Arthur Kirkland clenched his gloved fists as his eyes twitched at the black brassiere. His cheeks were burning and his face was red, rather due to embarrassment of seeing women's undergarments than annoyance to the Flying Mint Bunny. The C-sized bra lay on the tea table all open and innocent, when Arthur didn't feel so. The Flying Mint Bunny had a wide, bright smile on its face, proud of what it had brought. Pixie was rolling on the table, laughing and tearing as the wings on her back creased. Uni the unicorn stared at the bra with a confused expression.

"Flying Mint Bunny, what's this?" Arthur asked, his voice shaking with anger and embarrassment.

"It's our lead to Rio! It's got her flowery smell on it!" The flying rabbit said gleefully as it flew around Arthur in circles.

"I'm a magician not a dog. I ask for a girl and you give me her brassiere looking all proud and satisfied."

"Ah, don't worry 'bout it, Arthur! She's probably right behind me!"

"She sure is!" Pixie giggled. "Wait till she sees who ordered for that bra to come in his hands!"

"Even if I were as perverted as you, I wouldn't reduce to stealing her brassiere!" Arthur snapped at Flying Mint Bunny. "Worse, you've lost her. I told you to be careful and cut down on the jokes, didn't I? What if she gets lost in the red district?"

"Aw, c'mon! She must have at least a little memory of Wonderland!"

"She was exiled! Banished! Her entire memory was wiped out!"

"Yeah, she was exiled because of you." Pixie snorted.

"If she dies, I'll have to face the red queen on my own. But it won't be long until our powers will be drained."

XXX

Rio followed Gilbert's directions and ended up running around in circles. She was trapped in dark forests, swamps and caves where there was a light to it, the light of hope. In TV, the light of hope was described very differently from reality. She thought another miracle might happen, she'd fall into another hole and get back home. She couldn't believe she had travelled this far just to get her bra back. She regretted not asking Gilbert and Elizaveta for a way home, but she doubt they would know. It was no longer a funhouse. It was reality.

She had followed the light three times, the first and second times she had returned to the same place and the third time she was surrounded by weird-looking canines, probably werewolves and was almost devoured by them. Now she had come to a part of the forest which looked like a giant caterpillar pit as she waited for the cosmic vegetarian to come find her and eat her, or at least notify his friends. She had grabbed the tip of the giant leaf and saw giant butterfly eggs there, round and yellow and looking like giant eyeballs staring at her. She almost puked.

Bored, Rio plucked a flower from the ground. It looked like a purple orchid, a talking one. "Hey! Put her down!" squealed the other flowers, their leaves or hands on their stems or waists.

"What now, plants can talk?" Rio growled.

"You bet we can talk!"

"She killed Anastasia!"

"Kill her!"

"Get her!"

"Roar!"

"She deserves to die!"

"Hey hey hey, girls, what are you up to?" Rio heard the voice of a man which gave her the impression of a stereotypical flamboyant female-minded fashion designer. He had a posh, Polish accent. Rio turned to see the leading man, the owner of that voice in a hot pink plastic shirt, white skinny slacks with large holes, shades fixed on his eyes, a big belt with the gold-diamond letters FELIKS tightened on his waist and shoulder-length blonde hair. Behind him, a less flamboyant but equally stylish man with shoulder-length brown hair and green eyes was wearing a yellow short-sleeve exposing his muscles, white skinny slacks and a similar white belt with the silver letters TORIS. "I see we have a guest."

"Boss! She is the one who killed Anastasia!" One of the flowers reported.

"She must be a human then!" Feliks said as he strutted towards Rio, his waist shaking and his legs moving which reminded Rio of 70s. "Hello, sweet, what is your name?"

"My name is-"

"No! Let Feliks guess! Your name is Sweet!" Feliks announced as he took off his shades.

"Actually, it's-"

"No! You look sexy, like Feliks! You are Feliksa!"

The man behind Feliks made a light bow and said politely, "Nice to meet you, Miss Feliksa. I'm Toris."

"But not stylish like Feliks, hm? Okay, I call you Torisa now!" Feliks said as he scanned Rio from head to toe, unsatisfied with her cotton and lace white nightgown. "Tsk, not stylish at all! Do you wear this all the time?"

"No. I only wear it when I go to sleep."

"Go to sleep? You must be in your dreams now!" Feliks said as he flipped his hair, which gave Rio an assurance that all this wasn't real. "Okay, Feliks give you sexy dream!"

"What?"

"Come. Feliks show you Feliks style." Feliks said as he grabbed Rio's wrist.

"No!" Rio protested, pulling her arm away from Feliks' grip. "Look, I really, really need to find the Mad Hatter."

"If you go to find him, you need to look like the Feliks style! This unstylish style is not acceptable anywhere near Wonderland!" Feliks ignored Rio's whining and complaints as he pulled her towards a small cottage made out of candy. It looked the one owned by the witch in the fairytale Hansel and Gretel, but there was no sign of two stupid children sneaking inside and a cannibal witch locking them in a cage. Toris opened the door for Feliks and Rio to enter, and much to Rio's shock, the cottage looked much bigger inside than outside. It was the size of a mansion, or even a palace. "Welcome to my home, Torisa! Come, I bring you upstairs!"

"What? Where are you taking me?"

"To my room to get you groomed!"

Feliks pulled her up the long, carpeted staircase towards a room with two large wooden doors. Feliks' room was just any other for a princess, but the walls were adorned by panels of pictures of him doing different poses. This man sure loved himself. There was also a Jacuzzi pool in the room and a disco ball hanging above it. There was another door in the room decorated with diamonds which Rio thought led to the bathroom, but it was actually his wardrobe which was much bigger compared to his bedroom.

"This is the Feliks room. It's where Feliks keeps all his clothes and costumes." Toris said meekly.

Feliks snapped his fingers and a few maids sped towards him and stopped accurately a foot away from him. They were three maids with twenty-inch waists, revealing French maid dresses and overly tanned skin appeared. "Ladies, take Miss Torisa to the showers and get her waxed."

"Waxed?"

"Don't worry, Miss Torisa! My ladies are very gentle!"

The maids pulled Rio towards the bathroom, or according to them, the grooming room. It reminded Rio of the scene where Mulan was groomed to look like a bride for her matchmaking session, but she hoped it wasn't to that extent. She just wanted to see the Mad Hatter, get her item back and return home. Why was everyone holding her back?

"Good day, Miss Torisa. I am Donna."

"And I'm Clarise!"

"And I'm Nessa!"

"Actually, my name is-" Rio was cut off by her own shriek when Donna grabbed the hem of her nightgown and pulled it off swiftly. She was forced to strip naked and the maids put her into a bathtub full of cold, soapy water which made Rio's teeth chatter. "Wh-why is th-this wa-water so c-cold?"

"It cleanses your skin better!" Clarise chirped as she put her shampoo-filled fingers in Rio's hair.

"I thought hot water-"

"No, don't say anything. Just leave everything to us, and you'll come out looking like as gorgeous as us!" Donna said.

"Yes, as gorgeous as us!" Nessa said.

"And then we'll get you waxed!" Clarise said.

"Waxed? Why? I'm hairless!" Rio argued, bewildered. "Wait, you're not talking about the hair on my head, right?"

"No, of course not! But we're hairless too and we get waxed every week!"

Maybe that's why you look like Barbie dolls.

XXX

"Here she is! Isn't she gorgeous?" Donna mused as she pushed Rio into the Feliks room, where Feliks was waiting for Rio's grooming to be done. The three maids were smiling from ear to ear while Rio was looking very confused and embarrassed since they put her in a corset which was suffocating her. It made her waist look like it was a fifteen-inch waist of an anorexic supermodel, the size of her waist contradicting with her legs and chest.

"Just like how I imagined it!" Feliks said as he clapped his hands. "Now, let's get you in a dress and style your hair!"

"I don't really like to style my hair."

The maids gasped in unison, but Feliks was normal. He pulled Rio on a platform and used a magical measuring tape to measure the size of her waist, chest and arms. "This isn't my real waist size."

"Do not worry. These corsets are magical, the strings don't snap so easily."

"Why do you keep corsets and dresses anyway?"

"I like to cross-dress."

Without even asking Rio to choose, Feliks turned towards the racks and pulled the dresses out one by one, occasionally looking at Rio. It gave Rio the new ambition of becoming a fashion designer, but she didn't know anything about design. She had the lowest grades in class for Art.

Finally, Feliks finally pulled out a dress and walked towards Rio, beaming. It was a violet and white dress with a large and puffy skirt which Rio dreaded, elbow-length sleeves and a very low neck shaped like the base of a square. It looked like the dresses worn by the women during the Victorian age, if Rio did her homework correctly. Then, the maids pulled Rio in front of a dressing table, where Feliks played with her hair.

XXX

Francine Bonnefoy stared at the two cats without any obvious expression. That was what her people admired about her, that she was able to conceal her emotions so well. She had her cat on her lap, which was a dark brown cat, her favorite, called Roderich. There was a brown cat and a silver cat on the floor. The silver cat, Gilbert, the narcissistic one, was actually trembling in front of his queen for the first time instead of boasting to her about being able to bathe himself, just that he did that in his human form. The brown cat, Elizaveta, was on the slippery floor meowing, with her paws covering her eyes. It gave Francine the impression that the two cats had made a mistake, or just the silver cat.

"So, why are you back? I thought you two wanted to explore the red district?" Francine asked, her hand rubbing Roderich's head as he purred, much to Gilbert's annoyance.

"W-we screwed up on the w-way." Elizaveta said as she nudged Gilbert.

"Screwed up? What happened?"

"Gilbert!" Elizaveta snapped.

"Okay, okay! You see, we saw this girl and we think it was Rio the hero the Wonderland because they looked really alike! So she said the Mad Hatter had something that belonged to her, so we decided to lead her to the Mad Hatter and then we gave her wrong directions and now she's headed to the red district! Please don't kill me!"

"We? You gave her wrong directions, you git!" Elizaveta hissed as she scratched Gilbert's ear.

"Ow! Well you didn't have to scratch me!" The two cats growled at each other and got into a cat fight, oblivious that they were doing that in front of the white queen.

"Well, I think I will just get Arthur to settle this." Francine sighed.

"What? But Your Majesty, you know he's just going to take it in his own hands!" The two felines said in unison as they growled at each other again.

"Which is why he is the most trustworthy for this."

XXX

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