First off, I'd like to apologize to my readers for setting that reviews minimum. I tried the same thing with "WonderShock" and one of my readers for that really chewed me out, for which I'm grateful. That was really low of me and I shouldn't have gone to that length to generate reviews. Seeing the number of views and visits can be nice all by itself.

Please be sure to tell me what you think in a review or a PM. Now, onto the story!

Chapter 3: Infiltration

When Alice awoke, she felt like she looked in the mirror: Awful. She had slept for nearly twenty-three hours; her body was rested while her mind was still a whir. She looked very much like the time she had that Night Terror in Santoff Claussen, courtesy of Pitch Black. She couldn't help but wonder if this look was going to become normal for her: Hair a rat's nest, skin pale and cold, eyes bloodshot, eye shadow a mess, At least she didn't feel like a lifeless husk, though she certainly looked the part.

She doubted that he would be able to do this to her; she would have known by now if Pitch had managed to sneak into Wonderland and into her head. Additionally, it was practically impossible to get inside someone's imagination unless they were asleep. Alice didn't know what would happen if she were to be in someone else's Wonderland when they awoke, and she didn't want to find out.

As Alice washed her face and drew herself a bath, she thought over the events of the day before. There was literally nothing that would have triggered such an attack. Attack; it was a strong word, but that flashback had been so intense, so vivid. The best word for it was attack. The questions were, why and how?

Why was she experiencing these horrific flashbacks, and how was she remembering these events in such detail? She could remember wanting to forget the fire as that wretch Bumby had instructed, believing it was the best road to recovery, but neither did she want to relive every agonizing second of the fire and her family's deaths.

'Is that too much of a request? That I find a middle ground between selective amnesia and crippling recollection? I want to remember Papa, Mama, and Lizzie in our joyful days, I don't want to live in fear and dread of the next flashback, of the pain that haunted me for so long.'

Alice sank down into her warm bathwater and turned her mind to things less traumatizing. Everything had been going so well with her being a Guardian. It had taken her a while, but she had begun to see that there was some good in the cruel world. The joy in the eyes of the children who saw her and their questions into Wonderland and its inhabitants caused something in her that she hadn't felt until her reunion with Bunnymund: Joy. It was a tad awkward (just like the reunion) as she was still getting used to children and their innocence again. She had to answer their questions carefully as the real Wonderland was still dangerous in some ways.

She smirked to herself as she remembered Jack recounting the time Sophie managed to get into the Warren and the Guardians' collective lack of experience with real children. Baby teeth, with blood and gums? Alice's silent laughter, which caused ripples through the tub, was tempered by the reaction she knew Sophie would have if she could have seen Wonderland during the Red Queen's Reign, or when the Infernal Train was on the rampage.

She knew why Pitch Black had been so interested in her. The twisted caricatures of her old Wonderland retreat would inspire fear in the hearts of many, both children and adults, if they knew the truth. And Alice had no intention of the innocent being marred by the sick reality of her imagination, crazed by pain, loss, and guilt in the halls of Rutledge Asylum. Pitch could want her imagination all he wanted; he wasn't getting back in now that he had tried to destroy the Guardians a second time by unleashing the Dollmaker.

"Attempting to drown your sorrows in bathwater, Alice? You'd have more luck with a bottle of gin at this point."

Alice jumped and looked around for Cheshire. She finally realized that he was speaking from behind her locked bathroom door.

"You've been practicing ventriloquism, haven't you?" Alice snapped. "For a moment, I thought you had forgotten all notions of privacy and modesty."

Cheshire snorted. "Far be it from me to invade a young lady's privacy when she's in a bathtub. I learned that skill just to avoid raising my voice. I take it that the Guardians' get-together wasn't productive?"

"On the contrary. I informed them of your warning and we took appropriate measures to counter this new threat." Alice picked up the bar of soap and begin to lather up. Time to make use of the available cleaning supplies.

"Appropriate measures, hmmm? I would hardly call a swarm of tooth fairies, as far-reaching as the Tooth Fairy's mental connection to them is, appropriate for what is coming."

Alice could hear the derisive sneer in his voice. "Oh, and do you have a better plan?" She sneered in return. Cheshire hated it whenever someone imitated the tone he had just used on them.

"Let me point out the weaknesses of the Russian's plan first. To start, you are all separated by vast distances that are impossible to cover in a timely fashion without his snow globes. Second, you, who are the true target, have no way to communicate with the outside world if something happens here." Alice could imagine Cheshire checking off his points with his toes. "And third, I truly doubt the 'coming down on villain's head' part will work the way he imagines it will."

"And what is your suggestion?" Alice replied testily as she finished washing the bubbles out of her hair. She couldn't really argue with Cheshire's first point; North relied so much on his snow globes that he likely didn't think about the others' lack of them. The second point was invalid as she saw it; there was only one way into Wonderland, and that was safe with Bunny.

The third item could go either way; they could tear their new enemy "a new one", as Jack so eloquently put it, or this foe could prove stronger or more cunning than they imagined.

"Safety in numbers. All of you should hole up somewhere safe and let your adversary come to you." Alice could hear the insufferable pride in his own intelligence. Cheshire had always had an elevated opinion in himself and his abilities. Alice supposed it was a trait universal to all felines.

"Didn't you say that your 'lurker in the dark' is intelligent and manipulative?" Alice countered as she climbed out of the tub and began to towel off. "The situation would devolve into a waiting game if we did that, both sides stalling and hoping for the other to make a grievous error."

"You say that as though it's a bad thing. Then again, you were never were one for waiting, were you, Alice? I believe the Hatter has referred to you as 'Miss Hammerhead' because of your tendency to directly attack your problems. An effective strategy in most cases, but predictable by now."

Alice rolled her eyes as she finished drying off and pulled her dress on. "That's the approach that's worked for me in the past, Cheshire. I see no advantage in changing it now."

Alice jumped as Cheshire appeared in front of her. She had just pulled her socks on, but she still blushed at the fact that she hadn't had a stitch of clothing on a few minutes earlier. "Would it inconvenience you to warn me first before doing that?" she hissed.

"Yes, it would." Cheshire said snidely. "Sends my train of thought off its track."

"I didn't know you had a train of thought. I always imagined your mind as slinking around in dark corners," Alice retorted.

Cheshire gave her a dirty look. "Maybe I'll just drop by North's and give him my input since you don't consider my advice noteworthy anymore."

Alice rolled her eyes. "Very well, I'll tell the others your idea at the soonest opportunity. And before you mention my sixteen hundred winks, I used some of Sandy's dreamsand to knock myself unconscious."

"Cats everywhere would just love that sand of his," Cheshire purred.

"I thought cats slept two-thirds of their lives away, they don't need anymore," Alice said as she maneuvered around Cheshire and opened the door. He followed her as she entered her room. "Again, before you ask, I recalled a very vivid and disturbing memory prior to returning to Wonderland."

"Let me guess: The fire." Cheshire studied the oversized Venus flytrap that rested on a small table next to Alice's window. He believed the gift was very appropriate for Alice. She wasn't sure if that was a compliment or an insult. It was possibly both, as this was Cheshire.

Alice sat down and sighed heavily. "Yes, it was of the fire and of my parents crying for me to get out. Before you say something to the tune of 'I told you so', I'll talk with Tooth about this the next time I see her. The Guardian of Memory should know a few things about unwanted, traumatizing flashbacks."

Cheshire gave his equivalent of a shrug. "Or she might not have a single notion on how to help you. The Guardians are a force for good, but they are far too cheerful for their own good. Though I have to admit," the glow of his orange eyes somehow took on an almost tender shine, "the Tooth Fairy is quite appealing, for something with feathers."

"She blames Pitch for a nightmare she had," Alice smirked as she pulled her boots on. "In the dream, you two had taken the vows of matrimony. I can't imagine a worse fate for any female, unless she was a fellow feline, of course." She added the last bit just for his sake.

Cheshire sniffed and flicked his tail. "I can think of weddings far stranger, without the fear of a nightmare associated with them. Kindly send her my regards when you next see her."

"I'll make a note of it," Alice replied. As Cheshire began to vanish, Alice had a thought cross her mind. 'What had he meant by "weddings far stranger"? There's always a double meaning present when he utters something like that.' Alice was startled out of her reverie by Cheshire suddenly making a reappearance. "Did you forget to spout out another dire warning or sarcastic remark about the Guardians, Cat?"

Cheshire put his nose in the air. "I just recalled that after much strenuous pondering, I know why the Man in the Moon, if he exists, chose you to be a Guardian."

Alice raised her eyebrows. "Do tell." She sat down on her bed and gave Cheshire her full attention.

Cheshire was simply oozing with pride at his feline wit and mind, evidenced by his smirk and his happily-lashing tail. "What do you have that none of the other Guardians possess?"

Alice glared at him. He was going to riddle her as usual. 'Why am I not in a state of astonishment?' "A knife that can appear out of thin air," she guessed half-heartedly.

Cheshire stopped grinning for a moment. "Why do I even bother attempting to sharpen your wits? No one even tries these days." He shook his head. "Unlike the other Guardians, you have seen an exploiter of children, a true monster, at work, and you have faced and vanquished him. The Boogeyman is truly a wicked, depraved creature, but in the face of the Dollmaker, Pitch Black cannot hold a candle to an evil of that magnitude.

"You have suffered like none of them have," He continued. "Tooth lost her parents to the Monkey King, Bunny lost his entire race, and Jack was an amnesiac for three hundred years, after which he learned that he died shortly before transmuting into a spirit. Sad and terrible things, yes, but you lost yourself to madness. And by saving yourself from it, you can be a light to the children that know of similar suffering." He winked at her. "Have a very pleasant day, Alice."

With Cheshire now gone, Alice considered what he had said. It was just the sort of thing that Cheshire would think up with that Wonderland logic of his. She, the very antithesis of smiles and happiness, the emblem of suffering and pain, could do something that none of her new friends could. Out of all the Guardians, she had been the one most unlikely to be chosen, and that was why Manny had chosen her. She could emphasize with those children who had never known the joy that others had, those who knew of life's hurts and cruelties, and she could be a light to them.

Alice noticed "her" books lying by her bed and picked up Alice in Wonderland. She opened and looked through the pages. Even though she had long ago matured from that childish dislike for books without pictures, she still liked Carroll's books for their very beautiful pictures. They weren't accurate, of course, but she still loved them. She couldn't help but wonder what would have happened to her and to Wonderland if tragedy hadn't struck her family, if Bumby had never met the Liddell family and Lizzie, or if Lizzie had told their parents exactly what Bumby had been up to with her.

'If I had been spared the suffering I endured and my childhood had been a happy normal one, I suppose Wonderland would have faded into the oblivion that comes with adulthood. Perhaps I would have remembered, and these books would have been authored by "Alice Liddell". If it meant seeing my family again, yes, I would sacrifice Wonderland and all my creations in it. I just hope I would still be able to perceive Mr. Bunnymund as I grew.'

Alice set the book down as her thoughts drifted towards Bunny and her new friends.

ROTG:AMA-ROTG:AMA-ROTG:AMA

One week later

"I'm tellin' ya, I don't need to be followed around all day long. I'm not some rug rat that needs watchin'."

Bunny had to admit his idea had been a smart one, but its practice was getting old fast. It had been alright the first couple of days. He had shown the tooth fairies around the Warren and introduced them to the egg statues that called the Warren home and acted as caretakers and guards when he was absent. They also got along well with the eggs. They had a lot in common: Small, cute, sidekicks to a Guardian (just don't tell them that).

The issue was that the tooth fairies were too good at their jobs of watching over them. Apparently they took whatever their "Mother" told them very seriously. He hadn't had a moment's peace since they had arrived with him via his Tunnels. Everywhere he went, they went. He tried to look after some of the Warren's local flora, they would pester him trying to help. He wouldn't have noticed them if they weren't chittering and chattering all the time. It was just their language, of course, but it grated on your nerves after a few days.

There was also the issues they had with his dental hygiene. He flossed and brushed as Tooth said he should, but they always found fault with the way he did it. He didn't see why; he only had one filling and that was from before he became a spirit. Two nights ago he had woken up to find the tooth fairies propping his mouth open so that they could clean his buck teeth with some toothpicks. After shooing them back to the nooks and crannies where they made their various beds, he had slept the rest of the night facedown. He couldn't stop sneezing the next morning from all the dirt he had breathed in through his nose.

Right now, the hummingbird-like tooth gatherers were all scolding him (he assumed) and seemed to be talking about him and his habits regarding his teeth. Something told him that he going to get a lecture from Tooth the next time he saw her. He'd rather go one-on-one with Pitch; that woman was just plain terrifying when she was angry. If you needed proof, just ask the Boogeyman about the last tooth he lost. It hadn't been a baby tooth.

Bunny suddenly smiled as an idea came to the forefront of his mind. 'Why didn't I think of this sooner?' He looked past the fairies as if someone was coming up behind them. "Hey Frost, here to visit the fairies?"

In an instant, every single tooth fairies' face lit up with undisguised joy. They all shot around, somehow avoiding whiplash, to behold nothing but empty air and grass. When they turned back to Bunny, all they saw was his pooka tail disappearing around a corner, accompanied by his rare laughter.

It took the fairies half an hour to find him. He was sunning himself on a rock with a peaceful look on his face when they suddenly appeared above his head, chirping angrily and resting their hands on their hips, just like Tooth did when she was mad. Now that he thought about it, the tooth fairies did look rather intimidating given their numbers and those long, sharp beaks of theirs….

With a loud sigh, Bunny got to his feet. "Alright, you found me," he said. "Just thought I'd brighten your lives with the thought of seein' Frostbite. Not sure what you little blighters or Alice see in him, but that's your business." Bunny sighed again as the fairies doubled their volume. He couldn't tell when they stopped arguing with him about their merits as compared to Alice's, and when they started arguing amongst themselves as to who would win Jack's heart.

Bunny had to admit that he found the fairies' collective crush on Jack and Alice's effect on North's elves to be equally hilarious. He just knew better than to mention it to either party. 'What is with those two and attractin' the helpers of other Guardians? Well, "helpers" in the elves' case. Crikey, it's a good thing my googies aren't girls or boys.'

Unlike the completely male elves or the female fairies, his eggs were asexual. The "googies", as he affectionately called them, were born from the flowers that grew in the Warden. They would have been like a warning clock to him if he didn't see calendars regularly on his runs through the world. About a week or so before Easter, the flowers stopped producing pollen or seeds and instead clamped up, signaling that the eggs were on their, soon to be colored and sent out into the world with their message of spring's hope.

Bunny always felt his happiest whenever it was Easter. However, there was always a bit of grief that he buried deep down within himself. When the googies retracted their legs when he found a hiding place for them, they became real, hard-boiled googies. Bunny didn't know if they died or if they had been truly living in the first place. That was the only sorrowful thing he felt whenever it was Easter time. The Easters where it had really bothered him had been the ones immediately after Alice's disappearance from Littlemore Infirmary.

The only years that held a candle to the pain and sorrow he had felt in that decade had been the years directly after he became a spirit, after the extinction of the Pooka race. To become immortal when the rest of your species, everyone you had ever known and cared for was dead, it had been torture. The only reason he had been able to go on had been hope. As angry as he had been at the world and the hurt it had inflicted upon him, his hope was what had given him purpose and meaning.

Making friends hadn't been easy for him given his temperament and the losses he had experienced. Over time, he learned that the world wasn't out to get him and how to make friends again. The Guardians had helped greatly with the last bit. When Alice came into his life, he found himself finally forgetting about the pain he had endured at the beginning of his second life. When her family was killed in the fire and then she herself had vanished, his emotional state relapsed. That agony had been the reason he had become impersonal and almost business-like when it came to children.

Forming emotional connections to the little ankle-biters hadn't come naturally to him, even after Alice had returned as a spirit. Ironically, it was Jack Frost, one of the people he disliked the most and the perpetrator of the Blizzard of '68, who had been able to break that barrier with one little snowflake. Sophie had taken it from there as he had shown her and the other Guardians the Warren and the egg-painting.

The brief joy and peace he had experienced then had been shattered like a stained-glass window hiding an apocalyptic wasteland. Pitch's Nightmares had stampeded through the Tunnels, massacring the googies and denying them their birthright, to spread joy as symbols of hope and Easter for the world's children. When that one kid had walked right through him, it had reminded him of when Alice had stopped believing in him. As he felt his power and himself fading, he knew that his last visit to Alice had truly been his last. He would become powerless, and from there, would be easy pickings for Pitch. He would never see Alice again, and she would never learn why his visits stopped. Without Manny's choice of her as a Guardian, she never would have left Wonderland, even to find him.

Now that Alice was a Guardian, Bunny couldn't help but feel that his world was now complete. As he went along with the rest of his day, the tooth fairies constantly at his shoulder, he reflected on all the things that were part of his existence that, at certain points, he thought he would never have again. Friends, family; these simple things, so simple and yet so essential. He knew one thing for certain: He would never take any of the things he had for granted.

It was getting late when Bunny and the fairies to the den which he used as a bedroom. The Warren's own light would fade into darkness as the sun above set on the Australian Outback. It was almost too dark to see when Bunny set up the lamp and lit it. He had considered getting an electric lamp, but there were no electrical outlets for it and there never would be. He liked the Warren just as it was, though there was a possibility he could create a magical source of electricity. He just hadn't thought about it in a while.

There were many places in the Warren like this one; an earthen hollow big enough to be a room for someone his size. What separated it from the rest was the objects which cluttered it. Painting supplies, gardening tools, spare boomerangs, books on Tai Chi along with the original copies of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, along with some other miscellaneous objects which firmly labelled the place as Bunny's bedroom.

"Alright ya stickybeaks," Bunny yawned. "Time for bed. See you all in the mornin'." He watched as the tooth fairies went to the places that they had picked to sleep at night before blowing the lamp out and setting it down. He took off his boomerang holster and hung it from a peg in the wall before lying down on the blanket he used for a bed and curling up in it. Being a bunny, he didn't need a mattress like most sentient beings. Feeling his heavy eyes take their desired position, Bunny reached to the pocket where he kept the bag of Wonderland marbles and patted it. "Don't you worry, Alice. I won't let some psychotic wanker come after you. They'll have to deal with me first." He closed his eyes and began to drift off. His last conscious thought was 'And if they come after me first, they're in for one heck of a surprise.'

ROTG:AMA-ROTG:AMA-ROTG:AMA

Half an hour after Bunny's breathing slowed to a gentle, rhythmic in-and-out, joining the fairies in slumber, all was quiet in the Warren and in Bunny's den. The egg statues outside stood watch over the ruins of the subterranean temple, ever watchful for any suspicious-looking shadows or other magical phenomena that would constitute as a threat. The eggs themselves snoozed in their little shelters, dreaming of Easter and of the bright colors that would adorn them. All was as it should be in the Warren at night.

Yet, in a corner of Bunny's den, something stirred. Something unseen. Slowly, carefully, and quietly, a set of footprints formed on the earthen floor. They appeared gradually, as if their maker was trying to be as stealthy as possible. At the slightest sound, a breath of air, a sleepy chirp from a fairy, the far-off footfalls of an egg sentinel, the footprints would stop for a few minutes before continuing their tread. Inexorably, the footprints continued their path towards Bunny, asleep and secure in his own mind.

The footprints came to resemble those of someone on tiptoe as they came closer and closer to Bunny's resting place. As they approached, they began to creep around him towards his holster. When they arrived in front of it, they stopped. Nothing happened for a moment, as though they was making sure they were unwatched. Then, the pocket where Bunny kept his Wonderland marbles opened by itself and soon after, the small bag made its way out of its container.

As it came free, the bag swung forward, causing its precious contents to click against each other. In the quiet dark, the sound was almost deafening. Bunny snorted, stirred in his slumber, and his eyes twitched open for a few seconds before closing again. As soon as it was clear he was still asleep, there was a sound like someone breathing a sigh of relief. The bag moved through the air and suddenly vanished.

The tiptoed footprints began to make their way to the cave's entrance. However, they stopped by Bunny and then spread outwards ever so slightly. Out of thin air, a syringe suddenly appeared. It was filled with a yellow, nasty-looking liquid; the plunger was gently squeezed, allowing a stream of the drug to arc through the air. A drop landed on a blade of grass growing by the entrance. Almost instantly, the green, healthy plant turned yellow, and then brown before it withered away.

The syringe was lowered until it stopped right above a vein in Bunny's neck. It ran itself along the length of the pooka's neck teasingly, only a few centimeters from plunging its sharp tip into his body and unleashing its horrid contents. After a few minutes of this, the syringe vanished and a voice, almost infinitesimal in its volume, whispered. "Soon, Bunnymund, very soon."

The prints continued on their way out of the den and into the dark of the Warren. Once well out of Bunnymund's earshot, they broke into a run, only slowing whenever an egg sentinel came into the line of sight or hearing. Shortly, the prints came to the main atrium of the Warren, where the tunnels that lead to the six inhabited continents began. They sprinted into the North America passage. Once the Warren was far behind, the prints abruptly stopped and the yellow-green ball that was Lyssa's main mode of transportation took their place.

She blazed a trail of chaotic light to the end of the tunnel, which opened to allow her out. In the middle of a Kansas pasture, the ball emerged and turned into a panting Lyssa. As she caught her breath, both her eyes and her mouth smirked as she regarded the invisible exit from the Easter Bunny's home.

"Well, it appears studying all those kleptomaniacs back in the day paid off. Though, I would hardly call them maniacs. Pests and amateurs, more like."

For the past week, Lyssa had been in the Warren, waiting for an opportunity to snatch the marbles from Bunny's holster pocket. With the eggs, the sentinels, the fairies, and Bunny himself all running (or flying) around, she had to be careful lest someone walked into her. There had been a couple of close calls the first two days, but she learned quickly to avoid the Warren's unique traffic. There was also the factor of Bunny leaving the Warren at least a couple times each day.

It helped that she was very patient. When she was human, she was used to getting her way when she wanted it, which had usually ranged from "right now" to "five minutes". Patience was something she had learned while watching the unstable go insane, which ranged from months to years at a time. The man known as "Jack the Ripper" had taken eight years to finally succumb to his insanity. Lyssa was both fascinated and disappointed when she finally diagnosed him: Schizophrenia with a hint of megalomania. Megalomaniacs weren't new in her experience; she had seen the horrors committed under the Roman Emperors after all. The voices in his head that told him to kill prostitutes, and that it was right to do so, now that had piqued her interest.

Why did those voices exist in the first place, and why did it target that particular group? Lyssa's personal theory was that he had been the offspring of a "working woman" and had developed a real hatred for them. A hatred that he had kept down for so long that it took the form of the voices in his head, telling him to satisfy his desire to rid the world of them and then to destroy their cadavers. She had never had the chance to delve that far into his mind since he himself had been murdered by the brother of one of his victims and dumped into the Atlantic with a few stones tied around his feet.

That same patience had come in handy when she was studying the Guardians and Alice. She could afford to be patient. She was, after all, an immortal, a being for whom time was an ally, not an adversary. She had spent months learning about Alice and planning her return to insanity. Acquiring the tools with which to torment Alice with her painful recollections hadn't been easy, but definitely worth it. Using them, even more fun than adding her own voice to a schizo's internal dialogue.

What had surprised Lyssa at the last Guardian meeting she had secretly attended had been Alice. She had begun "reminding" Alice of her dark times a few weeks before that particular meeting. She figured that either Alice would have come to the Guardians earlier or that she would be a wreck by then. Neither had happened; Alice was there at the meeting, obviously sleep-deprived and brooding (the latter was normal), but hardly the sobbing, trembling, gibbering mad girl that would only need a little push to make her qualified for a strait jacket.

What really surprised Lyssa had been Alice's revelation that a new foe was gunning for herself and for the Guardians, using the very strategy that she devised, courtesy of the Cheshire Cat. Lyssa remembered that twisted animal from Alice's Guardianship Party, that glorious, twisted caricature of feline form and madness, mocking the world and everyone in it with that huge, yellowed grin and glowing eyes. Was he some kind of clairvoyant or did he possess a form of pre-cognition? Or had he somehow known what she was planning to do when she revealed her insane side to him? Whatever it was, she needed to quicken her time table, and fast.

The answer to Alice's lack of progression (or regression) came when the Guardians broke for lunch. She had glanced over Alice's shoulder and realized that the girl's doodle was a calendar, specifically one that charted out the flashbacks that she had been receiving. Apparently, Wonderland time was different from "normal time". She had started triggering flashbacks about a week earlier, intending to slowly progress from the Dollmaker Siege all the way back to the fire. She did it every twelve hours, estimating when Alice would be asleep by the time she had left the Guardian meetings. From Alice's point of view, she was having three or four flashbacks every other twelve days. This would wear her down over time, but not as quickly as Lyssa would have liked.

Realizing this, along with the knowledge that Cheshire Cat somehow knew about her, Lyssa knew she had to up the time line. After slipping behind Bunny when he made a tunnel back to the Warren, she had sent a memory of the fire directly to Alice, hoping to jar her. To entertain herself while waiting to get the marbles, she randomized the flashback triggers. Now, Alice would be experiencing flashbacks at different intervals, different levels of intensity, and different points in her history. At one point, Lyssa had refrained from letting Alice have any flashbacks for a whole day before sending her a really vivid one of her first session with Bumby followed by a cloudy Pris Witless blackmailing her for alcohol money.

Lyssa took out the bag and rolled a marble out, studying it curiously in the palm of her hand. It was like any cat's-eye marble she had seen before, except that the strip of colored material that ran down through its core was constantly shifting colors. From a banana yellow to a deep purple to calming green and all the others, the cat's-eye changed to every color imaginable. Lyssa found herself trying to predict which color and shade were next, but found it too erratic even for her. 'Alice certainly has an imagination, especially when it comes to the random and the haphazard.'

Anyone else who saw that marble would have thought it beautiful, a true marvel to behold. The only thing that Lyssa found attractive in it was the irregular changing of its hues.

"Now then," she said aloud as she began to survey the nearby ground. "Best to find the habitation of a Leporidae and test these marbles out. It wouldn't do if I need one of his tunnels specifically to unlock a portal to Wonderland."

She had also taken the opportunity to listen in on college biology lectures, along with quite a few others. Lyssa would have made a brilliant student and woman if she had been born in a different time to a different family and a different nation. Sometimes she wondered how she had merely been satisfied with the social lives of Pompeii's upper class when there were so many other interesting things to learn about the world.

"Ah, here we are." Fields in the middle of Kansas were advisable for locating rabbit holes, fortunately. "Now, how did that altruistic furball do it again? Ah yes, like tossing a rock into a stream. Then again, this is just your average rabbit burrow. Better put a little force behind it."

Lyssa clutched the marble hard in her fist and threw it hard down the hole. An instant later, she was rewarded with the flash of colorful, moving lights that signaled the creation of a magic portal, much like the snow globes that North used. The portal expanded out of the hole and Lyssa instinctively jumped back. She looked into the swirling kaleidoscope that made up the doorway between two dimensions and smiled, a mad flash appearing and disappearing in her eyes. She looked over the instruments and tools that she had begun taking along with her just in case she came across something that needed further study or became involved in a fight.

Satisfied that everything she needed was ready, Lyssa looked down at the portal, and then jumped in.

Lyssa had seen and experienced some bizarre things while looking through the minds of the unstable and insane, but nothing prepared her for the disorientating lights, sounds, and sensations as she fell down the rabbit hole. A strong wind howled in her ears as she plummeted downward at a speed she didn't know was possible. The lights blinded her and she closed her eyes, further adding to her confusion. Time itself lost meaning as she continued to tumble down, down, down.

At one point Lyssa opened her eyes to perceive gigantic forks, spoons, teacups, books, gears, clocks, cards, and chairs go soaring by. All the way down she heard voices from her past, voices that she hadn't heard in nearly two thousand years. Her husband, her son, her daughters, prominent citizens of Pompeii, memorable maniacs, and Pitch all added to the cacophony of noise that echoed through her ears. Without warning, a strong flash of light went off, momentarily blinding Lyssa.

She quickly became aware of a marked decrease in her descent, as well as the sudden absence of vertigo. The light faded and Lyssa found herself falling past amongst some truly gigantic trees. She was vaguely aware of a babbling brook as the ground came up to meet her. She was just able to get her footing right as she landed, stumbling down to her knees before righting herself again. 'What a rotten occasion to wear heels. Next time my footwear will be far more sturdy.'

Adjusting her glasses, Lyssa stood on her feet and took in the verdant surroundings she had found herself in. She took a deep breath of the clean air and breathed it out, wishing it wasn't quite so fresh, nor the birds quite so musical. She grinned crookedly as she fully realized that she was in Wonderland, for real.

'Now then, the game is truly afoot. If the Dollmaker was one such monster that Alice created, let's see if I can torment her with another.'

Oh no, the Spirit of Insanity is in Wonderland. What horrendous atrocities will she commit in Alice's most beloved place? Lyssa better watch her back; Alice is likely to fill her backside with peppercorns if she's given the excuse. I hope you all enjoyed that. Please tell me what you thought via a PM or a review.There are two ways to use Bunny's Wonderland marbles: Either smash them against a surface like North's globes, or toss them down one of his tunnels. Thankfully, Lyssa doesn't know that they're not as specific as she thinks they are, and that'll limit her trips to Wonderland. Though I don't think she'll be making a second visit. Alice will be on the alert after the first incursion.

Can anyone guess what Lyssa finds and uses to drive Alice further into madness? Hint: It's included in the DLC for Alice: Madness Returns. Believe me, it's going to be downright horrifying.

Happy reading and writing, everyone!