Chapter 2
The more Jack saw of this new place the more confused he became. After walking across the chasm between him and the factory, via the cable car line, he was quick to look around it.
He didn't go into many of the buildings. The whole area around the factory was warmer than he was used too, and the heat radiating from most of the buildings would be unbearable if he was inside too long. However he could see inside of the factory from the numerous holes in the walls. From what he could tell, the insides were just as strange as the out. All of it was made of metal with gears, teapots, and teacups everywhere, and the occasional room full of molten tea with a giant snow globe set above it. The air on the outside was choked in yellowish green smog, with even more gears and giant teacups and pots floating around it.
Still, for all it's strangeness Jack was fascinated by this new place he'd found. It was like nothing he'd ever seen, and he was eager to see more of it.
The only downside was that the wind was not cooperating with him as it usually did. While it still let him fly around it was shakier than usual. Jack could sense confusion coming from it, as if it was wondering who he was, and why he was there.
Jack chalked the wind's confusion up to the pollution in the air from the factory and thought nothing of it. Such things had happened before in very polluted areas. Thankfully, the factory was riddled with steam vents, both hot and cold, that were just the push he needed to keep in the air when the wind got confused. So he continued on his way, even with the wind's sudden change.
After flying past a swarm of fireflies that had light bulbs for lights, he came to rest on top of a giant clock face set into the top of the building in the center of the factory. He was careful not to get to close to the center of the clock, because for some reason there was a large hole in center, as if something had broken through it.
Glancing around at his surrounding area he tried to decide where to explore next.
"Let's see," he muttered to himself, a habit he'd picked up in his years alone. Looking off to one side of the building he read the sign across the top. "Smelling & Regurgitation," he read aloud. He then wrinkled his nose at the stench from the teapot shaped building that looked slightly melted. "Yeah, I can smell it from here."
He turned and looked the opposite way. "Cranking Up & Pressing Down. Well that tells me absolutely nothing." From the loud banging he could hear coming from the building, he thought it sounded like the only thing productive they were doing there was making a lot of noise.
Doing a quarter turn he looked at the last building in the distance. "Assemblage or Destruction as Required?" he read with amusement. "Well that sounds like the most likely place to find someone here."
With that he took off in the direction of the third building to continue his exploration, hopping along the floating gears, and occasional silverware that floated between him and the building.
Upon reaching it, he found it was just as hot as the others, but he figured he could handle it for a quick look around. Like all the other buildings there were a lot of holes in the walls. He flew though one and began to make his way through the odd assortment of gear doors and rooms full of broken metal.
Eventually he came a catwalk over a room where the floor below was covered in a pool with hot tea, with hooks and other equipment hanging from the ceiling. Farther along, where the catwalk expanded to a large platform sat one of the strangest sights Jack had seen since coming to that place.
On the platform was a long crooked table with several chairs positioned around it, as if expecting more people to show up. Piled on the table were teapots of all shapes and sizes all with steam billowing from their spouts. Along with the teapots were several melted-looking cakes, moldy finger sandwiches, and stale cookies, set onto plates that were all in some way cracked, chipped, or outright shattered, accompanied by several teacups and silverware in a similar condition.
The occupants of the table were just as strange and hodge-podge as its contents. There were only three, and they were all yelling at each other at the top of their lungs and pelting each other with rusted silverware.
One looked like a giant version of those wind-up mice with wheels that Jack had seen cats play with. Only this one had blood red eyes, had a bell on his head like a hat, and the area where the wheels attached was scarred and raw.
Next to him was what looked like a mecha rabbit. He wasn't quite as big as Bunny, and he had brown fur, metal legs, one arm that looked like a clock hand, and he wore a strange monocle on one eye. He was also yelling in a thick Scottish accent, which made Jack vaguely wonder if all giant rabbits had weird accents, or was it just the ones he met.
Both of the mecha animals were heavily chained to their chairs, and seemed to have teamed up to chuck cutlery at the table's third occupant, who was as strange as they were.
He looked a bit like a hunched man with a large gear sticking out of his back. He had a very big nose, greenish skin, and crooked teeth. He wore a suit that looked like it had been made out of a straitjacket, and wore a very tall top hat on his head. Unlike the other two, the man wasn't chained to his chair, and was allowed to pace up and down the table, refilling his guests cups with tea, and yelling obesities back at them while he dodged their silverware.
None of them seemed to see Jack, which led him to think he might be just as invisible to them as he was to unbelievers. A bit disappointed by that thought, he slowly made his way closer to the action to get a better look. He couldn't shake the feeling that this scene was familiar somehow, but couldn't place where just yet.
However the invisible theory was debunked as the man suddenly looked directly at him, and chucked a cup of boiling tea at his head.
"You're late for TEA!" The man yelled hotly in a British accent. He then squinted and took a better look at Jack, who had stopped dead in his tracks at being noticed. Fortunately the cup of tea flew harmlessly past his head.
"Wait who are you? Get away, you're not invited!" the man scoffed, before turning back to his guests, both of whom were now looking over at Jack with interest.
"Who's he?" asked the mouse.
"Never seen him before," said the rabbit (though, now that Jack was getting a closer look at him, he thought the rabbit looked more like a hare).
"Who cares!" snapped the man. "He's not invited. Now it's time for tea. Drink, drink." The man shoved two steaming cups of tea into the two's hands, and promptly had to duck as they threw the cups back at him, thus starting their war anew.
Jack snickered at the absurdity of it all, and cautiously came a little closer, and was content to watch them for a while. The three did their best to ignore him, focusing more on each other than him.
Finally, he couldn't help but voice the question that had been on his mind since he first came upon the scene. "So why are you two chained up?"
That got all three of their attention focused back on him.
"None of your business, laddie," snapped the hare.
"None at all, none at all," agreed the mouse.
"Ha, your business is everyone's business," snapped the man. "Being that you have no business anymore, or ever again, maybe." The man then turned to Jack as and he said, "These two bad mannered guests are getting their just desserts for horrendous and un-tea worthy crimes."
Jack cocked his head in confusion. "What crimes?" he asked, amused by the man's description of it.
"Oh the worst kinds," the man cackled. "Hostile takeover, the building of that confounded contraption, siding with HIM to make it. And worst of all, leaving me Tealess!"
"Oh, don't you start," yelled the mouse. "It's not like you're without fault."
"Did this to us, he did," said the hare, gesturing as best he could at his metal parts. "Took us apart, and put us back all wrong. Tried to do the same to others. Tried to do the same to Alice, but she set him strait."
"Alice?" asked Jack, his eyes widening. He finally realized why this scene seemed so familiar, and began to get an idea on just where he was.
Misinterpreting the reason of his surprise, the Door Mouse nodded. "That's right. He's not off the hook for that yet. Still on probation he is."
"And that is being served out keeping you two in line, strait and narrow," snapped the Mad Hatter angrily, not liking where the conversation had gone. He picked up a cane with a teapot on the top and whacked both prisoners on the head, before rounding on Jack.
"And you," he accused, stalking towards the winter spirit, causing Jack to back up to in alarm. "Didn't I tell you you were not invited? Be gone! In fact, I'll help you with that."
The Hatter swung his cane and knocked Jack off the edge of the platform (which he had not realized he had backed up too). Jack was so startled by this he couldn't have the wind catch him in time, and he began hurtling towards the pool of hot tea below the platform.
Since even before recovering his memories, Jack had always had an irrational fear of deep water, and avoided it whenever possible. Discovering his past only shed light on the cause of that fear. Because of that, the idea of falling into a who-knows-how-deep pool of boiling tea caused most rational thinking to fly from his head, and he reacted instinctively.
On the platform, Hatter had just turned back to his guests when a flash of white erupted behind him. All of a sudden the air turned frigid, and everything got covered in a layer of ice. From the tea in his teapots, to the tea pouring from vats in the ceiling into the pool below. All became frozen solid, and snow began falling from the ceiling.
He ran back to the edge of the platform, and looked down to where he'd knocked Jack off. Below him, Jack pulled himself out of the pile of snow he'd summoned to break his fall, and glared back up at the Hatter.
The Hatter shook one of his now frozen pots of tea at Jack. "You miserable, uncouth, slip of a snow cone. Look at what you've done to my tea!"
The Hatter threw the frozen pot at Jack's head, this time with much more accuracy than last, and Jack had to duck to avoid getting a concussion.
The Hatter continued to throw heavy things at Jack, swearing profanities as he did so. But Jack wasn't like Hatter's prisoners, and he wasn't about to just sit back and take the madman's abuse.
After dodging another teapot, Jack took aim and fired an icy blast from his staff. This hit the Hatter in the gut, and sent him flying back.
Jack flew back up to the platform to see his handiwork.
The March Hare and the Door Mouse were both laughing uproariously at the Hatter, who now lay frozen in a chunk of ice on the table. The only thing unfrozen was his head, and the madman was currently cursing Jacks existence in several creative (if a bit rambled and confused) ways.
Jack let out a sigh of relief that that was over with. Feeling he had overstayed his welcome, Jack turned to leave, only to stop short.
Looking cross-eyed down his nose, he saw a very large glowing ornate butcher knife pointed right in his face. And following the knife to its wielder, he found himself staring into the green eyes of an enraged girl.
"Who are you?" she demanded, "And what are you doing in my Wonderland?"
*A*A*A*
A/N Typical Jack causing trouble, but then the Hatter was asking for it. Let me know if I was off on anything. Alice and Jack's first meeting in the next chapter.
Disclaimer: I own nothing