.

JUST LIKE A VIDEOGAME

.

Finally reaching the floor, Aria continued her way into the gardens to cross their huge span and reached the entrance of the central building, and from the balcony of the central tower of the dream castle, Ace lost sight of her below the stone arches, trees and tall bushes.

He went inside to look what more was here while she made her way. He had considered just going out, but perhaps she was right, and if he went out of this room, he would probably get lost. Besides, the idea of her coming straight to him, looking for ways to reach him was appealing and even romantic. All the trouble back in the real world to get to her, and yet here she was the one on a quest to reach him.

"Very knightly of her, right?" -Nightmare chuckled as he appeared in mid air above Ace.

"You stole my words. That is not nice Mr. Caterpillar." -Ace ignored Nightmare as he looked around.

The room was a was a big royalty chamber, really lavished and full of silks but pretty boring except for the weird control panel over a central desk where the dude creature that he had killed had been when he appeared here. Walking up to it he noticed that the panel had LOTs of buttons. - "I wonder what all this do?" -Of course he began pushing them all. :D

"Wait, knight! You don't know what those do!" -Nightmare yelled as he flew above the controls. He also had no idea what this did and he could not manipulate anything in his current size.

Ace continues pushing buttons. -"Then only one way to find out. But this is boring. I should go and get Aria. She might be in need of a rescue in this place, right."- In truth he wasn't sure what she'd needed to be rescued from of who was the biggest threat to her. She had kissed the rat in front of everyone after running away from Julius. She had even gotten shoot in front of him while trying to get away, causing him that horrible clock wrecking sensation that he wouldn't like to ever feel again. He really hadn't liked that or when he saw her fall unconscious amidst the blue fog in that room.

" Why don't I show you something interesting about her instead?" - Nightmare snapped his fingers and 3 screens, with ornate painting frames, lowered down from the ceiling and above the control's console.

"You are trying to bribe me somehow? That is naughty Mr. Nightmare" - Ace however took a step back to watch them. "Are these supposed to show something interesting?"

"Oh yes. Just watch, knave." -He snapped his fingers again. The first screen showed Aria walking through the gardens.- "This one shows what is happening right now with her." -Nightmare maybe was unable to interfere much with the structure of the dream trap, but he could observe and project. As for the other two screens, the second showed an scene of Ace's youth, when he was a kid alone in the streets until Julius came around, and the last screen just projected static.

Ace quickly drew his sword - "What is this?"

"I'm connecting the timelapse to the dream realm outside of this place and because you are the only one here, I'm using you for that." - He flew slightly back to avoid a possible hit - "As she gets closer to this location and to you, the more unstable the dreamscape will be get and thus more of her can be seen." -He pointed to the last screen full with noise and interference - "That screen will show what needs to be seen. "

"You shouldnt spy in people's pasts Mr. Insect. It's not polite."- Ace raised his arm to deal a slash but suddenly the sound of something activating and gates being opened filled the air while from the console, a new small screen popped up to show a message that read: 'self defense system has been activated'.

In the first monitor, vague shapes began taking form and approaching Aria from different parts of the gardens. Nightmare let out a curse and disappeared to search for any crack in this dream to get them out.

"Oh? It seems that those buttons did something after all. Now Aria has friends to play with" XD - Ace observed the screen, and although he didn't move except for sheathing his sword, his hand remained ready over the weapon's hilt.

Down in the gardens, Aria had been trying to 'contact' her A.I. with moderate success. She had been trying to send binary impulses to give orders and wasn't sure if they were reaching any of her gadgets. She knew her suits functions were monitoring her, but she couldn't get any confirmation ping. She stopped for a second to crack her neck and back. At least she knew that this place was partly created by her mind, thus it should be at least somehow susceptible to her influence in some way, and that might be her chance to get out of here. Her options were limited, but the real problem besides finding Ace, manage to make him 'Not attack her' , convince him to cooperate and somehow get out of here, was when she wake up. If she didn't find a way to wake up before Ace did, she would at least need to gain some advantage in order to get away from him.

Suddenly a loud noise like doors opening and clicking was heard all around, and from the corners of some bushes, some vaguely humanoid shadows started to come towards her with their limbs extended like zombies reaching for a prey. She looked for a weapon but there were nothing even remotely useful nearby. Worst, the shadow creatures also started appearing behind her right from where she had come from.

"Well, shit."

Aria ran towards another flower surrounded brick road from the garden and came to a dead end by a wall. From the floor, a small shadow began to rise up and form a vaguely humanoid shape in front of her. She turned around but saw that three shadows were already in the way. They all were starting to solidify into skeletic forms that moved towards her position at zombie speed.

Sensing the move from the direction of the wall, she twisted her body to deal a round kick to the now fully formed skeleton in that direction, causing it to slam against the wall, where she began kicking it to detach one of its arms and then used it as a smashing club over the skeleton's skull. Not even a minute later, a crack appeared over the bone where she was hitting, and the skeleton transformed into liquified shadows again; and to her own surprise, her own shadow moved beneath her and 'pulled' the dissolving skeleton into it leaving nothing behind.

The foreigner felt it and she knew that it was Aegis. Her shadow had gained more unsubstantial mass and now it crawled over her arm to form a small blackened chain with a heavy spiked ball at the end. It was like what she had seen Aegis to in the safe house. It was restructuring its shape according to her needs. The process was vague for her, but she at least had a weapon now and she didn't hesitate to quickly jump sideways and swing the chain to hit the next skeleton in the skull.

She attacked fast. Moving sideways while using the swinging motions to enhance the force of the blows. Hitting one skeletal foe while avoiding other. Her accuracy wasnt that good since this was a melee weapon she had never used before. During a couple minutes she smashed ribs and arms while trying to hit their skulls; and after enough blows their broken and shattered bones fell to the ground and began dissolving into darkness that was once more absorbed by her own shadow.

She panted and took a moment to breath. She closed her eyes and a message appeared over her vision:

.

"Signal received. Connection established."

Aria opened her eyes and sent a couple extra binary impulses. Then she closed her eyes again to read the response as she had expected would occur:

.

"Status report: Unconscious."

She asked for more detailed information and Aegis told her what she already knew. Her body was still unconscious in the real world with Ace's body around, and because the way the synaptic messages were sent to her suit's internal inputs she could communicate with the AI to deal instruction, but for the moment, it's responses were limited to projecting text or images over her optic lenses. She could not be awoken first, but there were other possibilities. For starters, Aegis had informed her that this does were shadows given form and purpose through the energy flowing from the nightmare and dream realm, so it could 'assimilate' them by 'devouring' them, just like the Jabberwock's shadow the AI partly was. And the more foes defeated, the better shifting capacities it would gain.

"Just like a videogame. Defeat mobs to level up."

It was as easy as that. The more foes she defeated, the more she and Aegis leveled up in this place. Her smirk was calm but almost feral. As a gamer this was something she could do, and now she had a way to deal with her escape, maybe even a chance against Ace once she finally found him.

Fast noises coming her way alerted her of new foes to defeat; but this time they weren't skeletons but some big canine-like creatures which fur seemed engulfed in smoke and flames. She could only deem them as 'hell hounds', and when the first one of the pack lunged at her, she moved sideways to swing the chain flail, and missed.

"Damn." She growled while avoiding the bite from the next and managing to kick a third one. They were as fast as a big doberman and her weapon wasn't the best to deal with this kind of foe, however, she couldn't stop long enough to concentrate into sending binary orders towards Aegis to make her weapon change form and this beasts were vicious. So in a new try she decided to simply yell in hopes that Aegis connection with her brain waves was firm enough for the A.I. to decode the wording of the chosen weapon she required.

"Dual blades!"

For a few seconds in which the beasts almost managed to bite a chunk of her nothing happened. Then the chain flail dissolved into some misty goo that retreated over her forearms and reformed into a modular copy of the darkened hidden arm blades that her real world armor possessed, just in time for her to throw a punch forward and impale through the neck one of the attacking creatures, tossing it aside over another one as it's body began dissolving, then she twisted around to cut the next one in the head and retreated with a flip to slice the belly of the one that was hit by the body of the first killed.

Very soon the creatures were dead and her shadow had absorbed them, making Aegis and thus her weapons slightly stronger.

The gamer girl decided to set up some mechanics. It was clear that any kind of foe could appear and she would not have time to concentrate long enough to sent a clear instruction towards her A.I. , so she decided to pre-set some basic weapons and defenses with some defined 'chants'. If she chanted such 'incantations' then Aegis would know in advance what to turn into.

"Dual blades!"

Her trademark weapons, light and effective.

"Chain flail"

The same one her A.I. had created with the skeletons.

"Machete!"

A big machete klaive.

"Vampire Killer!"

She couldn't resist the temptation of calling a whip that legendary name, nor using any other videogame references for other weapons, items and tactics. This was turning into a live action videogame for her, and frankly she was starting to enjoy it as she continued her approach to the castle's gate, hunting every single enemy she found and 'farming' experience enough to know she was truly 'leveling up' her gear.

In a way this was fun and exciting, something that up in the control room Ace had clearly seen in the screen that showed her current progress.

"Ari is having fun~!" :3

On the little screen of the console a new message appeared:

"Initial deterring methods are being destroyed. Release Gate protection?"

Of course, he pushes the 'Yes' option. All too eager to provide her with more 'fun' in hopes that she'd be in a better mood once she finally found him. For some odd reason he suspected that she hadn't been that happy to see him come and rescue her from the clutches of the mafia's rat. Maybe she had expected him to wear a shining armor?

He put scratched his chin to though why the hell that hadn't gone as easy as he'd liked. The hardest part should had been to find her, So why getting her back was this hard? She was causing his clock much trouble. She had beat the crap out of Julius and left him in a horribly depressed state, and he too was a victim. When she had received those shots, he had almost felt the bite of the bullets over his own clock. That wasn't nice; even now he wasn't sure if killing her wasn't the best option. Maybe she did want someone else. It had even appeared as if she wanted him dead and gone and might try so once they were out of this dream.

"Would you really kill the only person you and the mortician truly care about ?" Nightmare appeared once more and balked at him with clear unbelief in his face.

Ace turned with his most perfectly charming and perfectly fake smile. "What do you think Caterpillar?"

"If you plan to kill her because she's hurt the mortician, then you will need to kill the mortician because he hurt her too. Could you?"

The knave's smile strained as he sliced the air where Nightmare had been a second ago. That had been a really low blow because he had indeed killed Julius before and that cracked him. It was something he wouldn't never ever like to experience again.

A new sound of creaking mechanisms filled the place and Ace turned to the screens. One started depicting how he killed Julius while other let him see the frontal gate from the castle opening and a huge monster came out of it into the confined space of the inner courtyard whose gates had been shut down and trapped Aria inside. It had the hindquarters of a goat, the forequarters of a lion, and three heads mixed together consisting of a lion at the front, a goat in the middle back, and a poisonous snake at the rear instead of a tail, and it was big and angry.

"A Chimera!" The mercenary searched for a way to escape but there was none.

Each of the heads looked at her. It was big, bigger than the Bandersnatch but not as big as the Jabberwocky, still, she probably reached only to it's chest. The lion's head roared and immediately charged forward towards the girl, trying to bite torso off. She dodged aside while managing to slashes its nose with one of her dual blades, barely avoiding getting swallowed by the snake head that came from behind the beast and rolling away from the claw's swiping paw. However, the confined space of the courtyard didn't give much space to maneuver. She was in trouble.

Of course, Aria didn't have access to her optic capacities or Aegis's databases, but she had play many videogames to know how dangerous were chimeras, there were reasons why these creatures were generally bosses. That was good news because that meant that she had reached some advancement in her quest; the bad news were that she obviously couldn't overpower it and didn't know if she had leveled up enough to defeat it when she clearly had no other options. If she didn't win she died for real. There would not be second chances.

With force out of question she needed to use her brain. That had always been the case. And as the beast tried to bite her again, she once again evaded, this time by rolling bellow it, movement that allowed her to noticed that the snake head and neck were long enough to reach the front head, but more importantly, the same space that confined her to fight in close quarters, also impeded de chimera from moving around fast or do long swipes or jumps.

Now she had a plan.

Aria jumped away at one of the claws and ran towards one of the corners of the small courtyard, where she got into a position where the lion tried to bite her. She moved to the side of the lion's head and waited for the attack of the snake, and a second before it stroke, she dropped herself down so that the snake's fangs would bit into the lion's side face. Even though the creature was more than likely immune to it's own poison, it roared at the hitting pain of the bite, which gave Aria the few seconds needed to hack away at the snake's neck while doing her best to sent her A.I. an image of a geologic formation, her next spell that would be powered by a lot of her own mana.

Just as she finished the transmission, the Chimera's paw came down to rid itself of it's dead snake head and hit Aria back against the close wall. The Goat head looked at her with hate and moved upwards to make some weird sounds while the hurt lion extended it's it's jaw to rip her apart.

"Estalagmita!"

Just as the lion's fangs were about to reach her, her weapons and some of her clothing dissolved into inky shadows that the extended below on the floor in front of her to project a huge stalagmite that grew upwards and impaled the lower jaw of the beast's attacking head; however, the goat raised increased the force of its weird calling and static electricity began filling the air.

Aria knew the sensation of an upcoming electric discharge. She herself was a master of those, however she wasn't wearing her whole suit to divert the flow. She jumped over the lion's head and grabbed at the creature's fur to climb towards the madly moving goat.

"Machete!"

The mercenary held tight onto the creatures with one arm as the stalagmite disappeared and the shadow went back to form a machete blade on her other hand that she used to slash at the goat's neck however she could while the chimera twisted and writhed around in a maddened frenzy. And when she saw the chance, she struck the blade deep and then let go to fall to the floor and roll away seconds before the lightning stroke the beast through the blade as if it was a lighting rod, making it release a final roar of dead.

As the chimera began dispersing into dark mist, Aria's shadow engulfed it while the mercenary breathed heavily on the floor. The barred gates of the courtyard opened to allow passage and above where the chimera had disappeared, a screen appeared in the air and to her confusion and she saw a younger Ace, with a dead man laying face down at his feet. She had no idea what the heck was that. But the next scene was of that same young Ace making a deal with Joker.

Aria didn't say anything. She couldn't understand what that 'video' and it was somewhat unsettling, however, she was more focusing on her current condition. Using that much mana drained her, now she knew that her shadow's shifting required nearby shadows to work and even so, turning it into bigger stuff than a weapon would leave her partly naked and exposed; if she increased attack capacities then her defenses would falls and vice versa. Using it was not a good idea, much less into a fight. Perhaps she could use this knowledge and ability in real life... She growled and shook her head at herself. Maybe as a 'fatality' move it was cool, until she had learned to control it in calm, using it in battle would be too risky.

Unknown to her, at the same time that she had seen that bit of Ace's past, back in the control room on the screens that had come out of the ceiling, Ace had seen the last screen finally come out of static noise and show a younger version of Aria, probably not but a couple years older than Alice, among charred ruins and screaming madly with overwhelming pain before peeling off her armored suit and disclose her own flesh, cut and burned with hot metal melted into lines that extended along her body. The same connective lines that matched the interior transmission lines of her armor.

"So that's how Ari got those pretty tattoos" :)

Ace was as aware that those weren't tattoos as he was aware that she had seen some of his own past.

Once again, a new message appeared on the control panel:

"Trapset ready. Activate directive route an encounters?"

Of course he pressed 'Yes' again. The chimera had been quite the surprise, but Aria had taken good care of it. Plus it had activated the last screen and now he was seeing how Aria had to become a mercenary back in her world and some fun missions she had performed.

In another part of Wonderland, Julius had finally reached his destination. It was the staircase that connected the different countries. He wasn't supposed to meddle unless time was being messed with, but since a foreigner's time was messed up anyways, he could perhaps bend the rules and reach the disturbance.

Last time he had been here Aria had been in Diamond and there had been no way for them to reach her, so he had sent Ace to a time in Diamond where there was someone to execute. Because time had stopped in Diamond, Julius couldn't do anything to reach it but he had been able to change the time of the staircase to the point when the other version of himself was still alive in Diamond, while he remained in Clover to keep the passage stable so someone else could cross. And Ace was the only person he had wanted or trusted to go and get her. That had given Ace a chance to find a way to either jump forward to when she was at that moment, or to get a for Julius to reach her from this side of the mirror. However, Ace was in his own quest at the moment and Julius had no clue where Aria could be, but if he found an stable point in her time in Wonderland he could reach out to her.

Stepping inside the corridor that lead to the remaining to stairs, he quickly found his way towards a border where he took a step forward, but instead of falling down, cards began forming a route over the abyss below each of his feet as he walked towards the disturbance that he had sense. It was not only a point in time, it was a definite somewhere that hadn't been there before. The place of her death.

.

.

.

.

I could almost play the 'vampire killer' tune from any castlevania games XD

.