Once Upon a Tennyson

by Creaturemaster

(After WAM) Ben somehow arrives in a world of fairy tales and magic, where following one's destiny is important above all else and the student body of a certain school is locked in a war over how to live their lives. Can Ben unite the students under one flag before the dark force lurking within the shadows ends them and claims the world for itself? The first of it's kind!

25. Way too Wonderland Pt 2

Well, Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezad-ie had a thousand tales.

'But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails!'

You got some power in your corner now, some heavy ammunition in your camp.

'You got some punch, pizzazz, yahoo and how, see all you gotta do is rub that lamp!'

And I'll say-

Hey, people! I like Friend like Me as much as the next genie, but we've got a story to run! After the long-ass length it took to publish the first part we at least owe it to our readers to get the second part out at a decent rate! I mean seriously, the death threats have been piling up and it's driving Hades crazy! You can't kill someone who's already undead!

'I dunno. I think I might look pretty good in another beard.'

You haven't shaved off the last one, silly!

'Exactly! Two beards equals twice the awesomeness that is moi!'

You keep telling yourself that. Anyway, thank you for all the support you've given me over the original lost copy of the previous chapter and I'm glad a majority of you (who am I kidding? All of you, to be exact) were so understanding for the lengthy waiting time between chapters. To show my appreciation, I shall bless you all with answers to your questions and a new chapter to follow!

'Onward, mighty stallion!'

I think the beard's making him hallucinate.

Actually, I think he was already crazy.

storygirl99210 – Yes, Ben is in Wonderland and only insanity and a wild ride can await him and the girls. Especially with a rather . . . unusual surprise at the end *hint, hint*

ajjr12 – Answers in the order that you asked for them 1) All of the ghouls are aware of Cerise's family heritage, but only Raven, Kitty, and Cupid are officially in on Cerise's secret; it's unknown if Maddie knows or not, but I can safely say that Apple is, as usual, absolutely oblivious for the time being. 2) I have seen the lost movie and, while it does have a very good plot point, it's not something I will be implementing. I already have so many ideas and characters and events that I want and need to cram into this story there really isn't much room for anymore.

Menatron the Angel of Ideas – I believe we've already discussed how and why Gigi and Twyla are incapable of contacting Whisp and Ben through a PM. And while the Evil Queen's monologue had to be cut from the final copy, that doesn't mean we won't get to see things from her point of view, especially since I've been lacking in the details on the villains schemes, something I've been trying to fix since my last story. I actually got the tuxedo idea from a series of Ben 10 Wonderland drawings and sketches I found on Deviantart and the Omnitrix idea was sort of an evolution of the Unitrix on steroids.

starravenwolf – Hey, no problem. I don't mind answering questions for my readers in the slightest (call me an egomaniac if you will). And while Ben won't be the first newcomer that the Queen of Hearts meets, he'll certainly be the most interesting especially after what he says . . . or rather yells. You'll have to wait and see.

Yay! Cannon-time!

'Curse you, starravenwolf!'

As much as I find the confetti cannon annoying, if it destroys Deadpool I think I'll be able to tolerate it. Light 'em, babe!

Yay! BOOM!

'NO! The confetti! It burns!'

StrongGuy159 – Can do, my man!

Darkness Rissing – And you may keep calling it that until I pull whatever tricks I have up my sleeve out to put on paper . . . keyboard . . . screen . . . you know what I mean. As for Nefera and Gigi being the next ghouls to come, you have at least one of them right . . . as for which one, I'm not saying anything! And believe it or not, the Elle x Cooper relationship wasn't actually my original idea, but the idea of another reader who thought it be a cool and cute idea; it just seemed inevitable anyway, plus it's nice to see where some of the lesser featured but well liked characters ended up in the series.

I can't say too much on Raven and the Evil Queen (spoilers), but I can say one thing for certain: always expect a wild card to throw itself into your hand of aces.

ALLAY HOOPA RING!

'ALLAY HOOPA RING!'

Oh, what the heck. ALLAY HOOPA RING!

transformers and star wars fan – Mr. Nibbles is the nightmarish, alien-like creature that was gifted to me and my roommates by a reviewer that only ever seems to pop up when we make false assumptions about our semi-beloved pet. Despite his acidic saliva, near-constant state of hunger, spider-like appearance, and habit of constantly attacking mine and Deadpool's faces when least expected, Maddie seems perfectly immune and treats Mr. Nibbles (she named it) like she is it's mother (we don't know what gender it is). She even feeds it like one in a . . . rather unusual way.

'You say unusual, I say hot and spicy!'

And I say stop oggling my girlfriend and get back in your closet before I compress you into an area the size of a dictionary and do it for you.

Matthew gemm – I shall, mi amigo! I shall!

Karlos1234ify – And I love writing for this story!

'You know what else is a coincidence?'

What?

'I love chimichangas!'

What does that have to do with anything?

'No idea! Ain't it grand?'

Since when do you say 'grand'?

See previous answer, you schoodle-brain!

mechazard01 – Answers in the order you listed them 1) Fluff Luv is essentially the brain child of a mindless conversation between me and Blazorna Ibara (who I've written a crossover with combining WAM and his other Ben 10 story. I'd check it out if you haven't already) where we were coming up with a villain idea based around Fluff Luv's species. The whole thing went on from there and we eventually ended up with a villain with will appear later on in OUAT and in the crossover as well.

2) Thanks! I just thought of what might drive Ben craziest the most, along with what I could do to hinder him in Wonderland High without taking away or shutting down the Omnitrix, since he's more science based than magic based.

3) It takes a lot to piss me off-

'Oh, Four-Eyes!'

That being one of them. Either way, it takes a lot for me to hate a fellow writer and reader and I would not suggest trying to find out either since that is not a pleasant experience.

4) That's okay, it's entirely up to you! And I believe we already discussed your little request, so done deal!

TerrorKing10 – Yes, yes I do, and it's both listed on my profile page and where I post a lot of artwork relating to my works, including the OC villains that were picked for the story. And trust me, I've got some ideas swirling around in my noggin; of course, I'll try to stick to the original design, but there's only so much I can do before I have to start taking guesses and implementing my own thoughts.

warprince2000 – I'm glad you thought so! Hope this was worth the wait as well!

DoomsDay2015 – When the time comes, you shall have it, mi amigo!

Isom – Ooh, Creaturemaster likey! Oh, Deadpool!

'What!?'

*Creaturemaster grins as he presses a meaty finger down on the core of the Nanitrix and swallows himself in a blast of yellow light. His right arms began to swell, metal plating taking the place of his skin as his bones and muscles fused together before sending out thousands upon thousands of sensitive nerve endinfs that connected them to the that now encased Creaturemaster's arms. His hands trembled and splintered loudly as they suddenly changed into sharp, gray claws while a large piston formed on the back of each elbow, merging with his arms underneath the armor. Meanwhile, Creaturemaster's upper left arm began to clatter and crack nosily as his tough, red skin took on a smooth, cool, organic substance comparable to that of plastic as it flashed bright red and blue and yellow in color; his fingers crunched and split loudly as they grew stiffer and more jointed, dull bumps popping out all along his arm as black lines and crevices etched themselves through his tissue. His lower left arm flashed a cool blue in color and deflated greatly, losing a great deal of the muscle mass it bad before yet remaining strong and lean as ever. His fingers crunched loudly as they hardened into three stiff, black blades perfectly designed for aerodynamic and slicing, completing the transformation*

Oh, nothing. I just thought I'd throw you a block party, since you're such a cut above the rest. Don't worry, this isn't a drill!

'Make it stop!'

How's this for stopping? *Snaps his Segmentasapien arm forward and grabs Deadpool by the front of his shirt, yanking him back with a loud clattering of bricks. Creaturemaster's Kineceleran arm then lungs forward and in a blinding burst of speed expertly cut out the letters 'C' and 'M' into the fabric of Deadpool's shirt before tossing him high up into the air. Deadpool screams and comes crashing back down just as the Talpaedan fists connect with his brittle body and slam the pistons down, punching him forward and propelling him clear across the room and through the door of his closet.* Oh, yeah! This thing rocks!

'Mommy . . .'

Creaty! How dare you beat up Deadpool!

Aw, babe-

Without me!

I knew there was a reason I loved you. And as far as I know, you mostly just stumble through the day without really knowing what you're doing and somehow graduating by Tea Time. I guess the only reason it seems harsh is because of how harsh they are on actually keeping you there, but then again, if they have classes that send chess pieces sailing across the horizon like golf balls, it doesn't seem that strange. As for Fluff Luv . . . I'll keep that in mind in case Maddie needs to calm down a bit. I've run out of sedative tea leaves and I'm not getting another shipment for the next six months.

'AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!'

Maddie, stop trying to smash Deadpool's face with your mallet. Smash his coconuts instead, that'll get a bigger reaction.

Okay!

'AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHH! Why me!?'

Don't worry. We'll reward him with a huge plate of Mexican food later. In the mean time though . . . on an ending note though, I finished Seducire (the Nemetrix alien you suggested for Jigsaw). It has yet to appear in the story, but I'd thought I'd get it out so I don't forget about it. Lemme know what you think! And in the mean time . . . again . . .

ImmaSupa Stargirl – I'll see what I can do, but no promises! As for the girls that are in the harem, there are roughly six girls currently attached to Ben right now and they are Apple White, Raven Queen, Cerise Hood, Madeline 'Maddie' Hatter (not my Maddie, mind you, a different one), Kitty Cheshire, and Cedar Wood. As you might have guessed, Lizzie's next in line.

Marshman101 – I don't know why but these sex-related reviews of yours somehow always make my day, probably because they're so unusual compared to everyone elses. As for your questions, Ben will not being having sex with the Evil Queen or Mira Shards in anything related to this story, but there is a very good chance that will be possible in the inevitable EAH lemon series in the far future. As for Maddie and Raven, it's probably happening in some universe right now as we speak, but it certainly isn't happening here!

Unless you . . . want . . . it to happen?

Don't tempt me, babe. Just don't.

Are you sure? I wouldn't mind *leers playfully at me*

For the love of Galvan Prime, Maddie, save it for date night! Sheesh!

Codecrash – I dunno. For all we know, the Narrators do have bodies, just ones that can't be seen even by Wonderlandian eyes, though this doesn't apply to their voices; they might not be able to interact with the mortal plane and could thus be immortal in a sense, though there does seem to be a need to reproduce considering Brooke's existence. I doubt that Ben would be that smart compared to the Wonderlandians themselves, but I don't doubt that somethings will just seem obvious to him considering his experience. As for Courtley and Ben-

'Make it stop! The puns! They are too much!'

I think Deadpool just expired!

How can you tell?

His lips are flapping like a jabberwocky with the sniffles!

Is there a difference?

ThatChronicKid – First off, I don't mention/advertise/recommend stories I know nothing about and/or haven't read and I only do that if I believe other people will enjoy them as much as I had. Until I can actually see some physical evidence that it's actually worth mentioning to the masses, I can't and won't do anything. Secondly, I only bring in other characters/readers into the author's notes when I feel it is either relevant to whatever insanity is taking place in my room/dungeon cell in the Underworld this week, not because they request it; and because there is nothing incredibly arc-like happening does not mean you should make said relevant insanity happen.

Malchior the Bad – Yes, yes, it's all in the name of driving Ben (and to a lesser extent, Lizzie) absolutely bat-shit insane. If you think Courtley's gonna try to flirt with Ben just to get on Lizzie's nerves, wait'll you see what a certain villain down the road has in store for our shape-shifting hero. As for Decagon Vreedle, it's a concept I've been toying with for a bit, but it's highly unlikely. Decagon Vreedle doesn't exactly offer Ben any kind of special advantage over his opponents and shares powers like another alien, Badaboom (I imagine he comes with explosives he can throw at enemies). And if not Badaboom, then numerous other heavy hitters like Humungousaur and Four Arms. It is a pretty decent idea however and, to be honest, Blazorna Ibara has been vouching for Decagon Vreedle to appear in our crossover with his Ben. Check it out!

Hero-Time10 – At the moment, it's rather low on my list of 'things to draw for Deviantart', but it could be done. Really, all you have to do is search 'Ben 10 Wonderland' and find the drawings by Kapaychan (which are phenomenal, BTW) and that's pretty much the design I went with, other than few, obvious changes to avoid being a total copycat (despite the fact that I am, in fact, an undead Tetramand).

shatterstarhawk – Yes, Maddie did get the cannon parts and is currently trying to figure out how to put them together (the instructions came in every other language imaginable except English an Riddlish). As for your questions, Epic Winter will be somewhat drastically different but should hopefully feature all the characters and yes, Wonderland did have an effect on the Omnitrix. Since Wonderland High blocks all forms of magic, such as Kitty's teleportation abilities, I needed something to hinder Ben and turning the Omnitrix into a whole bunch of Omnitrices on the randomizer function was just what I needed to even the playing field.

DracoAngelus17 – That's right, my woefully doomed friend! As the Heart of the Frelijord always says, "You can always trust Braum", and likewise, you can always trust us down here in our own, personal hellhole. And yes, I hope Way too Wonderland to be one of my finer accomplishments. And as for your . . . eh, problem . . . the best advice I can give you is to either not get bit or let her get her claws on you (in her spider form, she's more closely resembles an Arachnisapien with literal needle-like claws and legs) and whatever you do, do not let her tie you up in poison-laiden silk (it relaxes the muscles and nerves and causes all movement but breathing and blinking to cease) and proceed to either drain you of your fluids or use your body to please her, neither of which is a good option for you.

'Especially since the hatchlings, which will spawn in about a three day period, will devour the first thing they see which will most likely be you!'

Not helping, Wade! Can't you see he's got bigger things to deal with than your endlessly taunting!?

'But's so much fun! It's better than fondling Wolverine's nice pair of criminals he's got down under, if you catch my drift.

Unfortunately, I do. So, to recap. DO. NOT. GET. CAUGHT. If you do get caught, well . . .

Think happy thoughts?

Yeah, lets go with that.

Anon – I'm glad you like my story and I'm very appreciative of that, but I have a duty to other people who don't care for my Ben 10-related work and since I haven't catered to them, they are top priority. While I work my ass off to get my Total Drama story updated, I will be working on the next chapter of OUAT, CCB, and possibly the lemon series on the side. A rough estimation is probably three weeks in total for a chapter; that usually gives readers enough time to review and read.

Guest – She's in there somewhere!

luciayshadow – Hey, don't worry about it. It's been like, a month since I've updated this story which just shows you how busy I've been. And while I may no longer be in school (Haunted High doesn't enroll undead Tetramands it turns out. We don't phase through walls like everyone else), I can understand the difficulties that come with it.

And thank you for that helpful insight. I've got an idea for DaringxRamona, but I'm also liking JustinexRamona as well. Basically, I want to give Daring a happy ending too once he's been written into a better light (after much humiliation). And no, Twyla is not contemplating suicide (have I just unleashed an unspeakble evil by saying the-word-that-shall-not-be-named? Lets hope not), I am not putting suicidal thoughts into my characters heads (at least not ones they'll go through). I actually did almost nearly kill Twyla in my one-shot series but, as usual, Ben just happens to be nearby and save her in the nick of time.

El templo de la lechuza won't appear for some time, but it will appear with a few tweaks to the story to make it fit and compress it down a little (because lets be honest, as good as it is, it's utterly massive). And no, not all females of Kickin Hawk's species can fly; the species all resemble various species of birds, with the king resembling a peacock (much to Ben's horror). This grants them all slightly different abilities than others, such as those that resemble waterfowl or penguins being better swimmers while those that resemble cranes and ostriches are faster runners and possibly stronger. Those that resemble peacock aka royals and governmental officials, have the ability to glide with their tail feathers. Remember, flying is different than gliding.

Thought you might like the big bed and Skelita scenes, been meaning to give our little skeleton some love. And yes, Whisp is a Poison Apple shipper, though this is just mostly because she can here anything I say (the author) and likes to secretly read Holly's stash of forbidden fanfiction (which may or may not be involved in the inevitable EAH one-shot series); Fluff Luv has been perfected to absolute adorablation (which isn't even a word, now that I think about it).

If you think Disney was trying to rip off EAH with Descendants (which is a nice concept in itself, just probably poorly executed), I was actually down there in Florida for a couple weeks (which is why I didn't update for a while) and they have this line of Monster High/Ever After High-like dolls called Attractionistas, basically dolls based around the Magic Kingdoms various attractions, such as the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Tea Cup Ride (whose doll is actually named Madeline).

No, silly, I'm named Madeline!

Oh, vey.

maverickmoxey2000 – To borrow a line from my favorite animated role that the late Robin Williams has proudly portrayed . . . "AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH . . . OY! Ten-thousand years will give you such a crick in the neck!"

'Being around you for more than ten seconds is gonna give me such a pain in the neck.'

Quiet, you. And stay out of other people's reviews! I mean, c'mon, when the Lord of the Dead says you can't leave your padded dungeon cell, you don't leave you padded dungeon cell. Unless it's for another padded dungeon cell, then be my guest. Either way, something tells me that whoever the winner will be (even I don't know yet!) is going to take special advantage of their time alone with Ben, knowing full well that, considering it's Ben, there's bound to be something or someone or other that's going to ruin it. And the rest of the ghouls, no matter how oathsworn they might have been, will undoubtedly try to sneak a little somethin-somethin now and again or be unable to resist Ben's charm (or lack thereof) for long.

I think one reason they take students to places like that is a warning of sorts, basically saying "This is what can and will happen to you if you don't stay in school" or something like that. Basically piggybacking on every single prison break movie there ever was and ever will be. As far as I know and according to the wiki, Cooper underwent a massive, almost startling growth spurt somewhere around the end of Alien Force and the start of Ultimate Alien, possibly artificial even; for all we know he used his technokinesis to build himself a machine to help his body grow more naturally due to being incapable of taking the taunts and teasing sent his way about his stunted growth.

Rule 34 . . . or dear, sweet Olympian Gods. All I can say is there are some rather . . . interesting pictures of Lizzie and Kitty getting perhaps a little too comfortable with one another. Not to mention some rather . . . intriguing pictures of her with Daring and Courtley.

Disregarding the fact that I probably just stomped on every little girl's dream out there of being a fairy tale princess, that little issue with fairy tales in general always bugged me. I mean, I understand that the original fairy tales were a lot darker and meant to be lessons instead of stories, but the latest, more 'safe' versions make it sound like everything turns out just fine because you sing a little and have a random prince to save you from a danger you were absolutely oblivious about. As for whether Venus sleeps naked (I can not confirm this when she is alone with Robecca, Jane, or Ben), lets just say that you gave me a brilliant start to a chapter I was otherwise having difficulty starting.

I have seen that version of Ben and I will say he is rather amusing. Truth be told however, I modeled Ben's new look from a series of pictures from Kapaychan that portrays the UAF characters in Wonderland, with Ben naturally taking the place of the Mad Hatter as his new outfit implies. Either way, you my friend, come up with way too many good and fabulous ideas for your own good XD

Oh, and one more thing? I either offer my sympathies to Lizzie for what she has just unfortunately stumbled upon or offer my words of warning to you to RUN and HIDE, depending on how things go. I'm not sure whether you should be more afraid of her possible anger or her possible lust, but I know a thing or two from Maddie-

What do you know from me?

'Um, that your completely bat shit crazy!?'

I mean other than that, silly!

How about your adorable and beautiful and sexy as Hades?

Aw, you're just saying that to butter me up like a strawberry tart!

Is that a . . . good thing?

Yep! *smooch*

Oh, as if you and Lady Death haven't kissed before, Wade. Act your age for once.

Can't. That's what the lady and/or ladies love about me.

For once, I can't argue with that.

Now before we begin, I have two thing to ask of you all. First off, who should I pair Daring with!? It's no secret that I'm going to try and attempt to fix Daring's character, but I'd like him to also find that special someone who for once has all of his attention for more than a week (or a day, considering his social life in canon). I'd like to hear your suggestions for who Daring might be most compatible with.

The second thing I'd like to hear: how can I reform Courtley!? Like in canon I will also be trying to reform Courtley after her spout in Wonderland with Ben and the girls, but I'm going to do it better than the canon version did (leaving it up to the fans, while fun, probably wasn't the best idea). So I want to hear what you like about Courtley, what you don't like about Courtley, and what you think should be fixed about Courtley. Basically about Courtley in genneral.

'That just about cover it, Four-Eyes?'

Yeppers! Onward!

Alright, alright. As always, comment, review, suggest, and request down below! And don't forget to review about Daring and Courtley!

'Onward, mighty stallion!'

The beards are getting to him.

You mean they weren't before?

---

Hunter knew from the moment that he heard giggling and felt something wet and sticky drip down on his head from above that he should have simply kept walking and made it to his lunch date with Ashlynn. It had been a while – roughly a week – since he and his Vegan Princess had last dined together and out in the splendid outdoors on a lovely day no less; plus, Ashlynn had promised to make him some of her famous (or infamous, depending on how you looked at it) spinach puffs, delicious wads of cooked spinach wadded up between mouthwatering, fluff buns lightly seasoned with the most scrumptious spices this side of Ever After.

In short, the Son of the Huntsman was not looking forward to missing it.

So when he heard the aforementioned giggling and felt the suspicious substance that reminded him uncomfortably of the drool he would sometimes wake up with slowly trickle its way very slowly down his chest beneath his shirt, Hunter stopped on his trek and ran through the options he could take at this moment; he had at least two. He could either ignore it entirely and be on his merry way towards his Vegan Princess or he could go investigate and possibly regret finding what he discovered entirely.

It was never said Ashlynn fell in love with Hunter because of his brains.

Against his better judgment, the huntsman looked up to see the heavy, leather boots of Sparrow Hood dangling down from a high branch in a tall oak tree directly above him, the leaves rustling every now and again when the Son of Robin Hood decided to release an almost feminine giggle. "Sparrow!" he yelled loudly.

The following result was something akin to that of a startled chimpanzee desperately trying not to fall out of the tree for the sake of avoiding injury and a further bruised ego now that it had been caught. "Hey, not cool man! Nobody sneaks up on Sparrow Hood!"

Hunter sighed and rubbed his brow. "I know I'm probably going to regret this, but what in the kingdom are you doing up there?" he looked up into the tree with an expectant look.

"Come up here and take a look for yourself, Huntsman." Sparrow grinned mischievously with that ever smug grin that hunter knew drove Raven absolutely crazy whenever it was directed at her. And not in the good kind of crazy, no this was the kind of crazy that brought the well hidden dark side of the young witchling that had become his unofficial leader and that was a scary sight all in its own. If there was one thing in Ever After that pushed the incredibly patient and oddly mother-like Raven Queen over the edge, it was a cocky and overconfident Sparrow Hood who didn't understand the concept of personal space or volume control.

The later of the two was the more annoying for those that were wondering.

Now Hunter had a dilemma here. He could either forget he ever saw Sparrow in the first place and head back on track to get to his much beloved date with his girl and spinach puffs or he could play along and see just what had Sparrow giggling like a school girl with a secret. That last option generally ended up with the Son of Robin Hood landing himself in detention and spinning gold for Professor Rumpelstiltskin (who often cut Sparrow's punishment short just to get him to stop playing and out of his receding hairline), but occasionally it was worthwhile.

Occasionally. Rarely. Sporadically. Periodically. Seldom. As in not very often.

And yet, like a certain Daughter of the Cheshire Cat that got herself into trouble one too many times, Hunter let his curiosity get the best of him. Which was why he found himself grabbing onto the lowest hanging branch and hauling himself up as much upper body strength as he could muster before he managed to hook his foot over the branch and pull himself up. He then proceeded to carefully make his way up the rest of the tree under Sparrow's almost ecstatic urging, grabbing onto branches and setting his feet inside hollows that he was sure were empty to climb the rest of his way up until he had finally made it up to a spot located directly behind an eager Sparrow Hood.

How he had managed to haul his guitar and a pair of binoculars up there with him as well was a mystery in itself, but Hunter wasn't going to ask more than one question at a time. Especially when delicious spinach puffs and his beautiful Ashlynn awaited him.

"Alright, I'm up here. Now tell me why you're up here before I suddenly change my mind and climb back down." Hunter sighed with his arms folded over his chest out of annoyance.

Sparrow gave a grin that he couldn't quite place but would have to categorize under 'scheming' and 'proud', with a hint of 'predatory' for good measure. "See for yourself." he held up the binoculars for him.

Hunter sighed and reluctantly took the the pair of binoculars from him, mentally wondering why he was even playing along with the musician's antics that would undoubtedly get him in trouble as he put the binoculars up to his eyes and allowed them to focus. At first he couldn't see anything and it was comparable to that of a child's watercolor painting where all the colors bled together into a big mess, but eventually an image began to take shape.

The binoculars were nearly dropped to the ground below from Hunter's shaky fingers.

Venus McFlytrap was stretched out lazily along the length of a lawn chair that she had most likely dragged up from the school's indoor pool and was currently sunbathing with a pair of magenta-rimmed sunglasses over her eyes. Of course, that was the only thing – other than her copy of the Omnitrix – that she wore, making her one very nude ghoul that Hunter was sorry to say he was unable to take his eyes off of. The plant-monster ghoul's figure was bosomy and hard to look away from, her beautiful breasts and plump lips riddled with fine, needle-like teeth almost impossible not to stare at. Her flawless, green skin was only disturbed by tendrils of ivy and vines that curled their way around her warms and legs and across Venus' body to form what looked like a hardly functioning bathing suit that only covered the most private parts of her figure. Everything else was left to the imagination and that was quite a lot.

She was beautiful.

She was arousing.

She was an absolute goddess.

And she was dating Ben Tennyson.

It was at that moment the binoculars were nearly dropped a second time as Hunter hurriedly fumbled with them with a deep, crimson face and tried to shove the viewing device back into Sparrow's hands. The musician of course, gladly took them back but quickly hooked an arm around the huntsman's neck and put him into a makeshift headlock when he realized that Hunter looked like he was trying to make a break for it.

"What is your problem, Huntsman?" Sparrow scoffed with a big, dopey grin on his face as he returned the binoculars to his eyes for his viewing pleasure.

Hunter grunted as he tried to slip out of the Son of Robin Hood's tight grip. "My 'problem' is that I want to live! If Ben finds out about this, he's gonna kill us! I am not looking forward to being burned, crushed, stomped on, frozen, melted, electrocuted, and/or aged into dust if I can help it!" he hissed venomously.

Sparrow was about to try and sooth the huntsman's concerns – as even his somewhat limited intelligence was able to grasp that spying on a naked female of any species was not exactly considered appropriate in most cultures and that any loose ends concerning the manner left untied would not be beneficial to his health – when there came a sudden rustling of leaves from above. The musician paused from wrestling with Hunter long enough to stare curiously at the goshawk that had perched itself at the very end of the branch he and Hunter were sitting on.

Normally a bird of any kind, even a bird of prey with a hooked beak and wicked sharp talons, would not deter Sparrow from getting a front row seat at seeing a girl's cleavage and other areas, especially when she was unaware, but a little voice in the back of his head warned him otherwise. He had learned from a young age from his father about the kinds of animals he might encounter when he followed in his father's footsteps and lived out his days in Sherwood Forest, and Robin Hood had been quite quick to warn him about the dangers of the highly territorial and temperamental goshawk that would viciously protect its territory from any animal dumb enough to wandered into its patch of the forest.

Coincidentally, Robin Hood had given him that lesson right after he had several slash wounds in his face and back treated and stitched up by his wife. As Sparrow recalled, he had never seen his father so disgruntled and terrified in all his life and was quick to note that the lesson of the goshawk was told in a somewhat irritated and vengeful tone.

That specific lesson came back to Sparrow now as he starred wide eye at the goshawk perched at the end of the branch he was sitting on, and if the way Hunter had ceased all movement was any indication he had realized what their current situation was, too. Normally a few swings of the musician's guitar might have been enough to ward off the temperamental raptor long enough for the two boys to make their mistake, but not this time.

Last time Sparrow had checked, goshawks were not colored various hues of black and purple and did not wear spiked ankle bracelets around their legs.

The Son of Robin Hood had approximately seven seconds to react accordingly before Jane Boolittle – cleverly disguised as the goshawk perched at the end of the branch he was sitting on – gave a shrill shriek and flared her wings. Hunter and Sparrow yelled in response and scrambled over one another to safely scurry down the tree and make a run for it as the lavender goshawk rushed at them and ruthlessly began to peck at their heads with her beak and slash and attack them again and again with her talons. The bird of prey never let up at the two boys suddenly grabbed onto one another as they fell tumbling out of the tree, hitting several branches on the way down with a loud crack! or thump! every few seconds until they finally landed painfully on the ground in what could be called the most painful manner possible.

Sparrow hadn't hurt this much since he had made a particularly suggestive comment towards Lizzie Hearts and had received probably the hardest slap to the face Ever After High had ever seen.

"Sparrow . . . if I live through this, I am going to kill you . . ." Hunter grunted as he shoved the musician's foot out of his face and struggled to get out from beneath him.

"Get in line, Huntsman. You ain't the only one who wants a piece of Sparrow!" the Son of Robin Hood yelped once his skull had stopped pounding long enough for him to catch sight of the goshawk perched on the ground just a few feet away; a flurry of feathers and soft, lavender skin soon enveloped the bird of prey and Jane was quick to take its place. And she did not look happy.

The jungle ghoul glared coldly at the two boys that had the audacity to sneak even a glance at her ghoulfriend while she was trying to have lunch the only her species could that didn't involve devouring vast quantities of flesh and blood. The many animals she played host to within her body and mind were roaring for their blood for such a heinous act and Jane was all too happy to oblige as she tapped the Nemetrix permanently fastened to her wrist and randomly selected one of the vicious predators that lurked within; she hardly cared which one would have the honor of enacting vengeance.

The shape-shifter was swallowed in a blast of hot, crimson energy as her genetic code was manipulated and scrambled into something new. Her bones ground and cracked against one another as her limbs were stretched to lengths nearly three times their original size, hollowing out before thousands of stiff, little, horizontal rods attached themselves inside to provide extra support and durability. Powerful muscles and tendons stretched themselves along the length of Jane's legs, followed shortly up by a thick layer of tough keratin scale. The jungle ghoul's toes tore through her shoes as sharp talons with a single, sickle claw specifically designed to slash the vital tendons of prey rose from her digits. Her skeleton was shifted around, forcing her legs to re-position and hold her body up in a hunched fashion held in place by a stiff breastbone that acted as an anchor to her developing arm muscles. Byzantium purple feathers of varying shapes and sizes quickly spread across her shifting figure, leaving her legs bare and her neck naked just as her throat was pulled out to a long dimension. Jane's skull crunched heavily as teeth were absorbed into her jaws and pushed out into a long, hook beak perfectly designed for mass destruction. Her blue orbs split into a second pair and rotated about to either side of her head as the Nemetrix appeared as a spiked collar around her neck and the feathers on her wings and tail popped into existence, completing the transformation.

Hunter swallowed nervously as he glanced at Sparrow. He knew goshawks, swans, geese, peacocks, eagles, ostriches, and even griffins were highly temperamental avians that would not hesitate to punish those that so much as thought about as stepping into their territory, but this alien monstrosity looked like it was going to ruthlessly maul him without the slightest bit of provaction. The fact that Sparrow had already aggravated the person currently at the controls of such a power predator only worsened the situation.

It looked like he was going to be late to his date with his Vegan Princess and her delicious spinach puffs.

Jane had once told him and Ashlynn that the Omnivoracious were once the natural predators of Grey Matter's species, the Galvan, and were considered the swiftest, fiercest, most cunning, and determined predator in the known universe before they were driven to extinction; the Galvan civilization probably wouldn't have even risen had a meteor collision and resulting climate change interfered and sent their former predators spiraling into extinction. Even the alien avian's name was something to tremble in fear of, considering 'Omnivoracious' literally translated to 'willing to eat anything'.

And right now, it looked like it was willing to eat two human boys that had stuck their noses somewhere where they didn't belong.

"SCREEEEEE-EEEEEEEAAAAH!"

Sparrow and Hunter promptly screamed as they dove out of the way of a swift strike of Omnivoracious' hooked beak, ducking under a following swipe of the razor-sharp sickle claw, and scrambling away as fast as possible. The Omnivoracious shrieked loudly as she flapped her wings and gave chase, sprinting after the fleeing boys as the intention to punish them for their indecency.

This all left Dexter Charming very confused and very sore, not to mention quite frightened as well. One moment he had been almost aimlessly walking down the path that led past the boy's dorms and towards the Village of Book End, and the next he was suddenly flattened against the ground and being threatened by a gigantic, alien predator that had just been summoned into existence before his very eyes.

He wasn't exactly sure if it was better than getting turned into a sheep or not.

With a grunt Dexter climbed to his feet and tried to ignore the dull, throbbing pain in his leg where Sparrow's sharp elbow had planted itself into the back of his knee. Honestly, it didn't hurt as much as some of the injuries he sustained from his Heroic 101 class, among others, and most of those had easily been soothed and patched up with Healer Sternum's magic touch (as well as a healthy dose of healing magic). There were even a few occasions where the injuries in the class had been so numerous and so severe that reinforcements had been called in and all of Ever After High's magic users-in-training got a chance to practice their skills in healing magic; even Raven had gotten to try her hand on few occasions, though Dexter had been the only one willing to allow her to operate on him as her touch had a tendency to do more harm than good.

Back then he had been too love struck and too busy gazing upon her endless beauty to notice the burning sensations that arched across his body when her attempts to heal cuts and bruises ended up placing severe burns from dark fire in their place. Nowadays though, on the rare juncture that Raven's talents were called upon to heal Ever After's future heroes and rulers, he was still the only one that was willing to let her work on him, but their interactions were both more casual, if not a bit awkward than before. Beforehand, the Son of Prince Charming would try his best to hide his nervous demeanor and try not to make a fool of himself while the young witch worked her craft; now, the two of them would tell one another jokes to try and take his mind off of the pain that racked his body.

Dexter gave a sigh of sorrow and confusion. He still had dreams of him and his sweet Raven being a happy, loving couple that had managed to get their own Happily Ever After, even though those dreams somehow felt wrong and mocking; the witchling was with Ben now and it saddened and heartened him to finally see one of his closest friends finally happy after years of relentless shaming and ridicule. The young prince had always hoped that it would be him that would make Raven smile and make her laugh and simply make her feel better and loved after a long day of depression and let down.

At least now he could be comforted by the fact that she was content with her life now.

The idea of crushes and unrequited loves made him turn his attention back towards the note he had been carrying and had been fortunate enough to hang onto even after getting shoved into the dirt without warning. He had found it at the bottom of his locker, most likely slipped in through the vents in the door, and had curiously peeked at it as he hardly ever received messages this way (Blondie usually hexted him or hijacked the school's speaker system to get him down to the Mirrorlab in time for her next webcast). Dexter could easily recall the sudden rush he had gotten when he saw who had written and signed the letter, and with her trademark perfume no less.

C.A. Cupid.

It was rather unusual for the young goddess-in-training to leave him a message in such a manner, as she usually just hexted him whatever was on her mind, but what was even more unusual was what the message said in the first place. It was typed out for some odd reason and spoke in a rather diplomatic manner as well, but the signature was absolutely genuine; Dexter had seen Cupid's name on her papers when he would tutor her for Crownculus, and the way she dotted her 'i's with a little, pink heart was unmistakable.

Perhaps it was a joke? Cupid did often joke about how he'd end up being a head engineer in Mirror Travel some day, sometimes even mocking him in a serious and aristocratic tone that often descended into random babbling due to the goddess breaking out into a fit of laughter.

Dexter decided one last look at the letter wouldn't hurt and he quickly unfolded the piece of paper to look it over and make sure he hadn't misread something of possible great importance.

Dear young master Dexter Charming,

Your presence is requested at the Hocus Latte Cafe at hexactly 12:00 a.m. in the Village of Book End. I have some rather urgent business that requires your immediate discussion and I would like to talk over the matter as soon as conveniently possible. It has been far too long since our last meeting and I cannot wait to bask in your presence once more, if that is not too much of a problem.

Sugar, Spice, and however else that saying goes,

Chariclo Arganthone Cupid

The way the young deity had signed the letter with her full birth name was also rather unusual, as most fairy tales simply addressed her by her last name to save time and tongue (the one time Alistair Wonderland had attempted to pronounce her full name had made him literally Wonderland tongue-tied and earned him a trip to the healer's office as well), but if she was insisting on continue this formal game of hers, he was willing to play along.

"Hey, Dexter!"

The Son of Prince Charming glanced up at the sound of his name to see Venus leaning over the railing of her dorm's balcony waving at him with a sweet yet deadly smile. The plant monster was out of her usual attire – save for the Omnitrix that her boyfriend had gifted her with – and was instead wrapped up in what looked like a layer of soft bark that just barely covered her ample breasts and connected to her lustrous thighs while leaving her midriff and stomach exposed. Her shoulders were bare and the section of green skin between her breasts was left uncovered as well, leaving little to the imagination as small shoots and leaves sprouted from the edges of her strange and revealing outfit; it was just enough to count as clothing without receive a stern talking to from either of the headmaster's.

Either way, Dexter found himself blushing a fearsome red as his mind quickly wandered to parts he usually kept stuffed deep down in the corners of his dreams, which sometimes resulted in wet sheets in the morning that he didn't dare talk about.

Venus continued to yell down at him now that she was sure she had his attention. "Have you seen Ben or Jane anywhere? We were going to have lunch together, but they never showed up."

Now the sudden surprise attack from Sparrow and Hunter and swift vengeance they were receiving from a Nemetrix-wearing Omnivoracious suddenly made sense to him. "Um, I-I think I saw h-her go that way?" Dexter gestured in the general direction he had come from, trying not to say something stupid as he gazed up at Venus' oddly beautiful expression and figure. "She, uh, l-looked kinda busy."

The plant-monster ghoul smiled sweetly at the young prince, knowing full well that he was crushing on her, or at least entranced by her body. The two of them didn't really interact with one another as they hardly shared any classes and she was usually too focused on making sure Jane didn't have a full on panic attack every time every set of eyes turned to look at them during lunch, but Dexter seemed like a good person to her. A tad geeky and shy, but charming and handsome in his own right; it was because of those factors, plus the decision that she didn't need any more points added to her already questionable reputation, that she decided to let him down easy. "In that case, have you seen Ben anywhere? I haven't seen him all day."

Dexter shook his head but was relieved at the reminder of Venus' boyfriend, allowing him to look more closely at the plant monster without getting a sudden blood rush to certain parts of his body. "No, but I'll . . . um, I'll let him know you're looking for him if I him in Book End."

Venus raised a playful eyebrow. "Why are you walking to Book End? They have decent lunch here, don't they?"

The Son of Prince Charming gave a slight smile. "Not all of us are plants, Venus. To be honest, the food's pretty mediocre compared to some of the stuff they offer in Book End," he replied as a warm blush once again crept across his face. "And as for why I'm going to Book End . . . I, uh . . . w-well, me and Cupid are going out for lunch . . . as friends!" he added quickly.

Venus gave Dexter a skeptical look that said she didn't entirely believe him. If one were to ask anyone at Ever After High after the Halloween Incident, they would tell you that the young prince and the young goddess had grown even closer than they had since the two of them first enrolled at roughly the same time. After all, it was almost widely known that Cupid had harbored a crush on Dexter since ancestors only knows how long and it was only after Raven had openly rejected him as a suitor did Dexter seem to be developing feelings for Cupid that were only slightly more than that of just a Best Friend Forever After.

And besides, even Venus knew Dexter should consider lucky that a goddess of all beings found him attractive.

"If you say so, Dex." Venus inwardly chuckled. "Don't do anything I wouldn't!" she added with a teasing wink.

The proper response was to feel embarrassed at the way the plant-monster ghoul was harassing him and Dexter Charming did not fail in the slightest he hurriedly stuffed his note from Cupid back into his pocket and brushed himself off to look as presentable, yet as casual as possible. Before he could make his way down towards Book End however, a sharp whistle drew his attention back up towards the balcony Venus had perched herself on and looked back to watch as the plant-monster ghoul pulled something out of her neon pink and green hair and rest it in her palm. She then drew in a short breath and blew it back out in a lazy and slow cloud of yellow pollen that engulfed what Dexter quickly realized to be seeds in her hand and watched in amazement as a single, red rose emerged from her palm.

Venus winked at him a second time as she cast the flower over the side of the railing for Dexter to catch. "Little tip: don't go to a lunch date empty handed."

"Th-Thanks." Dexter swallowed nervously as he clutched the flower tightly and hurriedly made his way down the path towards the Village of Book End.

---

M.N: And so the Ben and girls in Wonderous Land unplanned the frabjous plan they planned!

F.N: With downly frowns and a slow galumph, to school they go with high harump.

B.P: What are you guys even saying? I mean, seriously, you're acting weird . . . I mean you always act weird, but . . . ugh, I knew I should taken that Riddle course when I had the chance!

M.N: Logic, it is plain to see that one plus one is less than three!

B.P: I . . . guess that makes sense?

F.N: All beauty is beauty in the hears you heard, the sightly sights of thw wisply word.

B.P: Oooooh, I get it. Mom, Dad, you have Wonderland Fever.

M.N: Nonsense, dear child! We are perfectly fine, just like the pineapples growing on the grape vine!

F.N: Indeed, we're great, we're doing just grand! Why, I feel like I could place in a rubber marching band!

B.P: Yeah, yeah, that's all well and good. Now go get some rest while I take care of this . . . oh, who am I kidding!? I'm not ready for this! Why didn't I pay attention to Mom and Dad!? What was it that they said to do? Uh, skip to the ending? No, um, it was stick to the script? I think? GAH! Why does this have to happen to me!

T.P: I'm home!

B.P: TURNER! Go away! I don't this right now!

T.P: What seems to be the problem, sis? Narration got you down?

B.P: Something like that. Mom and Dad have Wonderland Fever and I'm stuck narrating the story . . . which I don't have any idea how to do!

T.P: Well, why not ask Maddie or Kitty for help?

B.P: Because, Mom and Dad are gonna lecture about 'interacting with the story' once this mess is all over with instead of focusing on any sort of accomplishment I may make! Seriously, it happens every single time! I try to do something and they only reprimand me for the mistakes I make! Is it too much to ask for some positive reinforcement!?

T.P: Oooooookay . . . any other reason you can't ask Maddie or Kitty?

B.P: They're kinda busy right now . . .

T.P: So it seems. How about I get us started, eh? Then we can talk about whatever's bugging you over a nice cup of hot chocolate. How's that sound?

B.P: . . . will there be marshmallows?

T.P: I promise. I'll even get some whipped cream to go with them, too.

B.P: Alright . . .

T.P: That's my little sister. Now then, lets see . . . ah, yes. *Ahem* So the girls and Ben found a way into Wonderland, only to be captured by the Red Knight. Now they can't leave until they graduate from Wonderland High. With their magic useless, the Omnitrix on the fritz, and time running out for the Queen of Hearts, will they be able to save her majesty and Wonderland from the evil that lurks within? Sit back and enjoy, for the adventure is just the beginning . . .

B.P: Thanks, Turner.

T.P: Anytime. Now, I believe I said something about hot cocoa, right?

B.P: With little marshmallows and whipped cream.

T.P: Right. As Bruce Wayne might say, "To the Bat Kitchen!"

B.P: Who are you talking about?

T.P: Oh, that's right. You haven't read that comic yet. Well, that's another opportunity we can take advantage of while Mom and Dad are sick. You seriously need to be caught up with the times.

B.P: Not my fault Mom and Dad only let me read fairy tales . . . and where's the hot chocolate?

T.P: Coming right up, sis.

---

The Wonderland air was tense with suspense as both sides glared at one another with what could only be guessed to be a burning hatred for one another. One that just happened upon the scene might believe the sides to be arch enemies of sorts that had come to do battle with one another and allow only one side to emerge victorious and alive while the other would remain crumbled and defeated beneath their feet. One might expect either side to suddenly erupt into a flurry of movement to try and take out the other as quickly and as brutally as possible to ensure that they alone would come out sole winner of battle.

This was only partially true.

"You don't understand!" Lizzie Hearts tried to plead her case to the Red Knight. "I can't go to school! Take us to the palace immediately!" she demanded angrily, slowly losing her temper with the crimson vigilante.

With armed card guardsman bringing up their rear and occasionally threatening them with a quick movement of their ace-tipped spears, the group of three Wonderlandians, two princesses, one witchling, one Slimebiote, and one very annoyed Xenocubus made up a certainly odd looking group that were quickly being led down the winding path that snaked and threaded its way through Wonderland High's courtyard towards the entrance. Hedges that had been trimmed specifically to resemble giraffes and flamingos among an endless labyrinth of tall shrubs and bushes flanked them from one side of the walled off courtyard next to a pond that required to travel over its low bridge in order to get across. Origami fish swam lazily in its waters, occasionally swapping fins as easily as one might change their socks like the origami birds seemed obsessed with their heads. A set of over-sized croquet wickets and a mallet lay off to another side that looked to be absolutely useless for anything other than decoration yet were the perfect size for a giant of Tiny's size to use easily.

The Red Knight apologized as he rode his chesspiece horse along the checked path. "Sorry, your majesty, but those are the rules. Once you've stepped onto campus, no one is free to go until you pass your classes . . . no one." his face echoed in a sympathetic tone inside of his crimson helmet.

Fluff Luv – despite his current form and diminutive size – growled like a pitbull when he caught sight of the way Lizzie wilted under those words. No matter how sympathetic the Red Knight seemed to be to their cause, he ground the Xenocubus' nerves to no end. He knew that the crimson warrior had a duty to uphold as the school's attendance officer and possibly as a future warrior and guardsman to the Queen of Hearts, but this was the life of his current and future ruler at stake here! Without a leader, Wonderland would descend into even further madness, a mess from which it might never pull itself out of no matter who rose to take the torch of leadership in the absence of the Queen.

"Look, I'm afraid we've gotten off to a bad start." the Red Knight sighed as he brought his mount to a stop. The crimson warrior brought his hands up to his helmet and gave it a slight twist before pulling it off a in a grand, sweeping motion as he tossed his head, sending his red and black hair flying in a fluid motion. His features were masculine and powerful, his smile a sparkling white and his skin a pale pink in color that seemed to suit him quite well; the boy's eyes were a deep, stormy gray in color. "Chase, is the name. Chase Redford." he introduced himself.

Apple glanced towards her shoulder when she felt a relentless tickling sensation against her neck and bit her lip as her face flushed a deep red in color when she noticed the jealous furious expression upon Fluff Luv's face. She had to admit that Chase was quite handsome and would no doubt make some girl happy if the way he had somehow managed to catch each and every last one of their eyes, despite a good majority of them already pegged down and dating the same man already. Apple was also quite sorry to say that she kind of actually loved the desirous look upon the Xenocubus' face as Briar, Lizzie, and Maddie all continued to stare completely dumbfounded at Chase as he dismounted from his steed.

It somehow made him even more appealing, if that was even possible.

"I understand your distress," Chase chuckled with a warm smile that made Lizzie turn a bright red in color. Fluff Luv couldn't quite understand why he suddenly felt like exploding right now, though he had a vague idea of what the reason might be; after all, Lizzie was only a close friend, right? They weren't that close to one another and they certainly weren't in a relationship at all. So why did the Xenocubus suddenly feel like he wanted to pound Chase's face in right then and there when he noticed how he smiled back at the Princess of Hearts?

Raven coughed loudly, possibly sensing the waves of envy radiating off of Fluff Luv. "Lizzie, you said you mom's party is at tea time, right? What time is that?"

Maddie giggled. "Oh, that's easy! Tea time is at the time we have our tea! It's right there in the name, silly!" she laughed as she tweaked Raven's nose in a playful manner while Kitty snickered.

"No, I meant-"

"Four o'clock. Brillig, if I remember correctly." Lizzie cut her off with an answer. They were probably already undoubtedly late for their first class and if there was going to be any point in saving her mother from being beheaded and ousted from the throne, then standing around discussing the proper time to have ones tea was not going to get them anywhere.

"Not a problem. School lets out at three." Chase reassured them as he gestured to the stairs that led up to the building. "Now, you really don't want to be late. The vice principal doesn't like it when students are late."

Briar raised an eyebrow of confusion. "Uh, what about the principal?"

"The vice principal is the principal." Chase explained casually as he led them up the steps as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. "After all, it's not really fair to promote a vice principal out of their vice principal job just to make them principal. It's principally a matter of principle."

Raven felt like her head was going to throw up from all the sudden information she had just received but Maddie seemed to understand it. "Makes sense to me!" she shrugged.

"At least it makes sense to one of us." Skurd rubbed his slimy skull with his pseudopods. "Oh, I feel a headache coming on . . ."

Fluff Luv mumbled as he kept a closely trained eye on the back of Chase's head, as if he were trying to burn a hole straight through his brain. "Join the club, Snotty."

"Hexcuse me! Clear the way!" a voice clearly of upper class came from behind the small group of fairy tales. Maddie and Kitty glanced down at their feet as a pair of paws wrapped up in black, fingerless gloves of fine silk wove their way through their skirts and pushed aside their dresses to allow their owner – a white rabbit – to push through, clearly in a rush. The bipedal lagomorph hopped along at an anxious pace, sending his long, floppy ears bouncing up and down with every movement, much to Maddie's amusement. Locks of light gray hair were combed neatly to the right side of his head and he sported a pair of furry, gray eyebrows, a gray nose, the buck teeth that were a common characteristic of rabbits, and lavender-purple irises. He wore a white waistcoat decorated with pink and purple hearts, spades, and diamond patterns underneath his gray jacket; an ombre black tie that faded to blue pulled the whole ensemble together complete with a small, copper clock at its center. "I'm very late! I can't delay!"

"Someone's in a rush." Kitty smirked.

The White rabbit paused in mid-hop at the sound of the familiar voice and turned around with scrutinizing eyes that studied the two Wonderland girls with careful inspection. His lavender orbs widened upon joyous recognition and a smile crept across his previously highstrung face. "Oh, my ears and whiskers! It's Madeline Hatter! And Kitty Cheshire, too!" he grinned with a high class tone before he caught something out of the corner of his eye. "Oh, a-and, you're royal highness."

The rabbit bowed quite low to the ground, so far down that his floppy ears fell over his face and pooled up on the floor in an attempt to perfectly present himself to Lizzie. "Guys, this is the White Rabbit, Bunny's dad." Maddie introduced the white lagomorph to the rest of the group with a slight giggle for stooping down to whisper a small shred of information to the White Rabbit's ear. "Bunny's okay, at Ever After High, by the way."

"Thank goodness! She's safe from the curse!" he sighed with relief, wiping his brow with a laced handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

The sudden fluttering of small wings tickling the back of her neck caught Apple's attention and she was quickly reminded why they had come to Wonderland in the first place with a short look from Fluff Luv. "Oh, um, about that curse-"

BRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGG!

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! No time to talk! That's the bell that rings when the bell's about to ring!" the White Rabbit exclaimed as he frantically looked at his pocket watch with a look of dread upon his face. "Quickly now!" he gestured for the girls to follow him. The royal herald of the Queen of Hearts hopped along at a frenetic pace before coming to a stop at the main doors and – instead of reaching for the handle that was used by most of the school's taller student and staff – reached for a second knob several feet lower that opened up a door just his size; without another word, the White Rabbit bounded through and the left girls alone.

Apple was the first to take advantage of their sudden silence. "Okay, before we get going," the princess turned to suddenly yank Fluff Luv from her shoulder with a surprised yelp and give the Xenocubus a bone-crushing hug as she nuzzled him like a beloved stuffed animal. "HOW THE HEX ARE YOU SO CUTE!?"

To his credit, the Xenocubus tried to answer the Daughter of Snow White as best as possible, he really did. But then again, it was difficult for anyone the size of a teddy bear to explain anything when they were currently being strangled in a hug that felt like a giant hand trying to squeeze every last drop of moisture out of him like a furry lemon of some kind. As if that wasn't bad enough, all the girls promptly broke down into fits of girlish giggling and squealing and cooing as he was passed around and given hug after hug that only increased when it was discovered that he made a sound like a squeaky toy whenever hugged too tightly; there was a reason why this wasn't a particularly favorite form of Fluff Luv's.

"Careful, ladies. Hug him too hard and he just might pop!" Skurd cautioned with a stifling of suppressed laughter.

Briar was currently the one holding Fluff Luv at the moment and reluctantly let the bat-like alien go with a sheepish grin. "Oh, um . . . sorry?" she chuckled, embarrassed as the ball of fluff gave her a slight glare while rapidly pumping his wings to stay aloft.

With a sigh, Fluff Luv nodded. "It's alright," he mumbled in a tone and pitch that reminded Apple of a pixie; it took a great amount of internal strength and a quick reminder from Raven to keep her from scooping up the Xenocubus again. "There's a reason I don't use this form too much."

"Why's that?" Maddie giggled as she suddenly babied him. "You're so adorable!"

With a grunt of acknowledgment the Xenocubus fluttered back from the Hatter and landed on Raven's outstretched arm like a trained hunting hawk; at least the witchling had some form of control, even though she was just as guilty of turning him into a living stuffed toy as everyone else was. "That's reason number one: I'm too cute! Believe me, it's a problem." he frowned firmly when he saw the looks of disbelief.

"What's the second reason?" Raven wondered.

At this however, the Xenocubus' fur when from a fluffy, new fallen snow white to a bright pink that was the color of cotton candy. He folded his wings over his eyes as if they were hands of sheer embarrassment as he gave a soft, discomforted answer. "I-I . . . I um . . . uh, canmanipulatethematinghabitsofdifferentspecies."

Apple blinked, confused. "Um . . . could you repeat that?" she asked.

Skurd spoke up. "He said-"

"I don't need you explaining it! You'll make it sound worse!" Fluff Luv cut the Slimebiote off, chuckling embarrassingly when he remembered that he was still the center of attention.

"Ben . . . what are you not telling us?" Lizzie inquired with an inquisitive gaze that held the authoritative look she had been practicing since she was able to understand the ramblings of her mother.

As expected and much to the satisfaction of the Princess of Hearts, the Xenocubus reluctantly answered with an even deeper shade of pink to his fur. "The long and short of it is that Fluff Luv can make the females of different species very lustful and want to mate. They can also manipulate emotions to an extent, but . . . well . . ." he trailed uncomfortably. The looks on the girl's faces said it all as they gave one another disquieting looks as their cheeks suddenly turned a bright crimson in color to compliment Fluff Luv's fur color; only the Wonderlandians didn't seem overly embarrassed and had somewhat mischievous smiles to add to their red faces.

"Uh, all in favor never speaking of this again?" Raven suggested.

Not surprisingly, no one disagreed. With that out of the way and Fluff Luv making himself cozy on Raven's arm, Apple stepped forward and examined the door the White rabbit had vanished through. Logic told her that, due to their added height, they should enter by using the first door knob available to them and she graciously did so with a quick movement of her ivory fingers. Apple gave a tug on the door handle, jerking her hand back when it glowed a bright blue; glowing lines etched themselves across the door in a series of jigsaw puzzle-shaped pieces and then peeled away with the loud grinidng of hidden gears to let them inside.

The inside of Wonderland High seemed to be even more impressive and Wonderland-y than the exterior if that was even possible. They walked into the main lobby of the school and were greeted by a tremendous bell tower consisting solely of four, gigantic clocks molded together into a cube; as expected, none of the clocks told the correct time according to Raven's guesswork. Wild colors and patterns swirled around them in maddening whirlwind of display with staircases running up to doors located in the ceilings and floor or running straight into dead ends that would become viable passageways when card-shaped door frames with obtuse entryways opened from seemingly out of nowhere. A vast collection of the students to be anthropomorphic animals of varying species all of which were dressed up in outfits and clothes that were more extravagant and profligate than their own attire if that was even possible.

"Well, what are you waiting for!? I said quickly!" the White Rabbit scolded them as he hurriedly hopped up to them, completely ignoring the wild bandersnatch running through the halls until it came to a skidding stop and spat out a mouthful of books and papers for a pair of students before sitting down like a well trained dog. "You mustn't be late for class! This way!"

"For someone who gets around so quickly, he really is stressed, isn't he?" Fluff Luv shuffled his wings to steady himself upon Raven's outstretched arm.

Kitty smirked. "You have no idea." she purred as the White rabbit turned around and pulled out his pocket watch to glance at the time, hardly seeming to notice when the tiles under his furry feet began to move and roll along like some kind of giant conveyor belt, taking him, Fluff Luv, and the girls with him.

Chase – who had been silently drinking all of the information that passed between the group of strange outsiders – watched them go with a satisfied smile upon his lips. It always did his heart good to see that he was able to calm the fires of fear whenever possible, as his job of the Red Knight-in training dictated him to do so; as a warrior of Wonderland, it was his duty to protect the life, the way, the essence of her people and nature against any who dared to oppose it. There had been horrible, awful wars back in Wonderland's past, eons long forgotten of the warring nomadic tribes constantly clashing over resources and rule of their domain. It wasn't until the world of Ever After invaded did the tribes of Wonderland unite under the Hearts clan and put their differences aside long enough to fight off the incursive forces. This had been before the Storybook of Legends had been conceived and the Grimm family had been positioned to act as a neutral political power and mediator between all kingdoms and territories to avoid another possible large scale war.

As a knight and warrior of Wonderland, it was Chase's duty to enforce the laws that the Brothers Grimm believed too small to monitor and instead focus on their main tasks of holding the world together. This was why Ever After High, the very center of the Grimm's small stake of territory (compared to the Queen and White kingdoms it was downright pathetic), was considered neutral ground for all and any parties wishing to send their offspring for a proper education.

Wonderland High on the other hand . . .

"Oy!"

Chase blinked and glanced around for the source of the loud, abrasive voice. He suddenly yelped as a rock bounced off his thick skull, giving him a dull spike of pain as the owner of the voice spoke up once more. "You there!" it commanded with annoyance. "Was that lil' Lizzie Hearts I just saw?"

Chase nodded firmly. "Yes, Cour– Ms. Jester. With some friends from Ever After." he corrected himself as the girl speaking to him from within the shadows of a pillar she was leaning against hated it when she improperly addressed; seeing how she was technically his boss, he knew it was best to stay on her good side. The girl in question drew up to just below Chase's chin and had short, cream yellow, pastel purple, and blue-streaked hair styled into a one-sided fringe that obscured her right eye with a portion that braided down the left side of her head. Her eyes were a scarlet pink and a creamy yellow diamond was painted around her left eye, highlighted against her pale skin; her build was fluid and certainly curvy, if not a tad underdeveloped in her chest region. The girl's choice of clothing was wild and eccentric in origin, seeming to be nothing more than a wild collage of mismatched boots of varying lengths, leggings of opposing colors, extravagant collars and skirts tipped with bells, and a black gloves that reached all the way up to her elbows, all tied together by a hot pink jester's hat fixed to a gold headband fitted over her head.

"Ever After, eh?" the girl hummed as she pushed herself from the pillar and rubbed her chin in thought. "And who might they be then?"

Chase swallowed nervously. "Uh, well, you know I didn't get much of a chance to find out." he admitted sheepishly.

"Not even the wee lil' bat?"

Chase shook his head, a stoic look upon his face even though, deep within his crimson suit of armor his heart was pounding and racing. Despite not being as powerful as the Queen of Hearts herself, one of the two remaining rulers that still resided within Wonderland's borders, his superior was still very powerful in her own right and was not someone one wanted to trifle or annoy in any manner, much less make her feel impatient. Thankfully for him however, the girl waved him off. "Go on! Be on about yer business then! Off with ya!" she screeched at him with that grating tone.

"Seems I better look into this." the girl hummed in thought as Chase left.

---

Raven always knew that Ever After was boring.

To be fair, it was boring by Wonderland standards and even that didn't seem to be the proper word for it. The witchling mulled over a mental thesaurus of words and literature she had picked up over the years in an attempt to find the proper term for what her homeland would be compared to that of Wonderland before finally settling on . . . constricting.

In Ever After, there were only three dimensions that one would travel through on a regular basis, up and down, left and right, forward and backwards. In Wonderland however, there didn't seem to be any sort of restriction to the ways one could travel; in fact, one could say there were hardly any rules at all, even ones such as the law of gravity and physics didn't necessarily apply everywhere one looked. Hallways would curve up the side of walls and onto the ceiling, allowing their travelers to walk about as if this was something they dealt with on a regular basis. Doors would randomly appear out of the walls and floors and ceilings without any rhyme or reason and no one would give it a second glance. Corridors wound like corkscrews and loopty loops, floors moved like conveyor belts, clocks would always be wrong and correct at the same time, words would be written backwards and have to be read by foreigners using mirrors, paths didn't seem to have any distinct direction to follow, and yet everyone would treat it all as if this were . . . normal.

"Is . . . high school in Wonderland always this . . . weird?" Raven wondered as a a pair of badger-like animals with anteater snouts and lizard tails ambled across the ceiling without a care. The young witch remembered Maddie once telling her that such creatures were referred to as 'toves' and that they were "something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews", as well as the fact that they seemingly only made their nests under sundials and ate a diet made of cheese; Raven was quite sure she had never heard of a more ridiculous animal, and yet it just seemed like the kind of thing one would expect to find in Wonderland.

Kitty shrugged. "Seems pretty normal to me." she licked the back of her hand before brushing a stubborn lock of hair back in place. To both Raven and Fluff Luv the crafty calico was moving away from them on an opposite conveyor belt-floor directly above them and yet, upon second glance, Kitty would then appear to be actually traveling down the side of the wall opposite of them while they, Skurd, and Briar were moved up.

"Right. Normal." Fluff Luv rolled his eyes.

Apple was trying to make sense of everything. "I'm not even sure which way this hallway goes!"

Maddie giggled childishly as if the answer were obvious. "It's easy! It goes thataway!" she laughed, though Apple didn't seem as amused as the Hatter.

Lizzie unfortunately, didn't share her Maddie's enthusiasm and was currently pleading with the White Rabbit for his assistance, her begging becoming increasingly more worrisome as she was denied over and over again albeit with great reluctance and anxiety. What was really irritating Fluff Luv was that despite there being a plot to overthrow their current ruler – who was apparently well liked by her subjects, according to the latest polls Lizzie had read – that no one was actually doing anything to stop it. First Chase refused to let them go warn the Queen of Hearts of her current situation and now the White Rabbit was being difficult; honestly, was it so hard to make an exception every now and again?

Of course, the other thing that was annoying him was how long he had been stuck as a Xenocubus. Honestly, it felt like weeks to him, maybe even a month, if that was somehow possible, and if it wasn't the sickening, overwhelming instinct to turn his six female companions into bumbling, horny prostitutes in order for him to feed off of their lustful energy, then it was the constant gooey eyes and high-pitching coos that were sent his way whenever someone got a decent look at his absolutely adorable appearance.

"Mr. White Rabbit, sir, please! You have to at least let my mother know I'm here. I really must speak with her!" Lizzie attempted to reason with the White Rabbit. The tone in her voice made it feel like a knife was being twisted further and deeper into Fluff Luv's chest with every word that fell from her lips. His instincts were telling him that someone this upset in a situation this dire had to be helped, no matters the costs; it wasn't just the instincts he had developed over his time of being a hero, these were things he had known from the moment he was to walk and comprehend his parent's words.

The furry rabbit peered fearfully at his pocket watch and swallowed nervously. "Oh, my fluffy tail, no! No, no, no, no! The vice principal w-would be most d-displeased." he trembled.

"Please, we're on a mission!" Raven explained as her moving hallway conjoined with the stretch of black and white checkerboard flooring that Lizzie and the White Rabbit were on. "Lizzie's mother is in danger and my mom is the Evil Queen. Y'know, the one who placed the curse on Wonderland!"

Fluff Luv coughed awkwardly into his wing as the White Rabbit immediately tensed up and took a few hops backwards from Raven, looking at her with a face of utter terror as he trembled under her pleading gaze. "Um, not to be that guy, but I don't think that was the right thing to say."

"Once again, stating the obvious. Just keeping track for everyone that wanted to know." Skurd burbled sourly.

Raven sighed. While she was quite use to the reaction she got from strangers once they learned of her family heritage – they seemed to ignore her attempts to remind them that her father was also the Good King entirely – it was getting beyond old and she was honestly getting sick of it. At least a good portion of the student body back at Ever After High had stopped running away, screaming, or jumping out of windows – nowadays they usually only tensed up when she walked by and ceased all conversation until she had left. "Maybe while we're here I can break that, too. Surely, for the good of Wonderland, you can let us go and-"

The White Rabbit cut her off with a nervous stutter. "I-I-I . . . I must t-tell you something . . ." he gulped nervously when Raven edged a little closer to him, a pleading look in her eye as Fluff Luv flapped his wings and moved onto her left shoulder. The royal herald quivered anxiously as Apple, Briar, Maddie, and Kitty all quickly crowded around him, blocking him into a trap of skirts, legs, and eager expressions that were desperate to listen to what he had to say. "Y-You . . . are correct. There is a plot against the Queen of Hearts!"

"I knew it!" Lizzie shouted uffishly, stomping her foot loudly on the floor in frustration.

"What about the Storybook of Legends? Do you know where it is?" Briar cut in as Lizzie went off in a spout of Riddlish curses and profanity that had the White Rabbit briefly distracted. From what Apple could garner from the way his fur around his face turned a bright pink in color around and the gasps of horror from Maddie and Kitty, it was quite severe and perhaps teetering on the very edge unsanity – that place on the far end of insanity from sanity that's neither sane nor insane, but a lot more insane than insane and sane really was.

The White Rabbit shook his head to try and get the stream of harsh words out of his head. "I do not, young lady, but . . . there is a prophecy."

"A prophecy?" Apple parroted with interest, swiftly cutting off Lizzie's verbal rampage before she could say things that would most likely have her own mother behead her herself for using such language that she had certainly never taught her daughter.

"Indeed." the White Rabbit nodded as he cleared his throat his and began to recite the prognostication. "Into our world six girls and hero will drop to end this endless rhyme. The curse will tick-tock to a stop and ring its final chime. The legend book which the cat did swap they possibly shall find, and the regal head shall not be chopped . . . if they graduate on time." the royal herald finished with a slight bow.

Raven sighed with relief. "That actually kind of made sense."

"Of course, it did! It's ancient Riddlish!" Maddie nodded proudly.

Apple bounced up and down excitedly. "We're the six girls who dropped into this world!"

"The Book of Legends! My swapped it for that book of tricks!" Kitty realized.

"So . . . we'll find it?" Briar raised an eyebrow of confusion.

"And my mother will be safe!" Lizzie cheered.

The White Rabbit coughed loudly, bringing all the attention back towards him and, if the way he was tugging at the collar of his waistcoat with discomfort, it wasn't great news. "W-Well, t-that's only if you graduate . . . t-there's another p-p-part of the prophecy." he reminded them. "It states 'Into our world six girls and hero will drop to end this endless rhyme. The prophecy states that there must be a hero and I, rather unfortunately, do not see one."

Fluff Luv cleared his throat loudly while he flapped his little wings and fluttered down to the floor in front of the White Rabbit, only dragging up to his chest in height. "That would be me." he proclaimed proudly before his expression fell into one of sheer of vexation. "That is, if this stupid thing would change me back . . ." he muttered under his breath as he beat a wing against the Omnitrix with mimsy.

The White Rabbit, having been brought up by in a large family of high class rabbits and always being told to mind his manners tried not to chortle at the words that had just come forth from Xenocubus' fangs. "I don't mean to upset you, good sir, but how could you possibly-"

Before he could ever possibly finish, the Omnitrix gave off a series of dying beeps and the last thing the White Rabbit before the Xenocubus disappeared in a blast of intense, green light and energy was a smug, little smirk upon his face. The first dramatic change was in his size as his tiny, compact skeleton unfolded like a piece of paper with his limbs being pulled in all directions like rubber bands. His legs lengthened massively with a series of snaps and cracks and his arms elongated while his fingers were crunched back together in a much shorter length than they had been. The thin membrane between Fluff Luv's fingers shriveled up and shrank back like a wilted plant, folding back into his darkening skin while his bone shifted about and reconfigured themselves enough to allow his pinky finger to regenerate once more. His head pulled away from his body on a thin, short neck placed atop a contorting torso and waist that were just beginning to take shape; muscles and sinew pulsed and layered themselves over one another beneath his skin, forming the healthy figure of a semi-masculine male. The Xenocubus' feet cracked and crunched nosily while his stubby toes were pulled apart, taking on two new additions as his claws dulled and thinned out into toenails while his long, whip-like tail was slurped back up into his elongating spine like a strand of spaghetti. The fluffy, white, cotton candy fur was shed all at once, being pulled back within Fluff Luv's body in a swift movement, leaving naked skin that was quickly wrapped and clothed in a familiar, green tuxedo and pair of black pants. The pointed ears rotated down to either side of his head and his cute, twitching nose was pushed out about a pair of forming lips that concealed a set of changing teeth. The final piece of the transformation was the addition of a green top hat placed upon a head of chocolate brown hair and the sudden appearance of multiple Omnitrices all over his body.

"Man, does it feel good to be back!" Ben stretched his body. "I don't know how much more cutesy bat-talk I could take!"

The White Rabbit, to his credit, had managed to not faint from the sudden transformation and was instead leaning against Lizzie's leg for support as he clutched the area over his chest where his heart was while mumbling apologizes to the Princess of Hearts for daring to even lay a finger upon her royal figure; such acts without consent were considered treason and usually resulted in either several decades in the royal dungeons or – the Queen of Heart's personal favorite – decapitation. "Ap-p-pologies, y-your maj-jesty . . ."

"It's alright." she consoled him kindly. "But as you can see, Ben here should hopefully round out the necessary number needed for the prophecy to come true, correct?"

The White Rabbit nodded as he pulled out his laced handkerchief and dotted his sweating brow. "Y-Yes, qu-quite right, your highness. Seven is, after all, a lucky number."

BRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGG!

Before Apple could question the odd reasoning behind why seven was considered a luckier number out of the infinite others, the shrill shriek of the ringing bell cut them off and very nearly made the White Rabbit have a heart attack or jump right out of his skin – the Daughter of Snow White wasn't sure which sounded worse. "The second bell! I'm late!" he cried with fear as he hurriedly pulled out a paintbrush from the folds of his waistcoat and shoved it into Raven's hands. "Here's class! Good day, must be off! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late! No time wait, this can't for another date, I'm late!"

"He's kinda highstrung, isn't he?" Briar attempted a joke as the royal herald quickly hopped through a hole in the checkerboard floor to his appointment.

"Yeah, um . . . how is this our class?" Raven asked as she held out the paintbrush before her, absolutely baffled at what she may or may not have to do. That was the problem with Wonderland: there were no easy answers that any logical person could see, and by the time said logical person got use to Wonderland's complexity, the answers would become so frustratingly obvious. With the exception of its inhabitants, Wonderland was notorious for being infuriatingly . . . well, mad.

Thus, it took a mad mind to understand a mad problem. "Oh, that's easy!" Maddie laughed at the young witch's confusion as she stole the paintbrush away from her and proceeded to messily swish it back and forth against the nearest wall. "You just take the brush and paint yourself a happy little door!" she explained as the image of a door took shape from the crude painting and steadily became more realistic until the Hatter was able to reach out, grasp the knob, turn it, and easily open the door.

"So . . . we just have to make it through one day of school? That doesn't seem so hard." Raven sighed with relief.

The moment those words escaped the witchling's lips, Ben and Skurd shared an uneasy look with one another. Through many past experiences, both painful and mind numbing, the two reluctant partners knew that if there was one thing you never wanted to do, it was question the inner workings of the universe or dare taunt the complexity of a situation; in this case, Raven had just violated both of those rules and if the aforementioned painful and mind numbing past experiences were a hint to anything, she had just triggered what would most likely be the most exhausting chain of unfortunate events yet.

"We're in for some rather unpleasant surprises, aren't we lad?" Skurd sighed.

Ben nodded. "If Omniversal Law of Karma # 6,544,122,008,987,675,455,321,987,654,321,012.34: Section 8008, Sub-section 19, Article 3.14159, Chapter 1337, Sub Article 69, Paragraph 8999-A, Line 2-D is anything to go by . . . then, yeah. We're in big trouble." he sighed warily.

Unfortunately for the two of them, none of the girls seemed to share their concern or worry as they all filed their way through the door one by one with Ben bringing up the rear and closing the down behind; within a matter of seconds, the door began to ooze and drip its way down the wall before vanishing entirely, as if it had never been there in the first place.

The place the door had led them to however, was definitely something to behold. While not much different than the average classroom back at Ever After High, with its ornamental teacher's desk placed at the front before a chalkboard and its several tiers of desks and chairs – all of which seemed to share a chess piece motif, as expected – there were some differences as well. Fish-shaped windows dotted the walls and ceiling, showing locations that shouldn't have been there such as the blazing sands of an undisclosed desert or the lush undergrowth of a vibrant forest full of pixies and fairies and sprites of all species while bubbles carelessly floated through the air without a distinct path to follow; some bubbles even harbored sealife within them, though the fish and seahorses – literal tiny horses with fins for manes and fish tails for their hind legs – didn't seem to notice as they swam about.

The other thing that took particular interest was that they were walking on the ceiling.

"You do know the moment we acknowledge that we're on the ceiling we'll fall, right?" Briar spoke up with hesitance, remembering the seemingly universal rules of the cartoons she had grown up watching as a little girl before her mother had deemed them a "waste of her precious daughter's time" and instead tried to get her interested in dolls and makeup like all the other good little princesses were.

Skurd coughed loudly. "Not to be rude, my dear, but kindly explain to us all what you just did."

"I . . . said we were on the ceiling?" Briar raised an eyebrow.

"And . . ?"

Realization dawned on the Daughter of Sleeping Beauty as she groaned and pinched her brow with exasperation. "And I just said that if we acknowledge that we're on the ceiling, the law of gravity suddenly applies."

"Exactly." Skurd huffed indigently. "I would believe the laws of physics will kick in approximately . . . three, two, one . . . now."

As expected, the group of girls and Ben unceremoniously plummeted towards and landed on the very hard wooden floor in a painful manner, mostly because they had all landed in a tangle of arms and legs and were desperately trying not to activate any of the Omnitrices that decorated Ben's body, lest they trigger a transformation that would turn him into something that would only make their situation even worse than it was as they slowly and carefully began to disentangle themselves.

"Seriously? Is this what it's going to be like all day long!?" Briar grumbled with exasperation as she smoothed out the ruffles in her dress. "I'm pretty sure this dress wasn't designed for parkour, thank you very much . . ."

"Ahem."

The small party of fairy tales (this somehow also seemed to include Ben as well)turned their attention towards the source of the voice and were met with a creature that bore a striking resemblance to a fish of some kind, perhaps a trout or cod. The difference was that this fish seemed to be just as home out of water as he was in it and proudly did so by balancing atop his tail fins like a pair of legs. He wore a deep navy blue waistcoat with white dress shirt underneath all tied together with a red bowtie that fit snugly around his thick neck and did nothing to slim down his pudgy figure; if Ben were to take away the set of spectacles over his eyes and the ruler in his flipper, he could imagine this creature to bare a striking resemblance to Headmaster Grimm. He certainly seemed boring enough.

"Welcome . . . to Fishosophy . . . 101," the fish welcomed them all with a slow and breathy voice, as if he were attempting to breath properly and were choking. "My name . . . is Mr. Gadus Morhua . . . please . . . take a seat . . ."

Apple, being the ever dutiful and good student that she was, did as she was asked without question. "Yes, sir!" she happily complied. The princess quickly scanned the room and decided to take a seat at a desk in the front row with a rook-shaped chair and book-like table attached to it. "This looks like a good spot."

"Hey! Don't sit on me! Whatdda I look like, a desk!?"

The Daughter of Snow White yelped and jumped out of her seat as if she had just been lit on fire, promptly landing in Ben's arms and clearing quite a good distance from where she had been initially standing; naturally, Maddie was more than happy to give her a perfect score of nine, though she had to subtract points for the poor landing that Ben had provided. "That desk just spoke!" Apple panted.

"And so it begins . . ." Ben sighed.

Within moments the classroom was plunged into chaos as Raven was thrown out of her seat by a disgruntled chair that found being sat on was not comfortable in the slightest and Briar was snapped at by the teacher's desk, who seemed to have a rather touchy opinion on the matter of personal space. The classroom was descended into further pandemonium as the desks and chairs all began a rebellion, yelling and shouting insults at the fairy tales as the hat rack accused Ben at looking at his disgruntled wife while Apple merely tried to make sense of it all; she was pretty sure that the walls and floor were going to be joining in on the miniature riot at any moment now and was quite hesitant to be set down by Ben at that very notion while he tried to set the record straight with the inculpative hat rack that didn't seem interested at all in listening to his side of the argument.

Mr. Gadus Morhua didn't seem phased by the sudden eruption of noise and disorder within his classroom and merely waited with a bored expression as a tiny seahorse – an actual seahorse – slithered out of his coat sleeve along his arm and onto the very tip of his ruler, using it prehensile tail to hold itself in place. A shrill whinny that made Raven question whether or not the seahorse was like the little fish that knew of back home immediately silenced the classroom within seconds while the seahorse blew a bubble, hopped in, and happily floated away without care.

"You need . . . to take . . . a seat." Mr. Gadus Morhua reminded them, fixing his spectacles into a more comfortable position.

Raven nervously glanced back at the disgruntled desks and chairs with slight hesitance. She wasn't afraid of them – they were only pieces of furniture, after all – but given the fact that they didn't seem to like to be used as such, it seemed rather rude and inappropriate to condemn them to such a fate. "Um, I'm sorry, but we really don't want to do the wrong thing again."

"You can say that again." Ben proceeded to glare accusingly at the hat rack who returned his intense gaze full force and without hesitance.

"We don't understand the rules!" Apple tried to explain.

Raven sighed with exasperation. "Ugh, talk about not fitting in! I'm a total fish out of water!"

Lizzie could easily sympathize with the young witch on that one. After the fall of her homeland and the future of her throne and subjects unknown, adjusting to the dreary boredom that was Ever After High took some getting use to; the first issue had been getting up every day but the weekend to get dressed, have breakfast, go straight to a day full of classes to prepare her for her role in her family's legacy, come back to her dorm with a mountain of homework to have done by a designated date, and then do it all over again the next day! It wasn't uncommon to see the Daughter of the Queen of Hearts pouting miserably and throwing harsh glares at her fellow classmates every opportunity she got back then, but eventually days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and ever so slowly, Lizzie had begun to adjust to the point where one wouldn't have noticed that she was not of Ever After origin.

Of course, Maddie and Kitty took a little more adjustment than she did. After all, the Headmaster looked down upon playing croquet in the hallways during class hours or having tea parties on the ceiling when class was in session – Maddie was able to get away with that simply because the Headmaster had given up trying to stop her after a little convincing from his younger brother – and ancestors forbid that there be any hunting of small birds and animals on school grounds, especially if said prey belonged to students that had arranged for their pets to stay with them.

And that didn't even cover half of what the pair of mad girls had done, some of which was deemed to be actually rather inappropriate in Ever After it turned out.

But whatever Raven had said seemed to please Mr. Gadus Morhua rather well. "A fish in a school out of water, you say? My pupils have learned quick, faster and faster! All I can teach I have taught you today, you seven have become as your master! Pass!" the anthropomorphic fish smiled broadly as he tapped the floor with his ruler. Before Ben could comment on his sudden change in speaking, the floor began to glow a bright and calming blue in color beneath their feet, oozing and spreading out across the floor like a spilled drink across the ground until the entire classroom was bathed in its shining blue glow. Mr. Gadus Morhua then proceeded to give a joyous backwards flip and dove beneath the floor with a splash! as if it were a lake of water.

"Not again!" Ben managed to curse when Mr. Gadus Morhua swam beneath them like they were standing on a glass-bottom boat. Within seconds of realizing it, the group of fairy tales all plunged down into the water with a tremendous splash! Ben's instincts were telling him to either stop starring, get the anchors out of his pants, and start paddling or risk drowning or try to transform into an aquatic alien to save himself and the girls; neither option seemed necessary as he soon realized that he was still breathing air and not water.

A quick glance around revealed that he was trapped inside a giant bubble of sorts with water surrounding him on all sides, as if he were stuck inside of a gigantic aquarium. The girls all seemed to have found bubbles of their own as well, though most of them seemed too focused on just trying to stay stable instead of enjoying their gentle descent; naturally, Maddie was not one of them and was bouncing around inside her bubble like a rubber ball on steroids – making Skurd wonder whether the bubble would actually pop or not – while Apple seemed preoccupied by a group of adorable seahorses that had taken a special interest in her and were currently providing a sort of entertainment that made the princess giggle at their antics.

Eventually however, the seahorses retreated and them all to gently float down to what looked like a landing of sorts that covered in a yellow checkerboard pattern, a reoccurring design now that Ben thought about it. Then again, Wonderland seemed heavily centered around the game of chess and checkers and Ra forbid that he forget about its inhabitant's near obsession with tea time – it was something that Maddie never missed unless caught up in the most dire of situations, which rarely happened. Before he knew it, his bubble had landed in a desk and chair specially crafted to bare a striking resemblance to the numbers four and seven and proceeded to pop without warning; thankfully, Ben didn't proceed to drown once he found that he was able to breath just like the others as they landed in their own desks and popped their own bubbles.

"Now that's something you don't see every day." Briar commented as she looked upwards, drawing everyone's attention with her. Far, far, far above them was the glittering, shimmering expanse they had just passed through, though from their perspective it looked as if they still trapped under the sea. To some it might have looked like a glass barrier of sorts was holding the water back, like in the aquariums back in the Beauty Kingdom, when in actuality there was no barrier at all; the water, while retaining most of its properties, instead acted like a sticky gel when shoved into a tight space, forbidding the law of gravity from ever draining the aquatic tube of transport away.

Even so, Maddie briefly pulled off her top hat, reached inside, and pulled out an umbrella that she proceeded to open.

Before Raven could advise against the opening of an umbrella indoors – believe it or not, that specific myth was actually true and was indeed crafted by one of her ancestors as a prank against one of Apple's aunts back in their school days – they were interrupted by a droning, gentlemanly from high above. Squinting her eyes and peering upwards as far as she could, Raven noticed a small figure perched upon a branch high above the floor attached to the side of a massive chalkboard that stretched nearly all the way to the ceiling; how the witchling had missed that in the first place, she had no idea. From what she could tell however, the figure was a bird of some kind, an owl if she wasn't mistaken, wearing a white collared shirt with a red tie beneath a purple sweater vest mortar hat whose cap bore a striking resemblance to that of a playing card, specifically the four of hearts. " . . . where Y equals the sum of pie plus the square root of thirteen."

Ben swallowed nervously when the bird slowly turned his head to look at him with an unwavering stare. "Pupil Square Root! How does one solve this problem?" he hooted, clutching a piece of chalk in his talons as he spread his wings to gesture to a massive array of chalkboards spread all throughout the room, all of which were scrawled upon in complicated mathematics that made Ben just sick by looking at it; Cronwculus was by no means his best subject, but it wasn't his worst either. Even so, all the scribbling made his head spin.

"Um . . . Mister, uh . . ."

"You may call me Master Owlsworth," the owl addressed his question. "Now if you would please demonstrate to the class on how to properly solve this equation without the use of a calculator?" he questioned him with the steely, unblinking gaze that the birds of prey were notorious for.

Ben gulped nervously as he tilted his head back to look at the full height of the enormous chalkboard. "That's all one problem?" he whispered with astonishment before turning to Apple with a pleading gaze. The princess was surprisingly well trained in the art of mathematics and seemed to be the go-to fairy tale for a private tutor other than Dexter Charming or Humphrey Dumpty, more so the later than the former as a good portion of Ever After High still harbored a healthy amount of fear for the prince and his unstable inner demon. "Apple, you're good at this kind of thing. Got any ideas?"

The Daughter of Snow White beamed proudly. "Well, it-"

Apple was swiftly cut off by a harsh screech from Master Owlsworth, the wide eye owl looking particularly perturbed. "Pupil Linear, I asked the Pupil Square Root for an answer. Please await your turn." he glared sternly at her before turning to Ben. "Pupil Square Root?"

Ben gulped and began to sweat as he looked up at the chalkboard, trying to make sense of whatever lay before him, never mind all the other nonsensical equations and side problems decorating the walls around him; it was like this room was built specifically to make someone's brain explode. It wasn't until he heard a slight cough for attention from Skurd that he looked down at the many Omnitrices that bespangled his body.

"Well, here's goes nothing, I guess." Ben sighed as he chose the Omnitrices placed upon his left shoulder and slammed a hand down on it, swallowing himself in a blast of green light. His bones shifted and cracked loudly from within the layers of muscle and tissue, swimming to the surface and fusing with his skin through a series of loud pops and crackling noises like that of someone crumpling up a piece of paper. Any pain that might have been experienced was numbed through the process by the Omnitrix while his skin shifted and made a few minor adjustments until he was covered from head to toe in a thick carapace colored a light mahogany in color; his teeth cracked and groaned against one another as they dissolved together to form two plates of thick baleen that twisted into a permafrown accented with by black markings like lips. Ben's nails and fingers molded together into a pair of crab-like pincers as his bent into bug-like joints with his toes and feet thinning out to form spikes for the legs. A loud squelching noise filled the air as a pair of identical legs ruptured from Ben's insides, glistening with moisture when he balanced himself on his new limbs. His head exploded in size, his eyes moving apart as his brain bigger and bigger, pushing the boundaries of his skull to the limits until the armored plating of his carapace split right down the middle and his joints – all of them – turned a deep black in response. It should have been painful, but right now Ben felt more enlightened if anything; he could now see the world than just a TV show he could interact with, no, he literally began to see the world's inner workings as complex equations that mapped out the quickest escape routes, analyzed the probability of an act of sheer randomness happening, and cataloged the different ways he could solve the pathetically simple problem set before him. A green and black neck brace and loincloth appeared on his body with the Omnitrix and Skurd appearing at its center and completing the transformation.

Apple recalled seeing this alien before – albeit a female version of it – and watched as Brainstorm wordlessly hopped out of his desk and skittered across the floor and up the chalkboard, his four jointed legs easily allowing him to scale the vertical surface. The princess watched him climb higher and higher, forcing her to tilt her head until it practically rested upon the desk behind her; by then the Cerebrocrustacean had finally stopped his ascent when he was even with Master Owlsworth.

Brainstorm cleared his throat before 'speaking'. In actuality, Cerebrocrustaceans had lost use of their vocal cords eons ago once they had developed their massive intellects and electrokinesis through years of trial and error and several planets of their solar system that were no longer habitable and whose destruction made the Cerebrocrustaceans highly ashamed of their ancestors former actions; thus, they projected their thoughts through sound waves in order for less developed species to hear them properly. "If I may be so bold, my feathery, avian friend, but you are merely over complicating the problem."

Master Owlsworth raised an eyebrow and handed the Cerebrocrustacean the chalk in talons. "Interesting. Please, demonstrate for the class."

"With pleasure." Brainstorm seemed to smile just the slightest before he turned his attention towards the chalkboard. "If one merely simplifies the formulas and disposes the redundancies as well as actually using pi to the highest known digit instead of using a slice of delicious pastry for a problem of mathematical nature, then the equation can easily reduce the percentage of time it will take for one to solve it." the Cerebrocrustacean droned as he used the piece of chalk to cross out the images of a slice of pie and make several more adjustments before doing away with the square root of thirteen and replacing it with a simple seven. "Or in more colloquial terms . . . cut the problem in half!"

Without warning, a sudden battle cry sounded from the back of the room and all attention turned towards a card guardsman wielding a massive battle ax that should have been impossible for his scrawny arms to lift. Regardless of the physical implications, the guardsman charged blindly at the towering chalkboard and proceeded to smash it with the ax, crudely hacking it in two with a single chop; the river of cracks and crevices snaked its way up the chalkboard like a winding fissure until it reached the top and dissolved the chalkboard into nothingness right between Brainstorm and Master Owlsworth.

"Well . . . that's one way to cut it in half." Kitty snickered.

Master Owlsworth couldn't agree more. "Problem solved! Remarkable work, Pupil Square Root." he congratulated Brainstorm.

"Please, it was mere child's play," the Cerebrocrustacean bowed politely; his skull plates had flicked open at the last second and fired off a blast of green electricity that snaked its way all over his conductive body, allowing him a limited amount of levitation that he gladly used to lower himself down to the ground. "When one has an IQ of 10^30, or one nonillion for the woefully uneducated, anything can easily be solved with a simple equation."

The owl seemed to smirk at that notion as he flapped his wings to hover above them all. "In that case, Pupil Square Root, tell me what is the probability of me dismissing the class?"

The Cerebrocrustacean hardly waited for the bird of prey to finish his sentence before answering. "Estimated probability: exactly eighty-nine point sixty-four to the tenth power."

"Correct," Master Owlsworth nodded proudly as the white squares of the checkerboard floor beneath his classroom's desks glowed a bright blue in color. "Class dismissed!"

"Tell me, dear boy, what are the odds that this will end badly?" Skurd chided Brainstorm when the floor shifted beneath his legs. Before the Cerebrocrustacean could answer with a witty reply, the floor finally way beneath them all and sent them plunging into an abyss of darkness, much to his annoyance; a series of familiar beeps caught his attention before he was enveloped in a blast of green light and returned to his human form, providing the only form of luminescence within the dark void.

Thankfully before they all hit rock bottom and met a painful demise, Ben took notice that they seemed to be slowing in their descent. The floating cubes of black and white that he soon realized to be pieces of the floor that had previously been above them were falling much slower than they had been before, initially plummeting much faster than him and the girls, so that was a plus among other things. He had to admit, Wonderland was interesting place even if it didn't make sense half the time or even one-fourth of the time; it's just how it worked.

Within moments, they had finally reached what looked like another landing or level of some kind and quickly prepared themselves for touch down. Ben took quick note of their surroundings, raising an eyebrow when he noticed that the blocks and cubes that had previous been a floor and ceiling were now being re-purposed into slowly building up the towering, gigantic walls of the classroom they were landing in, stretching higher and higher back up the way they came; it made Ben wonder what exactly they would do when the walls finally reached the top of the floor above them, if that was even possible.

Maddie laughed as her umbrella puffed open like a parachute and surprisingly slowed her descent so that she was able to touch down upon the seat beneath her with the delicateness of a fairy. Thankfully, the rest of the girl's dresses functioned both as stylish and appropriate and parachutes in a pinch, a fact that they readily took advantage of . . . after some warning, of course.

"Ben, while you may not be an official citizen of Wonderland, I hereby decree that you are not allowed to look up under my skirt when we land," Lizzie ordered him with the best infuriated glare she could come up with. "Or it's off with your head!"

"Sheesh, you're getting more and more like your mother every day." Ben snickered. "Besides, it's not like there's nothing there I haven't seen before. Believe me when I've seen a lot of that stuff."

Before the Daughter of the Queen of Hearts could ask him hexactly what he meant by that with the demeanor of a suspicious dragon that suspected its owner was not talking them out for an afternoon fly around Ever After and instead was taking them to the vet, her dress puffed open at that exact moment and she felt a slight jerk around her waist as her fall was slowed; Ben landed just beneath her with a pained grunt, as he had not been wearing anything remotely dress-like and thus did not have anything to slow his fall in any way shape or form, what with the risk of getting an undesirable transformation.

Despite the skeptical comment, Lizzie did appreciate the small gesture of Ben holding out his arms to catch her and set her down in the seat next to him, with a respectful bow and a short murmur of, "Your majesty", to boot . . . even if it was in a slightly jeering tone. She attempted to both thank him and inquire in what he was talking about earlier during her proclamation, but was promptly interrupted by a series of loud screeches and hoots and roars that was absolutely deafening in the acoustic accommodating rooms; the echoes made it all but impossible to hear anything else and the Princess of Hearts turned to look for the source of the sound and settled upon two familiar faces.

Ironically, most people and fairy tales believed that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were both human in origin notwithstanding the fact that they could have been classified as a different kind of human if the sciences had to be brought into the discussion; it was unknown how humans even evolved in Wonderlands hectic and maddening maze of insanity or how they even got there if they were not originally from the place, but there were enough differences in behavior that the Grand Council had classified them as a subspecies all their own: Wonderlandian Carrollosi.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum however, were not of the human variety and instead were both a pair of brightly colored apes of unknown species, not that anyone really cared in Wonderland. The most that anyone ever bothered to learn about them was which one was which and which one was the other and, despite the extreme differences – Tweedle Dum had orange fur, wore a massive blue bow tie and a pair of black pants held up by suspenders while Tweedle Dee had blue fur and wore a red vest with a purple ascot, both of them wearing clown makeup to their faces – no one could really remember who was who and which one was which until the two apes either corrected them, drove them mad, or got sick of their company and threw bananas at them until they left.

Lizzie remembered them fondly when she was a little girl and they were put in charge my none other than her highness herself while she was too busy attending to the world of Wonderland to properly care for her beloved daughter, always hacking and slashing and decapitating enemies with her claw-like fingers and legendary battle ax. During those days the two primates had kept her entertained with their animal antics and slapstick humor that usually involved banana cream pies to the face, electric buzzers, and of course, banana peels.

The two apes didn't let up in their loud cacophony of screams and hoots as they swung down from a series of pillars that Lizzie realized to be towering desks of impossible height and landed on a pair of much smaller desks positioned at the front of the classroom, pounding their chests and beating the tables to create even more noise – if that was even possible – until they suddenly stopped and assumed a more dignified posture.

The one on Lizzie's left that was wearing a mortar hat– Tweedle Dee if she remembered correctly – cleared his throat as he adjusted his vest as if to make him seem more impressive. "Ahem. I, Tweedle Dee, of the affirmative position, welcome you to Debate Class." the blue primate bowed slightly before gesturing to his orange compatriot, who was wearing a dunce cap upon his head. "Tweedle Dum will represent the negative position."

Without hesitance, Tweedle Dum argued back. "I will not."

"Oh, yes you will." Tweedle Dee frowned.

"No, I won't!" Tweedle Dum growled.

"Oh, yes you will!" Tweedle Dee debated haughtily.

"No!" Tweedle Dum hooted, beating his chest angrily.

"I reject your refusal to be negative!" Tweedle Dee snapped as he used his opposable foot to kick a lever that cranked his desk up a few feet higher than his orange-furred brother.

"I reject your rejection!" Tweedle Dum shot back using his own opposable feet to kick a lever that cranked up his own desk about a yard above his blue-furred brother.

"Oh, no you don't!"

"Oh, yes I do!"

"Nuh, uh! No way!"

"Uh, huh! Yes way!"

"Seriously!?" Ben cried out with exasperation, slamming his head down on the desk in front of him. "These guys are almost as bad as Blukic and Driba!"

Skurd hummed. "I beg to differ, dear boy. These . . . gentlemen, as it were . . . are far worse."

Raven couldn't help but smile as she watched the two Tweedle Brothers shoot up higher and higher into the air on their desks, seeming to be either completely ignorant of the incredible height they were at or too focused on winning their senseless bickering to bother teaching their class in a proper manner. Either result ended up with the group of fairy tales having to crank their heads back farther and farther with every movement the two apes made just keep up with them, their voices barely more than a faint echo at the height they had reached. "Well, you've gotta admit; at least their kinda funny."

"But what they're doing isn't debating!" Apple sighed with exasperation. "They're just saying strange things and disagreeing for no reason! They haven't discussed a topic yet, none of them have presented any information or evidence, and all they're doing is just arguing back and forth without any order at all! The Grand Council would be appalled by this!"

Kitty huffed as she rested her chin on her hand. "We're not getting outta here any time soon . . ."

"Such negativity!"

"No, it isn't it!"

"Mum always said you were the negative one!"

"How dare you bring my mother into this!?"

"You idiot, she's both our mum!"

"No, she isn't!"

"Yes, she is!"

"NO, SHE ISN'T!"

"YES, SHE IS!"

"AAAGH! I can't take it anymore!" Apple screamed with exasperation. Ben and Raven blinked at the sudden outburst and shared a look with one another, as neither of them knew Apple of all people to ever become so frustrated with someone or something. Sure, there had been that stubborn jar of peanut butter she had wrestled with for an hour until she finally gave up and asked Tiny Giant to open it for her and the pickle jar who seemed to be in cahoots with the aforementioned peanut butter jar, but those hardly compared to a pair of arguing apes.

The two of them watched as the Daughter of Snow White marched up to the front of the classroom and looked around for a second before her sights landed on a large lever placed between the two ever growing desks of their two current teachers. With a grunt, Apple pulled back on the lever and was met with the rapid sound of grinding gears that drew her attention upwards where she shielded her eyes from the intense glare above and watched as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum came plunging back down like a pair of falcons in stoop. With a tremendous CRASH! and crunch of wood, the two primates came plummeting back down and crashed through the floor, leaving them slight dazed, disoriented, and all around simply confused.

Apple sighed and took a deep, calming breath to relax herself before she began to speak. "I'm sorry, but this is Debate Class. Things need to make sense!" she tried to explain while she grabbed hold of Tweedle Dee's mortar cap and Tweedle Dum's dunce cap and proceeded to switch both of them for the other. "For starter's, you hats are backwards. You should be wearing . . . this one and you should be wearing . . . that one. Thank you." she gave a slight curtsy, earning a round of respectful applause from her peers.

Tweedle Dee was the first of the two brothers to speak up. "Well, I suppose there's no arguin' with that logic."

And naturally, Tweedle Dum had to contradict whatever his blue-furred sibling had to say. "Yes, there is!"

"No there isn't!"

"Oh, oh, who's being negative now, huh?"

"Oh, don't bring that up!"

"I can and I will!"

"You know, this is the reason why mum never invites us over for tea!"

"No, it was because you have horrible table manners!""

"No, you have horrible table manners!"

"I do not!"

"Do, too!"

"Do not!"

"Do, too!"

Apple sighed wearily and massaged her aching temples. It was bad enough that she had to put up with this kind of nonsense from the antics of the Crumb Cousins that would ensue whenever they caught a whiff of Ginger Breadhouse's delicious cooking – this usually resulted in somewhat amusing results, most of which involved an excessive amount of frosting and the Crumb Cousins being promptly evicted from Ginger's covered in food stuffs as soon as possible – but at least in Ever After High that was because the Crumb Cousins were destined to devour Ginger's breadhouse. Here in Wonderland, as far as she knew, there was no reason for the two primates to argue over every little detail and to be quite honest, it was nerve grating. How Ben put up with this on a near constant basis back home was a mystery within itself.

BRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGG!

Thank the ancestors for the bell and whichever genius invented it!

"Oooh! Twelve o'clock! Time for lunch!" Maddie happily clapped her hands as she eagerly grabbed Briar and Raven by the wrists and all but dragged them towards and out a seemingly normal door placed in the wall on the far end of the classroom; if the day's events were anything to go by, this was actually probably the strangest thing Apple had encountered as she watched the Hatter drag off her friends with Kitty giving chase.

A slight cough caught her attention and she looked away from the eternally bickering Brothers Tweedle to see Ben offering her a hand. "Ladies." he gave a smug smirk that made Apple snicker at his attempt to be gentleman-like. The princess happily accepted his hand and took a short notice to see that Lizzie had accepted his other offered hand as well, more so out of courtesy than any feelings the Princess of Hearts might have for Ben; after all, he already had nearly two dozens girls, herself included, happily attached to him all at once. How many more could he possibly gather under his thumb before the universe deemed it enough?

---

The Wonderland High Castleteria certainly was a sight to behold. The architecture, while impressive with its flawless curves and undulating railings, there wasn't a single straight line in any structure of the room that Apple could see or make out through the wild display of colors and patterns that madly clashed with one another. There were several tiers to the lunchroom, with balconies that jutted out like the uneven bricks in an old stone wall where a single table sat roughly five or seven or so students among schools of fish floating around inside bubbles and massive balloons of various sea creatures puffing through the air as if they were actually alive.

Apple wasn't sure what to make of that.

The fact that things, such as chairs and desks and hat racks and seemingly balloons all had faces and could talk back at you was slightly unnerving. It had been bad enough when the Well of Wonder had a sudden flux and made her desk come to life and make inappropriate jokes about her underwear during her Princessology class, but here this seemed to be a regular thing. One look at her bowl of vinegar and oyster surprise made her stomach turn when she realized that there live oysters happily swimming around in her food like it was a swimming pool, giggling and laughing as they played about; the fact that Briar didn't seem bothered in the slightest by the still living food that talked back to her and screamed with glee as it made its final trip down her throat didn't help matters.

"Whatf?" Briar glanced at Apple's queasy face with a mouthful of food. "Ees not like thees is taranchulas ongth a sthick." she swallowed. "Certainly not crispy enough."

Apple felt her tummy do a somersault at the sound of that.

"Wait, wait, wait, hold up." Ben waved his spoon at the Daughter of Sleeping Beauty. "You've eaten tarantulas on a stick?" he raised an eyebrow.

Briar smirked at the flabbergasted look upon Ben's face. "Whisp dared me to and I gotta say, it's not that half bad; tastes like chicken. That's one hex of a girlfriend you got there."

"Ghoulfriend." Ben corrected as he took a mouthful of his own vinegar and oyster surprise before promptly spitting it and a giggling oyster back out into his bowl, disgusted. "Ugh. Now I wish I'd actually tried to eat some of Grandpa Max's cooking . . . to be honest, this is probably better. Any of you ever eat squidburgers for a barbecue."

Kitty glanced over at Briar when she noticed the princess had quickly raised her hand. "Another dare?"

"From Whisp." Briar confirmed with a nod and a smug smile at the queasy look on Apple's face. Ever since the shadow genie had started daring her to eat bizarre and strange foods from seemingly out of thin air, the Daughter of Sleeping Beauty had since then created a second bucket list of things that she wanted to eat before she was put to sleep for a century; currently, she had only been able to cross off the squidburgers, tarantulas on a stick, phoenix egg omelet, and a butterfly she had accidentally swallowed when she was younger and laughing while riding her bike at a break neck pace – how something so sweet as a butterfly could taste so bitter, Briar would never know.

Lizzie coughed loudly. "If I may intrude, Ben, would you be so kind as to what you meant by your comment before? About seeing more than what I so kindly asked you not to look at before?" she raised an eyebrow.

Unfortunately for Ben, Apple (oddly enough) was the one to speak up. "Oh, you won't believe it! This one time back in Ben's realm he was being chased by this fish-girl that was trying to mate with him because she was on some sort of yearly cycled that messed with her head and made her chase after the most desirable male she could find, which just so happened to be Ben and he saw her naked and everything-"

Ben banged his head on the table several times until the Daughter of Snow White realized exactly what she was saying and decided to clam up right then and there with a deep crimson tinge to her face that only deepened when she realized the full context of her words. The rest of the girls starred at them with confused albeit somewhat interested looks that was making Ben mentally wonder why he had even let that little tidbit of information slip from his lips to Apple of all fairy tales; a certain Daughter of the Cheshire Cat was probably going to never let him live this down for a good long time.

"You should really eat up." Maddie advised Ben and Apple, seemingly almost nonchalant from the spout of gossip. "We've got a long day ahead of us!" she smiled as she hurriedly shoveled more of her vinegar and oyster surprise into her mouth. Ben shuddered when he glanced up at his lunch saw the oysters in his bowl currently doing a synchronized swimming session together, spelling out the words 'EAT ME' in as big of letters as the bowl would allow.

"Um . . . no thanks. I think I'll see if I can't figure out a pattern to this stupid curse or not . . ." he mumbled to himself as he began fiddling with the Omnitrices covering his body until he settled upon one strapped around his left thigh and pressed down on it, swallowing himself in a blast of green energy. Ben's bones cracked and splintered loudly as they began to liquidate and dissolve inside of him, slowly turning his arms and legs into fleshy noodles that flopped at his sides and let the rest of his body sag upon himself like a poorly stuffed beanbag. The rest of his skeleton began to grind against itself while it compressed and compacted and began to vanish, the bones no longer having any use as his organs and muscles rearranged themselves around his limbs; his fingers fluidly melted together into a single digit that started to resemble the club of a squid tentacle, even more so when suckers suddenly popped forth from his skin like dozens of pimples and zits. Ben's skin turned a bright orange in color covered with mottled brown spots as his hips and torso fused together, shortening his body greatly despite the fact he was still roughly the size of Lizzie. His jaw thrust outwards in a jiggling, quivering fashion while his teeth splintered and crackled until they were nothing but baleen to filter feed with while Ben's head was pulled back and his eyes farther apart than before. A sudden, uncomfortable feeling overcame him until six whipping tentacles that burst forth from his chest and guts like some sort of alien nightmare – a sight that raised a scream of fright from Apple – as a green bodysuit with a black stripe down the middle and white cuffs for each tentacle materialized on him; the Omnitrix and Skurd appeared on his chest in a flash of green light, completing the transformation.

"Hmm. Squidstrictor." the Cephalod-ae took note of his form while he looked at the back of his tentacles.

Save for the sudden eruption of his many limbs, Squidstrictor was generally ignored as he slapped the Omnitrix upon his chest and was encompassed in a blast of green light, reverting himself back into his human form before he selected the Omnitrix around his right bicep and pressed down on that, swallowing himself in a second blast of green energy in the process.

Lizzie sighed glumly as she picked at her bowl of vinegar and oyster surprise. Being here back in Wonderland, her beloved homeland, was perhaps one of the best things that could have turned the depressing day completely around, but it compared naught to finally being reunited with her mother after such long departure. And now, here she was stuck in Wonderland High of all places without a way to get out; sure, there was the welcoming promise that she would still be able to make it to her mother's birthday party, but Lizzie had this nagging feeling in the back of her head that it wasn't going to be that easy, and that only made her feel worse.

"Hey, kid? What's gotcha so down?"

The Daughter of the Queen of Hearts looked up from her lunch for the source of the voice before she felt a tap on her knee and looked down, doing her very best not to scoop up the little Splixson before her and give him a firm hug. He was almost as adorable as Fluff Luv, like a real live living teddy bear . . . well, almost. Lizzie smiled as Ditto rocked back and forth on his heels while he was joined by three previously spanned clones of identical appearance and mind, though this didn't mean they were dependent on each other; Lizzie had seen that during the day that Daring Charming had lost his right and hand to be Apple White's prince, and it was a victory that many maidens still held over his head while he desperately tried to regain his reputation.

"I guess I'm just a little . . . concerned . . . that we won't be able to warn my mother in time." the Princess of Hearts replied. "Things in Wonderland tend to be somewhat tricky, if you catch my drift."

The quartet of Splixsons took that piece of information and quickly turned towards one another in a group huddle, silently conversing among themselves in hushed whispers and occasionally glancing back up at Lizzie with inquisitive gazes and a mischievous gleam in their eye that the Princess of Hearts found oddly endearing. She took note of the fact that there were four Slimebiotes placed upon each of the Ditto clones' heads, each duplicate looking a little worse for wear and perhaps even a little nauseous as well.

A couple minutes later, the Splixsons broke away. "Well, we're your friends, right?"

"I suppose." Lizzie smiled as she glanced out of the corner of her eye at Maddie and Kitty. They of course, were her closest and dearest friends out of their assorted group as she knew them the longest; they understood her dreams and fears, her desires and quirks, and essentially could have been considered her surrogate siblings if one wanted to go that far; some might have even claimed they were prime candidates for her majesty's royal harem, should she ever choose to create one.

Then there were Apple, Briar, and Raven. She was already familiar with the former two as they were all members of the Royal faction and were thus more than ready to resign themselves to fate and follow within their parent's footsteps to ensure the safety of their world's from the dangers that lay beyond. Raven on the other hand, was a tad more foreign to her since she was from the Rebel faction and thus was attempting to rewrite the stories laid out for her; some might have seen this as selfish and Lizzie would have readily agreed had she not taken the time to see things from Raven's perspective – something Apple had never bothered to do – and realized just how horrible things would become for her.

It was bad enough that there were already racial rivalries within the world of Ever After, with the dominant human races looking down upon the far more powerful races of magical descent, such as witches, fairies, mages, warlocks, sprites, and pixies and those that were not like them in any notable regard, such as ogres and trolls. Even the magical beasts that stalked the lands and lurked beneath the briny depths and soared through the skies were not safe from such prejudice – it was hardly a surprise to Lizzie that a great deal of the Queen and King lands that were not being used for magical agricultural development were set aside as highly protected wildlife and game reserves in an effort to preserve what was left of the dwindling ecosystems.

It seemed that the more numerous human species were afraid of anything they either couldn't control or understand or felt powerless against (Lizzie could at least understand that one) and thus absolutely had to destroy it on sight instead of trying to make peace and reach a better understanding. If it weren't for the uneasy truce held together by the Brothers Grimm and Grand Council, Lizzie didn't doubt for a second that Ever After would have descended into chaos with her precious Wonderland being pulled into the mix of things.

That left Ben out of their odd group, and he was honestly the one that she knew the least about yet oddly enough cared the most about. He had been harshly torn away from his own world, from everything he knew and everyone he loved and held dear, and thrown into their world without an explanation as to why he was currently tossed in the middle of their pathetic squabbling like he were supposed to put an end to it or something. He could have easily walked away from the whole mess or – from what Whisp claimed and Ben confirmed – have effortlessly wished it all away with a mere flick of his finger, and yet he didn't. He didn't even come close.

Ben instead chose to help her. He could have easily backed out of the whole ordeal and they would have been down a member in their quest to save her mother, but instead he stood proudly by her side like an unmovable mountain through thick and thin. It had been him that had been by her side in the Flower Fields and it had been him that had comforted her through her worries and fears over her beloved homeland and family; to say that he was perhaps her greatest ally in her quest was an understatement.

"Yes, I believe so." Lizzie confirmed more strongly with a smile and small laugh when she saw grins creep across all four of the Splixson's faces.

"And whadda friends do?" a second Ditto clone prodded her along.

"Be there by your side through thick and thin, that's what!" a third duplicate grinned as he grabbed two of his brothers in headlocks and gave them a neck crushing hug that just about made them pop.

The lead Ditto, presumably the original turned back to Lizzie with a slight, sweeping bow. "So take it from us, toots, when we're you friends!" he smiled at her, singing the last part. Much to the entire table's surprise – even the four Slimebiotes perched upon their heads – the quartet of Splixsons began singing in a barber shop quartet style that, given their high-pitched and somewhat adorable sounding voices, wasn't actually half bad.

"We're you friends! We're you friends!"

"We're you friends to the bitter end! (the bitter end)!" the fourth Ditto clone belted out as deep of a bass tone as he could, much to Lizzie's amusement.

"When you're alone (when you're alone),"

"Who comes around (who comes around)"

"To pluck you up (to pluck you up) when you are down (when you are down)?" the barbershop quartet of Splixsons hurriedly scrambled around Lizzie and with some strain against their woefully underdeveloped muscles compared to that of an average human, much less species such as a Tetramand, were able to lift up the Princess of Heart's entire weight and then set her back down in her seat as gently as possible to emphasis their point; the effort in itself was amusing when Apple caught sight of the winded expression upon their faces as they continued to sing their surprisingly on=key performance.

"And when you're outside, looking in who's there to open the door?"

"That's what friends are for!"

The four Ditto duplicates then proceeded to hop up onto the lunch table and generously shake Lizzie's hand one after the other as if they were greeting an old chum they hadn't seen in years, with the exception of the last Splixson, who gave a tender kiss to the back of the princess' hand with a gentlemanly bow; his three brothers looked at him with miffed expressions while Lizzie blushed a light pink. "Who's always eager to extend a friendly claw?"

"That's what friends are for!"

By now the whole table was getting into the swing of things when the quartet of singing Splixsons suddenly became the quartet of singing and dancing Splixsons and promptly started to dance around in a circle on the table top while Lizzie and Maddie happily clapped along. Briar was keeping rhyme by banging on the table like a drum as best as she could while Apple and raven tried to hold back their snickers from their private performance; they had always known their boyfriend to occasionally be a bit of a showoff, but this was something else entirely. "And when you're lost in dire need, who's at your side at lightning speed?"

"We're friends of every being comin' down the pike,"

"In fact we never met a creature that we didn't like."

The song briefly paused there as the third Splixson clone leaned into Lizzie and gave a slight wink. "Well, not exactly everyone, but you get the picture. Mind lending us that beautiful voice of yers, toots?"

While not much of a singer, the combination of the admittedly embarrassing yet touching performance gave the Princess of Hearts enough reason to at least give it a try. "Didn't like!" she sang as best as she could, a wonderful soprano that earned a round of applause from all the Dittos, among several catcalls and wolfwhistles, that is.

"So you can see we're friends in need,"

"And friends in need are friends indeed."

"We'll help you on your journey forevermore!" the four Splixsons began to close up their number by syncing with one another in perfect harmony, a feat within itself consider that they, when in human form, hardly ever sang anything that didn't involve backup, and even then he mostly left that to his more vocally talented girlfriend. At this point, Briar really wished she had remembered her Mirrorphone and not left it charging in her dorm; she doubted she would ever see this performance ever again and wanted to document it as proof that their non-incubus friend did indeed have some vocal talent . . . and there was a slight chance she wanted to post it on Mirrortube because, honestly, who wouldn't want to see four adorable aliens singing in a barbershop quartet?

"That's what friends are for!" a highly unfamiliar voice suddenly butted in. The four Splixsons, who had stacked themselves on top of one another for their big finish to their little musical number all promptly fell off the table and into a heap on the floor where they were all roughly forced back together into a single entity moments before the Omnitrix timed out and returned Ben to the world albeit a little sore and disgruntled at having been interrupted.

"Ow, seriously?" he groaned as he rubbed the back of his head sorely.

Skurd rolled his eyes. "Be thankful, dear boy. You were off-key the whole time."

"Says the booger who sings in the shower every opportunity he gets."

"You promised you would never speak of that!" the Slimebiote huffed as he crossly folded his pseudopods over his chest. "Honestly, of all the indignities."

A slow, loud clapping noise all caught their attention and they turned to see a girl standing over them all with the smuggest smile imaginable upon her lips. The girl in question drew up several inches below Ben and had short, cream yellow, pastel purple, and blue-streaked hair styled into a one-sided fringe that obscured her right eye with a portion that braided down the left side of her head. Her eyes were a scarlet pink and a creamy yellow diamond was painted around her left eye, highlighted against her pale skin; her build was fluid and certainly curvy, if not a tad underdeveloped in her chest region. The girl's choice of clothing was wild and eccentric in origin, seeming to be nothing more than a wild collage of mismatched boots of varying lengths, leggings of opposing colors, extravagant collars and skirts tipped with bells, and a black gloves that reached all the way up to her elbows, all tied together by a hot pink jester's hat fixed to a gold headband fitted over her head.

"Bravo, bravo. An extraordinary performance." she drawled with a tone that may have been sarcastic. "Mind if I take a seat?" she purred and without so much of a response, promptly sat herself upon the table and casually glanced over her shoulder. "Ah, Kitty, Madeline! It is such a treat to see you two back in Wonderland."

Lizzie sighed with exasperation. Of all the deities and fairy tales they could have encountered, it had to be her. "Everyone, meet Courtley Jester." she gestured towards the girl who now laying down on her stomach on the table without much care. "You might say she's a real 'wild card' around these parts."

Courtley pretended not to have heard the Princess of Hearts and instead acted surprised. "Did someone say something?" she feigned confusion before she lazily turned around and put on an expression of faux surprise. "Oh, why, it's lil' Lizzie Hearts! You know, I didn't even notice you sitting there . . . right. Next. To me." she purred in the princess' ear with a malicious tone.

The Daughter of the Queen of Hearts tightly clenched her fists and gritted her teeth, her face turning a deep crimson in color from sheer irritation. "This is your future queen you;re talking to!" she banged her fists down on the table.

The smug leer upon Courtley's lips made any anger Lizzie may have had remaining when the jester leaned in ever so close so that they were but inches apart from one, her smirk growing broader and broader until one might have mistaken her for the Cheshire Cat. "Oh . . . are you now?" she said in a tone that sent shivers up Lizzie's spine as an uneasy silence fell over the table.

Raven looked at the silent war going on between her friend and their latest arrival and, to avoid an all out catfight that Ben may or may not have to get right in the middle of to break up, lest they cause some severe damage to a school they were only temporarily staying at. "So anyway . . . Courtley, are you a student at Wonderland High, too?" she asked curiously.

Courtley responded as if she had just been told the most ridiculous thing in the world and simply laughed at the witchling's naive perception. "I'm the Student Body President," she proudly enunciated every word of the title, though Ben hardly doubted it would ever compare to the title of 'Queen of Hearts and Ruler of Wonderland'. "You might say it's my business to know what's going on around here."

Now Apple was normally someone that was tolerant of all people, no matter how rude or poorly misbehaved or simply clumsy they might have been. After all, she was very tolerant of Tiny Giant's presence, as was everyone else, and this was mostly impart to the fact that he never took advantage of the fact that he could easily step on every last one of them (except possibly Ben) as if they were bugs and instead made many attempts to be careful around his much smaller peers; he always waited until the halls were virtually empty almost a minute before the final bell rang so that he could make it to class without stepping on anyone – his massive stride made it easy for him to get between classes if he jogged, an occurrence that made it feel like a miniature earthquake was happening right beneath the school – and he took extra precautions to ensure that his feet had a pleasant aroma to them that wouldn't make half of his classmates faint from the horrible odor they produced after four hours of Bookball practice.

But when Courtley Jester plopped herself down on Ben's lap without so much of a request or thank you, something inside her started to burn and make her blood boil just the slightest. After all, Courtley didn't know that Ben had a girlfriend – several, actually – and thus couldn't be held immediately accountable for her actions . . . at least not yet while she was drilling them with questions. "Starting with . . . who R U?" she enunciated the last two words to the point where they could have been mistaken for letters.

"Hi, um, I'm Apple White," the princess began, digging her nails into her palms beneath the table when she noticed Courtley making herself quite comfortable upon Ben's person, grinding her fluid figure against his firm frame. While he had to admit that the jester wasn't someone to scoff at appearance wise, she was steadily grinding away at his nerves with her invasive antics and proactive actions; granted, Whisp did this on a somewhat regular basis, but at least that was because she both deeply cared about him – and Nefera, though the mummy would have told you something else – and had spent a few thousand years alone in a lamp with sporadic company. "That's Briar Beauty, Raven Queen, and my boyfriend, Ben."

"Actually, he's all of our boyfriend." Raven spoke up, gesturing to herself, Maddie, and Kitty as well.

Courtley raised a playful eyebrow at this. "Is that so?" she purred before turning to Ben with a seductive smile upon her lips. "Been quite the busy stud, haven't you?"

Ben swallowed nervously. "Uh, I guess so?"

"Smooth move, Casanova." Skurd mumbled. Fortunately for him, Courtley didn't seem to have heard him, noticed him, or didn't deem him worthy of her time, which was perfectly fine by the Slimebiote. Something about the jester just felt wrong to him and he knew somewhere within his genetometaphomorphic make up that something was going to happen; he unfortunately couldn't place exactly what it was as everything around him felt oddly familiar in a way that he couldn't figure out. For the time being he simply shrugged it off as the unstable amount of chaotic Wonderland magic in the air simply slowly driving him mad from exposure, like a radiation of some kind if that made any sense.

Courtley kept her attention solely on Ben as she slowly, meticulously walked her fingers up his sternum. "So . . . Ben . . ." she cooed his name in a tone that made him swallow nervously and sweat with discomfort at how open and flirtatious she was being with him. "Where's a handsome fella like you come from, hmm?"

Ben decided to spare the jester – no matter how intrusive she was – the long tale of his arrival and the explanation of the multiverse and extraterrestrials and parallel universes that would follow. To be honest, he was only able to just barely wrap his head around the bare bones concept of the theory and was nowhere near a level of understanding as Professor Paradox or Hexiciah Steam and he doubted he ever would be, not withstanding usage of the Omnitrix. "Ever After High. All of us, really." he added uncomfortably.

"And you're here because . . ?" Courtley pressed, scratching under his chin with a single finger. Lizzie gritted her teeth tightly and felt her face heat up to the temperature of a soon to erupt volcano as she watched Courtley work her womanly charms on Ben, spinning herself on his lap so that she could straddle him with her legs and press herself even tighter against him with her breath upon the skin of his neck as if only she and him were there, completely ignoring them all; she even went so far as to teasingly prod the tip of his ear with her tongue! The nerve of her!

And what really confused Lizzie was that she couldn't figure out why she was so bothered by it. Sure the jester annoyed her to no end, but she couldn't place hexactly why she hated her so much at this exact instance.

Surprisingly, it was Apple that spoke up. "Well, it's kind of a long story-"

"Which you do not have time to tell." Lizzie hissed at her through gritted teeth. Something about Courtley severely rubbed her the wrong way, and it wasn't just the way she feeling Ben up while they talked and were all but ignored by her. Honestly, did personal space mean nothing to this girl? And out of all the people at their table, Apple was the one to willingly talk about their sacred and secret mission to the person that was currently behaving like she was the only one who had claims to the man she was currently dating!

Unfortunately for the Princess of Hearts, Apple remained oblivious to her warning. "But you see, there's a plot against the Queen of Hearts and we've come to stop it!" she whispered excitedly across the table, much to everyone else's horror.

That immediately caught Courtley's attention and she stopped toying with Ben's emotions and bodily functions long enough to peer at Apple with cold, cat-like eyes. "You don't say . . ." she frowned for a reason Apple couldn't understand.

"She did say," Lizzie snarled lowly. "And far too much at that!"

Apple rounded on the future ruler of Wonderland, a sense of slight annoyance in her voice. "I just thought that maybe she could help find a way to get us hexcused from school. I mean, this vice principal everyone's talking about is more strict than Headmaster Grimm."

Raven had to agree with that and even Ben and Maddie couldn't help but snicker. "I know, right? I've never met anyone who's such a stickler for the rules!"

Courtley seemed to find the joke amusing as well, though Kitty couldn't help but narrow her eyes at the jester as she relaxed into Ben's frame while reaching over and playfully tweaking Raven's nose like one might do when entertaining a small child. Something about her rubbed her fur the wrong way, and it wasn't just because she was using her boyfriend as a chair either; there was something underlining sinister that Kitty just couldn't place and unfortunately for her, the narrators were being suspiciously quiet as of late and weren't accidentally giving away hints like they usually did. Even the young one had gone silent and wasn't offering up any clues to help them out, which was a mystery in itself now that the foxy feline thought about it. And the tone of voice that Courtley was using wasn't helping her suspicions either. "On the contrary, I think the vice principal is pretty keen on shaking things up."

BRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGG!

The jester snapped up at the sound of the bell with a bright grin on her face. "Ah, there's the bell!" she laughed gleefully. "It really was so interesting meeting you girls . . . and you Ben," she purred seductively while she scratched him playfully under his chin with a lustful look; both Lizzie and Skurd felt like they were going to lose their lunches at the tone of voice and a severe look of possessive irritation crossed all of the girl's faces when Courtley had the gall to lay a sloppy kiss upon Ben's lips without so much as a warning.

Before any one of them – Ben included, though he was more focused on getting the taste of Courtley off of his tongue – could reprimand the jester for her actions, Courtley scrambled off of Ben's lap and promptly backflipped over the side of the railing. Everyone immediately rushed over to the side with looks of horror as Ben frantically tried to pick an Omnitrix to use, one that might hold the genetic code of one of his flying aliens, until they caught sight of Courtley gently floating above them on the back of a gigantic pufferfish-like balloon.

"Good luck in your classes," she waved at them casually. "Oh, and Ben? Feel free to come find me anytime if you require some . . . assistance . . . with your schoolwork." she added with a slight wink and a kiss that she blew in his direction.

"I don't know whether to be entranced or disgusted, and I'm pretty sure it ain't the first." Ben shuddered as they all watched Courtley float off before turning to leave to get to their next classes and the madness that would undoubtedly ensue.

Once she was sure that Wonderland High's newest additions were well gone and out of earshot – she never underestimated the Cheshire Cat's senses and took extra precautions to ensure that the magical energy blocking runes and glyphs were well in place – Courtley climbed to her feet and courageously ran along the spine of the pufferfish balloon before she came to the tail and threw herself off. Most would have considered this suicide attempt to even promotional stunt of sorts from the amount of guts it would take jump from such a height, but Courtley was more than confident in her abilities. Her body moved gracefully through the air as she landed on a rail a floor below her and leaped off with the agility of a monkey; several more tumbles and rolls that would have impressed a professional acrobat quickly followed as she slowed her descent and finally popped back up.

Without waiting to catch her breath – it was hardly an effort anyway – Courtley positioned herself against a stand of lockers and folded her arms over her bust to make it seem as if she were casually waiting for something to happen. If her timing was right, he would be along any moment . . .

"Oh, dear."

Right on time. Honestly, he was so gutless and spineless and so easy to manipulate to her will that it almost wasn't fun anymore. Some would have gotten tired of the constant bullying they could so easily place upon him, but Courtley couldn't get enough of it. It made her feel powerful and in charge, something that was hardly common or even allowed for a lowly jester. "'ang on, Rabbit!" she called out when she caught him trying to casually leave without her notice.

The trembling tone in her voice made her internally grin from ear to ear. "Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What is it, Miss Jester?" the White Rabbit quivered behind the manila folder he had carrying with him.

"Those girls. The transfer students." Courtley got right to the point. "Change. Their. Course work. Make it more difficult." she glanced at her nails before turning to the spineless lagomorph with a icy glare, as if daring him to question her.

Fortunately for her, that's exactly what he did . . . or attempted to do at least. "B-B-B-B-But . . ." he stammered before his folder slipped out of his hands and fell to the floor, emptying its contents of various papers and documents all over the floor. Courtley watched him hurriedly try to pick him up in his arm before she suddenly lunged forward and stomped her foot down on the document the White Rabbit had just been about to pick up.

"You don't wanna make the vice principal angry, do you?" she sneered at him, daring him to argue with her once more. The vice principal's motives should never be questioned and their rule would always remain in power if she had anything to say about it; after all, what kind of a vice principal appointed a lowly jester such a place of power? A rather foolish one at that, and Courtley wasn't about to let them be told otherwise.

"No! N-N-N-N-No!" the White Rabbit trembled.

Courtley was done with her little games and snarled at her underling with the demeanor of mother manticore protecting her cubs. "Then change their course work! Make it impossible!" she demanded before swiftly turning on her heel to walk away. "Those students must. Not. Graduate!"

The White Rabbit hurriedly nodded and promptly dropped his papers once more as Courtley stalked off. With a sigh he bent down and began to fill his folder once more, mentally apologizing to his daughter's friends for what he was about to do. May the ancestors have mercy on their souls . . .

---

"I am ready to roll!" Briar grinned as she and Maddie jogged ahead of the others.

"Lets do this!" Kitty agreed with Lizzie in tow.

Raven couldn't help but laugh at her friend's enthusiasm as she walked with Apple and Ben. "You know, I've actually got a good feeling about this-"

"You fool!" Skurd roared with frustration, banging his head down on the Omnitrix he resided on with frustration. "Have you learned nothing about today!? The moment anyone, anyone utters those words, horrible things happen to them!"

Apple giggled at the Slimebiote's expression. "I think you're overreacting, Skurd." she tried to sooth his frayed nerves before she caught sight of their latest challenge placed before them. The structure of Wonderland High had always confounded her as classrooms always seemed too big or too small and shoved into the oddest of places as if everything had been done last second, and the last time she had seen the outside of the school, there couldn't have possibly been enough space for the current room they were in – if it could even be called that.

What lay before them was a massive field that seemed to stretch onward for miles without end, the ground like smooth cement their feet that was decorated in an endless checkerboard pattern of red and white. Grand castle walls made of ancient stone criss-crossed their way over the battlefield, forming a massive, walled in barrier around a section of the classroom so that it acted like an arena of sorts; extensions that harbored turrets and towers stretched on over the horizon and the sky was colored a foreboding, yellow rust in color that made Lizzie uncomfortable. Her throat felt dry as her mind flashed back to the heart-crushing feeling that had overwhelmed her when she found her beloved homeland in such disarray, the immense hurricane of unstable and dark magic swirling over her world just waiting for the word of its mistress to descend and destroy everything she held dear to her.

A slight weight fell upon her shoulder and she looked up to see Ben with his hand upon her. "Hey, don't go thinking those kind of things on me, alright?" he gave a slight smile. "We'll get out of here, one way or another. We'll save your mother, that I promise you."

Lizzie nodded. "Thank you, Ben. It's just . . . such appearances are quite unpleasant." she gestured to the massive room before them and the way the sickly colored sky above them seemed to be plated like a ceiling of sorts. "Now, for the matter at hand . . ."

"Chess!?" Raven gaped at the two armies of red and white positioned opposite of one another. "Aw, man, I'm horrible at chess!"

"Not as bad as me." Ben sighed tiredly. "Give me something to pound, and I'll do without even trying. Give me a brain teaser and, well . . ."

Apple smiled. "It's not that bad," she reassured her boyfriend. "Once you know the rules, you just have to think ahead!"

"As if the boy ever thinks." Skurd quipped, earning him a respective flick upside the head as a response. Before Apple could have attempted to console Ben a little further, the square beneath his feet glowed a bright purple in color and a row of playing cards rose up out of the checkerboard ground like a picket fence on the edge of a lawn. With a sudden move, a flooring formed beneath their feet and the cards rose upwards, taking them all with them so that they were standing on a balcony of sorts above the ground . . . all except, of course, Ben and Skurd.

Apple hissed with regret. "Ooh, sorry. Didn't see that coming."

"Well . . . I fail to see how this could improve." Ben grumbled with annoyance.

He was quickly proven wrong when one of the pieces from the red army – a rook if he could properly remember – swiftly slid over to them across the surface of the board. Ben had to crane his neck back just to get a look at the entire piece, which seemed to mainly be a turret or tower that shot straight up from its pedestal and cradled an archer or guardsman of sorts in its nest. The guardsman was clothed in crimson armor and a red helmet that slipped down over his eyes, seemingly blocking his view. "Logic and illogic . . . strategy and tragedy," the Red Rook bowed to the girls on the balcony above Ben. "I am your instructor."

Ben mumbled sourly under his breath. "So much for my attempt at reverse psychology."

Skurd comfortingly patted his arm. "A valiant effort, lad, but the universe will forever remain a cruel mistress."

"Ben Tennyson, time for your quiz!" the Red Rook announced, suddenly appearing directly in front of him from a low window in his tower that might have served as a means of entry.

"Oh, come on! A quiz!?" Ben complained. "Can't I study or something first?"

The Red Rook remained uncaring as he smoothly zipped across the board and, much to Ben's shock, dragged him along without so much as even touching him; perhaps the conveyor belt flooring in the hallway applied her as well? "Nope! We must assume our positions on the board. As a future king and/or hero, you will take the part of the White King. White King, step aside!"

The king – a chess piece with long, white flowing robes, a long gray beard and a grand crown of ivory placed upon his head – breathed a sigh of relief and quickly stepped off his pedestal, hurriedly scurrying out of the battlefield-like classroom without so much as a backward glance, leaving the remaining White Queen greatly perturbed. "Of all the nerve!" she huffed indignantly.

"At least you are able to play, your majesty," the Red Rook offered her a monotone upside to her position. "Ben Tennyson, please take your position on the board."

Ben raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and waded his way through the first row of pawns and other pieces until he finally made to the empty pedestal that the seemingly cowardly White King had once occupied. "Is this right?" he asked.

The Red Rook didn't seem to have heard him. "Ready? Begin!"

Ben naturally panicked. "Wait, what!? What am I supposed to do!?"

"Sorry, Mister Tennyson, but the game has begun and helping the enemy is against the rules." the Red Rook apologized without care as he moved himself back across the board until he was safely back between his ally's ranks on the far side of the board.

"Oh, no you don't! You get back here and-" Ben started to bark angrily in the direction the Red Rook had retreated in before he felt a hand upon his shoulder and looked out of the corner of his eye to see the White Queen looking at him with an forlorn look.

Now that he had gotten a closer look at her, ben realized that the White Queen wasn't a woman at all but a teenage girl roughly the same age and build as Lizzie was, if he had guessed correctly; she was of the same height, possibly of the same weight, and even both of their faces shared the same, heart-shaped structure, but that was where the similarities ended. Her eyes were a light violent in color, her skin was almost as pale as polished ivory, and her hair was almost completely white, save for a few, thin, ash gray streaks, as well as a black streak that sliced the old fashioned way her hair was held up in half. She was dressed in a short white skirt that reached down just above her knees with elegant, gold designs of intricate design that fed into a light gray top that showed off a respectful amount of cleavage and traveled off into a pair of long, puffy sleeves colored gray in color. Upon her feet she wore a pair of white diamond-studded pumps that made her seem far taller than she should have been and placed atop her head was a simple tiara of sorts that was decorated with an unprecedented amount of feathers.

"It won't do any good," the White Queen shook her head. "As the rules state, the only way out of a game is to either win or lose, simple as that, which is really surprising when you realize how complicated and maddening Wonderland is, I mean, it's like nothing and everything makes sense here and-"

Ben coughed awkwardly. "Um . . . yeah. Thanks, I guess?"

The White Queen froze for a second before crying out in frustration and facepalming herself with frustration. The sudden movement made the feathers upon her head stir and, much to Ben's surprise, were actually attached to a white dodo bird that seemed to have been right in the middle of a nap on the queen's head before it was disturbed. Sensing that their owner was in distress, the dodo hopped down off the White Queen's head and landed on her shoulder, nuzzling her affectionately with his oddly shaped beak.

"Thanks, Flutterfeather." the White Queen smiled slightly as she scratched the flightless bird behind the head before she turned to Ben. "Sorry about that. I . . . tend to ramble sometimes. My name is Bianca, by the way. Bianca Chessman."

"Uh, Ben Tennyson." he allowed his hand to be shaken by Bianca. "So, um, quick question. Not to be offensive or anything, but are you in anyway related to the White Queen back in Ever After."

At the mention of the name, Bianca frowned and shuddered as if she had just had to work with someone she detested. "Unfortunately, yes. She's my mother," she growled lowly. "Don't get me wrong, I love her and everything, but she's such a pain sometimes. And that's when she was one of the Three Queens! From what I've heard, she's got even worse ever since she fled Wonderland and got a job as a teacher at Ever After High."

"You have no idea." Ben smirked. "So what are you doing here?"

Bianca rolled her eyes. "In the absence of my mother, I have to take her place. It's great practice for when I'll assume the throne and everything, but honestly, it makes it really hard to keep up with all my other classes when you're stuck in a never ending game of-"

"Ben!" Apple's voice cut through the air like an eagle's scream, swiftly catching his attention and cutting Bianca off. "See that pawn in front of you? Move it forward two spaces!" she instructed.

Ben sighed and turned his focus away from Bianca and back towards the matter at hand. Unless he was transformed into his Galvan or Protinaphibian form, he was at an absolute loss when it came to mind games as his school grades would have proven. He was by no means an idiot incapable of thought or a "Dweeb" as Gwen had insistently called him during their more immature years, as he had proven himself time and time again of quick learning, an enhanced eidetic memory of near unrivalry, and an adaptability in situations that left more intelligent beings, such as his partner Rook, at a disadvantage.

Put him in front of a highly advanced door with highly advanced locking system however, he sooner choose brawn over brain depending on the situation – it looked cooler to bust down the door than simply unlock it, after all.

"Hey, dude, uh, Mr. Pawn?" Ben tried talking to the pawn in front of him. "Mind moving forward two spaces?"

He expected the chess piece to silent move in the order he had commanded it to or even talk a little bit before complying. What he didn't expect however, was the piece suddenly turn around and question his demand without hesitance. "On whose orders, then?"

"Uh, Ben Tennyson?" Ben tried.

The pawn unfortunately, continued to resist. "Never heard of a Ben Tenyson. All I've heard of are the Three Queens. Heard of a Queen of Hearts, heard of a White Queen, and heard of a Red-"

That was the pawn managed to say before he was suddenly whacked upside the head like a golf ball and sent sailing off towards the horizon with a terrified scream; Ben barely suppressed a yelp of surprise when he realized just how close he had come to being hit and looked up at what he quickly gathered to be the attacker. He was met with a tall woman with a white, slim face, dark gray hair that was tied back in a low bun streaked with arches of white and deep red in color, and a dark crimson crown bejeweled with dozens of jewels the color of scarlet and mahogany. Her eyes were a dark gray and her eyebrows were a dark onyx positioned above a short layer of red eyeshadow. Her robes consisted of a long red and white Elizabethan gown with ruffles, royal separate sleeves, and a high collar that was colored a hue of dark pink that was almost red but not quite there. "Ha, ha, ha, ha! The Red Queen strikes!" she crowed triumphantly while she waved her scepter over her head. "Your turn, White King."

"But . . . wasn't that my turn?" Ben asked, utterly baffled.

Another white pawn turned to address him. "Well, ya see, yer majesty, a turn is a turn and if one of us turns, say, to talk to you then it counts as a- AAAAAGH!" the ivory chess piece cried as it and two of its brothers were unceremoniously attacked one after the other by the Red Queen, sent flying through the air like golf balls as the queen's deadly scepter came into play.

"What!? You can't do that! It's against the rules!" Apple accused.

"Stop talking to the pawns and just get away from them!" Lizzie advised. Ben didn't need to be told twice and hurriedly scrambled away from his position while the Red Queen watched his every move with the familiar look of a predator; he had seen that look all too well on Khyber's pet back when Zed had been nothing more than a mindless hunting partner before she had been adopted and domesticated into a fiercely loyal companion. Memories of when Jane had first acquired the Nemetrix and had lost herself to her animal instincts came flooding back to him and had it not been for Bianca's voice cutting through his thoughts like an arrow through the fog, he could very well ended up falling victim to the Red Queen's bloodlust.

"Ben! Look out!" Bianca yelled a warning.

The Red Queen was already giving her order, a vicious smile upon her lips. "Red Knight to Bishop Seven!" she shrieked.

Ben came to a screeching halt as a mighty crimson stallion promptly hopped onto the square in front of him, its legs fused to the pedestal it stood upon while it snorted and glaring menacingly at him. Upon its back sat a deep crimson suit of armor accented with various hues of red in contrast to the white chess piece army and sporting black and red feathers in comparison to the White Knight's blue and white; a heavy broadsword and shield clipped to his side and his voice sounded vaguely familiar . . .

"Chase Redford?" Ben relaxed a few hairs.

The lid to the red helmet creaked open as Chase smiled sheepishly. "Yeah . . . sorry about my mom."

"That Red Queen is your mother?" Ben scoffed with disbelief.

"Well, she raised me. It's a long story." Chase shrugged sheepishly before he pulled the lid of his helmet back down. "Anyway, I just wanted to say how truly sorry I am that I, uh, well . . . have to attack you."

Ben felt an assertive smirk cross his face while Chase raised his gleaming broadsword over his head. "Dude . . . do you even know who you're talking to?" he grinned as he slapped an Omnitrix disk fastened directly upon his sternum and swallowed himself in a blast of green light and energy that began to scramble his genetic code into something new.

He could feel a prickling sensation crawl its way out from his chest, rippling across his shoulders and down his back as coarse, gray fur began to sprout forth from his skin in rolling waves that spread across his body until only his hands and feet were left naked and bare. His arched as he forced to hunch forward, his skeleton grinding and crunching loudly against itself as it shifted and reconfigured ever so slightly; the structure was similar and only needed some fine tuning. Ben's ears stretched back from his head and took on a rodent-like appearance as they were covered in a light coating of fur and nestled back against his head while his spine cracked and snapped and spat out a long, rat-like tail covered in a few stray hairs here and there. His toes melted into three claws with his heel pushing out behind him to form a fourth toe in a series of sickening pops and cracks that made Apple shudder at the sound. Ben's skull bulged outwards slightly into a rat-like snout as a few hairs formed a small goatee of some kind while muscles and sinew threaded their way across his figure, piling themselves on to create a more masculine appearance. A thick mane of raven black quills erupted forth from the back of his thickening neck and shoulders, completing the transformation as a pair of black pants and tank top with a green stripe down the front, green cuffs, and black fingerless gloves materialized on his body; the Omnitrix and Skurd appeared in a flash of green light around the waist.

The Espigilagisapien took advantage of his opponent's moment of hesitance and pounced upon him, knocking him off of his horse and to the ground. PorcuPain cackled with glee as he tore his claws into Chase's armor, creating a horrible screeching noise as keratin shredded metal for the several moments it took for the Red Knight to get over his initial shock and throw PorcuPain off of him.

Chase grunted as he quickly scrambled to his feet and held his sword in both hands, panting as the Red Queen screeched at him like a harpy. "Stop talking and attack! Attack!" she screamed. PorcuPain recognized it as the tone that most super villains and crime lords used to berate their underlings, mostly Billy Billions, Dr. Animo, and even Don Skueaky as well.

"As you command, mother." the Red Knight nodded grimly as he raised his blade over his head.

PorcuPain smirked as he curled himself up into a ball of razor-sharp quills and spun in place for a few seconds to build up momentum before he shot forward. It wasn't that much different than when he was in his Arburian Pelarota form, with the one exception that he was essentially running blind and couldn't turn at all, but details, details. The one thing that did matter was that Chase hadn't seen it coming at all and had the wind knocked out of him as the Espigilagisapien flattened him to the ground once more and ran him over, his spikes making a series of uneven rattling noises against the Red Knight's crimson armor.

The Espigilagisapien unfolded himself and turned around with a smirk upon his face. "Come on, that the best you got, bub?" he laughed. Before the Red Knight could retort with a witty comeback, PorcuPain had curled himself up again and came racing back at him once more, slamming like an eighteen wheeler into him and sending him flying across the chessboard and into the white army's ranks.

"Oooooh," Chase groaned while he rubbed his aching head.

"Are you alright?"

He took a moment of his self pitying to pause and look up at the sound of the angelic voice he had just heard. Well, it wasn't so much angelic as it was curious, more like a goddess among mortals if the feminine tone was anything to go by. He turned around and felt his jaw go slack when he laid eyes on the holy angel standing over him, a look of concern upon her gorgeous features; every part of her was like a beautifully carved statue of ivory crafted from the elegant hands of the goddess Aphrodite herself. And even then, her craftsmanship for Pymoglian and the goddess herself paled when compared to the stunning beauty standing over him. "Are you alright?" she repeated.

"F-Fine." Chase stammered as he hurriedly climbed to his feet and tried to pretend he still wasn't sore all over and in desperate need of a lie down once class ended; this was just embarrassing for him. Usually he was at the top of his game when it came to his role as the Red Knight, enforcing every rule without question, following every command of his mother and the vice principal without hesitance, his strength and skill with the sword was unmatched. And yet, he was being bested by a literal rat!

Admittedly, he was rather impressed the changeling had lasted this long.

"So, um, I don't believe I've caught your name." he admittedly sheepishly.

The ivory angel rolled her eyes with a slight smile. "I suppose in your line of work that's a legitimate excuse, considering you're in the line of fire, per say. I'm Bianca Chessman." she introduced herself with a slight pink to her cheeks. She had seen Chase in action for years on end during their time on the chessboard battlefield had she had to admit, his physical prowess was quite impressive. Since when had he gotten so tall?

"Chase Griblig Redford! Stop this nonsense and attack! Attack! ATTACK!" the Red Queen shrieked violently to the point where she looked just about ready to pass out from lack of oxygen.

The Red Knight chuckled sheepishly. "Uh, well . . . I, um, better get going and . . . stuff." he swallowed nervously before taking a deep breath to calm himself. "Um . . . want to hang out sometime? I feel kinda bad for uh, kinda . . . not knowing you existed in the first place? What am I saying . . ?" he murmured to himself.

Bianca couldn't help but snicker at his woefully pathetic attempts at conversation. "I'd like that." she gave a smile.

A sudden surge of confidence flowed through Chase's veins and a warm, dazzling smile cross his face as he tried to come up with something witty or clever to say before he rushed back out into battle. Unfortunately for him, PorcuPain had other ideas and came racing towards him, clamping his jaws tightly around the Red Knight's ankle, and promptly dragged him kicking and flailing back out onto the chessboard without much ceremony. "ItwasverynicetomeetyouBianca!" Chase managed to call over his shoulder as he was dragged away. "Let of me, you vicious brute!"

"You ain't seen nothing yet, bub." PorcuPain quipped as he let go of Chase and nodded at Skurd. The Slimebiote nodded in response and oozed his gelatinous makeup over the Espigilagisapien's right arm as he delved into the genetic database of the Omnitrix and selected one of its many samples. The fur that covered PorcuPain's right limb was pressed flat against his arm, amalgamating with his skin until it was layered over in a substance that looked similar to plastic upon first glance. Grooves that quickly faded into a deep black etched themselves across his morphing limb as bony knobs thrust themselves forth from his skin. The changing limb took on a bright red in color as it shifted and morphed into a thick, cubular barrel that fed back and into a row of brightly colored cubes not unlike blocks that wrapped over PorcuPain's shoulder and into a sort of pack upon his back, ending the transformation.

Chase yelped while the Espigilagisapien all too happily fired off the Bloxx-lobber, just barely bringing up his sword in the nick of time to deflect in an incoming projectile aimed directly at his face. His eyes widened when the block-like shell promptly exploded upon making contact with the blade, forcing him to quickly scramble to his feet to defend himself as PorcuPain relentlessly continued to fire at him. Any attempt to strike the Espigilagisapien was practically pointless as he swiftly dodged and weaved around Chase's swings.

"That's it! Keep up the offensive! Give 'im the ol' one-two!" Skurd coached PorcuPain on.

"Attack! Attack! Attack! ATTACK!" the Red Queen shrieked like a banshee and Lizzie was left contemplating whether or not her mother had taken a leave of absence from the throne to perform a study on Wonderland's educational system.

The Red Knight was doing the best he could to obey his mother, but the he had to give credit where credit was due: the changeling was nigh impossible to hit and his skill in combat was unsurpassed, or at the very least on par with his training. He wasn't sure what drove him to do what he did next; it might his need to obey the command of his mother to the best of his abilities or maybe his desire to impress Bianca with his capabilities as a warrior, or maybe it was his inclination to hit PorcuPain at least once.

Whatever the reason, Chase gave a loud battle cry and swung his broadsword up as fast as possible, striking the Bloxx-lobber with a loud clang! as PorcuPain shielded himself and was knocked back from the sheer force of the blow. The Red Knight wasted no time and cleaved his sword downward with as much strength as he could muster, his weapon clashing with the Bloxx-lobber as PorcuPain attempted to shield himself.

"Real swords!?" Briar gaped as she saw flecks and bits of the Bloxx-lobber being chipped off with every swing that Chase made and every block that PorcuPain took advantage of. "Do not tell me that this makes sense to you." she threw a look at Maddie.

Naturally of course, the Hatter ignored any outside commentary that wasn't from Raven, Ben, or her Wonderlandian friends. "Of course, it does!" she laughed. "They're not playing chess at all. They're playing Un-chess! You can move your pieces any which way you want as long as it is not a chess move!"

"That would have been nice to know before we before!" PorcuPain grunted against Chase's strength. The Red Knight drew back his blade and dealt a devastating move that shattered the Bloxx-lobber in half, leaving the Espigilagisapien defenseless as Chase went in for the kill. A collective gasp of anxiety came from the balcony as all held their breath and practically hung over the railing to see what would happen next. "Don't suppose you wanna call a truce?"

The Red Knight shook his head. "I'm sorry, but rules are rules!" he yelled as he swung his broadsword down.

CLANG!

"Not while I still stand!"

The Espigilagisapien cracked open his eyes, his heart hammering his chest while his muscles remained tense and ready to fire off a hurricane of pointed quills laced with various toxins that would easily pierced through Chase's crimson armor. Glancing up he found himself beneath a tall figure with broad shoulders dressed in a powerful and white suit of armor with a large broadsword grasped tightly in their mighty hands, the only thing keeping PorcuPain from being sliced in half.

"The White Knight!" Apple sighed with relief.

"About time you showed up, bub!" PorcuPain snapped as he helped himself to his feet. "I was just about to turn Strawberry over there into a pincushion!"

The White Knight grunted against the Red Knight's strength. "My apologies, your majesty. On the bright side of things, I have blocked the attack!" he exclaimed as he pushed back against Chase. "What are you commands?"

The Omnitrix gave a series of dying beeps before a blast of bright green light swept over the Espigilagisapien's frame and returned him to his human form within a matter of nanoseconds. "Wait, hold up. It's my turn?"

"Yes!" the White Knight strained.

"And I can issue any command I want?" Ben stroked his chin in thought, an idea formulating in his head. Usually he was taunted by his peers, co-workers, and even his ghouls on the occasional basis, but what he lacked in intelligence, he more than made up for in his ability to adapt to a multitude of situations. It was more times than he could count that he had managed to figure out a new way of getting out of a situation instead of beating his head against the figurative wall of progress by trying the same thing over and over again – granted, it had taken him some time to realize that he couldn't muscle his way out of every situation, but he was getting there.

"Yes!" the White Knight grunted.

Ben smirked. "In that case," he turned to the girls up on the balcony. "I'm calling this a dance off!"

"What!?" was the general agreement of vocalization from across the board, particularly the Red Queen who absolutely hated to lose and preferred cold hard battle. After all, those red robes of hers weren't originally dyed that way and she so did enjoy a good skirmish or two or at the very least, a grand tussle with the most vicious predators the Wilds of Wonderland had to offer save for the Jabberwockies; no Wonderlandian insane enough would single-handedly go after one of those monstrous reptiles.

Regardless of Ben's choice, the Red Rook was more than happy to accommodate – he had long since dreamed of becoming a popular DJ before being enrolled into the Red Queen's army – and seemed to coincidentally have the necessary equipment with him on hand. "Oh, brilliant move by the White King!" he exclaimed merrily as his turret tower was transformed into a low DJ stand while a pair of thumping speakers rose from the floor and began to lay on a heavy bass line. "Drop da beat, yo!"

Much to the two knight's surprise, the chessboard beneath the White and Red Knight's feet popped up and turned a dazzling display of swift moving and random pattern generating squares. "Dancing? Th-This is . . . th-that's not what I was trained for!" Chase protested.

"That's what I'm counting on, Strawberry," Ben smirked. "Now dance like nobody's watchin'!"

"B-But everyone is watching!" Chase panicked, his eyes frantically darting around the chessboard. All eyes seemed to be trained on him, everyone from Ben, Skurd, and the White Knight – who was considerably less confused and frightened than he was – to the girls quickly making their way down to the dance floor via a pair of playing card slides and both opposing armies; even his mother! Worst of all, Bianca seemed to be starring at him with the biggest smile on her face that just seemed to scream with mockery!

Chase swallowed nervously when the Daughter of the White Queen gave him a little wave and it felt like his heart was going at a million miles an hour. He feverishly glanced around for anyway to get out of his current situation, his mind racing to try and find a loophole of sorts within the rules, but he was stuck right where he was without even his trusty steed or sword to help him; he watched as the White Knight seemed to taunt him and then proceeded to mock him with perhaps one of the easiest dances to learn, a sort of hopping back and forth on one foot while dribbling a ball that Chase hadn't learned the name of, much less if it was even considered a dance at all.

He watched as Ben effortlessly took Apple in his arms and spun her around, a cheer of excitement coming from the princess as she was practically swung her around like a ragdoll to the thumping beat. She gave a joyful laugh and a slight blush of embarrassment when he affectionately pecked her on the cheek before tossing her out and pulling back in like a yo-yo, placing a light kiss upon his lips just as she came reeling back in.

"Come on, Chase, you can do this." he tried to assure himself as he stepped out onto the dance floor and gave his best shuffle. The only dances he had ever learned were the slow waltzes and spinning ballroom dances of royalty, and even those were far and in between in exchange for near endless combat experience. From the moment he could reliably walk he had a sword thrust into his hands and a training armor upon his shoulders while his mother barked at him from afar to run faster, jump higher, swing harder, and just plain screaming at him in general; it was what she considered parental encouragement.

The White Knight hardly seemed impressed. "Oh, puh-lease." he scoffed as he pulled out his next move and began to perform the almost obligatory Gangnam Style, some stupid music video that had come out on the Mirrornet from a clearly tipsy gathering of young royals and officials at a party they clearly shouldn't have been at doing things they clearly shouldn't have been doing for the sake of their reputations that had somehow churned out one of the most successful and highly irritating songs and dances to ever plague the Mirrornet . . . at least, in Chase's opinion. How they had managed to make, edit, and post the damn thing all in one drunken sitting before passing out was beyond him.

"Really? Oh, come on." the Red Knight frowned when his ivory counterpart jerked his thumbs at himself in a mocking gesture. What followed was a slightly better routine that popped and jerked to the rhythm of the thumping speakers and, much to his surprise, he found himself starting to get the hang of it; Ben however, seemed to have him entirely outclassed as he and the girls found themselves engaged in a miniature version of the Electric Slide, another Mirrornet sensation that had originated from a group of ogres attempting to perform a complex dance number for their addition for 'Dancing with the Kingdoms' and instead managed to produce one of the most popular dances of all time; no word on whether or not they had won a spot on the show had been released yet.

The Red Knight wasn't so much distracted by Ben's dance moves than he was distracted by how close his majesty was getting to the odd changeling. He watched with a raised eyebrow as the group fluidly dispersed to enjoy the rocking music to their own liking, with the Daughter of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White bouncing and bopping to the beat together and the Mad Hatter's daughter dragging the mysterious witchling into a fast-paced waltz that really didn't seem to have much or any control over it, but none drew his attention like how Ben and Lizzie had so casually fallen into what appeared to be a tango of sorts, if the way he effortlessly dipped his majesty was any indication.

His attention was quickly drawn away when he realized that he was actually dancing. To be fair it was a poor rendition of the Funky Phoenix, a dance that had been around since the dawn of time and invented by some drunken village idiot who believed himself to be a powerful wizard and thus able to eat an entire oak tree that had somehow managed to slip by the guards of a Charming family ball to entertain the guests with his buffoonery and spark one of the biggest dance crazes in all of Ever After; the Charmings were still trying to deny having anything to do with the invention of the dance.

Nevertheless, the Red Knight who had little to no experience with the dancing of popular culture in Ever After and Wonderland, had somehow managed to pull off a decent performance . . . until he lost his balance and fell on his face, right off the dance floor. Honestly he couldn't have been more embarrassed in his entire life and it only got worst when he realized that Bianca had seen it all from afar . . . there was a slight chance she saw things differently, but something told him that the girl he was beginning to seriously crush on was as sharp as a tack.

The music came to a screeching stop as the Red Rook slapped his hands down on the records of his turn tables. "The Red Knight has fallen!" he proclaimed, much to the severe annoyance of the Red Queen, before turning to Ben and the girls. "You pass!"

"Well that is a relief." Lizzie sighed with assuagement. "You can stop dipping me now, Ben." she added as she rolled her eyes back and realize just how close to the floor her head was with Ben's strong hands holding her by her petite – but nonetheless deadly – fingers and lower back.

"Maybe I don't want to?" Ben teased her while he wiggled his brow tauntingly before he seemed to be suddenly snapped back to reality and hurriedly helped a crimson-faced Princess of Hearts back up on her feet, muttering an apology and shoving his hands as deep into his pockets as they would go as he shuffled a fair distance away from Lizzie. Oh, my Ra, why did I just say that? he mentally berated himself while simultaneously trying to predict when the future ruler of Wonderland's temper would be unleashed upon him and when he could expect an attempt at decapitation in retaliation.

Luckily him, no one other than Skurd – who was silently plotting the best mocking gestures to throw at his flirting host – had heard his comment. "That White Knight sure has some moves." Briar commented.

"I'm just glad he showed up." Raven grinned. She was about to turn and thank the ivory warrior for his efforts and commitment to their cause when she realized with great stupefication that he was nowhere to be found, gone without a trace; this was beginning to grind her nerves and intrigue her at the same time. Since when did a warrior fresh off the battlefield disappear immediately afterward and not partake in the celebratory festivities or congratulations no matter how small. Usually warriors and soldiers would swell with pride at their victories upon the battlefield, having well earned them, and yet this one was like a masked vigilante, there one minute and gone the next with nothing to track them by.

BRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGG!

Before Raven could contemplate the situation any further, the bell had promptly rung and the White Rabbit's panicked voice came booming over the loudspeakers. "Oh, dear! oh, dear! The time is two o'clock and here are the announcements!" he recited frantically from out of sight. "The vice principal had declared that next Thursday shall fall on a Wednesday, the tortoise shall stop mocking the turtle, and Raven Queen, Lizzie Hearts, Apple White, Kitty Cheshire, Briar Beauty, Madeline Hatter, and Ben Tennyson's schedules have changed!"

"What do you mean 'changed'?" Kitty snarled suspiciously; something smelled fishy here, and it wasn't the sardine-flavored catnip she had laced her lunch with.

The White Rabbit seemed to sense the group of fairy tale's unease and sounded even more panicked than before if it was even possible. "You will immediately report to Tea Time 101!"

"And by 'immediately', he means . . ?" Briar trailed off with confusion before the floor underneath all their feet opened like a trapdoor into empty black space.

"You just had to say it, didn't you?" Skurd narrowed his beady little eyes at the Daughter of Sleeping Beauty before all seven of them plunged down into the inky, abyssal void with terrified screams and several mild curses on Ben and Lizzie's part. What was really baffling and irritating to the former of the two was why they couldn't have simply walked to their next class or, if the need to utilize some of Wonderland's pure madness was an absolute must, why they couldn't have taken a slide or something or anything for that matter that didn't involve them plummeting through the air at who knew how many miles an hour without the assurance of a mattress or something to soften their landing.

If it was any consolation, the look on Chase's face as he starred across the chessboard in the direction of the white army, particularly at a certain future White Queen, was utterly priceless.

Before long they had seemingly reached the end of their descent and landed quite painfully in a heap upon whatever sort of flooring or ground was beneath them with Ben at the bottom and suffering a good majority of the damage. This was greatly appreciated by the girls – despite the fact they too were just as sore as he was and arose from the pile of tangled arms and legs hampered dresses with various grunts and groans – but not so much by Ben himself. Thankfully he had managed to land in such a position that none of the Omnitrices that decorated his body were activated from the impact by some miracle.

"Thanks for the soft landing, Ben." Kitty purred as she climbed to her feet.

". . . no problem . . ." he groaned. "Where . . . are we anyway?"

The group of fairy tales were momentarily blinded as a spotlight suddenly clicked on from above and cast an intense blue light down upon, illuminating their surroundings. They found themselves at the center of a large cube about five yards long and five yards wide with the height being about five yards tall as well, forming a perfect glass cube that hastily sealed itself over and trapped them inside much to their confusion and worry. A sudden round of loud noise caught their attention and they peered out into the surrounding darkness to find themselves sitting on a stage of sorts positioned before a row of darkened theater seats which – despite the sound of rousing applause and cheers – were completely empty and devoid of any audience.

Courtley smirked widely to herself as she lounged in a theater seat towards the back of the amphitheater, her figure shrouded in the shadows. She could hear the soft thumping of the White Rabbit's feet against the floor as he made his way into a seat behind her and silently sat down, his beady eyes trained on the clear glass cube placed on the front stage. The jester couldn't help but hand it to the vice principal for their clever mind and nefarious schemes, how they came up with one maniacal plot after the other and showing such brilliance in how to take care of the foreigners that had dared to disturb their peace; admittedly, she would miss the Hatter-dressed boy, but she didn't dare question the authority of the vice principal.

Her smile only deepened when the recording of shrieking applause came to a sudden stop as the class' teacher, the March Hare, hopped onto the scene with a crazed look in his eyes that twitched every so often as much as his whiskered nose did. His ears were long and stiff, standing straight up from above his head on either side of a tuft of messy brown hair that was several shades darker than the tint of brown the rest of his body was covered in. His feet were flat and floppy, his tail fluffy and stout, and his outfit appropriately as mad as he was, with a purple checker patterned sweatervest and red cummerbund from which a polka-dotted tie just barely grazed from its position around the hare's neck. "Welcome class!" he laughed madly. "I see that you're ready!"

"Ready for what?" Apple asked worriedly.

The March Hare didn't answer and merely skipped off into the wings of the stage to grab hold of an old rope and give it a mighty tug. "Tea Time has commenced!"

The sound of grinding gears drew their attention down to their feet where they all caught sight of a large drain of sorts as big as a wagon wheel stationed in the bottom of the glass cube that gurgled and rumbled nosily before spewing forth a strange, brown liquid that mildly warm to the touch and felt oddly enough like one was relaxing in one of the hot tub's at the luxury spa in the Village of Bookend that Ben had heard so much about but never had an opportune time to check out for himself.

Being feline in nature, Kitty was naturally apprehensive of any large amounts of liquid – particularly those bubbling up from beneath her feet like a hot spring - and immediately jumped into Ben's arms, much to his surprise. "What is this? What's going on!?" she panicked as the oddly-colored water started to rise higher and higher.

Struck with curiosity – enough to brutally kill one of Kitty's relatives – Maddie bent down and dipped her finger into the ankle deep waters and gave sample lick of what she had found. "Yep! It's tea! Ginger, to be exact."

"This is never how Tea Time works!" Lizzie exclaimed angrily.

"Yeah! There isn't any bread-and-butterflies! And there aren't any chairs to switch places with!" Maddie pouted.

Ben grunted as the steaming hot tea rose even higher, reaching to about his waist as Kitty frantically moved up onto his shoulders against his will, trembling with fear as she hugged her tail to herself lest it fall into the rising waters below. "Kinda have more important matters to deal with, Maddie!"

"It's too much! How do we make it stop!?" Raven panicked as the tea continued to rise even higher.

"Anybody thirsty?" Briar gave a halfhearted joke as she raised her arms above her head in an effort to keep them dry.

With little options left, apple trudged her way through the quickly rising levels of tea and over to the side of their glass prison, wrapping a knuckle on the side and thankfully catching the attention of the March Hare. "Um, excuse me? Mr. March Hare? If it wouldn't be too much trouble to-"

"Look at me! I'm standing three feet below tea level!" the March Hare cracked madly, pressing a button on a remote in his hands to trigger a laugh track to guffaw and snicker at his poorly made wisecrack.

"What are we supposed to do!?" Kitty panicked as she started hyperventilating while standing on top Ben's shoulders just a few feet from the top of the cube. Her species of feline – arguably the only species of feline to ever successfully make its home in Wonderland – was deathly afraid of large bodies of water and avoided it at all costs, which was one of the reasons her prehistoric ancestors had evolved the ability of teleportation to compensate for their restricted range. As time went on and millions of years past and gave rise to sentience, the Cheshires had collected to form a united, nomadic tribe that had been at near constant war with the Hatters where their teleporting magics had come in great use. Of course, by then they still hadn't overcome their natural fear of water which was become a great hindrance to Ben's face at the moment.

Ben grunted as Kitty's foot slipped between his shoulder blades. "Kitty . . . I don't want you . . . panic or anything, but . . . I need you to get off!" he strained.

"N-No! Never!" the Daughter of the Cheshire Cat mewed.

Unfortunately for the panicking Cheshire Cat, her boyfriend just happened to loose his balance under a sudden surge in the rising tea level that created a current strong enough to send the two of them plunging into the boiling liquid without mercy. Immediately Kitty began to thrash about in a pitiful effort to stay afloat, but she had regrettably never learned how to swim; it was just something that her species had never and probably would never learn how to do for as long as they existed. Soon enough she began to sink and she just barely managed to suck in a final breath before she went under, her vision stained a deep brown in color as she tried to make sense of everything around her.

She could see Briar and Apple's skirt balloon outward like gigantic species of deep sea jellyfish, their legs kicking rhythmically as they managed to stay afloat and trued to figure a way out of their current predicament. All that Kitty knew was that they were too panicked and running short of viable air to notice her and she could only hope that they somehow managed to think of a way out of their glass prison before she drowned; and given how little air she had managed to grab before going under, it had to happen soon.

The Daughter of the Cheshire Cat felt something strong and firm clamp around her right bicep and she looked up to see Ben floating right next to her, his cheeks puffed to the brim with an oxygen supply he had managed to grab at the last second. Without warning, he suddenly leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, strategically maneuvering his tongue past her lips just enough that he was able to create a passage of sorts between the two of them for him to give a quick lungful of air.

Slightly shocked but feeling incredibly refreshed, Kitty quickly latched onto Ben's shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her waist and quickly shot towards the surface, erupting forth with simultaneous gaps for breath less than a few feet from the top of the glass cube much to Kitty's horror; at the very least they had a few more minutes before they would be forced to go under again.

"We're almost to the top! Think fast, everyone!" Apple exclaimed. "Before we run out time!"

"Give me a second!" Ben managed to pry his other arm free of Kitty's iron grip just enough that he could access one of the many Omnitrices covering his body. "Uh, eeny-meeny-miney-"

"Mo!" Skurd cried as he slapped his face down on the Omnitrix fastened to Ben's right wrist and swallowed himself in a flash of intense, green light that warped and scrambled his genetic code. His skin bubbled and began to pulse furiously as it formed into small bumps that quickly started to fuse together like water droplets on a window in a rain storm, forming large blobs of flesh that swelled and took over his lean arms. The sudden growths began to weigh Ben down as they started to harden into a thick, leathery hide before taking on the appearance of hard, crusty rocks colored a deep maroon; the rest of his arms bloated with muscles, becoming far bigger than his original self while his legs bulked and bulged with sinew and flesh. His feet ripped clear through his sneakers as his toes folded together into three, crusty plates while his skin flashed a deep black in color with the rocky plates forming like continents on a inky, black sea. Ben's head was forced down into his chest while his compressed and cracked loudly as his skeleton finally amalgamated with his skin to form a more durable body. His mouth widened horizontally with a loud crunching noise into an exaggerated grin, forcing his eyes farther apart in the process as rocky plates rushed to cover his skill. The final piece of the transformation was the addition of a pair of black and green shorts upon his person, a pulsing, molten core erupting forth from where his guts might have been, and the Omnitrix and Skurd appearing in a flash of light upon his forehead.

Courtley practically jumped out of her seat when she saw the enormous Galilean appear in a blast of green light, his sudden mass and weight quickly raising the water level to fill the rest of the cube as the girls all quickly grabbed one last lungful of breath and went under, tightly pressed against the sides of the cube by Gravattack's sheer size. The jester was practically vibrating with furry as the Galilean started to hammer away at the sides of the glass prison, though thankfully the walls refused to give thanks to the extra enchantments she had placed upon just on the off chance that one of the four foreign exchange students had an ace up their sleeve . . . and it seemed she was correct.

After all, the vice principal didn't tolerate failures, no matter how unexpected or overlooked they were.

The jester took a deep calming breath and relaxed back in her chair when she realized that the girls and Gravattack were still trapped within the glass cube and the walls wouldn't be giving in any time soon, despite the near hairline cracks she could just make out from the distance. By the time the walking planetoid actually managed to break through the walls, the girls would have drowned, the Galilean would possibly drown as well (Courtley wasn't one-hundred percent sure now), and the vice principal's nefarious plots would remain secretive and out of light until too late.

Unfortunately for Courtley, she hadn't counted on Raven suddenly disappearing from within the glass prison in a sudden burst of bubbles that lowered the level of tea slightly before reappearing on top of the glass cube in a puff of pink and purple mist. The witchling was shaken up, gasping for breath, and soaked through the skin, but she was nonetheless alive much to Courtley's fury. She quickly sent some of this fury off in the direction of the White Rabbit when she suspected when he cheering the girls on and had her suspicions proven correct.

"I don't know! I guess I just thought outside the box!" the Daughter of the Evil Queen seemed to be answering a question that had come from Apple, if the trail of bubbles from the princess' lips was any indication.

Courtley watched with increasing fury and tightly clenched palms as one by one the girls disappeared in blasts and surges of bubbles and reappeared on top of the cube all soaked from head to toe and smelling like tea but otherwise fine for the time being. Gravattack joined them a few seconds later, his weight making the glass creak and groan under his tremendous size; the girls all wisely took a step back before turning their attentions back to Apple, who was still trapped within the confines of the tea-filled cube.

"Come on, Apple! You can do it!" Briar coaxed her.

"Hurry!" Kitty pleaded.

Raven nervously bit her lip as she watched Apple start to sink to the bottom of the cube, her eyes squeezed shut in concentration and her fists tightly clenched while she tried to 'think outside the box' like everyone else had, but for some reason things weren't looking up. The witchling was sorry to admit that this might have partially been her fault for denying her destiny on Legacy Day and turning the narrow-minded Daughter of Snow White into a begrudging frenemy that was mostly friends by now. Apple was simply still too close-minded to 'think outside the box' as it were, molded and sculpted into the image of the next Snow White from the day she was born to the point where she had little to no original ideas of her own. Apple simply was incapable of being as creative and open-minded as Raven was, preferring concrete answers and logic to leaving things to fate, no matter how fast her world views were starting to change.

And it looked like it just might be the end of her.

Thankfully, Raven was far from the only one concerned.

"Everyone get back!" Gravattack commanded. No one argued and everyone quickly scrambled back as the Galilean planted both feet on the top of the glass cube, creating slight tremor that made the transparent prison tremble and shake under the sheer force. He quickly cupped his hands together into a bludgeoning fist and raised his arms over his head before giving a loud yell and bringing his fists down with as much force as he could muster. A thunderous boom! resounded through the theater, creating a spiderweb of cracks and crevices in the glass top of the cube. Another hit was all it took to shatter a hole the size of a wagon wheel in the top, just big enough for Gravattack to snap his arm down and grab Apple in his massive hand to haul her out just as she was about to run out of oxygen.

The princess sat there on top of the cube hugging Gravattack's leg for support as she gasped for breath. "W-We . . . we did it!"

"And just in time, too!" Maddie beamed. "You never want to let your tea steam for too long!"

A resounding round of laughter that followed the little quip drew their attentions back down towards the stage where the March Hare stood with a gleeful smile on his face. "You pass!" he clapped joyfully, oblivious to how Courtley was mumbling curses under her breath as she hurriedly left the theater behind. "I'm off to find a cup of sugar for my cube of tea!" he laughed madly as he pressed another button on his remote.

"I'm beginning to hate this place more and more." Gravattack mumbled as they disappeared in a puff of smoke.

---

Briar coughed violently as the harsh-smelling smoke attacked her sinuses and worked their way down into her lungs, ensuring her a decent coughing fit that was on the brink of bringing tears to her eyes before she had finally managed to get the last of it out of her systems. By then she had taken note of their current surroundings and was quite baffled to say the least. From where she was standing, the floor was the standard checkerboard pattern that could be found all around the school, but it looked like what one might see if they had taken a picture of the pattern and enlarged the image on their Mirrorphone to the fullest extent, making the squares far bigger than they should have been. Looking up she found that the walls were absolutely enormous and shot up high into the clouds before finally making contact with the ceiling . . . and was it just her or was that a giant locker on the far, far, far side of the room?

"Look out!" Raven yelled.

The Daughter of Sleeping Beauty snapped her head towards the sound of Raven's voice and glanced up as a gigantic shadow fell over them, which bore a great resemblance to that of the bottom of a shoe. It took her several harrowing seconds to realize that it was in fact, a giant shoe that was coming straight towards them and if it hadn't been for the near constant adrenaline rush coursing through her veins, Briar would have most likely found herself squished like a bug.

Regardless, her heart was pounding and she was near breathless as she watched the titanic owner of the shoe casually walk away without ever noticing then, each step they took feeling like an earthquake to her. "We've shrunk!" she realized.

"Or the school has grown huge!" Gravattack added as another foot came hurtling down towards him and Apple. The Galilean quickly thrust his hands out as a shimmering green field of energy came from his fingertips and raised his hands above himself and Apple just as the ship-sized foot came crashing down on top of them; a split second later, the foot shot straight back up as Gravattack just barely managed to deflect a good majority of the weight off of him and to a lesser extent the currently terrified princess cowering at his feet. They were all use to having to put up with Tiny stomping down the halls wherever he went no matter how hard he tried to be careful and it was easy to feel intimidated by his immense size, but this was something else. Whereas they were like dolls to the friendly giant, here they were like near microscopic insects to the students of Wonderland High, who didn't seem to have idea that they were there.

This briefly made Apple pale at the thought of accidentally stepping on some unfortunate soul as they had made their way throughout their day.

"Well, yes, sometimes it's hard to tell." Lizzie admitted as a third foot the size of a jabberwocky came crashing down mere inches to her - though 'inches' was a relative term to her size and the size of the owner's of such massive feet. "Oh, that's it! I for one have had quite enough! It's high time we saw the vice principal!"

"But, uh . . . how do we even get to the office?" Raven wondered.

As was a reoccurring occurrence for the day, it was none other than Maddie that came up with a solution, much to Apple's unease. You knew the situation was bad when the only one with an idea was the maddest resident in all of Wonderland. "This is the only door we can reach, so clearly it's the right one to use!" she opened a door in the wall that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and gestured them all inside.

"I am never gonna get use to your logic." Raven laughed as Lizzie to the lead and lead them all through the door and into a large and grand hallway with paintings of obscure subject and origin lining the walls. The traveled down the hall for quite a long distance with Gravattack bringing up the rear until they saw a faint glow off in the distance, like that of light from underneath a doorway. The group of fairy tales and planetoid quickened their pace and it wasn't until they were nearly there did they realize that the hallway itself was an optical illusion; while the hallway did accurately project distance according to the laws of physics, the hallway itself became smaller and more cramped until they were all forced to hunch over against the low ceiling with Gravattack's bulky body blocking any means of turning back.

Now down on her knees, Lizzie turned the knob on the door and crawled her way out into a thankfully much larger room. Once she was on her feet she turned around and held the door open to allow Maddie, Kitty, Briar, Raven, and Apple through before taking several steps back as Gravattack's enormous hand and arm came through and slammed against the floor. The second hand and arm came next and the tremendous and wide head followed suit, just barely managing to fit through the door's frame as if the door itself understood that its last occupant was not of regular accommodation size and had enlarged itself to allow passage through if worked out properly. With a few straining seconds and some assistance from the girls as they all grabbed hold of his arms and gave as mighty of a tug as they could muster, the Galilean finally managed to pop free and stand up to his full height in the room, his head just barely grazing the ceiling as he kicked the door closed.

The room surprisingly simple for something from Wonderland and, for once and as far as Gravattack could tell, there wasn't a checkerboard or chessboard pattern wall or floor in sight, just bright colorful walls of pinks and oranges and yellows that blurred together like a sunset without much contrast between one another. An extravagant rug covered a good section of the floor in front of an impressive desk behind which a chair hung from the ceiling on a heavy chain whose links were shaped like big hearts and clubs and spades; it seemed the playing card theme held up. Off to one side of the desk was a large book shelf that reached from floor to ceiling and stood adjacent to a massive window offered a view from the hanging chair when spun around.

Much to Lizzie's relief, there seemed to be someone sitting in the chair with their back turned them and, despite all the alarms and warning bells this gave her Galilean companion, she spoke up. "Vice principal, glad I caught you! I require a word." she attempted to sound regal and meaning of business. "My name is Lizzie Hearts, Daughter of the Queen of Hearts, and my friends and I need your help!"

"We need to graduate, but our class schedule keeps changing!" Raven jumped in.

"The classes are dangerous!" Kitty added.

"And they're getting harder and harder to pass!" Apple continued.

"And if that isn't bad enough for you, this place has no sense of decency when it comes to passing between classes! Honestly, dropping your students out of the sky from one classroom to the other!" Skurd huffed indigently from atop Gravattack's forehead, drawing odd looks from their group.

A short silence followed the Slimebiote's words, long enough for the attention they had drawn to fade away and back towards where the vice principal was sitting with their back towards them. Not a word had been spoken otherwise and Lizzie took a tentative step forward, curious as to whether the vice principal had heard their plea or not and would help them. "Oh, my, that sounds completely dreadful!" an eerily familiar voice spoke as the chair whirled around to reveal-

"COURTLEY!?" Raven felt her jaw go slack with disbelief. "You're the vice principal!?"

The jester scoffed and rolled her eyes with disappointment as she spun her chair back around. "If you'd ever bothered reading the school bylaws, you'd know that as Student Council President, I am also Acting Vice Principal. And as Acting Vice Principal, I'm also the Principal!" she replied over her shoulder with a small laugh as she casually filed away at a chipped nail. "See, it's a matter of principle."

Lizzie was clenching fists so tightly to the point where her claw-like nails could have driven blood as that sense of unease and mistrust wormed its way back into her gut and quickly took up residence without so much as an invitation. A quick glance out of the corner of her eye revealed that quite a few of her friends, namely Kitty, Raven, and even Gravattack and Skurd had looks of suspicion disbelief upon their features; a sudden blast of green light from the Omnitrix as it gave a few dying beeps did nothing to change the expression on Ben's face when he re-emerged into the world and protectively came up beside Lizzie as if his presence alone would instill a sense of power into all that gazed upon him . . . which usually it did.

Unfortunately for the Princess of Hearts, Apple still seemed absolutely naive to the matter at hand. "Well, b-but then you can help us!" the princess beamed brightly before sucking in a deep breath and launching off into as short and detail of an explanation as she could manage, much to Lizzie's steadily grinding nerves. "Okay, Lizzie's mom is in danger-"

Courtley cut her off with a mocking, pitied tone of voice that irritated Lizzie's nerves like no tomorrow. "Oh, and you really want to get to her birthday party by tea time, or she'll never hear about the plot to kick her off the throne!" she summarized tauntingly as she smoothly pulled herself up onto her desk and absentmindedly played with a Neuton's cradle placed upon the edge. "Oh, what a shame that school isn't over yet . . ."

"You're the vice principal; you can release us!" Lizzie pointed out.

Ben scratched his chin in thought, pressing his lips tightly as he watched Courtley's movements carefully. Something about the jester was rubbing him the wrong way, and his hero instincts were telling that something was seriously off about their current situation, especially when Courtley gestured to an odd-looking clock that he had somehow missed on the way in that bore a high resemblance to a slot machine. "Oh, but would you look? It's just eleven o'clock in the morning! School never gets out at eleven."

"Eleven o'clock!? Time is going backwards?" Apple was flabbergasted. "But that's impossible! Ben's not even that Clockwork guy!"

"Forget the clock!" Lizzie roared loudly as she pushed away from the group and marched right up to Courtley with a venomous look in her eyes that, had she been a gorgon and not a member of the House of Hearts, would have turned the jester to stone or melted her right there on the spot. "As your future queen I, Lizzie Hearts, command you to release us!" she demanded in an authoritative tone.

Courtley scoffed. "Command, do you?" she copied her teasingly. "Well, my clocks are what count while you're in my school, and this one says it will never be three o'clock!" she cackled madly as she hurriedly pulled down on the lever and set the three slots spinning in rapid random motions until all three of them clicked and settled upon the image of a trollish Courtley grinning like madmen while the massive clock spun its hand around as if it couldn't make up its mind about what time it was.

"That's cheating!" Kitty snarled.

"My mother will hear of this!" Lizzie roared even louder than before.

At that, Courtley laughed. "Ha! Your mother? What'll I care about your mother?" she growled before cartwheeling on top of her desk with that ever present smirk upon her lips that sent shivers down Ben's spine. He could tell now that something was seriously up about the mad jester, but it stubbornly refused to move anywhere but the tip of his tongue. "She won't be queen much longer!"

Maddie giggled. "Why it's-" she suddenly gasped with realization. "It's as if you almost want the plan to overthrow her mother to succeed!"

Understanding suddenly struck Ben and he fought the urge to slap himself across the face for being so incompetent and not realizing what was happening sooner. This was practically routine villainous plot right here!

Courtley on the other hand, gave Maddie a deadpanned look of disbelief before promptly exploding much like a manticore that had been neutered without any antiseptic and thus left to the horror of feeling the sheer amount of pain it would receive upon having its genitals removed – the usage of a rusty spoon was most likely optional. "OF COURSE, I DO!" she roared viciously. "Because it's mine!"

Lizzie looked to be on the verge of both figuratively and literally erupting like a volcano full to bursting at this point, her pale face now such a bright red from fury that Apple was quite certain that she was more colorful than any apple she had ever eaten in her entire life had ever been. Not only that, but the amount of blood rushing to her face right now, the rate her heart was bumping, and the adrenaline rush she must have been getting at that point made her highly volatile and it was a wonder that the Daughter of the Queen of Hearts hadn't simply exploded on the spot right then and there from how furious she must have been. And from the way her voice sounded very much like an affronted dragon about to lay waste to the village that had antagonized it into unleashing every last bit of its raw power and strength, Apple highly pitied what would come next if Courtley didn't get to a very safe place within the next few minutes. "YOU!? YOU'RE THE TRAITOR!?" Lizzie screamed.

Courtley turned on Lizzie with a jeering sneer. "You think you're so special because you were born to become a queen!" she spat at the princess, just barely missing the flamingo perched in her crown. "But you forget . . ." she grinned a smile that would have put the Cheshire Cat to shame as she hopped down from her desk and appeared directly behind the baffled princess. "A joker can be whatever she wants!"

"Oh, yeah? Well two can play at that game!" Ben shouted as he slammed a fist down on the Omnitrix positioned around his stomach and encompassed himself in a blast of green energy. The changes began with the ever familiar itching sensation that indicated he was growing hairy, specifically a patch of indigo-colored fur between the back of his shoulder blades that quickly spread along his arms and down his back as his skeleton cracked and crunched nosily. He could feel his bones grow smaller, compacting him into a height a couple heads shorter than his original frame while at the same they were becoming denser, stronger, and more powerful when muscles and sinew quickly laced themselves across his skeletal network; his shoulders broadened while his thighs and legs swelled with tissue and the strength that came with the powerful tendons and ligaments that followed suit. The indigo-colored fur continued to spread across his chest and down the inside of his legs, bleaching into a creamy white as his ankles snapped in half and were pulled back into a new joint that made them resemble the hind legs of a hoofed animal. This was further enhanced when his feet tore through his sneakers and molded themselves into a pair of cloven hooves made entirely out of his fused toes and toenails that melted into a thick covering. The fur stopped at his knuckles, leaving his hands to deepen into a dark black as his skull shifted and reconfigured ever so slightly so that his jaw thrust out just a bit. The most dramatic changes however happened mere nanoseconds later when a pair of curved horns like that of a ram's burst forth from either side of his head, curled protectively around a pair of pointed ears while a fluffy tail sprouted from the base of his spine. The final piece of the transformation was a pair of green bands around his biceps, a pair of black fingerless gloves, and a belt with the Omnitrix and Skurd on it materializing around his waist.

Smashface snorted threateningly as he socked his fist into his palm and took several steps towards Courtley looking none too pleased with her. Trapped between a furious future ruler that would most likely not hesitate to messily decapitate her with a flick of her finger, an extraterrestrial that bore an odd resemblance to that of a satyr or faun, and a gaggle of highly perturbed and protective princesses and Wonderlandians, one might think that Courtley was outnumbered, outclassed, outwitted, outmuscled, and in every sense of the word defeated.

But then again, the joker always had an ace up her sleeve.

"SECURITY CARDS!" she screeched like a harpy.

An unfortunately familiar sound caught Smashface's attention and he turned to see a wall of armed playing card guardsman kick down the door – the much bigger and probably much more used door – to the vice principal's office and quickly form a wall behind him and the girls, wrapping them and Courtley and finally cutting off any chance of escape Lizzie might have had with their spade-shaped spears pointed threateningly at her.

And all through it, the Satyrian wished he could wipe that smug grin off of Courtley's face, though he strongly suspected that nobody wanted to do it more than Lizzie at this point; it was a wonder the Daughter of the Queen of Hearts hadn't passed out yet. "Escort these girls back to their classes – where they will spend the rest of their lives!" she cackled madly before going off on a merry taunting spree. "Oh, the joker becomes the queen, it happens all the time! Oh, the joker becomes the queen, it happens all the time!"

"You have officially lost it." Briar snarled as a pair of guards grabbed her by the arms.

"Haven't any of you played cards before?" Courtley scoffed before turning towards Smashface. "And I was so hoping you and I could spend some quality time together . . . perhaps when I'm queen I might be able to arrange for you to become one of my servants . . . maybe . . ."

The Satyrian snorted irritably. "Not if I take you out first!" he yelled, surging forward with the force of a runaway train as he lowered his head and prepared to violently crash into Courtley and smash every bone in her body which he was somehow okay with. He wasn't sure what scared him more, the fact that he was alright with brutally mauling someone, or the fact that a small squadron of playing card guardsman snatched him up and quickly latched onto all four of his limbs, suspending him helplessly above the floor.

"Never fear! Skurd is here!" the Slimebiote chimed as he quickly slithered himself over Smashface's chest and arms and selected one of the genetic samples from within the Omnitrix. The Satyrian's arms started to swell with even more muscle and power than before, veins popping out and pumping alien blood and DNA through his bloodstream as the indigo-colored fur was quickly shed and lost in favor of quickly reddening skin that grafted and layered over itself several times for reassurance. The sickening sound of flesh being pushed aside filled the air as a pair of slightly smaller arms burst forth from under his original pair, nothing more than bare muscle and bone connected together by a series of ligaments and tendons attached to four strong fingers that were quickly – and thankfully – covered by more red skin. Fleshy bumps and protrusions sprouted from his biceps and ended the transformation as thick nails tipped the fingers.

With a sudden surge of strength from his Tetramand arms Smashface wrestled free of his captors and fell to the floor, immediately charging straight at Courtley with a heavy fist drawn back and his head lowered – a double whammy – for maximum power. At the last second however, he was suddenly dogpiled and shoved to the floor by the guards with more piling on him every second as he fought and struggled for freedom; when that didn't work, Skurd retracted the Tetramand DNA back into the Omnitrix and selected a new genetic coding that spread over Smashface's skull. A loud crunching noise filled the air as his fur and skin melted from his face and quickly fused with his skull, forming a tough substance that began to split and crack apart like mud drying in the sun. A molten liquid quickly flowed through the cracks and crevices as they turned a charred black in color and finished the transformation when the Satyrian's head suddenly caught fire.

Lizzie watched in awe and fury as Smashface blasted out an intense stream of fire in as many directions as his current position would allow him to before a guardsman quickly rushed over and dumped a pail of water over his head. The Satyrian glowered at the playing card before his head was ignited once more and he spat out another jet of flame that the playing card guardsman jumped over and once again dumped the contents of the bucket on Smashface's head; Lizzie realized it to be an infinite water bucket with great disdain, the Wonderland equivalent of fire extinguishers.

"Oh, do give it up," Courtley laughed. "As much as I love your silly little games, I have my own game to play . . . the one where I become queen! Now be gone!" she commanded.

And so, despite the many men it took and the many adaptation they had to make to their plan of operation, the loyal to a fault playing card guardsman managed to escort the struggling princesses and highly persistent Satyrian out of the vice principal's office without too much of a hassle. Granted, there were several scorch marks upon the walls, long scratches etched into the floor from dagger sharp claws, and more than once Smashface nearly escaped when he suddenly sprouted wings, but the situation was safely handled in a manner that pleased the vice principal greatly.

After all, making the vice principal angry was a fool's game and a game that fool's generally lost at.

---

Tap. Tap tap. Tap. Click! Click! Scrap. Tap.

She was breathless now and nearly drained of her energy, just like she was after every session of picking away at the heavy locks and seals and glyphs and wards that decorated the mirror placed within the office of the damn headmasters. As she slowly retreated away from the mirror, she made special note to imprison those two bumbling buffoons through this specific mirror, a sense of irony that she would find quite delicious, if the looking glass wasn't shatter upon her escape.

If she escaped.

With a sigh, she turned away from the mirror and slowly, lazily walked through the dimly lit void with the same elegant and stance as her title and position in her kingdom expected of her yet there was a lack of purpose behind it, and she was perfectly fine with that. She had always hated acting so prim and proper for people she didn't know and could really care less about, putting up a fake facade that everyone would kiss up to on the off chance she was feeling generous and might offer them a favor that they could cash-in on at some ungodly inappropriate time.

The only light that gave the empty abyss was those that came from the hundreds upon thousands upon millions of mirrors that levitated and floated through the realm on a magic she still wasn't able to fully understand, even after years of study. But being trapped in this place, this world between worlds, gave one more than enough time to do explore many possibilities and options and this had left her with more than enough time to examine the walls of her prison.

And even manipulate to a point.

With a wave of her hand and a flick of her ring finger the faded checkerboard pattern floor rose and erupted from beneath her, rising up below and in front of her feet with every careful and calculating step she took as she fluidly moved her hand in the direction she wished to go. It was only in this realm between worlds that she was able to command such power, to become the equivalent of an Olympian, and yet be confined to the world's reaches for as long as was decreed. And she knew from the terrible and deliciously diabolical acts she had committed and still planned to commit once she had gained her freedom, that it would be a long time before she would even be considered being granted freedom.

Not that she needed someone's permission to escape. After all, the first thing any sane man did once they were thrown in a cell of any kind, be it one with walls or out, was try to find a means of escape, no matter the cost; even limbs, organs, and lives could be tossed aside like used toys if it meant one more taste of sweet freedom.

Eventually she reached the mirror she so desired, a long full length mirror that allowed her a much wider view than the pocket mirrors maidens kept in their purses and only offered fleeting glimpses of their owner's faces before being clapped shut; as if she wanted to spend a few seconds numbly gazing at someone that didn't pertain to her and thus didn't interest her in anyway. The mirror itself opened up into an office of sorts and a thankfully much different one than the one she had spent a good deal of her imprisonment looking out upon when she wasn't casually browsing the rest of the looking glass gallery' it was like being surrounded by a million TVs with nothing good on to relieve her of her boredom.

The sight of a cackling jester girl and a small army of playing card guards dragging away an odd-looking satyr and several stunned princesses however, caught her attention. Especially when she realized that one of those struggling princesses was in fact her own flesh and blood, her so called 'darling daughter' as she had mockingly called her a few hours when she had lured the spawn into falling into the land she had cursed nearly a decade ago.

To say it was funny was an understatement, the fact that the spawn had been tricked into warping herself and her friends into Wonderland by foolishly reading the curse backwards. What she found even more hilarious was that scholars and magic users alike had spent years trying to find a means of breaching the barrier the Brothers Grimm had set up or find an entrance that hadn't been sealed up and the spawn had been able to crack it in a matter of seconds.

This still didn't change her views on the spawn just yet. She was still weak, like her pathetic father, and any opportunity she had taken to try and sow the seeds of twisted evil in her heart had been soiled and ruined. She would never amount to anything in the world, no matter what the little voice in the back of her head tried to argue; she had long since blocked it out after massacring it years ago day after day without relent until it had finally given up and left her in peace.

With a dismissive sigh she turned and began to walk again, the ground of the realm rising up beneath her feet at her command to carry her onward to another mirror that she frequented every now and again other than the one that opened out into the bumbling brothers' office. As she did so her mind began to wander off, particularly to the rather . . . strange being that had joined her 'daughter's' company as of recently. It had been quick and rather sudden and she had never expected it to happen so soon, but it had and she had missed it and remained oblivious up until that point; for the longest time she could have sworn that pathetic coward of a Prince Charming had shared reciprocated feelings with the spawn.

This stranger was an odd one at that. He looked different from others she had seen that were of his age and he acted different, too, similar to how the princes and heroes had acted back in her day but with such a minute difference that it somehow made the world to her . . . she couldn't quite place what it was that he had that they didn't, what set him apart from the rest that made her pause and look at him a little longer than the others that she usually panned over with a mind numbed expression.

It wasn't just his ability to change forms at will either. It wasn't exactly something new either, considering several fairy tales involved the protagonist or antagonist taking on the form of various animals and people to move along the plot; her own tale had required her to take upon the appearance of a hideous hag, after all. But these transformations, just like him, were different as well not just because they were nothing like Ever After had seen before in all its days, but a few of them were oddly familiar to her . . . it felt eons since she had last seen a sentient mummy and a vampire that didn't viciously hunt and attack prey like an animal . . . and yet, they weren't like any monsters she had seen before, with slight tweaks to their appearance that differentiated them just enough that one would notice the differences between the two if given enough time.

What intrigued her even further was that this stranger, this boy with the number ten embezzled upon his chest, reeked of raw power and strength, a kind that she hadn't felt in years. It briefly drew her back to the days when she had been a student in the hallways of the very school she was trying to break out into, back to the days when she had first met him and had felt a connection of sorts that drew her to him like a moth to the flame. But this was different as well . . . everything about him was different.

Unfortunately, from the few times she had seen him he was a good guy and certainly not the malicious type that would attack people without reason and lay waste to civilizations just for the fun of it. As far as she was concerned, if her 'daughter' had to have a right-hand minion to insist on calling a 'boyfriend' or even possibly a future 'husband', than she would have to do far better.

She finally arrived at her destination, a grand and ornate mirror that she had used herself back in her fairy tale days when she was on the run after fulfilling her tale and plotting and scheming for the ultimate takeover. Such chaos had been sewn back in those days: stories had been destroyed and tampered with, worlds had been conquered . . . almost conquered was the more appropriate term, and the single-handed most important puzzle and secret all of Ever After had ever known had come so close to being solved before the intervention happened and she had been damned to this doomed place for all of eternity.

Ever now and again, she took a break from picking away at the magical constraints of her prison and spying on the spawn long enough to check on her previous place of operations, an abandoned castle that lay desolate and desecrated in the small yet highly dangerous section of badlands that her kingdom's borders kept within her grasp. Given the woefully inventive minds and habits of her kind however, she suspected that the property and all land within several hundred miles of the place had been abandoned and cut off from the rest of the territories, officially cast out of its borders and forgotten to the rest of Ever After. She highly doubted any kingdom, no matter how money grubby and greedy they were, would ever want to claim that particular section of land that she had once called her own lest they wish to deal with an unprecedented and highly illegal amount of magical energy and radiation that would have quickly wasted away anything within several minutes of entering.

She usually didn't find anything out of the ordinary when she peered in upon her former place of residence and scheming, at least nothing stranger than the dusty hallways, cobweb-lined corners, and massive spiders that had been twisted nearly beyond recognition by the sheer amount of magical waste in the area that would have made an average magic user faint from such overexposure. This time however, she found something rather odd awaiting her on the other side of the looking glass.

A small band of knights had wandered their way into the chamber the mirror lay silent in, a pair of nearly identical twins with the masks of theater for faces that seemed to be under the command of a bulking man covered from head to toe in armor and looked to be in desperate need of some dental work if his horrible looking mug was anything to go by. What caught her attention the most however, was the hulking monster towering over even the metal-armored knight; his shoulders were massive and he was covered in shaggy fur on every part of his body that she could see, giving him a somewhat ape-like appearance if she looked past the royal robes of a noble that just barely clad his heavy figure.

"This had better work, magician." the creature snarled.

The creature that the other creature – the one that seemed to be in charge of the ungangly group – was referring to bore resemblance to a gigantic, bipedal turtle with a sharp, jagged shell and segmented carapace, razor-sharp claws sprouting from the ends of his flipper-like arms and acting as short, stubby toes on his feet. Dark, green markings covered his arms and the back of his weathered legs while bright, purple flames crackled and cooked around his blackened skull, held in place by a neck of what looked like sharp fangs and horns; red armbands with yellow cuffs wrapped around his arms and a red belt of a similar design sat around his waist with a bull skull in the middle and a crimson loincloth attach

"You place distrust in me?" the massive turtle scoffed. "Bravo. You actually managed to amuse me."

The hulking creature that may have once been a king at one point snarled and tightly clenched its massive fist as a warning. "Remember your place,

alien filth. I could easily kill you where you stand."

"I'm sure." the turtle rolled his eyes sarcastically before becoming serious once more. "These quarters shall do nicely . . . some fixing up is perhaps most likely required in order to suit our needs, but it shall suffice nonetheless. The amount of raw power and energy in the air is more than enough to fulfill our needs . . . it is rather

palatable, isn't it?"

The gorilla-like creature snorted and turned away to stomp out of the room. "Remember, alien filth. You are nothing more than a servant to me and it is only out of necessity and my own amusement that I don't kill you where you stand." he glowered before leaving with heavy footsteps that thumped heavily against the cold stone of the castle.

"I shall remember." the turtle rolled his eyes once more he lumbered off to continue further exploration of their latest headquarters. That alone was more than enough to severely tick her off, the fact that some group of idiots had stumbled upon her secret fortress of solitude and decided to set up shop there for whatever reason that she didn't know of. That being said, what she saw intrigued her to say the least and, given the circumstances, she didn't have anything better to do than pick away at magic seals and sit around and kill time. Messing with these fools might actually provide a means of entertainment to her.

And there was a chance that she just might be of use to her as well . . . if she played her cards right, unlike a certain little spawn and her little pet. Honestly, everyone knew that a joker could become a queen in a game of cards. It was just logic!

---

'Took you long enough! I grew a third beard in the time it took you write this thing!'

That's not a beard, that's a hairy tarantula!

'What!? AH, IT'S SPIDERY! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!'

What has my unlife come to? Anyway, apologies for the long wait. I'd explain everything to you guys, but I have a feeling I'd just be being redundant. Either way, I'll be trying to update stories more often, but with the (moment of IRL) threat of school approaching and me in my senior year, it just might become even slower than before (believe me this is far from what I want).

It's far from what we want, too!

'AHH! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!'

Mr. Nibbles, lunch time! Anyway, I sincerely hope you enjoyed the chapter . . . because I'm running out of things to say at this point right now. So I guess without much more stalling, thanks for reading!

As always, comment, review, suggest, and request down below! And don't forget to let me know about Daring and Courtley! It really helps!

Hasta Luego!

'IT BURNS!'

Acidic vomit?

Acidic vomit! Yay!

Oh, vey.