Down the Rabbit Hole: Micah Helps Destroy a Classic! (Extra Chapter) Part 1
Disclaimer: This is completely and utterly based on the manga, chapter 15
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"Tono knows what would happen if we had Haruhi play Alice, right?"
Kaoru looked up from his work: Putting the finishing touches on the Host Club's latest set of extreme costumes. This one would be quite the interesting challenge, considering the designated roles. "You know he's just having dirty thoughts about her in a dress," he replied flippantly, sowing up the last stitch in the dress' fabric.
Hikaru nodded, linking his thin fingers behind his head. "But based on personality, shouldn't we have someone else play Alice? She is the main role, after all, and Haruhi has absolutely zero curiosity. It'd probably end up like...."
...."I'm late! I'm late!" squeaked the White Rabbit. He frantically checked his golden pocket watch, horrified to find that he wouldn't make his appointment on time. His snow-white ears twitched in fright; what was a poor rabbit to do?
He scampered as fast as he could, completely unaware he was out in the open, and therefore visible to all who chanced a look in his direction. But he needn't fear; the only child in the vicinity was a young girl, who sat beneath a tree laden with dew-speckled leaves, reading quietly from a book.
The girl looked up as the White Rabbit dashed past her, where he ducked into a hidden cove among the rocks near her peaceful spot.
She blinked once, twice, then returned to reading. "Um, now where was I...?"
The twins grimaced; that would not make for an exciting time.
"Are you suggesting we do it ourselves?" Kaoru could easily picture it, he and his brother in frilly blue dresses and long blonde wigs. It would be no different from their childhood, really, and their mischievous streaks would aid the role of Alice well. Or bring the role crashing to the ground. Either was likely.
"Nope," Hikaru said, waving a hand uncaringly. "Tono would never go for it. But he'd probably be really happy to see someone else prancing around in such a cute outfit..."
His subtle prodding worked; Kaoru's lips tipped up in a smirk.
The twins set to work, feverishly gathering up the intended costumes and hurrying to the meeting place they'd set with the other hosts.
"Damn those Hitachiin brothers," Micah growled under her breath. She pulled roughly at the silky fabric of the dress she'd been forced into; it slipped between her fingers with ease and she gave up trying to furiously rip it apart after a moment. Sighing, she took another look around the room (again, she'd been forced to enter it). It was bare, apart from a table topped with sweets and a tiny door that looked fit for nothing but mice.
Micah turned on her heel, looking to find the door Kaoru had shoved her though; she sighed again when she realized it was gone. Maybe I'm hallucinating, she thought tiredly, pressing a hand to her throbbing forehead. That would explain much. Perhaps she'd already cracked from the hosts' overbearing personalities.
"Essentially, I've gone the way of the Mad Hatter," Micah mused, tilting her head to the side in thought. She looked down at again at her dress. It seemed strangely familiar...
"I'm late! I'm late, I'm late! I'm gonna be in so much trouble~!"
Micah's eyes widened as a small boy, dressed in an English-style petticoat and wearing snow-white rabbit ears, dashed past her. She tried to call out to him, thinking him familiar (her mind had already gone a little fuzzy) but she remained silent as he picked up a bit of cake from the table, ate in one bite, and disappeared.
Well, that was anti-climactic.
Of course, he hadn't really disappeared. That would be total nonsense, the stuff of fairy tales. He'd simply shrunk.
Micah watched the strange rabbit-boy, now only a few inches tall, scurry over to the tiny door and hurry through.
Cautiously, the girl approached the table and peered curiously at the assorted items laid out upon it. He seemed fine after eating, she mused, albeit a little smaller... What the hell? She reached the pick up the same cake she'd seen the rabbit eat, when a pale hand grasped her wrist, staying her hand. She looked up, and couldn't help but raise a brow at the boy in front of her.
Pale as death, dressed in an ominous purple cloak and with dark brown locks that completely hid his face. He looked like a person Micah would run away from had she met him on the streets at night; but, strangely, she couldn't help the feeling that she trusted him.
"I have the perfect potion for your troubles!" the boy said through a somewhat disturbing smile.
Micah beamed back despite herself. "Couldn't I just eat the cake?" she asked, frowning a bit as she glanced back at the table.
"Oh no, of course not!" the boy replied, casting a dramatic wave of his hand at the table. "These are all cursed. Fufufu.... You'll just have to trust me, Alice-san." She blinked at the mention of her name; how would he know it when she'd only just realized it herself? "An enchanted world lies beyond that door... If you travel through without this potion, you'll definitely regret it..."
She thought a moment, weighing her options. Trust the mysterious boy and take a possibly lethal potion, or go for the cake anyway despite his warning and possibly end up dead? Micah (now fully considering herself Alice) smiled and held out her hand for the small glass flask the boy held.
He chuckled and placed the bottle on her palm. However, before she could unclasp it and swig down its contents, he took hold of her other hand and placed a swift kiss on the back. Startled, the girl could do no more than blink when the boy, now waving around a creepy and rather demented-looking cat puppet, grinned and said, "I wish you luck on you adventures, Alice-san! And I believe you'll need this as well!" The boy slipped some unknown package into her pocket before making a slight bow and stepping back.
Alice, or rather Micah, found her lips curling in an amused smile and she eagerly drank the bit of potion the mysterious boy had given it. A shock of warmth ran through her body, then the oddest sensation, something akin to falling from a rollercoaster's peak and plummeting down at high speeds.
She felt ridiculously nauseous.
When Micah finally blinked open her eyes, which she'd closed to keep the room from spinning, she found herself completely alone. The boy had disappeared and, it seemed, everything had grown about ten sizes too large. She quickly realized it was she who had changed sizes and grinned to herself. She felt like she was in an anime!
Micah, excited for what was to come, rushed over to the only available door, her steps light. She pulled open the door and stepped out into the dazzling sunlight that reached out to greet her. Blinking, she looked around at the towering trees and vibrant flowers that surrounded her. Being so small, she felt vulnerable and out of place, but the nonetheless daring, and she struck out down the large (to her, anyway) path set before her.
It wasn't long until a chorus of annoying high-pitched voices drew her to a halt.
"My, my, look at the adorable little flower! I've never seen a flower as delicate as you. What species are you, dear?"
She cocked a brow as she turned and caught sight of the three figures perched among the flowers, swaying prettily in the breeze. Two girl and a girlish boy. Or three girls; Micah wasn't one who could guess genders very easily. Despite her confusion, she felt a jolt of annoyance simmering in her blood, and she answered without politeness. "I'm not a flower! Is it that hard to tell that I'm a girl! And what are you three exactly? You're humans too!"
"So rude," the boy-girl sighed. They lightly hopped down from their rose and approached young Micah, who took a wary step back. She couldn't be sure why, but she knew she didn't want to be around people (or flowers) such as this.
"I don't particularly care what you think of me," Micah managed to say without venom marring her words, "but I'd appreciate it if you could tell me how to get out of this forest. You know, I'm beginning to think it's cursed, if I happened to meet you three on my way through here..."
"As much as I'd like to deny it, it's the truth," the girl (Micah had decided to treat the three of them as girls, no matter what her head told her) said, a little wistfully. "Yes, this forest is indeed cursed..."
Micah blinked in surprised, and continued on in stunned silence as one of the other girls picked up the tale. She clasped her hands together dramatically, looking on the verge of fainting in dreadful fear. "Until recently, this kingdom was under the prosperous rule of the Red Queen," she began, "and everyone lived peacefully."
"But when the Queen collapsed from an illness and the Black Queen ascended to the throne, things drastically changed!" the smallest girl added, raising a prominent finger in explanation. "The Black Queen in horribly vicious. If she even gets slightly upset, someone would be executed on the spot. Even when that person would be fortunate enough to escape execution, they recieved a curse..."
"As a result," the masculine girl put in, "the light of this forest was taken away due to the fact that it was incompatible with the Queen's aesthetics."
Why... Why does this remind me of someone? Micah though, her eye twitching. Merciless and dark, huh? Sounds like... She shook her head. No one in particular came to mind, anyhow. She shouldn't dwell on such unlikely things. But what were those girls saying? Something about the light being gone...? Micah glanced around once more. It was true; the forest was dark and silent, save for the annoying "flowers". How come I just noticed this?
"If you're that upset by the Queen, I can do something about her," Micah said, catching the girls' attention. "She doesn't exactly scare me, considering this is my first time in this particular kingdom."
"Oh we could never ask a fair maiden such as yourself to do such a dreadful task!" The girls looked horrifed at the thought.
Anything has to be better than hanging around with these.... people, Micah thought, internally sighing as the girls continued to weep over her bravery and how much they wished for her to stay in their lovely garden with them. She was just about to give up and wander off on her own when a sudden puff of smoke filled the air, and down came a small girl dressed up similar to herself.
She was a bit taller than Micah, with hair cut and styled to match that of a boy's, but eyes big enough to suggest her being a girl was obvious. Micah grimaced, seing the strange flower girls grinning delightedly at the newcomer. Without much forethought, Micah grabbed the girl's hand and ran as fast as she could, even with the new girl stumbling behind her.
"Sorry!" Micah called over the whiny sounds of the flower's voices, which grew softer and fainter as the two continued down their intended path. "Those girls kinda worried me, so I thought I'd help you out!"
"Um, thanks." She didn't sound pleased nor upset. Micah raised a quizzical brow; just how apathetic was this girl?
"Yeah, don't shower me with praise or anything," Micah grumbled. Receiving no response, she sighed and asked, "Who are you anyway?"
"My name is Alice."
Micah slowed down, sensing that no one had bothered chasing them. Releasing the girl's hand, she spun around and, hands placed firmly on her hips, said, "I'm Alice, too."
"Odd."
Micah shrugged. "It's a common name."
"That's true, I suppose." Alice looked around, then returned her gaze to Micah. "What do we do now?"
"Well, I'm supposed to go overthrow a Queen." Micah said it so casually, Alice just decided to go along with it. "The Black Queen... She sounds like someone I want yell at anyway, so I'm not opposed to at least going to her castle."
"But do you even know where it is?"
"Ah...."
And so it was that Alice decided to accompany Micah, believing she lose herself in the kingdom and eventually die. While Alice didn't know the girl, nor did she feel any strong desire to help her, she decided it might be the right thing to do. The two came upon a small village and busied themselves with asking after the Queen, hoping for any sort of information that might lead to her castle's whereabouts.
Soon enough, Micah found the home of some Duchess of Gossip, and dragged Alice into it. The house was nice enough, but the "Dutchess" looked positively unstable.
"Lordy!! So you'll... topple the Black Queen for me?!"
Renge, the Dutchess, was a girl no older than Alice or Micah with long dark blonde hair. Her brown eyes sparkled with mischief that struck Alice as familiar but seemed completely new to Micah. Yes, mischief she dealed with on a regular basis, but this seemed different somehow.
"I guess you could say that," Micah responded uneasily. "But I'm pretty sure I never said I was doing it for you. If anything, I'm doing it for those weird flowers..."
Paying the girl no heed, the Dutchess dabbed at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief, hiding unnoticed (and most likely faked) tears. "I know! It's the natural order of the world that a brave warrior should appear to a maiden in distress!"
"Brave warrior? Have you seen this dress?" Micah picked at the hem of the pure-white silk that floated about her knees. "How exactly does this remind you of a warrior?"
Again, she was ignored.
Micah was growing impatient, as the Dutchess was still sobbing pitifully and looked about as useful as a wet napkin. She had half a mind to storm from the home and try her luck somewhere else, but as it happens, the Dutchess' butler bent low to and whispered to both her and Alice that the Dutchess had already recieved a sentence of execution fromt he Black Queen.
Which explains why this crazy girl thinks we're doing it for her, Micah realized. She sighed again. This world was so odd. What had made her think this was a good idea? Oh wait. She hadn't in the first place! She'd been forced, or coerced, or something....
Lovely.
"I don't even know what I did wrong," the Dutchess sobbed, grabbing hold of Micah's attention once more. "I... I just... though that the relationship between the Queen and Mr. Tachibana was a tad suspicious... So I was only slightly spreading rumors around..."
"I'm trying to get rid of the Queen and even I'm pissed at you," Micah said flatly, giving the Dutchess an annoyed glare.
"Well excuse me for seeking a little entertainment in my dull life!" the Dutchess wailed. "And the way those two looked at each other was really deep and meaningfull. I saw them before, putting a hand on the shoulder like this..."
"Please don't touch me," Micah said, swatting away Renge's hand. Her attitude turning a complete one-eighty, the Dutchess abandoned the girls and swept over to a baby carriage no one had noticed until this point.
"Oh, what am I to do with this lovely baby if something happens to me," she sobbed.
Micah, not overly fond of anything related to the dramatic Dutchess, still couldn't help her love of children and found herself asking to hold it.
The baby was adorable, in Micah's eyes at least. Short black hair and dark eyes set in an absurdly serious expression for one so young. Still, there was something...
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Alice asked, peering over at the child held in Micah's arms.
"It's called 'Moriko'," the Dutchess sighed, looking caught up in some loving fantasy. "It's a very mature baby so it never cried even once since the day it was born."
"Ah, so it's a girl," Alice concluded, having had her question misinterpreted.
"No, I'm fairly certain it's a boy," Micah told her. She wasn't sure why, exactly, but she was nearly positive the baby was a boy.
"We can always check," Alice suggested.
"Um, no, we're fine." Micah was oddly flustered at the thought. "It's alright if we don't know for sure. But I think it's a boy, so I'll carry on like that."
The conversation most likely wouldn't have continued any further in the first place, but nonetheless it was disrupted by a pair of fair-haired royals guards bursting through the door and seizing the Dutchess.
Micah and Alice stood on in puzled silence, completely ignored, except for when Renge called out as she was being dragged away, "Dear brave warriors! I must go to the castle now... You would need comrades to rescue a captured maiden! I mean, each one needs to be assigned a role! You must not forget an intellectual monk, a wizar, and of course, a swordsman! And finally, the most important thing you must remember is the visuals! Make sure to gather only visually-appealing people and... save me!"
Thus, the Dutchess was hauled away.
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