"LUZ!" Kipo and Alice cried in unison, and Kipo reached forward, but that was all she could do before Maggie launched herself at her, hands reaching forward and a strangely human jaw unhinging as Maggie grabbed at Kipo. But Kipo jerked back at the last second, rocking the boat menacingly. She, Kris, and Alice gripped the sides, quickly steadying it. Meanwhile, Maggie's arms closed on nothing, and she seemed to pause confused.

"What's happening?" Alice asked, trying to squint through the darkness. While Alice talked, Maggie's head turned and her solid black eyes stopped on Kipo, and she shuddered. "What's going on?!"

"Nothing, dear, nothing bad," Maggie told her, standing up again. She was standing on two legs, just like Hazel had been, but unlike Hazel, who had a fully body costume, Maggie only had a mask, and the rest of her body was human, dressed in black clothes like a ninja. The human mouth Kipo had seen before had disappeared.

Suddenly, Maggie titled her head at Kipo, and Kipo flinched.

"Oh, you can see somehow, can't you, huh?" Maggie asked, somehow radiating smugness despite her voice remaining pleasant. "I hadn't considered that before. I supposed I should have asked; please excuse my bad manners, ha ha!"

Kipo grimaced, watching Maggie closely. She didn't really look like she was about to attack, but Kipo doubted she just wanted a nice chat.

"You want to kill us?" Kipo asked, not that she really had any doubt, but it'd probably be good to make sure.

Maggie tilted her head again. "Obviously."

"Why?"

"...Why?" Maggie seemed to think about that for a couple seconds. "Well, that's just how this place works. We're monsters, aren't we? Do I need another reason?"

"Nobody would just kill someone for no reason!" Kipo argued. On the side of the boat, she heard a slash, but she didn't move her eyes away from Maggie. Maggie didn't look either, and Kipo could only hope that was Luz over there. There was another splash, and the boat rocked, but again, Kipo refused to look away.

Still, she wondered what they were doing back there. The sight shuffling sounds she heard weren't giving her any clues.

"...I have a reason," Maggie eventually replied. "Because that's just how this place works."

"Do you mean... it's for survival?" Kipo guessed, and to her chagrin, Maggie laughed.

"No, no, I have no problems with that," Maggie told her, amusement evident in her voice. "But I can see that you're not going to take that for an answer. Well, I suppose if you really want a reason... I suppose you could say this I do this for fun. We all do."

Beside her, Alice suddenly stood up, rocking the boat violently.

"All of you?" she cried, and even Maggie looked surprised at her ferocity. "Even... even Hazel? But that doesn't make any sense..."

"Whether it makes sense or not doesn't really matter, because it's not really the truth at all, I'm afraid," Maggie sighed, and before Kipo could speak, she continued. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the only thing I can do when you demand an answer where is none is to just make one up."

Kipo's brow furrowed, but before she could argue further, a sharp clang echoed throughout the building, and drew Kipo, Alice and Maggie's attention.

"Don't think I can't see what you two are doing over there," she said, her pleasant voice dissolving into a more annoyed, snappish tone. "Like this one over here, I can see just fine in the dark, too."

"Well, good for you, but unfortunatELY, IT'S TOO LATE!" Luz called back proudly, and Kipo nearly turned, too relieved by her friend being alright to really think properly, but she didn't get the chance to say anything before both Luz and Kris were surging forward, Luz jumping up at her, and Kris coming from behind.

Luz threw something small at Maggie, who batted it away easily, but it worked as a distraction, because Kris came up behind her, holding a spear and stabbing it through the ear of Maggie's mask, jamming it through the wood. Maggie screamed in outrage, but Kipo only heard the start of it before Luz began the descent of her fall, cutting their little boat right in half and plunging Kipo and Alice into the water, who had no say in the matter other than some disgruntled garbles through the water.

Kipo flailed around, panicked, and started desperately crawling to the surface, before she felt a tug on her sleeve. She looked down to find Luz beneath her, motioning towards a tunnel at the bottom of the water on the side of the building. Kipo blinked (it kind of hurt when she did it underwater), and then slowly nodded. Luz gave her a rather pained grin, and then quickly turned around, swimming as fast as she could towards the tunnel. Good idea, Kipo thought, her lungs were already starting to hurt, too.

She hurried to follow Luz, but before she did, she turned back up to the person above her, angrily banging onto the wall that the spear that was holding her into place. The water below her was coloured red.

The tunnel felt like it went on for ages, and as it went on, Kipo's lungs continued to burn, and hers and legs turned to lead. Eventually, Kipo found herself almost passing out and her mind turned to fog, and she found herself seeing things in the water around them, things that jumped out at her with horrifying claws and teeth.

They were never real, though, and eventually, Kipo stopped paying attention to them.

But finally, after what felt like hours, Luz did a strange fist bump thing, and Kipo's eyes widened as she shot towards the surface, and then disappeared. As she watched, Kipo nearly coughed on the water in shock before gathering the rest of her strength, and grabbing Alice and Kris before finally breaking through the surface, wheezing and spluttering, coughing out what felt like half the water in the river.

Kipo quickly shook out her head, and while she continued coughing out all her organs, she, Kris and Alice quickly swan to the edge of the river, climbing up onto it and flopping down like fish, gasping.

As Kipo felt the soft grass under her back, the wind on her face, the dirt under her fingers, she nearly cried... or maybe she was crying. She was soaked to the bone, she couldn't tell.

None of them were exactly sure how long they were they laid there, wheezing, it could have been hours, or days even, or perhaps even mere seconds. Nevertheless, none of them felt even remotely like themselves again when Alice eventually spoke up.

"A-Anyway," Alice started, sitting up and squeezing the water out of her skirt. Her movements were still slow and shaky. "I think I've solved the riddle you told me about."

Kipo's head snapped up, and she momentarily blacked out. "Wha-riddle? What riddl-oh." Suddenly, Kipo remembered the riddle they had seen at the tunnel and she winced. She'd forgotten all about that. "Oh, right. But... really? You weren't there, though..."

"Luz told me about it."

Kipo turned to Luz, still confused. "You seemed to have talked about a lot in fifteen minutes."

Luz shrugged. "Fifteen minutes is a long time to talk."

Oh. Well, for Luz that DID make sense. Kipo decided to focus on the important stuff now. "What's the answer, then?"

"Yeah, and why did you call it a riddle?" Luz asked. "It seemed pretty clear to me."

"It said there were two keys, but there's probably only one," Alice answered, though that didn't really understand like an answer at all.

Unfortunately, though, she didn't really explain further. Kipo tilted her head.

"Um... what do you mean by that?" Kipo asked, and Alice looked surprised that they hadn't understood.

"Huh? Oh, right, you probably don't know about Princess Mia, do you?" Alice asked, and Kipo sighed. Is this how all conversations with Alice went. Nevertheless, Alice continued.

"The person who lives at the castle you all want to go to is called Princess Mia," Alice told them. "I had asked Hazel about it one day, and he told me that she was kind of a trickster, who liked seeming fair, but she's really not."

Suddenly, Alice moved, sitting up to look down at her reflection in the water. "That's probably a trick, to make you try and look for two keys, when there's really only one."

Kipo thought about that while Luz cheered. "Oh, perfect! That means we only have to look for half the keys now!"

"She's a trickster?" Kipo asked, mostly to herself. She turned to gaze up at the castle, closer than ever. If what Alice was saying was true, then they could only could imagine what was in there... and it made more sense that the blue haired girl hadn't escaped yet.

Now the only question was whether or not Kipo and the others would be any better.

Eventually, they all got their breath back, and managed to get back onto their feet, heading into what looked like a town, or a village... supposedly. It was completely destroyed, so Kipo couldn't really tell, all that laid beyond them was wreckage and debris and only a few still standings walls.

Important standing walls, as it turns out, because when Kris pointed one out, it turned out to have a rather convenient cracked and faded map on it.

"Oh! Wow, good eye, Kris!" Kipo said, hurrying over to it. The rest of them quickly followed when they saw what it was.

"A map? Lucky!" Luz cried. "Does it have a secret entrance into the castle! All castles have those!"

Kipo squinted, studying the map closely, but before she could actually say, something else caught her eye: two words at the top of the map.

"Plezier... Park?" Kipo read. She frowned, confused, and for a second, none of them said anything, too taken aback to be able to say anything.

"...Doesn't that make this place sound like an amusement park?" Luz eventually asked. "Is this place an amusement park?"

Kipo frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."

"If this place is an old abandoned amusement park, then... that would make Hazel and that cat girl-er, Maggie?- that would make them the mascots, right?" Luz continued, and pointed to a picture besides the map. "Yeah! There they are: Hazel, Maggie... a pig named Napoleon... a dog called Chief, and Princess Mia."

The picture of the five had them all staring out at the onlooker, looking considerably friendlier and happier than what they looked like in real life. Luz was right, they really did look like children's mascots. Hazel was still a startling red, but he looked

But still...

Kipo shook her head. "No, this still... it still doesn't make any sense."

Unfortunately, Luz either couldn't hear her, or wasn't listening. "Yeah, and that boat we were on! That was one of their rides! And the place Hazel lived was probably a store of some kind that sold stuffed animals!"

"But this still doesn't make sense!" Kipo said, louder than she meant. Luz's face shifted from joy to surprise, and then finally melted into confusion as she tried to figure out what Kipo was saying.

"...Huh? It doesn't?"

"No," Kipo replied. "Because an 'abandoned' amusement park means that it used to be not abandoned, right? But the place we came from doesn't seem like the place that would have this kind of thing, or even this technology! They didn't have boat rides in the middle ages."

"Oh... that's true," Luz admitted, and she looked around at their surroundings again, a look on her face that was familiar. Kipo sighed. It was a look she had worn often on herself; the look was someone who had found the perfect answer, the one that explained everything, only to find that it had one giant flaw that broke the whole thing.

"Um, but you had said that you had came from a... portal, to come here, right?" Alice eventually spoke up, fumbling on the world portal. "So, you travelled from one world to another, which means that stuff in this world is not necessary in the other world that you came from."

"Oh, yeah, that's right!" Luz celebrated, patting Alice on the back, even though Alice didn't seem nearly as confident in her explanation as Luz was. "There! Everything makes sense now!"

Kipo made a face (and then quickly wiped it off), because she was about as confident in Alice's theory as Alice herself was. There was something wrong with what Alice said, but Kipo couldn't think of what that was at the moment, so all she did was nod. After all, there was really no harm in believing that... frankly weird, theory for now, though it did raise more problems, unfortunately.

Like, for instance, if they were on another world, which one were they on?

"Anyway," Luz said, evidently getting over her premature celebration. "If we follow this path up past the... Ferris wheel..."

Kipo looked up. There was no Ferris wheel.

"Then go through the restaurant and past the rotor, we should get to the House of Mirrors, which leads directly into the castle," Luz continued, apparently unconcerned about the lack of Ferris wheel. "Easy enough. This will be a breeze-ack! I shouldn't have said that! Now it's all going to go wrong!"

Shaking her head, Kipo decided to ignore Luz's strange antics, and she leaned forward to study the map closely. Luz had been right, apparently, that route was the shortest (and also most visible) there. In fact, it was highlighted by a bright pink line, leading to the cartoon picture of a stereotypical princess. Yeah, this really was starting to seem more and more like an amusement park.

"Alright," Kipo said, leaning back, cutting Luz's ramblings off. "Let's go. We don't really know how long Kris' spear will actually hold Maggie back, so we should probably hurry. We're right in the... what the..."

Kipo trailed off as a strange sound reached her ears, a sort of melody, an upbeat, childish piano tune that looped over and over, and would probably get irritating quick.

The others seemed to startle as they suddenly heard the sound, too, as it came closer and closer, weaving around the buildings and through the air, stopping right behind the wall the four were standing in front of.

Kipo tensed, but the sound didn't move again. What was it doing? Was it waiting for them? Could it see them?

Well, whatever the answer to those questions, it wasn't moving, so eventually, Kipo peeked over the edge of the wall, and the rest of them quickly followed suit...

And looked into the glowing red eyes of a horrible mechanical face.