Kipo stared at the door beneath her hands, holding her breath. It was wooden and felt sturdy, but so did the concrete wall ceiling above them before... so Kipo wasn't taking any chances.

But, despite all evidence to the contrary, the door remained shut, and Kipo couldn't hear the wire person anymore. She couldn't tell if that was good, or bad.

Still, Kipo couldn't help but feel relieved. Finally, they had escaped the wire person, the thing that had been following them for so long... and they had made it to the castle. This felt like a celebration, even though Kipo was certain that danger still was thick around them; even though they'd lost Alice to get here; even though they deeper into this place than ever before.

Kipo turned away from the door.

It seemed Kris had sensed the danger as well, and was pulling their sword out at the ready, prepared to fight. And Luz... Kipo turned away from Luz, too. She and Kris were prepared to fight should they so need it.

"Come on," Kipo told them. "We need to keep moving, to find the blue-haired girl."

If she was still alright. Kipo hadn't checked in a while, but since she had seemed to survive in this place for so long, anyway, Kipo wasn't too worried. Technically, she was more worried for her little group.

As Luz moved to pick herself up from the floor and her own despair, Kipo turned her gaze to their surroundings. It had a stark difference from the rest of the world that they had came from, where the rest of this land was broken down and in decay, this place was clearly cared for and taken care of. It was huge, with a ceiling high above them and a room that stretched far in front of them, to two staircases leading up to a long hallway with too many rooms to count, and with doors that all look similar to each other. Kipo's brow furrowed as she looked through them. It seemed this place was going to be harder to navigate than she thought...

Suddenly, one of the doors flew open, and all attention was called to a figure that stared down at them from the banister. For now, she was cloaked in black darkness, but Kipo thought she saw a light shine from where the figure's eyes would be. It stared down at them impassively.

"More of them, hmm?" the figure said, staring down at them. "More troublemakers and hooligans and rouges, come to disturb the peace. It seems we can't get rid of them. These lucky insects find their way into our castle and think themselves great. Well, no matter. No longer will I revel in the interests of insects; when a pest finds itself in our path, we will simply burn it. Do you agree?"

The three couldn't find the words to speak. Kris had been picturing an pretty and elegant person, kind of like their mother, Luz had been picturing the kind of witch like she would find in the Boiling Isle (but she'd been hoping for a princess like in a storybook), and Kipo had been thinking of a terrifying person, like a nightmare. They couldn't help but feel disappointed.

Thankfully, the princess didn't seem to be looking for an answer. They looked down at the trio with an air of disgust, and then raised a hand, flicking it at them. At first, nothing happened, and everything seemed to pause long enough for Kipo's brain to catch up to her, and for her to wonder what was going on.

Then the floor disappeared from underneath them. It happened so suddenly that it seemed to last forever while Kipo stared dumbly under them, before gravity caught up and the three of them fell through.

"Wh-Hey!" Kipo cried, reaching a hand out to the figure, but they disappeared when the floor swung back, closing them off from any light.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before they fell landed somewhere hard with a loud thump and varying cries of pain.

"What the... Where are we?!" Luz cried, and Kipo watched as she flailed around wildly, trying to adjust her eyes to the absolute darkness.

"Wait, Luz, you'll hurt yourself!" Kipo cried, and Luz blinked.

"Oh, yeah, Kipo, I forgot you had special powers," Luz said, sounding realized. Her face turned to Kipo's voice, but she over estimated it a little bit, and Kipo tensed as Luz' blank stare passed right over her as if she wasn't there at all.

Suddenly, Kipo heard a bang to her right, and she turned towards, finding Kris next to a wall, rubbing their forehead. Didn't take a genius to figure out what happened, and Kipo sighed.

"Hold on," she called to the both of them. "I'll come to you so you don't continue hurting yourselves."

"Huh?!" Luz cried. "I'm fine, though!"

Kipo decided not to explain. While she made her way across the floor, she took a look around, trying to figure out where they were. What she saw surprised her.

"It looks like we're in..." Kipo blinked, bewildered. She took a second look, as if her eyes were playing tricks on her. "...An underground parking lot? There's a lot of junk around here, too..."

Luz frowned, and she opened her mouth to reply, but all that came out was a shriek as Kipo reached out to her.

"Oh, that was just me, sorry."

"I-It's fine," Luz said shakily as Kipo helped her up. She continued talking as Kipo led her through the... the parking lot, avoiding the junk piled around as they went. "So, an underground parking lot? That makes sense, considering that this is an old amusement park."

Kipo's mouth pressed into a thin line, but for the moment, she decided that argument was futile. Not like she really had anything to argue with.

"Yeah, sure. Here, Kris."

Kipo paused (and Luz nearly tripped over her) and reached out with the hand that wasn't leading Luz. It took Kris a few tries of blindly groping until they managed to grab it, but soon Kipo was pulling him up, too.

When all three of them stood up, Kipo looked around at their surroundings. There were a lot of questions about their current predicament, but one stood out.

"...So... What now?" Luz asked, turning towards Kipo, but again not actually looking at her. "Was that person's plan just to... leave us here?"

Kipo frowned, and took a tentative step forward. "Well, I wouldn't imagine so, but I don't see-."

Suddenly, Kipo was cut off as the parking lot was suddenly flooded with a painfully blinding light. The three of them dropped each other's hands to quickly covered their eyes, crying out from the bright pain. But when they lowered their hands, an awful warmth rolled over their faces. Luz gasped.

"Oh... that's what she meant..." Kipo said, because the entire far half of the parking lot had gone up in a violent blaze, with flames licking across the floor and crawling towards them with a startling speed for walls made out of solid concrete.

The trio backed up quickly, but soon they hit the wall, and though the three of them studied the halls closely and desperately, there was nowhere left to run, and soon, the flames would swallow them up.

Running on blind panic, Kipo turned around, using her jaguar paws to pound against the wall, but she didn't even make a dent. Even so, Kipo kept at it, hitting it with more and more force every time, but despite her best hopes, the wall stayed solid.

"Kipo, over here!"

Kipo turned quickly, and found Luz pulling at a metal grate she (somehow) hadn't seen before. Kipo blinked, surprised, before hurrying over. Luz moved aside, and Kipo banged at the grate. But, somehow, despite all of Kipo's strength, that didn't move either, and Kipo was left staring at her paws in bewilderment.

"Huh? But-How? I thought..."

A loud clang drew her attention, and Kipo looked down to find that the grate had fallen down, in the exact opposite wall Kipo had been trying to break it down. Kipo almost thought that she'd somehow managed to pull the grate back without realizing it, before a blue-haired head poked out of the wall.

The three gaped at it.

The blue haired girl raised her head, saw the fire, and made an annoyed face. Then, she seemed to spot the trio.

"Oh, great," she said, annoyed. "I guess I have to help you all, too, huh? Ugh. Well, you might as well come with me. Hurry up! And grab that weird wrench before you come."

With that, the blue haired girl turned around, going back through the vent, and normally, the three would have hesitated, but with the heat almost scorching their back, they didn't argue, and Kris and Luz ducked through first, and as soon as she grabbed what was (hopefully) the tool the blue haired girl pointed out, she hurried through, too. But they didn't escape the fire as they went through; Kipo could feel the flames licking at her heels as she crawled through as fast as she could.

Soon enough, she saw the end of the tunnel, and as soon as Kris was up and out of the way, Kipo dashed through the last few feet and stumbled into a new room, the blue haired girl quickly stepping up and closing the tunnel with a grate behind her. Kipo scootched away quickly, the grate was full of holes and didn't look very strong, but the fire didn't cross it. In fact, it slowly started receding instead.

"Huh. Magic fire," Luz guessed, and without a better explanation, Kipo had to agree.

Before Kipo could reply, the blue haired girl poked her face into Kipo's space.

"Yeah, yeah, you can thank me later," she told Kipo, and Kipo had to assume that she'd done this before, what with her nonchalant attitude. "You got that piece, right?"

"Uh, this one?" Kipo asked, presenting the piece. It was a broken... something. The blue haired girl frowned at it.

"Well, no... but it'll work." The girl snatched the piece away, and quickly hurried over to a roller coaster car, on a track. Huh.

Kipo titled her head. It seemed that they had found themselves in some kind of loading zone for a roller coaster. Kipo frowned. Did that mean the track went into the castle and that their trip through the mirror maze was obsolete.

Kipo's fists tightened. She really hoped not.

"So... thank you," Kipo spoke up, if anything for a change of pace. "For saving us. We actually had meant to come rescue you... heh..."

The blue haired girl glanced back at her, furrowing her eyebrows. "Hm. Are you a ghost?"

"...A what?"

The blue haired girl stared at her. "I've seen you around before, but you've always disappeared before I could really look at you. I thought I'd been imagining the pink skin. Why are you pink?"

Kipo blinked, suddenly overwhelmed. "Uh... for the pink, it's a long story. But as for the 'ghost' thing... no, I'm not a ghost. I, er, used to have this crystal, a little while ago, one that gave me... visions, of people like me: people from other worlds. We've pretty much all gathered up together in a town, in the other world. Uh... we'd come to save you."

For the first time, Kipo could truly appreciate how weird their situation was. She coughed.

"Uh, by the way, I'm Kipo," Kipo told her.

"Luz!" Luz shouted, doing a silly little dance. She motioned to Kris. "And that's Kris."

Kris didn't move. The blue haired girl's eyes moved from each of them as they introduced themselves. She didn't speak for a while after that, until she shrugged.

"Coraline," she told them. "Not Caroline. And get in."

Standing up, Coraline slapped the roller coaster car. "We're getting out of this creepy castle. I don't know where we'll end up, but anything's better than this place."

Kipo's mouth dropped open. "You fixed that? It works?"

"Yep," Coraline said, popping the 'p'. She hoped into the train car. "Now hurry up."

The three stared at her, but they could all tell that Coraline wasn't just being bossy. There was a nervous urgency to her voice, and that part alone commanded them into the car: Kipo beside Coraline in the front, and Luz and Kris behind them.

"Finally," Coraline sighed, sounding relieved, even though it took only five seconds for them to crawl in. "Let's get out of here! And remember: keep all your limbs inside the car. You should probably hold on, too, because I didn't put any seat belts in here, and there might be loop-d-loops."

With that, Coraline stretched her hand out of the car, and pressed a button on the control box. As soon as she did, the car immediately and impossibly shot forward like a bullet fired from a gun, nearly ripping Coraline from her seat before Kipo reached over and pulled her back in.

From there, the car only picked up speed, and the pressure pushed Kipo painfully back into her seat. At this point, they might not need seatbelts.

The car twisted around the track erratically, emitting unholy screams whenever it went around even the slightest turn. With every rise and fall the car lifted off the track for just a couple seconds, and then came crashing down again, like Kipo's stomach.

All too soon, they reached the wall of the castle, and before they could even process that, they were crashing through and on the other side. Hurtling through the outside lands as a blur. Kipo only managed brief glances at the mirror maze, the river, the odd monster they'd passed and Hazel's shop before they were long behind them.

Squinting, Kipo stared ahead through the wind, trying to figure out where this crazy thing was going. To her surprise, the track went straight into the tunnel where they'd first came in from. Funny, Kipo hadn't noticed that before...

"Isn't..." Kipo tried to twist around to talk to Luz, but the wind ripped her voice from her mouth. Luckily, Luz seemed to notice what she was trying to say, and she stretched her hand out, focusing on the space in front of them carefully, as the car went into the dark tunnel, and only Kipo could see anything.

Kipo was frozen in horror as the little car hurtled at impossible speeds straight at the unrelentingly solid wall in front of them.