AlNel in Murderland

Written by Crisis Project (formerly shadevox)

Note: Hey guys! It's been a long time, and it's great to be back! I've been planning over the years different plots and points to return with our lovable Albel and Nel, but nothing was really the right combination to come back with. This time I'm just gonna try and see where it takes me – frankly, I'm getting tired of brainstorming over and over. So sit back, relax, and enjoy!

Warnings: this series will (most likely) hike from PG 13 to maybe T – we'll see how it goes.

Disclaimer: Star Ocean 3 belongs to Tri-Ace/Ubisoft/Square-Enix. Alice in Wonderland belongs to Lewis Carroll.

1: The Chase.

If Nel Zelpher, proud Crimson Blade and one of AquariaXXVII's right-hand women, had not had the wind knocked out of her she would have done quite a number of things differently.

One – she'd be running after that flouncing, blue-skirted blondie right now and tackling her to the checkered floor so the bit of fluff could beg for her mercy.

Two – she'd be cussing. A lot.

Three – she'd be rolling over to give some reprieve to her bruised breasts. Yes, they don't hurt as much as a man's crushed nuts might, but ask any chick who's had their chest steamrollered to the floor – it hurts.

Four – she'd be cussing some more.

Five – she'd be breathing, and breathing's always good for a girl.

The lack of oxygen was starting to make the blurry red room spin. With gasping effort, Nel finally managed to flip onto her back; her chest heaving as her vision slowly cleared of moisture and sharpened. A question struck her in her aching state: just why had she done that?

An innocent wiling away of five minutes had come back to bite her hard in the rump. A minute ago she'd been in the middle of spending five minutes underneath a tree in a field to the west of castle Aquaria. Fayt and Cliff, the "engineers from Greeton", had been in the Thunder Arrow room going over the plans so as to configure the weapon to fit and stay on Crossel's back. The blue-haired beauty Maria had followed after them in the company of Mirage. Roger had disappeared along with Albel Nox. The last two she wouldn't begrudge for vanishing.

Nel had already finished all her own duties and had decided to take a few minutes to herself upon returning and seeing the Black Brigade General prowling around the stuffy room, wearing dents into the plush green carpet with his pointy iron shoes. She'd reasoned that she'd be back in ten minutes, tops – the field was only two minutes away from the castle at a run. Nobody would be there because it had been the grounds which the runological team had tested the capabilities of the Thunder Arrow, as such rendering the ground with deep and dangerous ditches.

So she'd been comfortably gazing over the swishing sea of green grass occasionally punctured by upturned pungent reddish-brown soil when a rustling to her right had caused her to grab her daggers just as a small white cannonball hurtled out onto the dirt path.

"-gonna have my head! And I've only started this job a week ago! Craaaap -"

Vanilla's long feet were a blur as he ran toward and past her, muttering under his breath as he glanced from the huge pocket watch in one paw and the ground.

"-so cute! It looks so soft too - oh Mister Rabbit!!"

Close on his heels was a short girl, probably in her early teens or younger. Nel only had a vague impression of mid-length, fluffy blonde hair, an old-fashioned blue skirt with a white apron flapping over it and black shoes when she'd realized that they were heading towards one of the deepest ditches in the field.

In stepped Nel's ingrained sense of honour and duty, with a little helping of conscience. Chasing the girl down hadn't been a problem – it'd been trying to haul the girl up with one hand as she'd already been falling into the ditch was where the first complication lay. Looking back, the first real complication had been something else entirely.

And it was only as Nel lay on her back looking up at the hole they'd fallen through that she realized that the stupid girl had deliberately jumped in after the rabbit. But then, knowing herself, she'd probably have gone after the girl anyway. And for all her good intentions, she'd been used as a safety cushion. Undoubtedly she'd have a butt-shaped bruise on her back in the morning. A little thanks would be appreciated, but the chit had up and skipped off after Vanilla (who also, she realized, had ignored her completely).

Now, normally she was very cool and patient. But everyone has their own little buttons, and being stomped on by someone's butt and left in the middle of nowhere by the butt-er and an acquaintance without so much as a word of gratitude was one of hers.

Carefully Nel brought herself up and winced as she gently touched her back with examining fingers. The muscle was tender, but otherwise nothing seemed broken. Which was weird, she realized as she cast a glance up the hole. She should've broken a few somethings from the huge drop – the opening to the ditch was only a pinprick of light in the gradating shadows collected above her. The light grazed and outlined other somethings which she refused to remember as bits of strange and lethal furniture swirling around in mid-air which were a constant danger as she whooshed by them and had to somehow dodge them as she did.

Deciding to take her time surveying her surroundings (the chit could whine for help if she found any trouble for a little bit), Nel made sure she was alone before perusing the most bizarre circular red room she'd ever been in. The floor was comprised of polished black and white tiles, the walls stacked with red bricks. On her right was an upside-down fireplace, merrily crackling an upside-down fire. There was a leaky faucet sticking out from the ceiling, dripping water onto a painting of a sink on the floor to her left. Random items hung on the walls like trophies – a foot to the faucet's right she saw a blue pointy had with stars embroidered onto it. A little higher above that was a golden scarab, glittering in a candle's light as it flickered. She noted a crimson apple, a softly glowing golden shell on a black leather thong, a spindle, a lion skin rug, a glass slipper without its partner, a huge pumpkin, a sword lodged into a slab of stone, a wooden puppet of a boy with an elongated nose, a stuffed deer, and so on until they faded into the shadows above.

What the hell was a room with a fireplace doing down here underneath a field? Shouldn't there have been some kind of marker, like a chimney so they'd know someone was living here? Or a door? Maybe it was Vanilla's house...? But no, he lived in the Urssa Lava Caves, or so he'd claimed when they'd visited. And yet Vanilla had definitely jumped suicidally into this hole as well.

At any rate, someone lived down here, and they'd been in grave danger when they'd tested out the Thunder Arrow in the field the home was under. The roof could have caved in, with nobody the wiser. But when Nel and her team had scouted the field before the weapon had been tested nothing had turned up. No welcome mat, not even a hint of a doorknob, no marking of a dwelling of any kind.

Nel puzzled over the situation a bit more before deciding to put it aside until she could meet with the queen. First she had to get out of here. And it stood to reason that there should be a door around here somewhere. Nel had a sudden thought – if someone like Vanilla, a rabbit relative, lived down here, they may have fashioned the home into a series of burrows like a real rabbit or rodent home. Wonderful.

But the fastest way from one point to another was a straight line. Nel eyed the objects and picked out hand and foot holds before rubbing her hands and checking if her daggers were secure. Stepping slightly beneath the spindle, Nel leapt and grasped a good hold on the wooden beam – until she fell back to the tiles with a thump, spindle and all. Besides the pain in her butt (and her back again), she gasped – she'd just torn a decoration from the wall! "Shit," muttered the crimson-haired woman, "sorry Vanilla." She was just setting it aside beside her when, before her very eyes, the wooden spindle floated back up to its original position and hovered there.

There are several approaches to suspected insanity, the most common being flat-out denial. She'd seen too many unbelievable things in her life to deny anything outright. Ignoring it wouldn't help her situation either. Tentatively, Nel got back up and eyed the wall décor. The glittering silver stars on the blue hat beckoned, and she grabbed the soft hat. This time when she let go it just fell to the floor with a soft fwump of air.

She stared. Of course it would fall to the floor. There was the law of gravity to consider, after all. Shaking her head, Nel picked it back up and stuffed an arm through the brim to straighten up the pointed tip.

Suddenly she wasn't so sure she wasn't in a dream. Holding in her breath, Nel wiggled her fingers. Nothing happened inside the sagging blue hat. Cautiously, she stretched a bit more of her arm into the hat until she had the brim of the hat sitting on her shoulder, with no corresponding action happening inside the blue felt hat. The empty air in front of the hat should have been interrupted by her arm, which should have ripped through the hat at this length; instead there was nothing, just a phantom limb wiggling underneath the warm felt. Was this what Albel's rumoured decapitated arm might look like...?

Just when she was about to wrench the hat off of her invisible limb, her fingers collided with something. Eyeing the hat apprehensively, she wrapped her hand around a cold metal circle and pulled.

"Eugh-!"

It was only a split second later, when she'd pulled out and dropped the dehydrated and withered blue hands manacled by golden cuffs, that she realized that her common sense had fled her. Or rather, it didn't work in such dream-like settings as these. Normally she wouldn't have pulled something out blindly without knowing what it was.

Looking down with distaste at the butchered hands, she distantly noted how they appeared to be very old from the condition of the skin and the length of the gnarled yellow fingernails. It may have been preserved in some type of liquid, which would explain the blue hue to the leathery skin. The golden cuffs gleamed brightly in contrast against the aged skin, looking to be kept in good condition.

Shouting drifted to her ears from the hallway behind her. Obviously there was no way to use the wall décor as handholds to return to the field above her, and there was nothing left to do here. Nel quickly stuffed the hands back inside the hat, noting how it didn't get any heavier or bigger. On a second thought, she yanked down the apple and the glowing golden shell and stuffed them inside as well before she turned on her heel and left. No telling how long it would be until she found some form of staircase to escape out of this strange place.

The hallway was short, the door at the end of it unlocked. The blond girl was standing inside, gabbing away to the door at the far end of the square room. The ceiling was obscured by darkness; the only light shed in the room came from the few candles hovering by the walls.

"But you simply must see that I have to get through! I must follow – "

"Yes, yes, I know, the white rabbit. Do you realize that you have stalker-like tendencies?" replied a chirpy voice, a contrast to the sarcastic words it uttered.

Nel peered around the girl to see a painting fixed onto the small door in the wall. The door was no taller than Nel's knee – there was no way she was getting through, or the girl. Vanilla was possible, if he'd curled up and squeezed through.

Then she focused on the painting. "Welch?" Nel stared at the pig-tailed mediator of the Inventor's Guild. "What are you doing here?"

Welch held up both hands, but the girl interrupted before Welch could reply. "Excuse me, ma'am, but could you convince her to open the door? It's just that I'm following this white rabbit you see, and I saw him go through, and I simply must follow him!"

Nel stared. "Why?" Not that Nel wasn't planning the same thing, but she was following him because he may know how to get out of here. Plus, she wasn't about to try anything for the idiot who had landed on her back and skipped away without a word of apology. And she'd called me "ma'am" as if I were some middle-aged woman.

The blond blinked huge guileless blue eyes framed by thick black lashes. "Curiosity, I suppose."

Nel's temper started to chafe. What an ignorant answer. Was she saying that she'd ran after Vanilla through the field and jumped into the ditch and fallen through a huge distance of space only because she'd been curious?

"You know what, fine," snapped Welch. "Just take that and leave me alone. Why I always get selfish, yapping customers and guests is beyond me -"

Between their feet appeared with a cloudy poof a small glass bottle with a tag saying "Drink Me."

Before Nel could inspect it for its effects, the girl swiped it from her hand and took a huge swig from it, then let go of the bottle. Nel's hand automatically caught it in mid-air as the girl fell to the floor. No, she hadn't fallen – she'd shrunk with a speed which would make those Vendeeni ships envious.

She was now a bit of blond dust against the black tile she was standing on in front of the door, and from her miniature expression she was in a bout of miniature ecstasy. Scooting up to the painting, the girl exclaimed, "now I'm just the right size! Won't you please let me through?"

Welch just looked down her nose at their considerable height difference. Alice was too small to even reach the doorknob on the tips of her toes.

Nel peered at the glass bottle. There was just enough left for a small sip. If shrinking was the only effect to the liquid, she'd take it. She too had to get through the door to pursue Vanilla. Gripping the hat in one hand and the bottle in the other, she tossed it back and immediately fell to the floor, blinking and discovering that she was now level with Welch in the painting. The girl stood up to just below her knee.

"Now we're both small enough to go through," Nel pointed out to the irate girl in the picture frame. But when she turned the knob, she was brought up short by a click – it was locked.

"Oh, I should've told you, but you won't be able to get through even if you're small enough to fit," Welch said blithely, the warning way too late. "The key's up there."

A glass table whirled out of the darkness and landed silently on the tiles as Nel and the girl turned. A golden key winked into existence atop the transparent table ledge.

The girl started to dash toward one of the glass table feet and tried to climb up the slippery surface before Nel turned away and slipped free the daggers slung on her waist. The gleaming steel point with an undertone rippling of blue stopped just short of touching the painted canvas. "Now," Nel said in an agreeable tone, "shouldn't you have told us that there was a key before you gave us the shrinking solution?"

Welch sidled to the side, trying to evade the point of Nel's dagger. "Uh, you know, I can fix that. It's over there," Welch pointed, all irritation gone at the sight of the dagger in such close proximity. "But I should warn you – you really shouldn't go in. there's no guarantee that you'd get back out, and there're all kinds of things behind me that you really don't want to meet. Especially the cat."

At this point Nel was ignoring her as she stared down at the box titled "Super Size Me" beside her feet. Lifting the blue lid, dainty little tea biscuits spilled out and landed on the floor. A pair of tiny white hands shot out and lifted one. The girl was biting into it before Nel could say anything again. Nel narrowed her eyes as she watched the impulsive blond gobble it up – she'd watch her for the effects this time as well.

"Holy Mother of Apris -!" Nel scooted back as far as she could as the girl started shooting up and out. Her gleaming black shoe loomed larger and larger menacingly as it boxed her into a corner and she had a split second to decide if she really wanted to become a piece of gum squished onto the bottom of the blonde's shoe before she leapt toward the heel and hoisted herself up and over so she landed on the top of the girl's white-socked ankle.

She really had no idea how the girl came to be crying. She only heard a few muffled sniffles before the giantess' blue eyes cracked open and a flood poured out. Deafening hiccups rent through the air like thunder as waves crashed and soaked into the white sock Nel was standing on. The level of the water soon climbed up and started lapping at Nel's own ankles and she had to get to higher ground and quickly, and that was only if she managed to dodge all the teardrops zooming down on her, the size of boulders. How does a girl stock up enough water to start flooding a room?

A shout reached her through the din and Nel hazarded a quick glance in its direction. Welch was spazzing out in her frame as the waves of water lapped at the bottom of the painting, washing away Welch's knees. The painted girl pointed at the doorknob and looked to be ranting at it when the keyhole responded – it looked to be yawning open – when Nel was hit from behind, engulfed into a teardrop sac of water and washed into the raging ocean, sucked through the keyhole and swept into the dark.

A/n: Still working on the style of the narration, but I hope to inject more life and humour into it. It's just that I wanted to pump out this chapter so I can actually get motivated to keep writing the story.

Sorry that Albel hasn't made his appearance yet, but he'll be here next chapter!

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