Twisted-Wonderland: Our Precious Treasure (Part 2)

(155) PoD: Please Marry Me, Dear Ideal Prince

Many hours ago...

-----

This time, he was awakened by a muffled conversation. When he opened his eyes, the sky was yellow. The wind was rather dry and smelled almost metallic. He stood on top of a hill that almost looked like moss-covered mushroom caps being stacked against one another, along with a strange sphere house. In his sight ahead, beyond the yellowish grass, was a forest with vine-ish mushrooms as trees. It was strange, nothing like the forest in Night Raven College. Which means...it must be his usual dream, right?

The muffled voices that had become background noise for him started to become louder and clearer. At the same time, two figures took shapes in front of him, one was larger than the other. The larger figure leaned toward the smaller one as if he was whispering something toward it.

"Now, listen to me. If we play our cards right, we can both walk away from this, rich as kings. You get me that map and an even portion of the treasure is yours!"

Oh, wait. He recognized that now. It was...the cyborg, right? As if answering his thought, the two blurry figures in front of him started to take the shape of the cyborg and the cabin boy. The cyborg was stressing out his robotic hand toward the boy, an offer of a handshake. The cabin boy was smiling, so small and quite sad before he let out a sigh.

"Boy. You are really something."

The cyborg let down his hand in an almost sad way. His face was a mix of shock and sadness that Jonah couldn't understand. Wasn't he supposed to be the bad guy? Why does he look so genuinely sad? The smile on the cabin boy's face had gone completely, replaced by anger.

"I'm gonna make sure that you never see one drabloon of my treasure!"

The cyborg's face changed from sadness to rage as he shouted back.

"That treasure is owed to me, by 'thunder!"

"Well, try to find it without my map, 'by 'thunder'!"

"Oh, you still don't know how to pick your fights, do you, boy?!"

Jonah couldn't help but step back as the cyborg kept talking, his voice becoming louder as the threat was spoken. The background of the vine-mushroom forest and yellow sky slowly blurred with each step back he took and the two figures started to fade away Now. But Jonah could still hear the cyborg captain's declaration.

"Now mark me: either I get that map by dawn tomorrow, or so help me, I'll use the ship's cannons to blast you all to Kingdom come!"

He woke up with a gasp and his elbow hitting a thick book. It fell off the floor with a loud *thud*, forcing all the leftover sleep in Jonah to disappear.

He looked around his room. The light had already turned off, leaving his blue-and-red fire from his mailing candle. Oh, he sent his letter, didn't he? For Columbus. He kept his word. Grim was sleeping, curled up next to his pillow in his usual spot. Jonah vaguely remembered that he told Grim to go to bed first since he had his letter to write.

"Sweet Nebula..." he groaned, running a hand down his face. There was no way he could go back to sleep, not when he was sure that dream would just keep him awake. How many times has he had those dreams again? He got these dreams more than the vision he usually got from the orb.