The Melancholy of Wonderland

Alice

There wasn't much for Anya to do after the first few seeds were sown. All she had to do was wait for the Wonderlandians to catch on to her plan. She kinda felt like a villainous mastermind, twiddling her thumbs in the shadows. Anya couldn't go out in risk of capture, so she was bored out of her skull, trying to find small pastimes to keep herself from growing crazy. At the same time, according to Kyle and Aster's stories, it wouldn't be long before things got completely out of hand.

The Queen of Hearts desired control. She had placed strict rules and prevented the land from warping so she could rule forever. So things could stay the same. Try as she might, there was one thing in Wonderland that she could never have a solid hold on, and that was the Wonderlandians themselves. Even with the Code in effect, they were still each their own individual persons with their own minds. They could all make their own decisions. That's why the Queen of Hearts did her best to downgrade them, squash them into almost nothingness. One person trying to tip the iceberg could ruin it all. Anya was that one person. After all, there was only one person who knew you better than your best friend, and that was your worst enemy. The Queen of Hearts had the advantage in almost everything: power, knowledge, experience. But Anya had trust. She had loyalty, courage, and most importantly, hope. Tactically, the queen would probably win but taking into consideration the actions each individual could take, it was impossible to determine the outcome. Everyone was going to have their triumphs and their downfalls. The outcome was not set in stone, no matter how easily the Queen of Hearts thought she could win. Anya was sure of that. She may have been young, but she could easily see the potential each individual carried. She was going to make use of everything the Queen of Hearts hated to win this war.

Up in the Ruby Palace, a monarch gazed out the window at her perfect city of cards. Mistakes had been made in the past, but now every block of material had been carefully placed to create a mosaic of symmetry. Naturally, the builders who failed to achieve her vision had suffered a fate worse than death itself. Death. Yet another thing that had been beyond her control. She did not know when she was going to die or how. That in itself was troublesome. If she could not live to see her grand vision of Wonderland completed, then why did she struggle for so long? The queen hated for anything to be in vain. But immortality had to come later. The first step in achieving her grand utopia had been to dethrone her sister.

What a pest her sister was. Never punctual, never caring. The queen did care. She cared very much. Everyone deserved to be happy. A job to work for, a place to sleep in, good food to eat, she gave all her subjects their material desires. As long as they obeyed, they were given everything they could ever want. But that wasn't enough. There could be no crime, no outside thinking that could make unpredictable factors arise. So the queen had taken the magic of her sister's friend and turned from something ugly and unformed into something beautiful. Something of order and lawfulness. Oh, Taylor. The poor woman had such good intentions. All the queen wanted to do was unite Wonderland. And Taylor thought of it all as a game. Yet she showed her serious side once the queen's beautiful Code came into effect.

"What have you done!? Do you intend to kill Wonderland!? You're a psycho! A freak! How could you do that to your own sister?"

The queen didn't understand. All she was doing was making her precious subjects happy. They didn't need emotions or originality to be happy. They didn't need her sister, who gave them nothing. The queen gave them everything. Being unique was too unpredictable. It was detestable. To achieve perfection, everyone had to do their own work in a specific fashion like clockwork. No outside thoughts. Just the desire to please their queen. And that made her and them very happy.

She gave them work. She took away dangerous outliers. Everything was going smoothly. She changed everything to achieve a simple and beautiful design. Nothing unpredictable. Her utopia was complete. The ideal future for Wonderland was set. Everything was perfect.

Until that child came.

She always knew that Taylor and Ruth would be plotting against her. But what could they do, powerless and alone? As per usual, they did something unexpected. She hated the unexpected. To summon an Alice and turn her into their ally... The queen was horrified. Now her once-loyal subjects were turning their backs against her. She, their great Queen of Hearts. She, who had given them everything. She had lost her temper in front of the Alice, momentarily forgetting that their audience was being broadcast to all of Wonderland. She had played right into the Alice's hands. Every day she would hear that more and more people were breaking her precious Code. Their crimes grew bigger and bigger and greater and greater. Everything the queen had worked for would be in vain. Her utopia, her perfect world, her well-oiled society. It would crumble from its most unpredictable component.

This was undoubtedly the work of the Alice. No other would dare to rise against the queen. The Alice's ideals would spread throughout Wonderland like a plague, infecting more and more as they heard it. The sickness had to be stopped. The queen had sent her guards to quiet the citizens, to make them obey her Code. To ensure that they were happy for generations to come. Happiness only came with the queen. In the smaller suburban areas, it worked. But not in the City of Aces. Not in her perfect city.

Once again, she had played into the Alice's hands. The queen had suspected the Alice had been hiding in the City of Aces, but where was a mystery. In her perfect garden, her subjects revolted. Her soldiers had been marching in a straight formation when the first line had been caught by a tripwire. There were fenced-off small gardens on either side of the palace. A taut string of fishing line had been tied around the fences at ankle height. Her guards were caught by it and became a jumbled mess. Smoke bombs were thrown from various angles and when it cleared, three-fourths of her soldiers were dead. The perfect puppets who had been designed only to protect her and to kill their enemies had been defeated. She had expected the Alice's measly forces to take her head-on. How foolish she was. The Alice had been sneaky. She was outclassed in power and numbers so she broke up the queen's soldier's formation and hit their weak points under the cover of smoke. The queen had to admit, this Alice might be better than her at managing troops of people.

The queen had underestimated the tenacity and cleverness of the Alice. Of course the Alice wouldn't take her army head-on. The queen's enemy was smarter than that. Instead, she had taken out the queen's army in a well-coordinated attack. Now the rest of the Wonderlandians would be inspired to revolt. They would come to the City of Aces with torches and pitchforks and storm her Ruby Palace. This had been an overwhelming win for the Alice.

Now the Alice had the support of almost all of Wonderland. She had the resources to form her own army, and she could now match up to the queen. But the queen knew it wasn't the army that was to eventually come to her Ruby Palace that she was to be afraid of. No, not at all. It was the Alice's cleverness that was most frightening. The Alice was smart. She was sure to put her new recruits to good use, to use them in places where they would shine their brightest. She was going to use their individual assets, a most unpredictable factor.

Now that was something to be afraid of.

The queen had made two major mishaps now. But she had one advantage over the Alice, one deciding factor. The Alice could not kill her. If she died, Wonderland died. And if she, the Queen of Hearts, was alive, then she could take back everything. Nothing was in vain just yet. Her utopia would not be destroyed so easily.

The Alice had support. She had trust, numbers, and wit. But the Queen of Hearts had control over the fate of Wonderland. And that was something the Alice should be very, very afraid of.