Waves of Destiny (Twisted Wonderland)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The end of the school day did not come soon enough.  And yet, even when the final bell rang, I knew there was more torture to follow. "I'm already exhausted from a full day of cleanin'," Grim grumbled as we entered the cafeteria. "I can't believe we still gotta wash a hundred windows!"

I bit back a retort about this being all his fault. My anger had since vanished, and if we were going to be living together, we needed to get along. Playing the blame game would not help our situation. "We just gotta suck it up and do it."

"What's buggin' me is, Ace ain't even here yet! To make us wait, after what he did... Grrr!"

I looked around with a frown. "Good point." We could get started without him, but that would hardly be fair. So, we waited... And waited...

"And now he's super late! I bet he up and bailed on us!"

"We should look for him." After what that guy said with us, no way was I letting him getting out of the punishment.

"Ain't no way am I doin' his punishment for him!"

"Me either."

"C'mon, Ona, I don't care if we gotta drag him kickin' and screamin', he's washin' those windows!"

We did not know which class Ace was in, so we decided to look through all of them. In the first room, we found a talking painting that said it saw him heading back to his dorm. We immediately ran to the building that led to the dorms. Luckily, we spotted Ace just as he entered the Hall of Mirrors.

"AHA!" Grim shouted. "GOTCHA, PUNK!"

Ace turned around, a panicked look on his face. "Oh no! They saw me!" He began running.

"Stop right there, pal! No fair gettin' a head start! Wait!"

"Who in their right mind would ever wait? Seeya!"

"No way are you gettin' out of this! You think I WANNA wash windows?"

"Yeah!" I said. "This was your fault too." We continued to run through the ridiculously long room. Ace nearly ran into a guy with blue hair, who looked back at us, startled.

"He's shirking his cleaning responsibilities!" I explained.

"What?" said the boy. "That's not right! But how to stop him? Like, freeze his legs? Or bind them with a rope? Or maybe I could... Hmm... No..."

"I don't care how!" Grim exclaimed. "Just do something! Anything!"

"Anything?! Anything, huh..." The boy looked a little panicked. "All right! Here goes anything! I summon thee... something heavy!" A cauldron fell from the ceiling and fell right on top of Ace. Grim and I burst out laughing.

Grim jumped up and down excitedly. "Look, Ona, look! That Ace guy got crushed beneath a giant cauldron! It squashed him flat! Aha ha ha!" He pointed at Ace. "That's what you get!"

"A cauldron?! I wasn't expecting that. I may have overdone it this time..."

I grinned. "No, that was great. Thanks a lot!"

Ace groaned as he pushed the cauldron off of him. "What are you bothering me for?" he said. "You guys coulda just banged out the work yourself!"

I lifted my eyebrows. Was he serious right now? "There's no 'banging out' a hundred windows!"

"You have to wash a hundred windows as punishment?" said the blue haired boy in alarm. "What the heck did you do?!"

"I was just screwing with that furball a little," Ace said. I gave him a sharp look. "Okay, and the statue of the Queen of Hearts got a teeny bit charred. Sue me."