#2 Fancy Dresses and Alternate Dimensions: Marco Polo

I was perfectly content with living the rest of my life in my own dimension and classifying that one incident with Molly and sentient zippers a fluke in the fabric of space-time that would never happen again.

And then she unzipped herself in my room while I was studying. How classy.

I knew something was up when that blue tint suddenly appeared, washing out the ink on my notes. It was then that I wondered what possessed me to write with a blue pen. I turned around and there was Molly in all her lacy glory with her typical blank expression on her face.

"I need your help again," she said.

"What, is Natasha trying to take over the world again with the help of what's-her-face and happy-girl?"

"Well, that's how it started," said Molly, her expression unchanging. I seriously wondered if sarcasm existed in her world.

"And how did it end?"

"They were fighting the queen and suddenly all four of them disappeared. No one knows where they went."

"Maybe they got bored and went to another dimension where they could fight each other while riding dragons."

"We checked there. The dragons haven't seen them."

I stared at her blankly and decided to stop with the jokes for now. "So, what do you need me for?"

"Help me find them."

"What's so special about me that you can't just go ask someone else from your world?"

Molly placed a finger on her chin and looked up in thought. "You have. . .prowess in our arts, the likes of which haven't been seen in a long time and doesn't come out in our formal training. That's why I recruited you last time. I knew that only someone from another dimension could find some unconventional way of fighting."

"You call using two parasols instead of one unconventional? I thought it was just common sense."

"Exactly. As ladies, we're trained to avoid excess, but you have had no such training so the idea of using two instead of one came naturally to you."

"I'm not sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment."

"It's a compliment. So you see, I need you and your version of common sense to help me again."

I looked at my notes, then at Molly, then back at my notes. I really needed to study. I had an exam in just a few days and I hardly knew any of the material. More importantly, David was cooking dinner and missing that deliciousness was not something I was inclined to do. Then again, Molly seemed so sad and helpless despite the fact that her face hadn't really changed.

At least, that's what I told myself when I agreed to go with her. Again. I grabbed my parasols and followed her into the inter-dimensional space thing where we were once again pulled along the right path by an overly eager and oversized zipper. We came out floating above the city just like before and I followed Molly as best I could without crashing into the ten thousand other people whose airline of choice was United Parasol.

We flew for about ten minutes before landing in front of the most intricately carved and ornate building I had ever seen. It was as though someone had taken a castle and given it a modern makeover. I assumed that this was where the queen lived. It was easily the tallest building in the city.

"The battle began here," said Molly, pointing to a broken window a few floors up.

"Natasha has a thing for flashy entries, doesn't she."

"She studied them intensely while we were in school."

"Wait, you went to school together?"

"The fight began normally, but suddenly all four of them disappeared."

I gave Molly a strange look and she locked eyes with me. Although her expression didn't change, I felt as though she was silently telling me not to pry in her personal life. This scared me not because I was busybody who needed to know everything about someone else's life, but because I had spent enough time with this strangely dressed girl to read her mind.

"Well, let's go up there and investigate," I said.

"I've already done that. Besides broken glass and the usual damaged furniture, there was this note." Molly reached inside her dress and pulled out a small piece of folded paper. "There's some sort of code written on it that I can't decipher."

She handed me the note and I opened it slowly, expecting to find funny looking runes or pictures. Instead, I just saw one word written in capital letters: POLO.

"Marco?" I said immediately. Suddenly, the words on the paper lit up and a blinding flash of light engulfed us. When it subsided a few seconds later, Molly and I were standing in what looked to be the inside of a mountain. I was dumbfounded. Never in my life had I thought that a children's pool game would act as a teleporter to an enemy's secret layer. Also, Molly was looking at me as though I had just found the Holy Grail and it was kind of freaking me out.

"How did you know? What does the code mean?"

"Um, well, it's a swimming game named after some guy in history who did something important or something. Anyway, one person closes their eyes and shouts 'Marco!' while everyone else says 'Polo!' and tries to keep away from the first person. If they get tagged, they're out."

"So we're the blinded ones looking and they're hiding. This is all a game," said Molly darkly.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, slightly disturbed by her attitude.

There was a single torch fixed to the wall up ahead. I walked over and took it down. As the flame passed over the wall, I noticed something flash and did a double take. Right behind where the torch had been sitting was another message: TAG.

"You're it," I said.

An ominous rumbling shook the entire area, knocking Molly and I off our feet. There was a huge crash behind us and when I turned around, I saw two giant monsters made of rock looming over us. They sort of resembled gorillas with their long, thick arms and huge chests, although their heads were either small or non-existent. It was hard to tell with such little light. Molly and I stood up, and the monsters bellowed a deafening growl which evidently meant that we were supposed to run because they started chasing us.

Since I was the only one with a light, I tried to stay ahead of Molly as we ran down a pitch black tunnel. The thing is, I suck at running (and I was carrying two parasols and a torch), so she passed me after a few seconds. At first I thought she was just trying to save herself, so I got ready to yell at her, but then I noticed that she was untying the strings that kept her little hat in place. Suddenly, she stopped and tossed the hat in the air. Then, she caught it with the tip of her unopened parasol, spun around so she was facing the monsters, and opened the parasol. The hat flew a few feet straight ahead and stopped, hovering parallel with Molly's parasol.

The monsters didn't stop or slow down. In fact, we had maybe ten seconds before they would crush us, yet Molly wasn't doing anything.

"We're gonna die soon! What are you doing?" I shouted, but Molly ignored me.

They were right on us. We were going to be crushed and we were going to die. Of all the awesome death scenarios I'd thought up for myself, this definitely wasn't one of them. In fact, this was downright pathetic. I wasn't even dying for a noble cause or for a person I loved or because I did some badass thing to save to world. No, I was going to die by being crushed by sentient rocks. What was it with this dimension and inanimate objects that are living?

Keeping her arms extended, Molly spun around again, only this time a ring of water formed around her and condensed inches in front of the hat. She twirled her parasol quickly and a blue light flashed over it; it was completely charged, which surprised me because she told me before that you had to twirl it for ten seconds before it was ready.

Just before we were reduced to a sick mess of flattened bones and flesh, Molly fired. Yellow energy shot from her parasol into her hat and propelled the water forward in a fierce jet that pierced numerous holes in the monsters' rock bodies. By the time the attack was over, they were nothing but piles of mud.

"That was. . .amazing," I said, "but why didn't you do that when we were fighting Natasha and the others before."

Molly took her hat and set her parasol down as she tied it back onto her head. "I can't be that ruthless with them."

"So, you were holding back that time?"

Molly nodded, closed her parasol, and rested it on her shoulder. "Let's go. Explain what that code means."

"It's another children's game. One person is 'it' and everyone else has to run away from them. If the 'it' person catches someone, they say 'tag, you're it' and then the new person is 'it.'"

"So whoever is responsible for taking them is familiar with the customs from your dimension and is using them as clues."

"Yeah, I guess so. But why children's games of all things? And what kind of person would have all this weird stuff at their disposal?"

"It's a mystery," said Molly.

I was tempted to laugh again. No duh this is a mystery, sweetheart. I'm waiting for the part where we figure out that it was Colonel Mustard in the Dining Room with a candlestick.

We finally came to a clearing of sorts. It was a wide circular area and the tunnel narrowed again at the other end. I rolled my eyes as the light from the torch hit the walls and revealed the next message: DUCK, DUCK.

I knew what came next, but I really didn't want to say it. At the same time, I knew I had to. I sighed and thought that whoever was running this whole operation had a really sick sense of humor.

"Goose," I said.

"In the stew pot you go!" shouted a strange voice. Before Molly and I had time to react, the floor dropped out from beneath us and we fell into total darkness.

"That's not how the game works, cheater!" I shouted back. Molly opened her parasol and caught my wrist, and we floated nicely down into the abyss instead of falling like watermelons dropped from a tall building.

"May I guess the code this time?" said Molly.

"Go for it," I said. "It's not like we're in a hurry or anything."

"But we must find Natasha and the queen quickly."

Once again, Molly's inability to recognize a joke baffled me. This girl was too serious for her own good.

"It's another game in which someone is 'it' and must capture someone else in order to not be 'it.' The 'itness' must be passed on."

"Yes, Molly, the 'itness' must be passed on like the sacred heirloom of a family that has been around for thousands of years and has been integral to societies most pivotal events."

"Is it really that important?"

I couldn't make fun of her for that one. It wasn't her fault that kids in her world apparently didn't play the same games as I did, although something did occur to me. "No, but I think I might know what's going on."

"Really?"

"Yeah. See, in all of these games, no one really likes being 'it,' especially if you're bad at the game or you don't like running. So if you're stuck with being 'it,' you want to pass it onto someone else as quick as you can. So maybe whoever's behind this is trying to blame them for something or cover something up."

"What about the opposite?"

"The opposite what?"

"The opposite of someone who does not like 'itness' would be someone who enjoys 'itness,' someone who likes to hunt, capture, and control."

That made much more sense than my theory. "So then, what kind of person would want to capture people as though it were all a big game? I get why someone would want to capture a queen, but Natasha and her lackeys? What's so great about them?"

"I can think of several reasons," said Molly, although the silence following that statement indicated that she wasn't going to tell me those reasons.

We landed in what certainly looked like a typical underground lair. It was well lit by overhead fluorescent lights and sparsely decorated with a couple large machines and giant screens. Right in the center was a giant metal cage which contained Natasha, Anastasia, Melody, and an older looking woman with purple hair done in a tall beehive and wearing the thickest, frilliest dress I had seen yet. I assumed that she was the queen.

"Look! It's Molly!" said Melody with the same amount of cheerfulness she had the last time I saw her. "And she brought her friend back! Yay!"

Natasha scowled at us. "Great. Just what I need to increase my humiliation, being rescued by Molly and her other-dimensional lackey."

"I told you before, Natasha," said Molly, pointing her parasol at the red-headed woman, "this is Amber. You should call her by her rightful name."

"Rightful name?" said Melody, giving me a construed look. "Oh! I get it! But are you sure?"

"I haven't had time to look into it fully," said Molly and then turned to me, "but I'm maybe 80 percent certain."

"Ah," Melody said with a laugh, "well that makes things interesting, doesn't it?"

Both Natasha and I gave her a strange look, but I didn't get the chance to ask further questions since a gray-haired man wearing a tuxedo and a monocle suddenly burst into the room from some unseen doorway. For all intensive purposes, he looked like a very fancy butler--a very fancy butler who was very angry.

"Intruders!" he shouted, pointing a finger at Molly and I. "Invaders! Infiltrators!"

Neither of us flinched. This guy really wasn't all that intimidating. I mean, he looked like a butler and he was wearing a monocle. In fact, he probably was a butler since he looked so much like one. When I realized this, I slapped my forehead in agony. Why was it always the butler?

"Jives, enough of this madness!" shouted the queen. "Release us this instant!"

I slapped my forehead again. "Seriously? A butler named Jives? Seriously?"

"My apologies, Queen Victoria, but I can no longer listen to you. You are under my control now! It took me years to complete every step of the plan that lead up to this moment. I had to earn your trust, especially since I was an alien to this world. But now, I have finally begun gathering the most powerful beings in each dimension for our great overlord. Soon, we will gain control over all of them and combine them into one ideal world. We will rule! We will dominate! We will preside! We will regulate! We will oversee. . ."

"How many synonyms is this guy gonna use before ending his monologue?" I whispered to Molly as Jives the Thesaurus Butler continued spewing nonsense.

"He seems to believe that they convey his intelligence, his smartness, his brains, his knowledge," said Molly.

I was taken aback. Did she just make a joke?

"You were my most trusted butler, Jives, and now you have betrayed me!" said Queen Victoria.

"It was necessary, vital, integral, Queen Victoria!"

I was getting sick of standing around and listening to this, so I charged up my parasols and fired them at Jives while he was still babbling about his philosophies lining up with the Grand Master's philosophies and all that junk that just wastes people's time when they're trying to rescue four fancy ladies trapped in a cage.

My attacks hit Jives much harder than I thought they would, and he flew back, hit the wall, and fell to the ground in an unconscious heap.

"Geez, why are these things always so anticlimactic?"

"Underlings are never too strong. Also, you are more powerful than you think," said Molly as she walked over to the control panel and studied it. After a few seconds, she pushed a button and the cage opened. The four women silently walked out. Queen Victoria scuttled over to Jives, slapped him across the face, and scuttled back.

"I suppose we should be getting back now," said Natasha with a huff. "I'll have to battle you for control of the city some other time, Queen Victoria."

"Suits me just fine, young lady. You are much too rash and temperamental to do any sort of decent ruling or fighting, so I don't expect you to be very successful."

"Keep on believing that, madame. Perhaps you'll be surprised. Molly, darling, I'm sure you have your zipper with you. That will be the fastest way to get back home."

Molly produced the giant zipper from seemingly nowhere. As she opened up an inter-dimensional portal, I wondered how it is that Natasha and Queen Victoria could insult each other so politely. I also wondered why the queen's name had to be Victoria. The coincidence amused me.

After a short run on the narrow, black tiled path surrounded by infinite beams of bright colors, we reached the opening for the city that everyone but me called home. Molly instructed me to stay put and let the others leave. Then, she zipped the hole shut and reconfigured the zipper's path. Don't ask me how she managed that one. I was still trying to get over the fact that a zipper could do anything besides zip bags and jackets.

Soon enough, we were eagerly pulled along again and within a few minutes, I was sitting in my room again, facing the reality of my exam.

"I can't promise this is the last time I'll see you," said Molly, "but I hope I won't need your assistance again for awhile."

"No problem. In all honesty, it was kind of fun," I said and gave her a smile. Her expression lightened a little.

"Then I suppose this is farewell for now," she said and zipped herself away, returning my room to its normal color.

Geez, what am I getting myself into? I thought as I started reading through my notes. That was about as much a study break as I could afford to take.