Queen's Gate: The Gate Opener

Queen's Gate: The Gate Opener is the first of three novels detailing Alice's adventures.

Prologue: Treasure at the Undersea Temple
Using her monoplace ship "White Rabbit," Alice entered a pyramid hundred of meters below the Caribbean coast of San Antonio. As soon as she made it in, she found a pack of creatures guarding the ruins: Chupacabras. After making short work of them, Alice proceeded through and reached the chamber where the OOPArt that she was looking for, a golden boat, was resting atop a pedestal. But then, she noticed traces of someone else.

It was her rival Dorothy, with Lumberjack, her subordinate. Using her pure luck as the "Trap Avoider", the blonde Treasure Hunter had arrived before her without running into any of the Chupacabras, and now mocked her, as she usually did when she forestalled her. Despite that, Alice used her whip to grab the OOPArt before they could stop her, and after receiving a call from her subordinate Hatter informing her about the trap that had just been activated, the two Treasure Hunters rushed to exit the pyramid. Unfortunately, after she made it out, Alice noticed the treasure was actually a copy.

Chapter 1: Irukinuf's Songstress
The day after, Alice and Dorothy met at their school, and discussed about the fake OOPArts they had acquired recently. They reached the conclusion that someone could have been secretly substituting OOPArts, though they couldn't figure out why. So, they decided they would go after the Salzburg Cube that very afternoon.

It was then that they were interrupted by their teacher, a woman in a wine red dress called Faye Wright. Alice couldn't really trust her as she could find nothing about her past, so they both pretended to have been talking about their role of writers in the Literature Club.

When they arrived to the museum in Moscow where the cube was, Alice fought special forces someone was manipulating, and had to resort to using her Boost to make her way through. Dorothy didn't need anything like that, since her luck allowed her to enter the warehouse undetected. There, they encountered Lynn, "Irukinuf's Songstress", who wanted to steal the Cube to serve her Cult. Unfortunately, due to her using invisible tentacles Dorothy couldn't see and Alice running out of time for her Boost, she managed to escape with it.

Chapter 2: Reliable Partner?
After coming back home, Hatter brought her to the Dodgson Foundation basement, where she went on to explain how the "Gate" Lynn had mentioned was related to the last artifact Alice's mother was searching when she disappeared.

They day after their trip to Moscow, Alice and Dorothy discussed at school their new findings. Thanks to Dorothy's subordinates, they developed the theory that the "original" OOPArts being stolen were part of something alive, and agreed to work together at baiting that cult: they'd organize an exposition at their Literature Club with actual OOPArts instead of the fakes they pretended to be using, and hoped to catch any member of the cult there.

Meanwhile, Lynn made it to the island where her cult gathered, and as a reward for obtaining the Cube, she went through a ceremony that would grant her one more tentacle, increasing her power. The leader of their cult, Swodar the Tentacle King, was glad that they had found so many OOPArts that were part of their God's, Irukinuf's, body, and told Lynn to offer Alice and Dorothy to join them.

Chapter 3: Fierce Fighting at the Academy
Lynn appeared at the academy with the intention to steal the two genuine OOPArts on display, and offered Alice to join them. When Alice refused, she used a mini-sized weapon, "stun balls," to hit the sprinklers and make Lynn's tentacles visible. The tentacle user stole the artifacts and summoned her Ninja Tentacles forth, but Alice countered with her Trump Soldiers.

When the ninjas were defeated, Lynn called out to the other member of the Irukinuf she had come with, the ancient swordsman Hikita Bungorou. Alice engaged him as Dorothy went to follow Lynn.

Alice tried all her techniques but even in her Boost state she couldn't defeat the swordsman, so she activated the Overboost and managed to knock him into the ground. However, the Overboost ran out as the swordsman was about to ask her to deliver the coup de grace, and before the fainting Alice, he decided they would consider it a tie.

At the rooftop, Dorothy was joined by her subordinates Lumberjack and Löwe, and fought Lynn for a while, but the red-haired girl managed to escape, rushing back to her cult.

Chapter 4: Tentacle God's Island
On top of her ship, the Twister, Dorothy followed Lynn to the cult's island, but a tentacle user amongst them made a huge hole in the ship that sucked the blonde Treasure Hunter out of it, and her subordinates scrambled to make her land safely into the water below.

Alice was following Alice, and when she found about the attack on the Twister, decided to approach the island carefully and look for survivors in her rival's ship. Unfortunately, only the brains of the Baum Foundation, Scarecrow, was there. Then, Alice was brought to the pyramid where the cult were gathering.

Dorothy and Alice were then forced to face off in a match using electric sticks to decide who would be best suited to become "Irukinuf's Priestess". March Hare, Alice's subordinate, managed to interrupt the match and make enough of a diversion for them to break free, but when they tried to capture the Tentacle King, he threw Irukinuf at them.

Irukinuf entangled itself around Dorothy and manipulated her, and though Alice tried to fight her, in the end she was forced out of her Boost state, and was about to give up.

Chapter 5: Journey to a Different World
In order to help Alice, the Tentacle King activated the Queen's Gate. Irukinuf, Dorothy, Alice and Lynn ended up diving into it, and even though Alice's Spatial Rupture bullet managed to destroy Lynn's left side of her body, she got separated from Dorothy.

When Alice came to in the new world, she found a young Swodar greeted her, who welcomed her to the world of Hyperborea...

Trivia

 * The trilogy takes influences from the Alice In Wonderland and Wizard of Oz series, such as the names of and likenesses of the main and supporting characters.
 * The book mentions a staff named Irukinuf, which if spelled backwards spells out Funikuri, which denotes and adds to the possibility that there may be more living staffs than just Funikura.