[Thread] Let the dice fly

[feline_nonsense]

Characters: Cheshire Cat (AU), OPEN
Where: Around Econtra
When: Daytime
Summary: Cat's gone a-prowling, who will he find?
Warnings: Cat has a tendency to appear and disappear, and the personality-switch may catch you unawares? Otherwise, none.

Comments

[feline_nonsense]

(OOC: Hey! Sorry, I didn't get the email notification that you'd replied! Just saw your post now!)

Alice? Alice!

Cat's fur rippled, a medley of colors washing over his fur that grew momentarily long and lustrous. All too soon, it settled back to a dull gray, and his customary lantern-green of his eyes glowed, before he faded out of existence.

Invisible he was here, there, everywhere, there and back and again, while the world went slipstream around him. It was a good feeling, but not as good as being seen.

He slipped back into being a moment later, the world coalescing into exactly the way it'd always been, boring, boring, boring. The Outside never really changed its clothes, not unless you were a tree. But trees were strange, sad things. No one could hear them scream when you killed them, no one except Cat when he chose to listen.

And yet... Alice was here. Could the world truly be boring then?

He padded a few steps forward, stopping and curling himself into an upright sitting position, the closest he could get to eye-level were they on the same playing-field. "Still the same Alice, ever so hard to find. Rabbit stayed to wait for you, you know. And I? I went hunting."

[darker_alice]

Alice smiled. "I'm glad for that. It's been terribly boring being in a world that isn't your own, but the danger is just as imminent. Yet this situation is madder than anything I could think of: an army of random characters with power or not, and throwing in the absurd with potions to make you all funny and friendships coming and going. Its no way I've ever fought, really, and to endure all of this without a weapon? It was more than I could bear."

Alice took out the one weapon she treasured in a secret sort of way: there it was, that orb of unblinking cruelty, the person of which she had the pleasure of doing in. But the Jabberwock was no easy foe, that was for certain, and he attacked her mental condition, not to mentioning killing her friend Griffin. But she had done him in, and taken in that battle the powerful eye: able to bring a blast that obliterated in its path, and a rain of meteors that crushed those below.

"They were even a few idiots that pilfered my watch several months back. Imagine! Idiot pranksters with the power to change time! I think they are pleased I never caught them, which they ought to- I would have killed all involved had I known who they were. Really, a thing like that is not for anyone's hands but my own. It is a thing to save a life, but must be used rarely."

Alie shrugged. "But there's no helping it: I have to help kill those things here. I may hate London, but I've never had an enemy that toyed with my emotions by making me believe I had died. No, doing something like that deserves nothing but a grudge, and I mean to make them understand what that really looks like."

[feline_nonsense]

Cat cocked his head and flicked his tail, swick-swish!, eyes gone lambent but the light in them still pulsing as if a heartbeat. Still the same Alice, he'd said, copying the furless and their wont to judge by appearances. Didn't Cat know better than that? But still the same? Oh no, not necessarily. The Outside was different, had to be. Wonderland was made for one girl and one girl alone. Past the Looking Glass, everyone needed to share.

The dark etchings on his fur faded away, the color following, drifting its own whither-way before deciding on chocolate and caramel, deep colors swirling across his frame, now no longer thin and skeletal. "Everything's a game of pretend here, Alice," he said finally, testing his claws against the edge of a loose paving stone, "This world was not made for permanence and order, a Cat can change his coat quicker than lightning--and he certainly isn't the only one to do it."

Words and words and words and words... had she spoken as much when he had dogged her steps, when the world had grown black and the situation more and more desperate? No, no he supposed not. Communication was a staple amongst furless indoctrinations, why would things stay the same?

Just as well. Permanence bored him. "Now is your answer a yes, a no, a maybe so? You're not a dunderhead, Alice, but to lose a thing you value places blame only on yourself. This is Wonderland no longer, you will always have a choice in the matter. Is killing what you care for, or saving your friends?"

[darker_alice]

Alice watched him. He was certainly still the same old cat, that was for sure, and yet it was silly to think he would be any easier to understand based on familiarity. The Cheshire cat was a box of riddles, perhaps created from the maddest parts of Alice's brain where she enjoyed this kind of verbal assessment. Of course the Cheshire Cat would have his won advice, and certainly be startled by this "new" sort of Alice, even if he wasn't one to show it.

"You needn't remind me," Alice said dryly. "I'm not one for order, but I've never been in a place that deliberately tries to throw you to the wolves. They've all manner of mad people here, some so mad they want an ended world over one where they're allowed to live."

Alice smiled. "What a funny question, cat! One would think it was almost sentimental! Now, that is an interesting questions. Certainly I've met many people, some I would call friends, and they come and go in this place. Even took a beau for a very short time. Still...killing is what I know and, presumable, why I was made to come here. If I did NOT kill, what would I be then hmm?"

[feline_nonsense]

A world ended over one where they could live? Cat flicked an ear thoughtfully. Humans thought in absolutes, nothing happened unless it happened to them, the world did not turn unless they stood upon it. So would this world be one ended before it'd even begun? Humans could be such interesting creatures.

"Haven't you told yourself you've seen worse at Rutledge's?" Cat replied dryly, casting his eyes around him at the rest of the world slipping away, slowly, slowly, slowly at a normal pace rather than a run. It made things so very un-dizzy. "You should be used to such characters."

But... funny? Cat flicked his tail again, his grin not nearly as wide as before. Was he funny? He'd used to be. He distinctly remembered, when memory served, that once in younger days he had been silly and the world had been funny. He'd had stripes then. Pink and purple, as far from Real Life as he could be for a little girl who'd lost her way. "One might call me selfish," he added, "faster than they would call me sentimental, at any rate. It didn't pay to show such loyalties in Our Dark Days... and you had gone for a very long time, Alice."

There was no blame. Just an odd wistfulness that did not chance upon him often anymore, as memory made him remember and remembering brought up memories, of what imagination had used to be. "I suppose if Alice wasn't draped in black any longer she'd be the old Alice, 'seven and a half exactly.'"

No, it was probably better this way. Alice, Wonderland, and Cat himself had to grow up eventually--as long as it was not too much. And there was very little worry of that, not as long as Alice still knew how to play with her jacks.

[darker_alice]

Alice shrugged. "Madness in my world is one thing, but the madness of people in several worlds is something else. It isn't the villains that startle me, not really. chaos has become a constant. Its the these so-called heroes, the ones that are either slow to action or quick to attack. Their worlds must be easier than mine, for they seem to trust things will stay sane in such a crazy place. Those characters are quite a mystery to me. I can't imagine Griffin shut up in a room, lamenting his lost love."

Alice raised an eyebrow. "Have I? Well. I should hope that despite my absence, there are things that I haven't forgotten."

At the next pronouncement, however, Alice laughed. "Oh really? I find that to be quite impossible. That little girl is far behind me. I've read about her, certainly remember her, but she and I, though one in the same, cannot be reverted. I am who I am, and I don't wish to be like that again. Would you, cat?"