Lost in Wonderland

[Vorian]

Wonderland is not how you remembered. What was once a joyous amalgam of dreams and magical frivolities is now sick with war and resistance. The times are hard on the people and creatures of Wonderland as the Queen of Hearts spares no expense to consolidate her rule throughout every corner of the world.

A heaviness can be felt in the capital city of Heart City. Soldiers walk the streets by day, keeping the population in check. The Jabberwocky's banshee shriek can be heard by night and is said those who hear its cries are doomed to death.

Amidsts the turmoil, a legendary figure appears in Wonderland. Alice. She of Many Fates has appeared and innumerable factions now vie for control over her and control over her blossoming power.

Alice Faces the difficult decision of who to help in a world where nothing is as it seems and the fairy tale characters she grew up with have taken a deadly turn.

[BCOLOR=#ff00ff]Alice [/BCOLOR]"She of Many Fates": Alice appears in wonderland after a traumatic experience in her life. She has vague memories, almost deja vu, of a place similar to this one. But everything she remembers has changed so much and she must find her way in this new, dark and fantastic world. What's more, she feels something growing inside her, something she isn't quite good feeling and not quite bad either. She is not quite sure if she should fear or embrace whatever it is.
[BCOLOR=#000000][BCOLOR=#800080]Cheshire "the Cat": A mysterious man who appears in his early twenties with cat-like features and a bluish tint to his skin and short brown hair. He tends to keep out of the twisted politics of Wonderland, but is intrigued when She of Many Fates appears.
[BCOLOR=#ff0000]Queen of Hearts[/BCOLOR]: She long watched the discombobulation of Wonderland and at first thought of it as cute. A minor annoyance to effective governance but nothing to worry her rather large head about. That is until her husband's death at the hands of unknown killers. Convinced it was this same chaotic nature of Wonderland that allowed her husband to be killed and his killers to disappear, she became obsessed with bringing Wonderland under a unified and strict governance. [/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#800000]Knave of Hearts: [BCOLOR=#000000] The Queen's right hand man and the ruthless leader of her secret police, the Jacks. He is completely and entirely dedicated to his Queen and will never surrender her cause.[/BCOLOR][/COLOR][/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=#008000]Mad Hatter "Head with a Thousand Minds"[BCOLOR=#000000]: A strange and variant man, the Hatter is the embodiment of the Wonderland the Queen hopes to destroy; and thus he "leads" the resistance against her. His pure unpredictability has proven a tremendously effective guerilla war campaign.
[BCOLOR=#000000][BCOLOR=#ff6600]The March Hair[/BCOLOR] "Jumpy" -as referred to by Hatter: The March Hair is the only thing that keeps Hatter grounded in reality, or as close as you can come in Wonderland. He makes sure that Hatter's wild plans are implemented by the resistance members and he is responsible for keeping Hatter himself safe and out of the Queen's grasp.[/BCOLOR][/BCOLOR]

 

[FlourPower]

Darkness.

It was all around her, pressing in from every side and every angle. It seemed to be seeping into her very being. She was drowning.

Drowning.

Another word that came effortlessly to the tip of her tongue as if it had been placed there and yet she could not recall it's meaning. Her head was full of things that had no words and words that had no meanings. There was something now, something else in the darkness. Here she had discovered taste, or lack there for of. Her mouth felt like it was full of cotton and something sharp and metallic clung to the back of her teeth. Touch came next. It was as if she suddenly remembered she had a hand. Her fingers twitched and her hand moved slowly to touch her own face. The straight line of her nose, the angular shape of her cheekbones and the flutter of her eyelashes were revealed to her. There was the smell of something harsh and chemical on her hands that she could not identify. And then there was hearing. Slowly, like water wearing away at stone, voices echoed from the darkness towards her. They were calling and beckoning her closer.

Home.

She could go to their voices. To their world so full of the things that she couldn't understand. Or she could stay here. Here in the darkness where everything was easier. She was drifting now, away from the voices. She could hear them getting softer and father away until the only thing she could hear was her own breathing. The farther from the voices she got the closer she got to something else. Her breaths became louder and louder until they were a roar in her ears. The darkness began to recede, like layer upon layer of tissue paper being pulled back. What would be underneath it all? Slowly but surely, she found herself not in the darkness but in the light. And with the light came the most startling word of all.

Alice.

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Alice groaned as she felt the press of sun against her eyelids. It was too damn early to be awake. Wasn't it a weekend? It had to be a weekend, she was sure of it. So there was really no problem if she went back to sleep. If she was wrong her alarm would just wake her up. Unless she had already slept through it. In which case it was probably too late anyways and she might as well take a sick day. She hadn't used one in a while. She frowned when she heard the call of a bird. It was piercingly loud, as if only a few feet away. Come to think of it, it was rather muggy. Had she left her window open again? One of the drawbacks of her California locale, she supposed. It got suffocaingly hot in her apartment so she'd often open a window to let in the cool breeze that poured in off the ocean. Unfortunately when she woke up the next morning the sun had come up and she'd be sleeping in a furnace. It was a vicious cycle, one she too often fell into.

There was the babble of running water too, somewhere beneath the call of that bird and she frowned. Construction noises and shrieking teenagers on their way to hit the waves maybe, but the gush of running water definitely not. She lived a short walk from the beach, short enough to smell the salt in the air and see the glisten off it between the trees on a clear day but not close enough to hear it. Besides the ocean had more of a steady 'whoosh'. This was the continuous melody of rapidly running water. Alice blinked open and eyes squinting against the light. She had expected to find the olive green walls of her bedroom. Instead she found herself in the middle of the forest.

Alice jerked up, astonished. Pins and needles ran along her arms in protest of the sudden movement but she payed them no mind. Her breath was caught in her throat and her heart stuttered in her chest. Her eyes were as wide as the sky, with which they shared their color. She was lying on a grassy bank that sloped lightly into a wide river. The middle of the water was deep and still but the sides were shallow. Water ran noisily through the divets of rocks scattered across the shore. Uneasily, she pushed herself away from the water and farther up the sloping bank. A small scattering of startlingly pink flowers was crushed under her hand. On the other side of the river and set some ways back, dark mountains rose uniformly along the horizon like tombstones in a graveyard. Alice's whole body shuddered. Where was she and what the hell was going on?

 

[Vorian]

Cheshire watched silently through the mist that hung heavy over the water. Studying her surprised reaction skeptically, he wondered briefly how the girl in front of him had appeared there. Although he was invisible to her, Cheshire wondered how she would react to a man appearing out of nowhere, much less a cat. Yet as her eyes widened and scanned her new surroundings, the deep but light blue of them confirmed Cheshire suspicions, this was Alice.

He grinned to himself at the thought of all the excitement that would soon descend on such a thoroughly boring Wonderland, for if Alice was here, then the Queen would surely know she had returned. In fact, Cardmen were no doubt being sent out like a razor net into the wilds searching for her.

The bushes to Alice's right ruffled and a rabbit in a waistcoat and small bowler hat stuck his nervous little head out. His eyes met Alice and he quickly scampered around her in two circles, looking up and down and around and pulling little strands of her hair, pinching her skin and, having decided what he wanted to know, taking her hand. "Up. Up Up UP!" the rabbit cried, "We've got to get you to the Hatter and out of the open like this." He looked frantically toward the mountains, "we haven't much time, She already knows. She knows all, the trees, the grass, the water, mist, have ears and eyes you know."

 

[FlourPower]

Alice jumped, startled at the sudden outburst of sound coming from behind her. She whirled towards the forest she had failed to notice. It was thin here, marked only by a few, reed thin trees stretching into the sky. They were spaced far apart and bushed and other shrubs grew wild between them. She could see, however, that the trees grew denser and larger in number the farther back you went. It was from one of the bushes that the noise originated. Alice scrambled on her person and in the grass around her for something to use as a weapon. Wherever she was, there was bound to be some kind of wild animals or something. Unfortunately there wasn't anything around her, not even a heavy rock. Her jean pockets- had she fallen asleep in jeans?- were empty besides an old gum wrapper. Her slick, black windbreaker was pocket-less. Whatever was in those bushes, she'd have to face alone.

Of all things, it was a rabbit who stuck it's head out. It appeared to have a little hat and outfit on. it was larger than a rabbit out to be, or at least bigger than any she'd seen. It was about the size of a small dog. Alice gazed at it in bewilderment. She supposed this was better than a vicious predator animal, but all this strangeness was making her head ache. It's eyes flicked to her's with an almost human like recognition, and instead of running away, which any normal rabbit would have done, it came toward her. The rabbit circled her, then stood on it's back paws. Alice's mouth hung open and she felt like rubbing her eyes. She shrieked when it began pulling on her flaxen colored hair and almost jumped out of her skin when it pinched her. "Ow!" She complained. No, it couldn't have pinched her. It had to have bitten her.

Then the creature did something even worse than pulling at her hair or being much too big or even wearing a silly little hat. It talked. Alice pulled her hand from it's like it had burned her, scrambling back on the grass. "No, no way! This is too weird. This isn't happening to me. I'm dreaming. No, I'm being pranked." Except she never dreamed like this and none of her friends would pull such a crazy prank." She jerked her head back up to the rabbit, scanning it for wires, then scanned the surrounding area for hidden speakers or something of the source. "Am I crazy?"