A/N: The very first fanfic written by Black Fungus. I do not own Kingdom Hearts or the Cheshire Cat, but I've humanized the kitty for the purposes of this story. He's more like the original Cheshire Cat from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland than the Disney version, because I don't like the Disney Cat that much.
And sorry, Lewis Carroll, for casting aspersions on your character. I still think you're pretty awesome.
Contains a crack pairing in the form of AxelXCheshire Cat.
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Once upon a time, there was a lovely princess who lived in a forest with all her woodland friends.
A few worlds to the left and past the giant whale thing that wasn't always there, there was Wonderland.
In Wonderland, one very disgruntled Nobody was currently staring up at a disproportionate table with no small amount of ire, gloved hands propped on his hips. Or rather, he would have been staring at the table with ire had he been able to feel ire, which he couldn't, so he wasn't. Suffice it to say that Axel was not pleased. Of course, Nobodies could not technically feel joy, so they were never pleased, but even Zexion had to admit that Demyx could do a damned good impression of it whenever the musician found some way to slack off on the job.
Right now, Axel was pretty sure that the sitar player was acting like the cat that'd got the cream, canary, and about five pounds of catnip to boot back in the World That Never Was, seeing as how it was thanks to Number IX that Axel was even here in the first place. The pyromancer muttered dire implications upon the head of his colleague even as he was secretly impressed that Demyx had somehow managed to convince Number VII that he was unfit for recon in Wonderland. A little incompetence went a long way, apparently, and Axel was almost sorry that he'd performed so well in his very first mission. If he had not, maybe he wouldn't be here now, in this bizarre world that looked as if it had been dreamt up by some epileptic guy with a thing for small girls and shrooms.
However, the events that led to Axel's situation were irrelevant, since they could not change the fact that the pyromancer was looking up at a table about five times as tall as he was. He couldn't even see the bottles with that nasty stuff that tasted like mushrooms and toast (he didn't want to imagine what was actually in those things) that had caused him to change size so drastically, but at least he was small enough to fit through the door on the far side of the room now.
After a small altercation in which a sleeping doorknob was woken rather rudely by a flaming chakram to the face, Axel found himself surrounded on all sides by various specimens of foliage, all larger than they had any right to be (or maybe he was just too small, but Axel would rather blame it on his surroundings), along with a worrying number of large yellow mushrooms. Well, at least he knew what Wonderland's inhabitants were on now, he mused as he hopped from the cap of one mushroom to another, glancing at his surroundings in a bored fashion so he'd at least have something to report back to Saïx aside from how one could get the same experience of visiting Wonderland by simply taking acid.
And it was quite likely that the fungi he'd just jumped across were the source of that mushroom flavor in that potion he drank, because Axel was now seeing a set of what looked like—teeth, of all things, floating in midair in front of his face. Yes, teeth. Sharp, pointy teeth. Floating. The pyromancer took a step back and very nearly fell off the leafy platform he was standing on. The only thing that saved him from a harmless-yet-very-undignified fall was the pair of invisible arms that suddenly wrapped around his too-skinny waist (and no, Axel did not wear corsets, no matter what rumors Demyx spread to the contrary).
Axel stayed motionless for about half a minute, wondering what exactly was the standard procedure to follow when one is saved by a pair of invisible arms. The Organization had certainly never briefed him on this. Actually, the Organization's "briefing" for this mission had been Saïx growling a quick "Don't be spotted by the natives" and then shoving him through a portal, where he was nearly run over by a rabbit with a pocket watch. Yeah, Saïx sure was a helpful one, wasn't he? Not.
A small shove to his back, still unseen, sent Axel stumbling back toward the center of the platform, where he regained his balance and whipped his head around to face his savior. Oh, so now it was a creepy floating grin and two glowing yellow eyes. This was just getting better and better.
Now, Axel wasn't one to back down from any confrontation, not even from a disembodied face. The redhead straightened up quickly, crossing his arms over his chest and giving the apparition his best haughty stare.
"Who're you?" the pyromancer asked—no, demanded, cockily, the challenge clear in his voice.
"Why, I'm me," a voice, disembodied as the face, replied. "I think the question is, who are you? Or rather, what are you? Like something familiar, but something…not."
Of course, Axel could have spent the rest of the day there playing Twenty Questions with the creature, but the pyromancer wanted this mission to be over and done as soon as possible, so he could get back to the castle to force Demyx to reveal the secret of how to make other people do your work for you. Or take a nap. A nap was sounding pretty good. With that thought in mind, Axel decided to answer in the most straightforward way possible. Cue the catchphrase.
"The name's Axel. A-X-E-L. Got it memorized?" the redhead introduced himself, waving one hand around and indicating himself with it. "I'm a Nobody." Saïx and all that stealth crap be damned. Maybe if he screwed this up, he'd no longer have to do recon. Mindlessly slaughtering Heartless was a great deal more amusing than this.
"A pleasure to meet you, Axel the Nobody. I'm a cat. A Cheshire Cat."
The pyromancer blinked. "…You sure as hell don't look like a cat. You're a floating face."
Though the wide grin remained in place, within seconds, the rest of the creature had materialized around it. It looked like a boy, perhaps a few years older than Roxas, skinny and slightly hunched over, as if ready to spring forward. As far as Axel could tell, the kid was human. A human with slit-pupil yellow eyes and worryingly pointed teeth. Oh, and possibly the gayest hair color in this world (since Marluxia was, of course, back in the World That Never Was): a wild mass of magenta and violet.
"You still don't look like a cat," Axel pointed out.
"And you don't look like a Nobody."
"Excuse me?"
"I said, you don't look like a Nobody. You have a body, but you're lacking a no. How can you be a Nobody if you do not have no body?" the creature replied, eyes half lidded and carefully appraising the redhead.
Axel frowned, slightly put off by the thing's twisted use of negatives (if Zexion were here, he would have thrown a bitch fit about proper grammar), but feeling as if he'd been insulted all the same. "I'm more of a Nobody than you are a cat," the pyromancer snapped, not quite sure why he was now treating the term "nobody" as some sort of good thing. Oh yeah, because he was one. That made it good by default, right?
"But I'm a Cheshire Cat," the cat that looked like a boy practically purred, as if that made all the difference. As far as Axel could see, it didn't, but then again, he probably wasn't drugged up enough for it to make sense. Or maybe he was, because now he was watching as the creature took off its head and balanced on top of it on one foot. It was…slightly disturbing, to say the least, and Axel could think of one tall, dark, and rather dead guy in another world who'd be delighted to have this kid for his opening act next Halloween.
"Can you stand on your head?"
"No. My head isn't detachable." The pyromancer, having had just about enough of this, turned to leave, only to find himself face-to-face with the self-proclaimed cat, who, thankfully, had its head on in the proper manner again.
"If you have no body, you shouldn't be able to stand at all," it informed him solicitously. Axel scowled.
"You make no sense." Hadn't this kid ever heard of personal space? Feral yellow eyes were inches away from emerald green, and even as Axel pulled his head back slightly, his mind supplied him with the stupid random thought of the day: Hey, this kid isn't half-bad looking. Not as good as me, of course…
"Oh, no, I make sense. I make perfect sense. It is you who is not making sense."
Axel tried to think of a rebuttal, but was slightly distracted by trying to keep a respectable distance between himself and the kid. Unfortunately, our favorite pyromancer was nearing the edge of the platform, and the Cheshire Cat showed no signs of backing off anytime soon, still yammering on about sense and not making any.
"I'm making sense of what I say, you see, because I understand it. On the other hand, you do not understand what I say."
"I'm pretty sure no one does," Axel grumbled. To his annoyance, the Cat ignored him.
"You do not understand, so you are the one who is not making sense of what I say. Therefore, you make no sense."
The redhead, about to leap off the platform even though this would mean he'd have to start that ridiculous mushroom jumping sequence again to make it back to the upside-down room, paused and scowled. Axel did not appreciate being outwitted by a cat, even if it was a Cheshire Cat.
"Language doesn't work like that," he snapped.
The Cheshire Cat moved forward just a bit more, until his nose touched Axel's and the unfortunate Nobody was forced to cross his eyes to keep the stupid kid in sight. "Really? It works like that for me," the creature mused. "Perhaps you aren't paying it enough."
Axel had no answer to this besides pointing out the glaringly obvious flaw in logic, which he didn't think was going to help anyway, so he did the only thing he could. He stuck his face forward and crushed his lips to the Cat's.
It wasn't a very good kiss, messy and teeth colliding painfully and Remind me never to do this with anything that has sharp pointy canines ever again, which would of course rule out Saïx, but Axel would never in a million years get closer than was absolutely necessary to that pissy bastard even if Luxord paid him to, not to mention that Xemnas would throw an even bigger bitch fit than Zexion over the (nonexistent) grammar of his current thoughts should he ever have the desire to write them down, and Holy Darkness what am I doing?
Winning this argument, Axel's brain (the part that hadn't imploded from the sheer stupidity of his random actions) replied, though, upon reflection, he couldn't imagine how this could be counted as an appropriate rebuttal. The kiss lasted a few seconds at most, just enough for the Cheshire Cat to recollect his wits, but someone seemed to have cast Slow on their surroundings, because it seemed like they'd been in this position for about an hour. Axel's distracted mind suggested that it was probably Luxord, and the gambler was seizing the opportunity to obtain more blackmail photos to use against the pyromancer. As if he didn't have enough already.
And then the Cheshire Cat backed off, slightly less gracefully than the manner in which he'd approached. Wide glowing eyes regarded the Nobody before him, who was glaring back with poison green eyes and wiping a trace of blood from his torn lip. A few long seconds passed, no words exchanged, when suddenly the boy burst out into a fit of laughter and made a graceful about-face, somehow transmutating into a violet-and-magenta striped cat in the process. The laughter continued, however, as the Cheshire Cat bounded off into the trees, the faint lines of a nonsense song echoing back to one nonplussed Nobody.
"Holy shit," Axel said to himself. "I just made out with a cat."