Two
The story of a girl who could not figure out herself, and it ripped her apart.
Kokoro.
Kikou.
They are two, and now they must learn to survive in a world with roses and poison, blades and broken hearts, guns and tea.
Both must learn who they are- where they came from, what they're supposed to accomplish here, and why they are whothey are.
As people, they are both missing something.
If it's Wonderland, maybe they will find that something here.
Down they go, down the rabbit hole, to the country where everything will change...
And just maybe, the mystery of self can be unraveled.
Chapter 1
Arrival
Kikou did not know quite what to feel when she dropped into a hole, and then into a bright blue sky. She wanted to feel angry at the person who had created the hole, but she didn't know really who had done that, so she settled for cursing at the rapidly distancing black dot in the sky in very fluent French.
Her second thought was Kokoro- where was her sister?! Frantically looking around in every which way, the girl found that she could not see her sibling anywhere... Even though they should have been dropped down the same hole.
Panic welled up in her chest before it instantly calmed. Kokoro could take care of her self, and now Kikoku needed to figure out how the hell to land without killing herself... If that was even possible.
Her eyes narrowed and she put her hands up to guard her face from the stinging wind- it was harsh and had no mercy for a human in it's territory. The land started to come even closer and closer, and now Kikoku could see the blur of a tower- something big and green.
She grit her teeth and started rummaging through her thoughts, for even the slightest hint of an answer to saving herself from imminent death. The wind grew stronger, tearing at her skin and howling in her ears, and the tower began to increase in size in perception, and Kikoku began to understand what the saying "staring at Death in the eyes" meant- because that was exactly what she was doing.
Curling up into a little ball to try to lessen the impact once she hit the impeding ground, Kikoku braced herself for the pain, when instead of the slamming of body on brick, was a light weightless feeling as strong arms carried her weight, and Kikoku looked up to see a man in scarlet red, smiling at her like nothing was wrong, and saving her from the fall.
With a small grunt of effort, the man touched down onto what Kikoku assumed was the top of the tower, and then grinned at her with a creepy smile that radiated danger. Though he was her savior, the girl didn't think this man was a good person in any way, shape, or form.
Kikoku immediately tensed and rolled out of his grip, landing lightly onto the floor with a hand at the katana to her side.
"Who are you?" She asked with a fierce growl, her eyebrows drawn in suspicion and mouth set in a straight, flat line.
"Me?" The man chuckled innocently, and rummaged around in his jacket pocket, one hand casually set on the broadsword's hilt hooked to his belt on the right. He brought out a blue tinted glass vial, with some odd liquid inside.
"I'm Ace, the Knight of Hearts~! Welcome to the Land of Hearts, Outsider!"
She proceeded to draw her sword and level it at the goofily smiling knight. "Die."
Kokoro, once noticing that the ground was no longer solidly beneath her feet and the sky was where she was falling, was entirely calm. She wondered why she was falling and how, then remembered the hole she had fell down.
A tinge of worry came to be once the girl noticed that her counterpart and partner, Kikoku, was not here, however, it soon faded. The wind was pleasant to Kokoro's skin, the white clouds beautiful and the view from this high up a true one-in-a-lifetime experience.
So instead of dwelling on how she was going to save herself, as Kokoro knew that she didn't have the tools or the skill to do so, she simply waited for something to happen. If she knew these moments were going to be her last minutes on Earth, then Kokoro would rather have a calm contemplation of the life she had rather than a scream fest.
And if she was saved, well, she'd just have to wait for that to happen, yes?
As Kokoro came even closer to the ground, she noticed that she seemed to be landing in a rapidly nearing amusement park- ah, what fun! A graveyard as an amusement park. That's one on the bucket list.
To her irritation, however, she found that she would not be able to ride on any of these delightful looking rides if she died here. What a shame, Kokoro thought as the roar of the wind grew even louder and her hair started to whip into her face painfully.
That rollercoaster looks like a lot of fun...
But instead of a jarring and painful smash to the ground, Kokoro's body is suddenly engulfed in a buoyant warmth, filling with tension before pushing outward so that she jumps back up into the air once more, and then down, again and again until the momentum finally slows.
To the girl's good fortune, she had landed in a bouncy house, filled with air and incredibly flexible and cushiony, which made for a nice landing without any broken bones and just a little rug burn. Kokoro had been born with good luck, and that luck had saved her.
Unfortunately, the first fall must have taken out most of the air and now the bouncy house is a mess of colorful plastic, while some children around it pull their mothers over to have a look.
Hoisting herself up, Kokoro notices a slight clink as something falls out of her pocket, the fact that the people were faceless the least of her nonexistent worries.
"What's this..?" She murmurs under her breath, as she turns the small glass vial over in her hands, to see yellow tinted glass and a heart stopper. The liquid inside sloshes but makes no audible sound.
Shrugging, Kokoro pockets the vial and makes her way out of the collapsed attraction, noticing the stares from all the people around her and not caring enough to stop and correct any assumptions. As she distances herself from her landing point, she finds that the people in the amusement park generally ignore her, all smiles and laughs, looking forward to the attractions and food all around.
As she nears the amusement park exit, she tilts her head to her side, contemplating leaving or going on the rollercoaster once, just in case she didn't get to come back here again, when a loud voice yells,
"WHO DID THIS TO MY BOUNCY HOUSE!? EMPLOYEES, FIND THEM, THEY MUST BE FROM THE HATTERS!"
All of the vocabulary used are foreign to her, but Kokoro finds that it might be intelligent to get on a ride so as not to arise suspicion... She wasn't a total airhead like Kikou liked to believe.
And so the second Outsider skipped merrily down the pathway, the vial still stowed away in her pocket, it's contents entirely innocent to the average person, and towards the roller coaster to "dissuade suspicion". Technically, this was just doing what she wanted to do, which was what Kokoro did best.
Ace was really having a wonderful day!
Today was a very rare time change in logical order from dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night.
During the dawn time change, the red-haired knight was out camping in the forest somewhere, trying to get to the Clock Tower with some clocks that he had in his little bag, covered in blood and nonchalantly roasting some fish over a fire.
Due to some cat, (that obviously didn't value its own life) stealing his fish, Ace had actually found the Clock Tower by the time the next time change had come around, and like said, it was morning.
Ace was so happy to see such a shocked Julius that he tackled him, and nearly succeeded in hugging him but his plans were foiled by a wrench flying at his head, as per usual.
Giving all the clocks to Julius to fix, Ace had so much free time on his hands he had no idea what to do, so he wandered around through the rest of the time changes through many of the regions, angering the March Hare to the point of a gun shoot out.
Well, that always happened, so it wasn't much of an extreme. Boris also tried to kill him with the sweet AK-47 but that didn't end up working either, and of course, the Queen of Hearts did her best to beguile him into thinking that she could have him beheaded at any moment.
Dee and Dum almost sliced him in half, (it was a nice save) and of course, Ace sent back the lovely favor with a slice of his own magnificent swordplay.
But after all that and once the knight of hearts had already wandered his way back to the Clock Tower to resume his duties, it was night, and then suddenly it changed to the noon time change.
Cheered at the sudden increase in sunlight, Ace looked up to see the beautiful blue sky with no clouds, only to instead see a person falling from the heavens. It shocked him so much that he started laughing, then figured that this person probably needed his help; otherwise they would crash into the ground and die.
So in an act of complete randomness, Ace leapt up and caught the person in his arms, touching down safely back down at the tower, and then looking at the person as innocently as possible while observing every inch of... Her.
His hands were caught on a cargo green soft jacket and dark wash jeans, and the person he was looking at was slim but fit with broad shoulders for a woman and tanned skin. The grey tee she wore that said "If I told you, I'd have to kill you," in hot pink was a dead give away to her personality.
Her lower end felt heavier- black leather laced up combat boots were the source of the weight, but all of these details weren't even important, because she had eyes!
Beautiful, hard violet eyes, with glints of steel underneath such beautiful purple mist.. Her expression was one of suspicion, framed with the shorter dark locks around her face. She escaped his grip rather easily and rolled to face him, with her hand on the katana he had forgotten to mention.
It was slight, but he had heard it. The beating of the heart. Thump. Ba-thump. Thump.
She was a Foreigner!
Since Alice was still here and had not yet completed her game yet, it made absolutely no sense as to why this woman was here! And that was what was so intriguing about it, because Ace loved bizarre things more than anticipated things, and this girl was one of those.
When she bared her fangs at him as he talked, he knew that things were going to start to get interesting around here. Especially with the vial in his jacket, that he now had to get this Foreigner to drink.. But how, he wondered?
Well, that was not important. If this girl could amuse him.. A smirk creeped up on his lips. Then it was well worth it to wait it out.
Boris was having a nice little "cat nap" when Gowland's voice of fury made him wake up with a yowl as he rolled out of his bed and onto the floor, bumping his head onto many things.
Coming to a stop, Boris whined at the bruises on his arms and then proceeded to lick them until he was satisfied, still a cat at heart. Internally, of course, he was fuming at how even the old man's non-singing voice could wake him up so quickly.
Looking outside his window, he saw Gowland shrieking in fury over a deflated bouncy house and groaned. The Cheshire Cat had absolutely no reason to wake up so early in the afternoon, and now Merry Go Round was ruining his sleeping time.
Knowing that trying to fall asleep again would be more of a waste of time, Boris stretched languidly and exited his house to land on the outskirts of the amusement park streets. Most of the faceless didn't bat an eyelash at his arrival -they were too used to it- and the cat took his time to walk around, blending in with the environment and looking for something interesting to do.
When he had walked around for a while with absolutely nothing amusing around, Boris was about to go to the Hearts Castle to go kill more guards when he heard a squabble going on around the rollercoaster entrance.
Turning his head, feline eyes studied the girl and the ride monitor who both seemed to be arguing about something. The girl, with long brown hair that bordered on the line between dark and light, was smaller compared to the ride monitor, but seemed to almost be suspended in air, floating continuously, movements light and without burden.
She didn't seem to be the slightest bit perturbed at all, and smiled at the monitor, who seemed frantic to trying to get her to understand but frustrated that he naturally couldn't because she didn't seem to be very caring of the situation at hand at all.
The Cheshire Cat grinned and slinked over towards a bench that was in hearing range of the two, and did a little listening in. Amusement was something in short supply, and the golden-eyed feline would take everything he could get.
"Miss, please, can you just go back to the ticket center and confirm with security that you indeed passed through the gate? It won't be much trouble, I promise."
"But I- I came here just to ride the rollercoaster!" The girl sniffed, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she started crying. The ride monitor, knowing the glares that people were giving him, understandably sighed and just waved her into the line.
She brightened instantly as her tears dried, and then hummed, skipping into line. Boris was intrigued. He hadn't been so for a very long while, and so thought it smart to actually use this chance to interact with someone who didn't seem boring!
"Hey, ride monitor! Can you let me and her skip to the front of the line?" Boris grinned and asked, and the monitor barely acknowledged the fact that this was an unreasonable request and nodded.
Grabbing the girl in mention's wrist, Boris pulled her all the way to the front, and then got seated at the very front, strapping themselves in.
"Hey, you, what's your-..." The Cheshire Cat's famous grin dropped in astonishment to see that this woman had eyes.. And such beautiful eyes, too!
A caramel brown that seemed to be so soft and deliciously warm, with a sheen of gold that seemed to glow whenever the light hit her irises at just the right moment.. Her skin was pale, and as he chanced a brief brush, just as mellow and warm as her eyes.
"W-Who.. Are you?"
"Who are you as in.. Am I human?" She cocked her head to the side, confused, and Boris noticed, finally, the most exotic and rare sound he had ever heard in his life- the thumping of the heart.
"Um... If you mean my name, I'm Kokoro." Her voice was sweet and kind on the ears, a tone that you could listen to forever...
And though Alice hadn't finished her game, somehow, another foreigner had appeared..
Not that Boris was complaining.
"I'm Boris, the Cheshire Cat! Say, have you seen anything that looks like a small vial..?"
So.. How was that for starters?
I really love writing Kokoro and Kikou to a horrifying extent, so I'm pretty sure the next update won't be that far off.
If any of you read this and like it, thank god! This was actually one of my better writing pieces.
Sincerely,
Allora
