CHAPTER I. Down the Rabbit Hole
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Oh…" A pause. "Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Oh…" A pause. "Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Oh…" A pause. "How about now?"
"Yoh."
"Are we—"
"No. We are not there yet and even after the train pulls up to the station we still have to—" Kino sighed loudly, cutting herself off short as she realized that her ten year old grandson who may or may not have a clinical attention deficiency of some sort had gone back to playing around with that blasted kitten of his. "Never mind."
"Matamune's hungry already though!" Yoh exclaimed half-heartedly, as if that would've made the train go any faster. The tiny cat looked up at Kino and mewled its affirmation.
Kino muttered something as the train groaned to a halt and pulled up at a painfully outdated station, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the rusted up pipes and décor from the 1970s that graced the platform they stepped out on.
"Finally!" Yoh shouted, smiling down at his feline companion. "We're finally here, Matamune!" he ran ahead, shaking out his numbed limbs as he went, cat trailing after him.
Kino cursed again under her breath as she tottered after her grandson.
Yoh, after several moments of unguided sprinting, mostly fueled by sudden freedom to stretch his legs and the siren call of a new place just waiting to be explored by a much too excited ten year old, skidded to a halt. He nearly slipped on the ice crusted ground and he suddenly became aware of the biting cold wind that the Osorezan region had a sad penchant for doling out in generous amounts whenever it was winter. "Uh."
He stood, dumbfounded for such a long time that his grandmother caught up to him. "What is the matter now?" she asked, hissing as Matamune ran in circles around her ankles, as if the cat was intent on making her fall.
"Where is the house?" he murmured sheepishly.
"You take off in a blinding sprint, leaving me far, far behind and only now do you realize that you do not know where the residence is located?" she snapped angrily.
And yet again, Yoh had ceased in listening to her and began playing with Matamune again. "It can't be that far." He jutted his thumb to their left. "The only houses in the area, are all over there, right?" He rubbed his unmittened hands together, looking longingly at the smoking chimneys of the sleepy village in the distance, dreaming of crackling hearths and warm hot chocolate. He smiled and crossed his arms in front of him in an attempt to conserve body heat.
"Wrong."
Yoh's hands dropped from his chest. "What?"
Kino pointed in a completely opposite direction, her old gnarled finger indicating that they were to be walking in the direction of a distant, snow capped mountain looming over the countryside.
"You're kidding, right?" Yoh frowned, almost completely convinced that his grandmother was, in fact, jesting.
"No, we have to travel through these fields before we even make it to the mountain trail and then we have to hike a few miles before…" His grandmother rambled on as Yoh began spacing out once more.
"Hey, cut it out…what are you—Matamune!" Yoh struggled to keep a tight grip on his cat as the animal began wriggling around, trying to escape his grasp. The kitten broke free and both boy and cat froze as they heard a rustle to their left. A pair of rabbit's ears briefly shot up from amongst the tall grass, no doubt indicating that the animal was standing on its hind legs to try and sense danger. Yoh and Matamune instantly looked at each other before the cat broke out into a bounding dash after the rabbit. "Matamune! Come back here!"
Yoh, ignoring all furious protests from his grandmother who was surprisingly still going into in depth detail about their trek to the house, sprinted after the nimble animal as it zigzagged across the field in hot pursuit of the sure to be terrified rabbit. Several times, he came very close to grabbing his pet by the tail and yanking it backwards but the cat was agile, like a liquid bolt of fur, always evading and slipping his grasp by a whisper. "You stupid cat, come back here!"
Matamune looked back at him tauntingly a few times before disappearing into the thick brush of wild brambles and plants. Yoh inhaled and held his breath, bracing himself as the sharp thorns tore at his clothes and left bloody scratches on his cheeks. He kept tripping over gnarled tree roots and was well aware that his shoes were kicking up ridiculous amounts of soil and dirt as he ran deeper and deeper into the forest he had magically found himself in. A distant meowing resounded through the veritable maze of trees and he could've sworn that he saw the runaway kitten flash by an old, weathered trunk. "Where are you—Oh, crud."
Yoh, in the split second he had been suspended completely above ground, thought that this was probably what flying felt like. And then the laws of physics remembered that they were supposed to still be in effect and kicked in, sending Yoh plummeting…
down,
down,
down,
…a rabbit hole.
For a moment, Yoh thought that he was dead. And then the moment immediately after, he realized that if he were indeed dead, he wouldn't be able to think anything (or realize anything for that matter either).
As his eyes fluttered open, he found himself in the middle of the forest. The same forest he had been chasing his beloved pet through earlier. Just…
Well…
Different. This forest was larger. Much larger. Even though Yoh had ran his legs off into the thick of the forest, he had at least been able to see where the trees ended and the open field he had left his grandmother begin. But now, leafy branches, mosaic trunks and green foliage stretched as far as the eye could see.
Wait. "Leafy" and "green"? If there had been any doubt left in his mind about the forest being completely different from the one he had been in earlier, these thoughts were quickly dispelled as the forest was in its full summer glory, green leaves everywhere; quite different from the snow ridden, wintery barren landscape he had left behind in Osore.
"Damnit, I'm late."
Yoh whirled around and then he came face to face with a girl. A very pretty girl around his age in a black dress holding a pocket watch in her hand. She was very, very pretty and needless to say, Yoh's thoughts became very incoherent as he just soaked in all her prettiness.
And then he saw what was on top of her head. Blonde hair. A red bandana. Wait, no, above that.
The pair of rabbit's ears twitched as the girl came to a stop as she noticed Yoh.
"You." Her lips curled back into a snarl.
He looked around the forest before pointing to himself. "M-Me?"
She shoved the watch somewhere within the deep recesses of her pockets and glared at him accusingly. "Yes, you, idiot. Who else would I be talking to here? The entire forest is virtually empty!"
"Er…"
"You're the one with the stupid cat that chased me!" she snapped, one of her rabbit's ears quivering dangerously. "I was already late and you two forced me to detour!"
"Wait, you were the rabbit that…but how did I get here…do you know where we are…what's wrong with your ears?" he blurted out.
"Hmph, do I look like an encyclopedia to you?" She frowned and drew out her pocket watch again, her eyes widening momentarily. "Now I'm even more late! Figure it out on your own." The girl ran off in a bounding dash.
There was absolutely no way that Yoh was going to be left in the middle of some strange forest that apparently was inhabited by humans with various animal appendages. So he did the next logical thing.
He ran after her.
The girl turned her head as she was sprinting away. "What are you doing?" she yelled.
"Please, don't leave me! I have no idea where I am and…" he panted, trying in vain to keep up with her.
The girl simply hissed in disgust and quickened her pace, only pausing briefly to fling open a door that suddenly appeared in front of them. She left the door open and Yoh passed through it unflinchingly and he ended up in a hallway with the smoothest marble tiles he had ever seen. Distracted momentarily by the oddness of this hallway with its candle lit passages and various books and portraits adorning its walls, he managed to catch a glimpse of the girl who had somehow shrunk so that she was shorter than his knees as she ran through a door that barely fit her. Before Yoh could even think, the tiny door swung shut. He crouched down by it and frowned.
"How the heck am I supposed to go through there?" he moaned. He shut one of his eyes and peeped through the key hole only to see that the door led to a beautiful field where the rabbit girl was currently running through. "I have to follow her! But...but how can I become that small?" He turned around to see if he could find any clues as to how the girl was able to shrink and he promptly bumped into a table he could swear hadn't been there before. "What the—" He reached down to steady a bottle that had been on top of the table. Yoh's fingers brushed against a label that was tied around the bottle.
Drink me.
He snorted. "Yeah right. It's probably poisoned."
"You...you might want to t-try drinking it. It's supposed to shrink you...I-I think..." came a tiny voice.
"Really?" Yoh asked incredulously, bringing the bottle closer to examine it. "I guess...I really need to-Wait a minute." He whirled around to see where the voice had come from.
A tiny girl was sitting on top of the knob of the door he had been looking at earlier. She looked up sadly at him before immediately dropping her gaze and reddening.
"Where did you come from?" Yoh asked, bending over to talk to the small girl.
Suddenly, a tanuki and a kitsune materialized out of nowhere next to her. "Hey! We've been here all this time!" the tanuki yelled.
The fox nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it should be us askin' where you came from!"
The girl who Yoh noticed had bright pink hair looked extremely uncomfortable. "P-Ponchi! Conchi! S...Stop..." She shifted, moving her white robes aside, revealing that her ankle was chained to the doorknob. A pair of feathery white wings twitched nervously behind her.
He blinked in surprise and broke out into a huge smile. "Are you an angel?"
The girl brightened and opened her mouth to speak before Ponchi and Conchi interrupted. "Psh, yeah she was before the King imprisoned her here!"
"We haven't moved from here in...in forever!" The girl slumped over on the knob, her eyes shining with tears.
"Is that true?" Yoh asked in concern.
She was only able to nod slightly before bursting into heaving sobs.
"Hey, what's the big idea, you big oaf? You made Tamao cry!" the fox yelled while the tanuki shook a fist at Yoh.
Yoh gave a start and his hand immediately shot into his pocket to retrieve one of his snow gloves he had stuck in there before. "Here."
The girl, so surprised that she stopped in her crying, took the glove that was about four times her size from him and wiped her tears away. "Oh...! T-Thank you!"
"No problem. Now, I suppose I better drink this, huh?" He uncapped the glass vial and took a deep breath before downing the potion inside of it. The ground rushed up to meet him as he felt nauseously giddy for a few moments. When Yoh was able to stop reeling and he regained his senses, he realized that he was finally small enough to go through the door. But when he got to the door, he found that it was locked.
Ponchi stifled a giggle. "Are you serious?"
"You need the key, dumbhead!" Conchi snorted.
"It's back up there," Tamao mumbled while pointing at the table Yoh had found the bottle on.
"You gotta be kidding me..." Yoh wanted to just slump over and give up but his eyes fell upon a glass box he had missed earlier that was under the table; he opened it and found a cake inside of it with words elegantly written in icing on it.
Eat me.
Yoh sighed. "Well, it's not like I have anything left to lose." He downed half the cake in three bites, stuck the remainder in his pocket and immediately shot up in height. "I'm...never going to get used to this..." he moaned queasily, putting his hand to his forehead in an effort to quell his dizziness. He shook his head and slid the tiny key off the table which he now loomed above. "Now what?"
Ponchi and Conchi shot him several very rude, inappropriate gestures while Tamao motioned back at the table. He looked back to find another bottle, identical to the one he had found earlier. "Urgh...here we go again..."
After he had shrunk back down, Yoh examined his new height. "I think I drank a little too much...I think I'm shorter than I was before. Oh well, I suppose I'll be going now...Thank you for all your help!"
"Aw, it was nothing," Ponchi said bashfully while Conchi batted his eyelashes at Yoh.
Yoh frowned. "No. You two are gross and rude." He turned towards Tamao who began blushing. "Thank you very much!" he exclaimed brightly.
Tamao stuttered incoherently and reddened even more. "Now all I have to do is find that rabbit girl—"
The pink haired angel froze. "You're looking for Ann...A...A..." She began tearing up. "You're looking for another girl?" she sniffed.
"I...am...? Whoa, why are you crying?" Yoh asked hurriedly but her tears began dropping thick and fast onto the floor, gathering around them in pools by his feet.
"I...I...should have known that you were being nice to me for a reason!" she bawled, her entire body heaving in wrenching sobs, the tears coming now in veritable streams. "No one could ever care for me!"
Yoh was panicking so much that he didn't have enough time to consider how odd it was that her tears created a level of water that nearly reached his neck. All he knew was that he needed her to stop crying or he would drown for sure. "P-Please! Stop c-crying!" he spluttered as he began swimming about. "Please!"
What am I going to do? I'm going to die if this keeps up. His entire body was submerged underwater now. What's going to happen. The current of her tears brought him at eyelevel with the keyhole. Wait, I can fit through there now! I'm small enough! Before he could be yanked back, he seized the edge of the keyhole and forced himself through it, crawling through the keyhole at break neck speed. He could feel the water threatening to seep into the keyhole after him and drag him back or surge forward to suffocate him. But he suddenly tumbled out of the keyhole and into the field he had seen earlier.
And he landed on something quite soft.
"Get off of me, you idiot! You're going to make me...Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
"I'm the right size here?" Yoh felt himself roughly shoved off and then someone seized him by his collar. "Oh. Hello. I was trying to find you." He smiled as he came face to face with the rabbit girl.
She reddened and then glared at him as he drew his face precariously close to hers and snorted in disgust and cast him aside. "You again. Can't you just leave me alone?" she sighed before shoving him into a nearby lake.
When he had stood up and dried himself off, he found that he was, rather indeed, quite alone. Yoh stretched and then sat on a rock by the lake he had fallen into. "I wonder which way she went..."
A/N: I've been meaning to write an Alice in Wonderland themed Shaman King piece ever since I started this account haha Alice in Wonderland is very influential in my writing style (as you could probably tell from my icon). this was originally supposed to be a huge epic one shot but it would've been way too long... so i divided it up into multiple shorter chapters.
fanfic LJ: shatteredlyre . livejournal . com
tumblr: daniellaeheh . tumblr . com
i suppose this means i'm officially back from my long hiatus! does anyone remember me? haha and check out my other stories too! i posted a new one a few days ago.
keep this story on alerts! since this story will be updated fairly regularly. and don't forget to leave a review :)