After Neku's little run in with the Tweedles, he was not pleased one bit. His day was going absolutely awful. He'd gotten lost in the school hallway, nearly drowned in what was supposedly an ocean full of tears, gotten forced into a frilly ribbon-laced dress, and now he was wandering through the forest, trying to track some guy named The White Rabbit. A truly awful day indeed.

After wandering alone through what seemed to be some strange foreign forest, completely lost, for what felt like hours, Neku found that he was starting to feel rather hungry.

"Damn it," he swore, pausing to sit down on a fallen log, realizing that this venture through… wherever it is he was had cost him his lunch period.

He heaved a sigh, looking up at the tree leaves blocking what Neku assumed was a blue sky. He couldn't be too sure, though. Nothing seemed to make sense here. The sky could be orange for all he knew.

"Well you seem rather lost," yet another new voice called.

Neku groaned and buried his face in his knees, not wanting to meet any other freaks, especially dressed the way he was. "Go away," he grumbled.

"Okay," responded the voice.

It was silent for the few minutes that followed.

"…" Neku looked up. There was no one there. "Damn it," he swore again. "This is just great. I'm imagining things now, am I?..." he muttered to himself, not expecting any kind of answer.

"Yes. You are." Replied the voice from before.

Neku jumped, startled, and fell backwards off the log he was sitting on. He groaned, stood up, patted the dust off of his dress, and looked in the direction he'd heard the voice from. And sure enough, there, in the middle of the woods, was a single floating crescent moon smile.

"…Hi," said Neku, not knowing what else to do. He gave a small wave as well.

"Hello," said the smile, the space around it becoming distorted as the man that the grin belonged to faded into reality.

Neku stared at him. The man seemed in his late twenties and had black hair that fell to his shoulders. He was wearing red headphones around his neck as well as silver-rimmed sunglasses over his eyes. He was wearing a purple and pink striped suit and for some reason had matching cat ears and a tail.

"…Who the hell are you?"

"The Cheshire Cat," said the man, returning Neku's small wave from earlier.

"…Oh."

Well I guess that explains the ears…thought Neku.

"So, as I said before…" said the cat, disappearing again and then reappearing right next to Neku. "You seem rather lost, Alice. Is there anything I might be able to help you with?"

"W-well, I amkind of hungry…" Neku stuttered, jumping a bit. "And it's Neku. Not Alice."

"Well, Alice," said the cat, beginning to fade again. "You should probably concentrate more on the task at hand than be worrying about food, but…" he reached into his pocket, grabbed a small gift box, and threw it towards Neku before fading completely.

Neku caught the box and tugged the ribbon until it came undone, the sides falling down to reveal a small berry.

"…" Neku stared at it. What the hell? This was it? Neku remembered the green liquid from before. Would this berry make him shrink, too? Or perhaps it would make him grow. It would make sense that foods would do the opposite of beverages, didn't it? He shook his head. He didn't even care anymore. He just wanted to eat. So he ate the berry.

A minute later he was roughly the size of an ant, the cardboard that had once held the berry floating down from above and burying him a few moments later.

"Hey!" someone shouted. "Factoring hectopascal! Don't litter!"

Neku climbed out from under the gift wrapping and looked up to see a dark skinned man with silver hair and a black cap sitting on the top of a mushroom and wrapped in what looked like a cocoon.

"Um," replied Neku with a blank look on his face. What was this guysupposed to be? A Metapod? Or some lame attempt at a caterpillar?

"SO ZETTA SLOW!" the Metapod/caterpillar shouted at him.

"…what."

"I said, you're so zetta slow." repeated the man, struggling to sit up in his cocoon.

"Well I'm uh… sorry?... Look, I'm just trying to get home." Neku groaned. "Do you have any weird kind of potion or berry that'll make me bigger?..."

"Yes." Replied the caterpillar (Neku decided he was a caterpillar).

"…So can I have it?" Neku asked hopefully.

"If you answer my question," the caterpillar smirked, lighting a cigarette with a match and sticking it into his mouth, leaning his head off of the side of the mushroom so he was now looking at Neku upside down.

Neku walked a little closer, coughing a bit when he approached a cloud of smoke. "Alright… fine." He managed between coughs. "What's your… question?"

"What do I eat for breakfast?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know that?" Neku shouted, sick of all this nonsense.

"SOHCATTOA," the caterpillar replied simply, as if it was a hint.

"Um. Alright…" Neku muttered, trailing off in thought for a moment or two before replying. "Some of… hash-browns. And then maybe… Cereal and tofu… and uh… Tons of apples?"

"SO ZETTA WRONG!" Caterpillar Man shouted. "The answer was Slabs of Ham, Celery and Horseradish, Tons of Asparagus.

"…Those aren't breakfast foods." Neku informed him.

The caterpillar rolled his eyes. "Okay. Another riddle then."

Neku groaned. "Really?"

The caterpillar ignored him and went on with the riddle. "You're driving a bus. Two kids get on. One kid gets off. Forty-two kids get on, twelve get off. Another fifteen kids get on. Two get off. One thousand eight hundred and sixty-two kids get on and the square root of one hundred forty-four get off. You got that?"

Neku took a few minutes, struggling to add and subtract all the numbers in his head, before replying. "Y-yeah, I think I got it… There were uh… one thousand seven hundre-

"What was the name of the driver?" the caterpillar interrupted, taking his cigarette away from his mouth for s moment to exhale some smoke that curled itself into some strange sort of complicated algebra equation before fading away.

"…What," said Neku. "Well how the hell am I supposed to know that?"

"…Guess."

Neku groaned. "Well I don't know!" he shouted, slapping his forehead with his palm before continuing. "Um. Is it whatever the hell your name is?..."

The caterpillar shook his head, blowing out some more smoky math problems. "You moronic zero…" he sighed. "Youwere driving the bus, idiot. So the correct answer was 'Alice'."

"My name's not Alice!" Neku shouted for what felt like at leastthe hundredth time that day. "It's Neku Saku-

"You know how much weight I'll let you carry in my garden, Alice?" the caterpillar interrupted.

"…I don't know." Neku sighed.

"One yoctogram."

"…a yoctowhat?"

"That puts you on the microscopic level."

It was silent for the few minutes that followed. This guy was making absolutely no sense.

"So are you gonna help me or not?" Neku asked after a bit.

The caterpillar blinked and pointed to a small patch of mushrooms that were laying under his own huge fungus. "Half of them do something. The other half does something else."

Half of the mushrooms were blue. The other half was red. Neku stared at them. Had they been there before? He turned back to ask the caterpillar which color did what, but the man was now fully wrapped in his cocoon.

Caterpillar had officially evolved into Metapod.

Neku sighed. Whatever. He had a 50/50 chance, right? And even if he picked the wrong mushroom and wound up shrinking, he could always just eat the other color afterwards, right? Neku nodded to himself. Looked like taste-testing was the only way.

THE NEXT CHAPTER IS THE TEA COFFEE PARTY. Can you guess who the hatter is, yet~?

CAST SO FAR:
Neku as Alice
Joshua as The White Rabbit
Eri as the Doorknob
777 as The Dodo Bird
Tenho and BJ as random nameless people
? as The Hare (You should be able to guess :I)
Uzuki as Tweedledee
Kariya as Tweedledum
Megumi as The Cheshire Cat
Sho as The Caterpillar/Metapod