Author's Note: We're coming to the climax so soon! Well, this is a rather short series. There'll be a couple more chapters after this. ^^ As you probably noticed in the last chapter I said "Jabberwocky" instead of "Jabberwock". My bad. It was supposed to be Jabberwock. Well now you know. Thank you to all my reviewers. This time a special thanks goes to Magic At Midnight. Anyways, in this chapter I felt that I had to add some little Jabberwock references.

Oh yes, as someone did mention (too lazy to look back) Hazel does have many flaws. She's just not that three-dimensional. That's because when I started my story, I didn't quite flesh her out. And it IS my first fanfic. So, yeah. :P I think I'm going to make a sequel and flesh her out more then. Magic After Midnight, yes, this story doesn't have many details to the point where it's kind of a problem. However, I found that on the Alice in Wonderland forums so many stories are hard to read due to the fact that it's written in this certain… style. You probably know what I mean. So I wanted this to be easier to read. I know, though—I do need more details and stuff to make it flow better.

I looked to the sky and found my pink star. The next few days would be interesting.

Allow me to say something about the Cheshire Cat. That is… he is a very mischievous creature and while he is so very likable, he often does things without notifying you. Very independent. Very catlike. So I shouldn't have been surprised at all when the Cheshire Cat began walking towards the jungle.

"Chess," I said. "Isn't there a Jabberwock in there?" He continued walking.

"You mean Jabberwocks, right, Hazel dear?" he said. "Because there's more than one." This thought was not necessarily comforting to me. It gave me unpleasant memories—

Wait. I had never heard of a Jabberwock before… Yet I was sure I had run into one before. Sometime in the past.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
 And the mome raths outgrabe.

For whatever reason those words started echoing over and over again in my head. It was complete nonsense and yet I had a feeling that it meant a great deal. However, I did not have time to dwell on this strangeness (I felt I never had time to dwell on that type of thing), because I stepped foot into the jungle. The trees were all dead and were the color of the ash that was underneath my feet. Everything seemed to be black and white and shades of grey. It was maddening. I wanted to see a little patch of color somewhere. The blue on my dress seemed to dim down as well. That's when I realized something.

It wasn't just my imagination. Everything was black and white, including me and the Cheshire Cat. While I was staring at my now grey dress, Chess appeared right in front of my face. It always scared me when he did that.

"So I see you've figured out what's special about this place," he said. I glared at him.

"I wish you would stop doing that," I said. "And yes. Everything's got no color. What is this place?" The Cheshire Cat swished his tail about.

"It's what we call a colorless wasteland. They sprout in Wonderland here and there, usually in places where disasters have occurred…"

I shivered and wondered what had happened here. I looked behind me. I was expecting to see the clearing, the edge of the jungle that I had just come through, but all I saw were trees. I swallowed. I was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic. There were strange noises and I swear, I thought that a Jabberwock (whatever the thing was) was going to jump out at me in any second. To make matters worse, the Cheshire Cat would disappear and reappear at random intervals.

I mustered up the courage to ask the one question that I felt was very important.

"What happened here?" I asked him. "You know, to create the colorless wasteland."

The Cheshire Cat, who had been skipping through the jungle a moment before, stopped and I watched as his tail drooped.

"Oh," I said. "Well, you don't need to answer if it makes you sad…" I trailed off and felt very guilty and awkward.

Only when Chess turned around, he was different. He always had a grin on his face or a lopsided smile, and his eyes had always been bright yellow. But now he was making a hissing noise and his eyes were black.

He disappeared.

My heart pounded. What was wrong with him? I wondered if I had said something to make him turn Mad…

Claws dug into my arms.

"Hey," the voice of the Cheshire Cat said, "what are you doing here?" He was standing right behind me, his face right next to mine, and his chin rested on my shoulder. But his claws still dug into my arms.

"Chess," I said, trying to be calm. "Stop it."

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!

He laughed. "Whatever do you mean? I believe you've mistaken me for somebody else." I stiffened and tried to get a closer look at his face. It was sickening. The face that had looked like Chess's the moment before was now morphing into something much more grotesque and fearsome. The claws grew larger and more curled(and they still remained in my arms), the face grew into that of a monster's, it's body grew and elongated into a thing that I thought resembled an overgrown bat that had merged with a lizard.

"I am not the Cheshire Cat, little Wonderlander," it said in a deep voice. I wondered how I could rip myself from its claws. And it had called me a Wonderlander. I wasn't a Wonderlander by any stretch. The monster cackled. "I'm actually a Jabberwock. It's been a pleasure meeting you, but I'm rather hungry."

I shivered in its grip. Apparently Jabberwocks had the ability to disguise themselves. The thing lifted me up like I didn't weigh anything at all.

"I was so happy to see you," he carried on. "Too many Wonderlanders don't travel here now and I get so hungry." He scratched at a scale. "You can't imagine. The hunger pains—they're simply unbearable."

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

I had no idea where that voice was coming from. Surely not from Chaos. She wouldn't be trying to help me out of a situation like this, would she? I shook the thought out of my head. The Jabberwock scratched a bit of skin off of my left arm (just a small bit) and popped it in his mouth. And grinned. "Delicious…"

That's when I lost it. I smiled at him as he brought me closer to his jaws.

"Call me Alice," I said. He loosened his hold on me and I grabbed my knife. I plunged it into his hand. He wailed in pain and dropped me.

"You're not a Wonderlander…" he trailed off. "You've got a Vorpal sword…" He stiffened as I knifed him in the lower part of his stomach. He fell to the ground. I raised my dagger again but suddenly I found myself staring at the injured body of the Cheshire Cat. It was a defensive tactic. But I was Alice, I didn't care a bit about that mangy old cat.

I cut the thing's head off.

When I came out of my Madness, I was holding the Jabberwock's head and its blood was pooling about me.

"Hazel! And has thou slain the Jabberwock?"

I dropped the head and turned around to see another Cheshire Cat. I backed away.

No. Don't worry. I'm the real one.

I sighed with relief—I figured that Jabberwocks couldn't speak into other people's minds. "Chess, stop doing that. I could've died."

He shook his head. "No, Hazel dear. You wouldn't have. You're an Outsider. Any weapon you posses becomes the Vorpal sword and you will inevitably slay the Jabberwock."

That didn't stop me from glaring at him. "Well, did you find who you were looking for?" I asked.

"In fact I did," he said, beaming. "And he's right here."

The cat held out his hand. I walked forwards and saw in his hand a… caterpillar. It was big and fat and blue looking. Not very attractive at all. I stared. That's when it spoke to me.

"You know," it said, "I could change forms into a woolly bear if you prefer." With one of its many legs it pulled out a cigar from who knows where and began blowing different coloured smoke rings in my face.

I coughed. "S-sorry," I said. "Didn't mean to offend you by staring."

"And no offense taken, dear girl," it said. "I heard you were seeking advice."

Yes, I was seeking advice. I simply wasn't expecting it to come from a caterpillar's mouth. "Yes."

"About what?" it asked me. "Don't take too long. I've got to be somewhere very soon." He stared at me rather impatiently with his tiny green eyes.

"A cure for Alice," I said. "She wasn't always this way, was she?"

And with that, the caterpillar sighed, closed his eyes, and blew his pipe in a very nostalgic fashion. "Oh yes," he said. "You wouldn't believe how different she used to be. Such a silly little girl. When she came into Wonderland, we all changed. She changed us."

The Cheshire Cat nodded seriously (which didn't happen too often). "She changes us now, too. In a bad way."

I felt bad for them. It must have felt like their best friend had betrayed them, but on an entirely different level. I knew I had had a friend who betrayed me. It happens a lot when you read stories, but in real life it feels a lot different. The pain is different. But usually what I find is you can always see it coming but you don't admit it to yourself, so when the moment comes it's never a surprise.

In other words, you find you've been lying to yourself the whole time. I wondered if that's what happened with their Alice. I wondered if they had been lying to themselves.

"I sympathize," I said. "And do you know of a cure?"

The caterpillar blew a green smoke ring in my face before answering. "Yes, actually. I've heard that the Felix flower is good for that sort of thing if you make tea with it and force her to drink. However, before doing so, you must find the root of the evil, what has caused Alice to act the way she does."

The Cheshire Cat reacted before I did. "Chaos is the one who started all of this."

"No," I said.

They stared at me disbelievingly. I bit my lip before continuing, "In her memories, Alice made a deal with Chaos after she performed the Bloody Oath with the Hatter. So it can't be Chaos."

The caterpillar nodded slowly. "I suppose you are right," he said and inhaled on his cigar deeply before proceeding to blow a rainbow smoke ring in my face. "Bloody Oaths are curious things, you know." He paused when he saw the downcast look on the Cheshire Cat's face. "Oh don't look so down, Chess, that's not natural for you. Alice will be cured, have a little faith in the essence of Wonderland."

I was about to ask what the essence of Wonderland was, but at that exact moment the caterpillar looked down at one of his legs which suddenly had a golden watch on it and said, "Oh, sorry fellows. Have to go. Pleasure meeting you, Hazel."

And he disappeared in poof of green smoke.

There was a pause, and then I stomped my foot on the ground. "He forgot to tell us where we were to find the Felix flower."

Chess shrugged and looked impishly at me. "You never asked, Hazel dear."

I realized my mistake. "Woops," I sighed.

And then I had a horrifying moment as I was silent and remembered how Terror was gone and how awful it would be if Chaos was planning to do something nasty to him. I shivered. The Cheshire Cat had said we would be seeing Terror again. I would believe him.

"Chess," I said. "Do you know where the Felix flower is?"

He swished his tail and nodded. "Yes, of course I do, Hazel dear. It's a very famous flower around these parts. In fact, I was the one who named it." He looked extremely proud of himself.

"Really?" I asked—not surprised that he knew where to find it but more surprised that he had named it. "Then where is it?"

He grinned at me. "Look up."

I did so and through the tops of the dead, colorless trees I saw the stars and was so happy to see them because they were colorful still. And I found my pink star. "You mean the stars?"

He purred. "The Felix flower is a star. Well, it's a flower still, technically."

I whirled around to face him. "It's a star? How are we going to get it?"

Chess looked reprovingly at me. "Yes. The pink one. Come now, Hazel dear. Use that Wonderlander inside of you to figure this one out. It isn't that hard."

A test? Now? But I had learned that I had to accept things in Wonderland, however strange they were, as the truth. Physics? No such thing. If you needed something, you could have it quite suddenly. Like pulling a teacup out of midair. A star? Yes, I could do that. To the sky, the ground was the ceiling of the world. It all had to do with…

"Perspective," I said. "Is it possible to change one's perspective in Wonderland?"

Chess appeared delighted. "Yes, of course. I'm glad you figured that out. It's quite normal for us, you know. Now close your eyes and imagine that the sky is the ground…"

Let me say it now that it's a most peculiar feeling to switch perspectives like that. For me especially. Having a different perspective all the time in Wonderland must have been quite normal but for me, an Outsider, I had had only one perspective for the entirety of my life. It actually kind of bothered me that I had been so narrow minded.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a field of flowers that were floating over thin air. Yet I was standing on them. They glowed softly.

Chess laughed at me. "Don't look down, whatever you do."

So, naturally, I looked. And nearly fainted. We were extremely high up and down below I could see the ground laid out like a quilt before me. It looked much different from up here, though.

"I told you not to," he said mischievously. I glared at him.

"You knew I'd look if you said that."

He looked very full of himself and grinned at me. Eventually I just smiled and let it go. I walked forwards on the tops of the glowing colorful flowers.

"Now which one's the Felix flower," I said to myself. It would be the only pink one—my pink star, I thought to myself. The Cheshire Cat walked silently behind me.

"You know, the Felix flower and the colorless wasteland below are tied together," he said. I searched for the flower and waited for him to continue. He did. "Felix is the name of an Outsider whom Alice killed to become Queen of Hearts."

I was stooped down looking through a patch of flowers when he said that, and my blood ran cold. I remembered that from those memories. "Oh," I said. "Poor boy." My mouth felt kind of dry as I said it.

"He was reincarnated into a flower," Chess said.

And suddenly the "Felix" flower made more sense.

"So I guess that act created the colorless wasteland?" I asked. Chess nodded.

I could picture it too perfectly. Alice slitting the innocent boy's throat, him laying there, dying, and as he died so did the color slowly fade out of the forest.

"Wonderland must have known, then, that Alice becoming Queen of Hearts was a bad thing," I said. The Cheshire Cat arched his eyebrow.

"Really? Wonderland must have known?" he questioned.

I spotted it—a small pink flower—and picked it. "Yeah," I said. "I think Wonderland has a mind of its own."

Chess grinned at me. "Well spotted," he said, and I don't think he was just talking about my finding the flower. "To the Hatter's, then."

I wrinkled my nose. "Oh yes, to the Hatter."

The Cheshire Cat tilted his head. "What's wrong. Hazel dear?"

I shook my head. "I just… don't like the Hatter. That's all." Chess had a curious look in his eyes.

"Hmmm… Well isn't that an interesting idea… We shall see," he said. "Well, let's go down, shall we?"

It's funny, but when we landed on the ground it felt strange and I found that new perspectives were something I would have to toy with while in Wonderland.

The thought of returning home? It never occurred to me.

Thus ends the arch of the Felix flower. I think the next couple of chapters are going to have more in them action wise. ^^ Prepare thyself.