Myst: Hey, everyone. We are back with the next chappie!

Freak: Would've been sooner if we had those five reviews.

Myst: Freak, let it go.

Freak: What? We could really use the opinion of our readers.

Myst: They did. Not a lot, but some did. So, we like to thank everyone who reviewed and will be responding to them below.

PirateWizardThief: You don't have to wait any longer for the chapter is here now. And you rock!

Ptroxsora: Thanks:)

Pearl Bramble of Willowbottom: We will continue on this until we're finish.

Myst: This chapter goes to those three reviewers. Now for the disclaimer. Freak?

Freak: We don't own anything that is already Disney's which include the Gryphon. Just our OCs.

Chapter 3

~Garnet~

"This is sooo cool!"

Garnet gazed around in wonder, walking down the dirt path. He was so amazed at how all of Wonderland was just like it was in the movie, all of it to the tiniest detail. After falling down that hole (which was kinda fun for him), he landed in the middle of the forest instead of the room with the talking doorknob. Well, at least he didn't have to go through all that shrinking and growing nonsense.

He kept walking without knowing where he was going. Eventually, he ended up at an odd-looking cottage with a hedge circling the backyard. Going up to the wooden gate, he stood on his tip-toes to try and see the other side. However, he wasn't tall enough. Even jumping didn't help. He stopped and pouted in frustration.

Music caught his attention and he heard two obnoxious voices singing. Smiling with excitement, Garnet entered through the gate and saw the famous tea party of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare.

"~A very merry unbirthday! To you! To you! Yes, you! A very merry unbirthday! A very merry unbirthday! A very merry unbirthday to uussss!~"

Garnet laughed into his hand at their performance. That made his presence known to the two residents.

"No room! No room! There's no room!" The Hatter and Hare exclaimed as soon as they saw the kid. They rushed over and tried to shove him out of their garden.

"But you're the only people here," Garnet said, digging his heels into the dirt.

"It's rude to show up when you're not invited!" The March Hare spoke quickly, wagging a finger at the boy.

"I'll say it's rude! It's VERY rude!" the Mad Hatter nodded.

"Very, very, very rude indeed," the Dormouse said drowsily, popping up and back into its teapot slowly.

"Sorry, I didn't know. I was actually looking for someone," Garnet explained. Now that he'd said it, he remembered that his older siblings were nowhere to be found. He hadn't been looking for them as much as he had been touring around like a foreigner.

"Looking for someone, you say?" The Mad Hatter asked, pushing a chair behind Garnet causing him to fall onto it.

Garnet straightened up while the two residents took their seats at the table. "Yeah, my sister and brother. Have you seen them?"

"Maybe, maybe not," the March Hare giggled, a bit crazily. Then he grabbed a teapot from behind his back. He tilted it and out poured a small plate, teacup, and then the tea itself with sugar cubes. "Care for some tea?"

Even though Garnet was amazed to see the trick the Hare did from the movie, he didn't like tea. He accepted it anyway for fear of how they would react to that fact. "Um, thanks, but seriously, have you seen anyone around here?"

"Well, there's him and the Dormouse. And me, of course." The Hatter gestured while he said this.

"I meant besides the three of you," Garnet explained, placing the tea on the table. He pulled out a photo from his bag and held it up. "Like these two."

The Hatter snatched it to get a clearer look. "But there's three here. And this little fellow has one eye."

"What?" Garnet snatched it back and examined it. "Oh, that's me. I'm wearing an eye patch. We were pirates that Halloween." He handed it to the March Hare.

The Hare scratched his head in thought with his left ear. "No, no one in this picture has been to this party."

Garnet slumped in his chair, disappointed. "Maybe they're not here at all."

"Well, maybe you should look for someone who is here," The Hare said, folding the picture into an airplane and launching it.

"Yes," The Hatter agreed, the photo plane circling twice around his head. "Try finding someone unfamiliar."

Garnet arched an eyebrow. "How am I supposed to find someone that I've never meet before?"

"By looking, of course," said the Hare matter-of-factly.

"But-ow!" Garnet rubbed his eye after the photo plane poked it, falling to his lap.

"How, you say?" The Hatter said, drinking out of a half cup, literally. "By going straight, right, left, left, left, right, left, right, right, forwards, backwards, then forwards again, and then up."

"No, he should go this way, that way, this way, left way, right way, forward, backward, that way, downward, upward, and then maybe this way," the Hare explained, gesturing with his hands and ears and even feet.

"Wait, I missed that. What comes after right and this way?" Garnet asked, confused.

"No time for that. Time we got back to our party!"

Garnet gagged, holding his stomach. "Worst tea I ever had. I don't think salt was supposed to be in it."

After leaving the tea party, Garnet tried to follow their directions just to see if maybe their crazy advice would land him in the right place. But he just ended up following the dirt road.

He stopped when the path stretched out in dozens of directions with more signs nailed to the surrounding trees. 'Which way am I supposed to go now?"

While he stood there, a person came strolling by humming a tune. Actually, it wasn't a person at all. It was an anthropomorphic griffin.

"Um, excuse me, sir?" Garnet called.

"Huh?" The creature stopped and looked at the child like he hadn't noticed him at all while walking. "Well, hullo little fella," he said in a Cockney-like accent. "What can I do fer ya?"

"I'm kinda lost and I don't know which way to go," Garnet explained. "And I'm looking for-"

"Don't know which way to go?" The Gryphon interrupted. "Hjckrrh! Lad, everyone in Wonderland knows that the only way to go is the Queen's way. You should ask her yourself."

Garnet doubted that would work for him. He didn't want to go anyway near the Queen of Hearts, knowing full well that she might order for his head to be chopped off. But, what if one of his siblings had wandered into her garden?

Garnet bit his lip. "Y-you wouldn't happen to know which path leads to her castle, do you?"

"Hjckrrh! I was just walkin' on it." He jerked a talon thumb to the path between the left and middle forks. "But I wouldn't recommend goin' today. A criminal, about the near end of teenhood, is being executed today."

"What!" Garnet exclaimed. It couldn't be Kyra or Luke, could it?

"A young criminal is havin' his head cut off. They just caught him today-"

Garnet sped off down the dirt path before the Gryphon could finish, heading towards the castle. The Gryphon, meanwhile, stared in confusion at the boy's receding form and the bright glow that engulfed him.

Garnet rushed down the dirt path the Gryphon showed him. Fear clouded his mind with the image of Kyra or Luke's head mounted on a platter on the wall like a deer. Light filtered up ahead and he entered the twisting maze that was the Queen of Hearts' garden. He continued forward, aimlessly turning corners until he stopped at a red-rose covered archway.

The sound of drums filled the air, beating in rhythm. He tried to peep through the arch, but wiped his head back at the sight of two card guards standing right on the other side. Luckily, they were facing the castle and had their backs to him.

Looking around, he decided to silently sneak into the rose bushes to get a better look. Ignoring the thorns scratching his face and hands, he pushed down a small section of the bush. Having a clear view of the courtyard, he could see the number of guards lining around the entrances and the wall of the castle. The Queen of Hearts herself was sitting on a low balcony, the White Rabbit and the King of Hearts beside her. Everyone's attention was drawn to the wooden platform in the middle of the courtyard.

Forced upon his knees was a dark-clothed figure with masculine features. He was wearing a black trench coat with black cargo pants and a midnight-blue shirt underneath. His gray gloved hands were tied behind his back, clutched. His black combat boots were scuffed, like he traveled a lot or something. The guy kept his face down, brown hair obscuring him from view.

However, Garnet didn't need to see his face to tell this guy was a stranger to him. The White Rabbit rolled out a scroll and cleared his voice.

"For the crimes against the crown, which includes stealing what the Queen rightly claimed as hers and for unlawful damaged to her Highness's rose gardens, the offender shall be beheaded on this spring day to his death." He read out loud.

The drummers played faster and Garnet grabbed his slingshot out of his bag. He searched around the ground for a rock and grasped a hold of a pebble the size of a ping-pong ball. He readied his sling back just as the executioner stepped into place. The drums stopped.

"Off with his head!" the Queen declared.

The executioner swung the axe high over his head to make the deadly blow and Garnet, at that moment, sent the rock flying through the air. Like Goliath, the small rock slammed into the executioner's forehead and caused the man to fall back off the platform, the axe slipped into the air. The blade lodged itself into the block, an inch away from the teen's face.

Quick as a flash, the dark figured sprung up and cut his bonds on the axe's blade. Then things went into chaos.

"Seize him!" The Queen of Hearts screamed in anger.

The guards surged forward with spears ready, but the teen was faster than them. He yanked the axe out and jumped into the fray, causing a domino effect with some of the cards.

Garnet watched in awe as the criminal fought the guards, slashing their spears in half and using the axe's butt-end to knock the guards down. It was like watching an action movie up-close. For Garnet, it was exciting and terrifying, but mostly cool.

So focused on the battle, he cried out in surprise when something grabbed his ankle. Dragged out of the hedge, a guard lifted him up into the air. "He has an accomplice!"

Acting fast, Garnet pulled the rubber band of his slingshot back and let it snapped into his captor's eye. The guard yelled out in pain and covered his eye with both hands, Garnet landed with a thump on the ground.

All the same, his cover was blown. "Get them both!" The Queen screamed in rage, leaning over the railing. "Off with their heads!"

Garnet ran as a group of guards started chasing him. Meanwhile, the criminal stole a spear along with a brown bag from one of the surrounding guards and catapulted over the throng. He dashed off into the maze with them following him after they realized he wasn't in the fighting circle anymore.

Garnet ran down the labyrinth, turning along the zigzag-ing trail. It almost seemed as if he was in that same chase fiasco that Alice was in at the end of the movie. At one point, Garnet looked back to see that he had lost the guards and ran into someone, falling to the ground.

He looked up to see it was the dark-clothed guy. He scrambled back to his feet, sheepish. "Um, hi."

The guy looked behind them, then back at Garnet. "If you want to live, keep running."

Seeing the oncoming guards, Garnet followed after the guy, running as fast as he could. He and the stranger headed into the forest, the stranger throwing the axe. It cut through a large branch that fell behind them and blocked the path, the guards comically skidding into it with no way through.

They ended up at the crossroads again, where Garnet met that griffin. The young boy sat down, panting. The dark-clothed figure, meanwhile, leaned his hand against a tree to steady himself and rubbed his neck with his other hand, glad to still have a neck.

"That *pant* was *pant* so cool what you did back there." The guy turned his head to Garnet. "Jumping into the guards like that and cutting off the exit, it was so cool! Are you some kind of superhero?"

He shook his head. "No. I'm no hero. Just some thief. But what were you doing in the Queen of Hearts' garden?

"I heard someone was being executed today and thought it was my brother or sister," Garnet said simply.

"But you saw it was me."

Garnet nodded. "Yeah, and then I threw a rock at that big guy with the axe and you did those cool moves. It was better than seeing Jack Sparrow escaping from the gallows."

"Wait." The guy held up a hand. "You… caused the executioner to fall?"

Again, Garnet nodded. "Yeah."

"So, you…saved my life?"

Another nod. "Yep."

The guy chuckled, looking to the side. Then he walked over to Garnet and kneeled to his level. "I owe you a great debt for saving my life." He held out his hand, smiling. "Thank you."

Garnet shook his hand. "You're welcome."

The guy stood back up and walked over to the tree where his bag laid at the base.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Garnet."

"Granite?" He pulled out two sheathed Khopesh swords with a flourish. "That's an odd name."

"No, Garnet."

He shrugged. "Sorry. Garnet then." He tied the weapons to his waist and stood up. "I am Adrian. You said you were looking for your brother and sister, is that correct?"

"Yeah, we got separated and I don't know where to find them," Garnet explained.

"Well then." Adrian slung his bag over his shoulder. "Guess we better start looking."

"You're going to help me?" Garnet asked.

Adrian nodded. "Yes, you saved my life. The least I could do is help you find your family. Besides, a six-year-old can't wander alone."

Garnet scowled. "I'm seven and three-quarters."

Adrian laughed quietly. "All the same, you'll need my help. Deal?"

"Deal." Garnet shook Adrian's hand again. "So where do we start?"

Before Adrian could say anything, a voice echoed from the darkness.

"Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe; all mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe."

The two boys watched as a smile full of bright white teeth appeared on a branch above their heads. Garnet craned his neck back to get a good look at the purple and pink cat as he slowly became visible. "The Cheshire Cat. You're the Cheshire Cat."

"Were you expecting the White Rabbit?" He said, making bunny ears with his tail.

"We are not looking for the White Rabbit," Adrian said, glaring at the cat. "We're looking for two people."

The cat smiled at him unnervingly which made Garnet uncomfortable. "Still in one piece, I see. As for the two the little one seeks, I know where they are."

That got Garnet's attention. "Really? Where are they?"

"They who?" Cheshire asked causally.

"Don't play any games with us," Adrian demanded, arms crossed. "Tell us where his brother and sister are."

The cat grinned mischievously. "They are not where he thinks they are and are where he doesn't know."

"That doesn't really help us." Garnet complained.

"You can find them by wandering, but not looking."

"That doesn't make any sense."

The cat waved his tail dismissively. "That's all I know. Oh, and that you will have more enemies than you thought you would have here." He looked directly at Garnet.

"What do you mean by that?"

But The Cheshire Cat didn't answer. Only laughed as he disappeared, his smile the last thing to go.

Freak: What do you know, we didn't end at a cliffhanger.

Myst: Actually, I think we did.

Freak: No, we didn't.

Myst: Anyway, please leave all your comments, questions, and/or suggestions in the review box.

Freak: Also, if anyone would like to make a request of what places they could go or even their OC to make an appearance in the story, PM or review us.

Myst: Well, we'll just do the best we can.

Freak: See you all next time. Expect for the other story to be updated soon.