Giant budding red and yellow and blue flowers dotted the landscape of the forest Alice pointed the four companions toward. It was safe to say that it lived up to its name right off the bat. And...were those lily pads on top of stems? Jst when they felt this world couldn't get any stranger, it proves them wrong yet again.

Just as Sora was thinking they should have probably gotten a description of the appearance of who they were looking for, he suddenly shifted backwards with shock as a great, big, unsettlingly grinning, purple and pink striped cat head appeared in front of him.

Ruby, Donald, and Goofy let out gasps of shock at the bizarre sight as the feline head suddenly phased in and out of thin air before finally settling on the stump to their right...with a headless, thick, equally striped, bushy tailed body that they could only assume was the cat's, standing atop his own head! The front paws of the cat's body reached down and picked up his head like it wasn't strange at all, and plopped it atop his neck.

"Uhhh...Hi?" Ruby said, having a great amount of difficulty registering what she just saw. She'd seen Grimm less bizarre than this feline. "Who are you!?" Donald exclaimed, though recalling what Alice suggested, it was quite clear who they were dealing with. This was the Cheshire Cat.

"Who indeed?" the purple and pink striped feline said with a wide, curly lipped grin that never wavered even as he spoke like he felt pity. "Poor Alice. Soon to lose her head and she's not guilty of a thing."

Realizing the meaning of what he said, Sora perked up. "Hey! If you who the real culprit is, tell us!" The mysterious feline raised a clawed finger in front of Sora's face. "The Cheshire Cat has all the answers," he chuckled wagging his finger around. "But doesn't always tell."

Ruby raised an eyebrow, visibly confused as the rest. "Jeez. That's a bit of a tease, isn't it?" In response to her comment, Cheshire cat turned to her with a softer smile and shrugged. "The answer, the culprit, the cat. All lie in darkness." As the quartet looked at each other in confusion toward that cryptic phrase, the Cheshire Cat's body faded away as if into thin air. "Hey, wait!" "Don't go!" Ruby and Sora pleaded, but he was long gone. Though he couldn't be seen, his voice suddenly echoed throughout the forest, saying, "They've already left the forest. I won't tell which way."

From above Donald's head, a box looking like a neatly wrapped present appeared. It bounced off him, much to his annoyance and plopped into Ruby's hands. Curious, she unwrapped the ribbon and opened the box to see... "There's... nothing inside."

The Cheshire cat spoke again, still all over and unseen. "There are four pieces of evidence in all. Three are a cinch to find. The fourth is tricky. Big reward if you find them all."

"Should we trust him?" Goofy said, looking to his friends. Their faces alone showed that none of them were certain whether to trust him or not. "To trust or not to trust. I trust you'll decide." The Cheshire Cat said as he emerged that time only to vanish as soon as he appeared.

Ruby let out a frustrated sigh as she looked back at the empty box. "I can't even with this world, guys." Sora wasn't doing much better as he struggled to make sense of all this. But he at least managed to shrug off the minor headache he was getting before it distracted him. "Well it's not like we have much of a choice. We've gotta help Alice, or we're all in trouble." Sora reminded them. He was less concerned about what some weird cat refused to tell them and more concerned about helping a girl that was just threatened with death for a crime she didn't commit.

Thankfully everyone else was unquestionably of the same mind and followed him deeper into the woods. "Hey, lookie here!" Goofy called to the group, his attention focused on a big, tall flower of some sort.

"Goofy, we don't have time to be smelling flowers. We've gotta find that evidence." Donald said with a frown as he turned away. Goofy's attention was still fixed on it, wondering what was up with it. He then noticed the bud seem to look at the potion he had in his pocket. Curious, he reached for it and held it out to the plant, pouring the restorative liquid onto it.

Suddenly, the flower rose up and bloomed, as if thanking Goofy for the aid it apparently desired. The curious captain found himself waving to the flower with a chuckle, saying, "A-hyuck. Happy to help." As he was about to walk away though, he noticed something different. "Hey fellas, is the forest getting smaller, or is it just me?"

His question made Sora, Ruby, and Donald stop in their tracks. "Huh?" The instant that word left Sora, Ruby, and Donald's mouths, they looked down with gasps and quacks of shocks as suddenly, they began to grow again. "What did you do, Goofy!?" Donald yelled, before letting out a surprised "Wak!" when suddenly, his beak impacted with a branch.

"Hmm? I didn't touch nothin'." Goofy said, confusion lacing his voice. He just helped out a flower, that was all. The he realized. "Hey, we actually did get bigger! A-hyuck. No wonder it feels a lot more cramped in here." Goofy commented, ever carefree as he ran his had along the suddenly much more compact and tight forest.

"Hey, move over!" Donald complained, shoving Sora, expectedly not enjoying the suddenly cramped space of theirs. "Donald, quit shoving!" Sora said in a grunt as moved back. Doing so caused him to step on Ruby's toes, making the poor girl jump back and knee up when yelping in pain. "Ow! You guys, settle down a second!" Ruby pleaded with a whimper. She tried to step backwards, and ended up stepping on the stump they previously saw the Cheshire Cat upon. Almost like a floor switch, it sunk right into the ground. It made her face drop as she muttered, "Oh, I hope I didn't set off some kind of trap."

Suddenly, a couple of lilly pads near her shot up with the stems looking thick and solid. The sudden arise of them made her jump back, thinking something bad was about to happen. Doing so caused her to knock Donald aside and hit hit his knee into a large boulder. "WAAK!" he quacked in pain while holding his knee before glaring at the rock. His temper got the better of him as he flailed about with an angry face and used the adrenaline in him to pick up the rock then throw it into the nearby pond. While huffing with his frustrations vented, two more lilly pads shot up in the water though not nearly as much as the one Ruby made come up.

"Hey. Now it's a little more roomy." Goofy said with a smile when noticing the stump and rock were gone. Now they were at least able to put their feet firmly on the ground without shoving each other. "Yeah, but we still need to figure out how to shrink back. We can't arrive at the court looking like giants." Sora pointed out.

"But wait... isn't this our default size? I thought we shrank already before back in the room with the doorknob?" Goofy said, scratching his head and trying to figure out if they were huge or not. "Was it? I...can't really remember." Ruby said uncertainly. Was this their normal size? Or were they at normal size when they went into the Queen of Hearts' courtroom? She couldn't remember!

"Aagh, I'm getting a headache from this!" Sora complained, running his hands through his spikey hair. He was even more confused than Ruby and Goofy!

And speaking of Goofy, a rumble ran through his tummy as he tried to figure it out. "Hmm. All this thinking is makin' me kinda hungry." he said, rubbing the grumbling thing. Looking around the treetops, he noticed a little fruit atop the tree that was just unintentionally rotated. It looked ripe and fresh enough to eat, so he reached up, picked it, and took a bite out of it.

"Goofy, what are you doing!? Don't just take a strange fruit and eat it!" Donald yelled in a scolding fashion at the guard captain.

As Goofy looked at the grumpy wizard duck, suddenly the four of them had a puff of smoke around them as they began to shrink back down to their previous size. "Hey, look at that! We're small again!...Or are we normal again?" Goofy said going from cheerful to confused in a heartbeat.

"Who cares!? Let's just keep going." Donald said, shoving Goofy along toward one of the newly opened paths. He wasn't in the mood to deal with the crazy antics of this place anymore. And going by their mutual grasping of their heads, neither did Ruby and Sora. So they decided to just move on as well...But this world really knew how to continuously one-up its own strangeness.

At the corner of his eyes, Sora noticed something by a place surrounded by a thicket of grass and flowers. There were markings in the dirt. Footprints to be exact. "You guys?" he said, gesturing for them to come look with him.

"Those don't look like tracks people leave behind." Goofy said curiously. Stroking his beak, Donald squinted as he examined the tracks. "You're right. These footprints are similar to those Soldier like Heartless we've fought." Donald said, humming in thought. It was all the more clear that the Heartless were indeed the ones behind this now. "So can we use these as evidence to prove it was them that tried taking the Queen's heart?" Ruby asked. "Well we can't just grab onto the ground and expect to-"

Donald's lecture stopped as Goofy reached down and sunk his fingers into the soil. Right as he pulled up, the dirt around the footprints became a flat circular shape and seemed solid enough to hold together while the footprints themselves were in tact.

"Hey, look. I got it! A-hyuk!" Goofy cheered with delighted pride. Ruby and Sora were utterly stunned with disbelief, while Donald went utterly deadpan, palming his face from the same feeling times five. "Oh. Okay. Sure. Because why not?"

By now, Sora and Ruby felt it was probably best NOT to question the logic of this world, if this could even be called that. It was just too absurd to argue about. So instead, they settled for just moving along.

The group found themselves before a pair of large mushrooms, with one standing just a bit taller than the other. Ruby shuffled toward it, curiously poking it, noticing how squishy and plushy and downright bouncy it was. Then...an idea struck her. She knelt down and jumped on top of it, and began to springboard off the mushrooms before landing on one of those lily pad trees.

As she looked around, her eyes fell upon a somewhat familiar looking, twisty antennae-like thing. It looked very much like the Antennae of those shadowy Heartless. This must have belonged to one that was slain. But how come it didn't dissipate with the rest of the Heartless? Could it have something to do with this world? Questions for another time.

As she reached down to pick it up however, Ruby noticed something snagged on the antennae. It was...a small silver chain pendant with what vaguely resembled an apple at the end of it. "Wait...Haven't I seen this before?" Ruby mumbled to herself, staring intently at the pendant. "Is this-"

"Ruby! Did you find anything up there!?" Sora called up, snapping Ruby out of her thoughts. "Uh, yeah! I found some kinda antennae! It looks like one the ones on those little shadowy heartless we've seen!" she called back, standing up and showing them the antennae in question, all while carefully pocketing the pendant.

"Oh boy! Another piece of evidence!" Well at least NOW Donald was becoming a little more enthusiastic about their search. "A-hyuck. Won't be long til we find the rest and clear Alice's name." Goofy said optimistically. Of course, that was certainly quite a thing to hope for given the Queen's attitude "Let's hope so," Sora said, a smidge of pessimism slipping into his voice. His gaze shifted back to the lilly pads that grew from Donald and Ruby's earlier accidental actions. "Hey, guys? I think there are some hidden areas up there. You think they go somewhere else we could find evidence?" he called out with a much brighter tone as he pointed out a pathway in up the trees

Everyone followed where he pointed and their eyes fixed upon the passage he spoke of. "It's better than staying here. We've explored a fair amount this forest but it just seems to keep going on. We'll get lost if we keep wandering around here." Donald said as he waddled to the platforming lillypads near the pond. "Hey, Donald! Wait for us!" Goofy called out as he, Sora, and Ruby dashed behind him. With the lily pad's aid, they all made their way up into the trees before the small leafy tunnel. With no other place to look, the four of them bravely forged into the leafy tunnels. They'd come this far, so they were willing to brave the weirdness of this world as much as they needed to save a innocent life.