Five came upon an open place with a little house in it about four feet high after walking for awhile. Five thought, 'Whoever lives there, I can't go to them when I'm this size. I'd probably scare them to death and all I want is to have a neat conversation with at least one normal person.' So he began nibbling at the right hand bit again till he had brought himself down to nine inches.
Suddenly a footman with the face of a fish came running out of the woods and knocked loudly at the door. It was opened by another footman but with the face of a frog. The Fish Footman began by presenting a letter, saying in a solemn tone, "For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet." Then they both bowed low.
When the Fish Footman was gone, Five went cautiously up to the door and knocked. At that moment the door opened and a large plate came skimming out. Five gasped and ducked, watching the plate break to pieces against one of the trees. He stood back up, straightening up his uniform to be more professional, then went straight ahead into a large kitchen that was full of smoke.
A familiar brunette girl wearing a big puffy, layered dress was sitting on a stool with a large headdress on her head. It was Tana! Five looked over to the strawberry blonde cook who was leaning over a large cauldron, stirring what seemed to be soup. Five recognized her as Tana's right hand woman, Melanie. She wore a white bonnet but many long, messy locks of her ginger hair had fallen out of it. Her dress was much more peasant like and dirty with a low collar that revealed her large cleavage.
Tana the Duchess was nursing a baby and occasionally sneezed as there was so much pepper in the air. Even the baby was sneezing and howling alternately without a single pause. "I think you got a little too much pepper in that soup." Five snarkily remarked.
The only two creatures in the kitchen that weren't sneezing were Melanie the cook and a large purple and hot pink striped cat with bright yellow eyes that was sitting on the floor of the fireplace and grinning from ear to ear. "Why's your cat smiling like that?" Five asked with his hands back in his pockets. "She's a Cheshire Cat." She said with violent hatred, clearly directed toward the cat, due to not being fond of the cat at all for envy reasons.
Melanie the cook took the cauldron of soup off the fire and took a whiff of it, making an overwhelmed face. "Woah! Smells like dick cheese! Then your Ace ass wouldn't like it!" She said with her naturally loud voice followed by a cackling loud laugh.
Tana growled and stood up from her seat, forcibly flinging the baby in a blanket into Five's arms. "Hold this!" And at once set off to work throwing everything within her reach at the cook. "Shut your disgusting, perverted mouth!" The voluptuous cook laughed, thinking they were playing a game, and started throwing kitchen tools at the fuming brunette.
Objects and utensils were flung back and forth across the kitchen and Five, with the baby still sloppily cradled in his arms, ducked when a frying pan came flying toward his head. "Hey, watch it!" He yelled.
Tana ran to Melanie and started shaking her back and forth by her neck. The cook's tongue slid out as her cheeks burned red and her eyes crossed. Tana the Duchess gagged and pushed her away before she said, "I don't have time to deal with your gross nonsense! I have to go and get ready to play croquet with the Queens!" And she hurried out of the room.
Five looked down at the baby still wrapped up in his arms and squinted at it. Hair started growing out of the baby's face and its features shifted to one's of a baby monkey. "Pogo?"
The poor thing was sniffling and kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again, so he carried it out into the open air. The little thing groaned and Five looked very anxiously at it. "Pogo? Can you talk too like the other animals?" Pogo started grunting more aggressively and Five's eyebrows furrowed. The monkey suddenly started throwing a tantrum as it screamed and scratched at Five's arms, making him drop it with a hiss and a yelp. He massaged his left shoulder and watched it run into the woods making monkey noises.
"Wait! Pogo!" Five shouted and then ran into the woods after it. He ran for quite some time but slowed down to a stop when he realized Pogo outran him and disappeared farther than his vision could see.
"Damnit." He breathed out and placed one hand on his forehead and the other on his hip, looking down and walking in a small circle to collect his thoughts.
"Did you lose something?" Five got startled when he looked up to see the cat from Tana the Duchess' house sitting on a bough of a tree. He opened his mouth but no words came out from how unsettling the cat's big grin was as it looked down at him. "You're that cat! From the house." He said.
The cat stood up and walked down the branch toward the trunk to get to the other branch but when it passed the trunk from behind, it walked onto the next branch in the form of a girl.
"A Cheshire Cat, to be exact." She said smoothly.
Five's eyes widened so big they could've rolled out of their sockets. "(Y/n)?" He whispered to himself. "It's you. I've missed you so much, I went through a lot today so it's really nice to see your face." He said louder with a genuinely happy small smile and bedroom eyes, her beautiful face and presence comforting him instantly. His smile, though, slowly dropped as he noticed certain attributes.
She had purple cat ears on her head and she was wearing the outfit he last saw her in but the color scheme was switched to purple and hot pink stripes, a big fluffy tail with the same pattern flowing behind her. Her eyes were identical to bright yellow cat eyes and she wore a long, toothy smile laced with lunacy.
"What's a boy like you doing in a place like this?" She asked as she laid down on the thick branch with her hands folded so she could rest her on them, her legs up and slowly kicking behind her.
"Trust me, not even I know." Five breathed out to himself, annoyed. He looked back up to the Cheshire (Y/n). "Hey, do you know which way I should go?"
"Well where do you want to get to?" She asked with her permanent smile.
"Well... I don't really know, I just want to-" "Then it really doesn't really matter which way you go!"
"Well as long as I get somewhere." Five sassed.
"You'll for sure do that, if you walk long enough."
Five sighed and took a look around his surroundings, trying to decide where he should go.
"Oh!" The Cheshire (Y/n) exclaimed, like she just remembered something. "By the way, if you really want to know, he went that way." Both her right hand and her tail pointed in the same direction.
Five shoved his hands in his pockets again and walked closer to the tree with squinting, curious yet suspicious eyes. "Who did?" "The White Rabbit." She said as she sat up straight on the branch, her legs crossing.
Five's hands fell out of his pockets in thankful surprise. "He did?!"
"He did what?" She asked with her sharp smile not faltering.
"Went that way?" He asked, pointing the same direction as she did with a thumb.
"Who did?"
"The white rabbit!"
"What rabbit?"
Five huffed, getting severely annoyed. "You just said-!"
"Can you stand on your head?" She interrupted, her decapitated body suddenly balancing on her talking head with one foot, her sliced neck slightly squirting out blood. Five glared at her with a mix of annoyance and shock.
"However," She said, back to normal in a blink of an eye, "if I were looking for a white rabbit, I'd ask the Mad Hatter." She pointed in the left direction with her right hand crossing her chest.
"The Mad Hatter?" He asked, looking at her like she said something crazy.
"Or, there's the March Hare. In that direction." She pointed in the right direction with her left hand crossing her chest so both her arms were in an X shape.
Five nodded in half gratitude and turned to his left but (Y/n)'s right. "I think I'll visit him instead." "Of course, he's mad too." She mentioned while twirling her hair with a finger.
"Well I don't want to talk to mad people! Is there anyone sane in this place!?" Five snapped, marching back to his previous position while glaring up at the girl.
She stood up on the branch with her hands behind her back. "Oh, well that's a dead end." She walked down the branch toward the trunk and behind it but didn't appear on the other side. Five flinched and darted his eyes and body around, looking for the cat-girl.
He finally saw her walk out from behind a tree on the same ground as him, "Almost everyone's mad here."
She walked toward him, her hands still behind her back, and strolled in tight circles around Five. She slowed down her steps as her big, long striped tail brushed and curled against his body until finally caressing his face when she stopped right behind him. Right over his shoulder she flirtatiously said, "You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself..."
He looked over his shoulder to see her vanish quite slowly, beginning with her tail and ending with her big, crazy smile which remained for a few seconds after the rest of her had gone.
A chill ran down Five's spine. "In every world, she's still the strangest girl I've ever met."