2013.07.26 - Princesses and Cats

The Hallett Nature Sanctuary employs several security methods to prevent people from sneaking in during the night. Breaking into a nature preserve might not be the most lucrative form of lawbreaking one can engage in, but bored youth are bored youth.

The security can't do anything about motivated youth, however, especially motivated youth with fabulous magical powers. Amy Winston, who has been assured that her real name is Princess Amaya Amethyst of Gemworld, has the most fabulous of magical powers.

The teen sits cross-legged in the middle of a small clearing. The trees above her are filled with nesting birds, sound asleep and strangely unwilling to wake even when the girl below makes a loud noise. She does that often, making a frustrated noise or muttering something to herself as she sketches at the ground with a stick.

Magical senses will reveal that she is doing far more than poking grass with a twig. The forest around her thrives with life in a way that the rest of the preserve does not.

There is a chaos presence in the Sanctuary... Amethyst's own magical senses might be able to sense Vorpal even before she sees him. The Cheshire Cat's need for solitude, at times, takes him to remote locations. The incident with the Anomaly Killer had left him thoughtful... and worried. He came here to be alone with his thoughts, and see how he could figure out what to do.

As he strolled through the area, his purple fur might become very visible to Amethyst. He himself has no magical senses, except in the most rudimentary sense.

Amethyst wrinkles her nose. She looks up, dropping her impromptu wand as she takes interest in something else. The princess furrows her brow. There's something wrong, but she can't really put her finger on why she feels that way.

"Shh," she says, gesturing in the air in front of her. A little survival charm, much like the one keeping the birds from reacting to her presence. It's enough to hide her footsteps as she darts to a large tree. There, Amethyst watches, making herself as slight as can be. She has to clutch that stupid gauzy ribbon attached to her outfit so it stops fluttering around.

The strange presence is focused solely on the compact body of the feline. He was purple and quite muscular, the body of someone trained to fight, or to be an acrobat. Vorpal sits down at the foot of an old tree, legs crossed under him and his elbows resting on his knees. He seems like someone deep in thought.

Amethyst is surprisingly stealthy for someone clad in shimmering RenFaire finery. She watches, and then continues to watch as a purple cat man walks across the clearing and finds a tree to sit underneath. Her confusion is only heightened by the singularly peculiar feeling he's giving off. Sight unseen, Amethyst would still feel strange.

Sight seen, though, wow. And she's been to a place called Gemworld.

The princess, with a rush of silks and a flash of blonde hair, charges back into the clearing with a sword raised. It is a slender blade, held outward like a rapier, though it is more thick. "Who are you?" she asks, her voice hard and commanding.

The cat looks up, snapped out of his reverie by the interruption. He instantly tenses when he sees a weapon drawn, and his ears draw back. Who was this woman? And why was she questioning him like this?

And she spoke to him with authority. He did not like that.

".... please?" Vorpal says, his mellifluous voice low and quiet, as if he were making an observation that something was omitted.

Amethyst's expression immediately softens as Vorpal speaks. Despite holding the sword level, the harshness fades from her face. She almost looks embarrassed, if not for the fact that it's very difficult to look embarrassed while wearing a tiara. A moment later, she lowers her sword a fraction or two. Small favors.

"OK. Who are you, please."

Vorpal has always wished he could be the kind of hero to pull off a Tiara.

Secretly.

"My name is Vorpal. Or Keith, if that serves better..." he relaxes a little once the woman seems to acknowledge his request for courtesy. A supervillain would have blasted him right then and there. While she may still be dangerous, she wasn't immediately dangerous. "... am I trespassing?"

"Yeah. You are."

Amethyst purses her lips, and then drops the blade entirely. It's still in her hand, but at least it's pointed toward the ground. "I am too. I won't tell anyone."

The princess unabashedly stares at Vorpal, though she seems to be sizing him up more than gawking. It's not an altogether friendly look, but neither is it obviously threatening. "Would you... um, mind telling me what your deal is?"

Blink. Blink blink. "I'm... sorry?" the cat says, looking at the woman whose dress is so fantastic, it might make She-Ra run to Edna Mode and say 'This. NOW!' Vorpal wondered what exactly she could be referring to... one's perceptions of how strange one is tend to erode when confronted with the unusual... or with the accepting.

Amethyst gestures with her free hand, primarily indicating Vorpal's ears, though the wide sweep includes the full package.

"You're a talking... cat? Person?" she says, clearly treading shaky ground with her quasi-question. She watches Vorpal closely for some reaction as she talks, abandoning her line if he looks offended.

"And you seem to be some sort of glittering warrior... yes, I am a cat... person. More accurately... I am a Cheshire Cat. No, not THE Cheshire Cat. He only created me. So I guess that makes two. Unless there are more of which I don't know..." he tilts his head. Vorpal looks at Amethyst with curiosity "... you seem to find me a little on the unsettling side."

"Am I supposed to?"

Amethyst turns her head away slightly, looking out of the corner of her eyes. Her lips curl slightly. Through the Cheshire Cat talk, the princess began to lean back, culminating in a full step backward. "I've seen some really strange stuff, but you..."

Her mouth hangs open for a moment. Her inability to properly end her thought eventually forces it shut.

"What do you do as a, um, Cheshire Cat?"

"... I am going to start getting a complex here, you know. First a mutant with the power to alter probability itself breaks when she sees me... and now a lady who looks like she could handle She-Ra her ass says I am the strangest thing she has seen... ... do you know what that does to a guy?" He says, resting his chin back on his hands again and giving her one of those penetrating feline looks. "...I'm a cheshire cat. I just am. But if you wonder what I do as well?"

The princess badly suppresses a laugh at the mention of She-Ra, even going so far as to cover her mouth. She's still holding a sword, for the record. When Vorpal gives her the cat stare, Amethyst finds it a lot easier to stop the laughter.

She coughs. "Yeah. I hope you don't go around harassing young girls or anything."

"No, I usually put men behind bars for doing things like that. For the record, I prefer guys my age, thanks all the same... but I don't think you've told me /your/ name." Vorpal tilts his head in the other direction while looking at her, and gives her a Cheshire grin as he slowly lifts himself off the ground... while still remaining cross-legged. "... if you tell me it's your unbirthday today, I may have to go and get a very stiff drink."

"Uh."

Amethyst evens out her stance as it had been compromised earlier by her half-step retreat. A strong stance is primary in delivering a strong strike. The evenness of her footing seemingly moves upward, her muscles tensing and even her jaw clenching. Her eyes follow Vorpal as he floats upward.

"I'm Amaya. Amaya Amethyst," she says, speaking deliberately.

"...alright, that is rich. The purple princess meets the purple cat. The only thing that is missing..." he snaps his fingers and engages his powers of illusion, because Vorpal is feeling whimsical. The bark of the trees changes into a deep azure, and the leaves turn a lovely shade of purple along with every blade of grass. Flowers get tinted in similar hues, until the small clearing into which he had wandered was covered. "...is a purple forest. Now, my dear Amaya, we are in a properly fairy-tale-ish setting."

Amethyst sheaths her sword in a highly controlled movement. She watches, silent, as a floating magical cat man begins turning everything purple while abusing the full extent of his creepy cat grin.

As he finishes, the princess gives Vorpal a reproachful look. She raises her hands, already glowing with (yes, purple) fairy-light. Her fingers twist in arcane gestures and then the purple light shines from her like a corona. Its rays, twinged with flashes of turquoise, play over the illusory landscape.

The princess watches the light, seemingly dispassionate. When she looks up, the hardness is back in her eyes. "OK. I can't decide if I should be charmed or creeped out. You mind if I do something to find out? It won't hurt."

Her hands are still raised, still flashing magic.

"Be my guest, be my guest." The cat says, inclining his head and watching her with curiosity. Yes... he had to quote that. Because.

"Get my worries of my chest," Amethyst murmurs, only half-heartedly singing.

The princess gives Vorpal one last look and then closes her eyes, furrowing her brow. She doesn't do anything for a moment, though her lips move in silent recitation. After a few moments of this, she opens her eyes with renewed purpose and walks toward the Cheshire Man-cat.

Her right hand glows with shimmering, sparkling power. Amethyst gazes at it intently, making a series of gestures. With another look up to Vorpal, she reaches out and touches his knee.

Amethyst cries out, suddenly and sharply. She staggers back a step, holding her hand as if bitten. She lied. It did hurt. It felt like their flesh was magnetized, repelling each other.

The pain was so surprising that Vorpal's levitation goes out from under him -literally- and he falls to the ground, clutching his knee. The pain had been intense for a fleeting moment. The second pain was, of course, the fall because he wasn't up high enough to attempt to land on his feet. He winces and oofs, "OW..owowowow.... what the hell? I thought you said it wouldn't hurt!"

"It wasn't supposed to!" Amethyst replies, massaging her fingers. She stops soon enough, giving her hand an incredulous look. The princess refocuses on Vorpal, sitting on the ground beyond her possibly wounded digits.

"It was supposed to..." her tone trails off, vaguely dreamy. Her gaze has apparently continued, and now she's looking right through Vorpal. It all snaps back with a breathless assertion: "Chaos."

The look Vorpal gives her is one of full incredulity. Sitting on the purple grass, he finally bursts. "OF COURSE there's Chaos! I'm a flipping Cheshire Cat! Haven't you read the blasted book?" his voice projected a little more, and then suddenly the unusual quality dropped out "Geez! And to think I was being friendly and you come over and you flippin' hex me!" He checks his knee to make sure there are no open wounds.

"You'll wake the birds!" Amethyst shouts back. The birds do not wake up.

The princess's hand goes to the hilt of her sword, but she evidently thinks better of it and fails to draw the blade. She raises her hands to her forehead, pulling her hair back. The tiara briefly interferes, and though she manages to not knock it off, her disgust at its inconvenient presence is plain.

"You can't just go around saying you're a Cheshire Cat and expect that to explain everything! Do you know how insane you sound? I'm not convinced you aren't insane!"

Amethyst removes one of her hands from her voluminous hair, leaving a partially tangled mess behind. She points. "That's why I feel weird. Ugh, is that what this feeling is? Chaos?"

"...OK. Before this conversation goes ANY further- what are you, and where do you come from?" Vorpal says with mounting annoyance. "...I want to know who it is that I'm talking to before I elucidate further."

"Why should I tell you?" Amethyst says, matching Vorpal's annoyance with brazen defiance. "All I know about you is that you really like Alice in Wonderland and you're possibly dangerous."

".... HELLO? I'm not the crazy lady who SHOCKED a perfectly friendly cat! How do I know 'you're' not dangerous? For all I know you could be some sort of sorceress who thinks she's She-Ra and /is/ dangerous!"

"You weren't being friendly, you were being super sketchy! The whole grinning and floating thing? Doesn't inspire confidence!"

Amethyst exhales a long breath, lowering both of her hands to her side. She carefully makes her expression neutral and considers Vorpal. "OK. I'm a princess from another world inhabited by all the magical creatures that fled Earth way back before recorded history. Seriously. I wish I didn't have to say 'seriously.'"

The Cheshire cat looks at Amethyst, sphynx-like, and says "Do you know how insane you sound?" using the exact same words she used to describe him.

Because cats are bastards sometimes.

"You'll notice that I'm not grinning or floating," Amethyst says, still stone cold neutral.

"That's because princesses don't grin, or float. Princesses have ponies." The cat says. "...and, you know, I was actually doing those things, instead of claiming I could do them. A little credit, please?"

"Unicorns, actually."

Amethyst looks downward. "Some of them have wings, too."

"... you're really not making a good case of believability versus my case, you know. Either we're both phonies, or we aren't." Vorpal rolls his eyes and waves a hand. A glowing, purple chair appears right in the middle of the clearing. "Sit down, and you can judge whether I'm right or wrong after I've told you where I come from."

The chair simply... appeared. There were no magic words intoned, no complicated gestures. And it was magical, imbued with the signature of the 5th dimension.

Amethyst looks up, crossing her arms. She glances between Vorpal and the chair, evidently unsurprised at its miraculous creation. With only slight reluctance, the teenager walks over and sits down.

She keeps her arms crossed. She looks like she's experienced her fair share of lectures while in this position.

The cat slowly gets to his knees, once he is satisfied that he is not injured. He looks at Amethyst. "Once upon a time there was a kid born in the Bronx. And his mother read him books, a lot of books. His favorite--- well, you probably can imagine."

"One day his mother died, and the boy went to live with his uncle. That boy grew up fighting, and made it his job to fight against the gangs running rampant in Morrisania, with a few of his friends. One day, that young man died while saving some girls from some sort of satanic cult that was going to sacrifice them. That boy got his throat cut by a dagger, and he bled to death on the altar."

Amethyst shapes up during the recitation of "the boy's" story. Her carefully crafted expression of vaguely vacant attention slips. She sits up properly. There may be more interest than outright sympathy and sadness displayed here, but she's aware that the tone has changed.

"That boy died, at least being able to save those girls from the sacrifice. Unfortunately, he became the sacrifice instead, and a Door to Other Places opened. And something bad was trying to come through."

"And that's when the Cheshire Cat talked to the boy and gave him a choice. And when the boy had answered, the Cheshire Cat took the dead boy and made him a body in His Image, and shoved him into it, giving him all sorts of unusual abilities. Then the Cheshire Cat stepped away, and the Thing that had been trying to come through the Other Side did come through. And it ate all of the men in robes and bloodied knives up like spaghetti. Then the place burned down and all that could be found were burnt up bodies. And the boy's family mourned him but were glad he had saved those girls, at least. They didn't know the boy wasn't dead. But the boy could never come home again. He was different now. And that is how a boy born of a human mother became the Cheshire cat."

Amethyst lets Vorpal's story hang in the silence for awhile, her hands now folded in her lap. She looks down, not inclining her head totally but enough to put her gaze at Vorpal's feet.

After a few moments, the teenager looks up and smiles sheepishly. "So, do you share your life story with everyone you meet while trespassing, or just princesses?"

"I figured that the moment we were talking about flying horses, the time had pass for being prosaic and a good fairy tale was in order. Besides..." he shrugs "I am registered under my real name with the B.S.A. Do you really think I can keep up a secret identity looking like THIS?" Vorpal says, indicating his body with a sweep of a hand.

"Flying unicorns," Amethyst gently corrects.

She frowns, gazing off into space again. "The B.S.A. I forgot about them." The princess exhales and sits forward, almost on the edge of her seat. She puts her palms down on the arm rests. No magic finger wiggling.

"Look, um, Keith. I'm really sorry. I know what it's like to want to go back to some point in your life but not being able to."

"Sounds like you have a story." The cat says, leaning back on the grass and holding himself up by his elbows. "I'm all ears."

He flicks his ears, as a demonstration. He was glad he had decided to wear his uniform instead of civilian clothes. It was easy to get grass stains out of it.

Amethyst shakes her head. "No story. I'm Princess Amethyst, from a place called Gemworld. I'm here to stop a fallen angel from getting out of jail because he'll try to hurt my family and friends again."

She purses her lips again, glancing to the side and then back to Vorpal. "It hurt when I touched you because I'm... of Order, I guess, is how you say it. Kind of like how you're, um, Chaos-y."

Vorpal look at Amethyst, slowly understanding. "I see... so you're like Doctor Fate, then."

"You know Doctor Fate?" Amethyst says, perking up. "That's great! I mean, um, yes. I'm like Doctor Fate."

She rubs the back of her head, only just now finding the part she mussed up earlier. With an annoyed look, the teen goes about fixing it with her fingers. "The Doc actually knows a lot about Gemworld. Knows a lot about everything, I guess."

Amethyst briefly stops her grooming to make a face. "Oh, uh. If you're with the B.S.A., do you have to alert them to me or anything like that?"

"It's thanks to the Doctor that I am registered. I was living in an abandoned warehouse after my transformation ... he ... sort of stepped in, I guess. No, I don't have to alert them to you... unless you go breaking the law, killing people or stealing tiaras, you're considered an unregistered hero. You just don't get the ability to have a legal identity under your heroic identity... and some other things." The cat shrugs, "Some prefer it, others avoid it like Batman."

"I'm still not sold on the tiara I have," Amethyst muses. She smooths down her hair, satisfied with her handiwork and with the answer about the B.S.A., apparently, since she drops the subject.

"Fate stepped in, or, um, made me step in, too. We've got that in common, then." The teen stands up and extends her hand. "No magic. Unless you're secretly a Lord of Chaos, I think it'll be OK."

Vorpal chuckles and shakes her hand, "... make no mistake, I /am/ chaos. I can't escape it, it's what basically made me. But Dr. Fate told me that that didn't necessarily mean that I was evil. He said... well..." he snaps his fingers. A little visual representation of Dr. Fate appears, quoting what he had said to Keithh in Oblivion: ""Chaos is not 'evil' at all. Some once thought it so, but it's merely an extremity. Order is no different. The Balance is required for life to exist and to flourish. Chaos fuels life, while Order guides it and gives it meaningful form. Without Chaos, Order leads to stagnation. Without Order, life loses meaning or form, becoming little more than a cancer." "

"That's what he said."

Vorpal chuckles and shakes her hand, "... make no mistake, I /am/ chaos. I can't escape it, it's what basically made me. But Dr. Fate told me that that didn't necessarily mean that I was evil. He said... well..." he snaps his fingers. A little visual representation of Dr. Fate appears, quoting what he had said to Keithh in Oblivion: ""Chaos is not 'evil' at all. Some once thought it so, but it's merely an extremity. Order is no different. The Balance is required for life to exist and to flourish. Chaos fuels life, while Order guides it and gives it meaningful form. Without Chaos, Order leads to stagnation. Without Order, life loses meaning or form, becoming little more than a cancer." "

"That's what he said."

Amethyst watches their hands touch. No cosmic explosion.

"He gave me the Intro to Cosmic Forces lecture, too," she says, watching the tiny Doctor Fate give a tiny speech about an assumedly tiny universe. "I think he even used the cancer line. Yech."

The princess sighs, raising her eyebrows. "I know a lot of people who would be surprised that I'm some incarnation of Order. Oh, well."

Amethyst smiles apologetically. "I need to get back to work. I'm tracking down this skeezy old wizard who's trying to get out of helping me. He's sort of responsible for the mess I'm in."

"Skeezy wizard?" Oh god, could it be "... wouldn't answer to the name of John Constantine, would he?"

Vorpal had seen a lot of wizards in Oblivion. Many of them could answer to the description of kooky, eccentric, cranky, grumpy, grouchy and all sorts of other Snow White Dwarves. But he knew of only one who could be that other special dwarf, Skeezy.

"Um, yeah, actually." Amethyst rolls her eyes. "Jeez, he really is famous."

"He was, like, stalking me for I don't know how long, and then he started asking me for favors, and then I asked HIM to buy me a pizza," the princess continues to get louder as she talks, gesturing wildly with her hands, "and then he tricks me into letting this guy come to Gemworld, and the guy turns out to be a defective angel of vengeance, like, biblical!"

Amethyst rubs her cheeks. "I tracked him down and started hitting him with a baseball bat last week. I shouldn't have stopped. He said he'd help me, but he's gone now. I told him not to run. I'm going to have to break his legs or something."

Keith laughs "Oh, John... John John John. He's a scuzball... I'll keep an eye out for him, for you. It's the least I can do... I have... asked him for his services in the past, so I can sympathize."

Amethyst looks back to the feline and smiles again. She manages a tired, nearly soundless laugh. "Thanks, Keith. He actually... well, the person he convinced me to take to Gemworld killed a lot of people. I'm not sure if 'scuzball' really covers it. He just sort of," Amethyst shakes her head. "He just kinda brushed it off. Like he stole the last soda or something."

The princess turns to look at the trees. The birds are doing fine. "I really appreciate it. If you hear anything, can you tell Doc Fate? I don't really, um, own a cell phone or anything. I wasn't sure how long I'd be on Earth."

"I can do you one better."

A purple card flies at Amethyst, dug from his pocket and tossed at her. It has his full contact information. "This is how you can get in touch with me if anything arises. Otherwise, I'll leave a message for you at Oblivion if I find anything."

"Oh, yeah. Oblivion."

Amethyst catches the card between two fingers in a bit of dexterity. "I felt so weird hanging out there. I guess 18 is the drinking age in most parts of the world, though." She furrows her brow. "Gemworld, too, actually."

The princess turns and walks a few steps in the opposite direction, though she stops to look over her shoulder. "Here, we'll switch. I've been sitting here too long, anyway. The birds should keep sleeping until morning, but you probably have a trick of your own."

Amethyst raises her hand, wiggling her fingers. No purple sparkles fly out. "Bye, Keith. You're the first Cheshire Cat I've ever met."

"Goodbye, Amaya. The wonderful thing about Cheshires is that I'm the only one."

And there, he vanishes into thin air. Or rather... his body vanishes, but his smile stays behind. And then, that smile, too, vanishes as well.

Amethyst does her best not to shiver as she picks her way through the underbrush. He's not crazy he's not crazy he's not crazy.