friend_i_hope | OOM: Meeting Alice

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OOM: Meeting Alice

He's never liked Ratty. And it's not just the smell. You live in Wonderland long enough you get a sense of who can and can't be trusted. And Ratty's got that stink about him too. That stink that says you should guard your teas and loved ones around him because it'd take about a drop of Happiness for him to turn you over to the Suits.

Fortunately, Hatter's got more than a drop, and Ratty's story about an Oyster named Alice...

Well, he may not have mastered basic hygiene, but he's smart enough not to offer something he can't deliver.

(Hatter's perfectly aware that it can't be the Alice of Legend, but the coincidence is too much to ignore all the same.)

He tells Ratty to bring her in and quietly sips his tea while he waits.

His chair is faced away from the door when they enter, but he can still smell Ratty.

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

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Alice moves cautiously into the room, taking it in. She doesn't remember ever being in a room that has grass for carpeting, before. Curious.

She stops when Hatter speaks, and drips a little on the dirt. She looks at the chair behind the desk when he speaks.

"No thank you," she says politely. "Who are you?"

Okay, well, that may have been a little less polite.

At the question, he spins the chair slowly to face her, looking rather bemused that she asked, as though asking a person's identity is a strange concept.

"A friend," he says, almost smiling. "I hope." As Ratty unties the cloth around her arm, he adds, "I run the teashop."

Once her arm is uncovered, Hatter can clearly see the green mark that identifies her as an Oyster, and Ratty says, "See?"

The proof makes the situation all the more interesting, and Hatter stands, pacing over to his desk, turning his back on the two of them. Things could get tricky very soon. He needs time to think.

"How did you break out of the Scarab?" he asks, still facing away.

She watches as the chair turns, looking at this new person for a moment as Ratty takes hold of her arm, and shows him the mark. She tugs her arm back from him, with a small, annoyed noise.

She shifts her weight as Hatter paces a bit, not quite knowing what to do with her arms for the time being.

"The beetle thing?" she asks. "I used my hair pin and..." She opens her hands, gesturing like the rest of her sentence is quite obvious, as she continues to drip. "As you can see I'm drenched. This place...where...what is it?

Hatter makes an affirmative noise at her first question, turning to look at her again. He interrupts her only to guess that she fell, as is, yes, quite obvious from the state of her clothes.

Unless, of course, she's the sort of person who often goes for a swim fully dressed. You never know with Oysters.

He does have the grace to look at least a little apologetic when she asks where she is, though his explanation may leave something to be desired as he simply says. "Oh. Wonderland."

No, she's not the sort of person who often goes for a swim fully dressed. Well, at least not purposefully. She shifts her weight, a little uncomfortable. It's a combination of being soaked, not knowing where she is, and having a gigantic green tattoo on her forearm.

Plus, this guy in the hat isn't helping to make everything clearer. Very much is left to be desired in his answer.

She looks at him, a little incredulously. "That's a story in a kids' book," she says, beginning to wonder what exactly is the point of this confusing encounter.

Hatter's expression doesn't change a bit.

Honestly. Oysters.

"Does this look like a kids' story to you?"

She's got the dignity, at least to acknowledge that a kids' story this is not. "No," she says, waiting for him to explain further exactly what the heck is going on here.

Hopefully, this explanation will be a bit better than his last.

"It's changed a lot since then," he says, pushing off from his desk and walking toward her.

Or perhaps not...

"Oh, so you're saying it was real?" she asks, still with a slight bit of an incredulous tone, as she watches him walk forward.

She's still not quite sure what she makes of these really...unhelpful answers outside of 'could this guy be much less helpful?'

He points the magnifying glass he picked up from his desk at her as he confirms it. "You Oysters don't know how to find us, so...'scuse me," he takes hold of her wrist so he can get a better look at that mark on her forearm, making sure it's genuine, "you tell yourselves we don't exist, and quite frankly," he looks at Ratty here like the man should have known better, "we like to keep it that way."

She lets him take hold of her without any fight. There's no sense in it really. Especially when he's finally explaining something to her.

"Why am I an Oyster? This?" she asks, studying his face, in reference to the green mark on her arm.

"That's not gonna come off." Y'know, in case she thought another dip in the lake might do it. "Sorry." He smiles then, in a not-entirely-reassuring manner.

He waits until she's looked at him again to continue. "Only people from your world turn green when burnt by the light."

For a brief moment, he just looks at her.

What? She's pretty.

"It's the Suits way of branding their catch," he says, moving back to his desk. "And they call you Oysters because of the shiny little pearls," he drops off the magnifying glass and turns back, "that you all carry inside."

She just blinks at him, throughout his entire little...well, whatever you want to call it. Because it's still not qualifying as a good explanation of anything.

"What do you mean, pearls?" she asks, as she rubs her wrist and then picks at her nails.

"She's Alice," Ratty says, a little on the excited side. He's twitchy; Alice doesn't like that. "Go on, tell him who you are."

"Wow," Hatter says, glancing first at Ratty and then back at her. "Really?" He circles her slowly as Ratty nods his head enthusiastically.

He doesn't much like the twitchiness either.

"Ooooh." He laughs as he comes back around to Ratty, grinning at him for just a second before making a face. Turning back to Alice, he slings an arm around Ratty's shoulder.

"Ratty here thinks you're Alice. Of Legend.

Alice tracks him with her eyes as far as she can without turning around, and picks him back up again when she can see him again.

She's not sure which she doesn't like worse. The twitchiness or the smell, either way, she's secretly glad that his olfactory essence isn't proving to be typical of Wonderlandians.

"Who?" she asks. This being confused and in the dark thing, she's not loving.

Hatter pulls his arm away from Ratty then, making a little face, knowing he's going to have that ... lingering eau d'Ratty about him for a while now.

"The last, um..." He looks at his hand and brushes away a bit of...something he doesn't want to think about. "The last time a girl called Alice came here from your world," he starts, circling back around her, "she brought down the whole House of Cards, oh yeah."

Personal space? He cares not for such things.

"Made quite an impression. Although it was a hundred and fifty years ago," he adds, looking at Ratty again. "It can't be the same girl. Oysters don't even live that long."

Now that was entirely his own fault. No one made him put his arm around Ratty.

Alice's eyes continue to follow him, knowing out of the pair of men, Hatter's most likely the more dangerous of the two, even if he does smell a lot better.

Though, the personal space issue in this place bothers her to no end. When will these people learn it's a five foot bubble?

"I still want a good price," Ratty says with a bit of a...rat-like look.

This is about when she has to speak up. "What a minute, I am not for sale!"

He doesn't even look at her, just holds a finger up for her to be quiet. Turning away from Ratty, he gives her a look like 'can you believe this joker?' before heading back across his office. He doesn't have to look to know Ratty's following him, and he calls back, "Not on the grass."

There's a row of bottles on a shelf at the back and first he picks up a blue one. Serenity. Nice and calm. Looking back at Ratty, though, he changes his mind, picking up the pink one on the left instead.

"Here we are," he says as he starts back to the two of them, smiling at Ratty, displaying the bottle between his hands as he steps past his hat stand, his rack of (just in case) jackets. "Mmm. Pink nectar," he says, sounding for all the world like an old-timey snake oil salesman. "Filled with the thrill of human excitement. Fifty Oysters were drained of every last drop of hullabaloo, so that you, Ratty, can...taste what it feels like to win, just once."

Ratty's eyes gleam with greed, and he reaches for the bottle, but Hatter pulls it back out of his reach. "Warning," he says, reeling off his disclaimer. "Don't take it on an empty stomach and only one tiny little drop at a time, otherwise the experience might burst your shriveled up little heart. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Good. Go."

And Ratty snatches up the bottle and leaves.

Hatter sniffs his fingers and makes a face. "He really smells," he says to Alice.

She watches this whole interaction silently, curiously. It's hard to make sense out of anything, really, right now. Everything is so damned confusing. It's like she's watching the world go by without knowing how to participate in it. Though, she can't say she's sorry to see Ratty scurry away.

"Oysters were drained? What do you mean, drained?" she asks, seriously. Incredulity aside, for right now. She wants to know. Wants to know just how far in over her head she actually is. Not that she hasn't figured out it's pretty bloody far.

Hatter just looks at her for a moment. Probably, it's not a good idea to tell her exactly what happens to the Oysters in the Casino, so he just...doesn't.

"Ratty tells me you're looking for someone," he says instead, turning away from her, moving back to his desk.

"His name is Jack Chase," she says, moving forward a little, behind him. "He was taken by a man with a white rabbit on his lapel."

She stands, facing his back, on the grass, hands cupped, and waiting for a reaction.

Hatter sits and picks up his tea, crossing his legs. He pauses at her words though, the glass halfway to his mouth.

"I see," he says after too long a pause to be incidental. "Hm." He does sip his tea, though.

Tea-sipping means everything's all right now, doesn't it?

He sets the cup down again before speaking. "The White Rabbit is an organization controlled by the Suits. They travel back and forth through the Looking Glass and...vanish people from your world to ours."

Look. Sipping his tea again. Nothing to worry about here.

"Why?" she asks, like it's the most obvious question ever. She can tell there's something huge he's not telling her and that tea is doing nothing but make the point all the more clear that she's in the dark. It's not reassuring.

Perhaps it's not reassuring to her because she's American. If he were sipping coffee, maybe that would have settled her nerves better.

"To use," Hatter says, like this should be obvious as well. "In the Casino."

Yet more tea-sipping.

"Use?" she asks, eyebrows raising quite a bit. This is not good. People being used in a casino? What is wrong with this place, really. And why won't he just put down the damned tea?

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