paixaorpg | [Complete]

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[Complete]

Character(s): Alice, Scar & Timon
Content: Scar's showing her around. Cause he's NICE like that. And Timon's creepin' in the background to make sure Scar totally doesn't chow down on an Alice-sandwich.
Setting: Niflheim Gate
Time: Week 26
Warnings: Well, Scar's planning to pwn some heartless, so there will be that.

She’d gotten rather tired of bickering over this device’s network thingy with that strange little creature about her escort for the night eating her, and decided to just up and head out of the hotel that Lumiere was so generously paying for her to stay in for the time being. She would have to find a way of paying him back for that, somehow, eventually; but for the moment she was going to wander off and locate the very kind lion she’d spoken with whom had promised to show her around.

Normally she would find a talking lion to be rather crazy, but given her time in Wonderland this was nothing new to her whatsoever. Rather than being confused and frightened, or at least a bit curious at it, she was already quite used to the idea and seemed fond of it; at least having someone to talk to was always nice, someone who wasn’t mad that is.

Eventually she found herself where she needed to be: Niflheim. Looking around, she didn’t really spot a lion but figured he wouldn’t be all that hard to miss. Deciding that instead of worrying about it, she would simply wait, Alice tucked away the neat little device into her pocket and waited.

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Scar noticed the crowd around the gate parting as he approached this time. He smiled, taking in their newfound fear of him. It was only proper that these imbeciles who surrounded him would be scared. They were weak, milling about like nothing more than ants. He approached the gate itself, and saw the small little girl, looking quite lost. He sniffed the air as he walked toward her, to make certain she was, in fact, a human child, and not something strange.

However, he had told her he would be waiting. So, instead of speaking, he merely sat, waiting for her to say something first. He was still some small distance away, she would have to walk to him, but the crowd was giving him a wide enough berth that she should be able to see him quite easily.

Alice had been about to pull out the little device to double check her location when she turned to look at a small crowd of people who seemed to shy away from something. Raising her brows, curiosity settling in, she wandered from where she was standing to go see what it was that had them all looking so very frightened. As she approached, though, she felt herself smile and once more stuffed her little device into her pocket.

Well, he certainly looked like a lion, so she had to assume that it was Mr. Scar she’d spoken with. But what if it wasn’t? What if he was some circus lion that broke loose in the city? Oh dear, that would be dreadful, wouldn’t it? They had certainly given him a rather wide gap for her to just walk up to him with, but why would they do that to a lion as sweet as Mr. Scar? Perhaps they had just forgotten who he was? But just in case! Alice decided to take a longer route, making her way through some people who seemed to want to hurry away from the creature. Eventually, through her ‘longer route,’ she decided that he was indeed Scar and so she ducked under the arm of one of the city dwellers and crawled until she was close enough to the lion so that he would hear her if she so chose to speak. Pushing herself up to her feet, she dusted herself off and smiled to him.

“Mr. Scar? That is you, isn’t it? I’m Alice, you see,” Oh how she hoped she wasn’t talking to some strange lion who couldn’t reply to her and making herself look utterly silly. “That is you, isn’t it?”

Timon did not want to go on this expedition. Had it not been for the tiny Pumbaa in his head (because let’s face it, the meerkat had little other conscience), he would have simply shrugged off the conversation he had had with Alice and went back to sleep. Scar had done a fine job in giving the meerkat plenty of reason to keep his distance. Even with the girl’s life at stake, he had shown hesitation. But after the long pep talk he had given himself on the way to Niflheim’s gates, Timon knew he had no other choice to ensure the girls safety. He wasn’t exactly sure how he would fend off a full grown lion by himself but he was usually pretty good at improving… Usually.

He had lucked out in assuming Niflheim would be their meeting place. Alice had never told him where she was meeting with Scar. However, an odd sounding voice had revealed her location prior over the journals in explaining how to find a place to stay. He had been right to use that.

The meerkat kept his distance from the pair, hidden among the crowd best he could. If he were to draw to close, Scar would surely smell him. That was, if he hadn’t already. Timon was unsure how good the lion’s sense of smell was but figured if even the scent of meerkat was faint the lion would undermine it, his focus on his objective more than anything else.

He would continue to follow the pair from a distance, watching, waiting in fear that the lion would make an evening snack out of the poor girl. Poor, foolish, and should have listened to him girl.

[ooc: Timon might comment again at the end. Other than that, this is it~]

Scar smiled at the girl, and stood up. "I don't see any other lions around," he said. "I would assume that means you're Alice."

Deceiving her had proved marvelously simple, and Scar was quite certain that a child so naive would certainly fall into his clever ruse without a second thought. Her discussion with Timon on the journals had already proven how stubborn she would be when it came to matters of trust, and that only made this easier.

Of course, the Heartless would help a great deal as well.

“How very true,” she nodded at the mention of, or rather, the lack of other lions about the area. At the mention of her name, she curtsied and then stood straight once more. “Yes, that’s me!” Tucking her hands behind her back, she smiled rather politely to the lion. Despite him being an animal, he certainly seemed her elder so it would be best to be polite to him, she thought.

She didn’t really notice the fact that people were confused at her talking to him or actually frightened for her to be near him, so she simply smiled to him. “So, we go out through here somewhere to go look around the city? I’ve been getting a bit more excited about it, you know, seeing the city. Especially now that you’ve agreed to be my escort! I might not get out of here, but it might still be fun, right?”

She certainly hoped it would be more fun rather than dangerous. Alice was busying herself thinking about anything else but the creatures that Scar had mentioned being around the area. The last thing she wanted was to run into something frightening after all.

"Oh yes, we'll have lots of fun~" Scar said with a huge smile accompanied by a wave of his paw. At least...he would. He couldn't help but be reminded of how simple it had been to trick Simba all those years ago as a cub. This "Alice" was almost frighteningly naive.

It would be all too easy to have her play right into his paws. "Now, the man at the gate doesn't really like it when someone goes outside, so we're going to have to sneak past him. Are you good at doing that, Alice? If not, I could always threaten him. Being a lion and all makes it very easy to scare people into doing something."

“Oh, it would be terribly rude to frighten the poor dear.” Even if he was a bit of a jerk who didn’t let her ask him anything and just kind of shoved her through the entrance without explaining anything to her at all. Smiling to Scar, she clapped her hands together somewhat excitedly; after all it wasn’t every day one got to explore a castle, even if she couldn’t go all that far into it, she nodded to the lion.

“Sneaking I can do!” After all, she’d snuck away from her tutors quite often to avoid her lessons, sneaking was mostly certainly very easy for her. “I have a lot of experience in sneak-ology.”

Making up words was fun.

A made-up word. How...annoying. Simba hadn't even done that. And neither had the hyenas. Scar tried to contain his groan of displeasure and urge to rub his temple with a paw, focusing his efforts instead on their little...task. Of course, even the man at the gate wasn't going to interrupt Scar, but slipping past this stupid citizen with the little girl in tow would be hardly any trouble.

He smiled down at her, the grin breaking across his muzzle with thinly veiled menace. "You see how he has to reach over that counter to hand out the journals? If we can stay low enough, he won't even know that we're trying to get out."

“Very well Mr. Scar!” She proclaimed, although quietly of course so not to give away their position, naturally. Knitting her brow with a look of determination, Alice nodded to the lion and clenched her fists rather goofily as if to display her bravery for him. It should be fairly easy for her to crouch down and shuffle past the man, it helped that she was very small to begin with.

In contemplating how to properly sneak around the man at the gate she didn’t notice any of the slight bit of malice in the lion’s grin and she never would have guessed she was irritating him. In Alice’s eyes, Scar was a very sweet lion who was kind enough to volunteer escorting her about a dangerous city. He was a most kind creature indeed and she would have to repay him somehow in the future, with what though, she couldn’t say. Perhaps with adoration!

“This will be easier than sneaking away from Nanny, you’ll see.” Moving closer to the counter, though somewhat stealthily (as well as a child who fled from lessons rather frequently could, that is) Alice crouched down and eventually found herself on all fours, ducking down to crawl past the man. Pushing a hair behind her ear, she crawled past the counter and found herself on the other side of it rather swiftly. She was, of course, assuming that Scar would be right behind her. Once far enough from the desk and the man behind it to declare a victory of proper sneaking, Alice pushed herself up to her feet and began to brush herself off.

After all, dirt on her knee-highs would just not do at all.

Scar put scarcely as much effort into bypassing the fool gatekeeper's perceptions as Alice. To most, what he did would have looked like he was simply pouncing, staying very low to the pavement as he darted forward and past the line as well as the gate.

His leap brought his muzzle terribly close to Alice's head, and he smiled a second time, the sun glinting off his sharp, cruel teeth. He took a step around her, and then another, sizing her up quickly as he hadn't had a proper chance to do inside the domes.

"Now that we're outside the gate, Alice, it's far more dangerous," he said, his voice dropping to just above a hoarse whisper. Then he switched his voice to more of a cooing. "And, if you think you might be getting scared, don't feel bad to tell me you want to turn back, okay? I wouldn't want you getting upset."

That would certainly have made Simba only go farther away from him. Scar wasn't positive that this human girl was just as stubborn as his nephew had been, but even if she wasn't, and she actually listened to him (and who would, with an obnoxious cooing voice like the one he had used?), that would give him almost total control over just exactly what she would be able to see.

As she dusted herself off, she felt him closing in on her and startled a bit as he drew close, but attempted to play it off as though she hadn’t gotten frightened at all. Clearing her throat, she turned to look at him and raised her brows. Scared? Her? Why, she had to scoff at the mere thought of being afraid. When she thought back on all the things that happened to her in Wonderland and not once was she scared. (Perhaps that was a bold faced lie.)

And naturally she was conveniently forgetting that she was just startled by him in the first place.

“Scared? Why, not at all.” She puffed her cheeks a bit, almost appearing insulted at the thought. “I won’t be scared, you’ll see. Besides, I’m very confident in your abilities, Mr. Scar. I think you’ll be a grand protector.” She even nodded to prove her point (however that might work.)

"Of course, of course. Why, there's no reason at all for a girl like you to ever be scared of some monsters who have to hide in the shadows." Scar kept himself from laughing at her outright, but that didn't do anything to his smirk.

"And since you're so very brave, I'm going to let you lead the way, Alice. That way, I'll be able to see if any of those nasty little monsters show up to try to hurt you."

Lead? Well, she hadn’t really seen that one coming but it stood to reason that he was right. If she was the one who was leading them, Scar would have the vantage point of spotting anything that might come out at her, so she couldn’t argue the point. Now the only matter at hand was to decide where on earth she should go first? Tapping her finger to her chin, she looked around the area a bit and simply decided to venture forward, swinging her arms to and fro as she wandered along, humming a little tune and being completely and utterly unaware of what she might run into out here.

The Heartless, of course, would be arriving whenever Scar saw fit, provided whatever the creatures were that produced that most unfamiliar scent didn't show up. He had yet to actually encounter them, so could not be certain that they were no more--or less--dangerous than the Heartless were. He would much rather not risk running into them, whatever they were.

He followed along behind her, treading silently on the eerie white grass. A fine sight they made, a black-maned lion prowling along behind a tiny little human girl. The tune she hummed quickly became irksome, but after dealing with the hyenas for so long he decided he would be able to put up with it until he decided it was time for the Heartless to teach this stupid child how to be properly afraid.

So far so good, it seemed. Nothing had jumped out at her just yet and things appeared to be going rather swimmingly with the lion following behind her. If he were planning to eat her he would have likely already leapt onto her with the intent by now, so the silly meerkat she’d spoken with earlier could not have been more wrong at all! She’d have to point that out at some point in the future to him, if only to ruffle his — well perhaps not feathers, but still. The point was that she had been right and he had been wrong and thus needed to know; if only to apologize. It would only be natural for him to apologize for painting Mr. Scar in such a bad light and having it be proven wrong. How very insulting indeed.

Alice glanced around at the sights to see, the area really was very beautiful. And it certainly wasn’t every day that she was walking upon white colored blades of grass with a lion in tow, after all. Suffice to say, however, she was staying somewhat far from the darker and more shaded areas nearby, be it bushes or simply shadows cast by other bits of scenery nearby, Alice was not taking the chance to awaken something in the darkness nearby. If things here lived in the shadows like the monsters in her closet, she really wasn’t all that interested in finding them.

…although it would be somewhat curious to see a shadow creature, wouldn’t it?

A smile crept across Scar's lips, just briefly visible. The Heartless didn't need shadows to appear, of course, that was merely the place one was most likely to find them. In most instances Scar himself had seen them, the shadows had nothing to do with it at all.

Pools of darkness welled up around the girl slowly, silently. There were only a few--three, perhaps four, but that many Shadows would be enough. He wanted to scare her, not have the Heartless take her. And she was just a stupid brat anyway. The whole thing could probably be accomplished with just one, if he wanted to, but that would hardly make for a convincing show.

Behind her, two Shadows dragged themselves out of the darkness, pulling their heads and limbs from the shadowy depths. They made no sound, as two more dredged themselves up in front of her. Scar, for the moment, made no move to interfere, though he readied himself to pounce the instant the Heartless started moving. He couldn't have her getting wounded on their very first outing, that simply wouldn't look any good.

Alice was busying herself looking at a rather intriguing flower when something became visible to her in the corner of her eye. Wondering what else might be about the area for her to look at and learn about, she turned to take a gander at it and was surprised to see some sort of strange little black creature pulling itself up out of the ground from seemingly nowhere. Oh but he didn’t look friendly at all! Not with those glowing eyes and strange claw-like hands!

Letting out a gasp, she took a step back only to bump into another one of the black, strange little creatures. Letting out a frightened yelp, Alice stumbled over her feet to get out of the way from them. Although just backing up and shifting away didn’t seem to be working at all considering the little buggers just leapt at her! Ducking and covering her head, closing her eyes rather tightly she let out another frightened cry as one of the heartless swiped at her leg, catching its hand on her dress’ tuft.

Scar quickly jumped in front of Alice, tearing viciously into the Shadow with his claws. Another was rend asunder by his teeth, then another slammed into the ground and slashed into nothingness as he pounced on top of it. The last suffered the same fate.

"Are you quite all right, Alice?" he asked her, not even out of breath. Even though he rarely fought, or hunted, he certainly wasn't incapable of doing so. He was a lion, after all. And hunting and fighting were what male lions did best--the normal ones, anyway. Scar had only inherited enough of those instincts to know that he wanted as little to do with them as possible. This case with the girl was a rare exception.

She was determined not to look even though she could have sworn she just heard a strange squishy noise and felt one of their little black hands pry off of her skirt. Breaking her own vow to herself, Alice peeked opened one of her eyes in time to watch Scar leap onto one of the shadows and slam it into nothingness; then do the same to another. Feeling her body shaking in the fear of what had just taken place, she slowly uncurled from the little ball she’d found herself in to look up at the large lion, suddenly even more thankful for having him around than she had been in the first place. He’d certainly not been joking around when he mentioned there were creatures here that would harm her.

This place, Paixao, was definitely not like Wonderland. Though there were many things that confused her there and even those silly cards that tried to cut off her head — there wasn’t really anything so scary there such as what she’d just seen. At least, nothing that she could remember at the moment! Taking a moment to quickly look around her whereabouts, and even turning around on all fours to check behind herself eventually crawling in a circle back to face Scar, she bit her lip and gave him a bit of a curt nod.

‘Ladies do not cry, Alice!’ She thought to herself as she pushed her small frame up from the ground to stand on her feet, although still a bit shaky.

“Y-yes, I’m alright… Thank you, Mr. Scar! I’m afraid I would not be if it weren’t for you.” Which was, by all means, so very true. Alice did not have any kind of fighting skill, as it were. “Wh-what on earth were those things?!”

"Those, my dear, are called the Heartless." Scar looked out over the horizon as he explained. "They exist to steal the hearts from other creatures. Quite the nasty little things."

He walked in a circle around Alice. His voice crept lower and took on a much more menacing quality. "You should take care to stay away from them whenever you can. And if they show up so close, it's best to run. To run very, very far."

“They steal…Hearts?”

Of all the horrifying things to take from someone! Their hearts! ‘Nasty’ wasn’t the word she wanted to use for such a terrible little thing such as the heartless, but it was unladylike to say anything vulgar about them — and besides, Alice was much too shaken up to properly be upset about their existence for the moment.

Feeling a shiver crawl along her spine, she shook lightly as he spoke to her about what to do if she were to ever see the little monsters again. Running was certainly something she’d be doing if those little creeps showed up again; supposing that she wasn’t frozen in fear and curled up into a little ball at the time, that is. She gave him another curt nod brought on mostly by the fretting fear that they might pop back up again at any time — which she assumed they could do.

“D-Do people die if they do that?” She couldn’t help but ask, after all, biology class told her that people needed a heart to live!

"I'm not sure," Scar answered. "But I'm terribly certain I would rather not find out, wouldn't you agree?"

Of course, he didn't have anything to fear from the Heartless. They were his minions, and nothing more. He would have a rather easy time of making sure no such thing ever happened to him, and all he needed was to simply will them to leave if they appeared.

And convincing this girl...oh, that was proving to be working marvelously. She was perfectly scared of them, and perfectly trusting in him. He couldn't have possibly made this turn out any better.

“Y-yes, I quite agree actually.” She felt the color leaving her cheeks at the thought of someone actually dying. Setting her palms to her cheeks as if to will the color back into them, she attempted to shake away the thought. The last thing that a lady such as herself needed to be thinking about was people dying and creatures scampering off with hearts to do whatever they pleased with them. It certainly wasn’t the most pleasant of thoughts to be having.

“P… Perhaps we should go, Mr. Scar? Before those, those things come back, don’t you think?” She did. She very much did. The very last thing she wanted was a repeat performance. Alice couldn’t even begin to think of what might have happened if…

She was a lucky girl indeed to have met this lion and made friends with him.

"...Yes." Scar drew out the word overdramatically. "Let's."

He held his head high and led the way back to the gate. "Stay close, Alice. You wouldn't want to be caught alone if more Heartless show up, would you?"

Good lord, that’s exactly the last thing she wanted! To be caught off guard with those, those things springing up all over the place trying to steal her heart! And she definitely did not want to know what the conclusions were if someone’s heart was stolen. Hurrying in her pace to stay at the lion’s side, she glanced over her shoulder every now and again to reassure herself that they weren’t being chased by the yellow-eyed shadows.

Trembling just slightly, she opted to reach a hand out and take a hold of the lion’s fur (not too tightly of course) to ensure that she’d stay at his side until she was safely back in her little hotel room for the time being. There had been many things she’d seen. Big creatures, little ones — mad people and creatures alike, strange talking flowers and cards, piglets pretending to be baby boys but this was certainly the most frightening of them all.

“Th-thank you,” she spoke quietly as if worried that her voice would bring them back somehow. “I don’t know what I would have done without you Mr. Scar.”

"Oh, it was no trouble, Alice," Scar answered her, looking back at the little girl with a smile. He wanted to tear her to shreds for touching him, but of course, he had to keep up appearances, and didn't show the slightest discomfort. Dealing with this girl may perhaps prove less worthwhile than he wanted, for as much as she was annoying him.

He took his time walking back, feeling no reason to be in a rush. It had taken them a while to come this far, so it would take just as long to return.

“You’re a very strong lion.” She smiled to him with a gentle nod.

Little did she know the ‘very strong lion’ utterly hated her presence with him and would prefer to be rid of her let alone protect her from the heartless. To her, Scar was a friend who just made sure that nothing had happened to her while they were together and that just proved to her that she’d been right about him all along. She really couldn’t blame Ms. Belle for fretting about her — Alice was still a child after all and she noticed that adults tended to fret about children, but she could at least prove to that silly meerkat that he was wrong about Mr. Scar! That would at least provide a bit of happiness through the discomfort of the shadows from before.

She’d suddenly wished the road back to the city was much shorter than the one out of it and something told her if she were in Wonderland such a thing might actually exist.

"I'm sorry I can't let you ride on me," the lion said as they walked. "You see, I have a terribly bad back, and it won't let me do much more than walk, just like this."

The gate was finally looming up over the horizon. As much as Scar longed to pick up the pace and return sooner, and be rid of er all that much faster, the more time she spent with him, the stronger his little ploy would become. "I always wanted to play more with my nephew Simba while he was still a cub, but, alas, I was forced to miss the opportunity. I've regretted it ever since."

Tilting her head, Alice wondered what it would have been like to ride on a lion. Probably similar to a horse, she told herself, but shook her head to Scar. “Oh no, I wouldn’t have asked that.” She probably might have if the thought had occurred to her, but now she knew that there simply was no way for her to do so and that was sad. Poor thing.

“I hope you didn’t hurt it when you were fighting those things…” She’d feel sort of terrible if he had.

Noticing the sparkling ice-like gate coming up, Alice began to feel somewhat relieved. She thought about asking him if those heartless things could be inside the city but wasn’t entirely certain if she wanted to know the answer to that. Frowning though at his story of his nephew, she gave him a little pat where her hand held onto his fur — although she let go once they approached the gate.

“That’s awful, but I’m sure your nephew understood. If you can’t do something you simply can’t do it, is all.” She nodded to herself.

"Oh no, I can still fight, when I must," Scar answered. He twitched when he felt her patting his fur, and nearly snarled. He restrained the noise of course, it would have scared her, and would break the persona he was building for himself.

So of course, he couldn't have been more relieved to approach the gate. "I'll have to leave you here once we're back inside. Is that all right?"

He'd never had to play uncle for Simba in quite such a...direct way, and he was finding the act rather taxing. This girl asked just as many questions as his nephew had as a cub, and she seemed to have taken a liking to him. That meant that there was nothing but more questions and more of that stupid humming and her inane babbling in the future. It was almost as bad as dealing with the hyenas.

Scar could only pray all this would prove worth the waste of his time.

“Yes, that’s… That’s alright.” Naturally she would have wanted to have him lead her back to her hotel she was staying at but would never ask him as it seemed like she would be imposing at this point and besides, he’d made it clear that he wanted to part ways. He probably had other things to do, she assumed. Linking her fingers together, playing with them incessantly she headed into the city with the lion and glanced around (again, as she had been for some time now) to make sure those creatures hadn’t followed them into the city or anything like that.

“…I …I can find my way to my hotel room from here, th-thank you, Mr. Scar. I owe you a lot for your help today.” She smiled to him.

"Please Alice, don't mention it." Mentally, Scar added the word "really" to the thought. He would much rather that she never spoke of it again, though the way it seemed was that there was no chance she'd keep her mouth shut. She seemed rather enamored with him. And while from one perspective, that was a very good thing--after all, it was what he had hoped to accomplish, from another, it was obvious that this was going to be a most irritating venture, simply to win the trust of a stupid little human girl.

But he had noticed that if there was anything these stupid apes were likely to believe, it was an innocent little girl like Alice...so long as they didn't think she was making up wild stories. But even if they did, the thoughts of what she said about him would still be there, and that would make his life far, far easier. Everyone else could argue about him while he quietly slipped around in the shadows.

What a sweet and modest lion Scar was, it was really quite wonderful to have met someone so brave so early on in her stay here in Paixao. The last thing she needed was to get mixed in with the wrong crowd or some such. She was lucky and fortunate and very much saw herself in such a manner considering all that had come to pass in such a short time here already. But for the moment she’d let the lion go and find her own way back to the hotel, it wasn’t all that far after all and she could tell that he seemed to have other places he needed to be. Gathering up her courage, she nodded to the lion.

“I’ll head back now, I’m sure it’ll be alright.” She paused for a moment and then curtsied to him after bunching her skirt of her dress slightly to do so. “You be safe on the way home too, Mr. Scar!”

And with that, she turned on her heel and pressed her finger to her lips for only a moment before she recalled which direction she needed to go in order to get to her temporary home (or so she liked to think of it as) and set off for the hotel.

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