October 11, 2013 -*
Chloe's POV
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“Wonderland looks like a ******* acid trip.” I mentioned, while Hayden silently dragged me along pressing his fingers so roughly into the skin of my arm that I could feel my pulse surge through my arm. “Come on, don't tell me you don't think the same.”
“Where is Alice?”
I pointed towards the cage, containing one of the seven princesses. “There.”
Hayden took off his hood, and stepped up to the podium to stare at Queen *****. Oops, I meant the Queen of Hearts. Her square face and extremely large lips coated in a ruby waxy color along with the bad contouring made her look like a drunk housewife who hates her kids. “Who are you? How dare you interfere with my court!”
“What if I find you the real culprit? Will you let Alice go?”
“That's hogwash. Find me proof, then we'll talk.” The Queen of Hearts yelled in her unnecessarily loud and booming voice, startling even Hayden's hardass personality.
The solitaire card guards stood at bay, wielding their weapons at their sides. One of the guards locked the gate, and threw the key up towards the queen who spun the key ring around her finger. Hayden stepped back, gripping my arm forcefully again. “Dude, can't you loosen up?”
Hayden huffed. “Shut the **** up. If you don't follow my orders –”
“You'll do what? **** me? I thought you needed my soul to enter the Final Keyhole.”
Hayden tensed up the muscles in his hands around my arm, literally dragging me along with him. The moment we entered the forest, he loosened his grip on me slightly as he walked forward mumbling something about wanting to have me on a leash.
“Yeah, because I'm literally a *****. Get it?”
Hayden threw me up against the wall, pressing his balled up fist beside my face. His nose was nearly touching mine as he gave me a humorless look. I could basically see the evil in his eyes. “You're not ******* funny. After we open up the Final Keyhole, I'll finally be able to ******* get rid of you. All you are to me is ******* trash. Do you understand that?”
I spit a loogie in his face. “Get off of me, *******.”
Before I could react, he took out his keyblade and slashed up my left arm drawing a lot of blood. With gritted teeth, I said, “You – You will never ******* open up the Final Keyhole. Not without me.”
My body started losing consciousness almost immediately, and I felt my body drop down onto the forest floor. If looks could ****, I would have been dead the moment Organization XIII captured me three weeks ago. Finally, the darkness swallowed me and I welcomed it's homely embrace.
“There's a legend behind those paopu fruit: If two people share one, their destinies become intertwined. They'll remain a part of each other's lives no matter what. I've always wanted to try it." Max mentioned, putting her bare feet into the water.
“You know legends are basically myths passed down over generations?”
She looked over towards me with this soft gaze in her face, and I felt the air ****** out of me as the sun hit her azure blue eyes the right way. “I know it sounds stupid, but I want to do it sometime.”
“Grab me the axe out the shed, Max. We're gonna chop down one of these trees.”
“Are you kidding me?” Max had this worried look on her face, and I rolled my eyes.
“Yes. Come on, slowpoke. We're losing daylight here.”
A few minutes passed as I soaked my feet in the salt water, and I laid down in the sand whenever I was met with Max who held the axe above me. I flinched, and sat up quickly. “You scared me.”
“Give me the axe.” She handed it to me, and we raced each other to the top of the lighthouse. Of course, Max was faster since I was lugging around this dense axe. When we made it to the tree, I started swinging the axe into the tree. I got tired super quickly, since we basically raced each other. “This activity takes so much energy out of me. You and I shouldn't have raced up here.”
“It was fun. Let me try.” Max grabbed the axe from me, and swung with slightly more force than I did. After several of Max's swings, we watched the tree start leaning towards the water.
“You're doing it, Max!”
“Max the Axe Queen!” I shook my head grinning as the tree finally groaned, spintered, and collapsed off the top of the hill of the lighthouse crashing into the waters below. “Oh no...”
“I'll get it.” I nodded. “I'm a good swimmer.”
As I swam over towards the crash site, I noticed that the tree has gotten caught on the gap between one of the rocks so the leaves of the tree and some of the fruits were still showing. I was surprised that the stems of the paopu fruits stayed on. “I found the *****!”
“Chloe!”*
Immediately, I recall that Max never called for me. I swam back to shore, right? Her shrill voice rang in the air louder. Then it became deafeningly loud. That's when I felt fabric wrapped around my arm. My finger twitched as I started to realize that Max was screaming my name. “– And you don't understand anything. You're just a weak kid with a keyblade.”
“I may be weak, but my heart is strong.”
“Then show me that you're strong, because all I see is a hopeless girl saturated with optimism. Like you can do anything with those doormats you call your sidekicks.” I struggled to open my eyes, eventually peeking out. This was the first time I was looking at Max Caulfield in five years, and she looked ******* furious as she held the keyblade.
“Don't you dare talk about my friends like that!”
“Try and ******* stop me, you twig.”
Her eyes immediately flickered towards me, and I did the shushing motion with my lips when I weakly pointed up towards Hayden. She looked back at Hayden, positioning herself. With all of the strength in my body, I kicked Hayden in the back of his knees making him collapse over me. “What the hell?”
Quickly, I crawled out when he grabbed at my leg. “Get back here, *****!”
Max sprinted towards Hayden, her keyblade drawn and positioned to attack Hayden when he blocked Max with his own. This gave me enough time to crawl out of his grip. Two keyblades, something I've never seen before, came forth from Hayden's hands as I ran towards Max's side, throwing out my hand to manifest my sword. My heart was beating against my chest as I pressed my back up against Max's. “Good to see you again, Max.”
“Same here. Distract him, I'm going to heal you.”
Then it was my turn to fight Hayden, who looked furious. Max healed my wound in the background as I ran from Hayden. With Hayden equipped with two swords and knowing he is dexterous with both his left and right hand, defense was very difficult on my part. Eventually, he kept on throwing slashes over at me and that's all I could do. “Come on, Max. I'm basically blocking here.”
While Hayden was occupied by me, he noticed Max was building up a fire attack which he quickly darted towards the left as the flames hit a tree in the forest. The tree slowly started building up a fire as Max and I started clashing swords with Hayden. At one point, he swiped Max towards the ground and pinned me up against one of the burning trees. “You better back the ******* right now.”
“You're ******* scared, aren't you?” I yelled at Hayden's face, who pressed the keyblade against my neck. Everything started feeling uncomfortably hot, especially the sweat that ran down my face. My eyes glanced over towards Max, who quickly ran off towards the fruit upstairs.
“Where did that ***** Max go?”
Hayden spotted Max eating the fruit high in the tree, and his face went pale. Max slowly started growing in size, and that delay was enough time for me to run from Hayden. Once Max was at full size, she grabbed Hayden like a ******* teddy graham. “Leave my friends alone.”
She crushed him in her fingers, and his body shattered into billions of pieces. After checking that he was executed properly, she wiped her fingers on her shirt. “Woah, Max. That was ******* awesome.”
“Let me get down on your level first.” Max joked, grabbing the fruit out of the tree. Once Max shrank back to normal size, the blonde haired girl with wings had came over to heal my arm injuries with her keyblade. As Max approached me, I felt my heart jolt once I saw how big the smile was on her face.
****, she's ******* attractive now.
“Cards! Find whoever made this mess, and exterminate them. Off with their heads!” The familiar booming voice of Queen ***** interrupted my thoughts, and for once, I was thankful to hear such a nasally and unattractive voice.
"Oh ****!" Max whisper-screamed, grabbing my hand.
We ran towards the tea party set up yet abandoned by Alice and her friends, and hid under the table as we heard the Queen's voice, followed by the clapping footsteps of the Solitaire Cards.
“So are you going to introduce me to your friends?” I whispered to Max who was at my side, nudged her in her arm.
“Maybe later, when we're not stuck under a ******* table.” She gently grabbed my arm, and I noticed her touch greatly contrasted with Hayden's rough one. I excused that thought as soon as it ran through my head, silencing our breathing as the cards marched through the abandoned tea party. It must have been fifteen minutes of cards patrolling the area making sure it was clear before we crawled out.
I wiped the grass off my pants when Max threw her arms around me in the process. “Max, you're a ninja. That was some quick thinking. You're still smart.”
“I missed you.” Max buried her nose into my collar bones, curling her arms around me and pressing me close to her. I could feel her heart beating rapidly from the leftover adrenaline from the fight. Almost immediately, I returned the favor throwing my arms around her neck. Something about her smelled sweet, and I allowed myself a moment of peace and serenity with my best friend.
“I missed you too, Max.” Max tightened her grip on my shirt as I tried pulling back. “What?”
“Chloe, I've been looking for you for years now. I thought you were dead.” Max was crying, but from the way she was smiling, I could tell that it was tears of joy. Something in me blossomed as I pulled her into my chest again. “It's just...I'm so glad to see you.”
“Yeah. Same here.” Eventually, she let go, and I turned towards Max's friends. “Sorry for that. Looks like my best friend can't keep her hands off me. I'm Chloe Price.”
Warren and Kate both shook Chloe's eager hand. “Come on, Chloe. We have to leave before the cards find us and try to **** me.”
“Lead the way, Max.”
