Alison Leaves Wonderland

Once upon a time, Alison used to be oh so very happy.

Her Kappa father was a kind man that owned a bakery. As a toddler, she remembered being able to explore and taste all the bright and colorful treats from his shop. All his regular customers were also jolly and kind. They’d dote on her by pinching at her chubby little cheeks, a stream of warm coos and cute compliments leaving their lips.

Meanwhile, her Iota mother was a tough yet funny woman who actually worked as a car mechanic. She may not have been home as often as her father, but she was still able to come back by dinnertime in her mechanic suit and a disheveled hair bun. Even if she was tired after a long day, she still had the energy to crack jokes at the dining table.

Then, one day, while celebrating their ten-year anniversary, Alison lost both of her parents at the same time in a plane crash. She had to find out through her aunt and uncle, who were supposed to be her new guardian figures from now on.

The loss of her kind baker Kappa father and her strong and funny mechanic Iota mother hit her like a truck, on top of a newfound crippling depression.

For the next few years, she struggled to keep moving through the motions of her life. The dimples that used to crease her furry face were no longer present, replaced with increasing frown lines instead. The longer she stayed with her aunt and uncle, the longer she got to know her younger cousin Pip - a mischievous little Iota brat with a love for magic tricks.

Since he was so fascinated by the ‘magic’ he witnessed on their TV screen, Alison took it upon herself to learn some elaborate cards tricks for him. The sheer joy that gleamed in Pip’s big, doe-like eyes as he would watch her perform fulfilled her with a sense of joy she hadn’t felt in a long while.

Soon enough, Pip became like a brother to her. A radiant light was slowly creeping back into her life. Perhaps with him around, all would go well, and she would eventually feel happy in her own wonderland again.

Alison would soon be proven wrong.

One night, a monstrous fire plagued the house, killing off both her aunt and uncle as they died in their sleep. The memories of poisonous smoke fumes and blurred tears and just everything breaking apart and melting away all around her haunted Alison to her core. The image of the place she had finally acknowledged as her home crumbling into ashes and ruins was scorched into her mind so hard that she began to develop insomnia.

Every time Alison would try and close her heavy eyes in hopes of gaining sleep, all she could see were flames eating away at everything that she loved.

She later realized the full story behind the house fire while in court, when she and Pip had no other relatives to fall back on and were going to be sent to an orphanage. Pip had apparently been playing around with some matches and had accidentally dropped them.

At first, she tried to not think much about it. The raw anger that had threatened to burst from within her was immediately shoved deep down, suppressed all the way to the depths of her unconscious psyche. She loved Pip – no, still loves him.

Present tense, was what she would remind herself, almost like she needed to reinforce that out of guilt.

However, her true feelings could not stay dormant for long. Rage was a potent trigger. Eventually, just looking at him started to infuriate her. The longer they wasted away their childhood in the shitty orphanage they were crammed into, the more her blood boiled at the sight of his face.

She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. They’d still be back home if it weren’t for him, they wouldn’t be eating nasty ass slop every night for dinner if it weren’t for him, their parents would actually be alive and well if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t be crying herself to sleep every night if it weren’t for him.

One day, Alison had snapped. Something inside of her cracked, and any bit of restraint that she possessed left was shattered like glass. As she gave Pip a piece of her mind, her voice increasing in volume and intensity, red dotted her vision, almost like she was blind with rage.

Until finally, she declared severing all ties with him for good.

The hurt in his teary eyes almost made her take back everything she had said, but the dark misery that had accumulated throughout all these months that she had spent at the orphanage erased any hesitation she had.

It was his fault that she was like this anyway.

Or at least that was what she kept telling herself, that same, spiteful phrase looping over and over again.

She deserved her chance at happiness, but fate had already fucked that up for her too many times.

Nothing could possibly get worse.

Or so she believed.

One day, one of the staff members that at the orphanage worked had informed her that she would be getting adopted soon. A glaring red flag should’ve popped up in her mind when the staff member had failed to provide any specifics regarding who was going to adopt her, but at the time, Alison didn’t care about anything else but getting the hell out.

One minute, she was waiting in a room, ready to meet her new parents. Her legs swung back and forth, dangling over the white tiles, as her anticipation built up more and more with time. She was given a piece of peppermint to chew on while this was all happening.

However, the peppermint tasted rather odd. There was something sour about it, but she kept churning and tossing it around in her mouth anyway.

Several minutes later, the world began to tilt on its axis. Her vision swayed from side to side, left to right, and then darkness rushed up to her as she collapsed.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself bound to a chair with rope. All four of her arms had either been tied together or chained down. The cold sting of the metal chains wrapped around her wrists sent shivers up her fur.

A male Iota Floss with eerie red eyes stood before her. She tried to scream, to cry, anything, but her mouth had already been sealed shut with a cloth.

“We own you,” the man told her. His voice was hoarse and raspy, akin to crunched gravel. It hurt just listening to him. “We bought you, and now we will train you to be one of the best soldier we have in this organization. I’m your new instructor, and you will listen to what I say.”

What was happening? Where was the family that was supposed to adopt her?

Before a sob could break through, he reached his hand out and yanked Alison by the hair, forcing her teary-eyed gaze onto him.

“Do what you are told or else you starve and die.”

And so began Alison’s life as an assassin.

As she would later realize, the orphanage had sold her away to an Iota mafia group that specialized in training kids to be contract killers. They made plenty of profit selling these kids to other crime organizations by the time they turned eighteen and of age.

It was either kill or be killed in her new world.

If Alison didn’t study hard enough or train her body hard enough to develop the stealthy reflexes required for a mission, then she wouldn’t be able to see the next day alive. She had to become what they wanted her to be, and her soul broke, bit by bit, along the way as she spent her teenage years staining her hands with blood.

Once her eighteenth birthday had arrived, her routine for bloodshed naturally continued, only in a different place this time, and with different co-workers.

Indifference.

Apathy.

Detachment.

She couldn’t bring herself to care anymore, her tear ducts were already too broken to cry anyway.

Her childhood dreams of being carefree and content in her own fairy tale wonderland were long gone by now.

Though not everything is shit, and Alison does have some nice moments in her life as of recently ever since befriending her co-worker Jay (and eventually Clyde). Even if killing is still the only thing she knows how to do, and sometimes it makes her feel empty inside, she’s managed to make it this far in life, and maybe that’s what matters most.