| Felix Cheshire | |
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| Portrayed By | Tomas Nykrmajer |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Date of Birth | 18 August |
| Age | 16 |
| Zodiac Sign | Leo |
| Aliases | Cheshire |
| Places of Birth | Kern County/Lassen County, California |
| Current Location | NYC |
| Occupation | |
| Known Relatives | none |
| Significant Other | none |
| Identity | |
| Known Abilities | Cheshire Cat Tricks |
| First Appearance | Psamurai Pshowdown |
The Cheshire Cat was just a story, little girl. I'm the real thing.
History
And now, for something completely indifferent…
Charity Anne Murford was a mutant. She was also brain-damaged during birth and never developed emotionally past the age of three, intellectually past seven.
She was normally a sweet, pleasant child, though, until puberty quietly activated her mutant genetics. Her power first manifested to protect her from an abusive babysitter. The sitter was … let's just say that it was justice and more when Charity Anne slapped the sitter and the sitter transformed into a gelatinous glob. She reverted after a few hours in the sun, somewhat the worse for wear, and her story led the police to have her seen by the only doctor in their out-of-the-way burg. Dr. Smith, yes, he went by that name.
He wasn't actually a medical doctor. He was a doctor of philosophy and quite frankly he was barking mad. Classical maniac. And quite rich. So he managed it was easy to convince Charity Anne's parents that it was safer for her to be in his little hospital. Yes, he had a little hospital. It looked very clean, very sterile, from the outside, but he only had very special patients there. Actually he didn't have patients at all, he had experiments. But he also enjoyed fooling the townspeople by dressing up and making Appearances as if some movie star were being brought by limosine to his hospital.
He made a special room for Charity Anne. It was pink and had ponies on the wallpaper. The door was transparent plastic so she could see but not wander, and he would dress up like a nurse to bring her meals and read her stories and take her to the fancy shower-bath-box that he had imported from Japan. So he never had to touch her with his bare hands. After all, she might turn HIM to jelly! And she had her dolls, her toys, her teevee, and when the doctor said she was especially good she had cinnamon rolls for breakfast instead of oatmeal. But she was only especially good when he would bring her a little animal playmate and she would turn them into jelly. So she learned, she would get a cinnamon roll if she turned only the ones he said into jelly, even though it was very funny when they went all wobbly and transparent. She never saw what he did with them. She barely remembered them anyway, thanks to the brain injury.
Dr. Smith was ecstatic. This was Fate handing him his dreams on a platter. He was a devotee, an adherent, of the writings of the man who had become the High Evolutionary. He wanted to explore the secrets of human development, of what made animals simply animals rather than humans.
But where the Evolutionary was a genius of genetics, the Frank Lloyd Wright of meddling in the secrets of God, the doctor was more of a weekend house repair guy, the one who never got it quite right. So for the rest of this narrative, we shall refer to him when appropriate as the Medium-Low Evolutionary.
First it was mice. The gel was a completely undifferentiated mass of protein analogue. He could stir it and the mouse would revert just fine when exposed to ultraviolet light, only a bit stunned when it came to. Contaminants would just be embedded, unless they dissolved, when they would be distributed through the body. He tried then then to stir two mice together.
The result was a larger, single mouse, that was clumsy and confused, but it lived, gradually becoming just another mouse in personality anyway. The laser-beam-vision it used to stun the other mice so it could eat the food, that was something new and strange, so he sacrificed it. On the Altar of Science. Autopsy showed that it was identical to normal mice, even in the eyes, except that the internal organs were twice the usual size.
The ML-Evolutionary knew, after two more tries gave him a Snakerat which could levitate, and a Cricketbird which could explode itself. ONCE. Didn't live long, that one. He had to try with something harder. He knew where there was a foster family across town which would never miss one of their swarm of neglected brats. And he knew how to get a puma. So, he secretly brought the police down on the neighbor who had an illegal pet, a big cat named Felix who was convinced he was just another house cat. Felix was a fine healthy if underfed, don't forget that part 110 pound house PUMA, not quite grown.
And now for the foster kid…
The orphanage was only able to keep them until they reached age 12. Felix Smith (last name provided by state) was a foundling, abandoned at the doors of one of the very few operating orphanage in left in the US. He wasn't adopted. He wasn't an attractive child, he was small and frail and had temper fits when he was younger, and was sullen when he was pre-teen. And got worse when puberty hit. Gawky and sullen and shrimpy. The orphanage was run by nuns, but they weren't especially rude or disciplinarian. They were very efficient though.
At 12, he was released to the state foster care system, which put him through several homes. The first was a transitional home, pleasant enough but his attitude kept them from keeping him.
The next was a loving home where the parents were both well trained and were able to begin to get past Felix's trust issues, until the mother died of a sudden heart attack.
The last one was just short of abandonment because the foster parents did nothing to encourage or help him or the 10 other foster kids they had. They took the money and let the kids do most of the work. At 14, Felix was ready to run away. He was a runt, the other kids picked on him. He knew how to take care of himself, so he took off one day. They didn't notice for a week, and then they didn't stop reporting him for two months, because, they claimed, the other kids kept pretending he was still there. Almost true. They ate his share of food. It was a big scandal in the newspapers.
He thought he'd make it to a big city somewhere and vanish. Maybe find someone like his second foster family to take him in. He didn't get the chance. In the moonless dark he was hit a glancing blow by a tractor-trailer, not quite enough to kill him. It was summer, so he didn't freeze, but he didn't wake up either. Dr. Smith saw him unconscious on the side of the road, and knew he was one of the foster kids by the highly identifiable clothing that all that family's foster kids were given. He was good enough at first aid to fake being a doctor for this town, and he took the kid to his facility, cleaned him up.
He knew the kid was not likely to survive the experience, and he knew that if he was jellied, he'd revert to human healed physically anyway, so he put him on a flat table fitted with a deep-sided tray, covered him except for his face with a tent of cloth, and took him to see Charity Anne. It took some work convincing her, but eventually she did touch the strange sleeping boy and giggled when he turned into green wobbly gelatin.
The doctor put the gelatin boy Felix into a tub, ran a paint-stirrer through his gelatinous form, and covered the tub to keep out the light. His experiments had showed that the gelatin state would become permanent if reversion wasn't started within twenty-four hours, and the longer the creature spent as a gel, the longer it took to become functional again.
Getting the puma before the boy's change became too set, that was easy enough. He had convinced the owner that the sheriff was going to take the cat which was now stuck in a too-small cage out back, totally inadequate, instead of being with his people. So he offered to buy it and take it to a sanctuary, paid cash, and they brought it to the "hospital" where Dr. Smith used a combination of guile and trickery to get the nearly-tame animal onto the changing-table. Charity Anne petted the kitty, who turned into blue gelatin, and then she got TWO cinnamon buns with raisins and extra frosting!
It was not the optimal time - it had taken six hours to get the puma. The Medium-Low Evolutionary slid the puma-gel into the tub Felix was in, and mixed the two together with the paint stirrer.
It took longer than usual, even using the UV lamp, two days for the blue-green gelatin to coalesce. When it did, though, the resultant creature was everything the ML-Evolutionary had hoped for.
Well, other than being male, he was hoping for a catGIRL, but that could come later, if this one survived.
The creature was confused, with two sets of memories mixed together, and a body that didn't quite fit. He knew his name was Felix. Both memories agreed on that. He knew he was a … what? He could read. He could talk, but his voice sounded weird to him. He had fur, he had human feet, he had a long tail, he had claws on his human hands. He was bigger than he remembered.
That was a rush. He was not a runt! When the ML-Evolutionary came in and explained that Felix was his greatest creation, and laughed maniacally, Felix laughed along, but he was laughing at the human. The puma memories knew about the little girl human with the weird smell. But he knew neither of his owners would want him around. Families. Not owners. He owned THEM. But they were too broken so he wasn't going back.
He stayed at the "hospital" for a week, gradually gaining enough of the ML-Evolutionary's trust that he could wander around the unlocked part. He sat outside the door to Charity Anne's room, listening as Dr. Smith read to her from Alice in Wonderland. He remembered how to walk. And after the story he figured out something. He could do that same thing the Cheshire Cat could do - he could disappear by parts. He could even leave behind his grin, for last.
Felix was a methodical catboy and knew much more about hunting that the puma had, so he tried using the vanishing trick to hunt wild rabbits, which tasted much better than the sugary, nasty corn-filled stuff the ML-Evolutionary liked to feed him. He thoroughly investigated the ML-Evolutionary's house, finding out where he kept money, the food for himself, all his books and writings and those were, frankly, pretty scary, especially the part about "preparing to autopsy the cat-boy who has failed to exhibit the unusual powers previous chimerals demonstrated." That, and there were records of the "experiments" he'd performed on other kids before fate had handed him Charity Anne.
Hells no, Felix wasn't going to show the nutcase what he could do! He knew all about the doctor's secret camera in his room too.
But to get away he needed to be able to move more freely among the humans. He had to lose the fur, at least, or take it to a miniumum. He sat in front of a mirror in the doctor's bathroom, with his electric razor, wondering how his muzzle would possibly look human even if it was shaved. The sound of the ML Evolutionary returning from shopping alarmed him. He knew the sound of that engine, not far down the road, and in his panic, he started to vanish… but instead his fur pulled back into his skin, his face rearranged, leaving a scruffy, somewhat whiskery teenager who looked nothing like he almost-remembered. This one wasn't bad, really. Could he turn back? He did the same thing, and pushed past where he normally was, his legs and shoulders changing, until he was almost a normal-looking puma. Feet perhaps too big, head a hair too large. This was what he needed.
Now the only thing left … the Medium Low Evolutionary was NOT going to be doing this to anyone else. Felix wouldn't hurt Charity Anne, she wasn't bad. But something in the papers he'd read made his human-thoughts come up with a plan. He put things away so Dr. Smith wouldn't know he had been here, in case things didn't work, and he vanished through the wall into the hospital part of the house. He waited for the sound of unpacking in the kitchen, and went back to his normal self, and went into Charity Anne's room. When she said "KITTY!" and tried to touch him so she could get more cinnamon rolls, he vanished the part she was trying to touch, and said "BOO!" when it came back.
This was a great game! She laughed and laughed, and started copying his movements. He made the "Home Alone" face, and … she touched her own face, with her power still charged.
Charity Anne didn't turn into gelatin. She turned to stone. Felix cursed. She was supposed to go jelly. That way when she reverted the brain damage might be cured.
"What have you done?" Dr. Smith had come running when he saw in the monitors that the cat-boy was playing with the girl. Felix didn't answer. He grinned, and vanished instead, then appeared behind the doctor a moment later with a rope, tied him up and left him there, while he looted the house for cash, food (STEAKS!) and some clothing that would fit, stuff taken from one of the earlier experiments. He called the police, reported a break-in, and left the doctor's secret journals in the kitchen, open with pictures of the things he'd done before. The only thing he didn't leave was the file on himself. (And a few useful books.)
And then, he vanished, leaving behind not even a grin.
Timeline
| April 7 | Felix stalks Bruce and falls into conversation with Misha and Theo about Mutant Superiority. | Point of View |
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Quotes
- If I were looking for a white rabbit, I'd ask the Mad Hatter.
- You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself.
Trivia
- Cheshire is famous for having a completely artificial canal system that once transported industrial materials, but nowadays, the Cheshire Ring is primarily a tourist attraction, taking a week to completely circumnavigate.
Gallery
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