“NICCKKK!!!” Sweet’s shout resounded through the forest, but nothing answered him. He knew they have stranded a little far from their camp when they walked towards those sounds. Worriedness strained his gaze, as he searched frenetically his current surroundings. ‘Where did Nick go, was he attacked by something? Did the little guy go after those lights when I didn’t pay attention? Damn, how was I so absent-minded? He was following after me not long ago!’

Sweet glided through the misty forest, his heart trying to escape from his chest as he skipped spots with a gloomy and anxious expression. His brows were furrowed as he tried to figure out the place where Nick might have been kidnapped or gone missing. He felt the earth turn softer as he advanced, but he didn’t pay much attention at the moment. He could only continue shouting hopefully. “Nick! Where are you?!”

Ticking and string sounds like guitars were surrounding the futile shouts of the bunny. The tensing of the threads by the machines and its clock-like ticking sounds produced a rhythmical yet eerie symphony. The lights blinked and flashed with ambivalence, its changing intensity followed by a flash of strenuous lightning that blinded his eyes for a second. By adjusting his vision to the sudden rise in lighting conditions, he found a crying sound coming from a certain place with many edifications. The bunny’s silhouette was tearing up while holding its ears inside a uniquely shaped wooden structure. It was in the form of a hollowed tree with one of those wheels moving slowly as it gave a clinking noise while it tried to spin.

“Nick!” He exclaimed with despair as he hurried towards the sorrowful bunny inside the open tree. The tree’s wheel that was teetering in its intention to rotate suddenly started to spin. He didn’t know the reason why it moved. Nevertheless, he found it when the weight of his clothes increased; not by sweating after the long dashing event, yet secondarily to rain starting to pitter-patter. The crunchy sensation at his feet became muddy and the murky aroma of wet forest and its tinges of exotic plants raised misty tunes on his senses.

There inside a hole in the strange structure, a little bunny could be seen crouching with his arms over his legs. He seemed to be silent, as if not wanting to make noise and being completely deaf to the other bunny's call. Sweet was approaching slowly towards the little bunny voicing his name across the muddy roads that connected the weird edifications. The myriad of lights and flickering tunes they made whilst vibrating, gave a spectacle above that of a water fountain.

"Nick are you alright?" Sweet arrived near the other bunny while trying to calm it. He didn't know what he went through to be trembling in this current circumstance. The worst of all was that he remained silent with a face full of tears and dread...

"Nick what did you do or see? How did you come here? You should have been following me all this time!"

Sweet scanned the little bunny that was crouching whilst holding his legs with his arms. The face of the bunny was covered with a sticky fluid of red and pink color. The white cape Sweet used to clean him was stained with the color of the fluid giving a spooky appearance. While rubbing Nick's cheeks, Sweet could sense the known aroma of soap mixed with tomato sauce or ketchup. Even after removing the crystal red substance from Nick’s face, the little bunny seemed impervious to his call as if he had suffered a trauma. With such circumstances, Sweet tried to make eye contact and awake him out of his nightmare.

“Nick, look at me! It’s alright, I am here! See?!” He shook the bunny while grabbing his little face.

“B… I … g…” Nick muttered letters slowly as if regaining a part of his awareness.

Sweet knew it was working so he continued to lock eyes with him. “Nick don’t worry. I am here, nothing is going to happen to you.”

“B-ro… Swee…” Nick murmured with mist starting to cloud his glowing eyes.

“Yes, yes, It’s me, Nick! I am Sweet! Everything is fine, see? You don't have to worry... Just calm down, there is nothing here apart from me… There is nothing to worry, just look at me, see?” Sweet added towards the little bunny while repeating words to calm it.

“Big… Bro… Sweet” Nick articulated his words better after recognizing the familiar features of Sweet. Having someone to depend on, he started to look calmer. The wet feeling in his eyes made him rub them slowly as he attempted to stop crying.

Sweet who was almost on the verge of sorrow by seeing the little bunny cry, trying to appease it. Then he wiped Nick’s tears caringly as he asked, “What happened Nick? I thought you were behind me all the time… Tell me, please tell me so I can do something.”

“Big bro sweet, monsters... Scary monsters appeared when I…” Nick explained what happened, but things didn’t seem to make sense to sweet. He thought, ‘Monsters? I haven’t seen anything like that… Did Nick become scared by some dead tree or similar? Hmm, but this red sticky thing… It smells somewhat familiar...’

Sweet had a thoughtful expression, he eyed Nick and questioned, “Calm down Nick, tell me what happened after you stopped following me. Did you get lost or did this monster attack you?”

“I… I saw the lights, they were incredible! A-And I wanted to search for some treasure… For you. But then, after I left you… Strange noises started to appear... The Sounds… They were horrible! And then, then...” The little bunny was tranquil at the start but his eyes seemed to flicker and make him voice his words in crescendo. Towards the end of his dialog, he was trembling in anxiousness and fear. Sweet could sense his and Nick’s heartbeat, especially Nick’s because it was accelerating as he spoke.

Indistinguishable steps resounded and whistling winds appeared making the wooden structures screech. Even with the reverberant jarring background, Sweet could hear it, something was approaching. Whatever it was didn’t care about being heard as they stepped with force over the puddles in the already wet earth. The weak rain which seemed to stop for a while after he found Nick restarted. Thunder resounded across the air as the little bunny jumped in his arms. By sensing that, he decided to try to calm him again. However, the once modest composition of inharmonious jangles became a blaring symphony of cacophonous shrills.

The rustling shadows appeared to be blocking the only path for survival. Sweet knew they had no way out. Whatever these things were, he had to protect the trembling bunny inside his arms. The sounds outside decreased briefly with his last moment resolution, the only noise available became a long vibration akin to a violin. One which allowed him to continue hearing the drops falling over the puddles and the murmurs inside the misty yet visible forest.

Sweet peered towards the tree’s only exit as the shadows of monsters were increasing in number while surrounding them. Each of those creatures had a creepy mask that glowed with a half-moon in the dark. From their figures, Sweet could see more than two sets of arms and something like a tail. They used those to grab at the strings; which besides, increased the current tunes of the clinking machines.

It was an eerie scene, something otherworldly and incomparable to experiences in reality. The bizarre situation plundered the bunnies’ courage. They couldn't maintain their calm after looking at the number of different shadows brushing forward as they surrounded them. He could feel it, a freakish warning pinching his skin. It was an itching that foreshadowed his end. He had to move, he had to… Yet he couldn’t, because Nick was in his arms petrified in fear.

‘What are these creatures, what are they doing, what is this bad omen I am panicking about?’ He thought about it, but he couldn’t find an answer. He hugged the little bunny preventing it from doing eye contact with them. Yet, Sweet could feel it, Nick was trembling and pressing his head towards his left shoulder. Wet and cold tears added to the sensation of warmth from his shoulder.

“Yiyiyiyi! We have found them!” A hoarse voice came from the forest.

“Yiyiyiyi! Capture them!” Another voice resounded.

The increasingly blinding lights completely revealed what camouflaged behind the darkness. Weird creatures wearing cloths over their mouths. Each with a half-moon smile that glowed in different colors with blinking white lights as teeth. Some of the 8 limbed creatures had backpacks, others had something like nets, and their creepy smiles and curious stares made Sweet hesitate. ‘Should I run? It seems impossible to escape but if I don’t… Damn… Let’s go!’

Sweet stood up as Nick looked at him with anxiousness and tears. He gazed at the little bunny with resolution and explained, “Nick we are running, I need you to stop crying. I’ll carry you, so jump over my back.” Nick grabbed Sweet by the shoulders, as Sweet took a hold of his legs. “Close your eyes, if anything happens don’t open them, okay?” Sweet asked as Nick nodded and made a usual ‘Uhm’ sound.

The music increased as if anticipating his adrenaline rush. The creatures outside stared with a confused expression or mocking gazes. Sweet didn’t care, he scanned and found a path between them. ‘Come on, you can do it… You know it… Actually, just do it!’ He shouted in his mind as he made the first movement.

The muddy floor made things harsher, but he advanced and found none of the creatures moving. ‘What are they doing?’ He thought as he rushed towards his only visible exit. Yet when he entered the dark path between the beasts, a worse enemy appeared. Sweet stopped his jumping motions as he stared at the gigantic creature in front of him… ‘What in the world is that?!’

A huge mouth with many pointy teeth, two vertical eyes covered in non-fashionable glasses and separated by a huge forehead. It also had two red crossing horns beside what seemed to be its Buddha-like ears which were painted white. In addition to that, a completely painted face with a mouth cover that had big closed lips instead of a smile. It was gross for a kid, yet the worse was its six arms, they were tiny… Incomparable to its huge legs, it gave Sweet the freakiest feeling.

What finally creeped the soul out of Sweet was a snap. It was all it took for him to see a multitude of red nets clouding his vision. They were thrown by the smaller monsters making him and Nick roll over the ground. The big dinosaur thing approached after its finger sound, it looked at them and directed at the other monsters. “Take all of those things off, we don’t want them wearing anything.”

He felt snared in the strange web; unable to move, no need to mention about breaking free. The other creatures arrived and started taking their clothes off. The capes fell as they were undone, the inventories and spoons were thrown and left in the ground. They weren’t recognized as important by even the most curious creature.

“Big brother! Nooo! Leave me alone, I don’t want this!” Nick’s sobbing entered Sweet’s ears, its message stabbed his heart, stealing his voice. He tried to shout but nothing came out as he lost the power infused in the hero’s blessing. Both bunnies returned to their brown color, their energy diminished as their gazes turned soul-less secondary to chilling winds entering their bones.

The big creature ordered again, “Put the new clothes!”

The dark pupils of the bunnies’ trembling eyes reflected the events that occurred. They were smeared in the red-pinkish liquid which produced foam, cleaning the dirt of the muddy indistinguishable earth in their wet fur. Then the monsters wiped their bodies with some cloths using their arms. At that moment, he couldn’t see Nick anymore as other figures blocked his vision.

A strange thing was wrapped around Sweet as he continued to hear the vibrational tunes of the strings connected to those wheels and towers. He stared lifelessly as the big creature that was commanding made the others open a path. A bigger creature appeared from the crowd. It had a colorful hat with many circles. The back of its body was similar to a hot dog car, just more curved. It was holding a strange jukebox with his lower pair of arms. Its hands had blue gloves that glowed in the darkness and a mouth mask with glowing and downward-pointing lips as in a sad and inexpressive face.

“Did you catch them?” Asked the sad-expression creature in an unemotional and robotic tone.

“Yes, we have two. This one is already prepared. Its already tied up and silenced. Do you want to start?” Asked the big-lipped creature, it had a grumpy lady’s tone filled with a tinge of sarcasm.

The sad mask creature started to spin its jukebox after it connected it to one of the vibrating strands that a smaller monster brought for it. The surrounding music reverberated rhythmically as it followed the jukebox handle movement. The falling rain gave rise to a cold mist that reduced his vision as he could only stare at the event.

‘What is this thing planning to do?’ Sweet thought while trying to predict the creature’s intentions.

After some effort while spinning the jukebox, the creature’s attached wagon opened. Two ugly and wringing worms exited from it. They seemed to expand and contract like an accordion with an opposing motion. After the worms, the creature took out what seemed a long flexible cable or hose. It pulled it from where the strange worms came out, it hissed while producing cold mist from its inside.

Sweet eyed the creature as it grabbed one of the smallest ones and introduced the weird hose into its mouth. The small one started to grow until it got a balloon-like appearance. His mouth had something which prevented him from screaming, his arms were tied as he could mildly gaze at the sad-faced creature with a jukebox playing with his companions. He felt the cold air from the strange hose even if it was far away from him at the moment. The small creature expanded without end till its feet levitated over the ground. It tried to fight back with futility until it floated within the flickering lights and strands.

“Seems to work. Call Tomo, we are starting.” The creature expressed as it released the small creature in his hand which flew towards the sky like a ‘rocket’.

Sweet's expression turned grim as the sad creature advanced towards him. Drops of sweat forming over his forehead as the thing moved the cold hose towards his mouth. It was intolerable, a sensation of wanting to puke and vomit, a taste so horrible like drinking cooking oil. Feeling weak and idiotic, he regretted his error of not noticing the missing bunny nor being able to save Nick. Hell, he couldn’t even save himself now.

While the cold gas was invading his lungs and mouth, he saw another weird creature appearing. It had a huge red belly, but it looked like a huge spider with dark green limbs. It had a strange hat similar to the sad creature, but the most remarkable feature were its eight eyes in the form of telescopes and a red color stitched smile in his mouth cover. The green gloves in its hands held different tools he didn’t know the name of. It moved until approaching his side and doing a motion similar to a nod towards the sad creature. Sweet couldn’t see but there was another head at its back that gazed towards a cart it pulled with several of those tools.

“The hunt seems to give our expected results, now we take our prey to our home if the examination is positive.” It murmured in an overconfident voice.

“Are you sure they are sky helpers?” Asked the sad creature.

“Believe me, the sugar tests will be positive. This one is most likely a mutant or spy.” The stitched smile creature answered.

Sweet looked at the monsters talk, he knew what they said but didn’t understand anything. Thoughts started to become cloudy, the cold made his eye movement become slower. His eyes kept twitching as they opened slowly but closed faster. The last thing entering his vision were the lights in the sky, their shine became brighter as he shut his eyes in a forced manner. He could still hear the music until all became dark with a prolonged and monotonous beeping tone.

After this, the bunny was carried by the creatures to an unknown place. The two sleeping bunnies in their tent woke up and found the items lying in the already deserted place.

(Drops of water falling on the ground with echo)

Sweet’s ears twitched as he appeared to follow the sounds of water drops as they softly splashed over some puddles in his surroundings. His eyes opened abruptly as if awoken from a nightmare. His first action was a shout after rhythmical gasps for breath, “NICK!”

“NICK…! Niick……! Niiicckkk…….! Niiii…………..!” The echo of the place he was at answered.

It didn’t take him long to realize the cave-like structure he was in after scanning the stalactites and stalagmites in the area. Still, he couldn’t grasp his location. By staring at his hands and weakened sensation, he knew that what had happened was real.

His current location was a mystery. The light around wasn’t much, it was produced by some glowing fungus that grew randomly all over the place. However, thanks to those, he could see that it was a big closed room. In its irregular section,w the room had a wooden door in the form of a big rectangle.

“Where am I?!” He murmured as a small echo reverberated.

“Damn it! Nick…! Nick… I am, so sorry…” Tears formed in Sweet’s eyes as he gripped the wet soil with his brown hands. His nose couldn't feel anything apart from the iron-earth smell of the earth, like blood. A regretful expression surged as sobbing echoes filled the sealed cave.

The wailing sound continued for hours. The bunny inside the room lost energy and had to eat some of the mushrooms in the place. The strange gray dust in the cave dirtied his skin with an itching sensation. Sweet tried digging or thinking of ways to escape but nothing appeared possible. Without an inventory, without the cape, all alone in the gloomy cave, he was defenseless.

(Shrieking sound)

Light entered the cave as its only wooden door opened. One of those strange creatures walked in and stared at the bunny on the floor. Sweet’s dirty appearance caused scorn in the creature’s eyes, he reacted and stopped munching the strangely edible mushrooms. However he was too slow, the creature didn’t give him enough time to evade as it used one of those nets capturing the bunny.

In its small struggle inside the net, he could watch different tunnels. There were underground waterfalls, bigger glowing mushrooms, and crystal structures. He also noticed many treads attached to the ceilings of the tunnel's sides, similar to those outside they vibrated and glowed adding light to the place. The creature walked towards a plaza where many others shouted and appeared to be awaiting some spectacle.

‘What is this place?’ The bunny frowned as he watched the scornful ‘Yiyiyi’ laughter of the creatures. ‘What are these strange monkeys trying to do?’ He thought but before answering his own questions, he felt the sack in which he was being opened. A Pain came from his back as he collided with the floor. Standing up slowly he found a creature pointing forward before pushing him towards the open spherical area.

Sweet advanced in what seemed to be a bridge or walking plank. The surrounding was a stadium for these creatures in different colors and appearances. There were no seats, as each creature hung over the colorful threads using their arms or tails. Other creatures were using the gravity to descend in a cable trail system, they delivered some crystals similar to popcorn. They also served green drinks, mushrooms, and some unknown products.

Sweet kept being pushed by the monster behind. ‘Where is Nick?! Is he alright?’ Apart from the current situation, that’s all he could think of. He gazed and found something akin to TVs in the ceiling. A strange creature did a bungee jump from there and stopped in the middle of the spherical-shaped planetarium.

“Ladies and gentlemen! For your amusement, our defense force captured another spy!

(Shouts and nearly eight times the amount of applause came from the thread hanging creatures)

“You already saw the first one enter the pit! Now we will watch a second one!!!” The announcer monster exclaimed as a round of applause and growling followed.

‘Humph, stupid monkeys… So damn stupid…’ Sweet thought with scorn in his eyes. He gazed at the roadsides and saw more monkeys all over the spherical walls. Even if you looked downwards many other monkeys could be seen there hanging from threads. A hand stopped him from advancing when he was nearing the end of the path, it didn’t connect towards the other side of the sphere and stopped right near is center.

The walls below the plank could now be seen, and Sweet who was currently calm, staggered. It was secondary to the thing that entered his vision. It was a hole filled with darkness, but you could see a multitude of fangs spinning on the walls. They seemed to increase and reduce in size as if hiding their true lengths. The amount of circle after circle of fangs created an appearance similar to a mandala, but not perfectly symmetrical but rather imperfect and with a disgusting color.

“Now! Let the show start!” The announcer shouted as Sweet was being grabbed by the monster behind him. Applauses and shouts resounded as the announcing monster exclaimed the shows ending words, “Throw him to the blender!!!”

Sweet felt as he was pushed by the monster behind him to the pit below. Whatever that thing was it was going to eat him and listening to the guy in the middle of the sphere, he knew that Nick might have already become monster meat. Regret and fear took over as he fell from the weird ‘plank’.

“Ahhhhhhhhh” Shouts filled with anxiousness spread around the spherical chamber. Sweet shouts were accompanied by growls and applauses from the horrifying masses. The sinking body increased its downfall to what seemed a never-ending tunnel with a multitude of creepy fangs. Many creatures started to throw red things at him that stuck over his body. He felt bombarded with softballs that made him forget about time. He decided to close his eyes trying to evade the current sensations until he felt something odd. The pain didn’t appear, nor did the teeth slash him. In addition to that, He felt his body falling slower and changing direction softly… ‘How?’ He thought as he opened his eyes.

“Well, hello there sleeping guy.” A familiar voice sounded.