For a mother is looking for her missing child, time is a delicate matter…

The sound of military boots tapped on the wooden floor, as a flash light illuminated the path of the abandoned kindergarten. Her eyes were hyper focused on the area around her, her mind clear and ready to take on the task to explore this small kindergarten.

“Brown!” A voice spoke up in her ear piece that rested behind her hair. “I found a map of the Kindergarten! I’m sending it to your main device!”

Rachel Brown, a darkness hunter* from another universe**, had enrolled her five year old daughter to the BanBan Kindergarten. After Rachel was involved in a serious work-related incident, husband and her husband, Sanford, had decided to enroll their child into the Colorful Kindergarten, as a way to protect her from the horrors of her parents' work. However, she didn’t realize that yet again, her daughter would be roped into her job once more. as none of the kindergarten staff hadn’t answered not only her calls, but the calls of Sanford, his friends as well as her commanders and friends.

(*The Darkness Hunter are a government organization created to protect the lives of Humans, Monsters and digital beings called Device Partners. ** Rachel Brown is from a dark universe where the Darkness Hunters were cruel and unjust.)

“Great.” Rachel Brown replied, as she grabbed a red device that had patched up cracks, and turned on the holo-screen of the device. The map of the very small kindergarten illuminated the room brighter than her flashlight. It left a pin-point as to where she was in the small building.

“Just one question…” Her “navigator”, Rachel Solace Medic, piped up, confusion and stupidity lined her voice. “why is it spelled with a T and not a D? Isn’t it a kinder-garDEN and not a kinder-garTEN?!”

“Solace… It's spelled correctly on the map. The way you know the word is a common misspelling of kindergarten.” Brown replied, with motherly annoyance in her tone. She began to walk through the lobby of the kindergarten, looking around the place cautiously.

“Oh… OH! I see! Sorry! I thought it was always spelled kinder-garDEN!” Solace announced.

Rachel Solace, a darkness hunter and the leader of the Zero Squad. She often goes by solace, to not get mixed by the other four Rachels. She usually gets into the heat of the fights, the type to act first and then think during battles, unlike Rachel Brown, who is strategic while fighting. She also tends to let her mouth run before speaking. Rachel Brown had contacted Solace to help her with the investigation. While Solace might look and act like an idiot, she is pretty smart and knows when to call shots.

“Just focus on the mission, Solace. We’re here for one reason and one reason only.” Brown announced, while checking a computer for any clues. However, she muttered a silent german profanity after the computer failed to boot up. However, the blue keycard caught her attention and she pocketed it.

“Okay, so left to you is an electrical room. Right is a lovely small cafeteria-”

“I can see the map, Solace” Brown interrupted Solace’s monologuing, as she walked towards the cafeteria. She suddenly stopped and noticed one of the murals. A green dinosaur was seen painted on the wall, with the name “Jumbo Josh” written underneath his tail. The most notable feature about Jumbo Josh was his large hands- which reminded Rachel of the “fists” of the Crushing Wyvern, brachydios. A speech bubble was coming out of his mouth, with the text stating “Eat vegetables and fruits to become strong, LIKE ME!”

Rachel Brown stared at the dinosaur for a moment before the voice of her friend filled her ears, as her face came on the holoscreen of the device, looking at the mascot on the wall. “That's… one of the mascots of the kindergarden… right?”

“Correct, his name is Jumbo Josh. He feels…”

“Uncanny? Weird… Almost like a monstie?” Rachel asked, interrupting the older one. Rachel Brown took a deep breath as she replied.

“Yeah… something like that…” She slowly replied, as she ran her hand over the painting of Jumbo Josh. She’d expected one of her powers to activate, however, her ability to see the past or future did not activate. She sighed, as she continued her way to the cafeteria. Like the lobby, it too was empty.

Sighing at the lack of people, she continued down the hallway. As she passed the Jumbo Josh mural, another mural caught her attention, this time featuring a small handful of mascots. Rachel knew the names of most of them- from her daughter’s obsession over the characters. Jumbo Josh, the dinosaur, BanBan and Bambalina, the cat like creatures (though, to Brown, they looked more like demons) Opila Bird the Emu-looking bird, Captain fiddles, a small goblin-like creature with mermaid features, and finally Stinger Flynn, a pirated themed man-o-war jellyfish. She remembered hearing how her daughter hated going to the Stinger Flynn room, how the puppet always scared her. She preferred the Ophilia Bird puppet.

“Brown? Do you read me?” Rachel Solace barked, snapping Brown back to reality. “Brown? Are you sick? Poisoned? Pricked by a deadly plant that the only cure of the plant is the-”

“I’m fine, Solace.” Brown hissed,as she looked back over the wall of mascots. “I’m… I’m fine… I was just… reminiscing about… her… I’m fine.” She tried to reassure herself with a shake of her head.

“I’m just making sure you are alive and well. So that's the mascots of BanBans?” Solace asked, as she looked at the wall mural.

“Correct. They have mascots to make the place look friendly. It’s like Amandas and her “bubble dragons”” Brown explained, as she turned to continue to check the place out. As she approached the room that said “Creativity center.” Brown took the blue key card she pocketed earlier and used it on the door, making it open, and was greeted by a strange creature.

“... Hello?!” Brown called out, pointing her flashlight at the creature, literally cop-lighting the strange being. Obviously, no one- especially strange and unfamiliar creatures, hated to be cop-lighted, as it squawked loudly and retreated.

“What was it!?” Solace asked, as she looked down the hall via the holo-screen.

“I don’t know… but it looked like an Iodrome mixed with a Kulu Ya Ku…” She paused, as she shook her head, and reached out to grab her gun “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Stay on your toes. I’m going to try and hack into any nearby cameras. BE CAREFUL!”

Brown nodded, as she continued down the hallway, heading to where the creature was seen, her gun at the ready. As she entered the room, a series of bright lights turned on, nearly blinding the hunter. Laying in the center of the room was a sleeping monster, protecting some eggs. It clicked with her, this giant bird monster was Opila Bird, her daughter’s favorite. Brown quietly sneaked past the room with Opila but… something was amiss. This “Ophilia Bird” looked similar to the monster she saw before entering… But there is no way a creature could run away that fast and fall asleep in the same amount of time it took for her to get there. Something else struck her as odd- the texture of the creature.

“Everything has a texture” The words of the Autistic Rescue Hero ran through her thoughts. She wasn’t wrong, as this “Ophilia Bird” had an…. interesting texture. If Meirs was around, she would say that the texture looked like “A wet newborn chicken that rolled in a feather-pillow.”

She continued to look around the room, remembering the first time she brought her daughter here. It was full of life, with the mixture of screaming and shouting- along with the occasional staff member trying to stop a fight between kids.

“Brown, I found a security room. I can't hack into the computers, but maybe you can!” Solace startled Rachel, but the older one didn’t say anything. She grabbed her device and checked the map, seeing the room highlighted on her device.

“Roger that, I’ll head up that way.” She said, looking at Ophilia Bird, before walking away from the playground.

Rachel entered the security room, and looked around to see the computers. Most of them didn’t power up- however, there was a lucky survivor. As she logged into the computer, she noticed a folder containing files about the children and staff at the daycare. She took out one of her devices and plugged it into the computer.

“Solace, I got some files for you to sort through.” Rachel Brown unplugged the device from the computer and sighed, as the computer blue screened and crashed. “And read me the staff files. Mostly on Uthman Adam.”

“Utha-mon?” Solace asked. “Well okay… It says here that Uthaman is a principle, that he plans on bringing a smile to “every child’s face.” Brown, there's not much info on Utha-mon- Man, why does he sound like a-”

“Focus, Solace. There's nothing in the records that can give us more information?” Brown had once again interrupted the younger one.

“Nein. there is nothing. Not even a cookie crumb of help.”

Brown sighed heavily. This whole case was getting to her. She couldn’t find her daughter, there were monsters of unknown hostility, and she assumed that her best friend and partner wasn’t taking this too seriously. But she had to stay calm. She knew going into a blind rage wouldn’t help the situation any.

“Hold on- Brown! Eleven o’clock sharp!” Before Solace could finish her warning, Brown looked up to see the Ophilia Bird, its pose hinted to Brown that the large bird was hunting- and she was the prey.

Brown carefully waited for the bird to slowly approach her left, anticipating its every move. She gripped the table the computers sat at, waiting for the perfect opportunity.

Ophilia turned the corner and began to rush the mother, but wasn't expecting her to quickly slide under the table and rush out the door swiftly. Rachel ran down the hall as fast as her human form could go- so it was time to surprise the bird.

With a graceful diving jump, Rachel glowed and her human flesh was soon replaced with fur- her hands and feet had morphed into paws, and her face became dog-like, with rabbit looking ears emerging from the back of her head. The final piece of the transformation was a long, slender tail, that curved to look like a slice of a mushroom.

Rachel landed on all four paws and continued to out run the bird. Something within her told her to go to the ball pit, so she did so. As she reached the ball pit, she had jumped onto a wall and latched herself onto the wall with her claws digging into the drywall of the ball pit.

She slowly blinked back to reality, as she looked over to see the Ophilia Bird falling into the hole of the ball pit, squawking as her bright pink feathers were swallowed by the darkness.

“Brown! Brown! Are you okay?!” She heard her friend's words, this time, she had genuine concern in her voice.

“Y-yeah. I'm… alive.” Was all she could whisper out. She slowly climbed off the wall and looked at the ball pit carefully, noticing the broken floors. Jack and Rip would both have a field day with the structure of this floor. She thought, as she noticed the broken trap door. She stood up and returned to her human form.

“Brown, there's a worker's elevator! I’ll place it on your map!” Solace said, calmly.

Brown nodded, as she took her device, looked at it and headed to where the elevator was.

“Brown…?” Solace asked, like a scared daughter worried for her mother. Brown replied with a hum, which was her subtle way to tell solace to continue with her question “what… what did you see?”

Brown sighed deeply. Whenever she blacked out like that, she usually saw something. However,She didn't remember what she saw. “... I'm not sure…. It's fuzzy…”

Solace wanted to press on, but knew not to. The mission is important, and they need to focus on finding the missing children. Brown eventually reached The office, and with one swift kick, she broke down the door. Her eyes widened as she realized that the office belonged to Uthman.

She began to rummage through his office, checking not only his computer, but files. She wanted to know who Uthman really was. But not much came from it. All she could find was a plane ticket, and some PhDs, which didn't strike her as odd and rather put more ease knowing a doctor was probably with the kids.

The click of a locked door surprised her as she looked up and to the now opened door. “That's your golden ticket to the elevator!”

Brown nodded, as she walked into the room which was unusually large. She glanced around “Solace…where's the ele-” but she was cut off by part of the floor receding, and a worker's elevator slowly rising up. “Oh how cliché…” She grumbled, as she got into the elevator, and had it sent down.

As she waited for the elevator to go down, her device beep. she looked at it to see another map. “I found this in Uthamon's computer! And more cameras!”

“Great job.” Brown complimented her with a smile. She could feel the beams of happiness radiating from her ear piece as she heard Solace humming. but all joy was short lived, as a large, green brachydios fist grabbed the elevator. The creature was about to reveal itself when the elevator began to creak and moan. And with a loud snap, the elevator began to fall a lot faster than expected, which caught both Rachel Brown and the creature off guard, and caused the both of them to fall towards the blackened abyss. The last words she heard were “Brown?! BROWN! WHAT’S-”

###

“GOING ON?! BROWN! BROWN!” Rachel Solace frantically shouted at her microphone that sat on her desk. She was spotting for Rachel Brown in the comfort of her room in the darkness hunter base. She looked at her computer monitor, the last thing Brown saw was a lime green fist reaching out for her before coms were lost. She pounded her fist on the desk before jumping up and running out of the room.

She ran into a semi busy hunter base, shoving past a humanoid cat hunter. She weaved past both Humans and monsters before reaching the commander's quarters and flinging the door open.

“Commanders! We have a situation!”

Chapter 2

A mother is looking for her missing child, for time is something they don’t have.

Pain danced in her head, as an electronic voice spoke in a whisper. She knew it wasn't Solace, but rather her old device partner, Techno…

Techno… why was he here?

Ah- that's right, she asked to borrow him for an important mission- but she didn't tell Tech what that mission was.

“Brown! Are you awake yet?” The voice finally cleared up.

“Yeah. I'm awake now…what happened?”

“some giant monster broke the elevator, i was able to scan it and you! You may have a mild concussion- and I advise you to-” Techno's droning was no worse than Solace, but like Solace, Rachel was able to silence Techno by calling out to him.

“Techno, i can't rest right now. My daughter is in grave danger and i can't let a concussion slow me down- just… continue to monitor me.”

Rachel got up and looked around her surroundings. The elevator laid on the floor, dented and very much unusable. There was also a dent on the floor where the monster once laid, but it seemed that it had fled.

Techno's voice piped out of the earpiece Solace gave Rachel before the mission. “We have more bad news! Communication to the hunter base has been lost!”

“That's fine.” She said, as she proceeded down the hall, and out to a big empty room. It had multiple doorways to different rooms across from the platform she stood on, as well as a reinforced metal that spanned around 15’ in length. Each door had a different symbol on a sign, that hung above the entrance, each with a different sector. There was one sector that caught Techno’s eyes.

“Brown! Overthere! A coms sector! We can use that to contact the hunter base!”

Rachel silently agreed, as she used the bridge controls to manuver it to the coms sector and proceeded to walk through the doors and was greeted with frantic writings on the walls.