Breath pale against the numbing air, I blinked thoughtfully as the frost patiently kissed my face, me and my father - accompanied by two gorilla brothers - racing to find my friends while captivated by the soft, dusty illusions of light that sat heavy on our eyelashes. Me and him adored the snow, moreso when it was falling, making the land around us look like the definition of "winter wonderland". And it was in Africa, just in case you forgot. Snow. In freaking Africa! But we had to brush that off to the back of our minds for a while because nothing mattered more than reuniting with my friends, who I thought were dead mere moments ago. "How much father do we have to go," my father impatiently asked the two gorillas. "Not far. Our papa and your friends are safely hidden away in a cave in a mountain right around...here!"

Only, "here" was an endless valley of mountains, all looking exactly the same: tall and blanketed in snow. "Um, so… which mountain are they in again?" "Oh, that's so easy," Hafifu answered. Majinuni came back with, "Yeah; so easy!" "It's that one," they both said in unison, huge smiles stretched onto their faces, pointing their pointer fingers out into the distance. However, they were pointing in opposite directions. "Oh, no. Wait. It's that one," they both said, correcting themselves, only to point in the opposite direction of where they were originally pointing in the first place.

Oh boy.

"Boys, make up your minds. Which one is it," my father sternly inquired. With the tone he used, he even sounded like a dad. "Now, now. There's no need to panic; we know exactly where to go. We just need to find a tall mountain covered with snow," Hafifu reassured us.

Uh, he's kidding right? We were literally in the Steven Spielberg land of mountains. Every single one matched his description so how the hell were we going to be able to find my friends now if these two don't even remember or have a good sense of direction? "Hafifu. Majinuni. How do I say this? Oh, yeah! EVERY SINGLE MOUNTAIN HERE LOOKS IDENTICAL!"

"No. Not all of them. That one over there has a little less snow on the peak than the others."

My hand met my face and the sting of the assault felt better than the stupidity vibe these two were radiating at the moment. "WE'RE NEVER GOING TO FIND MY FRIENDS NOW," I screamed at the top of my lungs while I repeatedly jumped up and down as if I was a toddler having a tantrum, even causing the hill we were standing on to shake a little. Not one of my finest moments I admit but what would you do if your lion, cheetah, egret, hippo, and honey badger friends were lost and you and your lion father couldn't find them due to the idiocy of two primate brothers? Exactly. However, when I stopped acting like a 4-year-old, the ground kept shaking. And it only began to get worse by the second. There was then a terrible rumble from deep in the belly of the earth that struck fear into every single one of us, Majinuni and Hafifu the most because they were holding each other tighter than Shaggy and Scooby-Doo. Then the earth began to move as if it were a wave on the sea and some nearby mountains that had probably stood for centuries crumbled into their own foundations, trapping whatever occupants they had to a grisly death by crushing.

Eventually, it got to the point where we all plummeted onto the ground as it still continued to rumble.

Finally the rampage concluded and we were all able to stand up again without falling back down. My heart was racing like it was a Formula 1 car, and breathing became just as hard. The whole time I've been here, I've been attacked by a hyena, kidnapped by bad guys, ambushed by a fiery lion demon, and now I can add earthquake to the list. It's like nothing good ever happens to me in this world. Just unimaginable amounts of anguish and pain. But I found my long-lost father and my grandfather, so I guess that's...something.

"Are you okay?" "Sure. Sure let's just go with that Dad."

"We're okay too!"

So we were all ok. At least physically. I just wasn't expecting an earthquake to occur. I mean yeah they're natural, but they're also disasters who we only hear about on TV and never in real life. Not anymore. But we were all safe and ok and that's what really mattered. Now we could all continue to search for my friends and...MY FRIENDS! "GUYS! GUYS! WHERE ARE YOU," my voice echoed into a seemingly eternal abyss of mountains, some destroyed and some completely untouched. On the bright side, not all of them looked the same anymore. But what if my friends were crushed to death in one of the demolished mountains? I sure as hell didn't come all this way just to lose them in a freak convulsion because two retarded monkeys couldn't remember where they were. Fuck no! "GUYS! IT'S ME, DYLAN! WHERE ARE YOU?! PLEASE ANSWER ME!"

No answer.

When all hope seemed lost and the worst was likely what had happened, there was a voice. Only, it didn't seem to belong to any of my friends. It was female for sure, but it sounded a little younger to be Fuli.

"HELP!"

It was coming from the disaster site of one of the collapsed mountains which meant we had to move quickly! All four of us ran as fast as our feet could carry us before arriving at a humongous pile of rocks and gravel. But nobody was there to have called us for help. Strange. "Hello? Is anybody there?" All of us turned our attention to the rock pile before noticing that there was someone trapped inside of it. It was too dark and crowded to make out who was in there; all we could see was a pair of light green eyes. I crouched down to try and see my way inside, but no luck. I did manage to hear something though: tons of hyperventilating and whimpering.

"Hi. My name's Dylan, and this is my dad, Kopa, and our friends Hafifu and Majinuni. We're here to help you. What's your name," I gently said to try and calm them down before they ran out of air to breathe. It was already terrifying for them to be stuck in there so I figured they didn't need to panic anymore because help was here. "I-I-I-I'm Jani," their quivering voice replied.

"Jani? That's a very pretty name," my father added as the gorillas and us began to try and free...her from the rubble pile. "T-t-thank you." "Now, Jani, we're doing our best to try and get you out of there so we need you to stay calm and still, ok?" "O-ok." When you see Majinuni and Hafifu up close, you'd think that they'd be super duper strong, but in this particular situation, the rocks were stronger than they were. It was no use; they wouldn't budge for us either and if they wouldn't for those two, it's completely impossible. If only we had the Guard with us!

"Need some help," a familiar voice asked.

I swiftly turned my head around to see that my thoughts had been answered. Running towards us was all of my friends, along with King Sokwe, less possessed and more determined now. "GUYS! I-I-I thought that you were dead!" Bunga closely examined his body limb by limb. "Nope. We look pretty alive to me."

"Uh, who's this," Kion asked, gesturing towards my father. "Introductions later. For now, help us move these rocks; there's somebody trapped underneath!" "You heard the man. Let's move," Fuli shouted as she, the Guard, and King Sokwe began to assist us in freeing Jani. With all of us joining together, our combined strength and effort was enough to remove the boulders and save her. When all of the dust settled and our vision was cleared, we finally met who we were talking to face to face and eye to eye. Jani turned out to be a young lioness, not much older than Kiara or Kion. Her pelt was a light tan and her underbelly was a near white. On her face she had multiple white polka dots under her eyes, whose sclerae was yellow, and two on her forehead. The tuft on her tail was a shade of hazel. We didn't notice all of that at first until she calmed down and accidentally fell into my arms, her fur as soft as a faux fur blanket.

However, when she fell into my arms, there was a lot of staring going on between me and her that sort of made my stomach feel warm and electric. Gazing into her viridescent optics, I saw a lot of things besides my reflection. For some strange reason, I saw the two of us together frolicking through a field of flowers as we laughed and rolled down the grassy hill, which then turned into both of us floating into the sky past heart shaped clouds with Mariah Carey playing in the background. Was I tripping? Did I hit my head one too many times? Or was there something about her that made me feel things that I never knew I could feel.

Between the two of us, we had forgotten that there were others with us as I helped her up, still having a staring contest with her. "Uh, hello? Earth to Dylan," I heard a voice echo, but I ignored it because as far as I was concerned, Jani was the only person, or lion really, there. But the moment was ruined as I was slapped back to reality, literally, courtesy of Majinuni. "You have a lot of explaining to do," Kion announced as a million things raced through my mind. Mainly, though, the warm electric feeling didn't fade. I hadn't felt that since my skank of an ex-girlfriend and I were together before she betrayed me. Huh. I wonder what happened to her.

In Oklahoma (the Watu World)

While Detective Licon flashed his badge at the receptionist, Vanessa took a good look at her surroundings. They mainly consisted of mentally-insane people, some confined in wheelchairs, and some passed out on a hospital bed, handcuffed to it. This is where Aileen was being held? Cause unless she killed somebody, it didn't seem like a good place to keep a little girl, especially a scared one due to Licon's description of her. Even with the bad blood between them, Vanessa couldn't help but feel sorry and sympathetic for her as a tall man in a white lab coat carrying a clipboard in one hand brought them to the back of the Psych Ward. They passed by some scary-looking people as well. One woman just sat in the corner of her room, staring at the wall, and one man kept on complaining about seeing bats all over his room. And finally, they reached Aileen's room.

Van tried to take a good look through the window, but it was too tinted for her to be able to see anything. The man took out a ring full of over 30 keys, sticking the one on the far left in the keyhole, turning it to slowly unlock and creak open the door. There, they saw the girl Vanessa made friends with and who loved seeing her son be around, only more drained of life - clothed in a filthy hospital gown - and restrained to her bed with a guard sitting near it. Was she that dangerous?

"Be advised, she might not want to talk. She hasn't for over 13 hours and the one time she did, she assaulted an officer and had to have a sedative injected. Oh, and you can't step over the red line," he pointed out as he pointed his pen at a line of red tape bordering them from her.

"Aileen? Sweetie? You have some visitors." Her eyes slowly fluttered open and the first thing she saw was Vanessa standing near her along with Detective Licon. "Now, these people aren't here to hurt you. They just want to talk to you. Is that ok with you?" The guard standing near her stood up and hovered his left hand over his taser as if she was going to have some sort of breakdown. But instead, she slowly nodded her head as the man gave Van and Licon the all-clear to come and sit down on the nearby chairs next to her. "Behave, okay? Remember what happened last time. Ms. Garcia, Detective, if you need anything, Reggie here will assist you with whatever you need. I'll be back in a few minutes; I just have to go fill out some paperwork," the man informed them as he left the room.

"Why are you here," she weakly asked them both. "We're just here to talk to you and clarify a few things, sweetie." "Phht. There ain't anything you can ask me that I haven't already been asked by 7 other officers. All the same shit, you know: why did you do what you did? What are you talking about? Are you crazy? You don't think I already know that? I feel crazy. Ok I can't explain what happened with me; I'm just as lost as you both are."

"We don't think you're crazy. Right, Ms. Garcia." "Right." "Bullshit. I can tell y'all are fucking lying, just like everybody else."

"I can assure you that we're not. And we're not here because of what happened. We want to know what you know about Dylan Garcia." That name seemed to shock the life out of her, her entire body jolting upwards. "Dylan? I-uh-I...me and him used to be friends and now we're not. That's all there is to it." "We are aware of what went down between you and him. But right now, he's missing and we want to know if he might've said where he could've gone."

Her eyes bulged open wide to the news that he was missing. Vanessa couldn't believe that she actually seemed to care, given that she's one of the main reasons he did run away. Sweat began to drip down from her forehead before her eyes suddenly shut and her hand caressed them as if she just woke up from a splitting headache, only for them to suddenly reopen wider than ever. "Wait. I remember now." "Remember what," Detective Licon asked as he reached for his notepad. "What happened. I can't believe I forgot. I was in my room when my parents said they were going to go pick up my sister from daycare, and 30 minutes after they left, there was a knock on the door. There was nobody there, so I went outside to see what could've knocked. I realized it might've been some punks ding dong ditching me so I went back inside." Detective Licon scribbled away faster and faster as her story progressed.

"I turned on the TV, seeing the Missing Person's report for Dylan. But only seconds after, I was ambushed. A bunch of men, bad men, came at me from out of nowhere and began throwing me against the wall and hitting me over and over again. They threw me all over my room and completely ruined it, even throwing me at my hamster cage causing Linnie to escape only for a really old bad man to pick him up and break his neck in half. Everything started going black, but the last thing I remember him saying was, 'This isn't your fault. You're helping to fulfill a great purpose. She will most definitely be pleased.' When I woke up, I was here. Only, I didn't remember everything that had happened. I was told I had a mental breakdown and required medical attention and when I tried to leave…," she continued to say before gazing at something behind them that caused her to look completely petrified.

Van and the detective turned around to see the man from earlier standing in the doorway. "HIM! HE DID IT! HE KILLED MY HAMSTER!"

What?

"Doctor, what is she talking about?"

Silence.

"Nothing to worry about, Ms. Garcia. She just needs her medication. Visiting hours are now over. You need to leave now." There was something sketchy about him at that moment. Like why would he suddenly dismiss them if just a few moments ago they were fine only until Aileen began babbling on about something that apparently happened to her? Scanning the room for answers, Van noticed something strange about her IV fluids. She rushed towards the bag and tubing system to see a very, very ominous label on them. Of course!

"Doctor, this bag says 'Benzodiazepine'."

"So?"

"So, Benzodiazepine is a drug that possesses anterograde amnesic properties, disrupting both short-term and long-term memory function. She's not supposed to be on these; she's supposed to be on IV fluids. The injection of this drug has probably made her forget everything that's happened in the past 24 hours and it'll probably affect her for the rest of her life."

"Exactly." She jerked her head around only to see the old man aiming a handgun at her along with Reggie, the guard. "HEY," Detective Licon shouted as he reached for his weapon, only to be shot in the arm not even a second after, collapsing to the ground in agonizing pain as blood spread out onto the floor. "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING" Van began to think as she began to hyperventilate and collapse to the floor with tears brimming in her eyes. "You really shouldn't have done that. But I must say, I'm really glad that you did," the doctor said with a sinister grin plastered on his wrinkly face as he raised his weapon in the air. Searing caterwauls erupted from her mouth before the doctor hastily brought down his weapon.

Darkness.

To Be Continued in Chapter 20