Damn! I should've known this was a trap! There isn't even a peach tree around! Now I've done it! I'm stuck in some sort of hunter's trap! I've got to get out of this before whoever set this up comes back!

Jareth rattled around in the small cage, trying to get out for he wasn't sure how long. Being an owl seemed to be just getting worse by the minute. He had to sleep in a tree, nearly at something alive, and now he'd gotten himself trapped. Jareth tried to escape over and over, when he saw something. A note was attached to the cage. When he read it, a shiver went down his spine. This isn't a hunter's doing. It sounds much worse than that.

On the paper was one grave sentence written in red ink: Property of the Nether Animal Testing Facility.

The sun was setting behind the forest trees. Jareth had been trapped all day, trying to get out, when a woman arrived, looking very pleased to see his predicament. She wore a white lab coat, red lipstick, mascara, a skirt, and heels. As she lifted up the cage, Jareth became even more desperate to break out. "You certainly have a lot of energy." the woman noted. "Good. Maybe you'll last long."

He didn't particularly like how she'd worded that. Wherever this woman is taking me, I need to get out of it as soon as possible. Animal testing. That doesn't sound terribly pleasant, considering I'm currently trapped in an animal's body. I've got to get out of this, and fast.

The woman approached a large, yet short building in a clearing. It was gray, with few windows that were all tinted, and a small door. She set the cage down, giving Jareth another chance to escape the trap, and dug into her pockets with her long nails. "Where's my...what happened to...great." She knocked on the door and waited for a minute, Jareth still rattling around. No one came. She knocked again, harder, and called out, "Hello? Cane? Someone come open the stupid door!"

Footsteps became louder, and a man cracked open the door. "What happened to your key?"

"I lost it somewhere. There's a hole in my pocket."

"Natas isn't going to like that."

"Just let me in so I can get rid of this stupid bird. He's been rattling around in there the whole time."

The door opened and the woman lifted Jareth's cage up once again, walking inside. The man, who was tall, stocky and bald, shut the door and locked it behind her quickly. Jareth looked around, apprehensively. The building was much bigger that it had appeared to be. The walls were white and blank, the halls seemed endless, and the lights were bright and blinding. The woman walked through two doors, and Jareth's eyes widened at the scene in front of him. In front of him were rows and rows of small, wire cages, each with an animal huddled in the corner. He saw small dogs, kittens, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, chickens, even a small monkey all look with fear as the woman walked down the hall. Everything about the Nether Facility was giving Jareth a very dark feeling. The worst part was the noise.

There wasn't any.

All these animals, he thought, and yet one could hear a pin drop two miles away. Not one creature here is making a single sound. They won't even move. Each of them is just...frozen with fear. Fear of what...I'm not planning on finding out.

The woman went through another pair of doors into a back room. She set him down on the floor, and grabbed a much smaller, rusted cage. As Jareth began to play with the lock on the trap, desperate for escape, he saw her hang it up on a hook, then put on a thick pair of black leather gloves. Don't even try, he warned her. She approached him, and got down to look into his eyes. "Now, let's be a good birdy and make this easy, alright?"

Jareth had one final chance of getting out, but he would have to pretend in order to get it. He backed up a bit, and stood straight. The woman watched, making sure he wasn't going to try to get out like he had been, and opened the door. She reached inside, slowly. "Better, much better. For a minute, I thought you were going to make this hard." Jareth watched her hands closely, waiting for his opportunity to come. Just before she could touch him, he screeched, lunging out, and sunk his sharp beak through the glove.

"Ow!" She recoiled, but left the door open by accident. Jareth didn't miss a beat. He flew out of the cage and rammed the doors they came through. He realized that running his head into a door was really going to hurt later, but that didn't matter at the moment. All that mattered was that he got out of the Nether Animal Testing Facility. Too late did he remember that the front door was locked. He looked for another way, quickly, ignoring the shouts of the workers. Looks like I'm going to have to go through a window. He flew to the front window, and braced himself.

Suddenly, his wings were forced to his sides as a pair of latex-gloved hands seized him. No! Damn, I was so close! He squirmed and thrashed as hard as he could, but the person held on to his with an iron grip. How he despised being small. If he was his usual self, he could beat the person to a pulp, throw the workers in the Bog of Eternal Stench, free the animals, and then have a little fun with these people when he got back to the Labyrinth. But now he had no magic, no way to defend himself beyond talons and a beak, and no way to get these hands off him no matter how hard he tried.

The man turned Jareth, who was still putting up a fight, to his face and looked at him. He was tall with short, brown hair with bangs in his face, a pale complexion, electric blue eyes, no facial hair, and a mildly interested looked on his face. "When did we get this one? I don't recognize it."

The woman had come into the room, looking frantic. "I just got him, Doctor Natas. He was in one of our traps. He's quite a fiery one, be careful. It just bit me, actually. Do you think it will get infected?"

Doctor Natas didn't take his eyes off the Jareth. "Were you wearing gloves?"

"Yes, he bit through them."

"Clean it off, and then suck it up, Natasha. This thing's got so much energy, I really doubt its sick with anything. Cane, open the door."

The bald worker held the doors open as Jareth was brought back into the back room. The doctor carelessly tossed him into the small, rusted cage Natasha had hung up before his escape attempt. He tried to get out of it, but the door shut in his face and was locked. "I must dissuade you from trying that again, my feathered friend." the doctor said with a smirk. "The next time, there shall be consequences." He turned to Cane and Natasha. "How did this happen?"

"I was taking it out of the trap, when he bit me and took off."

"Well you should be more cautious, Natasha. And by the way, did I hear you knocking earlier?"

Her face paled. "You might have."

"Why?"

"I...misplaced my key."

"...Really? And did you recover it?"

"N-no, sir, not yet. I was too busy with the barn owl."

"I see." The man walked over to her slowly. "So, you're telling me that somewhere out in that forest is a key that opens the front door to this facility. Well, then...tell me, Natasha, what would happen if, oh, I don't know, someone were to find it?" She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. "Because in my mind...that would mean someone could get in here."

"Well, perhaps." she began quietly. "But any random person would just think it's a boring key to someone's house, or something."

"So you don't suppose that they may put together that it might go to the only building in the forest?"

The woman swallowed. "Well...when you say it like that-"

"Because if they did," he continued, his voice growing dark. "They may use it unlock that door, and walk in here. And if they walked in here, then they may see some things. Things that aren't necessarily meant for public eyes. Thing that may not be, shall we say, completely legal.

"Now in your defense, Natasha, those things should be legal. The government has always put a damper on the advances of science. People don't seem to understand that performing research on animals is what saves human lives. Medical advances such as curing smallpox, polio, the creation of insulin and vaccines for tetanus, rubella, anthrax, and rabies have all happened because of?"

"Animal research." Natasha and Cane chorused.

"Thank you. And yet, people are worried we're 'mistreating the animals', or about how animal testing is 'cruel and inhumane', while at the same time, getting up our butts about why we don't have a cure for cancer yet. Well, the answer to that is this: Because rules stop science. We can do great things, change the world, if people simple allow us to do what is necessary to get it done.

"But, Natasha, people don't do that. People would never let us do some of the things we do for science if they knew we were doing them. Which is why the front door and all the windows are always locked, and we're the only ones who have keys. That way no one can get in, and see what we're up to. Unless, of course...someone loses the key. Because then someone out there has a way in here. So Natasha, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go out in the woods, search high and low, under every rock, in every nook and cranny of those woods, comb the dirt, and not come back until you have the key! Understood!?"

She nodded quickly, and rushed out of the building. Doctor Natas adjusted his lab coat, glanced at Jareth again, and opened one of the two doors in the room, heading down a dark staircase.