One morning in Nowhere, we see Gina, Madeline, and Courage walk by the streets. doing their usual grocery shopping for the family we see while carrying in her arms as many bags as she can carry. Soon Gina placed them down on the ground to catch her breath luckily nothing was damaged when doing so. "Maddie?" Gina asks panting "Remind mommy to ask you to bring your wagon the next time we go shopping."
Suddenly Gina began to notice beside her a little market stand. Besides it, was a very perky woman dressed in what looked like a light purple jumpsuit and a white apron covered with splotches of blue and red paint mixed with yellow handprints, and her hair was tied in a tight bun. The most notable thing about the woman at least from Courage's view was her very uncomfortable smile which looked like the sides of the woman's mouth were forcefully pulled to the position.
"Good evening mam," says the woman to Gina who approaches" I represent a newly opened daycare. We hope that you would take the time to bring your child to the first day of the KDC" maintaining the same smile as she hands out a flier that reads KDC the daycare your kid will never want to leave from this place. What was even more strange was that the flier only contained a slogan, an address, and a number. This raised suspicion for the cowardly dog who looked at the flier.
Gina thanked the woman before taking the flier and looking it over more thoroughly as the woman slowly turned her attention to young Madeline who is getting shy at the fact the woman was staring at her while maintaining her smile no less."We can't wait to see you at the KDC we would love to have you there" the woman says Courage grew even more concerned when he saw the woman in the eyes. The cold, ever-staring, nonblinking eyes before the trio continue to make their way home.
At the farmhouse, at night while the girls are in bed Gina tells her parents about the daycare. Muriel concerned over it would say "I don't know if I want to go through with this dear I like having you all here." Gina responds "It's alright Mom I think this would be a perfect opportunity for Maddie to spend time with kids her age." Eustace while reading his newspaper comments nonchalantly "Fine by me one less freeloader living here."
Gina glares at him with annoyance while Muriel after careful consideration answers "Well dear it's your decision if it's what you think is the best thing for her far be it from me to change your mind" rocking on her chair as she speaks "I was also thinking..." Says Gina "What if Courage came with her Maddie can certainly use the company Gavin and I haven't left her alone since she was born" Eustace looking up from his paper happily commented, "Even better!" Only to be met with a rolling pin to the head by his wife.
"OW! What did I do!?" Eustace cries out Muriel says "It would be a grand thing to do I say wee Madeline can use the confidence boost and Courage would be happy to come with her to this fancy daycare" Courage who was on the floor napping overheard this and groans with dismay commenting "I know I'm not gonna like this."
The next day Gina takes Madeline to the daycare, which was an elementary building almost like an old school house from the nineteen hundreds. Gina did not seem to mind at all, she stepped out of the truck, took Madeline and Courage out, and approached the building.
As they approach, Courage notices the large letters above the door KDC has a unique symbol surrounding it. It looked like some sort of fish, Courage became unsettled as they entered the building. Inside the waiting room looked as if the whole room was sterilized from top to bottom, the walls, floor, ceiling, and even the furniture were all a certain shade of either blue or white. Strangely there were rarely any people aside from the receptionist who happened to be the strange woman from yesterday, now dressed in a nurse uniform.
"Welcome to the KDC!" Says the woman, not changing her expression and raising more suspicion from Courage. "Before we take your child under our care, we would like you to meet our loving caring founder" the said founder walking in from another room, when he revealed himself Courage was frightened out of his mind, he knew he was right to be afraid for the owner turned out to be a familiar red cat with purple stripes, a purple nose yellow eyes that can walk on two paws, and wore a shirt that ironically read Love for Children First.
The cat standing before them starts to speak "Welcome to the Katz Daycare, I'm Katz" Gina politely responds "It's very nice to meet you, I just like how clean this place is" Courage all the while tries to hide from the feline gaze, while Katz responds "I assure you, madame, here at the Katz daycare, our facility is not the only thing we maintain presentable by the time you reclaim your child she won't be how you remember her, metaphorically speaking of coarse."
Katz turns to his receptionist and orders her to take Madeline to a classroom, the nurse naively obliges getting up from her chair, grabbing Maddie by the hand, and calmly escorting her to class Gina simply kisses her on the forehead goodbye, telling her and Courage to be good before leaving the facility. Katz assures her that her child is in good hands.
Courage who was now left alone, tries to complain to Gina before she leaves. The receptionist standing behind Courage, grabs him by his ears while the poor dog continues to babble and chatter but to no avail. Hee is brought to Katz who then stares him down "We meet again dear boy" Katz says, ordering the receptionist to dispose of the pink dog.
Courage was taken straight to a utility closet and locked in it. Despite Courage's efforts to open the door by pulling on it proving unsuccessful, Courage started getting concerned over poor Madeline's fate, he had to act fast. Quickly, Courage conveniently takes out from his body a skinny butter knife which he uses on the door, to his luck it works.
"YES!" Cries the pink dog, then he starts looking for Madeline while avoiding Katz in a very empty hallway. He is only met with light blue walls and a couple of benches on the side of some of the doors he passes, he looks above and sees pairs of fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Courage wondered to himself this is a daycare right? Normally their facilities would be more colorful, occasionally with pictures done by kids pinned to the walls, but no it was all just giving off an empty feeling to the dog.
Courage suddenly notices that one of the doors he passes the window beside is barred, and has a sign pasted on one of them in red letters that read BEWARE, UNRULY TODDLERS, Courage carefully peaks in, and what he sees isn't Madeline but instead, a poor caregiver standing on her desk who was severely damaged head to toe her hair being a mess muttering to herself "three more hours just three more hours" carefully tossing over to the play area a plate of cookies toward what look to be children at play, who then turn into feral beasts fighting over the baked goods tossed their way, Courage was horrified.
Before doing anything Courage hears voices approach much to his fright. Acting fast Courage fused himself with one of the bars, passing by it turned out to be a custodian doing his job. The custodian stops and starts cleaning off the bars with a rag, cleaning Courage off in the process. The Custodian places the rag back on his cart, luckily the pink stain-shaped dog was not noticed by the man. The Custodian walks into the restrooms to continue his work, while doing so Courage morphs back into himself, thinking how he is going to find Madeline without being seen.
It would not be long before Courage notices an air vent above his head, without being seen Courage climbs his way up using the tiled walls via plunger suction he pulls out of nowhere on his body. Once he manages to reach the said vent and easily pulls a side of the vent open just before entering, the custodian mopping the floors would notice something on the mirror in clear view of Courage's position. The worker would ask "What in the world?" Courage was terrified, could he have been caught?
Luckily The custodian had his attention on the stain located on the mirror where Courage stood, cleaning it off immediately. "There we go," said the custodian while wiping it off only to then notice the open vent. Afterward, in annoyance, he grumbled "Darn rats."
Back with Courage, he is crawling through the dark cold metallic vents quietly so as not to disturb anyone below. It would not be long before he finds the room Madeline was brought to, and in the room, we see that it looks more like a padded room Maddie was all by herself glued to a beanbag chair watching something on a large TV set no larger then a shelf and surrounding Maddie was a mess of toys scattered in the room. Courage manages to hop into the room for a closer look.
To Courage's horror, it revealed to be rows and rows of colored wavy lines moving from top to bottom side to side, and even opposite directions while voices from the big screen television's built-in speakers would say in a formal tone " Providing care to your child is supervised under Katz control meaning your child is in masters supervision safe under control environments that meaning you won't worry we do all we can only for children's sake as the staff under Katz kids are happy to say KDC rules Afterword a robotic recording repeats the words Four word Over and over before replaying the earlier message.
Courage at first was confused as to what it meant before realizing what the message was. You're under your master's control, you do only as Katz says Acting quickly, Courage attempts to dismantle the TV with a convenient screwdriver and turns off the screen, rescuing Maddie from her trance, he pulls out from his body a smelly sock and hovering it toward the child snapping her out of Katz control.
Once Madeline is freed from the mind control, she passes out. Courage seizes his chance and carries Madeline with him as he attempts to escape.
Unfortunately for our pink hero as soon as he stepped out of the room Katz stood beside the doorway as if he knew where Courage would be "How long had it been dear boy?" Katz says while talking and walking across the hall to another room making Courage uneasy. Courage attempts to back away with Madeline over his head only to notice behind him the receptionist from earlier now wearing a sweater and jeans with a very short apron caked in paint and what's worse the receptionist was not alone as three more lookalikes approach out of nowhere blocking a potential escape route for the poor dog.
Katz continues " I do hope you do not intend to skip out on game time, we were just about to play every child's favorite: Tag." Katz slammed open the door he was leaning beside and to Courage's horror, it had three very familiar words BEWARE, UNRULY TODDLERS "and it just so happens to be your lucky day, because you're it!" Katz says with that said, the game began as a horde of feral children came crashing out of the door charging toward the pink dog with no sign of stopping.
Courage attempted to find some way of evading capture, but sadly before thinking of a way, the women before him immediately grabbed the cowardly dog and his little friend and lifted them to their level. Courage got a good look at the "assistants" and noticed they maintained their smile, as well as some small twitches to their eye or neck as well as the sounds of what appear to be beeping and clicking coming from them.
It would not be long however before the toddlers started to attack the robotic help, causing them to fall over and say random things while giving our hero a chance to escape, as well as a head start away from the feral beasts that chase after him. Katz despite witnessing his creations fall into disarray and malfunction in the process, remains unphased "Today is the last time that dog will spoil my endeavors, I should have thought of this years ago who knew a child army would play out in my favor." He says to himself.
Back with Courage, as he attempts to escape from the savage beasts, he finds out that no matter what hallway he turns in, or which classroom he goes into, he cannot shake off the toddlers of doom. Then out of the blue, Courage remembered the room he found Madeline in, and the hypnosis technique used on her, this gave Courage an idea. He quickly stops in a hallway as soon as he manages to get as far away as possible from the feral young people, places Madeline on a nearby bench to rest, and then takes out some plywood, nails, a hammer, paints, and gets to work on his newly thought-up plan.
The oncoming toddlers suddenly stop as at the very moment they catch up to the dog, they see what appears to be a puppet booth. But rather than show off some silly puppets when the stage curtain opens, the children are greeted by a pizza box with a giant purple swirl painted on it being swirled before the audience, who are now seated quietly watching this. Courage who was doing this thinks to himself "I hope this works."
Putting the box down, Courage takes out a puppet that resembles Katz holding a plastic spider, and another one that carries with it a very large stick. Courage would then begin the show with the Katz puppet threatening kids with the spider before the other puppet appeared, then repeatedly the puppet beat Katz on the head until the red cat collapsed this made his audience laugh despite the fact they could not understand the puppeteer.
The actual Katz who had managed to tail the chase for a good view, witnessed what had occurred and was vexed that Courage was not torn to pieces "You STUPID dog!" Katz shouted. Little did he know this caught his supposed army of toddlers' attention but they were less than thrilled to see their caretaker before them as they all let out collective snarls.
Katz nervously backed away from the children walking toward him like a pack of hungry wolves, frightened at what they might do Katz tried to put them at ease asking "Would any of you children like to have animal crackers and juice for snack time?" It did not appease them unfortunately as they immediately chase Katz as soon as he starts to make a run for his life terrorized out of his mind he lets out one final yell before the children detain him "I HATE CHILDREN!"
Once the ordeal with Katz was over, Courage walked over to Madeline who just had slowly woken up from her nap "What happened?" Asked the young child, rubbing her eyes "I had this crazy dream that a big kitty was my babysitter, and I couldn't hear a word he said because all he said was meow." Courage relieved to see his little friend was unharmed, just hugged her and said "I wish I could have been there."
Back at the farmhouse that night the girls were already put to bed, and the elders were simply watching TV, while Courage was sleeping on Muriel's lap while she rocks in her chair, suddenly we see Gina angrily walk in and rant "The nerve of some people, the minute I come by the daycare to pick up my little girl, I instead walk into a zoo! And to think I trusted these people with my child, I am going to write to nowhere city hall about this!" Afterward, she sees Courage on Muriel's lap approaching him and carefully pets him while Muriel says "Look at him, he must have had a long day taking care of wee Maddie such a good dog."
Gina simply smiles and says "I'll say, it's like Courage is looking out for her, looking out for all of us." While the women were talking Courage looked at the readers and said "Looks like I became the official go-to babysitter" taking out the puppets used earlier.
Thank you all for bearing with me as I write this I had a hard time thinking of content for this chapter but now it is ready and shown to you trusty readers thank you again for your patience if you enjoy what I wrote please review and hopefully I'll have more chapters out soon