Let the games begin.

If there was a way to describe the Game Station of Playtime Co., it would definitely be 'spider's nest.' The ceiling and the playground equipment were covered in thick spider webbing. The webbing on the ceiling held corpses of various toys. Koa felt uneasy. She shuttered. Spiders normally never really bothered her. She knew how to handle them.

But Mommy Long-Legs was a different story.

She was no ordinary 'spider,' but an elastic toy. She had advantages of reaching objects from afar, and Mommy stole her knife. Deciding she had no option but to play along with Mommy's demands, she followed a beeping noise that sounded in the Game Station. It lead to a control console that was in front of the train. Before she inspected the console, she inspected the train.

The idea of trying to figure out the train code and work the train herself were in and out of her mind in a heartbeat. First off, to open the door of the train, she required a green hand for the Grab-Pack, and she didn't have that. So she had no way to open the train. Plus, she was not a train conductor nor an engineer.

"Yeah, Koa, that's smart. See if you can try to operate a train. Who do you think you are? Casey Jones?" She asked herself sarcastically.

Turning her attention back to the control console, she saw a blinking light beside one of the three levers, and pulled the first one. A chime sounded before a feminine voice spoke up.

"Hi kids! Welcome to the Game Station! I'm Stella and we've got three super, duper fun games to play! These little tests show us just how crazy, strong and smart you are! Follow Mommy Long Legs down the stairs and we'll start by playing Musical Memory! See you in a bit!"

After that, a new noise sounded, the sound of a heavy metal gate opening. Koa followed it and saw the gate revealed stairs leading down to a hall that no doubt lead to a room to play the game Musical Memory. Going down the steps, she saw the hallway was blocked, and Koa couldn't get through the small opening through the blockage.

She could however, see a cardboard cutout of Bunzo Bunny, a toy bunny that clapped cymbals upon the winding of a key on his back and he would march along the music.

Looking to her right, she saw a hole in the wall and followed it. Reaching the end of the hall, she found a hole in the floor, and continued through the man made tunnel in the floor to a pitch-black dark room. Finding a flashlight on the floor, Koa picked it up and turned it on, happy to see it still worked. Hearing a familiar beeping, she turned and saw a red flashing light in tune with the beeping. Using her Grab-Pack, she fired the blue hand canon and pulled the lever, and the power came on in the room.

The beeping then came from another console in the room with four large buttons. On the console by the first button that had a picture of a teardrop shape was a green VSH tape. Seeing a TV on the other side of the room, she went over to the TV and played the tape. It was a tutorial video on how to use a green hand for the Grab-Pack. This hand had the ability to receive, hold and pass electrical charges! The hand and electrical receiver would only hold the charge for ten seconds, so Koa had to be fast with the charges. She also had to be cautious to not electrocute herself as well.

Looking at the machines, she figured she had make the green hand herself. Feeling nervous, she studied the machines and found one pipe torn out of place, but it was an easy fix thanks to her Grab-Pack. Returning to the console after finding nothing else wrong with the machine, she pushed the first button, and the machine filled with what looked like large plastic orbs, which melted rather quickly. After pushing the second button after being alerted by the console, the liquid plastic traveled through the pipes and into molding pockets in another machine. After the molds rotated as they cooled off, and row of plain Grab-Pack hands traveled down the conveyor belt. After a few seconds, they stopped and the beeping returned. After pushing the button, a green paint sputtered everywhere from the machine, a few drops of paint actually hitting Koa, the machine demanded more paint. Following the noises of another conveyor belt on the upper platform, Koa found stairs leading to it, found the paint, and loaded it into the machine, and pushed the button after returning once again to the console. And this time, each hand was covered in an even, clean layer of green paint. Once it was done, Koa pushed the final button and the new hands traveled to the end of the conveyor belt.

Koa felt nothing but relief to have two working canons again. Taking one of the hands and attaching it to her right canon, she saw a charged receptacle, and another receptacle that needed charged next to a locked metal door. Cautiously, she fired the green canon, charged it, and based the charge to the other receptacle, and the door opened. Koa felt nothing but joy after she left the room. Hearing the charge fail and the door slam shut behind her, she paused for a moment, but then continued.

Koa was relieved to find herself past the original blockage and in front of the door to Musical Memory, but she felt her anxiety levels climbing. Mommy Long-Legs had to be doing this for a reason. She can't just want to play games. This had to be a trap. If the games didn't kill her however, Mommy would.

Sighing in resignation, she walked into the room, and found herself on a sphere shaped platform. Behind her, she heard the bridge behind her drop, stranding her on the platform. All around her, there were three large groups of TVs, making one large screen. They all powered up, and a masculine narrator spoke as pictures and videos gave instructions of the game, Musical Memory.

"Welcome to Musical Memory! This advanced memory and cognitive recognition test is designed to stimulate several segments of the brain, allowing us to see how quickly and efficiently your brain works. A sequence of colors will be shown, and you must recreate the exact sequence using the buttons around you. Bunzo will slowly lower towards you. When you complete a color pattern correctly, Bunzo will rise back up. When you input a pattern incorrectly, Bunzo will lower towards you faster. If Bunzo reaches you, your test is over."

At the mention of Bunzo, Koa looked up and gasped. There he was, hanging several yards over her head. And he was a pretty decent sized toy.

"The test will become more difficult as it continues with longer patterns, and quicker succession. That's all. Good luck!"

The screens faded. Suddenly, a sound of something larger thumping against glass startled Koa. She looked in the direction and saw Mommy Long-Legs on the observation window.

"Oh, isn't it amazing?! Mommy hasn't seen the place up and running in years! Mommy can only imagine how excited Bunzo must be! It's been such a long time since he's been able to play! To cheer! To eat."

All of a sudden, cymbals crashed loudly above Koa's head three times, and Koa instinctively fell to the ground with a scream. Looking up, she saw Bunzo right above her. Other than the obvious buck teeth of a rodent, sharp pointed teeth aligned his wide opened mouth. And the look he gave showed her was excited to crush her head with his large cymbals.

After he clapped his cymbals the third time, Mommy spoke up excitedly, "Oh, that's the dinner bell! Good luck!"

Koa stood back up and gulped. The game sounded easy, but Koa knew better.

"Red" a voice suddenly called out, and Bunzo started to rhythmically clap his cymbals.

Refocusing on the game, she pushed the red button in front of her out of the four different colored buttons. The pattern continued. And after she completed the last pattern, a chime sounded, and the second round began. The pattern was faster, and at the end of it, it added a new color. Again, Koa completed the pattern. The third round was faster and added more colors like violet and white aside from the primary colors. Finally the third round ended, starting the fourth round, only to be even faster and adding mathematical or Greek symbols, random shapes, and letters. After the fourth round ended, Koa was completely surrounded by random buttons.

"Round five."

Once the round started, it was too fast to keep up with. Random colors and letters and shapes and words appeared on the screen in a fraction of a second before moving on. And Bunzo was approaching rather quickly. Suddenly, Koa spotted a stop button that started circling fast. Koa prepared her Grab-Pack, and fired a canon once the timing was right, hitting the stop button. The game suddenly glitched and sparked, the poles of the buttons malfunctioned, the everything shut down completely, leaving Koa in the dark. Panting in relief, Koa looked up and saw Bunzo being raised up, before he disappeared.

"Oh, it broke," Mommy said in stretched disappointment. "That's no fun."

Koa could see Mommy's eyes narrow before she composed herself and continued, this time in false praise, "for doing such a splendid job, Mommy has decided to give you… part of the code for the train."

She stretched her arm through the ceiling of the observation room, and Mommy Long-Legs gently commanded "look up."

Koa looked up and saw Mommy's hand stretching towards her from were Bunzo once hung. In fact, there was a small piece of paper in her hands.

"Take it," Mommy growled impatiently.

Koa, not wanting to risk it being a trap, used her blue Grab-Pack canon to take the paper from Mommy's hand. Once she had it, Mommy pulled her hand back as Koa folded and pocketed the paper.

"Mommy was hoping the game could last a little longer," she said in a melancholic tone, but then it shifted to a suggestive tone, and finished with a growl. "It's okay, though. Mommy knows… other ways to play with you."

She then disappeared under the observation window. The bridge to the door then lifted back up, but then it collapsed under Koa as she was crossing it, causing Koa to slide down and land hard on her rear. Carefully standing up, she looked around and saw a vent. Moaning, she felt uncomfortable going into those vents. But after looking around, she saw she had no choice. She opened the vents and crawled through. After making it a few hundred rounds and rounding a corner, she heard a pain-filled roar sound in the vents, and Koa froze in place in fear.

She waited. After a few minutes, it was still quiet. Gulping, she continued forward.

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew.

- CICELY TYSON