The aroma of smells and spices hit them like a whole other wall, and the two got a split-second glance of pots and stoves before they stepped forward one step too far, toppling down into the kitchen. They hadn't realized it before, but not only did the hole open up into a kitchen, it also opened up at the top of the kitchen. As Anne and Fei Fei fell down, they couldn't help but scream. They fell a long way from the top of the kitchen, but thankfully, they didn't fall hard.

They landed, mostly unharmed, onto a soft, large bag of something, covered in dirt, bounced twice, before coming to a rest. Anne and Fei Fei glanced at each other, wide-eyed.

Unfortunately, they didn't get a long time to recover. Almost immediately after they landed, the booming footsteps started up, coming closer and closer. It was coming to investigate the dirt and the screaming, most likely.

"Anne!" Fei Fei hissed, and Anne jerked her head over to find that Fei Fei had already started moving. The bag they had landed in was on the floor, and right next to a large table that was three times the size of all of them. Fei Fei was motioning to underneath the table, and Anne got what she meant almost immediately. Picking herself up, Anne stole across the floor, and hid underneath the table with Fei Fei just in time, as a dark, looming shadow covered the place they had just been sitting. Anne breathed a sigh of relief.

Anne and Fei Fei cautiously peeked out from the table, and saw the monster from outside. Or, not exactly, Anne noticed. She frowned. She hadn't got a really good look, but the shading and size of this praying mantic was different from the first.

Did that mean there were multiple?

The praying mantis was gazing at the hole that was slightly above it, craning its neck to look up, before slowly looking down to the bag on the floor. Fei Fei followed its gaze down to the dirt covered bag, where she suddenly winced. From the bag, leading directly to their hiding spot, was a trail of dirt. Fei Fei glanced to their clothes, which were covered in dirt, and their shoes, which left brown, powdery footsteps.

"Oh no..." Fei Fei sighed. She shook Anne, who was still staring up at the creature. "Take off your shoes! Hurry!"

Anne, a little surprised, did as Fei Fei asked as Fei Fei did the same thing. Anne finished first, and noticed the praying mantis coming closer before Fei Fei did, as Fei Fei was still taking off her boots.

"Fei Fei!" Anne whispered urgently, but Fei Fei just shook her head.

"Just a minute!" Fei Fei whispered back, but they didn't have time for the, so Anne leaned forward and grabbed Fei Fei's arm, dragging her along. Fei Fei had gotten one boot off, but the other was only half off, and Fei Fei tripped over it as Anne pulled her. Fei Fei took her shoe and managed to throw it away just as Anne pulled her around a table leg on the far side of the table from where they started, hiding from the mantis' eyes.

Fei Fei sucked in a worried breath as they hid. Did they leave any tracks?

Apparently not, because the next time Fei Fei and Anne peeked around the table leg, it was gone.

Still, even though Anne and Fei took a sigh of relief, they didn't let their guard down. Monsters in this world didn't have short term memory, they knew.

"What should we do?" Fei Fei asked her, quietly. Anne looked out from underneath the table, squinting. Now that she was looking more closely, she noticed that not only where there more than one giant praying mantis, there were at least six.

Great.

"Uh... I guess we just look around," Anne said. "Plenty of things die in kitchens!"

"Are they?" Fei Fei frowned. "I don't really think so, actually. Aren't they already dead?"

"Same difference," Anne decided. "Hopefully. Come on, let's go look."

Anne started out to the edge of the table, and then stopped as something was set down in front of her, and then slid under the table.

Anne stepped back, and both she and Fei Fei studied it. It looked like...

"A mousetrap?" Anne tilted her head.

"They think we're mice?" Fei Fei wondered, sounding more than a little offended. Suddenly, something was set on the mousetrap, on the place that would usually hold cheese, but this definitely wasn't cheese. Anne and Fei Fei's eyes widened as the wafting smell of the thing hit their noses.

"Whoa..." the two of them said together, and they both stepped closer. Staring at the thing. It was a little red sphere type thing, like a fruit, and it was clearly fried, cut open a little bit so some purple juice leaked out. It looked delicious.

"Huh," Fei Fei said. She and Anne glanced at her, and Anne grinned.

"Looks great, huh?" Anne asked, and Fei Fei's brows furrowed.

"Yeah, but it's a trap," Fei Fei pointed out.

"A mousetrap," Anne reminded her. She nudged Fei Fei. "We're smarter than mice."

Fei Fei looked to Anne, then to the food, then back to Anne. Her stomach rumbled, and she sighed. "Fine, I have a plan."

Anne beamed. "That's the spirit!"

A few seconds later, Fei Fei had her boot that she had flung off before in hand, winding it up in a throw. Before she came to this world, she wouldn't have been half as confident to do this, but she'd gotten a lot of practice in the last few months, nearly a year now, probably. Her ability to use angles and math in her shots and throws were helpful, too.

"Ready?" she called to Anne. Fei Fei was standing on one side of the mousetrap, ready to catch. They both were pretty up to speed on bacteria in the kitchen, so they weren't risking it (well, apart from the fact that they were using a dirty boot to get it off, but to be fair, they did try to wipe it off on Anne's shirt).

"Let's do this!" Anne cheered, and Fei Fei winded up, hurling the boot at the fruit. Just like she predicted, the fruit flew off, right towards Anne, who caught it in her arms. Anne closed her arms around it.

"Yeah! We did it!" she cried, right before the thing exploded in her arms. "Oh, come on!"

Fei Fei didn't respond; she had her own problems. As the fruit was knocked off the trap, the trap clicked, closing in on the supposed mouse. But as it did, the metal lever pulled on a nearly invisible string that neither of them had seen before. Fei Fei heard a clatter above her, and her eyes followed the string upwards, where it was attached to a metal pot that had been pulled down from the table, and was now descending on them.

"Look out!" she called over to Anne as she herself ran out from under it.

"I-!" Anne tried to move away, too, but she found that she couldn't move. As she looked down, she realized the purpled liquid that had pooled around her feet had solidified, trapping her feet onto the ground. "I can't move."

"What?" Fei Fei turned around, looking just in time to watch as the metal bowl landed, trapping Anne inside of it, but just barely missing Fei Fei. "Anne!"

Fei Fei banged on the metal bowl, calling out to her friend, but as she saw one of the monsters lean under the table. Fei Fei frowned, but she ran away anyway, hiding behind a table leg just in time. She didn't love leaving Anne all alone, but she didn't think there was anything else she could do if they both got caught.

'Sorry, Anne!' Fei Fei shouted int her head, looking around the table leg to see the praying mantis take the metal bowl, tilting it so it scooped up Anne as it was lifted, even though Fei Fei could see Anne trying to run away through the gaps. Unfortunately, Anne had no hope. The huge praying mantis reached into the bowl and picked her up before the two of them disappeared from view.

'Oh great!" Desperately hoping she wasn't walking into a trap, Fei Fei ran to the edge of the table, peering up at the praying mantis. Luckily, all its attention was on Anne, who was squirming in its clutches. Anne also seemed to be saying something, but Fei Fei couldn't hear what it was.

Whatever Anne was saying, it seemed to have no effect on the mantis, who only took Anne and dumped her in a jar it had been holding in its other hand. Anne landed in the bottom with a surprised expression, but only got to look up at the monster before it took a lid and sealed the jar.

Anne's eyes went wide. She remembered in Amphibia, when Ivy, Sprig's rival/childhood friend/ girlfriend told Anne about her hobby where she collected small bugs in jars (there weren't many of them in Amphibia) as pets. Right now, Anne felt like one of those little bugs in jars, but she also remembered how Ivy told her that it was very, very important that you put holes in the jar, so that the bugs wouldn't suffocate to death. Anne couldn't see any holes in the jar; it looked like it was sealed tight.

Right. She probably didn't have a lot time then.

Anne looked to the left, where she saw other, similar jars, and, just like hers, there were human's in there, too. They looked to be mostly around Anne's age, some younger, some older, but all definitely children. They were curled up on the floors of their jars, like they were sleeping, but when Anne peered at the child's face, his lips were purple, and his eyes were wide and bulging. He looked like a fish out of water, or like he has suffocated to death.

Anne winced, but something else suddenly caught her eye. A red flower, growing out of the boy's back and standing proud. Anne blinked at it, and then took out Kipo's letter, raising it up. She studied both flowers, and then nodded. Yep, same flower.

Anne stared at the other jars with children in them, all with the same flower. The same on the right side, too. She also noticed that some children were leaning on the sides of the glass, crumpled like they had been trying to crawl out.

Well. That was horrifying.

Anne definitely wasn't a defeatist, but right now, faced with everything she's seeing suddenly decided that using her all to try and escape probably wasn't the smartest thing she could do. She had already started shaking, her chest feeling tight. In the short time she had been in here, Anne was already losing air.

Anne sat down on the floor of the jar, feeling exhaustion pull at her eyelids. She wasn't happy to admit it, but trying to escape herself would only end with her own suffocation.

However, she wasn't worried. Fei Fei was definitely coming, and Anne knew that she could trust her.

Fei Fei hoped that Anne had already escaped her weird jar prison, because this looked near impossible. Somehow, Fei Fei had ended up on the other side of the kitchen, but only because she had been looking for a stool to get onto the kitchen that had kept being moved, and also wasn't actually tall enough to reach the table, so now Fei Fei was on the corner directly across from Anne's jar.

"I wish the lunarian lions were here to help," Fei Fei muttered to herself, looking around as if one would helpfully appear out of nowhere. No such luck, but in the search, Fei Fei found something that was only half as good, but it'd probably still work.

She brightened, but only for a second, before a mantis praying stepped in front of her, only it's legs visible under the table. Fei Fei quickly scuttled back into her corner before berating herself. She didn't have time to worry.

Still she couldn't be stupid about this, she needed to get the mantis out of the way first. With that in mind, Fei Fei adjusted her aim, now aiming from the jar with powder in it to the jar with marble looking things.

With any luck, this would actually do something. Fei Fei took a steadying breath and shot her arrow.

Both jars, and others, around, were hanging from the ceiling with a rope, probably for easy access even though it looked more like an annoyance. Fei Fei's arrow hit the rope tied around the jar, as expected. The jar fell, and shattered into a million pieces as it hit the ground scattering the marbles that bounced across the floor. Immediately, the praying mantis' began moving, all of them. That was pretty good.

Fei Fei began moving immediately, following her earlier set out plan. The praying mantis' were all busy trying to pick up the marbles, so Fei Fei easily moved around them, to the edge of another table, with a washboard hanging off of it. Fei Fei scaled it like a ladder (it was harder than she thought), and climbed onto the table. She wheezed, but she knew she wouldn't be able to catch her breath in the short time that she had.

She began moving again, to the bowl set up near the sink to dry. It looked like the one the praying mantis had used to catch Anne. Fei Fei climbed that, and right above her was the rope she had cut, just out of reach. It was here that Fei Fei discovered a hole in her plan.

The praying mantis' were distracted now, but soon, they would finish picking up the food, and turn back to the rope. Fei Fei's plan to distract the praying mantis' had ironically put her directly in their line of fire, later.

Well, only if they looked. Right now, they were still busy, so Fei Fei didn't waste anymore time, hoping up to the rope and pulling herself up, using panicked strength to get her to the top of the rope.

By some miracle, it was over before she knew it, and Fei Fei reached the top of the shelf without the praying mantis' being none the wiser.

With this, Fei Fei hid behind a jar, and finally, finally, caught her breath.

Fei Fei could see Anne out of the corner of her eye. She was just a short walk away now. So close... Fei Fei picked herself up and started moving again.