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WHEN YOU AWOKE, your arms were aching. You grimaced as your eyes fluttered open, sinuses burning while you took note of your surroundings. From what you could tell, you were up on a cliff overlooking a vast desert with mesas that looked familiar but just slightly off. Like you were looking at some odd mirror image. Off in the distance, you could just vaguely make out a dot of blue but your vision was too blurred for you to make out what it was. As the unbearable sun beat down on you, you barely realized you had been hanging from a wall beside Gyro.
"G-Gyro?!" you rasped, coughing violently as phlegm crawled up your throat. Your body convulsed with malaise, making the joints in your shoulders throb. As your coughing died down, you grit your teeth, swallowing whatever spit there was left in your dry throat to relieve the dehydration that was starting to kick in. You took a sharp breath and turned to look over at Gyro again, grimacing. He hung there limply, his hair wrapped around a rock that jutted out of the rock-face behind you both— grimacing was all you could do considering your hands were tied and you were being hung from them.
"Hey, this is fun! You guys are too funny!" Your head swiveled to find a short man standing in front of you, dressed in green with sugar cane replacing what could have been his hair. "You...asshole!" You could feel yourself bristle under that smug look the man gave you, making you lurch forward instinctively. The next thing you knew, you were on the ground, cheek flaring with pain. A groan slipped from your lips as you rocked against the ground in regret. When you looked up, Gyro hung above you, blood dripping from a wound on his chin.
"Oh, man! You slipped from the rock, Speedwagon!" You ignored the twinge you felt at the state of Gyro and instead turned to sneer at the short man through the strands of hair that had fallen in your face. "I'll- I'll kill you-" You couldn't even get back on your feet to try and attack the man before multiple hooks wrapped around you and dug into your skin. It was so unexpected that you couldn't hold back your screams which echoed through the vast and relatively empty expanse of desert you were in. You were back hanging next to Gyro as fat tears slipped down your cheeks.
"Y'know, Speedwagon, you have some girly clothes in that bag of yours," spoke the short man as you tried to stay awake and ignore how much blood was gushing from your wounds, "it doesn't make sense since you don't look like a woman... Or maybe... Are you a woman, Speedwagon?!" Those words were enough to snap you back to the cruel reality you had been living, taking a deep breath as you used the lie you had been using to get yourself out of trouble through the race so far.
"My sister." The man stopped in his tracks to look at you oddly as you grit your teeth. "My sister asked me to buy her some clothes next time I stopped through town." You lied through your teeth, hoping that he wouldn't care enough to ask for any more details. As hoped, the man simply raised a brow before humming and looking back over the narrow cliff edge nearby. You felt your body sag as you let out a sigh, the thrumming of your heart suddenly ever-more-present than it had been earlier.
