A Daring Mission

Chapter X

SHANNA

Music: Chimp's Challenge from Super Mario Galaxy 2

When I woke up from my unconscious state (which I'm not sure how I became), my mind began racing instantly. I tried to scream but nothing comes out. "Sam? Sean? Elle? Anybody, please help!" I yelled, hoping that they could tell where I was.

That's when I figured out where I was. My hands were bound to a chair, which was hanging in midair inside of a cave. I was hanging above a bowl full of some sort of boiling stew.

Then I heard a voice say, "Mmm... the young ones are always the best..."

I turned in the direction of the voice to find five men, wearing ripped-up clothes, with smiles on their faces. Two or three of them were licking their lips.

"You're... you're cannibals!" I screamed in horror.

"Hey, look, guys. She's as smart as she probably is tasty," one of them laughed, causing the rest of the men to laugh along as well.

"But why?" I asked, hoping to stall them for a little bit.

One of the men, who I assumed to be the leader, began walking around me slowly. "Normal food is too... bland. But we, we enjoy the taste of flesh, bones, and blood in our mouths. It's truly sensational. Now, just five minutes in that stew and you'll be good enough for us to feast!"

I stared at them in disgust. "You- you monsters! That is absolutely disgusting!"

'Call it what you want, it's how we live," the cannibal leader said. With that, he began pulling a rope, which lowered my chair slowly into the vat. Using my strength, I was able to break free of the ropes and made a mad dash for the exit.

What I ended up discovering right after that was that the cave was blocked off by a huge boulder. But that wasn't a problem for me. I raised a fist, ready to punch straight through the boulder, and then hands grabbed my arms and began pulling me back.

"You better cut this out now! I have friends who will show up any minute and kick the crap out of you!" I threatened. This just caused the cannibals to begin laughing again.

"Then we'll have to make sure they never save you. Larry, Joe. Get her in the stew now. Hurly, keep lookout. If you see anybody suspicious, shoot them. Got it?"

"Okay, boss!" all three of them said in... interesting voices. The ones named Larry and Joe grabbed me firmly by my arms and forced me towards the stew, despite how hardly I fought back.

"You can do so much better than this! I'm sure this stew would be delicious with or without me!" I tried yelling, as a last resort.

"Keep her quiet!" the leader's stern voice yelled.

SEAN

Music: sword lord's remix of William tell Overture

"What are we going to do? She could be anywhere right now!" I exclaimed.

"Well, we have no choice but to look for her. Let's get searching, my peeps," Sam said.

With that, we began searching the perimeter of the forest and fields surrounding us, and had no clue where she was. Some of us were calling, "Shanna? Hello? Where are you?" thinking it would help us.

"Sam, do you know where we are?" I asked as we looked around a group of trees.

He looked at me and shook his head. "I have no clue. Now let's look for your sister."

There were quite a few caves nearby, which gave me a pretty obvious idea: "Hey Sam, maybe we should search in the caves, because she was taken by monsters!"

He looked at me with an eyebrow raised, then chuckled. "Monsters? You must be crazy."

"Hey, anything's possible."

Then Sam asked Ariana if she could use her mind to find Shanna, and she shrugged and said, "I'll try." Then she closed her eyes, opened them, and gasped. "Oh no! I can't locate her! This forest is so dense it blocks my ability to find people!"

Heath sighed, "Well, that does us a whole lot of good."

"Why don't we search the caves?" I suggested again. "She could be in any one of them right now."

"Seems like our best shot." Abbey shrugged.

So we began searching the caves. For the first two, we had no luck. But then Isabelle noticed out of the corner of her eye that one cave was guarded by a boulder, Sam examined it and then blew it up with an energy, and inside we found...

Shanna tied up on a log, being lowered into a pit of boiling... something.

"YOU LET HER GO RIGHT NOW!" I yelled.

"Get 'em, Sean!" everyone yelled. I put my hand into my pocket and found something bulging into my hand, so I pulled it out and saw a sword with an iron blade. I looked at Sam and he gave me a wink, then told me, "Now's your time to shine, man."

I was so shocked I didn't even notice that a cannibal was nibbling on my foot. So I swung my sword and yelled, "Off with his head!" and the cannibal's head tumbled onto the ground as I leaped on the leader, who had his attention focused on Shanna.

"Hey doofus, see this!" The leader cannibal turned his head and I socked him in the jaw. I raised my sword straight above his chest, and despite his pleas and begs, I stabbed him right in the neck, finishing him off. The other three cannibals ran away in fear as Sam, Heath, Elle, and I ran to Shanna's aid. Blood was now almost everywhere in the cave.

"Thanks, guys," she told us as we untied her.

"Alright, we've got you, now let's get out of here," Elle said, so we all ran out of the cave. Once we were all out, I began panting out of exhaustion.

But from far away, we heard a "WE'RE NOT THROUGH WITH YOU YET!" We all turned in the direction of the voice, and the three remaining cannibals held a boulder, which they all threw at us. Ariana stopped it in midair, and smirked, "If you value your lives, you might wanna consider running right about now."

The cannibals heeded her advice and were gone almost instantly. I wrapped Shanna in a bear hug for a few seconds, and when I let her go, I saw her looking past me and pointing out, "Um... there's a whole group of people coming for us."