SMASH GAMES 2: CHAOS | Super Smash Bros.

17 - The Kidnappers

Rosalina  

She awoke to find herself lying on her side, staring at a sideways view of a campfire. She was breathing faintly, shallowly-a strip of cloth blocked her mouth. She was gagged. Gagged and tied up: her hands were pinned together behind her, and so were her ankles. 

What had happened? 

More importantly, why was she feeling like she'd just been shoved through a wood chipper?  

" 'Uma," she groaned through her gag, her eyes fluttering weakly. 

A noise to her left: "She's awake." 

Another voice came from her other side: "Toon Link, get her up." 

Small hands grasped Rosalina's shoulders and pulled her upright until her back was against a rocky wall. The movement dizzied her-she blinked several times to clear her head, aware of how similar this was to the times she'd been tied up in that clean, pristine room up in the Facility.  

But this place was anything but clean and pristine-it looked to be some kind of cave, by the rocky walls and ceiling. The fire dominated the center of the open floor, and Rosalina noticed that a small spit crouched over the flames, a chicken leg cooking over it. A boy sat down before the spit and began turning it. The boy in the green tunic! The boy she'd been trying to shoot earlier! 

The little boy wasn't the only one occupying the grotto-two men and one Pokémon sat in different positions around the fire. The Pokémon was wolf-like, with a blue snout, blue ears, and a strange, jagged tail. It was couched beside the boy in green, palms together, as if it were meditating. A boy in his late teens sat on the opposite side of the fire, watching Rosalina warily. He had a mop of navy-blue hair and wore a tunic crisscrossed with belts and leather armor. His cape pooled out behind him, displaying a strange, bright blue symbol that Rosalina didn't recognize. An empty sword-sheath hung at his hip-not that that made Rosalina feel much better. 

The last occupant was a man in his early twenties, with spiky hair a color that rivaled the navy-haired boy's. He, too, wore scattered pieces of armor, namely a piece on his right shoulder and long sheaths covering his calves. He was leaning against the wall opposite of Rosalina, watching her with narrow blue eyes. 

"Glad to see that you're awake," he said. He stepped over the fire and bent at her eye-level before snatching the gag out of her mouth. She bent and coughed, which made her chest ache. The man returned to the wall. 

"W-where am I?" she stammered. 

"Just be glad you aren't back in the cuckoo pit, where you belong," the younger blue-haired boy said sharply. "If you weren't a woman, I would've left your hide at the bottom of that hole for the chickens to peck apart." 

Rosalina vaguely remembered falling into a hole when she'd chased after the boy in green, and those vengeful chickens falling in after her, starting up into a pecking frenzy after they'd recovered from the fall. No wonder she felt like hammered cowpat. She glanced down at her dress and saw that it was shredded all the way up to her knees, exposing the tally chart of slashes and cuts that decorated her legs. No doubt her arms and face looked similar, or worse. 

"But I suppose we should thank you, too," the man against the wall said, eyes cold and unkind. "After all, you helped us trap enough chicken meat to last us at least a month. And now we've also got a valuable piece of intel." 

Rosalina didn't know what he was talking about-consciousness had brought with it an awareness of the burning in her arms and legs; they were stinging enough to push tears out of her eyes. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," she stammered, "but please let me go. I've done nothing to you." 

"Toon Link begs to differ," the man said pitilessly. "Says you were shooting at him when he went hunting."