-----------
“Rise and shine, red! I know I hit you hard, but your little blonde friend is already waking up, and I don’t like having to repeat myself.”
A dazed, groggy moan escaped Erza Scarlet’s lips as a feminine hand repeatedly slapped against her right cheek, rousing her bit by bit from her unconscious state. Her head was throbbing with one of the worst headaches she’d ever experienced, and her whole body felt stiff and unresponsive.
Just what had happened to put her in such a state? It felt like her memories were swirling around in her skull like bits of paper in a whirlwind, floating just out of her grasp. Had she gotten a little too carried away during that party last night? No, that couldn’t have been it. She’d been sure to watch how much she drank, since she had that job the next da-
That was it! Erza remembered it all now: a merchant woman had hired her and Lucy to protect her from bandits on the way to Bosco. Instead of a few easily-handled thugs, however, they’d scarcely made it across the border when an infamous slave-trading Dark Guild had ambushed them! Working together, the two Fairy Tail mages had taken down every last one of their attackers, but the sheer number of foes had left them badly exhausted.
Which was why they’d been completely unprepared when the merchant herself had suddenly attacked them, lashing out with some sort of magically-controlled chain whips that had knocked out Lucy and ensnared Erza’s right arm. She’d tried to fight back, but something had stopped her from using her Requip Magic, rendering the fatigued redhead easy prey for her adversary. The last thing Erza had seen before blacking out was the merchant’s chain-wrapped fist on a collision course with her nose.
Her blurry eyes were clearing up now, and she could finally get a good look at the strange woman who was slapping her awake. With mocha-colored skin, a strapless sea-green cocktail dress, and wavy black hair that hung low over her right eye and cascaded down her back, she bore no resemblance to the waifish blue-haired merchant who had betrayed Erza and Lucy. Had they been turned over to someone else while they were unconscious?
Groggily, Erza tried to reach up and bat the woman’s hand away, only to find her body still almost completely immobile. She could wiggle her fingers and toes or even turn her head slightly, but that was all. Not even her mouth was responding to her - every word she spoke seemed to come out as a garbled mess.
That was when Erza realized two horrifying things about her situation. One: she had been stripped completely naked. And two: there was some kind of cold, metallic frame wrapped around her body, keeping her from moving a muscle.
“WHAH THH HEFF?! LEH MH GUHH!” Erza demanded, her words distorted by the metal ring between her lips. Instinctively, she tried to use her Requip Magic to cover her dignity, only to find it sealed the same way it had been while she was fighting the merchant.
“There we go! It’s about time you woke up, red!” the woman said, standing up to her full height. Had Erza not already been wearing an uncomfortably large ring gag, her jaw would have dropped at how imposingly tall the woman was. Even craning her neck back as far as she could in her current position, she could barely see her captor’s face!
But as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the pitch-black room around her, Erza finally noticed something far more shocking than the woman’s height.
“LUHHY!”
In the shadows behind the woman, Erza could see the naked, whimpering form of one of her closest friends, stripped and bound by what looked to be the same kind of frame restraining Erza. She was lying face-down on an oval-shaped platform, pinned in place by iron loops around her lower back and knees. Iron cuffs were locked around her elbows, wrists, and ankles, and a short iron bar stretched from her wrist cuffs to her ankle cuffs, forming a strict hogtie that rendered her arms and legs completely immobile.
Most would have considered that level of restraint sufficient, but apparently the woman who had abducted them disagreed. An iron band was wrapped around the soles of her feet, forcing her to keep them together, and a thick iron collar was locked around her neck, limiting how far she could move her head. To silence any complaints about her treatment, a metal ring gag was buckled tightly into her mouth.
It was a devious, effectively inescapable device - and most worryingly of all, there didn’t seem to be any way of removing it. Erza couldn’t see any locks or hinges anywhere on the apparatus, and it was tight enough that trying to cut or melt through it would be extremely dangerous.
“Finally noticed your friend, red?” the woman taunted. “You should’ve seen her when she first woke up. She was screaming and crying so loud I couldn’t even hear myself think! I had to threaten to clamp her nipples if she didn’t shut up just to get some peace and quiet!”
“Whh hrr yuh?” Erza demanded. “Anh wuhh dh yhh wuhn whff uhf?”
“Who am I? Do you really need to ask a question like that, after how long we spent together on the road?” With a single wave of the woman’s hand, her appearance changed completely, and the two bound girls gasped in recognition. Instead of a stunning, statuesque black woman, their captor now looked exactly like the small, shy merchant who had attacked them.
“Of course, if you asked those slavers you two beat down, they’d probably think I looked more like this,” the woman continued in a soft, gentle tone, her voice having changed along with her appearance. With another gesture, she took on the form of a pale, gaunt woman with short purple hair. “They weren’t the brightest pawns, but pointing them at you two saved me a lot of effort. If you’d been in peak form, I would’ve had a hard time getting my chains around you.”
Finally, with one more flick of her wrist, she returned to her original appearance. “But I guess what you really want is a name, isn’t it? In that case, you can call me Mistress Thulisile. And as for what I want with you…”
The sadistic grin that spread across her face didn’t quite match her elegant appearance - but then again, neither did the rest of her behavior. “Well, I’m what you’d call a collector. I travel between universes, seek out new trophies, and take them for myself. And you two are my latest prizes!”
As a horrified Erza tried to process Thulisile’s words, a bright light flicked on behind Lucy, making her yelp and clench her eyes shut. Once her vision adjusted to the new lighting, Erza opened her eyes once more to see the source of the light: a glass-windowed display case that was now visible behind Lucy.
Inside the case, all of the clothing Lucy had worn on her mission was arranged in front of a red velvet backdrop. Front and center was a mannequin torso wearing her blue-and-white shirt and matching skirt, while her boots, her wristband, and even her Celestial Spirit Keys hung off to the side. At the top left of the display was a rectangular golden plate, engraved with the name “LUCY HEARTFILIA”.
And from the look on Lucy’s face, Erza knew that her own armor was undoubtedly in a similar case behind her.
Compared to the sight of Lucy herself bound, gagged, and naked, the display seemed uninteresting - and yet somehow, Erza found it the most infuriating aspect. It reminded her of a toy museum she’d seen once on a mission, where each doll on display had its optional accessories preserved alongside it. Did this woman really see them as nothing more than interesting curios for her to collect and admire?
“Now, I bet what you’re really wondering is how long I’m planning to keep you here,” Thulisile drawled. “After all, human beings aren’t trophies, right? You have to clean them and feed them and keep them healthy, and in the end they all die sooner or later. Not exactly the kind of things that make for great long-term collectibles, are they?”
Then Thulisile’s cruel grin returned, and any hope Erza or Lucy may have felt from that analysis vanished.
“That’s where my magic comes in,” she said, forming an iron rod between two of her fingertips and dispelling it a few seconds later. “As long as my enchanted iron is wrapped around you, not only is your own magic sealed, but your bodies are permanently stuck in stasis. You don’t need to eat, drink, use the bathroom - hell, you can’t even age! In other words, I can keep you as my trophies until the end of time, and you’ll still be just as sexy as the day I kidnapped you!”
“NMMM!” Lucy screamed, thrashing like mad against her bonds in a state of complete panic. It was no use, though - the frame didn’t so much as rattle no matter how hard she struggled.
“Yuh’ll nehfrr geh aweh wihf thiff!” Erza spat, having just as little luck as Lucy in her efforts to escape her own restraints. “Ohr friehnf wihll - “
“Your friends will do what?” Thulisile mocked. “In case I didn’t make myself clear, we’re in an entirely different world from the one you know. Your guildmates can spend their whole lives looking for you, and they’ll never come anywhere close to where I’m keeping you. But just in case that isn’t enough to convince you, let me ask you this: do you really think you two are the first sluts I’ve ever turned into my trophies?”
Thulisile spread her arms wide, and dozens of holographic images began to appear in the air around her. It was all Erza could do not to cry out in horror as she realized each image displayed a different naked, helpless girl, each trapped in the same impenetrable iron restraints as her and Lucy with their clothing and names displayed behind her.
A furious, cursing girl with glasses and long red hair in front of a set of light armor…
A purple-haired woman with a single horn sprouting from her forehead, struggling desperately in front of a purple business suit…
A sobbing girl with long blue hair in front of a school uniform and beret, begging for someone to save her from her fate…
“Starting to get the picture yet?” Thulisile said as the images began to wink out of existence. “I kidnapped all these different trophies from dozens of different worlds, and all of them told me the same thing - that someone who cared about them would save them. And believe it or not, none of their friends have shown up yet! What makes you think yours are any different?”
As Lucy began to quiver and cry, Erza felt like she was sinking into an inescapable pit of pure despair. Could this nightmare really be true? Was she truly doomed to spend the rest of eternity locked away as just another one of this madwoman’s trophies?
No, she couldn’t give up hope just yet! Fairy Tail had overcome impossible odds time and time again! They’d been to another world before, and they’d made it back to theirs without losing anyone! As long her friends were out there somewhere, she had to keep believing in them!
“Huh, still not ready to give up yet?” Thulisile said, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve got some serious fire in you, red - and believe me, I’m going to love watching that fire burn itself out. But if you really want to reunite with your friends so badly, I think I can help you out. There are so many beautiful women in your world, after all. Maybe taking one or two more before I move on wouldn’t hurt…”
No comments:
Post a Comment