Of Kings, Gods, and Girls [Ganondorf, Enel]

[Proto Man]

Far removed from the drama of colliding egos, a bruised and emaciated blonde lie in a dungeon cell beneath the fortress of a would-be king.

The woman had been in darkness for so long… How much time had gone by outside the walls of her cell?

With a groan, she rolled onto her side and clutched at her stomach. She wasn’t robotic enough not to feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. The scullery maids threw her just enough food and splashed just enough water on her face to prevent her from dying a natural death—if such a pleasure was possible for primes. Early on, when she was new to the cell, she had tried to cut her wrist on an uneven piece of masonry. While she had her previous bouts of self-abuse, the attempt had been motivated purely by the desire to escape.

Escape and get justice for what that bastard did to her. A maid!

The plot had worked for all of two hours before she bashed in the skull of the head cook and tried to escape the castle. If it hadn’t been for all the labyrinthine passages, she would have been able to slip out to freedom. Instead, she’d been jumped by guards and thrown down into the dungeons to languish in the blackness, never knowing the passage of time.

The only excitement was the rumbling of the entire building. When she had realized they weren’t natural tremors, joy had filled her heart. But her hopes of an escape were dashed when the staff reappeared hours later. Although they seemed visibly shaken as they did their duties, they wouldn’t tell her what had transpired.

How long had it been since that had happened? Weeks? Months?

A frail sigh escaped her chapped lips as she rolled onto her other side and stared at the brick wall of the dungeon. As she stared—as she had done for days on end—she noticed a strange band of glowing light stretch across the surface of the masonry. The light it cast was almost too much for her sun-deprived eyes, but she didn’t dare turn away as the line opened into a small blue circle whose surface seemed like glowing water.

And just to prove that she was going truly mad, the circle spoke.

“That’s no behavior for someone of your stature… have you really lost so much since coming to this place that you were reduced to bondage by a desert bandit? Come now, Android Eighteen, surely you aspired to more than this when you woke up in the Omniverse?”

…why does it sound so familiar? The woman groaned as she pulled herself closer to the talking circle. Her movements were stiff and uncoordinated—it was hard to do much moving with her hands manacled behind her back. “What are you?”

“This is a portal, my dear. A small one, of course, but I didn’t want to burn out all the omnilium from the get-go.”

“Who are you?” Eighteen muttered as she tried to stare through the opaque surface. If only she could reach out and touch it…

“A friend. A friend who wants to save you from your current situation.”

“What’s the catch?”

“I do you a favor, and you do me a favor.”

“What’s the favor?”

“I need your help in the planning and execution process of, well… something.”

“I need more to go off of than that,” the cyborg shot back.

“I’m afraid you don’t, Dear. It’s either you say yes or you stay there and rot. What’s it going to be?”

What did she have to lose? Her dignity was already dead. “Yes.” Eighteen replied as the circle in front of her started to glow brighter. The water-like surface shook and shuddered as it expanded out in all directions. Before she could make a comment, a pair of hands reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders, and dragged her through the portal.

With a faint hiss, the gate sealed shut, leaving behind an empty dungeon cell.