Barefoot, Nikola leapt down her basement steps in a feline-like fashion, a fleshy slap ringing from the floor as she used her momentum to screech around the corner and practically lurch face first into the still-locked door.

She caught herself and hurriedly slid one of the locks to the right, but it was attached to a securely fastened hatch instead of the border of the door itself. She tugged it open, the hefty square opening outwards with her efforts, showing the two vertical bars and a window behind it.

Her prisoner was still tied, but the cloth she'd stuffed into his mouth was laying on the floor in a sort of floral-esque pattern that she might find pretty if it didn't mean he may have 'filed a bug report', whatever that was.

She had no idea. The way it had been presented, it definitely sounded like some sort of salvation for them, like some sort of threat - something that she should be worried about. Was it just some outsider way of saying they were calling the guards? Was she about to hear another set of knocks at the door?

A cacophonous scream bellowed out of the hole in the door, and instead of rushing over to smash against it like she assumed he might, he retreated further into the room with haste - another thing she added to his growing list of cowardly decisions. But then, perhaps it was unfair to judge someone whose arms were bound for their bravery.

"Hello," Nikola said softly, trying to keep her voice level.

A series of whimpers came from the cage, and her prisoner flattened himself against the wall furthest from her.

"I suppose your reaction is warranted, given what you've seen me do. I'm going to enter the room with you now, but don't be alarmed - I'm unarmed and in my pajamas. We're both going to be unarmed." She winced at her accidental joke and then fingered each of the deadbolts open, pulling the hefty door towards her and brushing past it, something that the navy-haired boy didn't seem too pleased about. He mushed himself against the brick behind him so hard he almost became two-dimensional.

Notably, however, he didn't scream. Was speaking to him in the way she was, measured and slow, helping? Nikola moved into the room, no shoes adorning her feet. She was in a loose off-white tank top made with a rough material, and the wide, puffy shorts that shared a set with the tank top. She felt vulnerable without a weapon, but then, that was probably nothing compared to what her prisoner was feeling.

"Why? Why-w-why?" His words were wobbly as they left him.

"Why what?"

"Why did you-- why did you attack us? How-- how did you attack us?"

She balled her fingers into a fist. "I seem to recall being the one who was attacked first. I didn't attack you, I acted in self-defense."

"Self-defense? We didn't-- we weren't trying to hurt you, we were just trying to--"

"Reset me."

"Yes. Y-yes, yes. Reset you. We were just trying to reset you - we didn't think we would actually hurt you, or cause any harm to your actual program. We were just trying to get you to give us the quest right. You weren't giving us the quest."

Nikola narrowed her baby blues, brows stitching together as she tried to work out what the individual across from her was saying to her, but she had nothing. She felt rather like she was speaking to a crazy person. "To me, it seemed quite like you were attempting to kill me. I'm still not convinced you weren't. Can you please explain to me what you mean by 'my program' and 'the quest'?" Slowly, she took a seat down on the basement floor and was again surprised by how very cool it was, especially against bare skin.

The blue-haired adventurer's eyes went wide, more whites than colours at this point. "We weren't trying to kill you, just reset you. I-- okay, so usually when an NPC isn't acting the way they're supposed to, you can just kill them and they'll respawn wherever they're supposed to be at that time of day - and usually they'll be fixed. So-so we didn't think we were killing-you killing-you, we just thought we were making you work right."

Whether it was from being overwhelmed or from his fear catching up to him, she didn't know, but tears began to gather along the edges of his eyes. "My friends, did you-- did you actually-- did they respawn anywhere?"

She sighed inwardly. He was making no more sense than he had been moments ago, and he had answered neither of her direct questions. Still, she strove to be competent whenever possible, so she did what he apparently could not and answered simply and directly, and without all the quivery stuttering. "I didn't see them, no, but I didn't go looking for them. After I was finished with them, I needed to handle you."

The statement didn't appear to help his mood, considering two fat tears were now streaking down his face.

"Okay, so-- so maybe they respawned and just didn't come back for me, or they went to go get help, or-- fuck, did they just leave me here? Why do you have me tied up?"

"You tried to kill me," she reminded him. "Once I'm convinced you will not try again, I'll let you go." Probably. She didn't really know how this whole kidnapping thing went.

"How do I convince you? How, how-- how?"

"I will think of a way. For now..." Nikola felt a yawn tickling at her esophagus. "My body requires rest. Is there anything yours requires before I go?"

Her prisoner sniffled a few times and she waited as he regained as much composure as he could with his arms behind his back. "I guess... I guess I was hungry when I got here, so now my hunger bar must be close to 0."

"Alright. I will make you something to stave off your hunger. Is there anything else?"

"Well, if you could untie me, that would be great. I can feel everything that's happening to me right now - the experience is super immersive, sooooo my arms have been on fucking fire for hours now."

"No." Nikola turned around and kicked the door shut behind her, eliciting a long groan from the other side.

She traveled to the kitchen and peered from one end to the other. She had become accustomed to consuming foods that didn't take much preparation, but now that she had a guest, she wondered if she should make something a little more involved than an apple that had been washed and cored.

She wandered over to the series of pots they kept in one corner, lifting one of their lids to reveal a thick fat cap with meat sealed beneath it; chicken, in this case. Some meager amounts of cow were in the others, but she preferred those, so her supply was thinning.

The meat was salty, so eating it as-is was unpleasant and made her nose crinkle. She thought it was much better to add some sort of sauce or broth to distribute all the flavour. She didn't consider herself to be much of a cook, but making soups and stews was low-effort and difficult to mess up - plus, they required the use of her knife, which was sort of her jam.

She grabbed a cabbage and some carrots and got to work, chunking them first into thirds and then into long, vegetal strips. Then, she scraped them into a pile and got to work on starting a fire. Since her father cooked for more than just pleasure, their kitchen took up most of their main floor, and her 'oven' was perhaps one of the nicest in her village.

She scraped the ash from last time she had used it backward and hoisted in some dry pieces of wood, setting them upwards into a point and stuffing some twigs beneath them.

She used a knife to spark the fire, dragging it along a piece of flint until the thin bark of the branches caught fire and stayed alight. Then, she gingerly placed a pot near the wide opening.

She used the same knife, after wiping it off, to scrape away some of the fat from her preserved meats. Then, she slid said fat into the bottom of her cooking vessel to lubricate it.

As she waited for everything to get all toasty, she chopped the chicken into pieces. Watching the knife slide through the flesh made a feeling like warmth float through her, a sick sort of satisfaction. Then, when she heard the fat behind her sizzling, she tossed the bits in.

When the edges of the chicken were sufficiently browned, she added the cabbage and carrots in, and used the time while they were releasing their juices to hack up some potatoes too.

She added the potatoes when the cabbage was translucent, and poured some water in. She didn't need to add any salt, given that the poultry had been preserved in it.

Next, she scooped some of her father's prized sourdough starter from its tiny jar and mixed up up with some water, rye flour and the mixture of finely ground wheat he spent hours toiling over. Getting the grains to such a fine consistency was hard work.

She folded it over a few times, mushing it in on itself until it felt firmer and springier to the touch, and then slipped it directly onto the stone surface of the oven. A crust formed near-instantly, so she poured some water over the dough ball, scraped it off the oven and flipped it over.

Both the stew and the bread were ready around the same time, and they gave her just enough time to tidy up. She didn't like to leave the space messy; it had been her father's sanctuary, and she didn't want to crap all over his favourite place while he was gone.

She poured some pickling liquid into the stew and swirled it around, giving it its final bit of seasoning. She liked the tang with the chicken and cabbage, but the acid made the potatoes form a skin if she added it too early.

And with that, the meal was done.

She ladled two servings into glass bowls, and placed a knife into each one. She tore up the bread and stared incredulously down at her fingertips, which came away pink. Ow. She didn't remember touching bread fresh from the oven causing her the ow emotion before, so why was the universe damning her now?

Nikola gathered up the bits of bread into a cloth, and gingerly carried the glass bowls down first, making sure to not let either knife clatter down the stairs. When everything was all together and waiting outside the door, she poured some water into two glasses and ferried those down as well. They felt good against the burnt tips of her hands.

She pulled the latch on the door to check on her prisoner, and when she confirmed he was in the same place as he was earlier, she brought the food in and placed it before him. Before sitting down herself, she sealed the room.

"I have prepared nourishment for you and your 'hunger bar', or whatever it was you called it." Nikola moved some hair from her face as she settled in, resting her knees against the floor.

Her prisoner noticed quickly that there was no spoon nestled in amongst the cabbage and chicken. "Uhhhh... do you only have knives to eat with?"

"I wouldn't think of you as somebody in a position to bargain," she returned flatly. Wisps of steam rose from the glass bowls. "I will feed you with the utensils I have."

His face paled visibly and he wiggled against his bindings. "B-but I saw what you did with those knives earlier."

"It was not these knives," she replied as she looked down towards the blades submerged in liquid. She had used them to eat so regularly that seeing them as true weapons was peculiar, like slicing someone with a butter knife.

"That's-that's very much not the point."

She took one of them in her hand and poked it into a piece of chicken. "This is the point. Now, keep your mouth open wide and I might not cut you."

The blue-haired boy opened his mouth comically wide then, stretching his lips out so far they whitened. "Ahkay..."

Nikola put the morsel in past his teeth and used them to scrape the meat away from the metal. She could see him shaking again, his quaking spreading through the utensil as it made contact with him. She felt something like joy settling into her gut, at having another person present for the first time in a long while. How long had it been since her dad had been taken?

She didn't know if she was going to hurt the blue-haired boy. The longer he spent in her basement, the more she wondered if she could perhaps... keep him.

He closed his face as soon as there was a wide gap between her utensil and his wibbling mouth, and chewed slowly, as if keeping his jaw busy might mean she kept the weapons away. But his distraction tactic didn't save him, and soon enough there was another stack of food impaled on the end of her blade. She mushed at his closed food-hole until he opened it for fear of being stabbed.

They continued on for a while, with Nikola feeding him in deafening silence, broken up only by his whimpers whenever she would scrape too close to the edges of his lips.

The lull in their conversation gave her time to ponder. Something about what he had said about her earlier had wormed its way into her brain and it wasn't leaving. "What... is an NPC?"