Here it is, the chapter of Leni's perspective of the kidnapping. A few chapters ago I thought that this would have been the end of the story, but I realized that I still have a few more chapters to write. I'm not going to say how many because last time I did that, I ended up being wrong. Also, the reason I got this out so early is because I don't want to have to post new chapters in the middle of the night, and I've been really busy doing various different things so I couldn't post it sooner, so I went ahead and started writing this one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter of, "Kidnapped."

Chapter 12

Love is a strange thing sometimes. A lot of people think they know what it is, but really, they don't. Everyone knows that it can make people do things that they wouldn't do under normal circumstances. Love is what causes two people to start enjoying each other's company. It's what makes those two people decide that they want to spend the rest of their lives together and get married. Love is what causes people to have children of their own, to raise and cherish. But that's not all there is to it. Love isn't just romance and all hugs and kisses. Love between a Father and his son, or between a Mother and her daughter has nothing to do with romance. Love can just be enjoying being with someone, not even in a romantic way, it could just be two guys hanging out playing video-games, or two girls chatting about the newest episode of the "Dream Boat." Love even goes so far as to make corrections when needed. Love is what tells someone that what they're doing is wrong, and then helps that person refrain from doing wrong any further. The person may not appreciate it at the time, and ultimately, it may even end up driving them away, but it wasn't started because of a lack of love. Love doesn't have to be about romance. It doesn't have to be about how you feel for someone. It's about how many sacrifices you're willing to make. What are you willing to give up for another person? Would you be willing to give up your time? Your energy? All for someone else? People do it all the time. People put their pride, possessions, and even their own lives at risk for the sake of another person all the time. A man who puts his life on the line, for the sake of his wife and children, is risking everything he has to give so that they can be safe. A woman, who spends hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hospital bills on their child who has a brain tumor, risks driving themselves into poverty so that that child can have a chance at life.

Leni risked her own safety and even her own life so that Lincoln could be safe, so that he would stay alive.

The sun was getting pretty low in the sky. It would only be another hour or two before the light diminished completely. Leni kept yammering on as she watched Lincoln pull out his video game. It seemed to her that he kept on listening, as he kept replying, at least in some form or fashion, to everything she said. Her voice slowly dwindled down as even she was starting to get quite intrigued by the game he was playing. It was surprising to her that games like that one even existed. A game where you'r a human in a world filled with animals. Not to mention all the animals can talk and do just about everything else that a human can too; reading books, going fishing, buying food and homes, and even going to theme parks. Leni was going to ask him when they got home if she could play, but unfortunately, plans change sometimes.

Leni's shoelace became untied somehow and she tripped and fell on the sidewalk, scraping her knees and elbows just the tiniest bit. It brought pain, but nothing too unbearable. It did make her however, decide that she needed to stop so that she could tie her shoes. She called out to him, letting him know what she was doing. He seemed to be distracted by that game however because he just kept walking. She didn't blame him for that, it really did seem like an interesting game to her. So, she fumbled with tying her shoes, watching a white van zoom past, and then, finally finishing, started jogging to catch up to him.

He never left her line of vision so she knew where he was the whole time. But she started getting suspicious when the van that had zoomed past her earlier suddenly stopped on the other side of the road and turned itself around. Why had it stopped? It looked like whoever was driving it was in quite a hurry so seeing it suddenly stop was intriguing to say the least. Two men stepped out of the car dressed in plain white T-shirts and jeans and stood in place where they left the vehicle. Leni slowed her pace, now even more curious as to what they were doing, and noticed that they were both staring intently at Lincoln. Now moving with more caution, Leni kept an eye on these two strangers, both of which were still standing completely still. After a brief moment, they glanced at each other, nodded, and then immediately started running towards Lincoln's position.

At first she didn't catch on to what they were doing. Her first instinct, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, was to think that they were just going on an evening jog. After all, Leni and Lincoln were on an evening walk. But as she looked across and saw exactly what it was they were heading for, her heart stopped. Leni's eyes widened and her heart rate resumed like a rocket breaking the sound barrier as she broke out into a sprint, furiously trying to get to her little brother before they did. She threw her purse on the ground, only thinking about one thing. Her legs were pumping furiously, only keeping in sync by the mere thought of Lincoln possibly being kidnapped. The two strangers approached the sidewalk just behind Lincoln and as they turned to face him, Leni caught up and brought a right hook straight into the cheekbone of one of them.

The man on the right stumbled to the side, "OW! What the hell?!"

"Leave my brother alone!" Leni exclaimed. They had no interest in her at the moment. At that time, their focus was on the boy. But, trying to make sure she wouldn't interfere again, she was shoved backwards and fell to the ground, hard. The two men then resumed their chase of the boy, but Leni wasn't going to give up that easily. She quickly got up and jumped on the left one before they could get too far. Taking him by surprise, Leni started wailing into the side of his face, eventually bringing him to the ground with a thud before they even came close to him. Leni jumped off of him and backed up a few feet, ready for whatever came her way.

The man on the ground dusted himself off and he tried shoving her to the ground one more time, this time even harder, to which they noticed her quickly get back up again. The second man pulled out a knife in hopes that it would scare her off, or at least into stopping, but she didn't even hesitate as she ran towards them. As she approached, he swiped the knife, barely catching the side of Leni's torso, ripping her dress up the side, cutting her there and catching her arm as well, creating a long, but not deep cut. She fell to the ground in pain and they hoped that would stop her, but sure enough, she got back up and started making her way towards them again. They knew by now that they weren't going to be able to get Lincoln without taking care of her first, so they both turned their attention to the bright blonde haired girl. Her face turned from one of anger, to one of fear as she gulped, noticing their change in attention. She started backing up slowly at first, then more quickly. When they started running, she turned around and started running as well. With her legs striding faster than theirs, she would have easily outran them, but her purse on the ground that she had dropped earlier made her trip and fall with a tumble. She tried to get up, but the pain radiating through her side and her arm made it extremely difficult and they grabbed her before she could get up and keep running.

Pulling her up to her feet, they punched her several times in the stomach and then again in the face. Still holding her up, the man with the knife took it, and slowly dragged the sharp edge across Leni's cheek, making a small cut and eliciting a painful squeal from the teen. Once he finished, he dropped her on the ground. Thinking that was enough, they left her there and turned around. Slowly, Leni got back up to her feet and started hobbling towards them. "You just can't get enough, can you?"

The man kicked her legs out from under her, making her quickly fall to the ground, and then he kicked her side two more times just for good measure. They looked back in Lincoln's direction and saw him way off in the distance, they scratched their heads and mumbled to each other about whether or not it was worth it. Leni got up to a crawling position, and overhearing what they were saying, spoke up herself, "It's too late. He's almost home now." She coughed and spat up a little bit of blood. "Even if you ran as fast as you could... you wouldn't be able to get him before he got into the house."

"She's bluffing..." one of them said.

"Dude, they were walking on the street at seven at night, their house has to be close. Why would she be bluffing?"

Leni chuckled, knowing that Lincoln was safe and that these two brutes weren't able to get to him. It was never her goal to try to put them into submission. She knew that she wasn't strong enough to do that, it would have surprised her if she did. All she wanted, was to buy Lincoln enough time so that he could get far enough away, which he did. He was almost home now. Once he got home he would tell everyone what happened and then they would all come back, finding her right here, hopefully with the monsters gone by then.

To Leni's surprise, the two men turned around and looked back down at her with a menacing smile painted on their faces. That was the first time she really took notice of those eyes, those vicious, lust filled eyes. It scared her beyond what she thought was possible and immediately, she froze in place, unable to move. What was going on? Why were they looking at her? Why couldn't she bring herself to move?

"Well sweetie." The man standing to the left had a low gruff sounding voice. "It looks like you're our new toy." She was now beyond fighting back, all of her energy had been completely drained from her body. It was bad enough that she was already beat up more than enough, but combined with the fact that she couldn't move a muscle just made everything worse. They each grabbed one of her arms and dragged her across the street to their van. She was dreading everything that was going to happen next. She didn't even want to think about it. But, it was not a total loss. Lincoln was safe thanks to her. She imagined if he was going through this instead and tears came to her eyes. At least it wasn't Lincoln.

They tossed her in the back of the van and each looked at her for a moment, then closed the back doors, leaving her in complete darkness. Before the van turned on and started driving off, Leni was able to faintly hear her name being called, Lincoln was calling out to her. It was kind of hard to tell, but even she knew that Lincoln was worried. He was worried about her. They were all going to start looking for her, only to find nothing. They were all going to be scared for her and she knew it, especially Lincoln. He was there the whole time and didn't even notice that he almost got kidnapped. Everything happened without him ever batting an eye, so he was going to be the one that was the most scared. It pained Leni thinking about how much grief that they were going to go through, but that didn't really matter. Anything that she was thinking about regarding the rest of the Loud family didn't really matter as much to her as one thing. The biggest thing was that Lincoln was safe. There was nothing wrong with him. She loved him, and was prepared to do whatever it took to protect him, and she felt like she did.

Leni was shaken and jostled around in the back of the dark van, trying to get a feel of her surroundings as she slowly crawled across the floor of the vehicle. Eventually, she came to a position where she was sitting against the wall closest to the front with her arms reaching around her legs. The floor she was sitting on had all these bumps and hills in straight lines going across the width of the van. It was uncomfortable to sit on to say the least and the fact that it was metal didn't help at all. The only sort of light that was shining was emanating from the cab of the vehicle. It shone a beam of light down through the center of the back of it, hitting square in the middle of the inside of the white door. Leni could make out to her left a box of duct tape and situated against the wall to her right were a couple of red toolboxes. Other than that there was nothing between her and the door of the van. The smell back there was almost unbearable, some kind of mix between sulfur and dead skunk. Leni had no idea how those two bozos could even stand that smell it was so awful. If it weren't for the fact that she were already crying, it would have made her start crying.

Leni couldn't make herself move no matter how hard she tried. It wasn't that she didn't want to, if she could make herself move, she would. The first option would be to rush to the back door and open it, then jump out and hope they didn't notice anything. But she was frozen in fear. No amount of psyching herself up to do it even came close to making her move an inch. It was those eyes, those evil enormous eyes. It was like they implanted a demon in her that made her freeze up as soon as she started thinking about them and unfortunately for her, she couldn't stop thinking about them. The demon was even strong enough to make her keep thinking about it and it didn't seem like there was anything that could change that, except one thing. Lincoln.

One would imagine that thinking about him could have helped Leni to get herself moving. Thinking about how much turmoil he was going through. By now he had to have realized that she was gone and come back looking for her. Imagining him crying over her absence only made it worse for her. He had to have been in so much pain by now, maybe even to the point of, considering he didn't know what actually happened, blaming himself for it. That was the last thing Leni wanted him to do. She willingly sacrificed herself so that he would be safe, but he didn't know that. For all he knew, they were trying to kidnap her, and they succeeded. She would tell him what really happened and hopefully, he would be more understanding. Knowing Lincoln however, she didn't think that was going to be the case. He was going to try to blame himself for as long as he possibly could. Leni didn't like the thought of that at all.

But he was safe.

The van was no fun to ride in. Other than the fact that she was being kidnapped, it still wasn't at all a smooth ride. Can't they at least give her that much? It was already bad enough having to ride around in vanzilla all the time, but this was even worse. Whoever was driving was doing it quite recklessly, clearly speeding, running stop signs and stop lights, and not to mention he was jumping just about every curb in their way. All Leni felt like she could do was sit on the ground, bouncing up and down on the ridged metal, constantly bruising her butt, hoping that she wouldn't get more hurt than she already was. Multiple bruises in her abdomen were absolutely torturous to her as she strained to keep herself from moving so that there would be no pain, not to mention that her lip was still bleeding and the long cut on her arm and side from the knife made it to where blood was slowly running down her side to the floor. It wasn't a deep cut so there wasn't any blood gushing out or anything, but it was still a painful feeling nonetheless.

She had gone from tired and beaten up, now to scared out of her mind. The realization of what was going on had finally hit her. She was being kidnapped. The things that she was about to endure, she knew were going to be terrible, no doubt, and it scared her. Tears were streaming down her face to the floor, combining with the little bit of blood that was also staining it. She knew that she wasn't going to be able to get out of this, but there was one thing that was keeping her going. It was the fact that Lincoln was okay; they hadn't touched a white hair on his head, and she was glad that she had succeeded with that much.

The van jostled violently again and Leni hit her head on the wall of the inside, knocking her out immediately. She didn't wake up again until she was already at the goons' house.

That chapter wasn't as long as some of the previous chapters, but It's not the shortest chapter and I really was expecting it to be. I really hope there's not too much fluff in there, but I still hope that you enjoyed reading it anyway.

As always, I thank you for reading and I ask that you would leave a review telling me how I did even if you don't have any criticism for me. I do ask that if you do have criticism, that it would only be constructive. Don't just bash me, and even if you do bash me, at least tell me how I can improve. Thanks again for reading and I hope to have the next chapter out soon.