Chapter 8: In Which there is 99 bottles of beer and cliché kidnappers

Disclaimer: OH GET OVER IT

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Ouch.

Owowowowouch.

OW.

Nina refused to open her eyes. No damn way that was gonna happen, nope, uh-uh, no siree. Her head felt like Thor had taken Mjolnir to it incessantly, her tongue was a great big dried-out slug in her mouth, her eyes had that annoyed gritty feeling that happens when you're too tired to sleep.

And her arm.

It was like her arm had decided that it didn't really need to hang on to her torso anymore, and tried to cut itself off. She felt more of a dull ache mixed with a slow burn than searing pain – like she'd been sunburned really really badly, but Nina knew from experience that this was a bad injury.

So she was going to lie here on this bed that was definitely not hers (the scent was musty, the blanket scratchy, and the mattress impossibly hard) and pretend she was dead.

…

…..

….

Nope. Too boring.

Slowly and carefully, Nina forced herself to sit up, trying not to cry out in pain. Her arm throbbed, but she bit her lip and ignored it.

The room was bare and sparse, the walls a boring grey. The only furniture in the room was the cot she was lying on. A door stood to her left, and she had a pretty good feeling it would be locked – this was no hospital.

She moaned and leaned her head up against the wall.

This'll be fun…

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An hour passed, then two (at least Nina thought so, it was hard to tell) and she grew more and more bored. Her bandaged arm continued to ache, and, to distract herself, she started to sing.

In her loudest, most annoying, most off-key voice possible (which really wasn't that hard – she wasn't exactly Adele).

"99 BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL," she started, and swore she heard a groan from the other side of the door.

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"-38 bottles of beer, you take one down, pass it around, 38 bottles of beer on the wall. 37 bott-" Nina was cut off as the door slammed open and a supremely pissed off man walked in. His hair was salt-and-pepper, his suit a little rumpled, and his arms crossed. He was flanked by two burly men, one on either side, with tattoos galore and some serious muscles.

"I've been expecting you," Nina drawled, sitting up straight on the cot, slowly stroking the pillow in her lap as if it were a cat. She raised one eyebrow (a trick she was very proud of) and tried to look as evil-mastermind-ey as possible.

"…" The man in charge (because it was rather obvious) stood speechless for a moment, then began to speak in a menacing tone. "Good, you're awake. I-"

Nina interrupted. "Let me guess. You're holding me for ransom, because you saw me with Tony Stark and the Avengers. You think you're gonna get a boatload of money, and then walk away scot-free."

"Well, yeah," said the guard on the right in a deep voice. The man in charge glared at him.

"Silence, moron!" he yelled, and Nina couldn't help it – she started giggling to the amazement of the other three.

"Oh my god, this is so cliché!" she said between gasps. "Seriously, it's like all you did was watch bad action flicks and try to copy them!"

"How dare you?!" the leader growled.

"Easily," she shrugged. "Number one and number two are probably just guys you hired in some bar and ordered to crack their knuckles menacingly, you're some douche who never got a date in high school and now you wanna be rich, you most likely didn't even hire the laser-guy, you've just been following me around for a while –and really, you picked a fairly stupid time to kidnap me, what if Iron Man had come back – and I'd bet you anything this is an abandoned warehouse."

Douche (because he needed an actual name, not just 'man in charge') stuttered incoherently for a minute and Nina let herself grin.

If she was going to be kidnapped, she was going to have some fun while she waited to be rescued.

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A/N

I'm sorry, I know I haven't updated in ages, and at a cliffhanger too, and I know this is short, but I've been really sick all week, and then my computer decided it didn't like me anymore, and stuff keeps happening! I meant to make the chapter longer but that would take a while longer, and I decided you guys would want to know what the hell happened to Nina.

*Insert obligatory beg for reviews here*