Requested by Tofuf-Tofu
Author's Note
I really had fun with this fanfic as this will be the last one, and so mind as well send it off with a bang. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! ^_^
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___ was looking all around the mansion. She had checked every floor, but there was no sign of snake whatsoever, not even the other smashers could inform her of where he was. He was such a sneaky man, but this was a whole new level.
He hasn't been seen in two weeks. This was abnormal since he usually hangs out a few days a week. He didn't even say "goodbye" or "I'm gonna go out for a few days" or nothing like that. Just vanished.
'Where had he gone now...?,' she thought as she headed back to her dorm, 'Could he be kidnapped? Could have Master Hand send him on a super secret mission?'
As soon as she reached her dorm, she saw there was a note pinned to her door. "What's this now?" She removed it from the pin and spotted the handwriting. 'I-It's Snake!,' she thought. She then furiously read the note:
Hello there, ___
I know you've been searching for me and worrying about me. But in order to find me, you have to go on a treasure hunt for me. Are you able to do that?
Well, hopefully, you are because I don't want to be cramped up in this place forever. My first hint is my location. It's the place you hate the most, possibly.
She stuffed the note away in her pocket. "The place I hate the most...Oh, that's right! The gym!" Before she knew it she was dashing down the stairs to the gym.
As soon as she opened the double doors to the gym, all she could see was...boxes. Boxes, upon boxes, upon boxes were all in even rows along the floor. It didn't help that Gym was just colossal in size.
"Who in the world put these boxes here? And why are they so many of them?! Gah, I don't have time to process all of this." She ignored the boxes and looked around for any sign of a hint. Luckily, one the back of one of the doubled doors, she found a note. She took it off and began reading once more:
Hello again, ___
I'm glad you were able to make it this far. I know what you're thinking when you stepped inside this gym. What in the world are all these boxes are doing here? Well, this is just a challenge on how much you know me. A box is hiding another hint inside. That's all you need to know.
The note fell out of her hands as they trembled. "I have to look through...All of these boxes for one damn hint?!" She looked upon the horde of boxes, her skin grew extremely paler than a pencil shading. "I-If this what it takes to get Snake back, then so be it!"
She went to the first box in the first row. She ripped the tape off, but as soon as she lifted the top, confetti blasted into her face. She yelped and then removed the confetti from her face. She looked inside the box to see a string attached to a can of confetti along with a note attached to it:
Heh, like I would actually put the hint there. You have your head up your ass.
She picked up the note and shredded it to pieces. "Ugh, I'm gonna get him for this!"
She knew not to go for the second box in the first row after learning her lesson, and so she just chose a random box instead. She opened it, but it was only filled with styrofoam, even when she dumped it out, there was nothing.
She checked another random one but it was just gun powder.
She had to sit down on the floor and picked up a brainstorm. What if every box has a hint and then it all comes together? What if there was no hint at all and Snake was just pranking her as he did with the first box? Her head was starting to spin, but then she reassured herself that she would get through this madness and she took a deep breath from her rapidly beating stressed heart.
"Okay, I have styrofoam, gunpowder, and..." She trailed off once she spotted a box with a notable red "!" symbol on it. She slapped herself on the head. "Of course! This whole time! Gah...So that's what he meant by 'how much you know me'." She mumbled to herself before going to the box.
She opened it and fount just a note inside. "Bingo!" She cheered as she picked it up and began reading it.
Wow, I'm impressed by now. But it should have been common sense to see this box first before anything else since...y'know, you've seen my most well-known symbol plenty of times by now. I thought you wouldn't remember since you never paid attention to the small things about me, but I guess I was proved wrong.
But besides that, my next hint is this code.
"pybfrg"
It's shifted by thirteen, but you don't know shifted by what. That is your final hint. Good luck, honey.
"Shifted by thirteen? Does that mean I have to shift the boxes thirteen times to get my hint?!" She said. "That would be insane..." She looked at all of the boxes. "Maybe...Maybe it has nothing to do with the boxes." She thought once more, and then an idea had popped into her head. "The letters! They're shifted thirteen away from the alphabet!"
She went all the way up to her room and got her notebook and a pen, and then came right back down. She uploaded an image of the alphabet on her phone. She decoded it each letter by counting 13 forward from its original letter in the alphabet. She wrote down her answer, but it was nothing but gibberish.
"No! It's not it..." She sighed and placed her fingers in her hair in frustration. She felt like quitting altogether, but she got so far. She can't stop now. "But thirteen away from what though?...Wait, what if I counted backward, not forward?"
She picked her pen and went to work once more. After a few concentration in a minute, she was able to crack the code.
C l o s e t
"The closet!"
It was a tiny one in the back of the gym that nobody really touched. They had a larger storage room by the gym, and so it had no use. She went over to it and opened the door. She switched on the lights and then spotted a singular box, sitting on the gray concrete floor. She crouched down and ripped off the seal.
As soon as she did so, Snake popped out of it jack in the box style and roared.
___ screamed and crumbled to the ground. As she got up and regained her sanity and her stable heart rate, she could see Snake a fit of laughter, punching the box as he did so.
"That look was priceless! I really should have put a camera in here."
"I see you got your fix," ___ said bitterly as she wiped the dust from her clothing. "I was worried sick about you."
"I really wanted to see your face when you screamed when you opened that box. That confetti got you good, huh?" He smirked.
"No, I'm serious as a heart attack. I was worried about you."
"Really?" He quirked a brow, his goofy demeanor dimming.
"Yes, really! Why wouldn't I? I love you, Snake more than anything."
"___, y'know how much we drifted apart. It's like we're strangers. We barely talked, and even when I try, you're usually spending time with the others. It's like after I was removed from the smash roster, you didn't pay attention to me that much before like everyone else did. Like me being apart of smash was the only thing that attracted you to me."
"I...I have noticed that beforehand. I've gotten so obsessed with everything with smash that I failed to realized that you're more than just a smash fighter...You're a man who branches out on their own, who doesn't need smash to be seen as iconic. I'm so sorry, Snake. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Reason number one, I already stated. Reason number two, even if I was able to talk to you, you would have not been interested in my speech about this. And so I thought I would go 'missing' and told the others to keep quiet about it, and then set up this whole scheme. I knew it was a sickening idea, but it worked...I guess it really is true that 'you don't know until it's gone'."
She just threw her arms over him and cried into the crook of his neck after hearing it. "God, I'm so sorry! Really I am! The great lengths you had to go through just to get me. What if you really were gone? What if-"
He returned her hug and squeezed her tightly as he buried his face deep within her hair. "I know, I know. I really scared you." He pulled her away and brushed the tears from her eyes so he could stare right at them. "I promise to never do shit like that ever again. But you promise to never distance us like that ever again. I really want to keep this relationship, ___. I really do think you're an amazing person. I don't want to lose you that easily unless you desire to."
"No, I don't want to lose you either! I don't know what I do if you disappeared from me..."
"Me too." He held her tightly once more, this time they both savored their embrace together, enjoying the romantic moment they haven't had in months.
The End
And the end to this book! ^-^