Chapter 27 - Distress

It was quite hard to react in this situation. Both metaphorically, and literally. I felt the breeze pass by me, and by the time I turned back to where I held my prey captive, I couldn't see her around anymore. Not quite understanding what was going on, I looked around frantically, trying to see where she disappeared.

But it was no use. The man in black, that I could only catch a glimpse of, has somehow took Claire with him, leaving only my Binders behind, to slowly melt into the ground, disappeareing only the gods know where. I turned back to look at Meda for answers, but she just shook her head. Both of them taking a deep breath, it was quite hard to grasp this situation alone.

"Sorry... We couldn't do anything..." Francis apologized.

"Yeah," I responded.

"He was way out of our league. We could barely touch- No, we couldn't even do that much," Meda added to explain the situation.

"Yeah," I responded.

"Can you say something else?" Francis asked, frowning his brows.

"Yeah," I responded.

And then suddenly, I felt a huge force push my skull into my neck, and with that, almost knocking me down to the ground. Once I managed to grab a hold of myself, I looked up, from my current squatting position, and saw Meda rub her fist. I stood up slowly, stroking the place of impact.

"The hell was that for?" I yelled, confused.

"To bring you back to reality," Francis replied in her stead, while she was turning away, pouting.

"Right, right. Sorry," I replied. I guess I was still out of it, but that really brought me back to life. It was time to act, not to grief.

Suddenly, I felt a vibration, coming from my headset. It was an emergency call, from the hangar base.

"To Lord Tentazione, Master Caleb has been abducted, and Master Karver is unconcious. Waiting further instructions," the voice of a female robot came through. The Mainframe?! That can't be-

"We have a problem," I explained to the rest of the team. They nodded, and we started running back to the base, "Mainframe, send a medical droid to Karver, treat his wounds. We're heading back immediately," I commanded.

"Understood," with that the line has been cut, and we were once again alone.

We made haste, there was no time to waste. It was an hour walking distance, but we could run the whole distance, it wasn't that bad. This way, we should've been able to make it in less then ten minutes. We ran quietly, not expanding any of our breath for meaningless conversation, as that would've slown us down. We needed intel really bad. If we were to track down both Caleb and that weird man from before, we needed to hurry. We had to feed the Mainframe any and every information that we managed to find, and let's just say, we weren't techies. It would take us quite some time to do that.

Upon arrival, a scene of pure massacre waited for us. Unconscious men all around the floor, most of them bled out already, but a few seemed to be breathing still. With our medical knowledge, we lended the med-bot some help, and got some of them back in decent shape. Baulder was more or less stable, he just seemed to be out of it, occasionally some vomit would drool out of his mouth, but that could be expected. The question is, what caused this? I don't think some random lackeys could beat him up this bad, right?

We started feeding info into our ship, and set it to calculate possible hideout locations for this sect of Coin, or whatever they were called. While doing it, Francis explained what had happened in that dimension, that they were teleported to, and also told me, that at some point that man, Howard Cowell just up end left, tossing them out of this space at the same time. That's when he showed up to take Claire along.

From this, we could safely assume, that she was somehow a member of this Order of the Coin business as well. How many heroes could be among them? And who was this 'Paladin' that he was talking about? And what did Malcolm have to do with him? Best course of action would be to just contact him, but for some gods-forsaken reason, he didn't leave us his contact info, so that was out of the question.

"Mainframe, could you make contact with Malcolm Preecher?" I asked the system.

"Input required from Master Caleb LaCroix. Please present the authentication," the machine responded in a monotone voice.

"Well, that sucks," I said, then turned around, to see how Baulder was doing. Didn't have anything better to do. We had to wait for these lackeys to wake up as well, and hear the full story from both sides.

About an hours wait later, Baulder finally started to move a bit, and just a few minutes later, he finally opened his eyes. We rushed over, and helped him sit up. He seemed to be somewhat light-headed, as well as nauseous, but he said he'd manage. He explained the story, until the point, where the Order's henchmen started to use their plasma guns, but at that point, we heard some of them rustling about. I tied them up, with the help of Francis, and started an interrogation, with Baulder coming along as well.

"First off, why'd you call Caleb a Betrayer?" I demanded answer. I had my thoughts, but I wanted them to answer me.

"Pith off, will ya?" the one with no teeth said. He reminded me of those London taxi drivers, from the movies.

"Look, I can be nice, or I can be not nice. Your choice," I demanded once again.

"I ain't answering a fucking Sin, hear me?" the other said, with the huge lumps under his eyes.

"'A fucking Sin', is it? I so you choose the not nice option, I hear ya," I replied, deliberately making my eyes flare up in purple. That served as some good intimidation, they were almost pissing themselves, "So you fucking zealots think of me as some demon, is that it? I can be one for you. Your comrades will tell the tale when two of their friends pissed themselves in front of the Devil, himself!" I played into their little religious ruse. I'm starting to like this intimidation business.

"I'll tell ya," the third one, with the rabbit teeth said, "Hef ya heard of da Paladin?" he said.

"Yeah, the Paladin. I heard about him," I said, "Is it Caleb?"

"Yeth, Milord, he ith. I know, I therved under him, ten yearth ago!" he said, although it was hard to understand exactly what he said, I mostly figured it out.

I knew it. Of course he'd be the Paladin. Like, why wouldn't my own fucking advisor be the legendary Paladin of an entirely different organization, who also turned out to be a traitor? Once a traitor, always a traitor. He left with them, I assumed.

"Well, he better have a good explanation for this," I turned to the rest of the group, "So Karver, what happened after that?"

"He was kidnapped. The plasma they used was too strong for him, and eventually it got me too," he explained.

"That's no surprise. Radiation poisoning is some serious business. Don't worry about it too much, okay?" I petted his shoulder, reassuringly. He nodded, and stepped back.

"Hey, rabbit teeth, where's your hideout?" I asked.

"I can't tell ya that one, Milord," he shook his head.

"Tell me anyways," I ordered.

His eyes lit up, and the rest of the captives fell over in their suprise. He looked at me, bowed, and continued:

"Milord, it's up there, under the sign, that say 'OLLY OOD'," he said.

Olly Ood. I heard about that place. I think it was called something else a few decades ago, but everyone just calls it that. It's not as great as it once was, so the older folks took to that naming as well.

"What do you mean 'under'?" I asked, slightly puzzled.

"If ya go to the thecond 'O' in Ood, ya'll find a panel. Type in the thecret code, and ya can go in," he said.

"And what is that code?" I asked, impatiently.

"I don't know, Thir," he replied, "It'th alwayth the offitherth who let uth in."

"You are one useful idiot," I said sarcastically, "Now, take care of your little friends, then yourself, will you?" I ordered.

I walked towards the mainframe, as my newest minion murdered his mates, then himself, to look for any facilities in that area, that could help us get in. Satellite images, scans, anything would help. But nothing really helped. We were entirely alone, with no real help backing us. This truly was our first real mission, and our first real challange.

It's just a shame, that we didn't have it a bit easier.

This wasn't any level one quest.