Capitan Lincastle - Hidden Room - Before Masters Carson and Naaf confront Falgus.
I’ve been beaten, tortured and more while blindfolded as I sit on this chair. My Powers don’t work, it has the same feeling as that warehouse, the mana in the air not flowing or moving within. I hear a door close in front of me and the slow clack of shoes walking on stone.
My blindfold is removed and I see a wiry, olive skinned man with green eyes, a round chin, flat nose, large ears and hollow cheekbones. He has curly, light brown hair, and seems unremarkable with his 5 o'clock shadow. The room is still dark, barley lit by a few candles.
This must be the bastard who’s been beating me senseless for the last few hours. I can feel my eyes are swollen and cuts all over my face from punch marks, a couple of broken ribs thanks to some stomach punches and broken fingers on my left hand while my hands are behind my back, cuffed behind me.
He squats down to my level, his eyes dead, unconcerning become almost excited.
“Hello Lincastle, ready to talk yet? Cause if not...” He asks, smiling.
“What are you going to do? Bore me to death?”
Standing up he slowly walks around me, “You know what, no. I was thinking that if you can put up with hours of abuse like this and not break then maybe there is something else I could try… Something a little more… childish.”
“If you touch one hair on his head I swear I will kill you.” I reply venomously, full of hate. I won’t allow him to kill Lee.
“Yes well I thought I would, oh hang on ooooone moment.” He says standing up, his entire demeanour changing from serious to excitable. After standing in silence for a moment he says;
“Yes Sir, Money in the usual spot?” he says to himself, some kind of communication crystal but how it works in here I don’t know. The connection must have been broken as he slowly turns his head to look back at me, his eyes dead, something is wrong with this guy.
From behind his waist he pulls a knife, long and wavy. It slowly snakes towards me as he shuffles along the wire embedded floor.
“Sorry Lincastle, nothing personal I hope you understand, just business. Rest assured that I won't go after your kid, just a tactic there, I have standards.”
“What’s your name?”
“Aq, I'm from out west originally.” He says thoughtfully.
“Ever killed someone Aq?”
Cocking his head he replies after a moment, “Not recently.”
“In this situation, there was always gonna be someone who’d end up buried. In our businesses the most you can hope for is that someone holds your hand while you die…”
“Awe, you want me to hold your hand Lincastle? Oh! I forgot, I broke your fingers…”
“Yeah you did you bastard, that’s why it was no big deal to break my thumb.”
Cocking his head in the opposite direction he looks at me a moment as I slip my hand through the cuff, slapping aside the knife which falls onto the floor and lunging for his throat. In the candlelight we fall to the ground and I pull back firmly as the cuffs are wrapped around his neck
We struggle on the floor as I pull hard, harder, harder, legs kick on the floor, slipping and bouncing on the floor.
His nails scratch at my neck, leaving long marks as the air is cut off. Slowly his struggles stop, the only sounds are from me, panting.
I slowly get up, and hobble towards where the door should be, leaning against the wall a moment before it suddenly opens and I fall onto the floor of a corridor. Mana comes rolling back in, I activate Luminous Shackles and wrap them around Aq. Him secure I activate another Power; Gowick’s Call to Aid, any friendlies should pick it up and come running.
Fight over I struggle to keep my eyes open and hold onto my Powers, definitely have brain damage, my hands are shaking from more than the adrenalin and pain.
I soon enough hear footsteps from another room and the breaking of wood and stone. Help has arrived, the stress finally released, a calm takes me over and I fall asleep, my hold on the Chains ceasing, fading and unravelling into the air.
---
Michael Hayes - The Australian
Waking up I am laying on a soft bed, a bright light shines through a window in the wall, illuminating the white walls and bed sheets, a small crystal is on my chest wrapped on me under some bandages which sends through small amounts of heat.
Moving my arms out of the sheets I see they are covered in bandages. Blinking and rubbing away the sleep in my eyes I look around as my eyes get used to the light, looking around I can see my clones, the ten I had created to block radiation plus Numbers 1 and 5 with Lock sitting around my bed, some dozing off in a couch nearby while most are on the floor with sheets on them, some snoring softly.
Looking over them I shuffle up so I am sitting up and send a message to Number 1 whos close by, a very loud message pings him, waking him up from the chair with a jolt. Thankfully he is quiet enough to not wake anyone else.
He looks over at me and is about to wake everyone when I place a finger over my mouth, shushing him. He silently walks up to me and whispers;
“Hi Boss, you doing ok?” he asks in English.
“Yeap, looks like HP is back to almost full and then some. Why’s everyone here?”
“Oh, nurses figured that if we or most of us poof you might wake up again so we decided to sleep till you woke, you needed it, dumbass.”
“What can I say, 2s plan worked out well.”
“Yea well it also made you look like a madman, where’d he get the idea from? The whole exploding thing?”
“FullMetal Alchemist, Roy Mustang.”
“Ah yes, that makes sense. You want a, I don’t know, progress report?”
“Yes, what happened with Flagus? He dead?”
“You’ll be glad to know that he’s alive”
He’s right, I would feel horrid if he had died, killing is not my thing. “I will say I’m kinda surprised.”
“Oh he's not OK, very toasted. Like dads cooking.”
Chuckling quietly at the old joke, I reply, “How’s everyone?”
“Doing good, Carson and Naaf are also in hospital with everyone else, lots of gamma radiation to repair... How close?”
“Very, the last message I have was HP at 2. One hard punch and it would have broken.”
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“Thats dam close… With the progress report, we grabbed a bunch of docs from Falgus’ office and we have some of the Shae-Eq, 2’s gonna have a fun time with those.” Replies 1 with a smile.
“Kage?”
“No more losses, out of the 26 Kage we started with, 10 disappeared in the warehouse, figure you’d want to talk to Creature slash Power about them.”
“Yeah, when I’m out of here…”
Eyeing the bandages I ask “Hey, I was bleeding at one point, is that all sorted?”
Shrugging he replies, “I don’t know, you’d think it would be vaporised in the blast. And I told the medic teams about the Protection of Body and Mind and stuff, should be ok…”
He continued, “I talked with 5 while you were out, we figure that this madness might draw some more unnecessary attention.”
“We sank the Hood huh?”
The RMS Hood for those wondering was a British battleship that got sunk during WW2 by the German Battleship Bismark, Churchill is reported to mobilise everything to sink the Bismark in response, as we have taken down one head of the Institute, we may end up in a similar situation.
“I was thinking of… if we should start producing Earth weapons” I say, “Guns and other things, but I’ve been thinking that the sheer amount of power that people have sometimes may not make a difference, while for us it is something we can use.”
“Not worried about spreading stuff we shouldn't?” asks 1.
“It’s either we do… Or we don’t, either way, so long as we don’t give them info on the big bad stuff then… Yea I think we’ll be good.”
“At least I know you’ve thought about it lol.” Smiles 1,
“Yeap, I’m not your average transmigration fantasy protagonist!”
Softly laughing 1 replies “Right, cause you're the protag here?”
“Don’t get cheeky you ass.”, “Look in the mirror dumbass.”
We silently chuckle for a few, laughing at the absurdity for a moment, distracting us a little from the tasks ahead. “Teleportation Power next?” 1 asks.
“Yeap, 2 had some ideas about it so I’ll pop him up in a bit.”
“Cool, cool. Food?”
“Please, How long was I out?”
“About a day, it’s the next morning.”
“Damn…”
Number 1 leaves through a sliding door and comes back a little bit later with a tray of food; stew, roasted fish, toast and a nurse. The nurse checks me out and tells me to take it easy, the crystal on my chest will take care of the leftover radiation damage.
While that’s happening, 1 wakes up the others and we chill for a while, eating a significant portion of the cafeteria morning food between us which the cooks were happy with while we joked about and talked. In a world full of healing magic, not many people who are not on death's door get to enjoy their cooking lol.
Number 1 had also sent a message to Adoazze and her team, turns out they had created a party with them, checked them with that Trust but Verify ability as a precaution but as we had guessed, they were fine.
Adoazze’s team with Masters Carson and Naaf walk through the door while some of the clones finish singing an old song very passionately about these small hours.
“Eyy, look who turned up! Carson, Naaf, how you doing?” I ask, putting down a glass of some kind of blue juice on my tray.
“We’re well Michael, thank you” replies Naaf as he and Carson hobble into the room on crutches, larger crystals on their chests repairing the same radiation damage where it can. While the clones get some chairs together for them to sit on Adoazze approaches with brown papers in hand.
“Thought you might be interested, and also. Well done, you did well.”
Adoazze passes me a newspaper, there are several pages however the front page is what grabs my attention.
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1102540600491909135/1131983531648749649/image.png]
“Wow, this whole thing turned out bigger than I thought, at least when we first got into this mess.”
“I would not have guessed it would have come to this. We’re gonna have a party when you and the Masters are well, join us?”
“Definitely. Oh! Completely forgot about Lincastle!”
“He’s fine.” replies Adoazze waving a hand, “Broke out of a hidden room and took out a black-marked adventurer by himself with no Powers, he’s resting in another room.”
“I’ll be honest, it’s kinda weird, getting arrested by him, then trying to rescue him, then almost worried about him… What’ll happen to him?”
I direct that to Master Naaf who's sitting on a chair with a pillow on his back. As he leans forward Master Caron quickly steals the pillow without Naafs notice, placing it behind him with a finger over his mouth in a shushing motion.
“He’ll go under an internal review, right now I cannot say… It’s possible he’ll stay in the Guard but as of right now it's, what's the term Number 1 said? Up in the Air?”
Nodding 1 looks at me, “We had a chat about it, forgot to mention it” he says sheepishly.
Shaking my head I reply, “I should talk with him at some point, I’ll let you know what I think?” I ask Naaf.
He nods and leans back, noticing that his pillow has been stolen and glares at Carson before they quietly start fighting over it, slapping at hands almost like kids.
“Old friends.” says Milrich, who notices me looking at them.
After about 10/15 minutes an old nurse walks in and admonishes Carson and Naaf from leaving their beds and almost drags them away like two naughty kids being caught. Lots of friendly laughs come from that.
More food comes through, drinks and small talk happens for a while, hours go by as we chatter about all sorts of things, Proctor Wellingpar and Secretary Hope also drop by and we sing more songs and talk about what had happened over the last few days. Almost hard to believe how much stuff has happened, I’m ready to take things easy for a while…
Soon it starts to get dark and the nurses have promised I can leave tomorrow, Lock has promised me to take us all on a dedicated tour of the festival, it’s it’s last day tomorrow so everyone goes all out if they haven’t already.
Slowly everyone disappears, heading back home, 1 and 5 head back to Dr Rath's place and the rest of the clones disappear, poofing back into smoke.
At night I decide to have a chat with him, walking out of my room it looks like a normal Earth hospital with sterilised corridors, just with crystals on the wall to wash hands instead of hand sanitiser bottles. Asking a nurse for directions I find myself outside of Lincastles room.
I knock with no answer, I am about to leave, figuring he’s asleep but the door slides open suddenly, looking up I can see Lincastle is mostly healed, with bandages wrapped around his left hand and chest.
“Michael.”
“Lincastle. I wanted, well I’m not sure what I wanted…”
“I, I didn’t want to do it if it's any consolation, Falgus had me by the proverbial balls.” he says disgusted. At who? I can only assume himself or Falgus.
“That bad huh?”
“Yes, I did something bad, wrong many years ago and he found out about it.”
“I know, I saw the recording you left.”
Nodding he is quiet, the nurses wanting the gossip are hiding around the corner, I’ve got some Kage over there lol.
Seeing me with a slight smile he asks, “What’s funny?”
“Nothing, the nurses are just curious, I knew some like that back home.” I reminisce, remembering the stories told to me by my friends in St John Ambulance all those years ago, back to just before I arrived here.
“Why are you here Michael? You want an apology?” He asks thiredly, he looks run down and there are still some slight bruising around his face.
“I know it might not be much, but, I don’t think you did anything wrong. Yes I did think you were a massive dick and all that but… I don’t think you're a bad guy, you know.”
“How in the depths would you know that about me?” he replies angrily.
I pause for a few moments before smiling a little as I remember a particular memory, “My old man once said, there is no such thing as bad people, just bad decisions.”
I hold my hand out and Lincastle after a moment of hesitation takes it, “What about Falgus, Taaf?” he asks.
“Meh, some people are just nuts, you know.”
“You're a weird one” he says before letting go and stepping back a little, just before he closes the door he looks at me, “Thanks.”
“No worries” I say, giving him a two-fingered salute.
I head back to my room and pass the nurses who are trying to look busy in these small hours. As I arrive back to my room the sun is almost fully set, the dusk sun filling my room with light.
“I leave you alone for how long and you end up like this?” says a familiar voice. Spinning around I find Dr Rath standing in the doorway in a white coat, medical wands sticking out of pockets.
“I know, right? This was supposed to be a shopping trip.” I say jokingly.
Rath sits down on my bed as I get in it, “I don’t suppose you know as I was away but I was one of the doctors who had examined you and the Masters when you lot first came in. How are you doing?”
Chuckling and looking back over the last few days, not even a whole week, I reply, “Mate, let me tell you a tale.”