“Oh there it is! Oh thank Cosmos! My… Our precious blood!” The adult-bodied Ahvra had rushed to the wrecked vehicle and popped open the trunk. She picked up the case that contained the blood samples they’d been transporting. Or she tried to. The moment she touched the case, it vanished out of existence.
“This is definitely a trap then, be careful!” Xard flew down next to her, scanning their area for any would-be perpetrators.
“Let’s hope we can recover it,” Drim had to agree as he took a defensive stance and grouped up with the other two. “It’d be a serious issue. If that ends up in the wrong hands, it will take some intensive damage control to rectify this.”
Lately, Ahvra had been working on getting another full collection of blood from all the current Fiends For Hire members for her experiments. However, she had made sure to get double the amount she’d need for the foreseeable future just in case there were any unseen departures from the group regardless of the reason.
This second batch of blood was to be hidden at a secured external location that only she and Nathym would know the location of. The idea being that those two left the compound the least out of anyone else, so they’d be the least likely to be captured and interrogated for intel—of those that knew about the blood and its usefulness at least.
So Nathym had built an automated and inconspicuous hatchback that would look like any other car driving the road. It even had dummies with minimal movement in the front seats. When the car got to its undisclosed location, it would dig itself deep down and transform into a bunker to contain the package inside.
No one should have been able to tell the difference. But shortly after the car drove down an isolated road, it was attacked somehow. It looked like the tires had been popped, even though they were some of the toughest in the world. This caused the car to swerve off the road and crash, letting the attacker claim the prize inside.
“Didn’t Eye Pain say he was attacked recently?” Ahvra brought up suddenly. “And yes before you ask, I read the reports whenever an incident happens.”
“Uhh, Rezin?” Xard guessed who she was referring to. “Yeah, he just said he was randomly tackled on his regular walk to the care facility. Since most people can’t see him, he gets bumped into quite often. Didn’t seem that suspicious.”
“So no possible blood loss then?” Ahvra really wanted to be sure.
“Huh, he did say his arm felt itchy later,” Drim added. “Like he’d gotten a bug bite or something.”
“That’s bad!” Ahvra pulled out the head of the broom from beneath her lab coat and extended the pole. “If this person knows how Fiend blood works, they could be anywhere! Useful one, do a scan for goodbadness!”
Drim had to assume she meant morality, so he focused on it and tried to see if he could find anyone. “Hmm, it’s very faint, but I think there’s someone over there,” he pointed almost directly in front of them.
But before anyone could take any action, a glinting object soared from that direction. They all managed to dodge it, and it crashed into the car, shattering. It became quickly obvious that it had been a vial. As for what was inside, Xard started, “Hey isn’t that…?”
“...my blood?” Drim finished for him. The green blood had splattered all over the metal, coating the backside, and some was on the ground nearby. Before they even had the idea to scatter, the blood had activated. All foliage around them suddenly died, and new plants sprouted from the pools of blood.
“Zjik! Cover your—” Drim cut himself off, the rest of the words reduced to mumbles as he covered his mouth with his elbow. Either his warning hadn’t been coherent or quick enough. Both Xard and Ahvra collapsed to the ground the second the plant spewed its toxins.
Since he didn’t have a proper way to filter it, this only bought Drim a few more seconds while his body rapidly lost strength. He tried to hold himself up on the car at first, but quickly slipped and slid down the side. Before he passed out completely, he heard footsteps. Through his weary blinks, he saw someone suddenly appear, as if they’d removed a cloak of invisibility.
He wasn’t able to figure out much about them in his last few moments of consciousness. But his focus was drawn to their pink eyes. “Oh wow! Hehehe! I was hoping my bait would lure one of you, but to think I got both! Lucky day!” Their pink irises then curved into the shape of hearts.
◆◆◆
Xard woke up to blood rushing to his head. But also past his head. Some of his golden blood was trickling down his dangling arms. It was hard to see, but after a bit of neck straining, he found some running up his chest as well and into his face. Why was it defying gravity and moving upwards? After shaking off a bit more grogginess and delirium, he realized he was hanging upside down.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
That’s when the pain kicked in, and Xard realized metal hooks were pierced into his legs. And not only that, he was naked. Someone had figured out how to remove his combat outfit. Well, his underwear was still on, but thanks to gravity, everything was dangerously close to being revealed. He had been abducted by some sort of psychopath. Not to mention the deep cuts all over his body that were causing his blood to drain. Hopefully his healing would kick in soon.
He took a few deep breaths to try and calm down and glanced around the room. It looked like a dungeon, but something felt off. Even though rusted chains were dangling everywhere, the room looked too clean and new, like it had been set up just for this.
And only now did Xard notice the person dangling next to him—Drim also hanging upside down. Of course the man courteously looked away from his almost naked figure out of reflex, but then had to refocus on him to make sure he was okay. It seemed Drim was in a similar state of dangling and cuts, but he was still unconscious.
Whoever had captured them hadn’t thought to remove Xard’s rings. But even if they did, he had so much energy stored up that he could easily get them out of this situation. Two quick blasts to the chains above and Xard flopped to the floor.
He did his best to angle his body so that he wouldn’t land in the pan beneath him that had been collecting his blood. But his hip still clipped it and a bit tipped over and splashed all over his legs and underwear. After removing the hooks from legs, he attempted poorly to clean himself up since there wasn’t even a rag in the room.
Xard then went over to help Drim. First, he moved the pan so there wouldn’t be any more erroneous splashes. Then, he hoisted Drim’s torso up with one of his arms so that he wouldn’t collapse once the chains were broken. As soon as Drim’s feet hit the floor with a thud, he started to stir.
“Ugh, Xard?” he groaned drearily, trying to wake himself up.
“Here, let me help you,” Xard insisted. Drim wrapped one of his arms around his friend’s neck and pulled himself up while Xard kept him balanced until he could get firm on his feet.
“Just where the hell are we?” he asked, a bit groggy and still leaning on Xard for support.
“I have no idea,” Xard answered, the confusion of their reality slowly setting in. “But at least we’re okay, and we can get out of this together.”
“But where’s—” Drim started to ask another question but he was cut off by a monitor clicking on in the room.
“Oh my gosh, that was so perfect!” a woman appeared on the screen and squealed, one with pink heart-shaped eyes. “That was so much better than anything I could have ever written. Thank Cosmos I’m recording this! My slashfic will be reaching new heights!”
The two boys were still a bit confused and trying to process everything, so neither of them responded right away. The woman seemed to have caught on and introduced herself. “Greetings my two favorite boys in the whole wide world! My name is Savs Valen, and I’ve had the pleasure of capturing you two today!”
“But you can just call me Valen like everyone else. Savs is the name my Draz of a mother gave me, but Valen is my history, and I’ll never be ashamed of it.” To add to the eccentricity of her words, the rest of her appearance matched it. She was wearing a dark purple dress that bordered on formal wear and matched her hair that was draping over her shoulders. And she also had on a pair of long black dress gloves that went up above her elbows.
“You’re a Fiend…” Drim muttered, still a little out of it.
“Yay, thank you for noticing!” Valen applauded herself. “Most people don’t believe me when I say I’m a Fiend, and everyone thought I was cosplaying one at the most recent Fiendcon. I suppose I can’t blame them, since I was still my old frumpy self at the first Fiendcon.”
“What the hell is Fiendcon…?” Xard struggled with the idea.
“Only the number one convention for fans of the Fiends For Hire and all related Fiendom!” their captor eagerly answered, happy to talk about it! “And I’m still annoyed too. I didn’t expect you guys to attend the first one because it was still brand new. But as one of the head organizers of the second one, I sent your group so many invites but not even a single one of you showed up! So rude. I had guessed a few of you would come at least out of curiosity! Had to do a bit of damage control with disappointed guests…”
“Seriously, what?” Xard still didn’t grasp it. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“I think I have,” Drim mentioned as he shuffled a few steps away, finally garnering enough strength to stand on his own. “The name sounds familiar, but we definitely never saw any invitations. It must have gotten caught by our spam filters. Sorry, Valen.”
“Oh, it’s okay, I forgive you!” she quickly rebounded from annoyed to cheery. “Today is totally going to make up for it anyways! Alright, I know this all must seem crazy and sudden, but we’re going to have a lot of fun. Well, I’m going to have a lot of fun. So why don’t we just go ahead and move on to the next event! There’s—”
“Before we do anything, I’m afraid we must insist on asking a few questions,” Drim interrupted her. He was honestly doing a much better job at keeping it together than Xard had been so far. The redhead wasn’t sure he could have kept his composure for this long when dealing with a foe.
Certainly, he wouldn’t be engaging them like Drim was doing and would already be trying to blast his way out of here. But if Drim was able to get her talking and get some information out of her, it was definitely the better the route. Xard could only now chastise his own hotheadedness that he still needed to become better at managing.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s fair. I guess I jumped the gun a little bit.” It appeared that Valen could be quite rational at times, another surprise. “This whole thing was just so sudden, y’know? So I’m kind of winging it and got a little greedy. I really wasn’t expecting to capture both of you today, so I hadn’t fully prepared. The plan was to get one of you and have the other come for a heroic rescue! Oh well, your touching friendship and reliance on each other more than made up for it just now.”
And now that rationality was gone.