Chapter Fifty-Nine - You're Locked In Here With Me

Jacob woke up with a pounding headache, a dry mouth, and a squirming gut.

He was a college student, so most of that wasn’t entirely unusual.

What did make the situation a little more precarious was the way his hands were currently duct-taped to the arms of a rather uncomfortable chair. He tried to move his legs. Those were tied down too.

He also noted with dawning horror, that he was stripped down to his tighty-whities and was currently in a rather plain, windowless room with a table set right in front of him and his clothes nowhere to be found. He licked lips lips and noticed a distinct lack of alcohol-breath. So, this wasn’t the morning after a party.
Stretching his mind back, he tried to think of what had happened to him last. He had been babysitting two of the Boss’ brats. The raccoon one (or one of its bodies? He wasn’t entirely sure how that girl’s power worked. He might have been with the original, or one of her clones, unless they weren’t clones at all. Really, he tried not to think about it too much) and the new girl with the buck-teeth and the big flat tail.

Beaver-girl had a little budget and was using it all on random odds and ends. He didn’t pretend to understand how gadget-makers worked, but he imagined that she was going to turn some of those things into weapons of mass destruction, or just toys, because that was how the Boss and her crew of misfits operated.

He often questioned his luck-based powers, especially after they landed him right in the Boss’ lap.

Speaking of which... he blinked a few times and looked around the room. The smart thing to do would probably have been to play dead, but it was a bit too late for that. “Hello!” he screamed.

“Hi!”

Jacob jumped in his seat and turned around. There were two more chairs behind him, smaller ones. One was empty, but the other had a familiar girl sitting in it. “Oh,” he said. “You’re here. Wait, where’s Maple?”

Trinity wiggled a hand out from the duct-tape holding it in place, then pressed a finger over her lips in a ‘shhh’ gesture. “We don’t talk about what happened to Maple,” she said.

He noted that she was still in her clothes which... actually, that was for the best. He already disliked his captors on principle, but at least they had some morals. “Do you know who captured us?”

“Nope! But maybe you’d know if you didn’t spend so much time sleeping. You snored while they took your pants.”

Maybe the captors could have spared some tape for the girl’s mouth.

“Thanks, I’m glad to know,” he said a bit sourly. He knew that most people treated kids with a bit of respect and care, but most people didn’t have to deal with the Boss’ terrifying brats all the time. “Anym, uh, word from... yeah, nevermind. Did you get a look at who captured us?”

“B-rated minions,” Trinity said with confidence. “Not even proper minions, really, more mooks, I think. One or two of them look like they might be goons.”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” he said.

“Minions are people that work for a villain, it kind of covers all of them, like... there’s kinds of cans, yeah? But if they’re empty then they’re all trash. Mooks are minions that are hired to do something. They’re trained but it’s like... a job for them. And goons are like mooks but they’re gooder at fighting. There’s also henchpeople, hirelings, mercenaries, scrubs, drones, small fry, pawns, grunts, cannon fodder and a bunch of others, but they’re all just flavours of minion.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. He was used to the brats being a bit dumb, so it always took him off guard when they had a lot of very specific knowledge into a specific subject. That fact that it was all villainy-related should probably have bothered him more than it did. “Any plan to get out of here?”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Trinity said.

“And where’s Maple?” he asked with a glance to the other seat. Were they... no, he didn’t want to imagine someone torturing one of the kids. That was too evil by half.

The door opened up and he spun back around to face it. “That’s what we would like to know,” a gruff voice asked.

A shorter, stocky man stepped into the room. He was wearing a suit and tie, a teal one, like a wedding singer from the late eighties, but there were little fireballs and lightning bolts patterned on the suit. His shirt, at least, was plain and white.

“You look weird,” Trinity said.

The two behind the man were what Jacob assumed Trinity would call goons. Two bigger guys in black jumpsuits with full-face masks that hugged their faces and didn’t let any part of their expressions through. They had guns strapped to their hips and a few other things in their belts besides. What concerned him were the knuckle dusters they were fixing on.

“I look weird, do I?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” Trinity said. “Like, if I saw what you were wearing in the trash, I wouldn’t even take it.”

The man sniffed. “Do you often root around in the trash?”

“Yes,” Trinity said without even a hint of hesitation.

“She’s weird like that,” Jacob said. He felt at his reserves of luck and held back a wince. He was bottomed out. With the amount of luck he had, he would be worried about crossing a road without getting hit. Even eating was going to be a high-risk activity. He had good odds of choking on every-other-bite.

His reserves hadn’t been that low earlier on. Half the reason he agreed to accompany Maple (and where was she anyway?) was to steal a bit of luck here and there to replenish his reserves. The morning hadn’t been super productive, but he’d grabbed a bit.

A few strands from a lady who didn’t pick up her dog’s droppings, a smidge from a guy who tossed trash out of his car window, some more from a guy who was rude to a cashier. Little bits that wouldn’t be easily noticed. Taking someone’s luck felt like intestinal cramping, but most people who felt a little of that would pass it off as passing gas and would make a point not to react.

His tank was empty. The rest had probably been used up while he was out of it.

“So, where’s the girl?” the man before him asked.

“Uh, you’re not going to do introductions first?” Jacob asked.

Then the man slapped him across the face and Jacob reeled back.

Trinity laughed. “Wow, that was weak,” she said. “Where’s your monologue? Where’s the scariness?”

Jacob worked his jaw. “I think I’m a bit scared, to be honest,” he said. It was true, too.

“That’s because you’re lame,” Trinity said. “If it was the Boss, she’d have you so scared you’d be peeing yourself. I bet she’d find a way to get sharks, and like, a big vat of acid, and like, chains so that you’re hanging upside down over the acid with the sharks in it. Oh, and then she’d ask questions, but they’d only be for fun because she already read your mind and knows all your deep dark secrets so you’re just hanging there and learning that there’s nothing you can do while still covered in pee and about to be dropping in the acid shark tank.”

The mooks and the guy with the weird suit were all looking at Trinity now. He couldn’t read their expressions, but he had the impression they were worried.

“Anyway. She’s coming here soon, so don’t worry.”

“I doubt that,” suit-guy said.

Trinity grinned, then spat something out that landed on the table in a pool of saliva. It was a small device, with a few twisted wires and some flashing lights.

“What is that?” the man asked. “Didn’t anyone frisk her?”

“We did, sir,” one of the mooks said.

“Then where was that?” he snapped.

Trinity laughed. “It wasn’t made yet! Maple made it, and now she’s coming here with the toaster gun!” She grinned. “The Boss is coming too, and she’s going to smack the heck out of you.”

The man swiped the device off the table then gave it to one of the mooks. “Go find out what this is. Hurry.”

“Yessir,” the mook said before darting away.

Suitguy turned and pointed to Trinity. “Where did the other girl go?”

“Home.”

“And where’s that?” he asked.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m not telling you.”

He slammed a hand against the table, then leaned forwards. “Do you think I’m beyond squeezing the information out of you?”

“What are you gonna do, kill me? I’m more afraid of disappointing the Boss than I’ll ever be of dying. There’s nothing you can do to me that’ll make me fear you more than that.” She cackled. “Can you feel it? Can you feel the Boss coming? She’s going to teach you all about villainy, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He slammed the desk again, but doing it twice only made him look petulant. “Do you have no respect for your situation?”

Trinity giggled in his face. “You can’t hurt me in a way that matters, trash suit man, so run away and hide, but even that won’t matter, because we’ll find you, and when we do you’ll only wish you could die without consequences.”

Jacob swallowed and desperately wished he wasn’t in the room with the insane guy and the more insane girl.

***