Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Taken!
"So Drake Atlas, we meet at last."
"Do I have the honour of being addressed by one of the Generals of Order?" Drake asked the masked woman, as he tried to position himself between her and Yuma's group.
She had struck down his materialised Blue-Eyes Twin Burst Dragon in an instant, Drake didn't want to take the risk of seeing what would happen if that attack had targeted a person instead.
"You do. Allow me to introduce myself, I am the Black General of New Order, I am Wyvern." She said as she tossed back a disordered lock of her red hair before lightly jumping down onto the street in front of Drake.
As she landed, she cast a quick glance behind her at the masked man who had fallen down to his knees. Whether it be in homage or weakness Drake could not tell.
"I'm impressed you handled him so easily, he might not be our best operative but his energy reserves are among the highest New Order has outside the upper orders like myself. Not only did you handle him quickly and easily, but I can tell that you haven't even used half your own strength." Wyvern complimented Drake.
Drake kept silent, the more she praised him the warier Drake felt. Like a mouse being eyed by a playful cat.
Finally the heavens opened up and the rain began to fall, causing the Black General to scowl.
"Come to the docks in one hour, pier 4 warehouse 6."
"And if I don't?" Asked Drake, it didn't take an idiot to think this was a trap.
"Then your friend Yuma can say goodbye to his friends." She replied with a smile.
With a tap on her mask, the gem on her masks forehead projected a holographic image in front of her for Yuma and Drake to see. An image of four children bound by rope and hanging in the air in a steel cage.
A girl in black with long silvery hair that was shaped to crate cat ears, the cat enthusiast Cathy. A short stuff with a bowtie and colourful bowler hat, the trickster Flip. The book smart, blue haired school class rep, Caswell and lastly Yuma's well built best friend, Bronk Stone.
"Oh No!" Exclaimed Tori at the sight of their friends.
"Guys!! Let them go you witch!" Yuma screamed.
"Release them!" Drake demanded.
"Pier 4 warehouse 6, one hour." Wyvern repeated as the shadows around her came alive, seeking to engulf her and her masked companion.
But thanks to Kite, Drake was wise to this trick.
"No so fast! Go Swords of Revealing Light!" Drake slapped down the card he had specially prepared for such an occasion onto his duel disk. Infusing it with the power of Critias to materialise its power into reality.
A half dozen giant swords make of bright yellow light plunged down in a circle around the Black General and her subordinate. Their radiant glow dissolved the gathering shadows almost instantly causing Wyverns to clench her fists in anger.
Her shadow magic was strongly influenced by light, a bright single light could cast stronger shadows enhancing her power, but an all-encompassing light like this that surrounded her would instead banish all her shadows and rob her magic of its strength. Especially as the very nature of the Sword of Revealing Light was to lockdown an opponents monsters.
"Do you really think keeping me here will help those four? If I don't return, I am sure the consequences will not go well for your friends." Wyvern threatened Drake.
Having her grand exit fizzle out like that annoyed her, especially since it showed that Drake had at least some understanding of her powers already.
"Perhaps I just enjoy your company and can't bear to part so soon." Drake teased, but he strangely made no other moves after stopping her escape.
"Yeah! Now tell us where are friends are!" demanded Yuma. If not for Tori holding on to his arm perhaps the kid would have charged at the Black General himself.
"Like I will just tell you." With a quick draw Wyvern lifted the Seal of Orichalcos to the sky and unleashed a portion of its mystical power.
As the ring of magic expanded outwards it shattered the Swords of Light. In their last moments the fragments of the swords cast brilliant rainbow in the pouring rain.
Wyvern really wanted to throw down in a duel with Drake, the man was just full of surprises, but she had her orders. Now free from the power of Drakes Swords of Light she once more summoned the shadows to her side. She and the masked man then sank into the shadows and vanished from the street.
"Get back here!" Yuma cried.
"Oh no she got away!" Tori couldn't help but cry in despair.
"This is not good, our opponents seem to be well prepared. This will be very dangerous." Astral commented.
Drake remained silently waiting.
"Come on Drake! Why are we just standing here! We've got to Jet on down to the Docks now!"
"Give me a minute Yuma."
"What? We don't have time to waste! We only have an hour to get there!"
"I am waiting for something." Drake calmly said.
"Uh?"
*RING! RING!*
Yuma was startled as Drake took out and answered a high tech communicator he had never seen Drake using before.
"Orbital speak to me, you better have got be something I can use."
This communicator was a gift Kite had arranged to be delivered to Drake yesterday through secret channels, it was a direct link to the Orbital 7 satellite. A means of both contacting Kite and calling in technical support when dealing with New Order. The two of them had arranged this during their meeting the other day.
Drake had been worried that Faker would have discovered what his son had arranged and blocked it, but it looks like they had got away with it for now.
While Drake had been previously battling the Orichalcos Gigas of the Masked man, he had secretly texted a message to the onboard AI, alerting the machine to the presence of the Orichalcos operative. Its task was simple, lock onto Drakes location and download all the data available nearby within a 1-mile area.
In this high tech day and age people had dozens of deceives on them that records and transmitted all sorts of information. Exercise watches with GPS tracking information, Pacemakers linked to emergency service networks, Personal digital assistants, duel disks, communicators and many others.
Even if the masked man himself had been careful and had nothing on him there must surely have been others waiting and watching nearby. Just a single mistake could potentially net Kite and Drake a big score, a name, a face, or an address, clues that they could work with to track down New Order.
Then Wyvern had shown up and that information became even more important.
The reason Drake had delayed Wyvern like he did was to give Orbital 7 as much time as possible to hack into her tech and obtain as much data as it could. Even if it had only been a few seconds more, a few seconds was a lot of time for an advance computer system.
"YES MISTER DRAKE, THE CYBER ATTACK WAS A SUCCESS. I WAS ABLE TO DOWNLOAD THE DATA AND TRACED THE VIDEO FEED. TRANSMITTING THE CO-ORDINATES NOW." The mechanised voice cheerfully replied.
Compared to the attack on the Black Elite base several days ago, the cyber security New Order had deployed in dealing with Drake just now had been severely lacking. Especially when compared to the abilities of Orbital 7's bleeding edge systems. But how where they suppose to know that Drake was secretly in contact with Kites personal satellite?
Hacking all the wireless devices around Drakes position had been child's play for the AI, allowing it to intercept the live video link Wyvern had just show them and trace it. Which was what Drake had hoped for, otherwise he would have had no choice but to really walk into the spiders web Wyvern had laid out for him.
Instead of chasing after New Order and falling into a trap like a fool, he would rather just directly rescue the hostages himself if he could. Reading the data Orbital 7 provided it seemed that they were being held at a mixed sport stadium just a few miles north of the Heartland City museum.
"Orbital, did Kite leave me authority to deploy your Time Freeze field in his instructions?"
"YES MISTER DRAKE, ALL FUNCTIONS ARE AVALIBLE TO YOU AS THE HOLDER OF THIS COMMUNICATOR, UNLESS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN BY MASTER KITE."
"Then start making preparations to deploy the field at those co-ordinates at my signal and keep a look out for any movement from New Order. If they move the hostages I need to know immediately."
"ROGER THAT."
Calculating the distance and the time Drake thought that he could make it there in about 20-30min, provided he could catch the next bus at the next street over in time. They were close enough to Yuma's house that Drake knew the bus routes and timetable around here fairly well.
"Yuma you should take Tori and go home, just leave this to me."
"No way, they are my friends, I can't just sit back and do nothing!" he replied with steel in his voice.
"Fine, but you have to keep up." Drake knew he wouldn't convince Yuma to stay out of this. He shouldn't even have bothered asking.
*Splash, splash.*
Drake started to rush off down the street, he was cutting it close to see if he would be able to catch the next bus going in that direction or not. Yuma and Tori followed close behind uncaring of the falling rain.
---
Fortune favoured them and they managed to catch the bus in time and it wasn't long till they had reached the outer gate of the sport stadium. Given the time of year and the Duel Carnival the stadium was pretty much empty and disused at the moment, which had made it perfect for New Order's use.
The clouds were much thinner here and the rain was only a light drizzle but that only made the place look even more gloomy than it already did.
Before trying to get in Drake wanted to contact Orbit 7 again, even if the Time Field wasn't ready yet he wanted help with the security systems. Perhaps it could even identify their friends current location inside as well. But…
"*Beep*The Service you are requesting is no longer available, please contact your Network Support centre for further instruction *Beep*…"
Drake cursed how efficient Dr Faker was, only he would have been able to shut down Drakes access to Orbit 7 so quickly. Drake even tried to contact Kite directly but without any luck. Left with no backup and no support, Drake had no choice but to handle things himself. Hopefully they hadn't been moved since he had lost contact with Orbital 7.
He thought back to the video link Wyvern had showed them, trying to remember every detail that had been present, any clue. The cage had been hanging from a high ceiling, ruling out the offices and the main buildings of the stadium that, according to the specs Orbit had previously sent him on the way over, didn't have rooms that large.
That left about a dozen attached and free standing storage warehouses, utility buildings and motor sheds that New Order might be using. He remembered having seen small glimmers of sun light coming in through a small window at the back on the video, and at that time of day that meant that the building had a Westerly facing window of some sort and couldn't be on the East side of the stadium as that would have blocked the light itself. That eliminated another five possibilities.
The cage couldn't have been part of the normal set up for the stadium and was quite large, so Drake could eliminate another three buildings without a large enough access for New Order to transport their own cage in.
That left a group of four detached buildings grouped close together which were the most likely locations for where New Order was holding their friends. Being careful to avoid the security cameras Drake, Yuma, Tori and Astral snuck in and made their way over to the suspect buildings. The rain made it easier but the shower was already beginning to die down.
"Are you sure we shouldn't call the police?" Tori whispered as they passed by some cages of Baseball equipment that had been carelessly left out.
"Yes, I am sure" Drake replied as he stopped to pick out a baseball bat from one of the cages.
Since Faker must already know what was going on, and as he was the true controller of this city and therefore the Security Forces, if he wanted the police involved then they already would be. And if he didn't then nothing short of a disaster or miracle would change things. It would only risk alerting New Order.
Drake liked the heft of the wooden bat he picked up, it wasn't like he could just use the Sword of Wisdom to cut down these people, they were still humans after all. So he would have to settle for bashing them with a bat instead. He also picked up a couple of balls as well, just in case.
As they reached their target it became obvious that this was the right place, they also could tell in which of the four their friends were most likely being held in. Because there was only one building with a pair of armed guard.
"Stay here and hide." Drake ordered Yuma and Tori.
This next part would be dangerous.
Carefully he sneaked his way as close as possible to the guards without being seen, but in the end there was still a dozen meters of open space him and between them, too much even for Drakes enhanced body to make without a distraction. Drake decided to employ one of the oldest tricks in the book, tossing on of the baseballs he picked up to make a noise and distract the two of them for a moment so he could rush them.
It half worked. One of the guards turned, but the second didn't. But before he could raise his gun as he saw Drake rushing him, the second ball hit him square in the face. Then Drake was next to them and it was just a question of swinging until they were both down and out. Legs, side, gut, backs, heads, K.O. They never got a shot off.
With the guards down Drake call the others over and entered the building. It was an empty storage warehouse, at least if you discounted the steel cage hanging from the ceiling with four kids in it. They were awake but blindfolded and gaged. Drake had a bad feeling about this. This was far too easy.
Why? Why send only one man to ambush him? Why keep hostages in a place like this? Why where there only two guards outside and nobody inside? Why was it so easy? Drake didn't like the answers he could think up. He had wanted to avoid whatever trap was set by directly rescuing the hostages. But it made far more sense for the hostages to be the bait than that business about going to the docks.
So if those guys were the cheese, what part of this was the trap?
Yuma wanted to rush forwards immediately but Drake held him back, one minute, two, five. Even using the power of his Dragons Eye Drake couldn't find anything. He had no choice but to act. Transforming his duel disk into its true form Drake didn't bother finding the crank to lower the cage, with a single leap he jumped up to the cage and slashed!
The Sword of Wisdom was an enchanted blade, even without channelling any other energy it was capable of cutting through the steel bars of the cage like a hot knife through butter. Having opened one of the sides of the cage Drake climbed in and began to untie everyone. They had to hurry, if Drake couldn't find the trap then his best hope was speed. One everyone was free, they made their way to the exit.
"Guys are you alright?" Yuma asked in concern.
"We were so worried." Tori added.
"I don't know, what in the world was this all about anyway?" Caswell asked in confusion.
Bronk wasn't saying much, he seemed groggy and unstable on his feet, perhaps he had been ruffed up, or perhaps he was still suffering whatever had bug he had caught the other day. Cathy was just angry, promising to get her claws into whoever was responsible for treating a lady like her this way. And Flip had fainted in relief of his rescue and had to be carried by Drake on his back.
They opened the doors and were left speechless at the sight before them…
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone