Drip.

Cory opened his eyes, though couldn't see anything. Were his eyes even open?

Drip.

The drip caused the boy to jump, looking around for the source only to remember that he couldn't see anything. A flash of light showed him that he wasn't blind, which caused him to sigh in relief. That would be a fate worse than death.

Drip.

Curious, Cory crawled along the floor. It was a hard, concrete floor. Very cold to the touch. Like the basement of a factory long forgotten. As he neared the dripping water, he noticed it came from a pipe and fell into a grate. Another flash of light showed him the pipe was red, though he couldn't see anything through the grate. Cory groped around for the corners of it, and eventually found them. It was then that he noticed his hand was missing its implant. In fact, he was missing all his gear. His hat, his sword, his strength glove, and most importantly, his skull necklace.

Cory tried to pry open the grate, but then noticed even if he got it open, he wouldn't fit in there. What a stupid idea. The light flashed again, this time, Cory looked for where it came from. He seemed to be in a long corridor without doors or windows, with the exception of one at the far end. The lights seemed to shine from there. Cory walked along the hallway, suddenly remembering the events of yesterday.

Cory was taken away by the guards, powerless in the power of Stickler. Cory was then taken into the cell, where they knocked him out and shut him in. Was he really this weak without his katana of light?

Cory walked up to the window and looked through, seeing the light had come from a spotlight that occasionally shone through. He couldn't see how high he was in the building, but he knew he was at least at the hundredth floor. Beneath him, lit up with lights, was the city of CIAnada. It was a smaller looking town, though their technology seemed to far exceed that of the United States. Drones flew everywhere, keeping watch for intruders. That must be how they discovered their location.

The door to his cell opened with a thud, flooding the small space with light. Two guards stepped in with Rolling, the man who was with Stickler the other day. His long hair flowed in the wind.

"Heh, feeling down yet?" Rolling said, putting his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat.

"Yeah, right. I'm going to take you all out soon enough."

"Yeah, yeah. Sure. Let's go have a chat with the boss first," Rolling said as the guards grabbed hold of Cory.

"Where did you take my gear?" Cory demanded.

"Ha, as if we would let you keep that, fatto."

Cory looked down as he was escorted into an elevator. It was then that it occurred to him that the other crusaders had been captured too. Were they also being held captive? Hopefully they were aight.

The elevator traveled up to the top floor, where it opened to a large room with an enormous window at the end. In front of them was a walkway up to the window, with fountains on each side and a desk in front of the window. At the window stood stickler, looking out into the heavens, illuminated by moonlight.

"Glad you could join us, Cory. Now sit down." Stickler pointed to one of the seats.

"What do you want, Stickler?" Cory asked, angry.

"Oh, it's simple. You came to us instead of the other way around. We were going to send agents after you, but I guess you saved us the effort. Let's get right down to business. You met Payne before, what are his powers?"

"Oh, you captured me because I met Payne?"

"OK, you can't just answer a question with another question, much less one with such an obvious answer. Idiot. Answer the stupid question."

"Well, if I remember right... he was just some lazy drunk, I don't know how he got so powerful."

"That can't be, who was he?" Stickler demanded.

"He was James Madison's wife's son."

"James Madison was a cuck? Rolling, pull up his wikipedia page."

"Well, his dad died and his mom remarried to James." Cory said.

"What, you're on a first name basis with Madison now?" Stickler said.

"I pulled his page up, it looks like his name is John Payne Todd, and Cory is right, it says he was a drunk." Rolling stated, reading off a tablet.

"That's quite impossible, what's the source on that?" Stickler shouted.

"No source, must be a bad article."

"Shut up, Rolling, let me see that." Stickler ripped the tablet from the man's hands and read over the page, "what? It's saying he died in 1852? We must be talking about a different Payne."

"Wait!" Cory exclaimed.

"What? You know what he's doing?" Stickler looked up.

"I just remembered, he wasn't actually drunk. He just acted like he was so people thought less of him!"

"You're useless, Cory. How am I supposed to kill him without knowing what I'm up against?"

"Well, he doesn't know what he's up against either, so I would say you're even."

"Cory, you moron. Do you want to know what my spies told me, at least the ones who survived him?"

"Yes, please tell me. I need to kill him too."

"Ugh. Well, I sent spies out to… well… spy on him. Three of them went, only one returned from that trip, and that one knows he was only alive to relay the message. So they were just sitting around on their boat nearby, when the madman walked up to the craft, standing on top of the water. He asked what they were doing, and they claimed to only be fishers, but it seemed he saw through that lie as they were in suits and each carried IDs. Kind of a dumb decision in hindsight, but oh well. Anyway, Payne touched the boat and it instantly turned into liquid, pouring out into the sea. The weird part, though, is that the heat didn't change in the slightest. Then, the entire boat just vanished into thin air. It was as if it never existed. Payne walked up to them after this and just touched one of them, and he became stiff and just sunk underwater."

"What do you mean he went stiff?"

"I think they meant he became a statue."

"Is Payne Medusa?"

"You know what? I'm sick of you and you're useless to me. Instead of sending you off to the cell again, I think we'll just ship you off to the skybase."

"What the heck is the skybase?"

"It's a research lab. We're going to experiment on you," Stickler said in an evil tone.

The guards grabbed Cory and took him to the roof of the building up a flight of stairs. Cory screamed as they loaded him into a tight shuttle, which began to fly up into the sky. Cory could make out the curvature of the earth, debunking flat Earth. Everything became a blur as he watched the clouds separate around him. In front of the moon was a large base floating in orbit. Cory screamed again as he approached and it became larger and larger. A door opened and the shuttle flew in, landing in a mechanical room.

Cory was thrust out of the pod, which was then taken away by a conveyor belt. He was alone again, though this time, he was miles away from his friends, with no hope of meeting them again. Cory had lost hope.