The first thing Adam was aware of was a spike of pain lacing through his whole body. It felt like every one of his limbs seized up at once, and it took all he had not to cry out through his clenched teeth. The feeling faded quickly – though not quickly enough – and left behind an odd sort of tingling. Compared to the rest of his aches, the sensation was almost welcome, and in the darkness behind his eyelids, he had half a mind to fade back into that blanket of blackness that had so soothingly embraced him moments before.
Sadly, he wasn't given that option. "Wake up, puny little Ranger," sneered a voice. It seemed so far off, but he still knew it. Main Drain. "The great Prince Gasket wants to talk to you."
Adam had never really liked machines, not even before all of this mess. But at least his toaster was never pretentious.
He let out a chuckle, and somehow managed to force himself into a seated position. Even though he knew he was up the creek, he still had his pride, and if they wanted to be snobs, then he could at least hold his own aching head up high. "I'm sure he does," he muttered, not a little mockingly. "Surrounded by you guys all day, he's probably looking for a little intelligent conversation."
The hard smack that landed on the side of his head made the smile leave his face, but only for a moment. He forced it back to all its gloriously mocking, annoying splendor, even though the way it crinkled his eyes made the side of his face sting. Un-morphed and so tired and beat up he could hardly stand, there wasn't much else he could do.
"Smile while you can, Black Ranger," said a voice, and slowly, a new body came into view in the limited light. It was all very cliché, he thought a little dazedly. The room was small and dark, and the floor he was sitting on was littered with rusted nails and glass shards. Overhead, there was only one swinging light bulb to illuminate the room, and it barely did its job. Not that he was particularly interested in seeing the scene in front of him right at this moment.
There stood Prince Gasket and his less-than-lovely Archerina, looking down at him with their arms crossed over their metallic chests. He had half a mind to stand up, if only to spite them, but the chains around his wrists and ankles prevented him from moving much past where he was. The way the glass beneath him was biting into his bare legs – jogging shorts and a t-shirt weren't exactly the best protection against his dilapidated surroundings – kept him from moving much too, even though the splintered wood wall he leaned against scraped his back painfully.
"I plan to," Adam retorted. He gave the chains around his wrist a defiant jerk, and pretended not to feel the bite of the rusted metal on his skin. "You, on the other hand, might not be quite so chipper when my friends come knocking." The words sounded a lot more confident than he felt; last thing he remembered, he'd sent Kat off with a stunned Tanya, and Rocky, Tommy, and Jason had been up to their ears in other monsters. Besides, judging from his surroundings, he wasn't exactly in an easy-to-find location. He guessed it was at least safe to say he wasn't on the moon, though. That was something, wasn't it?
Either way, Gasket didn't have to know about his doubts. So far as that stuck-up Easy Bake Oven knock-off had to know, he was cool as a cucumber.
A beat up, bruised, and frankly sort of pissed off cucumber.
Prince Gasket, of course, let out one of his pretentious little laughs. It seemed like that was part of the standard programming for these machines, and Adam resisted the urge to roll his eyes. His eye, the right one, hurt too much anyway, thanks to Main Drain's backhand. He could feel something warm and wet slowly working its way down the side of his face, and he got the feeling there would be more than a bruise above his eye once he finally got the chance to look at it.
"Poor little Ranger," Archerina giggled. "He thinks his friends are coming for him. Well, my lovely, trapped black rat, I have a secret for you." She walked up to him, leaning over so that her face was only a foot or two from Adam's. "They aren't. They don't know where you are, and they don't care. You silly thing; you don't matter. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Though her lips, cast in metal, couldn't move, he could've sworn she was smiling. So, he smiled a smile of his own, so cheeky and saccharine that he could almost feel his blood sugar rising. And just when he saw the question pass behind her LED-lit eyes, he struck. The chains didn't give him much leeway, but they gave him enough, and in one quick motion, he hooked the fingers of one hand in the necklace around her neck and pulled her closer. With his free hand, he struck out with his palm to the left side of her face. Instantly, pain lanced up his arm – metal was not a very forgiving texture – but he still counted himself the victor as she reeled back with a cry. Her articulated fingers clutched at the side of his face, but they left just enough of a gap for him to see his handiwork. It seemed with the admittedly cheap shot, he'd broken off the tip of her hair, and smashed through one of her eyes.
"How dare you!" shouted Prince Gasket. Adam already knew he was in for it, but he told himself it was worth it. He wasn't beaten down, and he wasn't broken. He was going to put up a fight, and he knew he was going to take the punishment for it.
That didn't help when that punishment came, though. The prince strode forward and raised his foot off the ground, and before Adam could do anything to stop it, he brought the heel of his boot straight down on Adam's already-throbbing left knee.
The sharpest pain Adam had ever felt shot up his leg, and as a flash of white exploded behind Adam's eyes, he slid to the ground in a boneless heap.
Satisfied with his revenge, Prince Gasket turned and strode out of the room after his beloved Archerina. Main Drain was close behind, and slammed the door behind him as he left.
A few moments later, Adam opened his eyes. They were gone; his trick had worked. Well, maybe not a trick entirely. The rolling of his stomach and the tunneling of his vision had him thinking he'd pass out soon, but he couldn't afford to. This was his chance to escape, and he was going to take it.
Bringing his hands together in his lap, he started to work on getting out of the manacles. They were tight, but not tight enough. Rocky had always teased him for having such narrow hands; well, now they were a blessing. As the metal continued to bite into his wrist, he twisted it, contorting his fingers until finally, his hand slipped out. The next hand received the same treatment, and with raw, bleeding wrists, he started to crawl forward. He couldn't even put weight on his left knee without stars exploding behind his eyes, but after a few moments of reaching, he managed to get his hands on one of the nails lying on the floor a little ahead of him.
Making a mental note to thank Aisha for teaching him her mad lock-picking skills the next time he wrote her, he started working on the locks around his ankles. He wished he could've had the nail for when he was getting his hands free, but he couldn't have reached it then. Now, the last two shackles came off a lot easier.
Struggling to his feet – he couldn't straighten his left leg, so he ended up using the wall to help himself up - he started to look around the room. They'd turned the lights off when they left, but he noticed that it wasn't quite as dark as he thought it would be.
All he had to do was turn around to figure out why that was. There was light pouring in through a small crack in the wall. On closer inspection, he found that it was coming through between two planks in the wall. It looked like…a boarded-up window?
Surely his luck wasn't that good.
Pressing his face up against the planks, he peered through the slit and found that miraculously, his luck was, in fact, that good. There was water outside, and he figured that he was somewhere near the warehouse district. If he could just get outside, he could find some place to hide until Rocky and the others could get there.
First things first, though: he had to get out of there somehow.