Episode Derrick: Chapter 3: Hidden Movements

Chapter 3 of Derrick's Adventure

            As the tribe returned back to the main camp, Raven took the prisoner and threw him against the outer wall of the camp and held him by the throat.

            “Where did they go?” she yelled at the top of her lungs.  “How did you guys know we were coming?”

            “You are as stealthy as an earthquake!” the prisoner said in a mocking voice, not at all intimidated by Raven’s threats.  “We knew you were coming as soon as your scouts arrived!”

            “Liar!  They never have been spotted before; you must have a spy here in this camp.  Who is it?”

            “Too stubborn to accept your own failures, are you?” the prisoner said laughing a bit.  Raven growled and pulled out her sword.

            “Raven!” Qrow yelled stopping his sister before she did anything.  “We need him alive!”

            “I’m not going to kill him!  Pain seems to be a great motivator in terms of getting people to open up about secrets.”

            “Do you really think Ozpin would be okay with that?”

            “Ozpin wants me to be his suicide squad right?  For me to be the person who can do the crazy outlandish things he can’t?”

            “Raven!” Qrow yelled pulling Raven away from the prisoner.  Raven dropped her sword and turned around to start yelling at Qrow.  The two of them exchanged words at the top of their lungs, while Derrick walked over to the prisoner who was now just sitting up against the wall with a smile on his face.  Derrick looked at the prisoner, then decided to flick him in the forehead with his finger as hard as he could. 

            “What was that supposed to do?” the prisoner said kind of surprised at what just happened.  “Annoy me into talking?”

            “Just proving a theory” Derrick said as he took one of the prongs of his trident off his weapon.  “That little flick stung, didn’t it?”

            “I barely felt anything.”

            “But you felt SOMETHING.  And you seem to have a small red spot where I flicked you.”

            “And that proves…..?”

            “That you never learned how to use your Aura.”  As soon as he said that, Derrick plunged his free prong into the prisoner’s right knee.  The prisoner screamed in pain, causing Qrow and Raven to turn their attention back to him and find themselves shocked at what they were seeing.

            “What are you doing?” Qrow said grabbing Derrick’s shoulder.  “You’re an employee at Haven Academy!  You can’t be doing this!”

            “My headmaster is missing and I’m technically not even on the full-time list.” Derrick said pushing Qrow off to the side.  “We need answers, you’re too busy being good cop to your sister’s bad cop, I’m not affiliated with anybody legally, so it works out.  Besides, I think he’s more willing to talk now.  Right?”

            “I’ll…..never…..”

            “Somebody doesn’t value walking it seems” Derrick said as he plunged the prong into the other leg.  The prisoner screamed at the top of their lungs, Qrow reeled back in horror, Raven grinned in approval.  The prisoner squirmed, grabbing his legs in pain.

            “Careful,” Derrick said mockingly, “you keep drawing attention to them, and your hands will be next.”

            “WE WERE WAITING FOR YOU!” the prisoner yelled at the top of his lungs trying to fight through the pain shooting through his legs.  “WE MADE IT OBVIOUS SO THAT YOU WOULD ATTACK THE FACTORY SO WE COULD AMBUSH YOU!”

            “There, was that so hard?  Where are the rest of your friends?”  Before the prisoner could respond however, he passed out.  Derrick rolled his eyes in annoyance, cleaned the prong, returned it to the rest of his weapon, then entered the camp.  Qrow and Raven still stood there, not sure how to respond.

            “I think I’m starting to like him more” Raven said with a smirk.  Qrow finally snapped himself out of just standing there and wrapped the prisoner’s injuries in cloth and tried pouring a small amount of aura to see if it would take to at least help heal the wounds.  As soon as the wounds were tended to, Qrow had the prisoner tied up to a post inside the village.  A few guards stood by the prisoner while Qrow ran over to outside the main tent and grabbed Derrick by the shoulder.

            “What were you thinking?  You might lose your job at Haven!”

            “You and your sister weren’t going to do anything, I’m just along for the ride, I’m not affiliated with either you or your sister.  Nobody knows I’m here; I can do these kinds of things without repercussions.  Unless you plan on ratting me out?”  Qrow looked like he wanted to rebuke him further, but he was stuck.  He simply went into the main tent to cool off.  Raven walked up with a smile on her face and said,

            “Smart thinking kid.  Qrow always played things too close to lawful since we went to…..”

            “Oh don’t think you’re getting off scot free either!” Derrick said pointing a finger at Raven.  “You run head-first into a situation without ensuring it isn’t a trap?  You can turn into a bird!  I don’t think many people know that fact!  You could have just flown around the factory, maybe even inside it and realized they were waiting for us!”

            “If we waited, they would have left!”

            “If we waited, they would have stayed there!  Or did the part where our prisoner screamed that they were literally waiting for us escape your ears to keep your ego inflated?”  Raven’s mood changed from smug to enraged at the drop of the hat.  She drew her sword and pointed it at Derrick’s throat.

            “Be careful what you say around me.”

            “How much confidence do you command amongst your troops when you threaten an outsider for pointing out your own flaws for you?”

            “My tribe’s purpose now is to take action.  Not sit around on the sidelines like an unused blade that slowly rusts until it is forgotten.”

            “But if you use the blade too often the wrong way expecting different results, it will break much faster.  Trust me, I know how it feels to be nothing more than something kept off to the side.  Even more so now given the recent revelations about my employer.  But I don’t let that stop me.  I refuse to let it stop me.  It’s obvious to me now that Lionheart kept me locked away in Mistral so he could keep selling my weapons on the side.  Lying about my applications to Atlas.  And yes, I kept trying despite that hurdle, but I didn’t try to do the same thing over and over again.  I try to improve myself each time.  Learn from my failures.  What’s your excuse?”  Raven brought the blade closer to Derrick’s neck, but then lowered it and put it away.

            “I liked you better when you were just quiet and ran with what was going on.”

            “Noted.”  The two of them then entered the tent to join Qrow privately.

            “So what now?” Qrow said looking over the map of Remnant.  “All we know is that they were expecting us and they set a trap for us.  We don’t know where they went after the fact.”

            “I do have an idea about that.” Derrick said with a smile.  “What kind of tech do you have lying around here?”

 

 

            The prisoner slowly started to wake up, the pain in his legs still shooting through despite being bandaged up.  He struggled for a bit before realizing he was bound to a pole.  He tried to break lose, but then he felt a tap on his shoulder.  He couldn’t turn around to see who it was, but he felt relieved once he recognized the pattern of the tap.

            “I knew they wouldn’t leave me here to rot” the prisoner said with a smirk.

            “Only so long as you didn’t reveal everything to them like a squealer” the strange voice said in a whisper.”

            “I only told them that we were expecting them.  That we had set up a trap and they walked right into it.”

            “How do I know that’s all you told them?”

            “Wait, be quiet.” the prisoner said as he saw Qrow, Raven and Derrick walk out of the main tent.  The three of them seemed to be talking about something, but they moved on.

            “They are going to be the least of your worries if you don’t give me an answer” the voice said.

            “I didn’t tell them about the base in the eastern lands if that’s what you’re asking.”

            “The eastern lands?” the voice said in a shifting tone.  The prisoner then felt a hand on his shoulder.  Looking down at it, he saw that it was not a person’s hand, but a hand made up of grass and roots.  He looked up in shock to see a humanoid figure made up of even more grass and twigs.  And sitting in its chest was a small speaker.  The speaker started laughing, and then the prisoner heard the same laugh coming from towards the center of camp, where Derrick was laughing into a microphone.

            “Land alive, your boss needs to hire better grunt workers.”  With that said, the puppet punched the prisoner, knocking him out.

 

 

            As Derrick laughed at the stupidity of the prisoner, Raven pulled out a small regional map of the continent.

            “A ‘base in the eastern lands’.  Great, that narrows it down super well…….”

            “Actually, I think it really does” Derrick said with a smile.

            “How so?” Raven said looking over the map.  “There were never any settlements in the area.  It’s arguably a wasteland.”

            “Even wastelands can have diamonds in the rough.  The Schnee Dust Company built a factory out in that dump trying to find something in the wastelands.  They found a few deposits, but then everything just dried up so they became abandoned.  I bet you that’s where they’re hiding out at.”

            “Even so, that’s extremely far away.  My tribe would have to march more than a week to get there.”

            “You can fly and open portals.  I bet if you get going now, you’ll have a portal opened to back here for everybody to come through in a matter of hours.”  Raven tried to counter his point, but she just growled and pulled her hair in anger walking off towards an opening in the center of camp.

            “I swear, dealing with my daughter and granddaughter was less painful than this” she grumbled as she transformed into a bird and flew off into the distance.  Qrow scratched his head and looked over at Derrick.

            “I can’t honestly get a read on you kid.”

            “Good” Derrick said with a smile.  “Chaos hardly ever works when I’m predicable.”

Author's Note

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