Taking over the Abyss

9- Drake, where's the door hole?

When you woke up, you found that you had been placed inside of a relatively small metal cage meant for transporting animals, covered by a dark blue cloth. Although a majority of the pain had been dealt with thanks to your Pain Resistance, your sides still ached from being handled so roughly. Hearing voices of men you didn't recognize, you stepped back until the cold metal of the cage wall pressed into your back.

"Does it really matter?" A gruff, nasal voice demanded, "It's getting picked up tonight, I don't think the condition it's in matters that much."

"Well, it matters if it docks our pay," An equally annoyed sounded man snapped. You had the sneaking suspicion that they were referring to you and tried to stay as still as possible in order to avoid being noticed.

The first man sighed aggressively, "If it bugs you that much, then fine, you go wake it up. But when it starts trying to attack you, I'm not risking my safety for yours."

A pair of footsteps approached your cage, followed by the cloth covering it being flipped up. Bending down, the man was revealed as a plain brunet man with an equally plain beige covering the lower half of his face. Treasure Hoarders, huh? Behind him, you could make out a crystal-blue lake and a few bamboo trees. Wasn't this place near Qingce...?

Kicking the cage to make you jump, the man crouched down and asked in a condescending tone, "You alive in there?"

Not wanting to respond, you stuck your hand in your sleeve to pull out your staff, only to find that it wasn't there. Looking around for where you might've dropped it, you were stopped by the jerk in front of you snapping his fingers at you until you looked at him. Wiggling his fingers, the man reached behind and pulled out your beloved staff, waving it in front of your face teasingly.

"This what you're looking for?" The man gave it another little wave, trying to entice you into trying to take it back. When it was clear you weren't going to move, he continued trying to taunt you, "Client never specified it to come with you. Hey, how much do you think it's worth?"

"I said I wouldn't intervene, but I can't miss seeing you make a fool of yourself," The nasal-tone guy stepped up behind his colleague, much taller and tougher looking, save for the suspiciously-fist shaped bruise over one of his eyes and a busted nose. No surprise why he seemed like a grump. "Do you think it can even understand you, much less the concept of currency?"

"Well apparently it can talk," The smaller man retorted, glaring up at his accomplice before turning back to you, "Hey, can you understand me, or are you just ignoring me?"

Nasal-guy slapped his shorter companion on the back of the head, "Stop taunting the damn thing!"

"Alright, alright, fine," With a sigh, the more annoying of the two cracked his knuckles before immediately going back to trying to elicit a negative reaction from you, "Y'know, we're getting paid quite a lot for your capture. Don't know what sort of idiot in the Fatui thinks you'd make a good pet, but that's not my problem."

Fatui? A pet?

With a shit-eating grin, the shorter of the two man roughly patted your cage before standing up and flipping the cloth back over the cage again, "Keep quiet and be good, yeah?"

The two men walked away, arguing about saying the name of the organization that commissioned them to kidnap you. Sitting down with your legs crossed, you leaned against the metal crate. What did the Fatui want with you? All you wanted was to exist peacefully. Why did everything always have to go so wrong? Most frustrating was how everything had previously been going so well.

You sighed and cursed yourself for ever letting your guard down and thinking it would get easier. You weren't human- you were just an oddity. At least the Treasure Hoarders were upfront with admitting that to your face. There was no doubt in your mind that the Knights thought the same way about you, and Albedo and Sucrose too. Aether probably just wanted to use you to find his sister.