"Great another stray!" Karson said coming out of the basement holding the burnt remains of his armour. I'm sure with the amount of polishing he consistently gave it he could have it looking decent enough again.
He was obviously referring to Vicki who was now sat on the floor staring at her feet in sadness after realizing that she had actually killed a couple of people in the fire she created.
"Hey man, you can see she's hurting!" Skinny said, he was sat beside Vicki trying his best to console her.
Karson finally took a breath and sighed, "Right. I'm sorry." The anger and frustration had gone from his face and was replaced with a sad tired expression.
"Karson I know this won't help but I managed to get the rights from Sarah." I said handing the file to him. "I didn't even mess things up too badly this time. I promise." I quickly added trying to lighten the mood.
My attempt at getting Karson to smile did not work. Instead he returned my attempt at humour with a scowl after seeing the file.
"You and me need to hash some things out alone…" Karson said.
After that, I was made to follow behind him in silence whilst we walked for 10 minutes finally getting outside of an old looking warehouse.
Karson simply went to the side door and opened it gesturing for me to go first.
I could tell it was a dungeon by just looking at the grey barrier through the window. Other than that though the place looked completely empty.
"What is this?" I turned and asked Karson.
"This is ours." He said throwing the file on the ground.
"Well what kind of dungeon is this?"
"It's an empty dungeon. You've never seen one before have you?" Karson said gesturing to all the nothing that surrounded us.
"How can a dungeon be empty?"
"It's been cleared by the Templar Guild at some point recently and according to the file, it refills once a year." Karson said. I could feel his temper building.
"Surely we can find a purpose for it." I spluttered out trying to come up with some silver lining.
"There is! Empty dungeons make for great training and sparring areas." Karson said drawing Excalibur from it's sheath.
He charged towards me and I went to grab the Arrow of Mistletoe from my inventory but instead I deflected his sword with Dionysus' wine bottle. Karson was furious, I guess he thought I was trying to make fun of him.
"All you've done since I found you a month ago is ruin our lives!" he went to hit me again but I raised the bottle above my head and blocked it. "First you take our only real source of income!" He tried to go for my leg but I was able to dodge out of the way at the last second.
"Next you decide to take in another mouth to feed without consulting the guild leader first!" He tried to thrust the sword's edge to my heart which I had to swerve to miss but it still caught my shoulder.
"Next you train all of us until our bones break and our bodies shatter!" This time he aimed to get the one part of me I still struggled with my broken right hand. Cleanly ensuring the blade went right through it and pressing his body against mine so I couldn't escape.
"Finally you make an enemy out of my old guild and get our place burned down… Is there anything I missed?" Karson was barreling down on me with his intimidating stare.
I wanted to cry out excuses for all of the things he listed but I knew that these OTO quests may become more invasive or harmful to the guild. So instead I popped off the stopper from the wine bottle and took a swig using my left hand.
"Yeah our new guild member is the one that burned the place down. I had to tear up Sarah's slave contract that she had for her." I decided to just get everything out in the open. Karson was my guild leader and he would have found everything out eventually.
I waited for Karson to cleave my neck and send my head flying off of my body, but instead he began to laugh. Finally a smile shone across his face and he laughed with his entire body like every bit of negativity was leaving him.
"Haha I should have known you would pull something so insane!" Karson said finally putting away Excalibur.
It was hard to tell how much time went by but me and Karson had sat ourselves down in a corner of the warehouse and we were sharing Dionysus' wine.
"Hey sorry about earlier by the way." Karson said pointing to my hand.
"Ah don't worry about that! Haha It was broken anyway!"
"Those were some decent moves though! How many loops did it take you?"
"Just one." He would never know it had taken me 212 loops, from me grabbing the bottle instead of a weapon to him slicing me up in countless ways, until I was finally able to get through it.
"Haha that's clearly a lie! What do you think we should do about the guild now, head trainer?" Karson gave me a real title, which I appreciated.
"We need a place to live and fast. We had to have been in here for half an hour already so with the dungeon-real world time scale we've probably been gone-."
"Over a day, I know. But where are we even going to live?"
"Well why not here?" I asked looking around the giant empty warehouse.
"No bad idea. Guilds need a real business location they reside at and the Association doesn't count dungeons as real locations… But that gives me a great idea!"
"Oh yeah Guild leader! What's this idea?"
"I have to make some calls and then we may need to use all of Skinny's connections but I won't tell you just yet, you know in case it doesn't pan out?"
"Whatever you say boss." I said taking a swig of wine.
Karson and I continued to talk on the way to the hotel where they had been staying, I felt that even though we had lashed out and fell apart for a little while that we were now much closer than we ever had been before.
I don't know if I would be able to shake off the amount of pain that he had inflicted on me through our 'sparring session' for a while though.
When we got to the room that they had decided to stay at, it was a reasonably sized room with a double bed and a smaller bed with a bathroom attached, we opened the door to complete chaos.
Vicki was desperately trying to get away from Clarisse whilst Skinny and Steven were in an intense argument over who would get to use the bathtub in the hotel room first.
It seemed Clarisse had taken to considering Vicki as a little sister and best friend, I guessed it had something to do with the guild being a bunch of guys until now. So Clarisse had taken to braiding Vicki's short orange hair but Vicki hated it and just wanted to get as far away from her as possible.
"Hi guys, we're back!" Karson called out breaking up the room into stunned silence.
"I'm back as well!" I said calling out from behind Karson and the complete silence continued.
After the short pause we were then surrounded by all four of them each trying to say something to us but most of it fell onto deaf ears.
I did however pick up on the fact that Vicki was sad that I had dropped her off with a bunch of strangers and left for over a day. So I brought her outside the room into the corridor with me.
"So what do you think of your new guild?"
"Well I can't get rid of Clarisse, Steven seems completely fascinated by my ears in a creepy way and Skinny keeps wailing on my back, making it really sore, whenever he's happy."
"Yep that sounds like them! Sorry about just ditching you by the way, your new guild leader and I had a heart to heart in a dungeon."
"Everyone kept saying that I should talk to you if I wanted to learn about being in this guild. But because you weren't here and neither was the actual guild leader I had to come to terms with what I'd done by getting along with everyone else."
Wow I didn't realise that Clarisse, Skinny and Steven saw me that way, I really have come into my newly-established role as 'Head Trainer'.
"Don't worry I don't think I'll be disappearing again for a while so feel free to talk to me about anything you need. But first I could use some sleep and I'm sure Karson feels the same so I'll check us into another room."
Vicki grabbed tightly onto my arm with a smug face and said, "You know, I still haven't signed a contract to be in this guild. But you could persuade me by letting me stay with you two…"
"Sorry Vicki but like it or not you've joined our guild of outcasts and it would be better for you to spend more quality time getting to know each of them." I said wrenching her clawed hands off my arm.
"Meanie!" She said sticking her tongue out and going back into the room.
I managed to grab Karson away from the others and I used some of the credits from the Minotaur nose-ring that I had been saving to check us into a room with two double beds.
Unfortunately, because it was so short notice and it was one of their nicest rooms that I was paying for in advance it ended up costing me 500 credits. I had to remember to get Karson to pay me back as soon as possible.
We both entered the room and completely collapsed onto our beds falling asleep instantly.
I woke up in the morning to the sunlight streaming in through the window the second Karson whisked open the curtains.
"Rise and shine you two! You've slept long enough, now's the time for work!" I was enjoying my sleep so much that I'd been unable to comprehend what he'd said immediately.
I was busy thinking about how this was the first time I had actually slept in a bed since the coma when my brain managed to piece together what Karson had said. '… You two'…
My eyes shot open and my vision was clouded by the colour orange. "What are you doing?!" I shouted to Vicki.
This managed to wake her up quite quickly especially after I had shoved her with my arm a few times and she explained that she had found out our room number and said that she was my sister to get in here.
"Well why didn't you sleep in Karson's bed?!" I asked still completely confused about the situation. This was the point when Karson decided to not-so-stealthily leave the room.
"I haven't even spoken to Karson. It would be weird to sleep next to him."
Well she had me there so I quickly left the room as fast as possible trying to chase down Karson.
I didn't need to get dressed as I had passed out in my suit and currently the tie that would usually be tied round my neck was being used as a bandage on my broken sliced-open right hand.
After I had gotten over the surprise of Vicki sleeping in the bed next to me I'd realised that Karson had said that we had work to do.
So after meeting him and the rest of the guild for breakfast (seeing Vicki again seemed a little awkard) Karson took us on a bus ride to get to our 'work' for the day.
Turns out as usual Karson had woken up much earlier than the rest of us and had even managed to sort out the whole guild headquarters situation, sinking all of the guild's remaining money into it.
The 'work' he had referred to was us getting everything moved in and making the place seem more liveable, whatever that meant.
But once I saw our new guild headquarters I instantly understood everything that he meant.
The base for the Orion guild was now at the hospital that I had woken up in a month ago…