Troy and the Captain of Ringdom

Stepping Out Of Shadows

"...That was a nice one Max!" Ollie said while laughing so loudly. She'd just finished hearing one of Max's trademark 'Maxperience' tales. 'Maxperience' tales were Max's way of sharing his crazy experiences with his friends and family. The tale he told Ollie this time was the tale of a day he got beaten up at a cinema for spoiling the movie for all his fellow viewers.

According to Max, he kept yelling all the possible end results of a movie called "League of Titans". He was only playing a decent prank in actual fact. Maddison helped him with one of her drones as he tried making a comedy skit to grow his social media popularity. It all went wrong when a young man who was extremely muscular, walked in to sit beside him. The fit fellow got irritated by Max's constant yelling and the rest was history for Max.

He did get the popularity he wanted, but he became widely known on the local social media community for the wrong reasons.

"So...what did you learn from this Maxperience tale?" Max said before opening up his water bottle to take a quick sip. Talking for close to the quarter of an hour had really snuffed out every bit of liquid in his throat.

"Never play YouTube pranks at cinemas?" said Oliver.

"Sure I'll take that" Max said. The duo continued their lengthy chat till the lunch break had come to an end. Ollie would probably be thinking of changing her seat position sit right beside Max in the future.

Cherry and Troy had come in contact for the first time since their narrow escape in Yemen. Troy attempted to blow up her room and the rest of the facility if she wasn't set free, but Cherry was on hand to explain everything she needed to know.

As soon as Troy's eyes began to open, the supervising nurse fled for safety behind the expressly secure doors.

"Where am I? What's happening?" Troy yelled. Her pulse began to race quicker than normal yet again. Perhaps the feeling of hunger would soon wear her down. The nurse called for Cherry immediately, knowing she would be in a better position to explain things to her colleague.

Troy immediately switched her left arm to a chain g*n and her right to a BFG 9000, threatening to blow up the whole place if an explanation came any minute sooner.

"Troy! Troy!! Don't do it! Don't shoot!" Cherry said as she raced towards Catriona's containment unit, jamming one hand on the door and using the other arm to type in the unlock code she was being told by the nurse. The door slid open and Cherry walked in. Both of them had been wearing their black hoodies since the day they met up with the HKV.

The Ringdom recovery facility hired some female workers to give the heroes some good baths and dry clean their previously dirty clothes for immediate usage. Thus, the heroes were looking as clean as whistles on this bright sunny morning.

"Troy! It's okay" Cherry said to try and calm her pal's nerves. Troy felt a bit more comfortable on seeing her Captain.

"Cherry? Where are we? What the hell is going on?" Troy yelled before switching her arms back to normal.

"It's fine. We're at some recovery facility..." said the Captain.

"Oh really? So where is this recovery facility we're on anyway?" Troy asked.

"Uh...that's a very good question. It's on uhh..."

"Are you kidding me? You don't even know where we are? How am I even sure we're not on some other planet in the galaxy?"

"No we're not. I think we can trust these guys"

"Oh yeah! You mean the same way we trusted some dudes called HKV and nearly got zapped by some freak show's atomic cloud?" said Catriona who walked away in annoyance straight back to her bed.

Troy's ability to trust was understandably damaged. Seeing how the HKV; whom they thought were a well meaning black ops mercenary team, could throw in their trust so easily, then it could have been so difficult to believe that the Ringdom Vigilantes were fighting on their side.

"Captain Cherry! Troy Willows! Please report to the arena" a voice from inside the complex said. The heroes were due to report for a training session right after they had their first meals in over two days. The officials at Ringdom were careful not to stuff them excessively in order to ensure their fitness for the high intensity training sessions they'd be undergoing. Troy was cautious enough to watch every event that occurred closely so as not to let her guard down.

Cherry and Troy hadn't noticed, but they were at Ringdom's hovering recovery base. The recovery facility had everything a normal complex had, only that it floated right above ground level. The floating complex was bashed with an extra supply of oxygen due to the extremely low air pressure, high up in the skies. The heroes would be spending the next few days recuperating at this recovery base which was fully equipped with features and tools to aid them. The Ringdobase; as it was better known, appeared completely invisible to civilians viewing it from the earth's surface - a mind blowing work of architecture by Ringdom Incorporated. It meant that the edifice could move across multiple territories without even being spotted!

"So what would you like to have Troy?" Wommack; the nosh attendant currently on duty asked the teenage prodigy. Troy was already prepared to have her favorite meal of a pair of burgers, French fries and a nice chilled cocktail to slurp it off but the attendant was way ahead of her.

"Uhhh..." Troy said, already savouring the taste of an imaginary meal she hadn't even eaten yet.

"...and might I add, the following meals have been removed from your menu for precautionary measures" Wommack said handing a mini sized menu showing a list of no go foods, to Troy. Troy inspected the list and got extremely furious! She hadn't been this angry since earlier that morning!

"No burgers? No fries? No ketchup?! What is this? My aunt Jojo's house?" Troy reacted, causing a row in the belly-timber section.

"Hey I've been wondering...where does all this stuff you eat go to anyway?" Wommack boldly asked.

"You don't wanna know cafeteria guy...trust me" Troy said as she continued going through the menu she'd just been handed. She looked on it with much disdain.

"Well why?"

"Cause once I tell you, you can't unhear it" Troy outrightly said. Of a fact, no one really knew; that was definitely one thing Troy would have to explain for future references.

The heroes were handed a rather conservative and healthy breakfast of wholegrain pasta and Greek yoghurt with a couple of energy bars following up as the dessert. Neither of them liked the meal more than the other, but they just had to get themselves a mouthful before their warm up training routines commenced; maybe they'd be allowed to have a decent meal afterwards. During the period of their recovery, the league of lieutenants as well as a group of experts would closely be monitoring the green amethyst's energy signals. The RUV promised to only interfere when they had to.

Cherry and Troy headed to the arena to get the recovery routines underway. Every single staff that operated on the hovering complex had sworn not to make mention of the fact that they were thousands of miles up in the air to either Cherry or Troy - they wanted to avoid putting anymore tension on the heroes' shoulders. In the long run, the fact would be revealed to them, but only at the right time.

Though they hadn't had meal in days, Captain Cherry and Troy were looking pretty much in shape. They impressed all their supervisors in training as they flexed their muscles like they had never stopped.

"Hi! We were told to meet a Mr Damian here" Cherry said to a middle aged man who looked totally ripped. His biceps looked almost the size of Troy's head.

"Oh and you must be Troy Willows and Cherry Naphtaloz!" the middle aged folk said while pointing in their directions on mentioning their names.

"Uhm Sir! It's Cherry Davies" the Captain corrected. She still refused to be traceable to her evil father.

When many looked back on Cherry's story, they knew it was only her resilience that had brought her thus far. The lass refused to partake in her father's evil schemes and her rebellious nature went on to assist her in lots of spheres. Cherry would soon be bedeviled by the news that her father was reincarnated into another body; for today at least, she was all smiles.

"Sorry about that chum!" Mr Damian said as he stepped aside to allow the heroes walk in. The pair took a while later to carefully observe the tools they'd be working with. Having been impressed by the equipment they had just seen, the duo approached Mr Damian to obtain more clarity -

"So when do we start Damian bro?" Troy said rather too casually.

"First of all, it'll be Mr Damian through out the duration of our lessons and second of all...you can't train in those...rags" he responded while pointing towards their apparels on making his final statement.

"Rags?! These were imported from Turin man! They're probably more expensive then everything you're putting on!" Troy yelled, beginning to over react yet again.

"Come with me" Damian said, as he walked the heroes towards a corner in the room. Troy and Cherry instantly followed him and it began to feel like the former was beginning to overcome her trust issue.

Mr Damian typed in a code into a control panel fixed beside a cuboid shaped metal container. It appeared he had something to hand over to the both of them - probably a new pair of aerodynamic training suits. After Damian had completely punched in the access code, the doors securing the cuboid's content slowly opened and a slightly dense fume of ammonium chloride emerged from the lock. All three of them covered their noses by bending their elbows, but Cherry and Troy kept their eyes open as they seemed to be really anxious to see what was being stored inside the huge box.

A pair of intricately designed aerodynamic and finely structured training kits were in the wait. Mr Damian stroked out the suits and faced the heroes who were still mind blown by the make.

"So...you heroes ready to train or what?" he said with a presaging facial expression. Out of excitement, Cherry and Troy took the suits and ran off to the ladies room to get kitted up for a thrilling adventure.

Back on earth, the guardians of all four of earth's paranormal heroes were continually wearied by the absence of their wards. If this was that they had signed up for by letting their kids accept these super human powers and take part in all forms of dangerous activities, then they could have declined from the start if they had a choice. Mason used to be a timid and feeble adolescent and Madonna simply used to be an unassailable school bully. Cherry used to be a young little lass searching for definition and Troy used to be a despicable human outcast, but today they were all gone! Stuck in places their parents didn't have the slightest idea about.