End of Phase Two: 28

D:23H:17M:42S

Hydramental was angry. And sad. And infuriated. And worried. And… And… And he could finally breathe with just a little bit of ease once more.

He pulled himself together, bringing the last of his six elements back into his body for the first time in nearly 24 hours. Utilizing his Hidden Power, Elemental Essence, had become rough in the last 24 hours, he knew that, but that didn't change the fact that as long as he always kept one of his clones back, stuck in its pure, elemental form, he was practically invincible. He had only gotten to truly test it once, earlier in the day, but once he knew it worked, he knew it was the perfect defense.

Clockwork Tyrant had tried to stab him in the back and there had been the briefest of moments, when he was trapped in the Dead Zone and couldn't feel that connection to his remaining form that he truly thought he was about to die. It wasn't a feeling he liked, it wasn't a feeling that made him happy. Especially after the steps he had taken to get Loophole into position. But he was already also planning to betray Tyrant, so could he really be that mad at the man for trying to shoot his shot first?

No, what really pissed him off was Loophole. Not only did he somehow manage to utilize his powers in a Dead Zone, something that shouldn't have been possible, he also managed to protect the very asshole that had been helping him cheat this whole damn time. And that wasn't even going into the fact that somehow Loophole managed to thwart the damage from a bomb that might have emulated a small nuclear explosion without the radioactive fallout.

"GOD DAMNIT!" Hydramental roared, his voice echoing down and into the paved tunnel he had just exited through. "This is your fucking fault!" he said, lifting a finger and pointing toward a man that had a tank for a body from the waist down, sitting at the center of a room lined with printers and boxes filled with raw resources.

"Passing the blame? Really Hydramental?" Mr. Factory said, crossing his surprisingly built arms over his matching chest. His face was covered entirely by a welding mask, but even Hydramental could feel the exhaustion coming off of the older Augment. He had the energy of a mechanic that had been annoyed by far too many people who didn't take proper care of their vehicles. "Had you just kept your emotions under control before you killed Clockwork Tyrant, Perry's level would have never reset. You should have initiated the launch sequence before killing him. We had been over this several times after all."

"Yeah, well Loophole wasn't supposed to fucking show up with a GOD DAMN ARMY of people, and he definitely shouldn't have had access to whoever that overleveled Silver Wrangler fucker was. It kinda gave me no fucking chance to get in and activate the switches when they were all over the fucking place," Hydramental shot back, walking through the printer room and toward another hallway. The base didn't quite have the same layout as when he was first in it, but the main rooms were still more or less the same. "And what a stupid god damn system. Why the fuck would it be programmed to weaken something in the middle of a fucking fight?!"

"Don't ask me, I've never done a day of coding in my life, I just managed the servers," Mr. Factory said with a shrug. "My point is, I'm not blaming you for the plan failing. There were variables far outside of our control and for as many plans and backup plans that I try to make, I'm far from omniscient. I'm not nearly as smart as some of the forces at play here."

"THEN WHAT FUCKING USE ARE YOU!?!" Hydramental shouted, stopping in his tracks. A light barely started to jump off of him, ready to separate into one of his elements before his hands reached up and grasped at the side of his head. The light pulled back into his body, as one of his eyes began to twitch. "GAH! I'm in one piece… Keep it together. We can't afford to lose- HOW THE FUCK ARE WE- No. No. No. Just breathe… just breathe…"

"It's rather unfortunate that you can't rely on your Acceptance Matrix. Had I known this was going to happen when you turned it off I might not have suggested it but the alternative wasn't a better option either… That said, if this habit of leaving a copy of yours behind is going to be this detrimental, perhaps you shouldn't." Mr. Factory said, rubbing his chin as stared at Hydramental, waiting for him to recover.

The visor of his welding mask changed into two separate goggles, one of them zooming and whirring as he focused on the back of Hydramental's head. The man seemed to have an endless amount of patience and was barely even put off by Hydramental's quickly growing instability. Granted, that was probably because he had a small part in it and even if he was, as the game labeled him, a Miscreant, he wasn't so heartless that he'd toss aside someone just because they were damaged.

He could feel the pain coming off the younger Augment. Not because he had a power that let him sense it, but because Mr. Factory had a soul and knew a little thing about empathy. So even if keeping the man around would be a risk because of the instability, Mr. Factory was determined to make it work.

After meeting with Clockwork Tyrant the previous night, Hydramental had been intercepted on his way back to the city by a small drone controlled by Mr. Factory. Though Hydramental was skeptical of the droid, he had been having a growing feeling of… wrongness that had permeated his body the longer that time went on.

Each and every time he separated off a clone, he had a moment of clarity that demanded attention. Something telling him that his already dulled senses were being further poked and prodded at, molded like they were clay to fit someone else's plans. So, instead of running back home to sit in his lonely apartment, dwelling on the bullshit he had found himself knee deep in, he decided… what the hell, why not? At the time, he had still had access to the Dispatch Field that he had received from Geraldine, so he figured if this was a trap, he had a way to turn things in his favor.

And then Mr. Factory confirmed the very suspicion he had been gradually feeling ever since he had used that mass level injector.

Mr. Factory, a Level 153 Fabrication Artificer who quickly revealed that he was from the First Wave, was more than patient and honest to a degree that made Hydramental beyond suspicious. But Mr. Factory welcomed that. Insisted it was natural and normal to feel, but that in order to feel more… to trust that Mr. Factory wasn't just trying to use him for his own gains like seemingly everyone else, there was one thing that Hydramental would need to do.

So, while still under the cloak of the portable Dead Zone, and after Mr. Factory suggested it in order to truly "free himself from the shackles of the system," Hydramental disabled his Acceptance Matrix. He felt a weight get lifted off of his shoulders… for exactly two seconds before something in his brain seemed to… shift.

Suddenly, he was angry… and sad… and infuriated… and worried… and joyous beyond joy that he had broken the shackles he had so stupidly stepped into. He felt all of the emotions and so many more in a deluge of voices in a wave that hit him all at once. Even without the Dead Zone, they would have easily drowned out the incessant voice of the P.A.I. in his head that would never shut up. They all warred for control as his mind raced through the events that had gotten him there.

A syringe from an agency called S.H.A.D.E. that promised to give him a five level jump? How absolutely stupid was he? No. He couldn't blame himself. He had only been so desperate because Loophole was so OBVIOUSLY being helped by the system. He needed to take the shortcut. He needed to take that leap of faith.

It didn't matter to him that this agency had tried to use him… well it did… but he would just add them and TechWarden to his list of enemies to take down. Loophole had killed his brother and this agency was giving him free reign to kill him, so long as he just brought the remains back to them. Maybe a part of him knew there was more to it than that, especially with his new found clarity, but that asshole had hidden his brother's death from him. Whether what Geraldine had told him about the agency's suspicions were true or not, none of that really fucking mattered to him. Nor did any explanation Loophole would try to give him any longer. Because at the end of the day, they were all still entertaining this STUPID. FUCKING. GAME.

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None of this newfound rage he had been filled with was directed toward Mr. Factory. In fact, while he was annoyed with the older Augment for not at least giving him some warning that he'd become awash with these feelings, he didn't hold it against the man either. Because although there were a myriad of voices in his head trying to rile his anger up, they were his voices, and once he got used to them, they were nothing compared to the feeling of being controlled.

So when Mr. Factory had suggested working together, first to dispatch Clockwork Tyrant who's ambition had started to clash with the older Augment's own goals, and then to take down Axio for good, Hydramental decided to see just where it would go. Because although he couldn't seem to escape dancing to the beat of somebody's drum, Mr. Factory's offer didn't come with any more expectations than just going after the very people who had wronged him.

He wasn't stupid. He knew that Geraldine had spouted the same nonsense about "working against Axio" in her attempt to sway him. But Mr. Factory had something they didn't. He had an actual plan, and backup plans in case that plan didn't work.

"GAHHHH!" Hydramental cried out again after the silence lingered for just a bit too long between them. Memories were all well and good, but they did jack all for him right now. He took in a few deep breaths before he began walking deeper into the base and Mr. Factory followed behind him, navigating to the one room that he both needed and hated. "Okay, cards on the table time, why the fuck didn't you just kill Tyrant? I brushed it off because you knew he had cameras on you and you didn't want him getting suspicious, but he'd already agreed to turn on Axio for S.H.A.D.E. at that point, you didn't fucking need me to go in and do your dirty work at that point."

"I am… more than well aware who of is in charge of S.H.A.D.E. and trust me when I tell you that my powerset is one of those ones that they'd be more than happy to take advantage of. I was relatively sure that Andrew, er… Dr. Merens, that is, didn't know I was working with Tyrant, and I didn't want to alert him to that once the two had started to communicate. I watched the two of them have their call after you left Tyrant with that syringe and thankfully although Tyrant seemed more than happy to dance to Andrew's orders, including the one to try and kill you before you could kill Loophole, he didn't seem to think enough about his underlings to give his new boss a list of us. Having you kill Tyrant allowed me to continue to conceal my location, just in case they were watching during that last assault," Mr. Factory replied. He never seemed to hesitate to answer any of Hydramental's questions, meaning he was either telling the truth, or he was a liar of Oscar worthy recognition.

"Dr. Merens? Isn't he just some fucking government fucker?... No… Of course he's not… he's a fucking First Wave asshole too… ain't he," Hydramental said, stopping in his tracks once again and looking over his shoulder. "How fucking blind do those fucking Acceptance Matrixes make us?"

"Well… Andrew has always been in the government, though I'm pretty sure his doctorate is only honorary, so you're not technically wrong by saying he's a government fucker. Dude just was far more power hungry than a lot of us and rose through the ranks until he found his golden goose," Mr. Factory said with a shrug, though this only elicited a sharper look from Hydramental. Mr. Factory couldn't help but laugh before he answered the unspoken question. "I never worked for S.H.A.D.E., but I was a part of the team that merged with AetherTech after the buyout. Andrew was just my manager at the time, and then… when the First Wave happened, he became TechWarden, securing his position with the powers that be and becoming the director of his own agency."

"TechWarden? Is that name supposed to mean something to me?" Hydramental spat, rolling his eyes as he turned and went around the corner he had reached. "Probably just another piece of shit with an overinflated ego… Or was he some friend of yours? Nah, probably fucking not if you aren't wanting him to find where you are…"

"He's… a… very selfish and money focused person. That's probably the best way to put it. He and the First were butting heads from the moment the merger happened and them pulling against each other may be the very reason we are in this mess now. The First was naive, but in a lot of ways he really was every bit the hero he showed himself to be… he just might have enjoyed the game part of it all just a little bit too much. The truth was, he just didn't have the courage to put the genie back into the bottle once superpowers became a real thing… because if Axio was telling the truth about-" Mr. Factory's words cut off as he seized up, a hand reaching up to grasp at his throat for just a moment before he let out a groan. "Fuck… Never actually bring anyone in on this bullshit so I forgot about that. Well unfortunately I can't say… we might not have an Acceptance Matrix in the First Wave, but we signed digital equivalents of NDAs that prevent us from speaking to certain things outside of the people in our Wave."

"What the science fiction fuck? I mean, okay I get it, you're unable to say but like, how the fuck is it actually controlling you!? How is Axio controlling any of us and changing shit so that we have fucking SUPER POWERS? Can you talk about any of it?"

"There's a few things I think I can talk about, though we may need to walk a tightrope so that it doesn't cut me off. The good thing is that unlike what Tyrant believed, we don't need to rush to accomplish our goals. I've gotten as far as I have by proceeding with caution and rolling with the punches whenever one plan fails and plans fail a lot. Can't stop just because on fails, just gotta adapt and try harder next time. Because while The First and TechWarden might have bought into Axio's bullshit, I think the only solution is to shut this shit down for good. With that Pangolin out of the way, we can proceed a bit more carefully since we will be more out of mind of the people of the city," Mr. Factory said, rushing forward to catch up with Hydramental.

Unlike some of the people higher up on the totem pole within the joint group that had developed Infinite Ascension, Mr. Factory didn't have much interaction with Axio before the First Wave had officially begun. He hadn't known exactly the chain of events that had taken the true Artificial Intelligence and given it the ability to bend the fabric of reality as he did. But he did bear witness to the birth of the game, the birth of the First Wave, and he knew that there was only one possible way something like this was ever going to go.

Power corrupts people. It was a fact of the world and TechWarden's attempt to utilize Mr. Factory's powers to experiment on both the NPCs and Augments only cemented his resolve to put a stop to everything. And while he had had to go about it slowly, needing to gain levels and increase the capacity of his creation powers, he knew he was exclusively suited to target Axio in a way that none of the other Augments could.

Because while Mr. Factory hadn't been that important before the First Wave, the moment he got his powerset, he became immensely important. It had taken him over two years to print all of the panels and systems that would create the 25 million nodes that allowed the Augmentation Array to spread across the planet. While no one else quite knew how to get past the defenses Axio had put in place around the array, he did. Because he was the one who had installed them in the first place.

Mr. Factory froze in his tracks as they moved into the room that Hydramental had found himself waking up in just over a week earlier. The younger Augment circled around a couch that hadn't been there, taking in the still rather bare concrete room as he took in slow, deep breaths.

The room made him angry. The room made him sad. It reminded him of Loophole's smug, self-satisfied smirk. He could have used the small fortune worth of credits he had received from the various achievements he had only recently received to purchase a Squad Base anywhere. He could have moved right into the Astoria Power Plant with Mr. Factory.

But this place. As angry as it made him, he felt whole in it. As he stepped into the room, the voices in his head quieted, the feeling of his body splitting apart stopped, and he felt lighter than he felt anywhere else. It kept him balanced. It kept him together. And it kept him focused on what he had to do.

"Okay Factory, you've got my attention. Tell me what you can and then let's go over what the new plan is," he said, staring over at Mr. Factory with his jaw set as he leaned on the back of the couch.

Hydramental was focused. He was determined. And he wasn't going to stop.

Because he was going to kill Loophole and every single one of the people on his team that had aided that pathetic excuse for a man. He was going to kill TechWarden and gut the organization that was clearly helping hide the existence of the game they were pretending to fight against. And he was going to kill Axio and blow up every single one of his assets.

Because the entire system was at fault. And he was going to burn it all down.

End of Book Two.

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