Wildcard Assembly's Squad Base,

Multiple Locations

Current Phase Points:

112545

Current Ascension Tokens Applied:

16

End of Phase Two: 26

D:06H:38M:42S

"Can someone tell Dusk to get the hell back here already so we can drop in this morning's tokens? We got level ups for friggin everybody coming and I want my next Ability Augmentation already," Freakenstein complained, sitting at the large table that had been placed in a bit of free space near the kitchen.

"Shit, I'm about to get those Merchandising Options, I've got an idea for a whole line of Pinky brand leggings," Pinky said, grabbing a plate from one of the cupboards and moving to several boxes of Chinese food that Freakenstein and Swansong picked up after scooping up the 10 AM Ascension Token.

We had gotten a strong start first thing, copying our previous day's plan by having Duskbreaker take me across the country to assist in token hunting. While BrainCraft still wanted to work on his automated detection system, he agreed to hold the testing for the second half of the day. We'd still be out looking, hoping the system finally did its job, but it would be after we had already scooped up a few of the tokens.

While we never managed to find the 6 AM token, whether by luck or actually getting the hang of the shifting pattern, Pinky happened to be quite literally within line of sight of the second token of the day the moment it spawned at 8. With that out of the way and nothing to do until 10, I finally knocked out one of my four workouts for the week, adding a point to my Toughness just to give myself a little bit more health.

At some point in the middle of the night, or maybe it had been the day before and I just hadn't been paying attention, my Tome of Many Things had finally refreshed, starting its process of spawning books once again. Even though I still had barely scratched the surface of what I could do with the books I had only recently bought, I couldn't help but be tempted by the book I just happened to see when checking my B.E.L.T.. While I might have benefitted from letting the books continue to roll over until I could upgrade a Level 3 knowledge to Level 6, with just how much of my Stamina I was always using, a book titled The Power of Breathing had to have its benefits. Once it was absorbed, I gained a Level 3 knowledge in Stamina Management and my mind quickly started to whir with ideas.

I tabled actually creating any abilities until I had some real time to sit on it when BrainCraft came to me to bring me up to speed on his findings from the Power Plant raid. Apparently he and Jon had spent quite a bit of time the previous night going over several possibilities and now that it was time to bring the rest of the group up to speed, I was the one that seemingly had to do it. Whether I liked it or not, the group had overwhelmingly decided that I was the team leader, and that meant being the one to lay things out when it mattered. Once 10 AM rolled around, we were back out into the cool morning air and our scanners came in handy once again as both Pinky and I picked up a signal, allowing us to quickly triangulate the token's location only 10 minutes after the arrows disappeared off of our radars. Between the two that we scooped up and Freakenstein picking up all three of the ones that spawned in New York, we were sitting on five new tokens to add to our total.

Pinky was just starting to really get rared up, explaining a few different product ideas that she wanted to make once she was Level 20, when one of the doors opened on the side wall and Duskbreaker entered. Freakenstein and her both let out a cheer, starting to chant "tokens, tokens, tokens" in unison. Duskbreaker looked between them confused before I just shook my head and pointed over toward the boxes of Chinese left out on the counters.

"Okay, okay, I know we're excited to level but we will get to the tokens in just a few minutes," I said, standing up from my spot near the end of the table, holding a tablet that BrainCraft had provided me to help with this little presentation. I wasn't sure of the specifics, but he had managed to hook it up to the same systems the base was on, allowing me to move stuff from the tablet up to a monitor that had been added on the wall next to the table. Pinky and Freakenstein immediately started to boo and I rolled my eyes, waiting for them to settle down. "Look, we got a few things to discuss, and I don't know if we're gonna get a better time to do it. If we use the tokens now you guys are gonna get distracted with your leveling stuff and I'd like to take some time to prepare for some of the shit coming our way."

"We can multi-task," Pinky complained.

"Or we can just go over this in 5 minutes and then split up and do our things," I said, staring at her until she let out a laugh.

"Fiiiiine, you know, I think I liked it better when you didn't think you were actually the leader," she said, waving her hand for me to continue.

"Anyway," I said, waiting to see if there were going to be any more complaints before continuing. "As it stands, we have just over six hours until the new day in the game. As Codex and Brain have both pointed out, technically speaking it will be the fifth day of the Phase, the start of it maybe, but still the fifth day. Now, I'm not necessarily sure if Axio meant that the people he riled up would be doing things at the start of every fifth day or after every fifth day, but that kind of vagueness seems like it would be right up his alley to use to fuck with us."

"Hmmm, okay I get that that's definitely something to be worried about… what's the theory, some other big attack on all the regions tonight?" Pinky asked.

"I really didn't do all that much during the first night outside of beating down all the droids that got within five blocks of my neighborhood, I wonder if the droids are gonna be comin' out in force? I'd love to break a shit ton of those things, especially the bigger ones if those assholes let them out," Freakenstein said, clearly excited by the prospect.

"That's if they do anything," Jon said, his voice echoing from the Command Room. "Clockwork Tyrant was clearly trying to work around the schedule with all the bullshit he was doing and I somehow doubt Hydramental is going to be any more compliant with Axio's wishes given everything we know about him."

"Exactly. That's not to say we don't have anything new on the droids, Brain's been doing his thing and managed to decrypt most of the data we snatched up from the Power Plant last night. We do have a handful of potential forge locations. I say potential because Brain has pointed out that this information was the easiest bit for him to mine out and Hydramental knew that we knew about the Power Plant being a forge. It's entirely possible that these locations were planted to lure us in."

"Not exactly a great plan if he doesn't have any more of those Dead Zone devices. We did scoop up that thing up when Loophole broke us free, didn't we?" Miss Mist asked and I looked over at BrainCraft.

"Loophole brought me the remains and I've examined it as thoroughly as I can. Unfortunately in his quest to disable it, Loophole also smashed it into enough pieces that there wasn't much I could recover, especially give then rather unique style of the technology used to create it," BrainCraft said. "We have to treat the situation as if Hydramental has access to a replacement, just in case. It would be foolish to plan any move against him without thinking he could trap us in a field at any time. I'm still not entirely sure how Loophole managed to activate his abilities when you all had been trapped in the field, but we can't guarantee he'd be able to do it again. That said, if he did have access to one and was trying to set up a trap for us, he could have chosen to do it at the Power Plant. There are more than a few variables that we have to consider."

"Okay, so we tackle the forges but expect traps?" Freakenstein asked, still buzzing with excitement.

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"Nope, absolutely not," Jon called out. "After you guys had your little warehouse adventure I'm rather sure we established a strict 'no walking into traps just to see what they do' rule."

"That's a good rule to have," Miss Mist nodded with a light laugh.

"Not a fun one though," Freakenstein complained. "Okay fine, so we probably don't have droids to worry about tonight at least, what about out in Cali?"

"The Colony has been rather quiet, unfortunately because of that there's too much uncertainty to really come up with an exact plan of defense. That said, the ant hill bases are rather easy to see, since I'll be working on the network nodes this afternoon and we won't be searching for tokens as fervently, I think it might behoove us to have Loophole and Pinky try and do some initial surveillance on the bases we know of," BrainCraft said.

"We will do what we can. As of right now, even if it doesn't look like Hydramental is going to make a move, we need to be prepared for the worst case scenario. Miss Mist, are you okay staying on scouting duties for now? If Brain gives you the list of locations, can you search them top to bottom and let us know what you think?" I asked and she gave me a nod that made the curls in her hair bounce.

"Yeah I can do that, it's better than floating around aimlessly and hoping to see a random droid, and I'll take any opportunity I can to hunt down those assholes," Miss Mist said, grabbing a napkin and wiping a few scraps of food from her lips.

"Awesome, thank you" I said, looking at Duskbreaker just as he sat down with a full plate. "Dusk, how fast are you able to make the transit between our drop point in California and here?"

"Ummm," Dusk said, his eyes unfocusing briefly. "I think it's down to just over 19 minutes? Every time I make the trip I shave a second or two off the time, you know, kinda like wearing a path in a field by walking over it over and over again. But there's a floor on how low I can get it just based on the distance and the level of the ability at this point… I'm not necessarily sure how low that floor is, but I know that there is one."

"It's not terrible, but nearly 20 minutes is still a lot of time, meaning we can't rely on it for fast transport in an emergency situation," I said before looking back at the tablet I was unconsciously fiddling with. "We should probably need to keep one or two people in the city just in case we are wrong about Hydramental, that said I think we want to have the majority of the squad on standby in California. Assuming that the next attack is happening tonight, and since The Colony seems to be playing by all of Axio's rules so far, we need to be prepared for as big of an attack as we can prepare for."

"Shit… that means I'm getting left behind, doesn't it? And here I wanted to beat the shit out of a bunch of giant bugs," Freakenstein said with a huff, his brow pulling together behind his metallic mask.

"Why would you get left behind?" Duskbreaker asked after swallowing a rather large bite of lo mein.

"Cause it makes the most sense," Freakenstein replied before anyone else could, reaching for an egg roll. "Pinky is just as good of a tank as I am and I don't think any of us are gonna top the raw power Loopie can throw into his attacks, at least not without some serious buffing, so you guys would be covered from a fighting basis. Plus he can fly. Sure I can jump around pretty far, but I don't got the range. Sure, it might be nice to have me there for some extra fire power, but until we determine we need it, it's better to just stick to the basics."

"Well I was going to say we could open it up for discussion, but Freak brings up some valid points. Between him and Miss Mist, I think we should be mostly fine on at least basic defenses in the event of even a small attack," I said. I clicked a few things on the tablet before swiping them up and over to the screen on the wall. "Okay, since we got New York mostly planned for, at least tentatively, let's talk about the other side of the country. Brain and Pinky have identified ten definite bases in California so far, though I can attest that they are rather easy to spot."

"Something to note, I've only been inside one of the ant hills so far and it is really dangerous. You can't just knock the walls out like it's no big deal because it could trigger a collapse of the entire structure. That itself might not be a bad way to get out of the fight, but we've already confirmed that it won't destroy the base, they'll just burrow deeper and create more hills," Pinky explained, drawing most of the table's attention to her. She stood up and walked over to the side view layout of one of the ant hills up on the display. "It's kinda like one of the Greek hydras, try and cut off one head and two more spawn, except with this you can't predict if it's gonna be one new hill or ten. It was the mistake we made that first night, three of them popped up in rapid succession and we thought we were getting ahead of shit by cutting them off and suddenly… poof more ant hills."

"Why do the hills matter though? Won't The Colony just do some sort of attack on the main city in the region? Isn't that what they did when the phase started?" Duskbreaker asked and I felt myself squirm uncomfortably.

"Ah sorry… maybe I should have set this up as a presentation… I'm still kinda new to this whole "leader" thing so cut me a bit of slack if I haven't quite figured out the mission briefing part," I said with an awkward laugh before looking over to BrainCraft. "But you know what, a good leader knows when to delegate. Brain, you explained it to me but I think you need to go ahead and take over for this bit. Why aren't we expecting some city attack?"

"Well the short answer here wouldn't be a point to it. Unlike in New York, we haven't exactly had prolonged confrontations with any of them outside of the initial night. They unleashed several large swarms of different insects across the region which assaulted and quickly took control of a lot of the infrastructure. There's ant hills that popped up near the closest of them, those are the ones that Pinky attempted to take out that first night that then spawned more, but they essentially have built bee hives around the main infrastructure sites," BrainCraft explained. "Truth be told, I can make a logical guess at a handful of different possibilities, but without more data I can't make an educated guess as to which one is most likely. So, our best bet, as I mentioned earlier, is focusing on the bases, at least until I can collect more data."

"Like… attacking them or…" Duskbreaker said, a clear look of confusion on his face. Swansong reached up and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"No, I'm not exactly following either," Swansong said, looking from BrainCraft over to me with her head cocked to the side. "Is our plan to just like… go out there and sit near the ant hills or the bee hive things, hoping something happens?"

"Honestly? Yeah, more or less," I nodded. "Brain pointed out that we don't have enough information, or people really, to exactly be proactive just yet. While we could go and attack one of the ant hills this afternoon just to see if there's anything being prepped, it's a risk because it may free up The Colony to make their move before when they are supposed to. Until we can figure out what the leader er…."

"Hive Queen," BrainCraft provided before I continued.

"Yes, until we know how Hive Queen is going to handle things, we can't make any big moves of our own."

"True… back when Clockwork Tyrant was still at least somewhat following Axio's rules, he tried to use me to provoke you guys into moving," Duskbreaker said somewhat sheepishly.

"Wait, are you the one who got that whole mob marching down toward the Guggenheim?" Swansong asked, and Duskbreaker shuffled in his seat before nodding.

"One of the many things I did because I was a coward," he said, not trying to dismiss his own actions. "One of the many things to atone for…"

"No one got hurt that night Dusk, it is what it is," I said and then decided to push forward. "So here's the plan. Freak and Swan will keep hunting down the New York tokens while Miss Mist scouts the potential Forge bases. While Dusk keeps helping Brain out with his relay tests, Pinky and I will scout the region. We'll plan to skip Axio's announcement tonight, just on the off chance the attack is happening and Duskbreaker can bring Swan over to the West Coast. We can pick as central of a location as possible, probably near the base exit in Red Bluff, and set up so that if we have to move quick… well it's a good thing I can take people with me when I fly now."

"And what if Hydramental and Mr. Factory do make a move in New York while we are all over there?" Duskbreaker asked.

"Freak can hold them off long enough for us to get back. I trust our resident tank to be able to hold out against some droids for 20 minutes and with Miss Mist assisting they should be able to handle it," I said and I could see a huge smile spread over his face.

"Damn straight we can, Loopie. Hell, maybe Hydradouche will show his face and I can have a little brawl with him," Freak said, almost a little too hopeful.

"Just remember he is still ahead of us in levels since he got the boost from taking out Clockwork Tyrant and, uh… and Pinneedle," I said, hesitating slightly at the end as I looked over at Miss Mist. She had clearly been close with him and I could see her jaw set as I reminded them of what happened.

"Well he might be ahead of you guys, but I've got 20 levels on him. Just because I'm mostly good at infiltration, that doesn't mean I don't have my own ways to fight. Trust me, if that asshole has the balls to appear, he's going down," Miss Mist said.

"Okay, so it sounds like we have a plan then? Miss Mist and Freak handle New York later tonight while we all run around in Cali until something blows up. If not tonight then tomorrow? Oh and Mist is going to do some scouting on some potential places for us to bust up once we get past whatever this fifth day nonsense is? Did I miss anything?" Pinky asked, running through everything as she counted it off on her fingers.

"That is basically what I just said," I nodded, staring over at her as a wide smile spread on her face. She leaned forward, her hands turning to fist on the table as she looked over at Freakenstein who moved to mimic her pose. They shared a nod before looking back at me, both grinning with excitement.

"Tokens. Tokens. Tokens. Tokens."

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