Outside Six Flags Discovery Kingdom,

Vallejo

, California

Town:

Claimed by Miscreant:

Sergeant Sting

Region:

Claimed by Miscreant Squad:

The Colony

Current Phase Points:

128545

Current Ascension Tokens Applied:

23

End of Phase Two: 26

D:02H:41M:07S

"I can't believe they took over a theme park…"

"Personally I have mixed feelings about that place… I got hit by a bus in the parking lot a few months ago before I got Augmented, or I think that's how long they said it had been," Pinky said as I stared at the park from a distance.

Sitting right at the center of the park, covering many of the roller coasters and other rides littered throughout the park, was an ant hill that must have been around fifteen stories tall. I had gotten so used to the skyscrapers in New York that it was actually a bit hard to tell without other buildings around and my gauge could absolutely be off. I was just getting ready to start making my approach toward one of the many large cave openings that lead into the large hill when I came up short.

"Wait… you got hit by a bus?"

"Errr… Yeah, I think so? That's what the doctors told me when I woke up after the Augmentation process. It was apparently a pretty close call," she said, sounding more awkward than I could ever remember hearing her sound.

"Huh…" was all I could think to say.

"What's up?" she replied and I shook my head before remembering she couldn't see me.

"Nothing… just had a random thought. Not the time though, I can let myself get distracted by that later," I said, shaking my head before I approached the edge of the building I had perched myself on.

"Are you sure you can get in there without being seen? I mean, the whole point is not starting a fight early… right?" Pinky asked cautiously.

"I'm positive. With this new passive, as long as I don't do anything stupid, I should be almost as good of a scout as Miss Mist," I said.

We had spent the better part of the afternoon moving around the region, from one of the many ant hills to another as we tried to spot quite literally anything out of the ordinary. Well… anything out of the ordinary other than the ten-plus story tall ant hills littering the Northern California countryside. It had actually been a good test of the newest passive ability I added to my ability list. There had been a lot of things about the system that I had, rather stupidly, not paid close enough attention to, and just my stamina regeneration had been one of those things. It was only generating Combat Cadence that finally made me understand what I had been missing.

"Combat Cadence. Level 1 Passive Ability. While in combat or within a defined enemy stronghold (such as constructed bases, safe houses, or phased territorial spaces), your base Stamina Regeneration is increased from 100 to 200% of your total Strength stat per second. Out of combat, your base Stamina regeneration is reduced to 50% of your total Strength stat per second. Additionally, Channeled and Movement Abilities no longer pause Stamina Regeneration while they are in use."

Pretty much since the beginning, I hadn't taken the time to realize that my stamina wasn't replenishing whenever I was using my flight or any of the abilities that required constant channeling, stuff like Center of the Universe, Entangle, or Ring of Fire. In a lot of ways, that made sense. If you were actively pulling from a pool, then why would it be fair to let that pool keep refilling? Even with the reduction to my regeneration outside of combat, I could now easily maintain a steady, yet still rather fast flight without my stamina bar ticking down even slightly. I had made sure of that as we zipped around the countryside throughout the afternoon.

It was only after testing my new passive that a different idea came to mind. We certainly could have had Miss Mist come over and do scouting missions for us, but she had been making good, albeit slow, progress on checking through the list of possible Droid Forge locations back in New York. While she probably wouldn't have cared if we had interrupted her, I saw it as an opportunity to try my own hand at scouting, especially when I remembered I had an ability that I really hadn't used that often since the start of the new phase.

"Alls I'm saying is that I've only seen you be a brawler and almost everything I know about you suggests you can't help but pick a fight even when you don't need to," Pinky said, breaking my focus as I watched another small group of ants exit from one of the cave entrances and start marching down toward the hill's base. "I'm standing by in case you need me to cause a diversion when you get caught."

"I'm not gonna get caught…"

"Wanna bet?"

"You know losing that bet would mean we suddenly had to deal with a giant army of bugs… right?" I said, unable to stop myself from rolling my eyes even though no one was there to see it.

"What, afraid of losing?" she taunted and I let out a sigh.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a bad influence?"

"You're delaying, Loophole," Jon said, interrupting us as I rolled my eyes again.

"This one's on Pinky, I'm going in," I said, pushing off the perch and taking flight toward the entrance I had been laser focused on. As I took flight, I activated Spectrum Veil.

There was a noticeable shimmer that passed around me and while I could still see my own body when I looked down, I knew I was invisible to the world around me. I still wasn't quite into the enemy's region, but I certainly didn't want to get caught by a camera or anything on my way in if they were smart enough to monitor the various entrances. I hadn't thought about it probably since I had created the skill, but I even went ahead and enabled the ability's passive feature, ensuring that if for some reason my invisibility slipped or a camera was able to catch me, it would at least obscure me from their recordings.

I zipped down and into the cave entrance, seeing Gold Level Colony Nest flash in my location panel. At the same moment, I gained a new buff on my status bar named right after the ability as Combat Cadence and the small bit of Stamina I had drained while making my approach started to tick upwards, even while I maintained my invisibility. It almost felt like cheating as I hovered near the roof of the constructed cave, floating along as I proceeded inward.

Though I'd have to wait a few days for it to happen, I was seriously considering using The Tome of Many Things' upgrade feature to upgrade the Level 3 Stamina Management knowledge to Level 6. Not only would that open up even more possibilities for me, I'd also be able to use the Team Book Nook within our squad base to transcribe a Level 3 version of the book for everyone else in the squad. Since the book didn't exactly seem like it was power dependent, I had to assume that the others would all be able to benefit from it, maybe even make the same Combat Cadence ability or something similar enough.

"Okay, looks like I got in without setting off any major alarms," I reported, continuing my way further into the cavern. There were actual lamps hanging every so often, almost like you might have seen in an old photo of a coal mine and I kept myself just below them as I followed the strung together electronics. "These, uh… these have to be because they have actual people running around in here… right?"

"Huh? What are you seeing?" Pinky asked

"A bunch of lamps. Not exactly complaining since there's not exactly any windows in here to let the light in, but if it weren't for the groups of giant ants passing below me, I'd just think this was some sort of cave," I explained.

"That's odd… The ones I went into on that first night were just deep dark caves and I was so not looking forward to having to deal with those again," she replied.

"I wonder if this one is special. Hey Pinky, didn't you say the few ant hills you had checked out so far were all Silver level at most? This one is marked as a Gold," Jon said just as I turned, continuing my journey as I followed the lights. There were more than a few pathways that didn't have the strung up lights and while it might be a good idea to investigate them, with such an obvious path to follow they really were a secondary concern.

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"Hell, I saw at least two Bronze ones but most of them were Silver. I guess it's not surprising that there are Gold ones, I just hadn't seen them," Pinky said, a shift in her tone suggesting she was just a but annoyed by the discovery. "Kinda dumb that there's no real way to differentiate them."

"Well this is the biggest hill, maybe it's a size thing?" Jon suggested and Angie immediately began to giggle in my head.

"Are you trying to say size does-"

"Not now, Angie," I said, cutting her off before she could finish, eliciting a laugh from Jon.

"That one's on me, I did kind of set her up for that."

"Maybe if Loophole does get out of this place without setting off a trap we can circle back to one of the other hills and see if it is a size thing," Pinky said, thankfully unaware of the near tangent.

"Why are you so convinced I'm gonna get caught?!" I shot back.

"I mean… come on Loophole…" she said through a laugh. "I'm not saying you won't get out of it when it happens, or that it's necessarily that you'll get caught, but like… come on."

"She does have a point," Jon said and I groaned.

"You guys are jerks," I said and they both laughed, almost enough that even I cracked a smile.

I turned yet another corner, following the wires deeper into the ant hill, passing random bits of rides and buildings sticking out from the walls and floor of the cavern. I expected to keep heading along another tunnel but instead I found myself staring at a large open garage door, leading from the cavern right into a normal looking building. The strand of lights that had lined the tunnels were connected to a long orange extension cord plugged haphazardly into an outlet on the wall, the wire pulled taut to reach the start of the lights.

"Ummm… well this is weird," I said.

"You're inside of a giant ant hill with giant ants… what's weird about that?" PInky asked.

"A random open garage at the end of a cave when I'm still… what, three or four stories up from the actual ground," I explained, drifting into the room and slowly setting myself down on the ground. "Let me check something…"

After waiting just a second to make sure I was holding still, I let out a slow breath and activated Area Sense, letting the barrage of information hit my mind. I could still feel the jagged edges of the ant built tunnel behind me, and both above and below the garage felt like nothing but crammed together stone and dirt. But everything ahead of me on the other side of a set of closed doors felt distinctly human built, with the perfect angles of a hallway and rooms.

"Are there any building at the center of the park that could be up this high… with a garage door?" I asked.

"Ummm, not that I can think of," Pinky said. Jon's mic opened and I could hear the clattering of keys before he even began to speak.

"I'm pulling up old pics of the place, there's nothing I can see that fits the description… Maybe this is something they brought in somehow?"

"Is that even possible?" I asked.

"Do you hear yourself, Loophole?" Pinky asked with a full bark of a laugh. "You're standing in a GIANT ANT HILL and you're questioning a random building floating in the middle of it?"

"Once again Loophole, she has a point."

"Okay fair," I said, disabling Area Sense and walking toward the door. The doors weren't anything special, instead just a set that looked like they could be swung with the simplest push. As if to prove the point, I had to quickly step out of the way as the doors swung by way and four ants went marching past me.

Seeing them up close made my skin crawl and I held as still as I could as they passed, just in case. My worry was for nothing as they moved back out into the constructed tunnel as if I wasn't even there and I quickly moved to get through the doors as they swung back the other way. I was greeted by a hallway that felt strikingly similar to the tunnel leading into our own squad base when we had first purchased it, and that innately made me tense up as I crept along the passageway.

"If it weren't for all the dirt on the ground because of those ants, I'd swear this place was a damn office building," Jon muttered.

"Hell maybe it is," I shot back. I could have lifted myself up and into the air, but the few doors I could see were all at standard heights, meaning I'd be dipping down constantly anyway if I did float toward the roof that was only a few feet overhead. I stopped near every one of the doors, each one a simple swing door just like the ones leading into the garage and let my Area Sense drift outward.

None of the rooms seemed to stand out and after the third door blocked me from what I had to assume were eggs, I started to assume that was all I was going to find.

It wasn't until I turned the corner and found myself face to face with another actual pair of double doors that I felt like I might be getting somewhere. There hadn't been a single sign in the facility, nor were there pictures, or anything that even remotely pointed as to what this place had been before it had been turned into some sort of makeshift egg storage. These doors however did have a sign, positioned directly overhead of the doors was a sign that simply said "Logistics."

I had to wait for a full two minutes before the doors shifted, a large beetle with a horn on it scuttling past me. I actively pushed myself against the wall to make sure it didn't accidentally brush against me. The moment I had the clearance, I made a break for the door, catching it just as it swung back in the second time.

I entered an actual room this time, large and almost completely rounded. There were large electronic consoles lining every wall that I could see, with a single large door on the far side of the room opposite of me. Unlike every other door I had seen so far, these doors clearly wouldn't just swing open. These doors looked like they would have been more at home in a bank or a doomsday shelter instead of an office.

"Jackpot?" Jon asked as I turned, taking in the empty room. There were screens everywhere filled with blueprints and maps. I almost wasn't even sure where I should start.

"Kinda wish I had Brain here right now…" I muttered knowing that he was somewhere further north with Duskbreaker as they further tweaked the settings on one of his arrays.

"Having a tech genius does come in handy," Jon admitted.

"Why do you think I was so insistent on making a squad with him? The guy might be a little over ambitious with some of his projects, but he's good at what he does. I can't wait to see what he does now that we have those printers," Pinky said as I continued to look across the monitors.

"Wait, go back to those two," Jon said and I listened. The monitors were displaying two satellite maps of Northern California with several large icons placed across them. Most of the icons were greyed out, even while they were still there. But there were a few that were lit up both green and red, with an icon over the exact spot I knew that I was currently at lit up green.

"Their bases? It can't be that easy… right? Why are some of them lit up like this?" I mused, more to vocalize the question than anything since I knew Jon had just as much information as I had.

"It could be that easy, it's not like we've poked the bear on this side of the country that much just yet that they have to be paranoid and set up traps… Maybe the bases lit up have buildings in them like this? Just keep staring at them, I'm taking notes as quick as I can," Jon said. I wasn't about to make it harder for him so I kept staring at the monitors, trying to see if any of them stood out to me but knowing that most of this just looked like any random map of a place that I vaguely knew.

A minute had passed with us in silence when I heard the sound of pistons hissing and I instinctively turned. Jon let out the briefest of protests when he realized why I had moved. The locked doors had started to split apart and I noticed just how thick the doors were as they separated from each other. Two figures emerged from the doors, wandering forward and toward the other side of the room.

The man on the left was a bit lanky, wearing a cut off denim vest and a long pair of black sweats with red lines going down the side. He had a simple red and black domino style mask over his eyes but the thing that held my attention the most was the long, curved tail protruding down from his lower back going up and over his shoulder as a long stinger rested atop it.

The woman walking just ahead of him held herself a bit higher, wearing a long black full body cloak that almost made me think she was a nun of some sort. While her eyes were unobstructed, her lower face was completely covered by a dark green scarf and her hands were held together, the sleeves almost seamlessly combined as she walked. I scanned both of them in order as I held my breath.

"Tailstrike. Level 14 Decay Stinger. Squad: The Colony."

"Saint Mantid. Level 27 Energy Mantis. Squad: The Colony."

My eyes darted from the pair still heading for the other doors and back to the secure doors that were just starting to hiss and close back down. They weren't closing all the fast and I knew I would be able to reach them if I made a run for it, but I also knew I wasn't necessarily silent either. Except…

I suddenly remembered that I had Mute Button as an option, an ability that I hadn't used for an extremely long time. I was just about to use it when the two Augments stopped on the far side of the room. I hesitated, looking from the still closing door back to the two, readying myself to reverse time just in case.

"We have company." The voice was ear piercing and sent a shiver down my spine as the woman in the nun outfit, Saint Mantid, turned, and stared directly at me.

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