"That's a hamster wheel."

"THANK YOU! That's what I've been saying," Pinky said standing next to me as BrainCraft began materializing things out of his B.E.L.T..

"It's not a…. You know what, whatever, it doesn't matter… not like I had a better name for it," BrainCraft muttered just barely loud enough for us to hear it as he moved to the side, his hands raised out while he continued to work.

While Moth-Moth was still spreading spores and its babies were spawning and flying around to help her, they weren't actively going after any of the civilians. We were able to get the majority of them inside once we decided to clear out from the immediate area in Moth-Moth's path, though we did witness a few civilians get hit by yellow or red spores before immediately getting hit by the opposite ones, sending them collapsing to the ground. I was actually relieved to see that the damage aspect of the red spores even seemed to be disabled on the civilians.

I really didn't like the idea of just leaving the civilians to be hit by the spores just because they seemed like they wouldn't be any worse for wear. Unfortunately, since Duskbreaker was portalling back to New York to retrieve Freakenstein, BrainCraft needed me to transport him to get everything into position.

We raced to get ahead of the giant moth's path, with me yelling at anyone still outside. Anyone that didn't get in… well we weren't about to fight the civilians that were hit by the red spores so we just had to hope the coating of them would knock anyone out as painlessly as possible. Like I said, I didn't like the idea, but unless I wanted to just try wailing on the thing until I managed to brute force my way past its defenses, BrainCraft's plan seemed like the best possible option.

There was a small peninsula just southwest of the town and with Pinky and BrainCraft included in my Gravitational Field we quickly covered enough ground that we would maybe have enough time to prepare. BrainCraft was rather interesting to watch work, especially since I really hadn't gotten to see his power fully in action. It was easy to think his entire powerset was simply being smart and building things, but that missed an entire aspect of it.

As each new item materialized out of his B.E.L.T. they began rearranging in midair, pieces slotting together as smaller devices combined and began to power on. He had complete control of any piece of technology he built and could mentally interface with his devices as if they were extensions of his own body. In theory, he was relatively sure as his powers grew he'd be able to also take control of technology that he didn't build, but for the time being that was still one of his disadvantages.

We stopped at a few spots along the peninsula and each time BrainCraft deployed a 6 foot tall device that almost would have looked like an antenna if it weren't for the large, perfectly spherical silver ball sitting atop each one of them. Once we had five of them placed, I was directed to set us down on a long, open stretch where the real work began.

What Pinky had called a hamster wheel was, for all intents and purposes, a hamster wheel. There was a large, circular center piece that was formed out of three large, curved pieces that sat on a single large base. But that's not all that was there. Along one side of the large open running space, a column formed, a single slot on the side that was dormant while the device still formed. Pinky was quick to hop up into it once it set down on the ground, testing the motion on the treadmill as she looked at the various modifications to it.

"Now, unfortunately I haven't quite set up the power source for this, so I will need to stay nearby to activate the burst and launch functions with my Technomancy, so no Pinky before you ask you can't take this with you afterwards, I still have some tinkering to do," BrainCraft said. While Pinky did briefly frown, she seemed far more interested in the device as a whole.

"How often will it deploy the barriers?"

"Well given your power needs it to be fairly consistent, I set the deployment to scale as you speed up," BrainCraft explained, walking in a slow circle around the wheel as another antenna spawned from his B.E.L.T. and began assembling itself. This one was at least double the size of the ones we had already set down and I couldn't help but stare in awe as the pieces slotted together without BrainCraft even actively focusing on it.

"Wait… so there's no upper limit?" Pinky asked, her eyes widening enough that I thought they were about to pop out.

"That is what you requested after all."

"Sorry, what exactly is there no upper limit for?" Swansong asked. I wasn't quite sure when she had joined us since she had been staying back to try to continue coaxing residents back inside, but I had been a bit fixated on watching BrainCraft set up his devices. She floated down next to me just as all of our shadows started to shake and form together, a portal pushing up from the ground as Freakenstein and Duskbreaker began rising out of the darkness.

"Well hot damn what's going on here?" Freak asked as his head became fully visible. Having traveled through Duskbreaker's portals before, I knew how weird it was to have only a portion of your body exposed while the rest of it was still in the shadowy realm between portal points.

"Ah perfect timing," BrainCraft said, waving his hand as several large, perfectly cubed bits of metal materialized and thudded to the ground. "You're able to place armor on enemies and you can survive any single attack without losing all of your armor, correct?"

"Uhh… yeah," Freak said, looking toward the large piles of metal hungrily. "I have to stay attached to it or else it will fall apart though, though I still get some side effects from attacks if they are supposed to deliver them. I don't mind being the tank though if that's what you need me to do."

"Perfect. Absorb this metal, then Loophole I'll need you to fly him up and drop him onto Moth-Moth," BrainCraft explained. "You'll need to move fast because I'll need you to come back and charge the coil here with every last bit of power you can manage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you do have access to an ability that will recharge your stamina to max correct?"

"I do and it refreshes my cooldowns when I use it, but it gives me an Exhausted debuff every time which would remove that cooldown refresher. Although…" I said, drifting off as I looked over at Duskbreaker, finally stepping the rest of the way out of the portal as Freakenstein moved over to the metal cubes and began absorbing the metal into his armor. BrainCraft was apparently already on the same page.

"The coils I have set up all share power between them through a wireless connection, with Duskbreaker leeching the debuff from you, you should be able to stack quite a bit of power into these before Moth-Moth gets into range, especially if Swansong is using her Song of Doubling. Honestly that should help the charge stacking as well as Pinky's buildup."

"I can only leech a total of five Exhausted debuffs before I will get knocked out. If some enemies got close enough I could maybe deposit the debuffs onto them…"

"Or you can drop a few onto me, I believe I can hold four before being rendered unconscious. Luckily I won't need much regeneration if this works right," BrainCraft said which elicited a quick nod of understanding from him.

"Hmm… that would let me do what… 7 rounds of full power charges if we don't want to knock anyone out? Think that would be enough to stun that big thing?" I asked, reaching up and tapping at my chin.

"I asked Codex how much strength it took you to knock out Saint Mantid. If this operates purely on a density or size thing then yes, I think that level of a shock especially when amplified by my coils that will strengthen the force by at least a modest percentage will be enough," BrainCraft explained.

"I'm sorry, not that I'm doubting the plan, but this sounds like a lot of steps… couldn't Loophole, Freak and Pinky just go and beat it to a pulp?"

"Theoretically I'm sure they could, but you heard Loophole. He tried hitting it and it did a whole lot of nothing, even at a higher force," BrainCraft said with a nod. "Even with the interface, the missions, and everything else, it's rather easy to forget that this whole thing does work on video game logic. Hive Queen, even though she has been taking over large swathes of the state and has been threatening the civilians, unlike Clockwork Tyrant she doesn't seem to be going for destruction just for the sake of it. The kaiju is almost proof of that, even if the spores are annoying, they are only there to knock the civilians out. My theory is that she's following Axio's instructions to the letter, meaning that thing up there almost definitely has the kind of weakness on it that any MMO boss would have, because that's exactly the kind of thing Axio would find endlessly entertaining."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Huh… and you think electricity is it?" Swansong asked, looking over her shoulder at Moth-Moth as she continued to creep closer.

"Well bug zappers are a thing for a reason and it's the only clue we really have to go on. The coils will act to store up the charge and the metal plating Freak wraps around Moth-Moth will act as the target. Think of it like a giant, albeit pseudo-science version of a Tesla Coil… gotta take advantage of the video game logic ourselves, y'know?" BrainCraft said with a shrug. "I think we have a prime opportunity to try it and with Pinky being able to fully harness her Hidden Power, she'll be able to take that thing down in a single blow."

"Yeah, you still haven't exactly explained that though," I said, looking from BrainCraft over to Pinky. "Not that I'm doubting you Pinky, I'm just used to being the heavy hitter."

"You're getting a little too cocky for your own good," she said, though it was clearly playful. "I know what your Hidden Power can do now, only fair you get to know what mine does. Might even give you a little something to worry about next time we brawl."

"If it's all the same, we should get moving. Swansong, if you'd begin singing and Pinky, I think it's time you start charging," BrainCraft said, gesturing toward Moth-Moth as she finally came over the main peninsula near us. "I'll explain internally."

I nodded, looking over at Freakenstein just as Pinky started to lightly jog on the wheel, the large object rotating around her slowly speeding up. Freak looked like a veritable giant that just happened to be coated completely in metal. The only exception to this was his head, that looked comically small within the larger body that had been constructed around him.

"I'm gonna ramp up the speed so I can get back, just let me know when to drop you," I said and he nodded his head, though it did seem like it was a bit of a struggle to do so. I activated my flight, scooping Freak up at the same time as I turned and put on the speed. I activated Orbit Me the moment we got within range of the spores still coming off of Moth-Moth's wings.

"Now, I'll try to keep this as simple as possible. You understand the basics of Pinky's powerset, correct?" BrainCraft asked.

"Yeah, she has some form of kinetic absorption that she uses to charge up her attacks and hit harder. I never really got how the tusks worked into it, I just figured it was one of the weird quirks of the game."

"Excuse you, I like my tusks," Pinky shot back.

"You're partially right," BrainCraft said, choosing to push forward. "Kinetic is a big aspect to her powerset, but typically she has a maximum storage capacity, you've helped her charge that up quite a few times already."

"Right," I said, making a wide arc over Moth-Moth, periodically releasing Orbit Me to let the spores dissapate. Freak gave me a thumbs up once I was in a solid spot over the moth and I released him from my power. He fell a handful of feet before the metal on his body began branching outward. I dropped him right near the top of the moth's thorax and the metal began looping around it to create a makeshift harness.

"Well Relentless is what allows Pinky to go beyond her maximum capacity," BrainCraft explained. "There's more to it of course, but the basics are rather simple to follow. If she starts moving without using any of her kinetic bank, she can start to build up a secondary bank. This bank has no maximum capacity but can only be built up if she is either A. moving in a perfectly straight line or B. breaking through barriers and obstacles while continuously increasing her speed or C. both. While Pinky isn't a speedster, at least not like someone like Formula, once she begins her charge there's no stopping it until she makes that final impact and this secondary bank does increasingly stacked damage compared to her regular bank."

"So the wheel gives her a non-stop straightaway to run on… why was that something that was hard to build?" Jon asked as I turned and started racing back toward the large coil BrainCraft had set up.

"That would be because of its second function," BrainCraft said.

There were already sparks jumping off Pinky as she started to pick up the pace. While a normal hamster wheel would have probably kept her right in the center of the treadmill, as Pinky began to run faster, she actually managed to run around the entire loop, even while the structure was moving below her. Right as she reached the bottom part of the loop, a flimsy wooden wall was ejected from the canister on the side of the structure right into Pinky's path.

It burst into shards as her tusks hit it and she lurched forward even faster, once again making the loop and crashing through yet another barrier that was placed in her way. Had I not had my own task at hand, I might have gotten distracted as she slowly started to turn into a blur, the steady sound of smashed bits of wall and metal turning into an ever increasing beat. I was already charging up Shockwave Pulse before I hit the ground, not wanting to let my own task escape me.

"So she runs, faster and faster… building up the charge until…. What? She breaks the wheel?" Swansong asked internally without ever missing a beat of her song. I wasn't sure where her own Hidden Power had gotten back to after she had last exhausted the charge on her Doubling Resonance, but with all the singing she had done since the moth first appeared I was sure she was stacking that reserve quite quickly.

"Don't worry, I accounted for that," BrainCraft said without elaborating further. I released the charge I had been building after five seconds passed, that being all that was needed to fully drain my Stamina bar. Without missing a beat I activated Quantum Overclock and replenished my Stamina to max, restarting the process all over again as Shockwave Pulse's minute long cooldown reset. "Perfect, the coils are starting to accumulate and Freak's band is in place. We have about a minute and a half until she's in position, keep it up!"

With 140% Stamina, it took an extra 4 seconds to fully charge the ability before I released it again, happy that the ability allowed me to designate the coil as a target. As soon as the Exhausted Debuff hit me, Duskbreaker leeched it away. It took almost every bit of the minute and a half that BrainCraft had estimated and it became harder to ignore the beating wings of the moth above us.

"That's all of it unless we want to knock Dusk out," I said, breathing heavily as I looked back over my shoulder. Pinky was no longer even visible inside the pink streak she had become, a nearly solid ring of pink light zipping around inside of the hamster wheel. I materialized a Superior Stamina Injector and used it. Even though I couldn't use Shockwave Pulse again and I was going to be sitting with an Exhausted debuff, there was one part of the plan that I had just realized BrainCraft hadn't seemed to account for. "Shit, the spores are still coming down… I got them!"

I took off into the air, activating Orbit Me as I rushed to start scooping up all of the spores that were raining down toward us.

"Five seconds until the stun discharge! Clear the path as quickly as you can Loophole but be ready to catch both Freak and Pinky, I don't think either of them are going to want to take a swim after this," BrainCraft announced, I kept moving, dipping around and past moths that took the opportunity to smash into the spores I carried with me.

I could feel the static in the air before anything changed but it was only a moment later before a surge of electricity raced through the air. Bright white arcs of pure light came off of each of the coils BrainCraft had set up and magnificent arcs of electricity burst through the air, ripping through the smaller moths as they all converged on the metal band Freak had wrapped around what would have been the moth's neck. It was almost like something out of a cartoon as the entire kaiju lit up in a flash of light and Freak let out a string of curses in our internal chat.

"Get ready Pinky, ramp is being deployed in three, two…"

Braincraft trailed off before there was a loud THUD that filled the air. A moment after that, Pinky howled in excitement, her voice echoing out and over the nearby bay. I only barely moved myself out of the way, dragging all of the spores with me before she went rocketing past me like a pink clad bunker buster missile. I could just barely make out as her tusks grew, forming together into a sharp point as she crashed into the side of the giant moth.

The glow faded as her impact made a visible ripple pass over the kaiju's body, Pinky penetrating through the beast like the missile she was. Only a few seconds later there was a large spray of green goo that exploded out of the opposite side of the moth and the entire thing began plummeting to the bay below it. Pinky didn't stop moving though, her trajectory rocketing her up and away as the kaiju began crumbling into dust behind her. I managed to swoop down, catching Freakenstein in my Gravitational Field as he still maintained the Stunned debuff from getting caught in the electrical burst.

"Umm… we may have overdone it just a bit," BrainCraft said just a bit hesitantly.

The baby moths all popped out of existence as the spores went with them, several notifications popping up in my display that I waved away for the moment. I dove toward the ground, dropping Freakenstein off with the group, knowing he'd be just fine in a few minutes. I looked down toward the dissolving, plummeting kaiju before I looked back toward Pinky's still escaping form.

"I'll go get her."

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