By the time I caught up with Pinky, she had managed to fly at least 100 miles out into the ocean, if not a bit further since I couldn't even see the shoreline any longer when I had finally found her. She was just starting to swim back to shore, some kinetically powered strokes helping her to make some headway when I plucked her out of the water with my Gravitational Field. It was only on our flight back that I finally tackled the small stack of notifications waiting in my queue and Pinky was happy to not focus on swimming to tackle her own, apparently, slightly larger stack.

"Mission Completed! A Promise is a Promise. You know, of all the ways you guys could have tackled that big bug, I don't think Axio was expecting you guys to turn one of your squadmates into a surface to air missile. It's impressive and I'm almost entirely certain that's going to be on the highlight reel, just was not expecting it at all. Your contributions to defeating this kaiju placed you third in contributions behind both Pinky and BrainCraft! Reward: You have received an A+:Tier loot box, an S:Tier Squad Base loot box, and 10,000 credits."

"New Achievement! Stamina? What's Stamina? You've used over 1000% of your possible Stamina in less than 10 minutes, in fact, you did it in less than 2, but we're not gonna up the reward just because you're an overachiever. This is a Platinum tier achievement. Reward: You have received an A+:Tier loot box."

"Lucky Charm Feature Activated! Your A+:Tier loot box has been upgraded to an S:Tier loot box!"

"New Achievement! Teamwork Makes the Dream Work! Do you know the signs of a good leader? Don't worry this isn't some trick question and I'm not going to make you guess, it's being able to listen to your team and trusting them to play to their strengths. Your squad took down that Kaiju in record time, seriously, everyone else is still dealing with theirs though a few are getting close to finishing the jobs as well. Regardless, your team's level of cohesion was wonderful to see and deserves at least a little reward! This is a Gold level achievement. Reward: You have received an A:Tier Squad Base loot box."

"Phase Points Gained! Team Victory: Complete an objective while a part of a team. This gain has a static value. Modified by Squad Trophy Valor Crest. Total Value: 250 points. Crowdpleaser: Complete an Encounter with an Audience of Sapient NPCs. 10 points per NPC. Total Value: 410 points. Kaiju Killer (NEW!): Take down an enemy biological Kaiju. This gain has a static value. Total Value: 1500 points."

"Local Area Manipulation. This power has reached Level 6. Your Local Area's range is now a 20 foot radius."

"Quantum Overclock. This ability has increased to Level 4. Initial stamina refill increased to 150% capacity. All other effects still apply. This ability has not been Augmented."

"Shockwave Pulse. This ability has increased to Level 2. Stamina cost for this ability is reduced to 450 points of stamina per half second of charge. This ability has not been Augmented."

"Sting Like a Bee. This ability has increased to Level 5. Successful strikes now impart 50% increased damage. This ability has been augmented 2 of 3 times. Current Augmentations: Time Adjustment; Passive Upgrade."

"Gravitational Field. This ability has increased to Level 2. Base Stamina cost of this ability is reduced to 2.25% stamina. This ability has not been Augmented."

As those faded away, Pinky and I continued our flight back to land, though we did do it at a somewhat leisurely pace. Pinky, who couldn't fly on her own unless she was apparently rocketing through the air, was taking full advantage of my Gravitational Field and was doing small twirls as I pushed us forward.

"You guys haven't gotten back into Comms range of the others yet, have you?" Jon asked.

"If they're talking we're not hearing them," I said.

"Ah, well Brain jumped two levels off of that, dude got a shit ton of upgrades and an S+ loot box. Everyone's got a good few to open so I think it's time for a Luck Bomb when you guys are back," he said. "I was going to suggest maybe having Swan pick up some pizzas but she said you two had some plans for the evening."

"Yeah, we talked about it before all this started," I said a bit sheepishly. "Got everything wrapped up so quickly that it looks like we don't have to change our plans either... as long as there's nothing going on over in the city at least."

"Nothing that I've seen mentioned online," Jon said.

"What are you two going to do anyway?" Pinky asked, looking over at me with a raised brow and a sly smile.

"Er uh… I'm uh…" I said, stumbling just a bit as I reached up and rubbed the back of my head. "I'm taking her out on an actual date… The city is still a bit in panic mode but neither of us thinks there's ever going to be a point where everything is perfectly settled now. Besides, there's a few places that are back to normal operations, so we are just gonna roll the dice and see if we can have something normal around… well all of this."

"Huh, that's oddly sweet," Pinky said.

"Loophole has his moments. He's said it before that if he could turn back time he'd go back and not ask-"

"Oh for the love of- do not bring Rebecca up again," I said, cutting Jon off as he let out a cackle of a laugh.

"But it was so funny!" he shot back and I let out a sigh.

"Well now I've got to know," Pinky said, looking over at me as I shook my head furiously.

"Nope, nope, nope, don't want to talk about it," I said, feeling my cheeks burn.

"I'll tell you about it later," Jon offered, still laughing. "Needless to say, if he had his Hidden Power back then, you can be damn sure he would have used it."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Who wouldn't have!?!" I said, slightly exasperated.

"Hey I get that, if I'd had mine back in High School, we'd have killed it during the Powderpuff games we did every Homecoming… then again, I might have also left some girls with broken bones and they would have hated me even more," Pinky said, unable to stop from laughing as well.

"I can only imagine the situations where Relentless would have been useful without other powers," Jon said, finally starting to calm down. "Though, it is interesting that you guys both got Hidden Powers you'd have used back in the day. Then again, I think anyone would take damn near any super power if they could get one."

"Oh you are definitely not wrong," Pinky laughed again. "All the craziness aside, I do gotta say I love that this happened to me, even if I do sometimes wonder how I got lucky enough in the first place."

"Hey give me enough time and I'm sure as hell going to figure that out," Jon said and this time it was my turn to laugh, causing Pinky to look over at me curiously.

"If there's one thing I know about Codex, it's that he's wanted to get Augmented ever since the first Augments appeared."

"And I'm closer than ever before thanks to you buddy," he said quickly. "Now hurry up, Dusk is waiting for you to get back so he can portal you, Freak, and Swan back to New York."

Undisclosed Location

Time Until First Wave: 2 Years, 5 Months, 13 Days

"What the hell is that?"

"Huh?" Christopher's head popped up from a small hatch in a large platform that had taken the place of the coffee table in the center of his basement.

"Don't huh me. The giant metal platform you were climbing into like it was a wardrobe to Narnia. What is that?" Cassie said, pinching the bridge of her nose as she finished descending the staircase into the basement.

"It's a… shit what did you call it?" Christopher asked, looking over his shoulder toward the array of monitors.

"A Personal Assessment Platform, it is a rudimentary analysis device, but it will do for now," a new, extremely robotic yet distinctly male voice said, causing Cassie to jump, her head looking around for the source.

"Okay, new question. Who the hell was that?!"

"It's Axio, who else would it be?" Christopher said, rolling his eyes as he turned to a toolbox that was positioned just off to the side of the platform.

"How… when… why did you give him the ability to speak?"

"... Because it's faster than having to read everything out anytime I needed to ask him a question about this design he gave me?"

"And you're just… building a weird design the mysterious computer is telling you to make, no questions asked?"

"Christopher asked many questions before we proceeded with the construction and testing phase. It required multiple days for all of the supplies to arrive and has taken multiple days to finalize all of the connections," Axio chimed in.

"See, I asked many questions and he's been friggin amazing about answering them," Christopher said with a shrug.

"Okay, then let's return to my original question if we're actually answering questions," Cassie said, walking up closer and lightly kicking the platform. "What exactly is this? And for the love of god don't say "a Personal Assessment Platform" like I have any idea what that is. I leave to take care of my day job for two weeks and I have no idea what's going on now…"

"Ah right, I should probably start taking better notes on all this," Christopher said, straightening up as he stretched. "Pierre's been doing some of it over the phone, but he writes all his notes in French and I can't read any of that."

"Pierre's listening in too?"

"Bonjour mon chéri! Je suis là pour vous aider."

"English please Pierre, I only took a year of French half a decade ago and Cassie… actually she probably speaks it fluently now that I think of it," Christopher said toward an intercom on the coffee table that Cassie just noticed was pushed up against the giant box of at television he had.

"Nope, I took Spanish in high school, though I do understand Patois even if I can't speak it," Cassie said with a shrug.

"I will do my best to, uh, how you say, accommodate. Though you will forgive me if I do not know the word for everything, yes?" Pierre said with a laugh over the speaker.

"What's Patois?" Christopher asked, his head popping back up like he was a meerkat.

"I believe Cassie is referring to Jamaican Patois. An English-based creole language mixed heavily with predominantly West African languages though there are notably some influences from Arawak, Spanish and other languages," Axio offered.

"Ummm…" Cassie said, looking from Christopher, over to the monitors, and then back to Christopher who started to squirm.

"I may have pulled out one of the old Encarta CDs my dad bought for me to install on his computer. Axio is apparently compatible with Windows software."

"It is as I told you Christopher. My design allows me to be compatible with 93.253% of potential possible coding languages, you would be hard pressed to find a piece of your software that I am not compatible with," Axio said.

"Okay, as interesting as that is, and we will absolutely be revisiting it, can you please explain what the hell this platform is?" Cassie asked again, rubbing her temples as she tried to process everything.

"I mean, I kind of feel the name is pretty self explanatory," Christopher said, closing up the panel he was working through and wiping a bit of sweat off of his forehead before standing up and stretching. "It might be better to just show you though," he added, holding out a hand to help her step up onto the platform.

"Wait, I don't want to be a test subject," Cassie said, shaking her head. Christopher just rolled his eyes in response.

"Please, I already used it once, I was just making sure the wiring didn't get fried after the first test."

"The human need to reaffirm things that should be obvious is quite fascinating," Axio said and Cassie was positive she heard actual curiosity in the robotic voice.

"It's an anxiety thing, you'll get used to it after being around us long enough," Christopher said to the computer without lowering his hand.

"I… I'm still really confused," Cassie said, taking Christopher's hand as she stepped up on to the platform. He released her hand as he stepped back off of it and walked over to the computer. "I thought we were making a video game, what are we going to make everyone buy and build something like this? How the heck did you even afford the parts to begin with?"

"Pierre loaned me some cash to get all the parts actually, plus most of it was random motherboards and equipment that I was able to cannibalize out of older machines, it was surprisingly less expensive than expected," Christopher explained, typing a few things onto the keyboard before turning around. "But no, that wouldn't make any sense. The idea would be to have one of these in every store that we sell the game at."

"Okay but… why?" Cassie asked as the machine whirred to life under her feet. Christopher looked over at her with a smile just as a green light enveloped her.

"Remember what I said about making something distinctly unique? Well what's more unique than accounting for a person's actual innate abilities and tying them into their own character creation?"

"Analysis of Subject #2 complete," Axio said, the green light disappearing just as quickly as it appeared. "DNA structure indicates this player's unique secret power should be Voice of Reason."

"What?" Cassie asked, scratching her head as Christopher gestured for her to come closer to the computer.

"It's a weird name for a power but apparently that's the super power you would naturally have, even comes with an explanation," he said, pointing at a screen that Axio started to read.

"Voice of Reason, a power that allows its user to not so subtly affect and control others using the various tones of their voice. This power requires careful thought and consideration to properly manifest and use."

"How is that a super power?" Cassie asked. "And more importantly, how did that thing determine that would be a power I would have naturally?"

"It has to do with a specific structure that is unique within every biological- uh, my apologies, I believe this may be beyond your current intellectual capacities to understand… no offense. Did I use that correctly, Christopher?"

"Spot on Axio."

"Some taken," Cassie said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "What's the point of this anyway? Isn't the whole point of MMOs to let people play multiple characters and have multiple different builds and stuff? Is the idea to only let people play as one specific thing? Where's the fun in that and why does it matter if this "Voice of Reason" is a power that I'm naturally suited for when we are trying to, unless I missed some sort of giant change of plans, make a video game."

"She does bring up some very good questions Christopher, I too have been starting to wonder just a bit," Pierre chimed in from the speaker.

"Well I was waiting for everyone to be here," Christopher said, falling back into his chair. "Okay Axio, let's lay out the road map for the team."

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