Central Park,

Manhattan

, NYC

Neighborhood:

Claimed by Guardian Squad:

Wildcard Assembly

City:

Claimed by Miscreant Squad:

Droids R' Us

(Contested by Guardian Squad:

Wildcard Assembly

)

Current Phase Points:

135705

Current Ascension Tokens Applied:

25

End of Phase Two: 25

D:20H:24M:39S

It was paranoia. Logically I knew that.

Sophie and I had been having a great night so far, and even without the constant strain of battle, I couldn't deny that we were clicking. We had been trying to decide what to do next, even if we both would have been fine sitting on that bench the entire night, and after some not so subtle probing from her, I offered to show her around my own neighborhood.

I hadn't exactly been paying attention to the other people in the park, mostly because I was trying to be as entirely present with Sophie as I could. If there was one thing I had learned about myself recently, it was how easily I could let myself get distracted and hyperfixate. But some habits were getting hard to break. As we started to walk along the path, leaving behind the small crowd taking in the food trucks, I activated the mobile version of Area Sense, feeling the world around us.

It had been because of that reason that I could feel as a single person, walking along the pathway stopped, and turned to look at us as Sophie and I walked casually along the way. That alone wasn't damning of course, I knew myself how often I turned to look at someone just because I thought they looked familiar, but there was a way the form subtly shifted in shape under the scrutiny of my sixth sense. I didn't look back so it was entirely a hunch, but my gut was screaming at me as the shape started to follow along behind us.

"What the hell is even the point of the masks if it doesn't stop other Augments from figuring out who we are out of our gear?" I muttered internally, knowing there was only one person that would answer right now.

While I might have wanted to ask Jon his opinion, I had received the notification that he had left the Command Room only about ten minutes earlier, probably to get some much needed rest of his own. I could always text him, but that wasn't guaranteed to be instantaneous nor would it promise he'd be able to help. Not that I could think how he'd even help in this specific situation.

"The masks are meant to hide your Secret Identity from the NPCs, not the other players," Angie answered. "Though historically you all aren't as close together from the start, so it's possible this is an unintended side effect of Axio's changes to this year's wave."

I must have unconsciously tensed up, because I could feel as Sophie looked up at me, her lips parting to speak when I held a finger up to my lips. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite fast enough.

"Nate?" she asked before my chat message went through. While we could have just turned to internal chat, I found when it was just the two of us I still had a bad habit of wanting to actually vocalize the things I would want to say.

<Loophole: We're being followed.>

<Swansong: What? We are? How sure are you? Who is it?>

<Loophole: 90% sure? Haven't looked back yet but the form, I don't know… it shuddered a bit when it turned to follow us. There's only one person I know that I've felt their form do that.>

<Swansong: What's the plan?>

<Loophole: Not sure… just… I'm sorry if we lose a bit of time here.>

While I obviously could just rewind things, get us back to a point before we had run into him in the first place, I had promised Sophie that I would try my damndest not to use that particular power tonight. As she had put it, it would have given me an "unfair advantage on getting to know each other" and I oddly found myself agreeing with her. This certainly seemed like it qualified as an exception, but unless I absolutely had to, I wanted to at least try to avoid rewinding and losing any of the night we had had so far.

We had only walked about twenty more feet away, still within sight of the Food Trucks but in a spot mostly separated from people. I looked over my shoulder, the man having closed in closer on us than I had initially expected, close enough that I could see the sneer on the familiarly unfamiliar unmasked face of Marco Travisi, better known to me as Hydramental.

"Well hey Marco," I said, trying to sound as natural as possible. I wasn't sure if he had been close enough to hear Sophie when she had said my name and while it was just a first name, even giving him that much felt dangerous. "Long time no see, how've you been?"

"Oh bite me," he snapped, his eyes narrowing as he came up short. "You've got me in a bind, I don't know what I should call you unless you want me to call you Lo-"

"Wally is fine," I said quickly, picking a name at random as I felt just a bit of relief. I still had to make this quick just in case I had to back things up, but knowing that detail hadn't slipped made me feel slightly better than expected.

"Uh huh, sure it is," he said, his lip turning up as his sneer became just a bit more violent.

"Well you'll excuse me if I don't exactly want to give you my actual name after all the shit you've pulled," I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible, though even I knew I was probably poking the bear.

"After all the-" he started to stay, coming to a stop as he bit his tongue and glared daggers at me. "You've got a lot of fucking nerve. You want to play that game? I can expose you and your little girlfriend right here and now Wally."

"Come on Marco," I said, holding a hand up as I tried to calm him.

"You think you're so fucking smart? You think you CAN FOOL ME?!" he growled. He was getting louder, one of his eyes twitching as his fists clenched together. "You think I can't use my fucking ears, Nate."

"Hey now, no need to raise your voice. Maybe just once you and I can talk to each other like a couple of adults instead of kids throwing temper tantrums," I said, still trying to get a handle on it. That said, even I knew I was going to have to break the "no time travel" rule. Him knowing my first name wouldn't necessarily have been the end of the world since it's not like I was the only Nate in the world after all. But he knew more than just my name at this point, and I'd be a fool to think he couldn't track me down with a little bit of work.

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"Even out of your costume, you're a grade A prick," Hydramental snapped. There was a lean to the way he was starting to hold himself that made it clear he was getting ready to attack, and any outcome from that action wasn't worth risking.

"Sorry," I muttered under my breath as I looked over at Sophie before rewinding us every bit of five and a half minutes.

End of Phase Two: 25

D:20H:22M:51S

The Hydramental clone that had been left behind could feel the bubbling anger coming off of his prime body. Even though his forms only shared speech when they were within the same region, it didn't seem to matter how much distance was put between his forms when it came to emotions.

So while he wasn't sitting there having a conversation with no one, he could feel the annoyance and hatred that was coming off of his main body. The energy was so much that he couldn't just sit there staring at the printers any longer and he was out of his chair, marching right for the exit. He knew exactly who he had encountered and he felt an urge to rejoin with his body to exact as much revenge on the man as possi-

Hydramental was bored, he had been- wait… what had he been doing. The grey clad form looked around the room, something feeling incredibly off as he sat in the comfortable desk chair that Mr. Factory kept in the room. He probed his mind, trying to reach back to his main form to figure out what had happened with little to show for it. Memories flowed back to him, though they happened in sporadic, confusing bursts that didn't seem to make any sense.

"What the fuck?" he muttered to himself.

End of Phase Two: 25

D:20H:28M:30S

I might have been able to cut it closer, save just a bit more time in my Bank, but I wanted to put as much distance between us and him as I feasibly could. It was entirely possible that he had already seen us earlier in the night and was already following, but if luck were even a little bit on our side it had just been a completely chance encounter, and I had the opportunity to push us in a different direction entirely.

"-should have brought a jacket," Sophie said, grasping onto my arm as she pushed herself closer to me. We were midstep and I unconsciously came to a stop, eyes scanning the area as I looked for the path we had chosen to walk along. Sure enough, I could see Hydramental still slowly walking along, his attention fully out on a small field a bit away from the gathered trucks. "Nate?"

I had a decision to make in that moment as I looked from the man who had caused me so much trouble already to the girl I was… well I was really enjoying my time with her. I didn't exactly have a normal childhood, or parents to watch and model relationships after, none of my own at least. Jon's parents had been a constant in my life ever since I moved in with my grandma and if there was one rule that I could always remember Jon's dad Raymond telling me, it was that relationships died with lies.

"I don't want to lie to you," I said, my brow creasing as I resisted the urge to look back toward Hydramental to give it away, "but I also don't want to ruin our night either."

Sophie's expression turned from slight awe to serious as she took in my words. Her eyes narrowed as she looked away from my face and around.

"What's wrong? Is there another attack that's about to happen?" she asked, lowering her voice to a near whisper as she let me guide her away from the path we had been planning to take.

"Nothing that serious I think…" I said, feeling her hand moving in small circles on my arm as I tried to relax. "It's uh…"

<Loophole: Hydramental was walking up the path over there… I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but he recognized us and started to follow the moment we crossed paths until I stopped to confront him.>

"Oh," she replied in a soft murmur. There were a few moments of silence that passed before the chat window reopened in my vision.

<Swansong: What's the plan then? If he doesn't know we're here, we could always follow him and find out where he's been hiding out.>

I couldn't help but smile just a bit as the message came through and I oddly found myself relaxing as a laugh escaped me. Even though we were both trying to pretend like we were normal for a night, there was something about the fact that even Sophie jumped right back into the mindset that made me feel even more comfortable with her. That said, without an actual immediate threat to have to face, I was pretty sure I already knew what I wanted to do.

"I think there's an ice cream shop over this way that we could pop in on if we take a bit of a longer route back to my neighborhood," I said, smiling down at her as her head cocked to the side.

"But… shouldn't we…"

"Ruin our night dealing with a douchebag that just wants to pick a fight with me when we can do that most days?" I said, raising one of my eyebrows at her. While she still had a bit of a worried expression, this did elicit a laugh out of her. "I mean, to be fair I'm probably a bit at fault there too since there's something about the dude that just sets me off, so why put us in that position at all?"

"Okay that's fair, though Miss Mist might not be all that pleased that we had the chance to trail him and we didn't take it" she said, moving a hand down my arm until she linked her fingers with mine. "So ice cream and then back to Hell's Kitchen?" she asked, a mischievous smile taking over her expression.

I risked one more glance over my shoulder, looking toward Hydramental who had his attention fully on the food trucks we had left behind. Once I was sure he wasn't following I looked back down at Sophie, trying to put that annoying encounter behind me.

"That sounds good to me, as long as you're still wanting to see my place that is."

"Lead the way."

End of Phase Two: 25

D:18H:05M:28S

"Cassie?"

"What, were you expecting Hinata or Pierre to stop by?" Cassie asked, descending the staircase as the doorway back into the Common Ground sealed up behind her.

"Pierre's been by a few times actually, so yeah, sort of," Christopher said, stretching out his arms as he stood up from his array of computers. "How's the damage looking from all of those kaiju?"

"Surprisingly better than we probably could have expected… well, except for Vancouver, but that place had already been left in shambles by Tempest's Wrath," Cassie reported, purposefully eyeing the computers. "Haven't you been tracking all of that too though?"

"Some of it yeah, but I'm still only one guy with just a computer," he said with a shrug. Cassie sat a paper bag down on the table that Christopher was about to head straight for when she stepped around the coffee table.

"Before you eat though, I just had a rather… interesting encounter," Cassie said, reaching into a bag on her belt and pulling out two rather thick looking envelopes. "I'm not sure how to interpret this, though given your attention on Loophole, I felt like it was better that we not ignore it."

Christopher eyed the envelopes curiously as Cassie held them out to him.

"Did he… write me a letter?"

"Not him, no," Cassie said, shaking her head. "One of his teammates, a guy named Freakenstein approached me at the bar when I was waiting for the food. Honestly scared the shit out of me because I have no idea how he saw past my Oblivious Melody, but he popped up and handed me these. Said one was from his teammate BrainCraft and the other was from someone named Codex that had some "game based questions" for you. The weird thing is that I can't find this Codex in the player database you have us hooked up to."

"Huh? What do you mean he's not in the database?"

"I don't think that statement could have literally any other meaning…"

"I… Sorry that was a dumb question, I might be a bit sleep deprived still," Christopher said, sitting down on the couch and taking a sigh as he held the envelopes in his hands and eyed them suspiciously. "If these two are from the same team, why did they send two different letters? And more importantly… who the hell is Codex if he's not an Augment?"

"I mean, I'm assuming he's someone working with Loophole's team, but if he's not in the game then how the hell does he know about the game? That shouldn't be possible… right?"

"It's not possible as far as I know…" Christopher said, looking between the two envelopes. "Guess there's only one way to find any of this out…"

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