I was starting to become an… ugh… morning person.

It was bound to happen, but between the Advanced Relaxation Shower that guaranteed at least 6 hours of rest that left me well rested and the general need to be awake before 6AM, I was no longer finding myself feeling grumpy and groggy first thing in the morning. If it hadn't been that shower, I'd almost have to assume things were even worse for Pinky and BrainCraft since they were three hours behind us, making their first token of the day spawn at 3AM. But then again, Pinky was also the one that was always trying to keep us all up later into the day, so if she was tired in the morning, that was kinda on her.

None of us actually did end up staying out that late and when I returned to the table after my conversation with Calypso, everyone seemed more than ready to split off for the day to get some sleep. Freak and I shared a look that told me we'd definitely be talking about it later, but after briefly talking with Jon when I got home, I resolved to bring both him and Swansong in on our concern when I got the chance. Calypso had only promised she'd message me when things were arranged and without much else to go off of, we would just have to be patient and wait for that message to come through.

I ended up waking up over an hour before the first token even spawned and did something that I hadn't quite been as on top of as I should have been. I smartly used that time to use the Garage Gym to bump my base Strength stat up to 20. Had I had the time, I might have popped into the Study Hall to up my intelligence as well, but I resolved myself to take care of it between token drops sometime today. Between the various things I could do in the expansions of our base, I was starting to think I needed to keep a schedule, though I was distracted from my planning as the rest of the team started filing in when I was grabbing a bagel from the kitchen.

We hadn't seen Miss Mist in nearly a day, though Jon assured us she had checked in with him through an extremely high tech method… She had left a post it note on his keyboard, probably by turning part of her body to cloud in order to reach far enough. She hadn't gotten in until late and had finally decided to return back to her own Safe House to sleep. BrainCraft had seemed like he wanted to say something about that, but a quick reminder about the time had us all turning to split up and start the day.

While we weren't exactly worried about sharing tokens with the few other Augments out in California, honestly it actually gave us an opportunity to find the few other Augments in Pinky and BrainCraft's region, we knew we needed to be careful about how we approached the tokens that spawned within the city. For the most part at least, we knew exactly who might react, even if it wasn't necessarily going to be Pigeon, a name I hadn't seen since the start of the phase when it had slowly dropped off of the leaderboard. But it was knowing who might react when he went for the tokens that had kept us from barreling into things without a second thought.

It wouldn't have necessarily been all that bad if the tokens simply made us targets, it was the fact that we would have to stay out in the open for an entire hour with the target actively on our back and signaling our location that made it just a bit less simple. Freak and I had been contemplating this with Swansong following behind us as we exited the base into Central Park while Pinky and Duskbreaker headed out to California. We had only just stepped out of the tunnel into the open air when a group of Clockwork Gorillas jumped out of the trees and tried to take us down.

They weren't exactly much of a threat, going down without making either Freak or myself try all that hard, but the fact that they had seemingly been waiting to ambush us was disconcerting to say the least. It might have been the first time we were actively hoping to find a horde of the droids swarming over the park. Swansong and Freak both seemed to be relieved when we found a handful of other clusters of the droids scattered around, I couldn't quite accept that it was a coincidence that we just happened to run into a few of them right by our base entrance.

Jon passed on our experience to BrainCraft who immediately offered to "whip something up" to give us monitoring capabilities outside the entrance for possible ambushes. While trusting him with more recording and technological assignments felt risky, we wanted to at least keep up appearances with BrainCraft until we were absolutely positive about our suspicions. To that end, having him put together a new bit of tech did at least keep us seemingly dependent on him, even if I did have Jon starting to look through to see if it were possible to move the entrance elsewhere.

He had apparently been a bit curious as to why Jon had removed the audio pass through device that he had been using to listen in on us when we were split up between regions, but didn't push too hard when Jon told him he had noticed it was causing an "odd sort of interference" that had been annoying him. It seemed unlikely that the explanation worked for him, but he didn't vocalize anything about it since he really didn't need to be able to listen in on us when we were just "having random conversations."

The ambush and subsequent scan of the park did delay us on our way out and none of our trackers managed to pick up the Ascension Token's signal when we scrambled to use them. Freak didn't seem too worried once we had realized this, gesturing for us to follow behind him as he turned toward the east and started heading for Brooklyn on foot. He had tried to explain the pattern to us once, and apparently BrainCraft seemed to follow it, but it had something to do with alternating sides of the region while simultaneously moving in a clockwise path through the neighborhoods, with the only exception being the last token of the night spawning in the same general region as the first token of the following day.

Luckily, Freak had picked up the last token of the day all the way over in a neighborhood called Briarwood in Queens. Unluckily, we were just about to pick up the pace, to head towards where we believed the token should be when an alert appeared on all of our displays.

"The currently active Ascension Token has been picked up by the Miscreant: Skim. This Augment has 59 minutes and 59 seconds left to hold the token before he can return to an eligible Safe Zone."

"Skim picked it up… huh," I said tentatively as we moved up to hover over Central Park. I had my Gravitational Field fully activated and Freak was taking full advantage of that fact as he made small barrel rolls off to the side of me, waiting to see what we were going to do. I looked between him and Swan who both just shrugged before I let out a sigh. "Screw it, let me try messaging him… I know he's technically on Hydramental's squad right now, but I'm not sure what he's capable of or why he'd jump on the very first token with these new rules."

"It doesn't hurt to ask," Swansong agreed with a nod, though her eyes were still pointed in the direction the alert was pointing in with a confused expression. "Also, that's definitely not in Queens… kinda pokes a hole in that pattern you swear by Freak..."

"Yeah I noticed that too," Freak said, turning himself upright as he came to a hover nearby enough that we could still talk without using our internal chat feature. "It's possible that Axio changing up the rules reset the pattern but we aren't really gonna know until we can see where they spawn the rest of the day."

I turned my attention to my interface, pulling open my Friend's List and selecting the only name I currently had listed on the Miscreant side of the window. There was no way I could put this without it sounding somewhat awkward, so I just decided to lean into it.

<Loophole: So uh… this isn't me threatening you or anything, I want to make that clear. But do you need us to come over there? Like I said, not a threat, we aren't trying to hog all of the tokens.>

I didn't exactly move us with any urgency, knowing I could easily pick up the pace at any moment, but I did slowly move toward the northern part of the city as I waited for a response. Skim just as easily could have chosen to ignore the message, but only a few seconds later the chat window reasserted itself to the front of my vision.

<Skim: It's uh… Barry is trying to see if Hydramental is gonna come yell at us for taking one of the tokens. He's hoping he can use the fact that we are in a squad together to track him down to wherever his base cause he assumes that's where Mr. Factory is at…>

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<Loophole: So why'd you pick up the token instead of him?>

<Skim: Barry thinks he can follow Hydramental from a distance long enough to track where he goes on his minimap. I'm s'pose to just surrender when Hydramental gets here so that he just takes the token and go. Barry doesn't think he'd outright attack us just for the fuck of it if I am quick to give it away.>

I felt my brow furrow as I looked past the message and over to the shining beacon hovering farther to the north and slowed us back until we were hovering in place just near the northern edge of Central Park.

"Apparently Barracuda is trying to use Skim as bait to lure Hydramental out…" I said and Swansong giggled lightly causing me to look over at her curiously.

"A barracuda using bait… it's funny," she said, shaking her head.

"Huh. Swan likes puns, who woulda guessed it," Freak said with a smirk. "And seriously? If he really wanted bait, you'd be the better choice. Though I guess Barracuda doesn't have you on his list and doesn't know Skim does either."

"Plus if his Acceptance Matrix is compromised, then this plan is really just TechWarden puppeting Barracuda and until we do plan on bringing them in, it might be a good idea to keep our distance," I said, looking from my squadmates back toward the beacon.

"That feels like it would be a waste though," Jon said, the usual clatter of keys making their way over the comms. "As far as I can tell, Barracuda isn't exactly some sort of stealth specialist like Miss Mist is and it's not like TechWarden is actively controlling him like he's a video game character, otherwise he'd have had better control over SnakeBite. Having Barracuda try to tail Hydramental doesn't exactly feel like it would work as a way to track Mr. Factory down, just as a way to make those two aware someone is trying to make a move."

"It sounds like a good way for Barracuda to get himself killed… which is kinda what Skim was hoping we'd stop from happening," Freak said and I felt my stomach turn slightly. "Should we, uh… maybe use this as the opportunity to "capture" them?"

"It would risk you guys running into Hydramental, though that's going to be a risk every time you pick up a token until day 10," Jon said.

"Yeah… he kinda throws a wrench into a lot of things…" I said, looking back toward the chat window with Skim. "Let's… maybe not interfere with this, but maybe stay up top here in case we need to react… If Hydramental does decide to turn it violent, I think we could get there in time to stop things, I think."

<Loophole: Okay just let me know if things look like they are turning south and you guys need any help. I'd offer to get closer, but if Hydramental sees me, I doubt he's gonna be running right back home, but we will stay close enough to react. Hell, we can use this to get you guys locked up if that's still what you want us to do.>

<Skim: I… okay thanks. If you can hold off on that another day or so… I'd appreciate it. These tokens at least might give a chance for you to find us without Barry thinking I'm behind it.>

"You know, I've been meaning to ask, what exactly is our plan for that dude? Like, I know we are trying to stop him and Mr. Factory but what is the goal there? Capture and lock him up? Can we even do that when he can just split off clones and reform?" Freak asked, scratching the side of his head.

"There has to be, right? I mean, we can get Phase Points for capturing other Augments which should send them to jail, at least that's what my P.A.I. told me," Swansong said, following as I floated Freak and myself down and toward the roof of a nearby skyscraper. "Though… I guess those don't matter that much if Axio is just gonna break them out whenever he needs some baddies to throw at people…"

"Yeah so like, I know we made the decision to take down Clockwork Tyrant by any means necessary because of the threat he posed… I'm just wondering if we are approaching Hydramental and whoever this Mr. Factory is the same way," Freak said, his expression serious.

"I…" My brow furrowed as I realized that I had, somehow, let this detail slip through my mind. "He's… Hydramental that is… I don't know if he deserves to die… Clockwork Tyrant killed a lot of people and had made it clear that he was willing to keep going if he had to…"

"Well Hydramental did try to blow up all of lower Manhattan," Jon said, causing Freak to nod in agreement. "Not that I'm necessarily advocating for murder or killing of course, just feels like it needs to be pointed out."

"He tried and we stopped him," I said, shaking my head a bit more fervently than I probably needed to. "Hydramental… he's not well. Something about all of this just… I don't know, it broke his brain. He wasn't quite this… well mad when we first met."

"You did say he was always a bit of an asshole with a stick up his ass," Jon said, humming to himself. "Though that sure as shit doesn't exactly warrant death either. I'm sure people have said that about me once or twice so we all just rub some people the wrong way."

"I'm not exactly going to play the self hatred card and say it's entirely my fault that he's gone as crazy as he has, but I won't shirk the blame either," I said, looking back toward the beacon that hadn't moved since it first appeared to the north. "I just wish there was a way we could… I don't know, maybe fix his Acceptance Matrix so that it helps him. I kinda thought that thing was designed to keep the people using them emotionally stable."

"That is what they are mainly meant to do, all the other stuff and functionally is just apparently hidden within it's code as subroutines. I'm sure you have plenty of memories of a lack of emotion around certain events, even if you do choose not to think about them," Angie offered before quickly quieting back down. I wouldn't say it, mostly cause she should just be able to hear me think it in the first place, but she had been getting a lot better at not pointlessly interjecting and I could almost here her make a satisfied sounding grunt.

"Hmmm… I have a theory about that actually," Jon said just as I watched the beacon on the far side of the city move slightly toward the east. "We had been working under the impression that Hydramental was compromised and working with TechWarden until Skim came to you guys with his fears about Barracuda, right?"

"That's definitely kinda how Loophole always made it seem," Swansong nodded before Jon continued.

"Well let's assume he was compromised but somehow Mr. Factory knew how to break him free, even if he didn't know how to do it correctly. What if something in that entire process is what actually ended up affecting him? Maybe the Acceptance Matrix wasn't meant to be toyed with so frequently and it caused some sort of feedback so to speak?"

"Sure, I guess any of that is possible and all, but how does it help us? Unless we can fix the matrix, it doesn't really matter if his is broken or if it specifically is what's causing him to go insane," Freak said, looking away from the city and back toward us. "Look, I know I got categorized as a Miscreant early on cause of public perception, and I sure as shit don't want you guys to think that's all I am because of this… But even though he didn't succeed cause, as you said, we stopped him, he did try to blow up the city simply to get back at you. What's gonna stop him from trying that over and over all because he wants to get revenge on you Loopie? At what point do we say enough is enough and put him down to protect the city?"

"I'm… I'm not sure," I said, looking down at the ground. Other than SnakeBite, I really had been going well out of my way to avoid killing. Even just the act of putting him down out of mercy had left a mark on me that, though I didn't tell anyone, left me with the occasional nightmare. I had gotten exceptionally lucky that the majority of the enemies I had had to fight through Phase Two so far were not only NPCs, but they had been robots and giant bugs of all things. It had made it relatively easy to put the worry out of my mind and just throw out damage in what I had come to realize were rather absurd amounts.

"Well Loopie, not trying to add stress to the pile, but it's probably something you're gonna wanna figure out. Until then, you might wanna let me be the one to grab those tokens, Hydradouche might be a bit less likely to come out if it's just little ol' me," Freak said with a smirk my way.

Though I knew that Freak had meant to make it all feel lighter, I was pretty sure that was a rather large hurdle to clear now that I knew I was going to have to figure out just what I was gonna do about him. I must have looked pretty stressed, because Swansong walked up and rested a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it with just a bit of reassurance.

"So on to the other topic that I'm almost sure we're on the same page about," Freak said after we sat in silence for a few minutes, watching and waiting for anything to happen with Skim's beacon. Swansong and I looked over at him curiously and he once again looked serious. "I mean, at least I hope we're on the same page about how damn suspicious BrainCraft is acting, right?"

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