"20 seconds, want a second timer at the entrance here?"

"Nope, leave it where it's at, once we confirm I'm not in a Dead Zone, go silent on the count report unless I call for it."

I had raced away from the small army of droids, content to leave Pinky and Freak to the task of tearing them down to scrap, and quickly covered the last few blocks to the collapsed pangolin.

There were work trucks surrounding the thing, with clear signs that the workforce had run off in a hurry the moment the army of droids appeared on the horizon. I eyed the area cautiously, searching for any extra droids and unsurprisingly came up empty. If the goal was to get the droids up the street here, it wouldn't really make sense if there had already been some hanging out and just waiting pointlessly.

"Swan-"

"They'll be fine, I'll stay above where you enter and keep singing, the songs should still reach you without me having to go in," she said before I could even get started. "Now go walk into the obvious trap and we'll talk about how we can't seem to stick to the 'no walking into obvious traps' rule later."

"He just can't help himself, can he?" Jon laughed and I ignored them as I turned and darted toward a large hole left in the head of the droid.

I zipped through it, disabling my flight and skidding to a halt on the ground as I cautiously took in the partially deconstructed command room. The workers hadn't been slacking over the last few days, with most of the equipment that had lined the walls of the room having been yanked out. There were tarps and random toolboxes scattered about and… the noticeable sound of something clanking up a single, small doorway in the corner of the room.

"Yup, that's 100% a trap," Jon said, nearly making me jump in the darkened room.

"Well at least he doesn't seem to have this place enveloped in a dead zone…" I muttered, shaking my head as I walked toward the doorway.

"Yeah yeah, silver linings Loophole."

It led into a familiar, curved hallway that followed the outside edge of the pangolin's head and I felt myself tensing the further up the pathway I walked. Even if I had rewound it… this is where I had seen both Miss Mist and Swansong… no… I couldn't think about that, not when I needed to keep my head on straight.

"Wow… you actually followed, how fuckin' arrogant are you?" a triplicated voice said as I finally walked through the single door at the end of the pathway.

"Not arrogant… stupid maybe… but not arrogant," I said, keeping myself right at the entrance as I swept the area. Before I made another move, I turned my attention back inward, just to make sure. "You guys still with me?"

"Yup, got the window blown up so I don't miss a thing. Timer ready when needed," Jon replied. I checked my status bar and confirmed I had Swansong's Song of Hercules buff as well before I pushed forward.

Three Hydramentals stood on the far side of the room, trying far too hard to look casual. I checked each of their jackets, finding his red ringed form flanked by his green and blue ringed forms. I wasn't sure what that meant for the brown, earth manipulating form I had already managed to dispatch, but I knew that one had to be somewhere close by if he had simply split him back off.

"Hey don't sell yourself short. You can be stupid and arrogant," the Hydramental's spat, venom clear in his tone as he sneered at me.

"I'm surprised you're not attacking me, you were taking more than your fair share of cheap shots at us out there in that little horde of the mechanical toys you stole, or wait, did you just trade one master for another and you're someone else's minion?" I asked, hoping to rile him up enough that I could at least figure out some part of his and Mr. Factory's plans.

There were obviously a few ways I could have approached this but I had tried to talk sense into him logically, more than a few times in fact, and it really hadn't worked out. I probably wasn't going to get through to him this time when it hadn't worked before and I knew that. Hydramental had something seriously wrong with him, and I was holding on to the tiniest bit of hope that The First would have some sort of answer for how I could help him before I did have to finally pull the trigger and find a way to put him down as if he were a rabid dog. And that was if I could even figure out a way to do that when he could keep his forms separated.

"I'm not you, I'm nobody's minion," Hydramental snarled, bits of fire starting to swirl under the red form's hands. "I'm working with Mr. Factory, not for him."

"Oh yeah? And what's the goal? Weren't you trying to blow this thing up just a few days ago? You know, when you decided taking out most of Lower Manhattan was worth it if you happened to kill me too?"

The three Hydramentals all sneered at me in unison. "Yeah, and yet somehow you just happened to stop all of it… and that was after Axio broke the system to let you use your powers when you shouldn't have had access to them."

"Axio isn't helping me, I don't get why the fuck you think-"

"Because he keeps fucking with my memories whenever it has to do with you!"

"He… What?" I asked hesitantly. I had been mentally keeping myself at the ready to activate Timekeeper's Control the moment I needed it, but this actually did bring me up short.

"DON'T PLAY DUMB!" the three roared… or… was that four? I didn't want to take my eyes off of them, but I also couldn't risk getting snuck up on either. "The only reason I'm doing it this way instead of just KILLING YOU is because I know it's not fucking worth it. Until we take out Axio-"

He stopped in his tracks, the expression on his red form's face giving away that he had already revealed more than he was supposed to.

"As long as that fucker is protecting you, as long as he's fucking with my memories to make me forget how you keep getting away, then you're fucking untouchable."

"Think about what you're saying! Like, if he could fuck with your memories, why the fuck would he leave you like this?!"

"BECAUSE HE KNOWS- Because he…. Because…." Hydramental seemed to be warring with himself, his blue form shimmering slightly before settling and reforming. "Either he's fucking with my memories… or you are… I fucking know it."

"Is he… is he getting less stable?" Jon asked cautiously.

"Debatable," I muttered, watching Hydramental carefully. "How are things going outside?"

"One of the fuckin' chickens got back up!" Freak complained, his voice breaking in now that I was open to the rest of them as I waited to see what Hydramental would do, his forms muttering to themselves. "I thought I tore that fucker to pieces, but the smaller droids are merging with it to get it back up."

"It's getting faster too," Pinky added.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS HYDRAMENTAL!?"

"Miss Mist?" I asked, wincing at the sudden shout, something Hydramental noticed as he sneered at me.

"What, those little friends of yours having some trouble out there?" his voices asked, and I was suddenly well aware of one coming from the doorway behind me. I cautioned a glance over my shoulder and found his purple clad form blocking the easy exit. "They're gonna need to figure it the fuck out without your fucking cheats."

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"I'm not fucking cheating!" I said, activating Area Sense as I felt the surrounding area just in case his last yellow form was… wait… I looked from the purple form behind me back to the three ahead of me, confirming their red, green, and blue bands as a realization finally hit me. "Hydramental has more than five forms."

"Huh?" Jon asked.

"HE'S WITH YOU!?" Miss Mist bellowed and I was sure she was about to turn to head toward me, the dot representing her on the very edge of my minimap.

"Four of them are. I know you want to see him dead, but unless we have eyes on all of his forms, he's just going to get away. I need you to-"

"I'm coming to you," Miss Mist said, cutting me off. "It doesn't matter if he's not together. I can follow him to wherever the fuck all of him is if I have to."

"I haven't gotten enough out of him yet! If you come, he's going to run off, please Mist, just stay back!" I demanded. "Red, blue, green, and purple are in here. His brown and yellow forms are still missing."

There was a loud roar that came from outside of the pangolin, though it must have been close because the sheer volume of it caused the metallic shell around us to shake as a smile spread over the Hydramental's faces.

"Cheater or not, you'll get what's coming to you. I'm going to have my fucking revenge for you killing Sal, even if I have to take the fucking long route to do it."

"Then you'll be spitting on his fucking grave," I said, unable to hold the comment back. I was almost positive that, Hydramental's belief that Axio was "helping" me or not, this was going to make him attack and I kept myself prepared to rewind. While I hadn't gotten an exact plan out of him, knowing that Mr. Factory had apparently put him on a path toward trying to take Axio down was… well something, wasn't it?

"YOU LEFT HIM TO FUCKING BLEED OUT! ALL ALONE! I'm the only reason he had a proper burial! THE ONLY REASON HIS SON GOT TO SAY GOODBYE TO HIS DAD!"

Things felt like they were rapidly spiraling out of control, something that I really shouldn't have been surprised about given our history. His purple form had started to walk around me, almost trying to taunt me into trying to make a run for it. If I was going to run for it, I certainly wasn't going to go that way.

"What's the time?" I asked, preparing to back myself up and just turn to help take care of the rest of the droids.

"Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds," Jon reported back as another roar echoed outside of the pangolin.

"When did this fucking chicken get so fast?!" Pinky complained.

"We're coming to you Loophole, 15 seconds top," Freak reported.

"Ozzy didn't ask to have his father taken from him! You're so insistent that you're going to try and help me and yet you didn't even try to help Sal!" Hydramental spat just as the entire droid around us started to shake, another screech of a chicken roar coming from right above us as Swansong's Song of Hercules was completely drowned out by the ear piercing sound.

"I wasn't-" I started to say before, almost impossibly, the lights in the pangolin whirred to life, the droid seemingly coming to life as things started shaking.

"Tell me something, are you gonna make me forget about this too? Are you gonna be able to stop me this time, Nate?!"

My eyes went wide and even though Jon was saying something, it felt like all I could hear was a ringing as I stared back at the four forms of Hydramental. His red form looked like the cat that caught the canary, a wicked smile cutting across his face.

"I fucking knew it," he snarled. "That stupid fucking name has been rattling around my head for the last two days and I couldn't figure out why. But then things kept happening… deja vu… situations that I knew felt familiar but unfamiliar… either you or Axio are fucking doing something and I just-"

I rewound time, mentally using as much time as possible without checking the timer with Jon. My breathing was heavy as I found myself back in the center of a group of droids. Hydramental's red form burst into light and started racing toward the pangolin and I felt myself staring after him as I tried to calm myself down. My Time Bank was dangerously low, with just over a minute left to work with. The droids barely gave me time to calm myself down as three large Clockwork Kangaroos came jumping toward me.

"Are you going after him?" Jon asked curiously and I shook my head, activating Float Like a Butterfly as I moved to weave through my new enemies. I mentally forced myself into the solo channel that would contact him.

"He knows my name… Somehow he knows my fucking name," I spat.

"He… shit… how? You just rewound, didn't you? Shouldn't that have taken the knowledge away?" Jon asked and I could hear the worry in his voice.

"He didn't find out in the time I just rewound, he already fucking knew it," I said, drilling a fist into one of the kangaroos and activating a 25% Gravity Punch that forced the droid back into a heap with the other two that had advanced on me.

"But that's… how?"

"I have a theory but it's not one I like," I said, looking up the street just in time to see as the droids were breaking away from the large Clockwork Chicken that Pinky and Freak were tearing to pieces. As much as I wanted to talk about this, because him remembering my name was something that was absolutely worrisome, we had to take care of the monster in front of us first. "Guys, the first chicken is going to get back up, we need to stop it before it can reach Perry, it's going to try and reactivate him. Oh… and Hydramental has more than five clones. I've counted six at this point, but we can't rely on that being accurate either, it's clear he's been trying to obfuscate what he can do."

"It's gonna what?! I tore that thing to- oh fuck these fucking modular droids," Freak spat as the metallic animals started leaping onto the droid. Maybe we should have been suspicious when it didn't explode after being taken down the way all of the other droids did, but given the glut of enemies, it had easily slipped our minds.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?!" Miss Mist bellowed as her icon appeared on my mini-map and she reentered comms range. "Where's that fucker Hydramental?!"

"Mist, we need your help taking down this giant chicken before it can get to Perry, they want to reactivate him so that they can… I think they want to use it to try and fight against Axio? I couldn't get more out of him than that."

"Is he in there now Loophole?" Miss Mist asked, somehow sounding like she was talking through grit teeth even in our internal chat.

"Not all of him, we need-"

"I'm going after him," she said. "You guys stop the chicken, I'll follow him to his base so that we can finally figure out where that is. We need to put an end to this now before they can do anything stupid."

"He's not all there Mist and there's no way of telling that's where he's going to go! Hell, he might not even be there now that I didn't chase him down. We all want to stop him, we need to do this together otherwise we might be put into a worse spot. Shit, I barely got you out of that thing alive the last time, can you just take a minute and work with us so it doesn't happen again?!" I yelled, taking to the air before I ramped up Center of the Universe and began racing through the crowd of droids. I wasn't sure how many I could scoop up, nor was I trying to get all of them. Instead I was staying low, dragging them across the ground and forcing the droids to barrel into each other as I whipped across the street and toward the rising chicken. For a moment, I was almost positive Miss Mist was going to tell me off for denying her, and I mentally prepared for her to ignore it all the same, especially after dealing with Hydramental's obstinate attitude, but after a long moment passed, she finally let out a sigh.

"Fine, I'm heading for the dumb giant chicken."

We weren't fast enough to stop the first chicken from getting back up and with all of the remaining droids pouring back into it, we found ourselves having to chunk its health down over and over again, even while it tried and failed to do any sort of meaningful damage to any of us. By the time it was finally down, even though the chicken had never managed to get even another block closer to Perry, the giant pangolin had somehow completely vanished. Miss Mist was staring daggers at me, probably because the droid had slipped away from us as civilians hesitantly poked their heads out of doors, cheering our success even while it didn't quite feel like one. I had a decent stack of notifications, including a level up notification that would finally tip me up to Level 24, but there was one in particular that practically demanded my attention.

"New Mission! Where'd that Pangolin Go? I know everyone was wondering where Perry came from when he first appeared at the start of this phase, he's not exactly easy to hide given just how big he is after all. So that raises just one big, big question. Where the hell did he go? Too bad you drained through that Time Bank of yours, cause this mission might not have even shown up if you could have watched him vanish. Since this is really important to Axio, he's pretty invested in making sure you guys are motivated to figure this out. Wanna know how invested? Just take a look at the… Reward: You will receive an S+:Tier loot box and an S+:Tier squad base loot box for completing this mission."

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