End of Phase Two: 24

D:05H:03M:25S

Hydramental was seething.

Had he been literally anywhere else, he might have started to destroy things just to take out a little bit of the rage he was feeling. Unfortunately, constantly channeling and dispersing electrical energy was all he could safely do for the moment.

The room around him creaked and groaned as he felt the gentle hum of engines moving the large fortress around him. The main body of Hydramental sat in a chair, watching as his yellow form approached the quickly installed coil that had taken the place of the droid's power core. There were better things he could be doing with his time of course, but unfortunately, until they were able to resurface, Hydramental really didn't have anything better to do.

Still, that didn't stop him from glaring at Mr. Factory as the older man walked through the doorway with an open bag of popcorn, a hand having to reach up and under his welding mask to feed himself.

"You should have just let me fight them head on if all of those droids were going to be lost causes anyway," he spat, pushing himself up and out of his chair as his yellow form let off a barrage of electricity into the coil, causing the room around him to whir to life just a bit louder.

"I would have preferred if the droids had reached Perry here. You had said you were sure Loophole would chase you down, that should have given one of the Clockwork Chickens time to reach Perry and merge with his systems," Mr. Factory said with a disappointed sigh as he looked over at the coil. "This was the last resort plan if you recall… it'll take some time before we can bring in the resources for me to print a new core, not to mention the modifications that will need to be done. We should consider ourselves lucky we were able to extract it and it was still able to submerge and retract its legs."

"Tch, sure, lucky," Hydramental sneered, his mind buzzing. There was only one reason that name suddenly bounced back into his head and he no longer needed to see Loophole's face to confirm it was his. He wasn't quite sure what good knowing that asshole's name would do him, but he'd keep it in his back pocket, perhaps it would throw the orange asshole off balance at just the right moment. "He was finally taking the bait, I don't understand why he didn't fucking chase me."

"Perhaps he doesn't see you as a threat, we did unleash nearly 75% of the remaining droids that we had stockpiled in lower Manhattan and they were blindly charging down the road and exploding. I understand you have your grudge against the man, and I did promise to help you, but have you considered he was trying to minimize the damage to the city?"

Hydramental's red and blue forms lurched off of his body, materializing a few feet away from Mr. Factory with bits of fire and ice swirling around their respective hands. Mr. Factory, for what it was worth, was completely unfazed by this sudden sign of aggression, instead holding out his bag of popcorn to the two as he stared at them blankly. A moment later, both forms dissolved and remerged into the main form as his yellow form shot yet another barrage of electricity into the coil.

"He's a performative asshole is what he is, probably thought he'd get more points or another stupid fucking loot box," Hydramental said, his main form walking over and taking some of the popcorn out of Mr. Factory's bag. "As much as I want to kill him myself, it would have been nice if that girl would have actually killed him like she'd done with all the other assholes she's come across. But I should have assumed that was a lost cause after he reflected my lightning and absorbed the chicken's attack."

"That is rather…. Unfortunate. I'd have have preferred if she had shown up a bit later, if he wasn't going to chase after you, her showing up in his hometown would have been more than enough to drag him away from the fight, even if she wasn't much of a threat to him as you've pointed out," Mr. Factory said.

"Maybe I just need to go and burn a few of the buildings in Hell's Kitchen down, maybe I'll get lucky and get his fucking building." Hydramental looked up toward the roof, almost as if he was daydreaming.

"Careful, you're teetering close to the line again," Mr. Factory warned, causing Hydramental's head to snap back over toward him with narrowed eyes. "I told you. I'll help you with your revenge in return for your assistance, but I won't condone the murder of innocent Sapients unless we have absolutely no other choice. Property damage? A bit of chaos to let us move in the shadows? I understood your reasoning for setting off the detonation of Perry here, given the circumstances it would have caused a lot of death, but we might have created the first zone completely free of this system had we been able to disrupt the array over New York. But unless it is absolutely necessary and unavoidable, we will not kill Sapients. It goes against the Code."

"Ugh not that stupid fucking Code again. Who the fuck would take that thing seriously when it wants us to care if some science experiments learn that everything they know is a fucking lie?"

"Lab Grown does. It was her powerset that created the source for the non-Sapients and she's the one who added that line to the Code. We all had our reasons for adding the lines that we did," Mr. Factory said almost casually.

"Then she's fucking stupid."

"Careful Hydramental, she was a close friend of mine," Mr. Factory snapped back, his even temper finally breaking just slightly.

"Was?" Hydramental asked. Even his yellow form looked away from his task, raising a curious brow at Mr. Factory. The man's posture straightened as a hand reached back into the popcorn bag.

"Keep up the power cycling, I'll need to start having the remaining aquatic droids cart supplies in so that I can begin the upgrades. If you'd like, once I can swap in the new core, you can take all of your forms and head back to the base under Grand Central. I'm sure you'd get incredibly bored sitting around watching me repair this place."

"I thought we had a deal, Factory. You needed me for the labor in exchange for you helping me. How are you going to repair this place if you send me away?" Hydramental sneered, gesturing over toward his yellow form. "We wouldn't have even gotten this thing away if I hadn't been charging it for the last half hour and now you want to get rid of me because I asked a question?"

"Please Hydramental, I know you're not that dense. You wouldn't have helped me retrieve the body here if you didn't know it was the right decision," Mr. Factory said with a shake of his head. "We were lucky that the self destruct feature didn't end up going off in the end. Of course, I already have enough on my conscience and I don't want to add hundreds of thousands of deaths if I don't have to, but with this shell we won't have to build up nearly as much. That said, it will take some time and it will take me at least a week before we can start moving it again."

"A week?! You expect me to sit around for a WEEK?! That asshole will just keep collecting those stupid fucking tokens and getting leveled up. I'm not blind, he's clearly already stronger than me as it is with Axio's cheating, even with the seven level gap and you want me to give him time to close that?!"

"Oh god no," Mr. Factory replied incredulously. "Loophole clearly poses a threat to our success. It would be better if we did handle him, and sooner rather than later. I should have the supplies for the core here by tomorrow night and will have the core built the following day. So we just keep to the plan. Deploy the remaining droids in the city to keep him preoccupied and hopefully get him to make a mistake and show us which building is his in Hell's Kitchen. Then, once I have the core set up, you can go out and finish this trivial task so that we can get on to what really matters. Freeing this world from Axio."

"Fine, I can wait two days. Just make sure you turn up the heat high enough on that asshole that he does react, because I want to put an end to this charade once and for all. Don't make me regret trusting you Factory."

Wildcard Assembly's Squad Base,

Multiple Locations

Current Phase Points:

182620

Current Ascension Tokens Applied:

39

End of Phase Two: 24

D:04H:41M:17S

"Why the hell am I working with you guys?!"

"Mist…" Pinky said, placing a hand on Miss Mist's shoulder that was quickly shrugged off.

"Don't Mist me, Pinky. I joined up with you guys because I thought if anyone would understand the need to take care of these people, it would be the very people who stopped those people from blowing up a part of the city. I thought you all would be decisive enough to take care of this nonsense once and for all but apparently I was wrong. Apparently, none of you are willing to do what's necessary." Miss Mist was practically seething as she pushed away from the table most of the group was sitting around.

The original plan had been for us to take the small wave of quiet that came after we put down the last of the droids to open up the various loot boxes we had received from the attack and to take care of the level that each of us had managed to gain from the sheer number of foes. Besides the A+ I had received after arriving at the scene, I had also managed to scoop up a C:Tier for an achievement called Entourage after forcibly moving more than thirty enemies at a time with the gravitational pull of Center of the Universe, and then an F:Tier after my blow that had sent the droids rocketing toward Hydramental like they were a Scattershot, which was coincidentally what the achievement was called.

Although we didn't see a lot of different types of Phase Points gained, between the Team Victory and Crowdpleaser gains, we had each managed to gain at least an additional 4190 points, further extending our leads on the Leader Board even if most of us were well beyond the point totals we needed for the phase.

On top of that, I had also raised my Center of the Universe to level four, both my Mass Driver and my Gravitational Field to level three, as well as leveling up my Local Area Manipulation up to level seven, all things that were great to see and something I had just started to appreciate… when Miss Mist finally had apparently had enough. She had clearly been upset after we had discovered that they had managed to slip away with Perry, insisting that we try to go after it even when we had no idea how we'd be able to search the only logical place it had gone, under water.

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When I had decided we were going to pull back and retreat to the base to regroup, everyone else seemed to agree, but Miss Mist spent the entire trip back muttering to herself, something that was impossible not to notice. When she still was going on as we entered the base, especially after we had to take care of another small group of gorillas that were just a bit too close to the tunnel entrance, I finally told her to just say what she was thinking as I moved over to insert the three tokens we had managed to get lucky enough to scoop up between Freak and Pinky for the day so far.

And let me tell you, Miss Mist did not even bother beating around the bush.

"If we aren't on the same page about what needs to be done here, I don't know if we should be working together," she finally said after no one responded to her accusation.

"It's not like it's so easy we can just snap our fingers and solve everything Mist… They've been careful, we've been trying to hunt them down but they haven't exactly been out in the streets with giant signs over their heads saying 'hey come fight us'," Swansong argued and Miss Mist shot her a glare.

"And yet I'm the only one who's been actively hunting for where they were hiding while you all sat around flirting with each other and-"

"That's enough Mist," I said, finally cutting her off as I finally pushed off my leaning position against the bar that separated the kitchen from us. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're the infiltration specialist and scout here… we haven't been sitting on our hands doing nothing, we were trusting you to do your part of the job so that we could finish this off together."

"That's if she was even scouting," BrainCraft muttered, though he seemed to look shocked when we all looked over at him, as if he hadn't realized he had said it out loud.

"What the hell are you implying?" Miss Mist growled and while BrainCraft did look uncomfortable for just a minute, he quickly shook the nerves away. He briefly looked my way, ignoring as I shook my head before setting his resolve and stared right back at her.

"I mean, it's not like we are watching over your shoulder whenever you sneak away to do these little scouting trips of yours, how are we supposed to know that's actually what you're doing? Trust goes both ways you know," he said. While Miss Mist certainly did look insulted, it was Freak who actually spoke up next.

"Yeah, well what about you Brain? You keep poking and prodding into all of our business and trying to worm secrets out of our powers and trying to foment distrust between all of us. You accused Dusk of being suspicious to me and Miss Mist to Loopie. What, did you try and tell Swan that Pinky is up to something? What the hell is that all about?"

"What?! I never accused Pinky of being up to anything, and the others- I just- I hadn't intended for it to-" Brain said, recoiling backwards in his chair slightly as he began to stumble over his words.

"Wait, you don't trust Brain?" Pinky asked, her eyes widening as she stared at Freak seated next to her.

"I want to, I really do Pinky, but ever since he brought up Dusk, my gut's been screaming at me, and I tend to trust those instincts," Freak argued, crossing his arms over his wide chest.

The entire room seemed to be devolving into chaos as everyone sans Miss Mist, myself, Duskbreaker and Jon all started to try to talk over each other, becoming nearly impossible to follow as I felt my frustration rising. Maybe I should have just burned the last minute I had in my Time Bank the moment this had started to happen, but that didn't feel like it would be the answer either, especially since I had no way of guaranteeing I'd be able to steer the conversation away from this happening at all. Apparently, without me even realizing it, there had been an underlying tension that had rapidly sprouted within the group that I had either not noticed, or willfully chose to ignore, even with the various concerns that had been brought to me in the last few days.

Just as the noise began to feel like spikes to my skull, I reached for a skill I had rarely felt the need to use since I had first started and especially never expected to use in this sort of situation. I activated Mute Button, causing the room to suddenly become eerily quiet. It took less than a second for the others to notice, more than a few looks being shot my way as I reached up and pinched at the bridge of my nose. Once I was sure they were all done talking, I released the skill and gentle bits of ambient noise refilled the space.

"That's. Enough." I tried to make myself sound as big as possible, but this wasn't exactly something that was in my comfort zone either. I simply knew I had to be the one to do it. Whether I liked it or not, I was the squad leader, and that meant it was my job to bring order to the chaos when it was necessary. I even looked over my shoulder at Jon who had stood up and seemed concerned before setting my resolve. "This isn't getting us anywhere and honestly, I'm getting a little fucking tired of it. I think this is my fault… I convinced you guys to turn off your Acceptance Matrixes and it's made us all just a little bit paranoid, especially trusting each other after really only knowing each other for a ridiculously short time… I get it, after I shut mine off, when I first met Swan I was positive she was just someone else that was working against me. Shit, maybe that paranoia is a side effect of turning the Matrix off, I really don't fucking know. But we can't keep doing this…"

"Keep doing what? Because we had Hydramental in our sights and you stopped me from going after him Loophole," Miss Mist spat, anger still clear in her tone. Neither BrainCraft nor Freak necessarily looked that happy either, but they also didn't move to speak up. "You're the only one here trying to "save" this asshole, you know that right?"

"That's-"

"No seriously, show of hands, who thinks we should just kill Hydramental already?" Miss Mist asked, looking around the table. No one moved at first, though Duskbreaker was the first one to finally break that streak, his hand creeping toward the ceiling before it was joined by BrainCraft's and, to my surprise, Swansong's. I looked over at her, slightly shocked and she seemed to squirm, though she noticeably decided to respond by shooting me a message instead of saying it out loud.

<Swansong: He did try to blow up part of the city… What's to stop him from trying to do that further up north where it could hit my family… I… I know you don't want to kill and neither do I… but we have people on the team willing to do it…>

"See, even the guy who thinks I'm apparently a traitor and your girlfriend think I'm right," Miss Mist argued, a look of smug satisfaction appearing on her face.

"You have tried to talk him down numerous times at this point Loophole, at a certain point enough does have to be enough. The droids you all faced out there today alone could have killed who knows how many people," BrainCraft offered and I felt myself become flustered.

"And not a single civilian died," Jon finally said, joining the conversation as I heard anger in his voice. "Say what you want about Loophole's stubbornness, but it's not like he let them get away to kill people. You guys stopped the droids and there hasn't been a single report of even an injury from that robot riot, with the information he had available, Loophole did what he could."

"He could have just let me go after him!" Miss Mist practically shouted and I smashed my teeth together as hard as I could.

"You made the choice to listen and meet us at the chicken, Mist. You made the choice to defer leadership to Loopie when you joined up with us. You don't get to throw a bitch fit just because-"

"I THOUGHT HE WANTED THE SAME THING I WANTED!" Miss Mist did shout this time, cutting off Freak as her eyes welled up, fists clenched at her side. "That asshole shot me, was going to kill both me and Swansong and Loophole stopped it! He saw Pinneedle dead! Hydramental is a monster and needs to be put down!"

"He's a broken man that's only become more broken because of me," I finally said, though I felt like a record stuck on repeat using the same reasoning that I had been pushing every time this subject came up.

"Sometimes you can't put the pieces of a broken man back together…" Miss Mist said, her tone dipping as her shoulders fell toward the ground. "I'm sorry… if you guys aren't willing to do what's necessary… then I'm going to go do it on my own."

She turned and started to head for the base exit, Pinky getting up to say something when Brain put a hand on her arm to stop her. Without another word, Miss Mist was out the door, at which point she immediately dropped from the squad, her door disappearing off the wall lined with our Safe House entrances.

"What the hell Brain?!" Pinky snapped at him the moment she was sure Miss Mist was gone and smacked him on the shoulder, causing him to wince and hold up his hands in protest. "Why the hell would you just go and accuse her to her face like that without any actual evidence!"

"I wanted to see her reaction, she was getting all riled up, I assumed it was the perfect chance to make her slip up on something… It's unfortunate that it didn't seem to work, but it is what it is. Frankly speaking, I'm still not convinced she's not a mole," BrainCraft said with a shrug as I looked between the two of them incredulously.

"What? After all that you still-"

"Yes Loophole, I still think she's compromised. Indignant act notwithstanding there's too many unaccounted for hours and coincidences for us to not assume she isn't working for someone. More than likely TechWarden given the one track obsession with chasing Hydramental down. I'm not going to suddenly believe she wasn't up to something just because she stormed out and left the squad when this could all just be some act," BrainCraft said, nodding his head over at Freak. "Besides, it's barely been a few minutes and no one has provided any proof of their true allegiances, I doubt Freak is any less convinced that I'm not some sort of spy, are you?"

"Well I… I mean… when you put it that way… uh… no not really I guess," Freak said, taken slightly by surprise by BrainCraft's apparent casualness.

"Which is probably my fault… I sometimes forget that not everyone thinks at the same speed as I do and it occurs to me, now that I look at the things I've discussed with each of you, that I probably have made myself look rather suspicious… haven't I?"

"Is there anyway we can use that scanner you made for the Acceptance Matrixes to confirm that we are all disabled?" Swan asked, looking around the table as the growing tension seemed to at least minorly dissipate.

"I mean, technically yes. But it doesn't really count for much if people here don't trust me. It would only be logical to assume I was able to control the readings that the machine gives since I'm the one who designed it," BrainCraft explained.

"Which you telling us that could be taken as a sign of you being open and honest with us, but it could also be a tactic of you giving us information you thought we would definitely think of as a way of trying to prove you're being open with us too," Freak said, reaching up and rubbing at his chin.

"Exactly. Trust is a finicky thing… isn't it?" BrainCraft said, somewhat morose.

"Then… how do we move forward?" Swansong asked, her hands clenched together tightly on the table in front of her as she wrung them together. "We are… we are all trying to protect the world as a whole… right? Aren't we trying to stop TechWarden and all of the craziness that's going on with this game?"

"Of course we are," I said quickly, the rest of the group offering nods of their own, even if they did seem to be a bit more tentative than normal. I was trying to think of what, if anything else I could say, but even I could tell that the group's morale was far lower than it had ever been before. "Let's… let's take the afternoon off from worrying about the tokens… I think we need to-"

<Calypso: We've set things up. Meet me at the Common Ground as soon as possible, ask Chuck at the South bar to show you to the back room… Alone preferably, it'll be hard enough concealing the three of us as is.>

"Hello, Earth to Loophole," Pinky said, waving her hand back and forth after I apparently trailed off, my entire body clenching with anticipation after Calypso's message appeared in my vision. All the worries, the fighting that had just erupted out of damn near nowhere seemed to melt away as I refused to let the message fade from my vision. Maybe I shouldn't have just announced this to the whole group, especially given the topic at hand. But trust was a finicky thing... and I was tired of the paranoia.

"The First… he's ready to talk to me."

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