Nate Mercer's Apartment,

Safe House

. Community Center 4, NYC

Town:

Claimed by Guardian:

Loophole

City:

Claimed by Miscreant Squad:

Droids R' Us

(Contested by Guardian Squad:

Wildcard Assembly

)

Current Phase Points:

189820

Current Ascension Tokens Applied:

42

End of Phase Two: 23

D:09H:38M:17S

Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that our evening didn't get interrupted.

But sure enough, after we gathered up, listened to Axio's surprisingly tame announcement for the evening, had a slightly odd conversation where I took the time to pull each person aside one by one to– very specifically– ask each of them to describe the sound a dog made, and added two more tokens to our Upgrader, Swansong and I retreated back to my apartment, ignoring the few catcalls Pinky and Freak tossed our way.

It took more than a few minutes for both of us to relax since I think we were both expecting at least some level of insanity, or maybe some sort of super secret meeting I'd have to facilitate for some reason. But eventually, as night fell and we settled onto the couch, we were able to drop the masks, metaphorical ones in this case, and return to just being Nate and Sophie, though I think we both might have looked toward the windows more than a few times when we heard a random noise.

So it was a pleasant, very welcome surprise that I woke up, well past my new normal time with the sight of a mess of red hair right under my nose and several beams of light shining pleasantly through my slightly askew curtains. Sophie's head was resting on my chest, her body practically unmoving as she curled into me and I couldn't help but smile as I resisted the urge to move. Even Angie stayed silent, though that was probably because I had mentally blocked out every last bit of the game that I could the moment we stopped watching the movie.

Even if we did still technically stop before things went too far, both of us were pleasantly on the same page about that, it had been a long time since I'd had a make out session that had been that good. I wasn't exactly sure where we were marking the start of… well whatever we were calling this, but I really didn't have anything to compare it to. The few other girlfriends I'd had in the past had all taken varying lengths before we ever did more than just go out to what constituted as a date for a broke kid in New York.

The simple truth of the matter was that even though Sophie and I had been around each other almost constantly for days on end now, when we did have a quiet night without more superheroing to do, we still wanted to spend more time together.

Without moving, I looked up toward the ceiling as I focused in on my interface, first turning to the phone app, marked clearly with a notification for a text message.

<Jon: F and P have been hunting, successful and quiet morning so far. Didn't want to interrupt (you should start setting alarms). Find me when you're up, and message you know who.>

I suppressed a laugh at his abbreviation for the sake of secrecy given the means of communication and then shot him a reply letting him know I'd find him in just a bit. Then, knowing that putting off having a simple conversation had already led to turning one person into an enemy, I pulled my Friend's List open. I started mentally typing, stopping and erasing several times as I felt myself making stupid excuse after stupid excuse, deciding to just keep it short and simple.

<Loophole: Hey Mist, can we talk?>

Sophie was starting to stir and I looked down only to see her pull tighter against my side, one hand over my chest grabbing onto my side as she buried her head further from a stray bit of light that hit her from the window.

<Miss Mist: What, want to lecture me more about killing? Or is this some sort of trap because I'm supposedly betraying the others somehow?>

I mentally cursed myself for keeping it short and simple. How stupid could I be? Maybe I was just bad at admitting I was wrong…

<Loophole: No, no… sorry, I tried writing it out a few times but it felt like I was making excuses… which I guess is what I'm doing now… Some stuff has changed and I want to explain, but I'd rather do it face to face though.>

Sophie's hair hit my nose and I had to resist the urge to sneeze, though my hand pulled against her side and she stirred again, letting out a mumbled complaint for "five more minutes."

<Miss Mist: Where and when? Your base's entrance has become a bit too overrun with droids for my taste.>

I considered it for a few moments and then decided that I did have the perfect place, because if Jon's hunch was right and Hydramental had repurposed the old Viper base, I sure as hell wasn't going to let Miss Mist investigate it on her own.

<Loophole: Rooftop across from the south entrance to Grand Central Station in about a half hour at 9. That work?>

<Miss Mist: Fine, I'm not too far from there. But this better not be a waste of time. See you soon.>

I let out a small sigh of relief, happy that she was at least open to meeting. This bit of movement caused Sophie to stir again, finally coming up from her nuzzled position as she looked up toward me with sleep still in her eyes. She sat there for a few moments, looking up at me as she woke, finally allowing a smile to sprout over her face as she realized where she was.

"Well good morning sleepy. You look like you could snooze the whole rest of the morning," I said, breaking the silence and returning the smile.

"It's your fault. You're a good pillow," she replied, leaning down and kissing my chest before resting her head back against it. I moved my hand slowly up her back, causing her to shiver as she consciously pulled against me and I had to mentally tell myself to calm down as I felt her body next to mine. "No one's tried to blow the city up this morning, have they?"

"Nah, Jon probably would have kicked the door down if we slept through that," I said with a laugh.

Sophie had been slightly nervous when Jon followed us back into the apartment before we had started to get comfortable. He had told her, given the fact that she was spending the night and would probably not want to have a mask on all the time when he tried to walk through the place, what his name was. Since he was actually in the system, at least technically as my Guy in the Chair, she didn't get a prompt about protecting her Secret Identity when she returned the courtesy.

"Well that's good…" Sophie said, tracing a finger along my torso as she rested her chin on it to look toward me. "Do you think things are gonna eventually stop being so…"

"Insane?" I asked, finishing her thought as she trailed off and making her smile.

"Not really a better way to put it I guess," she said, her lips turning down briefly. "Might be nice to have an actual full day off, even the crappy internship I did during the Summer before my Freshman year at SUNY gave us weekends and the occasional Wednesday off…"

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"If… When we put a stop to things with Hydramental… Well, hopefully things here in the city can start to become normal again, though I guess the rest of the country isn't exactly doing much better…"

"Plus Tempest's Wrath is apparently lingering around, you already had to fight her off once…" Sophie offered and I rolled my eyes. "We should probably add her to the list of things we are going to need to take care of…"

"And here I thought you were trying to get things to be less insane," I teased.

"I want people to stop trying to kill yo- er… attack the city… I want people to stop attacking the city…" she said, her cheeks growing red as she caught herself. She was about to hide her face when I moved my other hand to her chin, holding her there before she could move, unable to take my eyes off of hers. "Nate…"

It was another ten minutes before we finally made our way back into the Squad Base, fully in costume as Jon greeted us with a wave. The rest of the base was empty and Swansong let go of my hand as she headed straight for the coffee machine in the kitchen.

"How are things looking?" I asked, walking over to the glass separating the Command Room.

"Freak's got another forty minutes for the New York token, that'll make two for the day so far. TailStrike picked up the one out in California only a few minutes after it spawned. Pinky and Duskbreaker are making their approach but the assumption is that Sergeant Sting will be there as a guard still," Jon explained quickly. "There uh… there were a handful of Clockwork Spiders spotted in Hell's Kitchen over around 11th and 53rd this morning just after Freak had finished claiming the 6AM token. He rushed over and crushed them before they could do too much property damage or cause an alert to wake you guys up but uh… well they managed to wreck a few abandoned buildings and a good portion of Dewitt Park."

"Just another reason to make taking care of Hydramental a priority," I said, setting my jaw. "I messaged Miss Mist, I'm going to meet her over at Grand Central here at 9 to try to set things right."

"Do you want me to come too?" Swansong asked, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee.

"Umm… it's up to you," I said honestly. "My assumption is that Mist is going to want to infiltrate the base right away, if I can get back in there too, I kind of want to go with her, if nothing else to keep her from exposing that we know where one of their main bases are."

"She's an infiltration specialist," Jon said, arms crossing across his chest. "I had asked her what that meant and it basically means she has abilities that let her enter the kind of bases and other places you have to have "permission" to enter normally. I don't think you'll be able to get back into the base the same way as her."

"Oh… shit… I sort of thought that since I'd been in there before and had just been able to go through the front door last time, maybe I could do it again," I said a bit sheepishly, rubbing the back of my head.

"The base has traded hands since then, plus you had the key Axio had generated to lead you there," Jon explained, pulling open a few windows on his screen, including a few different descriptions for Features named Infiltrator, Skeleton Key, and Universal Acceptance.

"I did a lot of digging last night since I sort of had the same thought. There are a few item features that could let you break into enemy Squad Bases, but as far as I can tell they gotta be rare as hell. Freak checked the resale shop when he and Pinky were on their way to the Common Ground last night and didn't see a single one. The fact that Miss Mist can make abilities that let her do it, well obviously we don't have a database that will tell us if there are others like her, but… Well as far as I can tell, you can't even use something like your Quantum Leapfrog to let Miss Mist go in the space and then swap places with her because the ability has to specifically mention Permission Bypassing."

"Hmmm that's unfortunate… but I wonder…" I said, raising a hand up to my chin as I thought about it.

Sure, maybe I wasn't exactly some sort of stealth specialist. Even if I had once thought I'd keep an entire Action Bar Revolver slot set up specifically around infiltrating places, I really had leaned heavily into my offensive options instead, truly becoming, as Jon would put it, a "brawler." I didn't necessarily think I had made the wrong decision, and given the wide variety of enemies I'd actively had to fight, I didn't regret it either, but it had left me a bit underprepared when it came to infiltration skills that weren't just "knock the door down." It also didn't mean that none of my currently available knowledge pools were useless either. If there was ever a time for Quantum Shenanigans, this certainly felt like it and I made sure to focus at least partially on my Echo Step ability, hoping I could use that as a baseline for the idea.

"New Ability! Quantum Imprint. Now these are the kind of shenanigans I want to be seeing! We're digging into a whole lot of nitty gritty here so try to keep up. Whenever you go somewhere, you leave tiny little bits of matter and an actual imprint on the world around you. When you use this ability, establish a quantum resonance between your current self and a previous version of you that once occupied the targeted location. If you have ever physically entered a permission-restricted area, your past spatial imprint remains recorded and accessible as long as you can place the location within your Local Area. This ability costs Stamina equal to the base cost of your Echo Step (475 points) plus 25 points of Stamina per day since you were last in the location PLUS 500 points of Stamina to break Permission based restrictions. Does this require a bit more math than you're used to? Probably! But given the complexity of what you want to do, I think you'll be fine keeping up. This ability has a one hour cooldown."

Jon let out a bark of a laugh as he shook his head, clearly reading a new window that opened up when I created the ability.

"Well that'll do it," he said, still shaking his head. "I must need some sleep if I thought your broken power set wouldn't be able to come up with something… though I guess I did pass out at my desk here for a few hours last night."

"You didn't have to abandon the apartment just cause I was there," Swansong said before she took another drink from her cup.

"Eh, I had research to do and am bad at keeping track of time," Jon said with a shrug, briefly meeting my eyes before opting to change the subject. "Okay, you got a way in… I'm guessing you'll do something like, what, Spectrum Veil to stay invisible in case of cameras? I'm hoping the goal isn't to start some giant brawl without the whole group there as backup…"

"If I can help it, I don't want to let it turn into a fight of any kind, there's too many unknown variables still. I'll tell Miss Mist that this is just a scouting mission, especially since we need to make sure we know how many clones he can make at a time before revealing that we know where he's hiding… But no matter what, I'll let her know the plan is to put him down for good, as long as he's a threat to people, he's too dangerous to leave alive," I said, tapping at my chin as I noticed the time. I was going to have to really put on the speed if I waited too much longer to get out the door, and I'd probably need to use my Veil just to dodge past any droids lingering around the tunnel entrances.

"Are you even sure he's going to be there? What if it's not even one of their bases?" Swansong asked curiously and I shook my head.

"Honestly... I'm not sure. I think Codex's hunch is right about this one... it just feels... well ... right. But for all we know Hydramental is still wherever Perry disappeared to, though I still don't get how you make a robot that big simply vanish, the bay isn't that deep," I said, eyeing the time again. "Regardless, if it is one of their bases, even if they aren't there, we'll know. Maybe that won't be useful information, maybe it will… And if it's not one of their bases... well then at least Mist will know we are willing to go as far as we need to with this. All I know for sure is that we've been reacting. Over and over again, and it's left us stuck on our back foot. If this has a chance to be even remotely successful, it's something I have to at least follow through on."

"Makes as much sense as anything," Jon agreed with a nod. "Well if Swan isn't going to go with you, I'd suggest she goes and reads that Stamina Management book you made, maybe use the Study Hall while she has the time… you know, something all of you need to be better about doing?"

"Yes dad," she said, rolling her eyes as she turned, stepped up onto her toes to kiss my cheek with a whisper of, "don't do anything stupid," and then headed for the back hallway.

I didn't linger much longer, heading out the door with Spectrum Veil activated, which let me skirt past the handful of Clockwork Gorillas I noticed waiting to pounce before I could accidentally scan them and equalize them to my level. Had this been the first time they were there, I might have taken the moment to let Miss Mist know I was handling a quick fight and would be just a few minutes late. But without anything other than maybe some experience on the line, I doubted this would be the time that destroying them would keep them gone for good.

Once I was clear and sure I was pointed in the right direction, I put on the speed and crossed the distance in barely over a minute, actually overshooting my destination on accident once I did finally slow down. When I did finally circle back, lowering my altitude until I could better make out details, I spotted Miss Mist perched on the exact building I'd been hoping she would go to.

"Now remember," Jon said as I went in for the landing. "Don't put your foot in your mouth this time."

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