Neighborhood: Claimed by Guardian Squad: Fortune’s Cadence
City: Claimed by Guardian Squad: Four Corners (Contested by Miscreant Squad: Droids R’ Us)
Current Phase Points: 26705
End of Phase Two: 29D:23H:50M:37S
“If there was ever a time for your luck to shine well god damn did it not choose a pivotal moment,” Angie’s voice chirped in my head. There was an odd lack of noise other than her voice and I realized that my perception of time had shifted, causing things to slow to a stop. “We’re gonna slow things down here for a minute or two so that I can get through this explanation, cause boy oh boy are you going to need it.”
“What-”
“Oh Loophole, if there was ever a time to just shut up and let me speak, this is going to be it. Here, I’ll even promise to stay mostly on topic. P.A.I.’s honor,” she said before I could even start to respond. “First thing’s first, let’s talk about the actual functionality of how Hidden Powers integrate into the system. See, as I mentioned back when you were first going through power selection, the powersets available to players come in a wide, wide variety but this is done by mixing and matching a bunch of different powers together. Pretty much each power can be either a Primary or a Secondary power and each player has their own unique combination.”
A window opened in front of my vision and listed out each of my powers side by side before a third column formed and pushed the other two together to the side.
“Hidden powers themselves are wholly unique. There will be no other Augment in the game that has your particular hidden power and it is highly advised that you not disclose it to anyone, as this power should be considered your ultimate trump card. By the way, can I just say that that overpowered luck stat of yours is really putting in some work. I mean, obviously this power was attached to this powerset from the beginning, but you rolled the dice when you let me randomize your powers and you’re about to be handed something you probably wish you would have had in high school. Jon told me about what happened when you asked Rebecca to prom… Don’t worry, we can both pretend that never happened.”
The window began to populate as an icon that looked like a pocket watch appeared simultaneously in the window and at the very end of my action bar in a new section of its own.
“Timekeeper! This is your Hidden Power. It is currently Level 1. You now have access to a Time Bank and the Timekeeper's Control ability. This Time Bank has a maximum capacity of 15 minutes and refills once daily at 6:00 PM EST. At any time you may use up to 5 minutes of this bank to rewind time, not just in your Local Area, but everywhere. While Axio certainly might have tried to make this work so that it would only happen within your local area, the fact that your area is mobile and this ability lets you rewind as much as it does just leaves way too many paradoxical questions that are impossible to answer by not just making this power affect everything. No Loophole, I’m not fucking with you, you have a rewind button. Now before you start thinking about how you can break and exploit this ability, because let’s face it, that’s who you are, I’m going to crush some of the first ones you might think of now.”
“Shouldn’t you be telling that to Jon?” I muttered, although I would be lying if I tried to claim that my mind hadn’t immediately started to think of the possibilities. To be fair though, it was either that or just freak out that I was able to reset time.
“Don’t you worry, I’ll be filling him in once we’re done and you back things up, probably in much, much, much more detail since he’ll ask a million and one clarifying questions,” Angie chirped with a laugh. “Let’s break everything down for you though, since it is your power after all. The overall functionality of Timekeeper’s Control is actually rather simple. You activate the ability, choose an amount of time, up to a maximum of 5 minutes, and then POOF you reset yourself back to that very moment, right down to the status of your cooldowns, abilities, buffs, and debuffs. Once you have set your reset time, the full use of this ability will go on cooldown for the amount of time you rewound, however you may still spend additional time from your bank on time that would bring you back to that initial time you rewound to or up to your maximum allotted time if you did not initially reverse time to that amount."
Angie seemed to stop for for what I had to assume was a moment to let me take in the complexity of the new ability, but I also heard her humming to herself as if she was considering her words.
"Okay... to make it simple, if you rewind at 6 for 5 minutes down to 5:55 and then time starts chugging, you can spend any amount of time from your bank to bring you back down to exactly 5:55 and not a second later, but if you only rewound to 5:57, you could still back up the additional 2 minutes if you later realize you need the additional time as long as it does not rewind past 5 minutes from the future moment you initially started rewinding. Is that clear enough for you, cause it’s confusing as hell to me. Point is that sorry Loophole, Axio doesn’t want you chaining this ability to rewind more than you’re supposed to. And before you go scheming, no, your abilities that refresh cooldowns will not affect this ability. Also, other than myself and Axio, you, and only you, will retain all memories of what you rewound. Note: If, like right now, you had just experienced a level up before you rewind time, you will not lose the level and if you assigned your stat points for the level, those choices will remain. However, to prevent you from rewinding a single instance to farm experience, you will only get experience from taking down any single enemy one time. Don't worry, we'll be the ones doing the tracking of that and anything that will not give you additional experience will be marked. Extra Note: In case you were wondering, like with the abilities attached to your Primary and Secondary Powers, this ability can be used when you are not in disguise. Extra, EXTRA, Note: If you are in the middle of combat when you utilize this ability, you may choose to switch to another one of your pre-made revolver options, providing you the ability to tailor your new try to the challenge at hand. WARNING: Repeated and overuse of this ability can leave your mind and body in a catatonic state for an extended period of time due to temporal sickness. Look, you’re messing with the literal fabric of time and space for a game, we’ve gotta make sure to put a limit on that somehow.”
I immediately looked at my mission tracker, seeing that it had only been 10 minutes since all of this had started. The implications of this ability were impossibly clear and the name of my powerset for once actually made a bit of sense. Sure, I didn’t have an infinite number of tries, but between the versatility of my main power and being able to reset things…
With a deep breath as time began to normalize, I activated the ability.
“New Achievement! Once More With Feeling! You have rewound time to take another shot at something that didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. It’s almost a shame that we don’t Augment people under 18 because you really, really could have used this in High School. Believe it or not, while your Hidden Power is unique, somehow this achievement isn’t! It was a unique achievement at one point, but now you’ve gone and messed that up for poor old… you know what, not important. This is a Mythic level achievement. Reward: You have received the power to literally rewind time and you’re still expecting a reward? Oh fine. You have received an A:Tier loot box.”
The bright flash of light faded and I found myself standing at the center of the broken Clockwork Monkeys. Their bodies were just starting to shake and lift into the air when I instinctively slammed on Center of the Universe, pulling the broken parts toward me just as many of the pieces started to clunk together. My sudden pull stopped at least half of the pieces from forming together and while the resulting Mega Clockwork Monkey was still larger than any one of the regular versions, when I scanned it the description only listed the Elite as Level 8.
“Holy shit, were you really so close to leveling that defeating those monkeys– WAIT WHAT THE HELL, YOU HAVE TIME CONTROL POWERS NOW?!” Jon’s voice was practically deafening, but I ignored it as I pushed off the ground. I dropped my gravitational pull as I rushed for the Mega Clockwork Monkey, ignoring the "no experience" marker that floated over its head and planting my feet before going to work as I began to stack the Target debuff on the monkey. I opened a chat menu as I remembered what was coming.
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I waved the chat window to the side as I heard a rumble. I risked a look over my shoulder, catching as the remaining pile of broken monkeys formed together, making a second Elite Level 7 Mega Clockwork Monkey.
“Dude! I can see your bank, you already used time!? What the hell did you see?” Jon asked and I felt as the monkey I had been assaulting used my brief moment of distraction to backhand me with a large metallic fist.
As I went flying I mentally activated Timekeeper’s Control, this time only backing up 10 seconds. I found myself back hammering on the first Mega Monkey. Its Target debuff had only risen to 50%, but it would have to be enough and I threw a 40% Gravity Punch. While it still tried to deploy its claws to counteract the knockback effect of my ability, between its lowered level and the increased damage I had poured into the strike, I had forced my way past its defenses. My initial string of attacks had destroyed the monkey’s shield and the powerful strike sent the drastically weaker monkey hurtling backwards before it slammed into the buried scale. It shattered into pieces just as I could hear the second monkey forming back together.
“Dude! I can see your bank, you already used time!? Why 5 minutes and 10 seconds… What the hell did you see?” Jon asked as I materialized a Superior Stamina Injector and used it.
“Wait you’re not joking? Do you actually have the ability to control time now, Loophole?” Swansong spoke up.
“Guys seriously. Not. Now. I’ll explain later,” I said through gritted teeth, pushing off and rushing for the second monkey. I actually used the parkour skills I had gained, dodging around the monkey by running along the side of an abandoned car before dropping behind the droid.
It seemed to have been anticipating a direct charge, as its claws had drilled into the ground the moment I had gotten close enough, but thanks to my dodge, I found myself on the opposite side of the monkey’s anchor, and this time I went for the kill shot from the start. I punched forward, releasing a 50% Gravity Punch that launched the almost laughably easy monkey from its spot, quite literally tearing its legs off at its ankles and destroying its shield and a good chunk of its health bar. I followed it up with Paradox Chain, letting my afterimage appear to drive a fist down and into the monkey, wiping out the rest of its health.
I jumped backwards as the remains of both of the Mega Monkeys finally stirred, shaking and then exploding, leaving small holes down and into the sewers of the city. If the rest of the city was anything like this, I felt terrible for whatever system was in place for responding to and repairing all of this damage.
“I’m really glad I can fly now,” I muttered to myself and then eyed my stamina bar. I wasn’t empty but with everything going on I needed to conserve as much of my stamina as possible. A thought from the first time I had gone through this came to mind. “Codex, you can see where the droids are popping up right, are there any to the north of me near the Guggenheim?”
“How many of these things are there… should we really have split up?” Swansong asked and I heard more explosions in the distance.
“Swansong I’m going to need you to keep singing that peaceful song, those guys in the back look like they are starting to get jumpy. Fucking hell Loophole, you’re right, how fucking much did you see?... Damnit I know Angie, it’s not the time… Okay, there’s a pack of Clockwork… I want to say Tigers? Yeah let’s go with Tigers. There’s some Clockwork Tigers outside of the Guggenheim. Swansong is funneling folks down into the subway on the West Side, it seems like the droids are zeroing in on your location instead of hers,” Jon called out and I found it interesting that Angie had said something to him during his rant. It wasn’t exactly the same as the first time I heard him say this, but it was still eerily close.
I looked up toward the Guggenheim, it was a few blocks up the street still and wasn’t an impossible distance to cover. I started running. Because of my ability to fly, it had been a while since I had actually just gone for a run, so it was easy to forget that increasing my Dexterity also increased my speed. I might not have passed for someone with Super Speed, but with the speed I was moving, I would have easily left an Olympic medalist in the dust.
There were still at least six and a half blocks between myself and the Guggenheim, but I was still able to easily see as a series of explosions lit up the street.
“Huh… That’s weird. They just disappeared off my map,” Jon said.
“No it’s not,” I said, leaping into the air and taking off as I flew forward. I landed on top of a car near the scene of the destruction, looking around. “Hey, who else is here? We could really use your help right now!”
The cars were a mess and fires were everywhere, but I couldn’t see any signs of life. While it was entirely possible that the other Augment had already run off from the fight, I had to hope that they hadn’t. I eyed the mini-map at the corner of my screen, noticing the red dot just in time as it came rushing toward me. I jumped off the car and out of the way just as a blur of grey flew past me, piercing the side of a nearby car.
“What the fuck was that?!” Jon shouted.
There was a burst of glass as the object knocked out the front windshield with a single strike. Unlike with its entry, it didn’t go rushing off in a hurry. Through the broken glass and onto the burning hood of the car, hopped an actual pigeon. I had seen the name more than a few times on the nightly recaps, I had seen the small bits of footage that he had appeared in, but even with that I still had just assumed there was some joke I was missing. Apparently… there wasn’t.
“PIGEON! Level 13 Pigeon.”
“Um… hello?” I called out tentatively, taking a step forward as the bird cocked its head to the side. “That thing is looking at me… right?”
“It’s an actual fucking pigeon… what the fuck?” Jon sounds exactly as incredulous as I felt.
I was just about to take a step toward the rather mysterious creature ahead of me, actually distracted from the chaos of the world around me when I heard a loud BOOM followed by a sharp whistling that filled the air. Pigeon immediately started to look around and a garbled sound of cooing and panic escaped its beak before it turned and flew off in a blur.
“Damnit…” I muttered as I watched it go. I had to assume that Pigeon had some idea of what was going on given the destroyed Clockwork Tigers, but even then I had to wonder if there was any way that we would have been able to communicate with it. I had to just hope that it wasn’t going to get in our way. I looked over toward Central Park, looking for where Grand Strike must have landed.
“What the hell was that sonic boom? The Sapients are all freaking out thinking there are bombs getting dropped,” Swansong said. I floated up and into the air, looking over toward where the older Augment had landed the last time.
“Hey Grand Strike, you okay?” I called over the Raid comms. I wasn’t entirely sure how the internal channels really worked, but the system almost seemed to intuitively know which level of access I was trying to talk to. It didn’t matter if it was just to Angie, to her and Jon, or all the way up to this Raid Group we now found ourselves in, the system just knew. The longer the silence held though, the less sure I was that I had spoken in the right channel. “Pinneedle?” I tried, just in case somehow it had just happened to someone else.
My attention was drawn over to the Raid Group and, much to my fear, one of the names had vanished from the list.
There was a loud screeching sound that passed through the air, enough that it rivaled the sound of the raid sirens and I had to reach to cover my ears. When the screech finally disappeared, I was finally able to concentrate on my chat window once more.
It was almost exactly what he had done for me. I gulped hard as I looked at my remaining Time Bank. If this was only the start of the evening, I refused to imagine this was going to suddenly calm down any time soon, but I couldn’t let him die if I could change it… could I?
“Dude are you going to-”
I activated the ability, resetting by two minutes and stumbling as I once again found myself mid-run. I was going to have to get a better handle on backing myself up into scenarios like this.
There were still at least six and a half blocks between myself and the Guggenheim, but I was still able to easily see as a series of explosions lit up the street.
“Huh… That’s weird. They just disappeared off my map… wait, why the hell did the bank just drop by 2 minutes!?” Jon said. “
While Pigeon’s existence was still interesting, it was quite honestly the least of my concerns as I looked around and launched myself up and into the air. I turned, orienting myself toward the Pangolin while I waited for a response.
I gritted my teeth together as I considered my options. At this point it felt basically impossible to warn Pinneedle without revealing exactly how I knew what I knew. Had it just been him, I probably wouldn’t have necessarily cared about Angie’s warning to keep my power a secret, but given that he’d probably tell Grand Strike and Hydramental about it to explain why they had to run, I found myself hesitating.
If Hydramental was compromised, which my gut insisted felt likely, then I’d be handing over what should be my biggest secret right to TechWarden. I needed to have a trump card against him, something that he couldn’t prepare for and until I was absolutely sure Hydramental was safe to disclose anything to, I couldn’t risk it. Unfortunately, that didn’t help me at that moment either.
There was a loud BOOM… and Grand Strike’s name vanished from the raid group.
Happy Monday! And welcome back! I hope everyone had a good week last week and I'm sure you'll all be glad I took the time to make sure I had all the kinks worked out of this power. Special thanks to the folks on my discord who helped me get the wording on Nate's hidden power just right.
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