We first got our level ups handled, with Swansong having to go through and select a new Ability Augmentation while I only had to worry about assigning my new stat points. As usual, I dropped two points into my Luck and then this time around I put two points into my Strength while my Pendant of Paramount Ascension automatically raised my Style up by yet another point.
After that was done, we turned to our loot boxes. While Swansong had managed to rack up a few of them, mostly coming from a variety of achievements for keeping Sapients safe within active combat zones, I had only managed to get two loot boxes since the phase had started. One of them was just a D:Tier from an achievement called Droid Destroyer for destroying over 200 of the same “class” of enemies and the other was the A:Tier I had received after first using my rewind.
The D:Tier had predictably been unimpressive, with just a few Standard Stamina Injectors and 250 Credits. The A:Tier however came with an upgrade I had long been waiting for.
“Championship Ring. Equippable Ring. It’s a really good thing this gaudy thing is covered by both your gloves and those hand wraps cause it is really an eyesore. Then again, I’ve seen enough versions of this thing that I think that might be the point. Oh well, you’re not wearing it for the looks, you’re wearing it for those sweet, sweet stats. +3 to Strength, +2 to Dexterity, and +1 to Style. This ring comes with the Champion feature.”
“Champion. This feature grants you a bonus to your base damage based on your position on your wave’s leaderboard. Starting at Rank 10, receive a 5% increase to your physical damage for each additional rank (5% at Rank 10, 10% at Rank 9 and so on.) If you are the Top Rank on your Leaderboard, this increases to a total of 60% increased damage and you gain the additional feature Champion’s Presence. This increases at a rate of 1% per day for each day you stay on the leaderboard beginning from the moment you equip this ring for the first time, regardless of at which rank. Please Note: Unequipping this ring does not reset the current damage increase, however, falling off the leaderboard, trading it, or selling it to another Augment does. Current Increase: 61%.”
“Champion’s Presence. This feature is only active if you are the Top Rank on your Leaderboard. Any enemy within 20 feet of you suffers a 10% reduction in their damage output and movement speed, while team members within the same range receive a 5% boost to their own damage and speed.”
It was only by a few hundred points, and it was entirely possible that Tempest’s Wrath would pass me by again with us now slowing down for the evening, but I had been a bit surprised to find that I had risen back up to the top of the leaderboard, now for the second time. under different circumstances I might have been feeling a bit proud of that. But as I tried my best to refocus the team as everyone started to spiral, I pushed the thought out of my mind. At the end of the day, while it was nice to have the extra damage and the extra boon from being at the top, I’d let myself feel proud about it when my city wasn’t under siege.
Although we knew that Axio had coordinated the hundreds of sieges across the hemisphere, they weren’t happening in any sort of perfect synchronization. I had only briefly been able to talk with Pinky as they fought their way through what she had referred to as an actual, building-sized ant hill. Hearing of the monstrosities they had been fighting since the night had started, I couldn’t even begin to describe just how glad I was that we were only dealing with mechanical giant animals as opposed to real ones.
Part of me had hoped that if we warned them about the possibility of large scale hostages it would at least give them something to work off of, but there was a sinking feeling in my gut that had been screaming it was too little too late.
I had retreated into the Garage Gym after Swansong had drifted off to sleep and while Jon had initially been furiously searching for any scrap of information he could find, eventually even he fell asleep on his desk. Although I had been going just as long as the others, I just couldn’t find it in me to actually stop and close my eyes. I had already transcribed my different Level 6 knowledges into new books for our Library and I couldn’t utilize the gym again just yet, but the room still gave me a bit of comfort without disappearing back into my bedroom.
There was the smallest part of me that wanted to go out and scout, but I didn’t want to risk seeing something that made me angry enough to attack and risk Clockwork Tyrant following through on his threat. While I was relatively confident in my self control, it just wasn’t something I was willing to risk. After I had been sitting in silence for almost too long, a message window opened.
I looked at the message curiously before looking at the phone mod on my interface to check the time. It was getting close to midnight for us, but for him and Pinky it would only be getting close to around nine.
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I made my way back through the base, stopping only to pick Swansong’s blanket up off the floor and checking to make sure that Jon wasn’t drooling all over his equipment before I slipped first through the portal into my room and then through the portal hiding behind my completely full Display Case.
While I hadn’t exactly made it a point of being in the Square this late into the evening, it felt strange that the normally busy courtyard was practically empty. There were a few people navigating the sidewalks between the segments and heading up toward the portal wall, but the normal air of relaxation that typically permeated the space was nowhere to be found.
It made sense of course. Even if the Augments in Europe, Asia, or Africa weren’t dealing with the same kind of chaos, it was impossible to believe that there weren’t any Augments in their area trying to launch similar attacks. I tried my best not to linger on the implications of it all too much as I headed into the bar nestled right at the center of the courtyard.
“Oh wow…” I muttered as I walked through the nearest door.
Part of me had wondered if maybe my instincts were just completely off as I looked around the packed bar. The various screens that were normally showcasing highlights of different fights were all playing footage that must have been either streaming live or coming through news channels across the world. I even briefly noticed the orange flash of my jacket on one of the screens and turned to keep my head down as I headed toward the same back corner that BrainCraft and I had met up in previously.
He nodded to me as I approached and I noticed that the bulky pair of goggles that had been acting as his mask had been changed out for a smaller, more sleek pair of round glasses with tinted lenses. They were honestly small enough that I almost had to assume that they sported the Who’s That feature just to keep his Secret Identity safe. One of his spiky personal auditory barriers was already spinning at the center of the table as I sat down.
Only a few seconds after I sat down, one of the NPC waitresses approached the table and, feeling my stomach rumble, I placed a quick order for a midnight snack.
“So how are you guys holding up?” I asked and BrainCraft shrugged.
“As I mentioned, Pinky is rather furious at the destruction that’s been caused. She’s originally from a smaller town and our entire region is wrapped up with Sacramento being where The Hive is basing their attack out of,” he explained. “Unlike how compact your region is given the density of New York City, The Colony has been taking advantage of how spread out things are for us to make it more difficult to slow down their advance. We’ve unfortunately had to do exactly as you and are having to just let them keep the population hostage until the end of this evening. Hive Queen even made it a point of showing off that they had captured both Lock N’ Load and ClothWhip.”
Other than the difference in our regions, it was exactly the same scenario that Swansong and I had found ourselves in and it more than confirmed my theory that the wholescale destruction or genocide of non-Augments wasn’t the main goal of this large scale assault on the world. I opened up my Friend’s List as I thought about the continued capture of the higher leveled Augments and saw that Silver Wrangler’s name was still appearing on my list.
I wasn’t necessarily sure if it would have faded if something had happened to him, and I wouldn’t be able to check for sure until I had left the Common Ground, but I was going to have to make sure I reached out to him to check in once I could, especially since he had been moved over to the Guardian side when the evening had started.
If that meant anything at all to me, it was that he wasn’t working with Desperado Incorporated, the squad that he had let me know were attacking his region.
“As much as I want to try to figure out what the point of this insanity is, I don’t believe there is much good that can come from hyper fixating on it for the time being,” BrainCraft said, practically reading my thoughts, almost to the point that I briefly wondered if he had some sort of telepathic ability that worked without being inside of a team chat.
“Yeah… I hate to admit it but it’s the same thing as the hostage situation… there’s pretty much jack shit we can do about it unless we want a whole lot of people to die,” I said. While this was something we had acknowledged within our squad, it felt… terrible… actually saying it out loud to someone else.
“Yes, the best we can do is to try to collectively increase our strength and assist each other to the best of our abilities,” BrainCraft said and I looked over to find a small smile on his face.
“Well.. yeah obviously, but it’s not like we can travel across the country over and over to help each other… can we?”
“It’s true that there are a lot of rules and regulations put into this system to prevent a lot of ways for us to rapidly deploy across the globe, though of course, there are also elements like the Guardian Guild Hall that are designed to let us reach more remote areas with speed too,” BrainCraft said. “That said, we might not have to be able to hop across the globe in order to assist each other.”
“Oh?” I asked with a raised brow.
“Did you know that the squad system is in fact designed to allow for more widespread team-ups?” BrainCraft asked and I just shook my head.
“Honestly, I’ve done a little bit of reading on it all, but I did only just form my squad recently and we’ve been pretty busy,” I said. “I sort of assumed that squads could be pretty spread out though, I just wasn’t exactly sure how it worked. Like, I know The First used to have a base in the city here, but none of his team members have been coming out of nowhere to try and help with any of this either.”
“It’s probably because they can’t, at least not easily,” BrainCraft said, stopping to take a sip from his drink as the waitress returned with a large, fully loaded burger and a plate of fries that she sat down ahead of me. “While you can utilize a squad base to fast travel if your Safe House is within the same region, the same can’t be said for members outside of the region. In fact, in order for them to access the Squad Base at all, the remote member would need to have purchased a base of their own. I’m sure you’ve seen that your base has a long hallway that ends rather abruptly, correct? That hallway is generally used to connect various different squad bases in different regions together, allowing for larger squads and a greater deal of versatility.”
“Oh… you want to merge our squads,” I said as realization kicked in and BrainCraft nodded.
“It would seem to be the best choice in a lot of ways,” BrainCraft said as I stopped to take a bite out of my burger. “While we might not be able to quickly travel across the country out of each other's exits, we still would have a variety of advantages that would make it more than worth it to do. Not only would we be able to share Base expansions, we’d all have access to two regions worth of Ascension Tokens which would be a good advantage to have, especially given a hidden point modification to them that Axio rather conveniently left out of his phase announcement.”
“There’s a modification?” I asked once I had swallowed.
“Yes. I discovered it when I was able to get into the control panel for our Ascension Upgrader,” he explained. “There is a setting in place that makes Ascension Tokens gathered outside of your region worth 50% more when you collect them. Meaning any tokens that you guys gather would be worth 3000 points for us and vice versa.”
“Shit… yeah this is basically a no brainer… though I should run it by my squad to make sure they are cool with it too,” I said and I saw as BrainCraft’s eyebrows jumped up with curiosity.
“Did you add an additional member to your group? I thought it had just been you and Swansong?” He asked and while I might have wanted to curse myself for accidentally revealing Jon’s existence. I had even managed to keep it from the larger part of my explanation to both him and Pinky a few days earlier, but it really didn’t matter if we were going to end up merging together since they’d get to see him anyway.
“It’s a bit complicated but I actually think you’re gonna find it interesting,” I said. “Trust me, I’m pretty sure everyone will be on board, but we have a consensus rule that I want to make sure we stick to, even when the decision seems obvious.”
“Fair enough,” BrainCraft said with a nod.
“Would we be joining your guy’s squad then?” I asked and he just shook his head.
“We will initiate a squad merge at the registration office… Well… technically you and Pinky would have to initiate it as the leaders of the respective groups and then a new name would need to be assigned. Interestingly enough, the original squads will still technically exist, they’d just be listed as subgroups to our new, larger group.”
“Ah, so you won’t be ditching the Pinky and the Brain name anytime soon then, huh?” I asked and BrainCraft let out a sigh.
“Unfortunately no, I don’t believe we will.”
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Well, it's probably about time for an extra stat update:
Loophole - Level 15 Perfect Planner
Current General Stats
(denotes score increase from Pendant of Paramount Ascension)
Current Equipment
Features:
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