“Phase Points Gained! Team Victory: Complete an objective while a part of a team. This gain has a static value. Modified by Squad Trophy Valor Crest. Total Value: 250 points. Crowdpleaser: Complete an Encounter with an Audience of Sapient NPCs. 10 points per NPC. Total Value: 3470 points.”

  “Crime Alert Completed! Citizen Unrest. You have received a Medium Reputation Boost and a B:Tier Squad Base Loot Box.”

  I hesitated for a moment as I stared toward Hydramental, unsure of what to make of his sudden appearance. While I knew Axio would set up a lot of things, he had been pretty adamant about how the rest of this phase was supposed to go during his announcement not even an hour earlier. It seemed more likely that this was nothing more than a coincidence, which somehow just did not sit well with me.

  I lowered myself down toward the rooftop just as Hydramental wandered over toward the edge, peering down toward the crowd before looking over at me expectantly.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” I asked, unable to stop myself and he overdramatically rolled his eyes.

  “Come the fuck on man,” he groaned. “I might out level you now but I sure as hell ain’t going to think I can take down a Platinum level base on my own.”

  “Yeah how exactly did you jump up that far?” I asked, highlighting him.

  “Hydramental. Level 17 Elemental Everyman.”

  “How’d you jump from 8 to 13 a few days before the end of Phase One?” he shot back and I felt myself immediately tense up. I stared at him briefly, his eyes hardening as they met mine and I resisted the urge to swallow hard. Luckily for me though, I had had a few days to consider what I’d say if he did ask.

  “The mission I had for that Snake Key came with a good reward and a lot of experience. I was more surprised that there weren’t more people that jumped up in levels at the end of the phase,” I lied, looking down toward the crowd just to have an excuse to look away and Hydramental let out a huff.

  “Well if yah know there’s missions that can give you boosts like that, then how dumb do you have to be to wonder how I got these levels then?”

  “Huh… well that sorta backfired,” Jon chimed in and I clenched my jaw. If I pried, he’d have to assume I was hiding something and that wasn’t a road I wanted to go down.

  “So are we doing this or what?” Hydramental asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t let me on that squad of yours but you’d team up with me in the field if needed?” he continued, arms loosening as he gestured over to the building. “Well it’s fucking needed.”

  “Okay, okay,” I muttered, looking back over him and opening up the menu before I hesitated. I turned my attention back inward, focusing solely on the Squad channel that left Duskbreaker out of it. “Codex, lips shut outside of this channel. Swansong, I’m inviting Hydramental into the team. Between us, him and Duskbreaker, we should hopefully be able to take down the Forge… I think at least.”

  “I’ve got myself locked into this channel, I’m not gonna be the one to slip up this time,” Jon said with a laugh.

  “Okay… should we, uh, make sure Duskbreaker is good with that?” Swansong asked and I suppressed a laugh of my own. I had sort of just taken his assistance as a guarantee when we had just left him to fight with Barracuda.

  “Dusk, you okay?” I called out over the general chat, unintentionally shortening his name, though he didn’t correct me.

  “Yeah, Barracuda got away though… sorry,” Duskbreaker said timidly. “I thought I had him secured and was trying to get in contact with the Non-Sapient in the Harlem Police District when he… er… well he got away.”

  I silently cursed but tried to put it behind me. I would have rathered that we had gotten the chance to ask Barracuda a few questions about what the hell he was thinking, but without rewinding and diverting my attention from Hydramental, I wasn’t quite sure how to do that.

  “Honestly, don’t worry about it, we got bigger fish to fry,” I said and Angie audibly groaned in my head. It took me a second before I realized what I said and I suppressed yet another laugh at my unintended joke. “Hydramental popped up and helped clear out the droids on the top of the museum here, we are gonna try tackling the Platinum Droid Forge to stop the production in this area. You in?”

  “I, um… well I,” Duskbreaker started, tripping over his words before he cleared his throat. “I mean, yeah of course. I just don’t want to be in the way and felt like I messed up with the capture…”

  “Look, don’t worry about it, Barracuda’s already shown himself for who he is, we’ll be ready for him next time, okay?” I said.

  “I… Yeah, okay,” Duskbreaker replied back quickly.

  “Swansong lead him over, we will meet you at the entrance,” I said before I turned my attention back to Hydramental who was uncharacteristically actually waiting, though he did look annoyed all the same. I sent him the Temporary Team-Up request and he quickly accepted it with a smirk.

  “Was wondering how long you guys were gonna have your little pow-wow,” he said and wandered toward the far side of the roof. “Let’s hope they tossed most of their forces out here for whatever this sorry excuse for a trap was.”

  I was just about to wonder how he was planning to get down from the roof when his red form split off from the main body and jumped over the edge. More out of curiosity than anything, I jumped into the air and flew over the edge, catching just as twin torrents of flame shot out from his fist down toward the ground, quickly melting the roof of a car unlucky enough to be below where he had jumped. When he was only a few feet above the ground, I saw a mass of glowing energy rush down from the roof and merge with the red form. A moment later, the fully formed Hydramental walked casually from the car he had set ablaze and toward the front entrance of the large building.

  It didn’t stand out as a shop, and was practically non-descript in appearance. Unfortunately, it was also thirteen stories tall and the entire building was highlighted when I tried to get a feel for how large the Forge was actually going to be. If I had to guess, the building was supposed to be designed for the sort of small offices that a new lawyer might rent out while getting their firm going.

  A moment after I set myself down on the ground in the middle of the street, Swansong came flying around the corner with Duskbreaker running along underneath before she also came to a stop next to me. She looked toward the building, then to Hydramental who was still heading right for the front door before finally settling on me with a curious glance.

  “We go in hard and search everything. I have to think they made some sort of tunnel over into the Guggenheim to set this whole display up, whatever the hell it was,” I explained and started to move to catch up with Hydramental. “Hydramental and I will take the lead and-”

  “Tsch,” Hydramental said as he stopped only a few feet from the door. “Try and keep up Loophole, you really lagged behind back with the Vipers.”

  Before I could finish laying out my plan, he stepped forward and kicked the door in. I looked toward Swansong who very subtly tapped on her wrist like she was pointing to a watch before I shook my head. The Temporal Sickness Debuff was still lingering in my status bar, though it only had 4 minutes left on the timer. I didn’t want to use the skill just to stop Hydramental from being… well… Hydramental and then have to wait 10 more minutes for the timer to fall off.

  I’d just have to hope there was nothing in the next few minutes that I’d need to rewind.

  “Heh… famous last words,” I thought and Angie just giggled.

  I rushed to follow Hydramental in, dodging as a Clockwork Monkey went hurtling past my head. Hydramental had immediately split off all of his forms, only leaving his brown clad version behind to casually stroll into… well… I had no idea how to easily explain it.

  The outside of the building had been little more than a facade, with the entire center of the structure opened up, all the way up to a large skylight in the ceiling that I was almost positive wasn’t visible from the outside. There were several floors inside of the build, but they only ran as thin sections, leaving a large square cutout. Sitting in the center of that cutout was a large metallic egg that was easily every bit of 10 stories tall. Panels, cables, and pistons all over the surface moved in no discernible pattern as small bits of steam and vapor occasionally puffed off of it.

  “Clockwork Egg. Level ??? Mechanical Egg. No Loophole, I don’t know what’s inside of it or why it looks like an egg… I’d personally suggest trying to scramble it before it could hatch though, cause nothing that big can be good.”

  I had to tear my eyes from the egg as another screeching monkey came hurtling toward me. It landed a blow, but instead of rewinding, I used the close proximity to make sure I was able to grab ahold of the droid. My hand closed around the mechanical arm before I whipped it around in a circle, tossing it toward a group of humanoid looking droids that had been working practically undisturbed on computers in the corner of the room.

  Unfortunately, and to my surprise, the monkey didn’t explode. I looked over in time to see Hydramental’s yellow form send a large burst of lightning through a Clockwork Kangaroo that tried flanking him. The droid shook and its health bar went plummeting downward. The surge of electricity never stopped, arcing off of the droid and onto every single one of the nearby droids, both humanoid and animal-like in nature. Even as each and every one of their health bars emptied, none of them exploded.

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  “Okay hopefully this doesn’t bite us in the ass, but it looks like their “self-destruct” instinct isn’t active in here, that makes this just a bit easier,” I said, rushing the remaining Clockwork Monkeys near me and delivering blow after blow, letting the Passive version of Sting Like a Bee do as much of the work as possible so that I could reserve as much of my Stamina as possible.

  “It makes sense. You wouldn’t want to blow up the place that you’re using to build these things… wherever they are coming from,” Jon offered.

  Swansong jumped as she made her way further into the room, floating up into the air to get a better vantage point as Duskbreaker went running toward a long staircase on the far side of the room leading up and around the corner of the building. Swansong immediately began to sing, belting out the Song of Hercules as we each tried to thin out the veritable swarm of droids.

  “What’s the goal with this anyway? Do we have to clear out all of the enemies or is there some task we are supposed to do?” Swansong asked and then, almost as if expecting the obvious question, she added, “I never actually had any of these bases to handle in Phase One.”

  “Lucky you,” Hydramental said a barely disguised sneer in his tone. His forms were scattering around the building and tackling various small groups of droids. The brown form that I knew was his "prime" body seemed to vanish into the chaos and I really didn't have the time to figure out to where.

  “All the ones I dealt with in the first phase generally required me to clear all of the enemies out,” I explained, dispatching the last of the monkeys before sweeping my vision around the room, “we probably need to shut down whatever Tyrant is using to build these things so that he can’t just start it back up after we leave. The bases I dealt with in Phase One didn’t get remade… but I wouldn’t put it past Axio leaving that possibility open.”

  While all around the room there were a few stations set up with droid parts scattered atop of them, it wasn’t like the final Viper base where there were clear vats that the Non-Sapients had been grown in. I was just about to start looking for a staircase to the basement that I was sure this building would have when Duskbreaker spoke up.

  “There’s a whole wall of 3D printers up here, a few of them are still hot.”

  “On my way, we need to destroy those. Hydramental, I’ll assume you can handle this floor?” I asked and all four of his clones let out a bark of a laugh as they circled around the base of the egg at the center of the room taking on the last few groups of Clockwork droids still resisting our entrance.

  I took that as answer enough and lifted off into the air, darting up past Swansong who looked toward me just as I passed, the sharp melodies of her Song of Hercules still echoing throughout the room. I went up and over the railing, catching as a handful of shadowy tendrils wrapped up and around an odd assortment of Clockwork animals, consisting of llamas, monkeys, and an entirely too large clockwork skunk, complete with a smell that made me want to gag lingering off of it.

  The deep purple energy radiated outward, hitting and wrapping around each of the droids as they froze in place, barely even struggling against their bonds. There was a pulse that hit each one of them and while I waited for something to happen, I wasn’t expecting them to simply shut down and fall over onto their sides. I was just about to ask Duskbreaker what he had done when my attention settled on him and I found sparks of electricity bouncing off his body.

  It seemed to take an almost Herculean effort as he turned toward the nearest printer, one of literally dozens of them lined up and stacked on top of each other, and, slow enough that a snail could dodge it, punched.

  There was a blinding flash of light that I had to immediately turned my attention away from and a loud BOOM echoed throughout the room and, only thanks to the fact that I had landed and was holding completely still, I felt as Duskbreaker got tossed backwards from the source of the explosion and up in and arc away from the wall.

  I jumped forward, getting my body between him and his escape path before he crashed into me and we tumbled down into the short ledge. There had been enough force behind the explosion that I was surprised that we didn’t burst through the wall and we both let out a sharp groan of pain.

  “What the absolute fuck was that?!” Hydramental asked and I felt my head spinning as both Duskbreaker and I struggled to get back to our feet.

  My health hadn’t taken much of a hit, but the concussive force of the explosion hurt all the same. Duskbreaker on the other hand wasn’t so lucky and his health was teetering on the edge of empty. He looked visibly rattled and his hand shook as he materialized a health injector. Even after stabbing it into his leg, he still seemed to shake and he fell back onto the ground, arms resting on his knees as he took in slow deep breaths.

  “That was too many,” he groaned. I looked down at him, holding a hand out that he eyed cautiously.

  “I thought you said you weren’t an offensive type?” I said and after another moment passed, he took my hand and I helped him back to his feet. There were a few more droids coming down the staircase on the far side of the room from one of the higher floors before I looked over at the entire segment of printers that had been outright destroyed just from the sudden burst of electricity.

  “I- I’m not,” he said, following my gaze toward the droids coming our way. “I can absorb a few different things, but energies are my newest and I don’t have a permanent storage so I have to let it out, which my ability doesn’t seem to be built for…”

  “Huh.. that doesn’t make sense,” Jon muttered, the quick clack of keys immediately following his words in my head. “Why would his powerset hurt him in order for him to use part of it? There’s gotta be something he’s missing…”

  “You can help him figure it out later, we’re kinda occupied,” I shot back and he laughed.

  “Just thinking out loud, you guys are doing just fine. Swansong, can you head up to the next level up, we should see if there are more printers up there,” he called out and I saw the flurry of her red hair as she shot herself higher into the sky, surprisingly just a little bit faster than I was used to seeing her be able to move.

  I looked back over to Duskbreaker. The injector he had used had apparently only been an Enhanced version and his health was sitting just a bit over 50%.

  “Maybe don’t go for the electricity again until you get a bit of a better handle on it, think you can still help me slow these guys down?” I asked and he nodded before a large pillar of ice appeared out of nowhere, launching Hydramental upward, high into the air.

  “There’s another wall of printers up here, some are still actively printing!” Swansong called out.

  “I’m on it! First floors cleared, come on, keep up assholes,” Hydramental called out, his voice echoing as several balls of light went chasing after the blue clad clone that had been launched off of the pillar. The lights merged back into his body only briefly before his red version broke off, landing on the ledge of the next floor up and pulling his original form over the wall in a single swift motion.

  The droids on our floor were still making their way around the long edge of the room, disappearing behind the Clockwork Egg. Making a snap decision, I turned my attention to the wall of printers, moving as quickly as I could toward the center of the mass and making sure as many of the printers would be affected as possible. In rapid form, I activated Quantum Echostrike and threw a mere 10% Gravity Punch.

  It was a risk to throw one that weak, but even though I wasn’t anywhere near as tech-oriented as Jon, let alone BrainCraft, even I knew just how delicate printers were at the best of times.

  A pulse of power echoed outward from my initial strike, hitting every single printer in range and crunching them inward. The entire section went dead, some starting to creak precariously forward from their mounts as I let out a breath of relief. There were still a few more to take care of on the other side of the destruction that Duskbreaker and unintentionally levied, but it was a far cry from having to suddenly worry about dozens of new droids getting printed the moment I turned my back.

  A group of half a dozen Clockwork Wolves charging our way around the side of the room were just turning the last corner before they had a straight shot our way when, almost like I could see my Misfortune Abound passive ability proc, the entire printer wall collapsed forward, crushing the pack of wolves underneath of it.

  There were larger droids that were still coming around the side of the room and finally into the rhythm of the fight, I jumped into the air and rushed, taking the fight directly to what I finally realized were Clockwork Orangutans.

  “Try and shut down those last few… you know… without hurting yourself this time Dusk,” I called back just as I drove my fist into the leading droid at a much faster speed than I probably needed to be coming in at.

  Maybe it wasn’t actually an ability since I just threw a standard punch, but the heightened speed I was moving at apparently added more to my strike and the Orangutans head was pulverized, quickly launched directly from its body and into the wall behind it. There was a sharp sting of pain that came with the strike and I even took just a few points of damage. That didn’t bother me though, because it still meant I had one less enemy to take care of.

  I was just about to start attacking the next of the droids when a sharp hiss filled the room and an alarm began to sound. Out of nowhere, the handful of droids on the pathway ahead of me froze up, their bodies falling to pieces before each and every one of those metallic scraps rose up into the air and went hurtling toward the Clockwork Egg at the center of the room.

  The alarm blared in a sweeping sound that echoed off every surface. I had to actually lift my hands up and onto my ears just to try and blot out a bit of the sound before it became ever so slightly muted.

  “Well I must say, I did not expect you to breach one of my facilities this quickly, and here I thought I was going to have to wait those damndable five days that Axio was enforcing on us,” Clockwork Tyrant’s voice echoed out and he let out a sneer of a chuckle. The various pieces of droids rushing in to the egg vanished in puffs of light just before hitting the egg and with each added piece that came into it it shuddered just a little bit faster. There was a single spot a dozen feet above me that was growing in light. “Luckily for me, he did say I was allowed to defend my assets if you lot tried to attack before I was supposed to continue your trials.”

  I had been batting the idea around in my head the entire day while I flew around the city looking for the Ascension Tokens. Each time I saw the giant Pangolin in the bay, I couldn’t help but think if I’d ever be able to put on enough damage to hurt something that big. I was already able to hit pretty hard, I knew that I could, but it took a lot out of me with each attack. Luckily for me, I wasn’t without options for layering those heavy attacks, even if it would take a lot out of me.

  I launched myself into the air, rushing toward the shining light. I wasn’t quite sure what the spot was supposed to indicate, but Angie had told me I should try cracking the egg before it could hatch. Maybe it had just been a bad joke, but with my Temporal Sickness gone, I always had to option to rewind if this didn’t work.

  The moment I was directly next to the growing blaze of light, I threw a Gravity Punch with every last bit of Stamina I still had in me. The entire structure shuddered as the knockback effect of the my Gravity Punch forcibly launched the egg backward toward the wall of the structure. It must have been reinforced though, because it managed to absorb every last bit of the knockback from my strike. I briefly started to fall, my flight disabling with my stamina bottomed out before I activated Quantum Overclock. My stamina filled all the way back to the top before overfilling to 125% and I launched myself back toward the egg.

  The blare of light flickered ever so slightly and I threw another punch, once again unloading every last bit of my Stamina in yet another Gravity Punch. The outer wall of the structure shuddered and I could hear the sound of creaking as I started to fall toward the ground again. I activated Quantum Overclock again and regained my lost ground as I rushed for its center one more time. I was trying to time this as best as I could, and the moment I got into range I stopped counting just a few seconds before I punched one last time.

  I let out a second 125% Gravity Punch and just as my stamina drained to zero, it quickly jumped up by 50% two times in a row as the aftereffect of my double usage of Quantum Overclock came into play. This last strike finally did the trick, sending the Clockwork Egg bursting through the wall and, with three quick follow up activations of Paradox Chain, striking the egg with repeated waves of damage, it shattered into thousands of pieces. They all went flying outward and into Central Park on the far side of 5th Avenue. I could vaguely hear Clockwork Tyrant letting out a string of obscenities before his entire PA system went dead.

  A veritable avalanche of notifications filled my vision and I let out a slow breath of relief as the first of them opened in my vision.

  “You have cleared this Platinum Level Droid Forge without alerting the local authorities. 1 of 10 New York City Droid Forges cleared!”

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  Quantum Overclock. Level 1 Activated Ability. Instantly refills and overfills your Stamina to 125% capacity, after 15 seconds you regain 50% of your Stamina and one instance of the Exhausted debuff is applied, reducing your natural Stamina and Health regeneration by 25% for 30 minutes. If you do not already have an Exhausted debuff when you activate this ability, refresh the cooldown on all abilities with cooldowns 10 minutes or less. This ability has No Cooldown and costs No Stamina but cannot be utilized if you have two or more instances of the Exhausted debuff.

  Paradox Chain. Level 2 Activated Ability. If activated within 5 seconds of landing a physical strike, create a Quantum Echo that strikes the same opponent from any direction of your choosing, dealing 100% of the original strike’s damage and all associated effects. This ability can be reactivated up to 4 times, losing 20% of the original strike’s damage with each activation. This ability costs 10% stamina for the first activation and 20% for each subsequent activation. This ability has a 30 minute cooldown that starts after you go 5 seconds without activating this ability.

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