Wildcard Assembly's Squad Base, Multiple Locations Current Phase Points: 155205 Current Ascension Tokens Applied: 32 End of Phase Two: 25D:03H:49M:38S

"Okay but what the hell does this mean?"

Jon was pacing back and forth within the Command Room as he parsed through what we had told him, a hand on his chin as he came to the exact same question that the rest of us did. Why was Barracuda compromised, and why was he trying to infiltrate Hydramental's group when we were under the impression that he was also compromised.

"Dude your guess is as good as ours," I said, my arms crossed as I leaned against the kitchen's bar. "The only thing I can think of is that Mr. Factory, whoever this dude is, knows how to break TechWarden's control, but who the hell is this guy?"

"It beats the shit out of me," Jon said, finally collapsing back into his chair. While the entire group could have been here, we were getting close to the 2PM tokens and everyone but Brain and I split up to hunt them down when the clock was about to roll over. "I mean, I've looked through every scrap of newspaper, every augment subreddit, and I can't find a single thing on this dude. It's like he doesn't even exist…"

"Duskbreaker insists he's quite real given the fact he had been charged with absorbing the man's Exhausted debuffs to keep the work flow going," BrainCraft said, rubbing his chin as he stared down at his own tablet. "But I do agree that it's rather odd there's been absolutely no reported sightings of the man past Duskbreaker and Skim's words. Speaking of, where do we stand on Skim? If Barracuda is compromised, there's obviously the chance he is as well, regardless if he got a level boost or not. We'd be fools to assume that the Acceptance Matrix can only be overtaken when in conjunction with a leveling boost."

"Yeah but it'd be weird to take control of Barracuda's while leaving Skim's alone. Besides, who even would have gotten to him and when? According to Skim, Barracuda had gone up in level after they woke up outside of Perry… though I guess that timeline is questionable if Skim is also compromised and this entire thing was meant to lure us into a trap," I said, pushing off the counter before circling around to the fridge to grab a bottle of water.

"If the goal was to overtake as many Acceptance Matrixes as possible, then TechWarden would have just had Skim try something against Freak when they bumped into each other. It would have been the best time for them to spring a trap and I was watching the entire time they were walking to the bar," Jon said, shaking his head. "They don't know you guys have been disabling them, so why wouldn't they have tried to get Freak while he was, at least from their point of view, separated?"

"Logically speaking, that would suggest Skim is telling the truth, but if that's actuall the case, well…" BrainCraft said, coming up short as he looked toward the ground and then over to me. "Look,I know you dismissed it yesterday when I brought it up, and I understand why you did… but you do remember who extracted those two from the pangolin, right?"

"Miss Mist…" I said, my brow furrowing. "She has been here with us during a lot of our discussions but I don't think we've talked about the Acceptance Matrixes around her once… Then again… she also knows we don't have the leveling time limits either… Fuck, is she working against us? Did you ever use your Acceptance Matrix scanner on her?"

"Of course I did, she was completely clean which is why it took me so long to even vocalize my concerns, but who's to say she even needed to be compromised to help?" BrainCraft said. His tone seemed almost casual, even as his brow furrowed in concentration as he looked back toward his tablet.

"That's still a bit of a stretch," I said. I wasn't quite sure why I was feeling so fervent in denying the possibility that Miss Mist was working against us. Her working with TechWarden certainly made a lot more sense than her working with Hydramental of course, but something had changed since I started forming my squad that had made me want to be less suspicious of everyone.

"Obviously it's possible that it's a stretch, but I'd have to assume TechWarden has some form of support staff or squad that works with him without having to be forced to or else even he wouldn't have been able to tinker with core mechanics of the system. Hell, you'd have to assume he is also one of the original developers, though that also raises the question of why he wasn't on The First's squad as well."

"I mean, I think that's the most obvious. If TechWarden is a bad dude, then The First who was like the Guardian wouldn't have wanted anything to do with him. If they were both developers, then who's to say they didn't have a giant falling out over how things were being handled?" Jon said, shaking his head and I found myself looking between the two of them.

"Wait what?" I asked, feeling like I was missing something. "The First is one of the develop-... of course he is. How- Wait, have you guys been working on something?"

"It is pretty obvious once you really take a moment to think about it, especially when you consider his name of all things," BrainCraft said, returning his attention to his tablet. "Besides, you do have plenty on your plate as it is Loophole, things like research can be left to the tech team,"

"To be fair, I was gonna bring you in on it when we had more details, I kinda figured you'd be the lynchpin in it all when we actually get you a meeting with the dude," Jon said, looking directly at me with a knowing look. "And even without knowing he's the developer, I'm sure you two have quite a bit to talk about."

"Well, yeah obviously but still, how are we even going to get a meeting with him?" I asked, taking a sip of water before Jon let out a laugh. "What?"

"You do see what just happened right?"

"Uhhh…"

"He's referring to the fact that you have seemingly forgotten we were talking about Skim and Barracuda but have gone on an unrelated tangent that's led to a different project entirely," BrainCraft explained and I felt myself squirm just a bit in embarrassment.

"I was going to get back to that… The First has just been a big factor in all of this for me, I think that kinda makes it excusable to be distracted by it," I shot back.

"Hey you're not gonna hear me arguing, but like Brain said, you've got a lot on your plate. We've at the very least made contact here last night, I figured that hopefully in the next few days we'd hear something back and that had been when I was planning to bring you in on all of it," Jon said with a casual shrug.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Wait what? You've already made contact?" I asked, maybe a bit too shocked.

"Technically Freak did. Dude surprised me when he said he had noticed her out there a few times so we decided to test our luck while you were busy with Swan. Your luck musta rubbed off on us cause we literally got her on the first try."

"I'm just glad I was able to catch up with them before she got to the bar. I'm not even sure how Freak noticed her though, we were all just sitting around when he gets up and goes to the bar. Next thing I know, he's back and saying he dropped the letters off, almost had to wonder if he had finally had too much to drink," BrainCraft said, causing Jon to give him a curious look.

"You know… I've been meaning to ask, what did you need to add-in so bad that you needed to catch up with them last night?"

"It's probably jumping the gun, especially since your note was a simple request for a meeting if at all possible between him and Loophole, but I created some initial diagrams of the Dead Zone device. I wanted to see if they could offer some notes on what might be missing," he explained. "Obviously it's a long shot given it's more than likely that TechWarden is responsible for those devices, but having those would be a.. er… forgive the phrasing… game changer."

"Okay, to be completely fair it was more than just a request for a meeting. I explained the background a bit and reminded them that both myself and Loophole backed their Kickstarter and we've yet to actually get anything out of it," Jon said, reaching for a bag of chips he had on the counter to the side.

"One might argue Loophole getting Augmented is getting something out of it," BrainCraft said, before reaching up to tap his chin. "I suppose the question is, did you guys do the transactions separately or did you send it in together?"

"We… oh shit… we had to have my mom put it in on her card since we were only 11…" Jon said, realization passing through his eyes.

"Yeah well if that were the factor for deciding who got Augmented, it would be your mom running around with super powers, not me," I said, before looking over at BrainCraft. "Plus, I doubt everyone who has been Augmented were backers or connected to them."

"It's certainly possible that there is some overlap between former backers and Augments, but I would wager a guess that section of the Venn Diagram is rather slim," BrainCraft said before shaking his head. "And no offense, but I think preordering most video games is for suckers. Developers never live up to their promises."

"I mean, yeah recently but you try telling that to a kid obsessed with super heroes before they were actually running around in the world," Jon said with a shrug. "Anyways, it's not like I need a refund or anything. Kinda wrote that off years ago. But hey, can't hurt to mention it, right? Maybe it'll bump me up on the list to be Augmented eventually."

"That's actually another thing that got brought up," I said, remembering our brief tangent while talking with Skim. Jon perked up at this, his brow raising as he looked over at me expectantly. "But before you guys chastise me for trying to talk about another thing, maybe we should circle back to what we are going to do about this whole thing with Skim and Barracuda."

"Okay, I'm totally proud of you for staying on topic, but also that is such a dick move," Jon said, shaking his head disapprovingly. "But fine, we can just circle back to that. I guess we need to what, come up with a few different plans for dealing with Barracuda and Skim?"

"It certainly does seem like everything really relies on if Skim is also compromised or not, correct?" BrainCraft said and I nodded. "Then I think our next step would be to arrange a meeting with him somewhere neutral to let me scan his Acceptance Matrix, we don't even need to tell him that's what we are trying to do, the man didn't seem exceptionally bright all things considered. If he's telling the truth, then following through with his request would effectively take two pieces off the board. And if he's not, well then we could still take two of them out, we would just have to account for that factor as we made any further plans."

"Hmm… yeah actually I guess that would be the next step, he did say he'd prefer if we didn't make a move for a few days at least," I said, setting the bottle of water down on the counter before opening my Friend's List in my interface. "Okay, I'll shoot him a message, see if we can organize something tomorrow, sound good?"

"Works for me. Trying to do anything else may be a bit overkill," BrainCraft said with a nod. "Besides, we don't need to have some sort of insane plot to handle every night."

"I think most of the squad would agree with you… though Pinky and Freak would probably vocally disagree," I said and Brain let out a laugh as his tablet dematerialized from his hand.

"Well you're certainly not wrong," he said, his hands clasping together before he pushed them toward the ceiling and stretched. "I'm going to get some work done in my Den for a bit if you guys don't need anything else."

"Wait, wait, wait, we are so not dropping the whole "other thing that got brought up" that Loophole decided to skip past like a dick. Did you guys figure something out about how people are picked?" Jon asked, his eagerness almost spilling out of the Command Room as he bounced in his chair like a toddler on Christmas.

"I think saying that is a bit premature just due to the limited number of reference points compared to the sum total," BrainCraft said, looking up toward the ceiling. "We found a commonality that we each shared and while that alone does seem to be itself a bit damning, we can't necessarily extrapolate and suggest that every Augment would match up with us."

"And that is…?" Jon asked, looking between us expectantly.

"We were all in some sort of accident," I said, almost hesitantly and I wasn't quite sure why. It wasn't like I was expecting him to go out and get himself mortally wounded just for the chance to be Augmented, but if I really thought about it, maybe there was a small part of me that wouldn't put it past him either. "Like, major accident level."

"I'd almost argue that in any other reality, all six of us should rightfully be dead already," BrainCraft added. "It would probably be seen as a bit rude to go around trying to take a survey of other Augments, but there are certainly other ways of trying to validate this hypothesis."

"Okay let's back up though for a minute," Jon said, holding up his hands. "If a thousand terminal patients suddenly were turning around every year, then you'd almost have to think "

"I've been looking into that actually," BrainCraft said, "Interestingly enough, I apparently don't have any medical records at all with the hospital I was taken to. I of course can't confirm anyone else given the whole Secret Identity thing, but it would be interesting to see if we could confirm similar results."

"Huh, I could look into that for Loophole. There's a part of me that wants to say it's a stretch, but given the way the system can stop people from talking about things, it's not unreasonable to suggest Axio or whatever controls the selection process just wipes your records clean. Wouldn't be much of a stretch all things considered," Jon replied with a nod. "Doesn't really help me much though. I'm sure as hell not about to throw myself into danger just on the off chance it gives me super powers."

"Wouldn't you though?" I asked, looking over at him and causing him to laugh.

"I'm 75% sure I wouldn't," Jon laughed. I was just about to chastise him when a new window popped into my vision.

"New Mission! What Came First? Uh oh Loophole, looks like someone isn't playing by the rules! Or… actually you know what, this is technically still the fifth day, maybe they are playing by the rules. A building in Washington Heights has collapsed, revealing a… you guessed it, GIANT CLOCKWORK CHICKEN! The area immediately around the building that it hatched from will be under siege in a matter of minutes. Seems like your day of kaiju fun is far from over, hopefully those troops of yours aren't scattered too far to the wind. Reward: You will receive a reward based on the outcome of this encounter. Good luck."

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