“So, I’m surprised you actually sent me a teamup request,” I said, looking over my shoulder at him once we were far enough from the main platform. “Not saying I’m not cool with it, it’s just that there’s not really a mission we are gonna get team points for.”
“I’ve got some gear with the Team Player feature, more damage ain’t a bad thing, especially going into this,” he said with a shrug. “I also wanted to see how allies appeared on the mini-map upgrade I installed after the giant windfall I got from that street fight.”
“Ah, yeah I have that feature on some of my gear too, so it works out for me. How much did the map end up costing you?” I asked.
“25,000 credits. It was pricey as all shit, but I got really tired of having to double check where the hell I was going all the time,” he explained.
“Damn, that is a chunk of change…” I said, holding my tongue before I made a comment about him not using the cash for gear upgrades. It wasn’t my place to question his build choices, nor did I really care to try to point out flaws in his style. We slowed to a stop near an out of place indent in the wall. That alone might have made it an obvious place to investigate, even if it didn’t have the same Viper’s logo crudely spray painted into the spot. “You know, it really feels like a bad way to hide your bases by spray painting your logo exactly where the entrance to your base is.”
“Huh? You do realize the graffiti is just something we see, right?” Hydramental replied.
My head dropped to the side for a second before I turned my attention inward. “Is that right Angie?”
“Well we can’t have every random person just investigating all the places with obvious markings on them and it makes it easier for you Augments to find them,” She explained and I just let out a sigh as I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Huh, well no. I did not realize that… but I suppose it makes sense,” I said as I materialized the Snake Key into my hand. “Now, let’s see what this will do… not like there’s a keyhole for me to put it in…”
As the key formed, the rubies inlaid into it began to shine, sparkling and glittering just as the graffiti on the wall began to glow in unison from its proximity. It started from the center before it began rushing outward along each of the lines until the entire piece was shining a brilliant emerald green that I had to lift a hand to shade my eyes from. The light burst outward before the wall vanished and a long tunnel that faded into darkness was left in its place.
“Well that’s one way to make sure normal people don’t go wandering down there…” I muttered and activated my Area Sense, probing down into the tunnel for any rooms that I couldn’t see. As far as I could tell the place was just a tunnel. A tunnel that happened to be illuminated with a faint green light, but a tunnel all the same.
“I’m just wondering if this is just the normal city sewers or if it’s some alternate area like the square,” Jon wondered as I started walking down into the passage. The moment I crossed the threshold into the tunnel, Viper’s Headquarters flashed through the location panel on my interface and my mission tracker shook.
“Mission Updated! The Snake Key. Ooooooh boy! You did it, you found where the key led to! Now if you want that reward, you’re going to need to figure out what was so important that it needed to be locked up so tight. The reward for the mission is still an S:Tier loot box.”
We walked in silence for a few minutes, the barrier reappearing behind us as soon as we had both gotten about fifteen feet into the tunnel. Had we both not been dead set on continuing forward that might have been something to worry about, as it stood, it just worked to make sure no one followed us. The walls were made of solid concrete but it really didn’t look like any sewer I had ever seen. At the end of the day, it really didn’t matter what it was though, it was where we had to be.
“Have you ever seen your brother fight? Does he spit venom like Sal did?” I asked, finally saying something.
“Nah, I never got to see him fight, at least not in any real capacity. I’ve seen his snake form, though that’s only been twice and it’s not like I memorized his colors or anything like that,” he explained casually. Unlike our other discussions about him, bringing up Sal didn’t send him off the deep end. “But other than the biker incident, I never actually saw him in action.”
“Well hopefully he’s as weak as I accused him of being earlier…” I muttered before I could stop myself and heard his footsteps come to a stop. I stopped and looked back at him, his brow creased in frustration as I let out a nervous chuckle.
“You spoke with him?” He asked, his voice stern as he stared at me.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have said that…” Jon said.
“Loophole is good at putting his foot in his mouth,” Angie added with a giggle.
“I, uh… Yeah… I was just clearing the last den in my area and he sorta came over the speaker to taunt me,” I said, deciding trying to obfuscate it at this point was, well, pointless. “Dude sounded a bit posh to be honest.”
“Posh?” Hydramental asked as one of his brows raised.
“Yeah, it’s the best way I can think to describe it. He just sounded like he had a really high opinion of himself,” I explained with a shrug before turning and continuing to walk. “He basically invited me to come and try to take him down after I beat down a bunch of his men.”
“I really don’t get it,” Hydramental muttered as he let out a rough sounding sigh. “He was never like this before he got Augmented. Shit, the dude got both the Presidential Volunteer Award and a Future Leaders scholarship in his senior year…”
“I wonder what his P.A.I. was like, maybe he just snapped,” I suggested.
“Maybe…” He responded, though he sounded unsure.
“Are you going to just swing at him first or are you gonna to to talk?” I asked, stopping for just a moment and activated my Area Sense at the same time. On either side of the concrete coated tunnel there was nothing but filled space and it went on for as far as I could feel.
“He’s my brother… I need to know why this all happened, and if I can’t make him see reason… well he’s had his chance…” He trailed off again.
“One way or another this ends tonight,” I said, stopping again to look back at him. He looked back at me and I could practically see the fire in his eye before he gave me a curt nod. The tunnel seemed to have a bit of a curve as the darkness in the distance never got closer, but as I looked backwards, the same darkness overtook my vision. “Does that mini-map of yours show where this tunnel is heading?”
He shook his head, “No, it’s actually giving me a sort of fog of war effect. It did that in the last two dens I took down here this afternoon too, but when I'm just running around the city it shows up like it's Google maps.”
“What’s up with that Angie?” I asked internally.
“Certain areas, when designated as bases or game specific areas, will create a fog of war for those with the mini-map feature to protect any possible changes the controller sets in place. This is largely speaking a defensive aspect of base ownership. Other such defenses, when a base is properly leveled, include armed turrets, gas chambers of both the knock out and lethal variety, and of course, good ol’ trap doors.”
“Does that mean Loophole could eventually have a greater base than our Safe House here?” Jon asked and I couldn’t help but be curious as well.
“He could! Though that generally takes place after Augments form a permanent squad. Then each player would have an entrance to their base from within their personal safe house.” She chirped before she hummed for a minute. “That said, having a squad isn’t necessary to create one of these bases, it just costs a lot more on your own.”
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“Guess we better just keep going,” I finally said, deciding to let the topic drop instead of getting too deep into something that ultimately didn’t matter right now, though once again Jon and Angie seemed to drift off into a deeper conversation that I managed to zone out.
As we walked, every so often we stopped and I probed outward with Area Sense. Hydramental was of course curious as to what I was doing, but I had opted to largely keep my mouth shut, telling him I was just looking around for anything that might have looked out of place. The tunnel was curving back and forth, almost like a snake slithering, but there were noticeably no side paths. No hidden rooms or even guards patrolling that we had to dispatch. We had been walking for nearly a half hour, something that was easy to track due to the ticking timer on my Well Fed buff, when the faint sound of activity finally started to reach us.
“Let me scout forward really quick, I can go invisible and see what’s waiting for us. How's that sound?” I asked in a low voice. If they were close enough that we could hear them, then the same was going to be true for them being able to hear us.
“I mean, I’m fine with just going in hard and fast but if that’s gonna make yah feel better about it go for it, just don’t take too long or get too far ahead,” He said, though he didn’t seem to be pleased about it.
I nodded and turned, creeping forward as long as I could before I activated Spectrum Veil and approached the threshold into the room. The tunnel exited into what I could only describe as a large high school gym, complete with an actual set of bleachers along one wall. Basketball hoops on either end of the room, and a giant Viper logo painted, crudely, on the far wall. Gym equipment littered the rest of the floor and there were at least three and a half dozen men that I could initially see wandering around the room, stopping at the equipment and gathering in small groups throughout.
I dashed into the room and heard Hydramental’s heavy footfalls coming up behind me quickly. I hadn’t dropped my Veil yet, so the bikers didn’t look at me as I entered. Instead, I was able to make it about a quarter way into the room, heading right toward a half dozen level 5 grunts on the far side of the gym when shouts of alarm went off to Hydramental’s entrance.
I stopped hard right in front of the grunts just as they turned to rush toward Hydramental’s splitting form. The group was nice and close together, and I activated Quantum Echostrike before throwing a 25% Gravity Punch. There was a noticeable look of shock that passed over the group as I popped into existence, only for the entire group of them to get thrown backwards into a bench press.
Their health bars crumpled, all dropping to near critical from the single attack. I didn’t let up and fell atop them. I placed a few hard kicks to their stomachs and heads, knocking each of them out in a rapid succession. After seeing so many of my enemies crumble to dust, it was actually kind of nice seeing the floating KO debuffs over their heads. I had to keep telling myself, it wasn’t my fault that all of those soldiers were dead. I hadn’t forced them to inject themselves. Although there had been non-Sapients dead in my wake, so far, it felt like my hands were still clean.
Hydramental wasn’t striking nearly as soft-handed as I was and I turned just in time to see a grunt practically immolating in a blaze of red and orange flames. As much as I wanted to admonish him, to tell him to go for the knockout instead of the kill, the last thing I needed was him to decide to start throwing his attacks my way. If this proved anything it meant that even though Hydramental was working with me now, I still knew this was a one time thing. Even if we could be cordial, I couldn’t actively team up with someone who would kill indiscriminately.
A nearby brute called attention to me and the group finally split up, half trying to surround the Hydramental clones and the other moving to rush me. I activated Float Like a Butterfly and charged right back at them. I still hadn’t actually taken the time to figure out just what fighting style I had picked up when this all started, but I knew I was light on my feet and quick to strike.
“It’s Wing Chun, and very badly utilized Wing Chun at that,” Angie said with an exasperated sigh, “You’d think you would have looked that up by now.”
“Isn’t that a Chinese style?” Jon asked and yet again I forced their conversation to dull into a drone as I focused on what mattered in the moment.
It really didn’t matter to me what the style was, it was working for me. I dodged around the closest grunt and struck him in the back of the head before I spun on my heel and moved further into the mass of enemies. I dodged, dipped, and weaved around the bikers, landing quick jabs and strikes on their torsos and arms before I finally planted my feet in the middle of the group.
I didn’t want to copy Hydramental and set them all ablaze, I knew that for sure, but I had made Ring of Fire for a reason. I activated it and forced the blaze to rush outward as rapidly as it could. There were sudden screams of pain as the flames licked at every single target within my zone. The fire didn’t linger on any of them long enough to actually set them on fire, at least not outside of a few burnt shoulders and singed shirts, but they did all take good hits to their health bars, some falling nearly 25% from the single second of fire that assaulted them.
There was a brilliantly bright light show coming from the other side of the room as bolts of electricity bounced between the bikers and the metallic equipment surrounding them. I didn’t have time to admire it though as the nearest brute to me had recovered and came rushing in my direction. I dodged his first attack, dipping under the massive arm, activating Sting Like a Bee and hitting him in his side with a 10% Gravity Punch. I followed it up with two more rapid strikes, chunking his health down to nothing before punching him as hard as I could in the gut with a 5% Gravity Punch that sent him crumpled to the ground.
I made eye contact with one of the grunts gathering around me and found myself smiling as I activated Center of the Universe. Instead of ramping it up to full strength, I only added just a bit more pressure to the force than I was normally exuding. While being able to yank people toward me with a massive amount of strength was absolutely useful, there was something to be said about changing gravity just enough to leave people off balance. I rushed the grunts closest to me, landing strikes with ease as each of their attempted strikes sent them stumbling as the extra pressure sent them flailing.
Although I had already used a good portion of my stamina, I found myself taking down the enemies with enough ease that I limited myself to basic attacks, working my way through the side of the gym I had claimed. I didn’t make it through the fight unscathed and I took more than a few hits as I fought through the bikers, but I never found myself worried either.
It only took a few minutes between the two of us to clear out the large swathe of enemies that had filled the room. I looked over to Hydramental as he materialized a syringe into his hand before he jammed it into his arm. I pulled a pair of health and stamina injectors of my own and used them, letting the renewed energy fill my body as I let out a relieved sigh. No reinforcements had come bursting through the far doors and the battle was over with a mess of bodies, destroyed gym equipment, and burn marks littering the room.
There wasn’t a single one of the bikers on his side of the gym that had the KO debuff and I found a growing pit of anger in my gut. Even knowing this wasn’t the moment, I couldn’t stop myself as I stared toward Hydramental, my jaw setting as I found my resolve.
“Did you have to kill all of them?” I asked as we stood there and Hydramental looked at me with amusement.
“Are you still on that? Is that why all those assholes on your side are just knocked out?” He laughed and rolled his eyes. “They’re not real dude, you have gotta get over it.”
“So what, you’d kill the shopkeepers in the square too without caring?” I asked as he started walking toward the pair of double doors on the far side of the gym.
“If they were trying to kill me? Yeah, without hesitating.”
“And what about me? Or any of the other Augments? Would you kill me?” I asked, feeling my jaw set as I anticipated his answer.
“It depends,” he said with a casual shrug.
“On?’
“If you’re trying to kill me or not,” He replied with another laugh. “I don’t get what part of that is so hard for you to understand.”
He shoved the doors open and walked through into a clinical looking hallway on the other side of them. I followed after, finding myself at a loss for words at his callousness. Even when he had been trying to attack me, I hadn’t even thought to go for the kill.
“There has to be a line,” I finally said and that caused him to stop, his levity evaporating in an instant.
“Not in this world there doesn’t,” He shot back, giving me a hard look before turning and continuing forward. The hallway was basically sterile, with no random doors and only ending in another hallway splitting in two directions.
“Then why didn’t you just go Miscreant? Killing isn’t heroic, it’s not what Guardians do,” I demanded as I stayed close behind him.
“Guardians save people, real people,” He said simply without looking back, “As long as we are both doing that, why do you care what happens to these puppets?”
I wasn’t sure if I had an answer for that, so I didn’t reply, instead following him as he stopped at the intersection and immediately headed toward the right hand path. Only a few feet down the hall there was another set of double doors. He looked through the windows and just shook his head.
“Some sort of research room. Now try not to get your damn panties in a bunch,” Hydramental said as his red form split from his main body.
“Dude wait, we can get information out of them!” I said, jumping to stop him before he tried to blow up the room like he had with the train car.
“Relax, it’s called intimidation,” Their voices echoed in unison. He pushed the doors open and walked in with heavy footfalls, “Okay, everyone show us your hands and tell us where your boss is.”
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