"Has anyone told you that your powerset doesn't make any sense?" Miss Mist asked as we slowly crept through the long winding hallway that led into the main base. "I haven't seen everything of course, but I've seen enough and I just don't get how any of it connects."

"I've been told that once or twice," I said with a smile that she couldn't see due to Spectrum Veil being activated. Miss Mist had pointed out more than one camera already, the only additions to the otherwise completely familiar entrance.

I crept slowly along as Miss Mist was… well honestly I wasn't exactly sure. She had erupted into her vapor form the moment we made our way to the base entrance, slipping through the nearly nonexistent cracks around the edges of the invisible door. After I used my Quantum Imprint, jumping past the barrier that I couldn't even put a hand through initially, we began heading up the passway as quickly but quietly as possible.

When we first stepped into the space, we got immediate confirmation of the base's owner as my location panel that had once flashed with Viper's Headquarters in this place instead flashed with Droids R' Us Satellite Base. As interesting as it might have been to try to figure out it worked to have multiple bases, trying to learn about them while infiltrating one didn't seem very prudent. Even if we were mostly moving in silence as just inspecting things.

I always knew that Miss Mist was capable of controlling just how her vapor form moved, it was how she flew and was the core functional aspect of her powerset but other than that, I was really just realizing that I didn't actually really know what she could do. True, that was partially because I had just trusted Jon and his obsession with all things Augment to fill me in on anything I needed to know, but I was also quickly realizing that I needed to know at least a bit more than I already did.

While I knew her particular set went by the name Vapor Rogue, other than its "infiltration specialization," as Jon always put it, that was almost the extent of my knowledge and while we were infiltrating an enemy base really wasn't the time to start prodding and asking questions. So I chose to do exactly what she had suggested, which wasn't hard because I liked to think it was exactly what I had been doing in the first place. I trusted she knew what she was doing.

So even though I couldn't see any of her vapor, her body spread out so thin it even the minimap in the corner of my vision wasn't quite sure where to place the marker for her, I knew she wasn't just rushing off to scout without me either. In fact, moving with her through the area made it clear just how slow this particular form made her.

"Is your speed connected to how condensed you are?" I asked, floating as close to the center of the room with my invisibility activated. Though the two skills were constant drains on my Stamina to keep activated, since we were inside of an enemy base, my Combat Cadence was keeping my Stamina Regeneration far above the required cost to keep the two skills active. While I was able to control being able to be seen, I didn't have a skill that would make my movement soundless if I chose to walk and I wanted to reduce the risk associated with this infiltration as much as possible.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," she said, my sudden question apparently catching her off guard. "It's why I normally scout on my own. I think my pace annoys most people. That said, I can get into every nook and cranny and there's no way to hide a door that I can't detect. There's definitely some I can't get through if the seal is tight enough, you know, like that stupid box Tyrant stuffed me into, but I'd still be able to know it's there."

"Useful, though if this place hasn't changed too much, this hallway stretches another quarter mile or so with nothing to see," I said, briefly activating Area Sense just to test the walls. If I had taken over this base, I'd probably have tried to hide some sort of room along the curved path. "Actually… Hey Codex, is there some sort of rule that says bases acquired by squatting can't be changed?"

"You're only asking him because Miss Mist can't hear me, aren't you?" Angie pouted, though Jon spoke up before I could respond to her.

"I was looking at that a bit last night and had the window open somewhere around here," he said, humming slightly. "There it is… No restrictions as far as I can see so it's probably a good idea to be thorough, just in case."

"So far there's no gaps for me to squeeze through and no cameras in the light fixtures like these places normally have," Miss Mist reported. "You can go on ahead, you know? Like I said, my pace is slow but I like to be thorough. If you find something outright suspicious, tell me and I'll hurry over.."

"You sure?" I asked. While I didn't necessarily like the idea of splitting up, just in case one of us was compromised and a fight broke out, we would be able to cover a lot more ground a lot faster.

"Trust Loophole, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah," I said, slowly adding just a bit of speed. "There's a gym this tunnel lets out in and another hall on the other side. If they haven't changed the base around at all, there will be a lab on the far side of that hall, that's where I'm going to head… It's that spot where I told you that I had to… uh… knock Hydramental out."

"Got it," Miss Mist said. "Stay safe and don't get into any fights. The last thing I need is for the rest of the squad to think I led you into a trap… That'd be just my luck, wouldn't it."

"To be fair, you've got me to vouch for you… and both Brain and Swan can see that you've shared your POV with me. If Loophole gets in trouble, it's kinda on him," Jon added with a laugh.

"I'm not gonna get into trouble, sheesh," I muttered, moving on ahead as I left Miss Mist to slowly creep along at her own pace.

I made my way up and through the rest of the tunnel with just a bit more speed, keeping myself hovering above the surface as I went. Once I was no longer moving casually, I finally emerged into what used to be the gym, now mostly empty except for a lone, precariously stacked pile of boxes in one of the closer corners. While I could have taken the time to investigate it, I was sure Miss Mist would give it a thorough once over.

Honestly, it was kind of stupidly easy to pretend like our falling out had never happened, even with Miss Mist's quips about exactly that. Even when BrainCraft had first brought his concerns to me, I hadn't exactly been convinced. Hell, I was only as convinced by Jon's own concerns because… well I had known him longer.

But at the end of the day, I don't think I ever actually really believed that any of the members of the squad were working against us. It just… it didn't add up to me. Maybe I was too trusting… Or maybe just wanted to be trusting, I wasn't exactly sure. But just as Jon was sure that this place had been taken over by Hydramental, something that he was right about even if it seemed relatively barren at the moment, my gut told me that the people I had chosen to trust at this point were… well… trustworthy.

"I miss paranoid Loophole. You had more time to talk to me," Angie chirped as I moved to the other end of the gym and into the next hallway, keeping my eyes open as I searched for cameras or anything that might give away what they were using this base for.

"Please, you have other P.A.I.s to talk to now, it's not like you're being left alone," I said.

"Yeah but none of them get as bothered as you do. It's just not as fun," she pouted.

"I don't know, I've heard Franky complain about you once or twice and he's Pinky's P.A.I. The fact that you can bother him should speak to something," Jon said with a laugh that slowly faded to the sound of clicking keys. "You'd think they might have redecorated, though I guess when you have a dozen bases you don't care how any one of them looks…"

"Makes about as much sense as anything I guess," I said, coming up to the corner of the hall, peeking my head out and confirming that the same double doors leading to the lab were still there. I moved up to them, careful not to push the doors open just in case anyone was inside of the room as I peered through one of the small windows on the door.

The research lab that had once been there was no more, instead replaced by a large, open concrete room with a smattering of furniture placed haphazardly around the space. While I didn't need to activate Area Sense to confirm it, I still did anyway as I noticed a large, 80% Negative Vibe Zone encompassing most of the disorganized space. I immediately used one of my Vibe Anchors, pinning the space down just in case I did run into someone.

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Just as I was about to push the door open, a window opened in my vision.

<Skim: Ummm… hey man. There's uh… there's something happening up here at this Droid Forge that Barry and me are camped out in… It might be nothing, but since you were gonna help me out with Barry, I thought it would be a good idea to let you know. All the printers started back up again, but everything getting spit out of them is merging right in with the giant egg.>

My brow furrowed as I looked at the message and briefly looked back over my shoulder.

"Everything okay?" Jon asked cautiously.

"Skim messaged me… something is happening at the forge they are sitting at," I explained, my eyes focused up the hall. "Let me… let me check something…"

<Loophole: Is the egg about to hatch? Where's this forge at anyway? Should we have someone on standby just in case?>

<Skim: I'm uh… not quite sure when it's gonna hatch, there's no controls or anything here we can look at. Things just seem to be really picking up and I figured you guys should know about it. The forge is on the far side of Queens in Glen Oaks, kinda way the hell out of the way.>

"Glen Oaks? Where the hell is that?" I muttered. While I had grown up in the city, it wasn't like I had a photographic memory of where every community was either, especially not in a borough like Queens where I rarely, if ever, had visited.

"Way out on the west side of the city. I'm guessing that's where the forge is?"

"Yup," I responded to Jon, looking back and through the window as I kept probing the space with my Area Sense and finding there was no movement inside of it. "Skim doesn't think the egg is about to hatch… but…"

"But that doesn't tell us when it will hatch or why Skim is telling you about it now when you just became occupied" Jon muttered, finishing my thought for me.

"I was careful leaving the base… the droids shouldn't have even seen me," I said, reaching up to push the door open and then hesitating when I noticed a glint of light out of the corner of my eye, barely visible at the edge of what I could see through the door's window.

"We're missing something… we have to be. Like, this one might be a bit of a stretch, but there's been way too many things just too close to perfectly timed..." Jon said, his voice low as his fingers hammered away on his keyboard. He started muttering something to himself. With one final check of my Area Sense, confirming that there still wasn't even a mouse moving inside of the space, I pushed the door open and cautiously entered the room.

While I was expecting to find something in the corner of the room in the spot that I had noticed the random glint, I still came up a bit short as I cleared the doorway.

"Is that… a giant diamond?" I asked, my head falling to the side as I took in the large crystal floating in the corner of the room. It was almost perfectly cut into the shape of a diamond, or maybe like one of those indicators you'd see over the head of a Sims character, but it was also almost… foggy? Before Jon could offer his own opinion, I highlighted the object in my vision… which I probably should have just done from the start.

"Hydramental. Level 31 Elemental Everyman. Squad: Droids R' Us. Warning: This is a fragment of the Augment's core, no Social Features are eligible to be used on it."

My eyes briefly went wide before I inched closer and focused, trying to look deeper into the swirling fog within the crystal. It was almost impossible to make out, but sure enough, curled up in a fetal like position was one of Hydramental's forms, eyes shut and seemingly hibernating. Though it may have been a trick of the light, or just something happening because the form was encased in crystal, I was relatively positive that I could see a grey stripe in place of the myriad of colors normally on his jacket.

"That makes seven then… right?"

"Maybe, but why is this one stuck like that? Is it some sort of defense mechanism?" Jon asked, immediately going into speculation mode as I carefully moved from side to side, taking in the floating crystal. "What the hell would grey even be for and-"

"You know I have no clue… right?" I asked, cutting him off before he could get wound up too far. As curious as this was, I slowly backed away from the crystal. If I hadn't been detected already, I sure as hell didn't want to risk setting off some alarm that suddenly woke the man up.

"No, no… I get that," Jon said, slightly frustrated. "Just… I have to wonder what this means. From the looks of it, it almost feels like it must be some sort of backup plan…"

"Seven fragments… a backup place to store one of them… Guys, is Hydramental Volde-"

"No! Bad Angie. We're not making that comparison," I said, quickly stopping her as I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose. "It barely even makes sense," I added out loud, mostly under my breath.

"Hey Loophole, I found something," Miss Mist chimed in, causing me to jump slightly. I suddenly felt a bit bad that I had been having an entire side conversation without her.

"You too? I found… Well it's not technically Hydramental… I think? Or maybe it is? Might be a good idea to get another set of eyes on it in case you can figure out something that I can't," I explained, looking back at the weird, giant Hydramental crystal. "What did you find?"

"Well, let's just say I think I know how things have been getting leaked."

Undisclosed Location

Time Until Augmentation Array Appears: 1 Year, 10 Months, 18 Days

"What are you doing?"

Andrew jumped, his head hitting a lip on the inside of the device he had his head buried in. He reached up and rubbed the back of it as he slowly backed up, looking over and seeing Factory looking down at him with arms crossed over his chest.

"Ah, Mr. Factory. I noticed this one wasn't printing so I thought I'd take a look. My Primary Power is Adaptive Engineering after all, I figured there was no point bothering you when you've been working so hard on the Array project," Andrew said with a far too wide and far too inauthentic smile. "And what, no sir? You're usually more polite."

"And you usually leave my workshop alone, sir," Factory shot back, looking over toward several other printers on the wall next to Andrew, each clearly having been opened up. "Let me guess, those ones weren't working either?"

"That's… Er… Yes. Do your machines usually break down so easily? Is that why it's taking so long to bootstrap this system up for the full array?" Andrew said, his brow creasing together.

Ever since the power surge, things had been… well tense to say the least. Christopher's basement was completely dead where it came to power access and his actual property wasn't much better. While they could still use their powers, many of the features, like power creation and experience gain were all disabled. Had it not been for that, it might have been a good solution for the annoying Axio problem, but as it stood, Andrew was afraid they were stuck with him.

Christopher had doubled down on things, implementing more and more of the game features he had planned. Some of them, like being able to make the inside of buildings much larger than the outside, were useful enough that Andrew didn't put up that much of a fight. But that was also because he was actively working on his own solutions. Factory had been the biggest wrench in his plans though.

While the man didn't stop working on the array simply because he refused to be stuck in a limited area for the rest of his life, Factory was being damn near obstinate about his refusal to just do as Andrew told him to do. He had been the one who had given the man his powers, hell, he'd been the one to coin the Print Manager power in the first place. He needed someone who could make whatever device he could think of, that had been his plan. But he just hadn't quite been counting on the fact that some of his employees wouldn't fall into line on all of his orders.

So he had decided to take matters into his own hands. If he could just go through the devices and figure out what made them tick, he could build one or two of his own and then slowly bootstrap his own factory to print things with. And that, of course, is where he had run into the road block.

"My printers only break down because they are the same level as I am. Christopher theorizes if I can get high enough, they should be durable enough that that's not a problem any longer. But if one breaks, you sure as hell aren't going to be the one that's going to fix it," Factory said.

"You've gotten rather disrespectful, you know that, right?" Andrew said, barely suppressing the urge to sneer. "My powerset gives me knowledge and control over all things technology. If you'd just show me where I'm wrong on my blueprints, I am positive I could make them work far more efficiently."

"Respect goes two ways, sir," Factory said, saying the last word like it was dirty. "I'll tell you this just because I'm tired of you poking around in here like you think I don't know, because I do, and it's why I'm "more disrespectful" now. I've seen the blueprints you've tried to feed into my printers, seen you trying to get into the ones that are actively printing, so don't think I don't know the bullshit you're up to. You can't use one of my printers without me knowing. Because they're all a part of me and at this point, I can see everything they can."

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