"I am a complete and utter imbecile."

"Don't say that Brain. I mean, if you're an idiot, what the hell does that make the rest of us?" Freak said, a slight bit of humor in his voice.

"No, you don't understand… I…" BrainCraft started to say but noticeably hesitated.

It hadn't taken me long to rendezvous with Miss Mist back in the former gym of the base. In the very corner I had glossed past there had in fact been a door that had been hidden into the wall. Given the fact that Hydramental and I hadn't taken a whole lot of time to investigate the room the first and only other time I had been through it, I couldn't even say for sure if the door had always been there or not. Regardless, once I managed to squeeze through a rather small path to the door and into the room that couldn't have been bigger than the bedroom of my apartment.

There were at least two dozen, nearly edgeless monitors spread over the walls, pressed up against each other to take up every last inch of the wall that they could. There was also a whole bunch of other equipment that I neither recognized nor cared to actually investigate right away, but it wasn't because I didn't want to. I was simply just a bit too transfixed on the wall of monitors.

Most of the monitors each had a different video feed on it, showing rooms that I didn't recognize. But near the center of the wall, four of the smaller monitors merged together to make a single, larger monitor, very clearly showing BrainCraft's Mechanic's Den. There didn't seem to be a way to control the monitors or even make sound come out of them, at least, not one that we could access. There was a console, but there was an odd looking mechanism next to it that seemed like it was missing a piece. As much as I wanted to see just how much the camera was able to see and hear, I didn't want to risk alerting the console's owner.

While it certainly could have meant that Mr. Factory and Hydramental knew we were infiltrating their base at that very moment, it didn't exactly seem like that was the case. If anything, the fact that we had found Hydramental's… crystal, or whatever the hell it was, suggested that they hadn't caught that specific part of our plans for the day.

We needed the whole team to be filled in. So with the current token out of Pinky's reach and Freak just about to fully claim his, I ordered everyone to meet up in Central Park. There was no way I could know just how much the enemy could hear inside of our base and until I was able to talk with everyone, sans Miss Mist who stayed behind in the base in her vapor form to monitor Hydramental's crystal.

"I… um…" BrainCraft started to say before trailing off yet again.

"Spit it out Brain," I said, leaping over a Clockwork Frog and slamming my fist down and into it.

All of the others were scattered around the park, trying to clear out as many of the droids that had invaded it as possible as we chatted through our internal comms. Since we were going to be out and about, it made a bit of sense to clean up the place up and stack a bit more ability and level experience as we possibly could.

With this small bit of news, it almost seemed like a weight lingering in the air between the squad had finally been cleared and while we were still figuring out exactly what this meant for us moving forward, everyone was moving in top form as we smashed and destroyed our way around the area.

"Up until last night, I may… uh… I may have had the base bugged…"

"Oh Brain, you didn't…" Pinky groaned.

"You mean… more than the device you had me set up in the Command Room so that you could be kept up to date when the group was out in the field?" Jon said, his voice far lower than he normally spoke. Since he had to be in his room to communicate with us and couldn't actually talk internally like the rest of us could, the last thing he seemed to want was to be the one that revealed to Mr. Factory and Hydramental that we were on to them.

"You don't have to whisper. I disabled them yesterday when I ran the first test with the Dead Zone device and you removed that interface from the Command Room when you became suspicious that I was the mole. With everyone out of the base after that, I just… never reenabled them since it made me feel… well…. Like I was being a hypocrite," BrainCraft explained. "Just… depending on how the printers work, it's very possible they heard pretty much everything that's been said inside our Squad Base since we first brought them in…"

"No wonder you were quick to jump to the "bug Miss Mist" plan when you were trying to prove she was working against us," I said, turning and unleashing a Mass Driver with a thousand points of my Stamina onto another frog as its electrified tongue tried to smack into me, knocking it back and into its own mouth. "Why the hell did you have the whole damn base bugged?" I asked, trying to keep my tone as calm as possible.

"I said I realized I was being a hypocrite!" BrainCraft snapped back before he let out a sigh. "I've been removing them this afternoon while Codex kept me up to date on the tokens and infiltration. I barely heard you guys leaving earlier, so if the printers only heard what I heard because the rest of my system was down.. well, it would explain why Hydramental didn't pull his safety net out of the Forge."

"Okay, but why did you feel the need to bug the base in the first place?" I asked again, refusing to drop it. While having confirmation of how some things were getting leaked was nice, it felt like a bad precedent to not pursue the full answer to this specific question.

"I… My reason for it is going to sound ridiculous…"

"Get to the reason before I come over there and clobber you myself. I said some raunchy stuff to Freak when I didn't think anyone was listening," Pinky said, though it sounded more like a joke than a threat.

"Because I'm terrible with uncertainty, alright? I know that I seem like I am keeping everything together and am in control of my faculties and emotions, but it's a cheap facade. When I don't know what people are thinking, my brain builds… worst-case simulations. Hundreds of them. Constantly. Bugging the base made them stop," BrainCraft said in an almost hurried explanation before he seemed to take a second to try and calm himself down. "Hearing you all just… living… It made me feel like maybe I wasn't one catastrophic miscalculation away from offending everyone on the squad. It wasn't about spying. At least… it wasn't until I started using it to try and figure out who the mole was… It was about… well… trying to feel safe around people I was trying to let close to me. Which, yes, is messed up. I'm aware."

"Y'know, maybe you should keep your Acceptance Matrix on. It might help with all that," Freak laughed. I jumped, my hands going up into a fighting stance as I prepared for a new enemy, when I noticed him come crashing out of the sky with a large, metal sheet formed into a sharp wedge formed under his feet. He smashed down and into the back of a freakishly large Clockwork Scorpion that had been just outside of my Local Area, a huge cloud of dust engulfing the two of them.

"I'll pass on that, thank you," BrainCraft sighed.

"I actually get where Brain is coming from," DuskBreaker spoke up as I turned away from Freak tearing into the Scorpion and stealing its metal away from it. "Er… about being terrible with uncertainty I mean…"

"Yeah… I get it too," Swansong agreed. "Anxiety can be really tough to deal with, but it can be a bit easier when you feel comfortable with someone…"

"I find it easier to punch through shit than dealing with it any other way," Freak said. I was already up and into the air, putting some distance between us as I headed for another section of the Park.

"It would be easier if that was the best way to deal with everything," I muttered.

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"So… the question is… what do we do about the printers?" Jon asked just as I activated Earthbound Impact above a group of Clockwork… bulls? Or maybe they were some sort of goat? I really wasn't sure what the point of the distinction was when it came to robots and it certainly wasn't going to matter when they were turned to scrap metal either.

"I mean, we destroy it. Feels like that's the obvious answer," Freak suggested and I heard both Jon and BrainCraft try to speak up in unison, though Jon relented and let BrainCraft be heard.

"Destroying it certainly is an option. But we have to think about a few things. Namely, optics and opportunities," BrainCraft explained. "If we destroy it, we are essentially telling Mr. Factory we know what he's been using it for. That's not necessarily a bad thing of course and we can certainly go that route, but we'd also be cutting off a few different opportunities that this particular bug gives us."

"Opportunities?" Pinky asked. I dodged out of the way of a few Clockwork Monkeys that hadn't quite been caught up in the damage of my initial impact, turning and landing blows as quickly as I could, ramping my Stamina Regeneration back up through my Combat Cadence until it was refilling far faster than I was using it, even with Center of the Universe on, forcing the remaining enemies nearby to get dragged toward me.

"Counter-espionage tactics," Jon answered before BrainCraft could. "If we know they are listening to what we are doing, we can feed them false information. It wouldn't work forever, hell, we could probably use it exactly once to lure them into a trap. Even then, we'd want to confirm that they are still listening if they aren't going back to the base that Miss Mist is monitoring, but we do have that option."

"Isn't that like the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons? Would they even believe us if we tried to lure them into a trap? Shit, how the hell do we trap Hydramental anyway?" Freak asked.

"I think we've got an option for that," I said, thinking of the Dead Zone device still sitting in my B.E.L.T., a plan coming together in my head. "In fact… I think I have a plan…"

"Oh my god. Guys, it's finally happening! The Perfect Planner is actually going to make us a plan!" Pinky said with a squeal.

"I've made plans for us before…"

"True, you have. And the first raid on Perry did go exactly as far to shit as you predicted it would," Freak laughed and I rolled my eyes, delivering a 25% Gravity Punch that sent the last few of the Clockwork Monkeys near me hurtling backwards into the trees.

"Guys… can we hear what Loophole's plan is before we make too many jokes?" Jon said, wrangling the group for me as I took a look around, probing the world around me to see if there were any other obvious targets nearby.

"First, Codex and BrainCraft are right. We need to confirm if they are still listening…" I said, lifting off of the ground and moving up and into the air to get a better vantage point. "Brain… those bugs you were using. Were they audio and video, or audio only?"

"Um… Audio only. I, uh… I didn't want to take the chance of recording something I didn't want to see necessarily," he responded quickly.

"Okay. I can't believe I'm saying this but Brain… get your bugs back in place as soon as possible. From this point forward if we are going to discuss anything with the actual plans for this, we'll do it under the cover of one of Brain's auditory privacy devices in The Common Ground or when we are out in the field together like this," I said, my brow furrowing as I looked to the north where I saw a pink streak rushing across the park. "Can you make it so that the devices filter out anything coming from Codex's Command Room?"

"I should be able to, I think. I'll need to make a few estimations since we can't exactly test turning them on and off to verify that without possible discovery though."

"Get as close to perfect as possible, we'll do a single round of tests and if Codex can still be heard… well we will just have to work around it," I ordered. "And for the record, this is temporary until Hydramental has been dealt with."

"I'll get right on it. Shouldn't take me more than five to ten minutes once we adjourn," BrainCraft said.

"Okay, that's all said and good… but once again, how are we gonna handle the guy who can keep a crystal backup of himself and split off forms to run away when he's in danger?" Freak asked once again.

"The Dead Zone device," I said simply, looking over as Swansong floated over toward me, having apparently been flying nearby as she continued to belt out her songs to stack the energy into her Hidden Power. "I'm not sure how we will confirm they are listening just yet, maybe we can use the information Skim gave me as bait? Regardless. Once we have that confirmed, we move on to Hydramental. If he comes out with all of his other forms, all I have to do is get him in the Dead Zone… Brain, how big do you think I could make it before it would start wrecking the battery life?"

"Hmmm, a block or so? You could probably cover around 700 feet of space and have the device activated for around an hour if my calculations are right."

"That's more than enough time," I said with a nod, swallowing hard before I opted to continue. "We draw him out, then I just have to get close enough that I can activate the device to bring all of his forms other than his backup crystal back together. Once Codex confirms for Miss Mist that he can't communicate with me, she breaks his crystal… and I finish the job with Hydramental…"

"Wait… you're going to do it?" Freak asked, just a bit incredulously. "I mean, I'm not saying I don't think you could, you're the only one whose powers would still work in that zone. Even if you didn't have a weapon, one of your enhanced punches would probably pulverise the bones of someone without powers. I just know you've been against this specific path from the start."

"I have… but I have to be the one to do this… I can't expect you guys to solve the problem that I created," I explained.

"Okay, that's all said and good… but how fast are we exactly planning on trying to do this? They got away with the Pangolin, for all we know, they're gonna launch another attack tonight. Isn't that kind of why it's a good idea to keep all of us here on the city side for the time being?" Pinky asked and I felt my brow furrow yet again.

"That part… well that part I don't know," I said, swallowing hard. "But you're right Pinky… we don't have a lot of time to waste, we're going to have to-"

"Crime Alert! SPIDERS!!! An entire building on the south side Hell's Kitchen has collapsed, revealing a nest of Clockwork Spiders! Some sort of electrified webbing has been seen emerging from them onto nearby buildings, stop them before the public finds out what it's going to do! Reward: You will receive an A+:Tier Squad Base Loot Box for completing this alert. For every building that gets destroyed, this loot box will lower by one tier."

"Well isn't that just cleverly ti-"

"Crime Alert Canceled! SPIDERS!!! Has been claimed by Augment, Tempest's Wrath."

"Ummm…" I started to say, looking over toward Swansong who looked equally confused.

"Wait… is she… helping?" Pinky asked, clearly on the exact same page.

"Don't look a gift Augment in the mouth?" Freak asked cautiously. When no one immediately responded though, he apparently decided he needed to explain. "You know… like the saying with the horse, but-"

"No, no, I think we all got what you were going for Freak," BrainCraft said, cutting him off. "Okay, you were saying Loophole? We don't have a lot of time to-"

"Crime Alert! Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my! Three oversized Clockwork beasts have been seen emerging from Dewitt Park in Northern Hell's Kitchen! Looks like someone really wants to cause some destruction in your neck of the woods Loophole! The animals were seen heading directly toward the cruise terminal! Reward: You will receive an A+:Tier Squad Base Loot Box for completing this alert. If any cruise ships are destroyed by these droids, this loot box will lower in tier."

Everyone stayed quiet for a second this time, an almost unspoken question lingering in the air as we waited to see if something should happen. After a few moments passed, I finally decided to break the silence.

"Well… I guess this should give Brain some time to get those bugs back in place," I said with a small laugh, looking around the park as I tried to pick out where the others were. "Pinky, Freak, jump as high into the air as possible and I'll come grab you with my field. We can argue about who will take what droid on the way there."

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