It didn’t provide the same built in simulated fighters that the Apprentice’s Dojo that I had included, though BrainCraft was sure that that specific issue wasn’t going to be a factor for too much longer, but it really wasn't designed for that kind of practice anyway. The Team Sparring Dojo had two modes available to it. The first mode made it act similar to the basic version of the Training Dojo, allowing the rapid regeneration of Stamina without having to worry about the Exhausted side effect. This mode was obviously good for practicing perfecting our own abilities, but was also going to be extremely useful for practicing combo moves.
The second mode was where this version of the Dojo got its name. The Sparring mode gave the room a few basic settings that made it similar to the Fight Club, but without the audience or modability that came with those arenas. It took up 900 square feet of their base’s space allotment, though the ceiling was at least 20 feet up and made me question just how the allotment actually worked. Regardless, it hadn’t really bothered either of them since they hadn’t actually been using the lounge to just hang out all that often, so they didn’t mind the diminished area that the expansion had caused.
Unlike the Fight Club which would pull us out of the fight the moment one of us took enough damage, the Sparring Dojo simply wouldn’t let us go below 25% health to begin with, adding a Sparring buff to our status bars the moment we stepped into the room that created the protective effect.
The big difference between the Sparring Mode and the regular Training Mode, was that while things that we did in the Training Mode would revert the moment we left the room, effects gathered while we were in Sparring Mode would carry on, even after leaving. This meant that even though we couldn’t use the endless Stamina features of Training Mode to charge the kinetic battery that was associated with Pinky’s Primary Power, I could hit her with the strongest Gravity Punch I could manage without having to worry about it killing or seriously hurting her, not that she had seemed all that concerned about it in the first place.
Normally just the single strike from that sort of blow wouldn’t have even hurt her unless I had gotten her moving to begin with, but the speed with which she hit the wall after the 100% Gravity Punch’s associated knockback effect sent her health bar plummeting right down to that 25% barrier.
When she stood back up, she had been practically buzzing as small pink static discharges bounced off of her body. Wanting to see just how much energy she could stack into her Battery, she gave me a Superior Stamina Syringe and urged me to use it just so I could hit her one more time. We waited the extra minute for my stamina to refill the rest of the way and I hit her one more time, repeating the process as she slammed into the wall.
The second time, I noticed a small glimmer of light that passed over the surface of the wall when she slammed into it, explaining why the plain concrete didn’t so much as crack from the blow. If Pinky had been buzzing from the first blow, the second blow had left her bouncing off the walls as the static surrounding her limbs became almost blinding to actually look at.
Without much prompting from BrainCraft, who only stopped to point out a few spots on a map he had taped onto the wall outside of his Mechanic’s Den, she was out the door on the far side of their lounge and tearing across the countryside of Northern California. Jon was eagerly following along, talking quickly with her P.A.I. Frank as he slowly poked through the information on her abilities that his console provided. Pinky had pretty much zero qualms to letting Jon have access to all of the information on her powers.
Even though she also could now theoretically talk his ear off to try and uncover as much about my powers as she could, the bit of information she had received from BrainCraft was really all that she wanted to hear, and she was insistent that he only tell me what was absolutely necessary since she still wanted to, “beat me fair and square.”
Swansong and I briefly debated on heading out our respective Safe Houses to cover more ground, but given that we both knew if the beacon for the most recent Token did light up, I’d be putting on the speed to get to it as fast as possible. It did help to know that I probably could outpace most of the other Augments in the city, though Freakenstein hadn’t gone after the first Token, so it was always possible that he had a way of getting around that we just weren’t aware of yet.
We stepped out of the base underneath the bridge and cautiously approached one of the tunnel exits. I could hear the sound of cars and horns in the distance and while there was certainly a bit of activity in the city, it was a far cry from the usual bustle. The oddly lowered levels left the city feeling surprisingly more eerie than when it had simply been a battleground with the streets emptied.
“I can see at least 4, maybe 5 of the Falcons, it looks like they are circling this part of the park,” I said, peering out of the tunnel and up into the air.
“As far as we’ve seen so far, the Falcons haven’t really been coming in for the fights,” Jon said. “They’re probably being used for surveillance, I wonder if they have been moving in a pattern at all. Wait, one sec.”
I looked over at Swansong and raised a brow, leaving her to shrug.
“Sorry, BrainCraft came over to take a quick look at our Ascension Upgrader and was listening. He pointed out that if they were being used for surveillance, they are probably running on habitual patterns. Even the most well crafted Falcon would have to land at some point to recharge and it's highly unlikely that even a powerful Augment like Clockwork Tyrant could be controlling every single droid deployed around the city at the same time without relying on presets,” Jon explained.
“Clockwork Tyrant does have bases around the city,” I said and realized that in the panic of the evening, I had forgotten to bring up what I had encountered just before the fight in Times Square. “They are like the Viper Dens I had to deal with in Phase One but they’re called Droid Forges this time. The Astoria Power Plant is a Platinum level one and I think we are gonna need a lot more than just Swansong and myself if we are gonna try to assault it.”
“Hmm, okay, but they can’t all be coming from that one place,” Jon mused. “We might need to try and watch some of the Falcons and see where they go. If we can locate where the Forges are throughout the city, I bet we would be able to get a start on finding the transmitters that are controlling all of them. Though now might not be the right time. Sixty seconds till the top of the hour.”
There was always the chance that the Token had already been found and we wouldn’t be seeing a beacon appear for it, much like what had happened with the first Token spawned this morning. But if that were the case, the plan was relatively simple. Swansong and I would take off in different directions and spend the next two hours blanketing different parts of the city. This would partially be to try and locate the next Ascension Token and partially to try and get a better lay of the land with Clockwork Tyrant’s “rule.”
While I had noticed the various parts of his forces patching the holes in the streets and collecting any of the unsalvageable destruction around the city, I wasn’t sure what the point of any of it actually was for. I took a look over at my Mission Tracker before we made any other moves, eyeing the Save the City mission that we had received when The Long Night’s mission timer expired. I was relatively unsurprised when the mission had claimed that we had Failed and we earned no rewards for our performance. That said, I was a bit surprised when the failed mission gave way to a Second Chance Mission alert only seconds after the first one faded.
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“Save the City! Your city has been taken over by a hostile, egotistical Augment! Are you gonna just sit around and let that happen just because you couldn’t finish things in a single night or are you gonna do the work to fix this? Come on Loophole, we all know what you’re gonna do, so why pretend like you’re not gonna try and topple a player dozens of levels higher than you again. Reward: You will receive an Extra-Large Reputation Boost and an S:Tier Loot Box if you manage to take down Clockwork Tyrant and stop his rule over your city.”
There was a familiar DING! that preceded a flash of golden light spreading across the city in a rush.
“Ascension Token Revealed! Who doesn’t appreciate the theater? And this particular one is out in the open air! The location has been marked on your mini-map!”
“It’s up at the Delacorte Theater,” Jon called out. I had started to move before Angie had even finished announcing the reveal, activating Spectrum Veil and taking off in a burst of speed just to make sure the Falcons still flying in the air above us couldn’t pinpoint where our base’s entrance was at. Knowing how much Stamina the skill required, I dropped the invisibility the moment I was up and into the sky, catching the attention of more than a few of the Falcons as they turned to try to keep up with me.
Had we actually left the base in the last hour and a half, we might have actually just found this particular Token with a relative amount of ease. In fact, it might have explained just why the one that had spawned at 6 AM hadn’t ended up ever reaching the point of becoming a beacon. I had pushed my speed up relatively high and had to come to a hard brake as I descended down and into the open air theater on the other side of Central Park.
The token was just sitting there right at the center of the stage, floating in mid air and slowly spinning. I wasn’t going to take any chances this time and I scooped up the token and immediately pulled it into my B.E.L.T., causing the beacon to vanish.
“Got it,” I said.
“I never had a doubt. It looks like the beacon appeared for Pinky too, she’s literally creating a damn dust storm in her wake as she’s making these crazy powerful leaps across the area,” Jon laughed and I could hear a few clicks over the comms as he was presumably multitasking as he always was. My chat icon at the side of my vision shook and I opened the window.
We had only interacted a bit so far, and I did think that it was going to be a good idea to gather as many of the Augments in the city as possible, but I still couldn’t bring myself to just automatically extend an invitation to the squad to every single person I came across. At the same time, part of me knew that I also couldn’t expect to make every single person who joined the squad turn off their Acceptance Matrix either.
In truth, it wasn’t something I was mentally prepared to figure out and I knew I’d have to sit down with the rest of the squad at some point to bring it up.
“Get this,” Jon said, pulling my attention away from the window and I waved it away. “I had Swansong watch the sky where you left and those Falcons that started to chase you only followed for a few seconds before they turned around and returned right back to where they had been flying from. Probably decided they had no chance of keeping up with you. That’s almost gotta mean they are following a preset path.”
“Well it makes sense,” I said and I started to slowly walk around the empty stage, trying to take in the slightly serene moment. Much of Central Park, including the theater, had been largely left alone and the theater was no exception. There was a flash of movement that drew my eyes toward the sky and I noticed more of the Falcons adjusting their course to fly in a circle above me. “Looks like they are at least partially programmed to lock on to us if they see us,” I said and thought about it for a moment, “I wonder if they would notice us in normal street clothes?”
“Hmm, I guess that we can add that to our list of things to test… what’s the plan now anyway? I'll be honest, I really wasn't expecting this one to spawn and didn't think you'd have a Token already. Want to try scouting the city to find the new one anyway?” Jon asked.
“We do want to collect as many as we can, plus it might be helpful to know how easy they are to spot when they aren’t beacons that are trying to draw us in,” I said. “Though BrainCraft would probably prefer if I dropped off the Token at the base first.”
There was a click, followed by a brief bit of static before I could hear a throat being cleared.
“Yes, I very much would prefer that,” BrainCraft said, taking me by surprise.
“Wait, you can hear this chat?” I asked, almost a bit too shocked.
“Not naturally, it would appear just because I am in the same squad base now, it doesn’t count as being within the region to maintain Squad Voice Comms, there’s probably some sort of communications upgrade we will need to purchase for the base before we have a permanent link to communicate through without the text channels,” BrainCraft explained.
“Then how-”
“I had Codex attach a forward relay onto his desk in the Command Center. Simply put, I’m essentially listening in through an open phone line, as long as that doesn’t cross a line for you,” he finished before I could question it further.
“No, it makes sense if you are gonna be trying to help us figure out this tech angle,” I said slowly. “I had honestly just sort of assumed you would have been able to listen in already so only just now hearing you surprised me.”
“Well it does seem to fit the theme of the game of putting everything behind far too many layers,” BrainCraft said with a sigh. “It would be nice if for once it wouldn’t lock relatively common features just to be difficult. Even the phone mod for our interfaces only allows for a single call at a time, pretty much eliminating working around the limitation by just making a big group call.”
“That does have to be frustrating for someone specialized in tech,” I said and he let out a bark of a laugh.
“Oh you have no idea Loophole. Now, I do want you to bring the Token back to the base here before you start hunting down the next one, but I’d like you to do a quick test in regards to those Falcon droids that Codex had mentioned to me.”
I looked back up toward the sky, finding three of the Falcons were still circling directly above me.
“If you want me to capture one so that you can examine it, I’m pretty sure it would explode the moment I disabled it,” I said, catching as a dot appeared on my map.
“Ah yes… I forgot about that…” BrainCraft muttered. “I’ll need to work on something to neutralize that contingency before we move forward with that plan then. Okay, how about you just bring the Token my way so that I can start working on a reliable method for tracking them down.”
“Sure, sounds good,” I said, looking up toward the Falcons one more time and feeling something stir in my gut. “I’ll be right there though… I want to try something here first.”
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