To make sure all the Man's Laughter were dealt with, we carried on searching for another half hour before fully confirming that they had all been killed. While they hadn't been physically difficult to deal with, it was mostly the unnerving nature of them. The mental attacks had warn us down, as we had to ignore our ears as the laughter constantly felt all around us, making us reliant on our other senses, which in the dimly lit dungeon was also difficult.

It would have been slightly more difficult if I hadn't experienced Mattew's mental connection or read up on them previously. Although, Mathew's spell was a double-edged sword, as it meant that Edward was unable to help to keep his cover from being blown.

We finally were able to get back to the entrance after only a couple of wrong turns, mostly made by me. Honestly, it felt like my brain was unable to handle a change in direction. The different perspectives made the rooms nearly unrecognisable to me. It would have taken far longer to get out if I was by myself. Luckily, that was not the case, as the rest of my team and the Legends did not have this issue.

We all collapsed in the chairs, clearly exhausted. The non-dreary light was appreciated; even Cassie had taken off Granite. The only person who seemed least physically affected by the fight was Alex, but I guess he mostly gave support, as far as I could tell, with his tech lighting up the shadows. Dr. Jacq appeared after five minutes of everyone resting their feet. They were carrying a vial of vile, black liquid.

"Thanks, everyone, for helping to clear up that mess. I hope it was a valuable experience," they said, not looking up, almost as if they were reading a pleasantries script after being reminded that we were here. "Keep up the good work."

With that, they disappeared again.

After a second of tired silence, I spoke, "That guy has a bag full of cats."

Mathew looked at me. "What?"

"You know, like the opposite of the cats out of the bag?" I said, defending my statement. "It sounded better in my head."

"I'd disagree." Edward chimed in, floating upside down next to me.

"I thought you were being silent." I thought accusingly at him.

He pointed at where Mathew was sitting.

"The spell ended."

"What? How can you tell?"

"The weird, grape purple symbols went away."

Even though his eyes were pure white and his paused flame-like face was only slightly humanoid, I could tell he was looking at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world: of course, he could see Matthew's Legacy.

I looked over at Mathew, his eyes were back to their regular non glowyness.

"Huh, that's useful; I forgot to account for Mathew's spells." I paused as I remembered something I wanted to ask at the back of my mind that I had forgotten about till now, "Though that being said, isn't the only person you're conspiring against Washington? How's that going, Jacq basically already knows, I'm not great at hiding my eye colour, who's to say Washington doesn't as well?"

I felt a wave of confusion coming from Edward, "You think I'm conspiring against Washington?" He flipped back around to normal eye level. "I may not like the guy, which I do think is reasonable as he did send me on a practically suicide mission, but that's a personal grudge. I'm mostly here because I'm stuck with you, plus I enjoy not having to just survive anymore. I'm basically a ghost, and I have no obligations. Mentoring is also fun."

"Wait, then why are you basically hiding?"

"It's just easier; I get to talk to less people. It's not like I was much of a socialite before, I only had like one friend."

"Can I tell Mathew then?"

"I already know." A new voice chimed in.

Hearing Mathew's voice suddenly made me jump and almost fall out of my seat.

"What," I spoke out loud.

Mathew sighed, "You're terrible at keeping secrets, and the eye thing's you're a giveaway if you know what you're looking for. Plus, both of you are so loud in your thoughts."

Looking sheepish, he looked away. "I may also have been trying to practise my thought spell on you and half been using you as a radio, trying to isolate one of the songs that you have stuck in your head, and I heard you talking to Edward."

"I do have good taste in music," I began to feel weary of the time. We should probably talk, think, whatever, when there's less people to look oddly at us." I looked around the room and loudly smacked my legs. "Right. Does anyone else also want to go get food?"

The rest of the group responded with shrugs and tired thumbs up.

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***

Cassie looked at my plate with obvious disgust, "Is that really what you eat, or are you guys messing with me."

Mathew looked at her dryly. "He's just like that; he claims it's a speedster thing."

"You can't bully me, I'm your leader." I wined.

Alex responded, pointing out the obvious, "That hasn't stopped us before, plus you're not the Legend's leader."

"Does that mean that I have a free pass to bully you then, or do you have any other defences?"

"I'm dyslexic?" I weakly defended. "Ok, it's just easier to fit it on one plate, plus pork does traditionally go with apple, so there's that!"

The rest of my team did not back me up.

Even Oliver replied, "While yes, you would be correct, but not when it's apple pie."

Cassie continued with what she was about to say before she had been distracted by my perfectly normal choice in food, "Ok, ignoring Tom for the moment, I'd say we did well working together."

Oliver suddenly looked suspicious, "While I certainly agree, I feel I know where you're trying to go with this."

Cassie put on her professional face as she stopped with the small talk, "I'll cut to the chase then; the Legends want in on the security mission."

"Well, obviously, that is not in my control. I'm sure you could convince Washington or Dr Jacq to-"

Everyone stared at him.

"Ok, fine, I'll email my dad to see if he can make it two teams."

"Thanks, you're the best."

Oliver looked over at Alex expectedly, Alex nodded giving a thumbs up.

"Email sent," Oliver confirmed.

I looked at both of them, "Is Alex basically your secretary, then? Oh yeah, I have something to tell you when we get back to the room." I turned to the Legends, "We should work together another time. This was fun."

After the rest of the team finished their food, we went back to the room, with Mathew still in the lead, as I still wasn't certain of the directions.

***

I stood in the middle of our room in front of my team, trying to work out how to phrase the situation exactly, "Ok, right, yeah, how am I going to say this? Um, yeah."

Edward sighed, "I'll do it then."

My perspective warped as Edward took control, and my eyes swapped. The sensation of floating took hold. My face formed from slightly nervous into a bored, almost sarcastic looking expression. The whole room had a weird glow to it, and colours seemed almost distorted. I could see the flow of everyone's aura as a faint glow under their skin, and their eyes became more vivid. There was a slight lightning blue resonating out of my body, attaching it to me like a loose string.

"I keep forgetting you can do this."

"Hi, everyone. I'm the other soul accidentally possessing Tom." Edward introduced himself with a mock bow, my voice coming out with a slight accent. You might know me better as Reacher or even as that guy who was almost constantly on the news for stealing a while back. I'm here to help if you want it, as I'm basically forced to tag along with Mr. Blue Lightning here. Any questions?"

Alex spoke first, "So is this why he constantly had music playing in his head?"

"Nope, he's just like that."

Oliver looked deep in thought, "How long has this happened for?"

"A couple weeks before we got here."

"Ok, cool. Does this change anything in regards to the rest of the team?"

"Nope. It just means I don't have to be quiet when Rune here uses his intercom. If that's all the questions, I want to go back to being ethereal, Tom's sweaty."

"Hey! I'm not sweaty." I shook my fist at him, or whatever equivalent my current form had. I got distracted by the sparks trailing my current movement as they reminded me of a sparkler. Then, just as suddenly as before, my perspective and eyes shifted again, and I was me again.

I sat down as the weird senses I was just feeling went, and I was mainly just disoriented. Edward went back to floating.

Mathew clapped his hands together. "Right, now that's sorted. Does anyone else have any secrets they want to reveal?"

Alex put his hand up, and Oliver looked like he was about to stop him, but he spoke before he could, "Yeah, I'm actually a robot with a soul."

"What," Mathew said flatly.

"Yeah, look." His eyes glowed slightly, and before Oliver could stop him, he deconstructed his arm and then reconstructed it, revealing gears and wires hiding beneath his skin. "See."

"Alex! We talked about this; Dad doesn't want info about you getting out!"

Alex shrugged.

Oliver let out an exasperated sigh as he held the bridge of his nose. "Uh! I knew this would happen eventually, so I might as well explain." Oliver looked at both Mathew and me. But you have to promise to keep this under wraps."

"Of course, I at least would gain nothing from exposing this information, plus you already have mine, soo…"

"Oooo, this is getting interesting!" Edward said, suddenly more interested in the conversation.

"Neither would I."

"Ok then, basically Light Industries were trying to cut out the middle man by making a completely automanus Mythic as then we could just sell them directly to governments instead of to the public, the only thing that couldn't be replicated was Aura and Legacies because you need a soul for that. My dad put Alex's dad to the task. He knew of all of the stories of people using souls for nefarious needs, so he was just starting small. One robot as a proof of concept. He wasn't trapping souls or dissecting them or anything like that. If the stories of the Angels, Arc-Angels and Shades had any lick of truth, he wanted nothing to do with that method."

Alex interrupted, "And blah blah, there are lots of failures till me, blah blah, I'm proof the project wasn't viable because souls mean free will, blah blah. Long story short, I'm basically his kid now and the project was shelved as the original plan was basically slavery and was no better than those dark organisations that kidnap children to create and control Mythics."

Oliver glared at Alex, "And to get to the point then. All of the research and notes were destroyed, and the only thing left of the project is Alex, who should learn to keep his mouth shut unless he wants someone to try and deconstruct him for the method to make more of him."

After a moment had passed, I said, "Huh, that actually explains a lot of things that I was ignoring. Anyway, no need to worry; your secret seems more important than mine."

Mathew had an epiphany: "So that's why it was more difficult to link you to the communication spell. It probably needed to translate your thoughts because you're a robot. I just thought that your Legacy just made your thoughts slightly encrypted."