I swiped through an entire page of videos taken during the fight at the bank on Jon’s tablet as he sat scrolling through his own laptop.
Unlike Jon, before I got pulled into this, I felt like I was like most other people my age. I thought the Augments were interesting, but largely I just wanted to stay out of their way. Sure I knew about the big guys, but I didn’t read the comics, or look up random fights just to see who won, or get super excited every time a new one suddenly cropped up. And that was something Jon knew very well about me.
So if I suddenly named exactly what the power was and then somehow it leaked that that’s exactly what this guy’s… my… power set was, it wouldn’t take Jon long to put two and two together. While I wasn’t necessarily sure if that would constitute breaking the rule, it wasn’t a risk I was quite ready to take. I had to find something in one of the videos that I could use and make it seem like I was just pointing it out.
“You could just tell him about your powers and deal with the consequences if it’s so important to get his opinion. Not sure why you need it though, he’s cute and all, but it’s not like he could possibly know what he’s talking about,” Angie chirped.
“Not now, Angie,” I shot back and I could actually hear her harumph in response.
“It’s a real shame this dude’s powers aren’t all that flashy,” Jon said. He was leaning forward and seemed to be squinting as he took in something on his screen. “He landed some good punches but they didn’t exactly look like they were enhanced and other than the sound thing, I’m not… hmm what’s happening with this dude’s shirt?”
I looked over to him and waited for a response but he just shook his head. With a few quick clicks on his keyboard, a link was airdropped onto the tablet. It wasn’t a good shot, the person holding their phone was probably (rightfully) shaking as he tried to sneak the camera around the edge of the table, but he still caught as my Weighted Clothes ability caused the Grunt to be crushed to the ground.
“It kind of looks like it just suddenly got, like, really heavy or something,” I said and Angie groaned again.
“Act better.”
“Seriously Angie, Not. Now.”
“I’m just saying, if you want Mr. Blue Eyes to believe you, maybe be more convincing than ‘really heavy or something’,” She shot back quickly and I stopped myself from groaning.
“Hmm, I think you’re right,” Jon said as he squinted at the screen. “Still, that doesn’t add a whole lot either. It could be something gravity related, or he could be a telekinetic. That one seems the most likely since that one gun also fired when the dude’s finger was nowhere near the trigger. As much as I hate to admit it, we are probably S.O.L until this guy shows up again. You can definitely tell he's fresh, not just going off the fact that he’s running around in a ski mask, but like, there’s no polish.”
“Polish?” I asked and leaned back against the booth, trying my best not to feel… offended? My hand ran across the bottom of the seat as I considered what he was saying and my fingers briefly touched a piece of dried but still sticky used gum. I instinctively pulled my hand away, wiping it on my pant legs and feeling slightly annoyed by the bit of tackiness that remained on my fingers. A thought suddenly crossed my mind and I did a search on the tablet, finding what I was looking for rather quickly before I looked back over to Jon, “Think you can explain?”
“Yeah like, okay this is gonna sound weird but try to stay with me, got it?” He said as he straightened up in his seat.
“You know me, I can handle weird,” I said with a wry grin but finally stopped to take a bite out of the Cuban that Jon had run up to order for me.
“Okay… So you know how in Augment Fighter 4 you can do combos and stuff? Well it’s like that,” he explained. “Well… okay it’s not like an exact one for one or anything, but there’s more than a few Augments who do skills or moves that get literally translated right into the game. Like The First for example. One of his signature moves is the Pressurized Ground Pound. He basically comes in hot from up high and hits the ground, which immediately sends out a big wave of pressure, hell you should remember that, right?”
“Yeah, it knocked the wind right out of me,” I said as I closed the browser and looked back over to Jon.
“Well that move is in AF4, like almost one for one. And sure, if it was just The First that would be one thing, he’s famous as all hell, but like, you can literally match up moves in the game right to video footage of the different heroes and villains. If I didn’t know that the Augments have better things to do with their time, I’d say it’s almost like they put motion controls on them just to get the combos to match up perfectly.”
“Well shit… it’s almost like they are just playing a game then…” I said before I could stop myself. I expected to get suppressed. Other than when I had first gotten prompted about the rule, I hadn’t risked mentioning the game since I had just assumed it would be futile. Angie had after all warned me that it would just get muted. Yet somehow I hadn’t been suppressed… I had to test it, just to make sure and as I opened my mouth to say “I’m actually playing it with them” a big red warning flashed across my vision.
“DIALOGUE SUPPRESSED! This NPC is not authorized to know about the existence of Infinite Ascension. Claiming your involvement would be a clear violation of this rule. Further attempts to reveal your involvement in the game will result in the immediate summoning of a level 100 Elite NPC.”
“So why did that get suppressed?” Maybe it was dumb to ask, but I felt like I needed to know, especially if I was trying to find the right line to walk without risking Jon’s life.
“That’s… hmmm I’m actually not sure! While I am your Personal A.I., I am not the one that controls the suppression system. In fact, the only thing I am really designed to do iniatiialy is act as an interface and narrative assistant, as well as providing perfectly detailed explanations about the world around you. However, I can be upgraded with additional features in time,” Angie explained. “It would seem Axio determined your “theoretical” didn’t constitute breaking the rule, but I’d advise you to not push your luck too far.”
“I mean, that’s as fair of a guess as any of the shit we’ve heard, though it is kind of insane… and that’s when we’re talking about people who literally break the laws of physics. Anyway, not the point,” Jon said and closed his laptop. “This new guy, he doesn’t have any combos. Like, yeah he turned the sound off and then made the one guy get crushed to the ground, but it wasn’t in unison. He was kind of just throwing whatever he could and hoped for the best. I mean, really watching the fight, assuming his powerset is something luck based, that’s really what seemed to get him through it all. There was just, well, y‘know…”
“No Polish…” I finished for him as he trailed off. I had really thought I had found a way to get Jon’s opinion on all of this, but clearly there just wasn’t enough information that we could “stumble” on for us to have a conversation about it just yet. “Okay, I think I see what you mean. So what, you think we can’t figure out what his power is yet because he’s just running around like a chicken with his head cut off… so to speak?”
“Yeah more or less,” Jon said. “I definitely hope he figures it out though, I’d love to have a local dude to be cheering on. But ughhh, I still wish I could have gotten powers though. What’s a dude got to do to be Augmented? Friggin missed the selection window this year already…”
“Huh? Selection Window?” I found myself perking up at this. Sure there was the forum for Infinite Ascension, but it was just a place for people longing for a game that, well yes i guess it did exist but not in any form they could have ever dreamed of… right? No, if that’s what Jon had been following all this time, I’m sure he would have told me about it ages ago.
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“Oh, sorry I know you’re not as into all this, but I’m pretty deep down the rabbit hole at this point,” he explained and took what felt like the longest sip of his drink. “Anyway, there’s like, tons of video essays, theories and stuff about it if you really want a big breakdown, but the gist of it is that there’s this like, window every year where new Augments appear. It doesn’t seem to happen at the same time every single year, but there’s always a sign about a week before it happens.”
“Oh maybe this cutie does know a thing or two,” Angie said, her voice practically purring. I hadn’t taken the bait the first few times but I guess I was going to have to address it.
“Ok, is this seriously going to be a thing? You’re an A.I. you can’t actually think he’s cute, right?”
“I can and do, don’t kink shame me.”
“That’s not- you know what, nevermind,” I responded with a sigh before adding, “Not even sure what the hell I was expecting.”
“It’s not my fault I don’t have a lot to do when you’re being a boring little bitch, let me just enjoy the eye candy.”
“So what’s the sign then?” I asked, trying to ignore as Angie laughed in the back of my head. I tried to think back to the night of my accident, trying to see if there might have been a sign that I had just missed. In truth, so much of it was a haze up until The First appeared.
“Okay, so you know how the Array is normally just like, there, right? Maybe it flashes a few lights or glows bright over areas where big fights are happening but otherwise it mostly stays dark, right?”
“Sure, I guess so?” I said.
“Well see… okay and this is where it gets a bit weird but like… did you happen to notice last week, the array was sort of periodically flashing-”
“Holy shit yeah, it was flashing blue that night,” I cut him off before I could stop myself, the memory suddenly becoming clear to me. Jon was looking at my curiously as I tried to calm myself down. “Er, I mean that was the night of my accident. I was walking toward the blockade and saw one of the nodes right above the city kinda pulsing blue before it went red and stopped completely. Shit if that’s the pattern, why haven’t the big channels and all that started to talk about it?”
“Timing mostly. The array doesn’t flash for the same amount of time every year. A few years it flashed for a week, there were two years that it flashed for over a month and this year… this year it only flashed like that for about 10 hours. Honestly most people on the forums were just thinking it was a false start until, well…” He gestured at his laptop and the tablet. “Obviously there’s some new Augments running around. You’d think at least someone in the media would have at the very least picked up on that. Personally, and I know it’s gonna make me sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist that’s yelling about government censorship, but like… come on right? Someone’s gotta be forcing them to not mention this pretty obvious detail.”
“Huh,” I said, stalling as I took another bite from my sandwich.
“Yeah, I know it’s crazy but I promise the evidence is there, though at the end of the day it doesn’t matter that much. Whatever happens to get these new guys selected, clearly I missed out yet again,” Jon said, obviously dejected and I continued to chew, unable to find anything else to say.
A notification popped up in the corner of my vision that read “CRIME ALERT” in flashing text.
“What the hell is that?”
“Okay seriously Augment, you can read, right? It’s a Criiiiiiiiiiime. Aleeeeeeeeeeeert.” Angie responded, overly drawing out the words in a way only someone who didn’t need to breathe could do.
“Yeah but what does that mean? I thought I wouldn’t get more missions until I had a name?” I highlighted the box on my screen.
“Crime Alert! Three Men and a Lady! Uh oh, three of the Hell’s Kitchen Bikers have been spotted in your vicinity. And it looks like there’s a vulnerable little old lady that’s about to be mugged by those mean bikers too! If you put down that sandwich and get moving you might just make it in time to intercept them before they can steal her cash and her marbled rye. Reward: You will receive a Reputation Boost and a B:Tier Loot Box for stopping this crime. This crime has a 10 minute time limit startiiiiiiiiiiiing, now.”
A timer took the alert’s place and started to rapidly click down as I felt my grip on the remainder of my sandwich tighten. I didn’t have to address this… Logically I knew that. I could sit right here on my ass and- The loophole! Sure, so far we hadn’t been able to discuss my powers far enough in depth since we just had this one fight that has found its way online. But logically, there just needed to be more information that he could see, and wasn’t this just the perfect opportunity?
“Oh, I completely forgot, I ran into Mr. Russo on my way home earlier, he said they were cleaning the building over on 56th tonight. He assumed I was still recovering but said that if I wanted to pop by we could talk about me keeping my job when I was ready to go,” I said as I got to my feet and waved the last bite of the sandwich at him before finishing it off. “Thanks for this, I’ll catch yah at home later.”
“Try not to get in the middle of an Augment fight this time,” He said with a wave as he returned his attention to his laptop,
“Yeah, that would be just my luck,” I laughed as I turned, but before I could go to exit, a thought came to mind. “Hey, do you have a piece of gum?”
Jon reached into his backpack and pulled out a pack, offering me a stick that I grabbed with a smile.
“It ain’t brushing but it’s something right?” I said with a laugh before I headed for the exit. Once outside, I looked around, trying to see if there was anything, an indicator or something that could lead me to the crime. “Shouldn’t there be like, a waypoint or something?”
“For what?”
“For… the crime alert? This is a game isn’t it?”
“Ohhhh, yes sorry, Wayfinder upgrades are available, however you do not currently have one. You’ll have to listen for clues, that said, Crime Alerts will only occur if you could logistically arrive at the scene in time to prevent it and these early ones are never that hard to find. So what’s the gum for?”
Okay… I just had to look for clues. I ignored Angie and started to walk toward 56th, that was where I said I was going already. Hopefully it wasn’t the other-
There was the roar of engines as several bikers ripped around the corner just a block ahead of me and came screeching to a halt. Sure enough, there was an elderly lady practically alone on the sidewalk, slowly making her way along with a single grocery bag and her purse slung over her shoulder.
“Okay, so it’s going to be like that then? Just throwing it right out in the open?”
“Hey Axio’s the one in charge, don’t look at me about where these guys show up,” Angie said, the timer ticking down past 7 minutes. “But like I said, this is still the early stages, the goal is to both help you get stronger and to get you some notoriety with the public, not to make you have to play super detective… Actually, no we do have some super detective missions too, we just never lead with them. The punchy way is the easier way to get you goody two shoe types into the ebb and flow of it all.”
I had only made it a block away but that was the good thing about living in New York, there was always an alley to slip in. There were still people on the streets, and with the Secret Identity rule, I couldn’t risk being seeing and associated with my… fuck, was my costume really going to be just white boots, some spikey bracers and a jacket right now?
I dipped behind a trash can, waited for just a minute to make sure no one had noticed, and then activated my equipment. There was a flash of light and I could feel the weight of my jacket as it fell onto my shoulders.
“It’s the Acceptance Matrix thing that’s making me just roll with all of this, right?”
“It is… yes, why do you ask?” Angie mused.
“No reason, it’s just… nice is all. Kinda makes this whole thing a little bit easier,” I said as I flexed my hands and my knuckles cracked. “Guess it’s time to stop that little old lady from getting mugged…”
“Top ten things you never thought you'd say?”
“Given the fact that before today I’ve gotten into maybe a single fight in my life, I’d say top 5 is more like it,” I replied with a laugh and then stepped out onto the sidewalk. The bikers were starting to creep up on the woman, and that meant it was show time. For once in my life, I really hoped there were some cameras nearby.