“Congratulations! You have reached Level 7, please return to your Safe House to assign stat points and additional attributes!”
I had just finished taking the third Bronze den remaining down when the level up notification appeared and I was quick to text the alert back to Jon. He just as quickly responded with a thumbs up but nothing else.
I had pretty much hit the ground running on the first of the remaining Bronze dens. I did what I could to make sure that none of my enemies time to react, refining my assault strategy with each new den and the strategy had paid off. It was barely noon as I looked down at the mess of knocked out grunts that littered the floor of the dilapidated apartment building’s lobby. I went through my process of looting them, gathering a few random weapons and another good haul of credits to add to an already decent morning. My B.E.L.T.’s currency display showed I was sitting at just over 22,000 credits between the looted bodies and rewards from the 10th precinct.
Once I was sure I hadn’t missed anything, the bronze dens so far having literally nothing of interest even with more thorough searches, I pushed the front of the building open and ushered the waiting police officers in. It was another slew of random faces and I acknowledged that they had taken control of the scene. Although no one had gotten into the den to actually see the fight, a surprisingly large crowd had gathered behind the police line and gave me a huge cheer as I emerged.
Although I was certainly starting to take to the fights that came with being an Augment, the sudden swell of people still left me feeling a bit uneasy. I could hear cries of “We love you Loophole!” and “Yeah, get those punks out of our neighborhood!” and I acknowledged them with as friendly of a smile as I could muster before I launched myself upward into the sky and away from the crowd.
“One of these days I’ll get used to being up close with crowds like that, but this is not that moment,” I muttered to myself as I looked back down at the gathering crowd, each pulling out their phones to point toward me.
“Nah, stay awkward Loophole, it makes your interactions with others far more hilarious to me.”
I rolled my eyes before putting on the speed, whipping up and over the buildings. Although I didn’t have a map of the area, and it was certainly a lot harder to navigate from above without street signs to guide me, I had at least made a point of really memorizing what the roof of my building looked like before that first flight. Even then, I had to circle once before I set myself down, making sure I the nearby buildings didn't look like carbon copies. I shook my arms out and disabled my gear before I walked toward the entrance to the stairwell, not wanting to raise any questions just in case there was anyone else on the stairs. I eyed the slew of remaining notifications that had piled up and cracked my neck to the side as I opened the door. I had to climb down 4 flights of stairs so it wasn’t a bad time to let the notifications run through.
“Phase Points Gained! Basebreaker! You’ve disrupted an enemy base within a territory you have an active claim on. Value equal to Base’s Rank (Bronze equals one, Silver equals two, etc.) times 250. Total Value: 250 points. Rising Fame (NEW)! Your reputation has risen in rank! This gain has a static value. Total Value: 350 points.”
“Reputation Increased! You have gone from Unknown Vigilante to Local Hero. You are now eligible to claim Small Town and equivalent sized territories.”
“Hey Angie, how many Reputation ranks are there?” I asked as the window faded and a stack of abilities that had each leveled up came up next.
“There are 10 ranks that scale with the 10 levels of territories. As I mentioned previously, the Community Center that Hell’s Kitchen is included in would count as equivalent to a Small Town. Though I’m sure locals would disagree with our categorizing of the area as 'small' but it is simply semantics that help to keep things rather streamlined.”
“Makes as much sense as anything,” I said as I awkwardly nodded at an older woman passing by me. I let the ability screens appear and fade one at a time, actually a bit surprised that I had leveled more than one following that last den.
“Super Luck. This ability has increased to Level 2. Luck within your local area is now subtly affected by .2% for every 1 point of luck that you have.”
“Gravity Punch. This ability has increased to Level 2. Every 5% of your stamina put into this skill now deals an additional 60% damage up to a maximum of 600% increased damage. This ability has not been augmented.”
“Center of the Universe. This ability has increased to Level 2. Initial pull rate increased to 6 meters per second with the strength diminishing by .75 meters per second for every 5 feet from the center of your local area the affected targets are. This ability has not been augmented.”
"Float Like A Butterfly. This ability has increased to level 3. The duration of this skill has increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds. This ability has not been augmented."
“Sting Like a Bee. This ability has increased to Level 3. Successful strikes now impart 35% increased damage. This ability has been augmented 1 of 3 times. Current Augmentations: Time Adjustment.”
Like with my flight ability, both Gravity Punch and Center of the Universe were quickly finding a lot of use. Their low to no cooldowns made them easy to use in rapid succession, which made them leveling up more expected than not. I might have been surprised about Super Luck leveling up, but given it had just been working its magic for me in the background, I felt more relieved that it finally had ticked over. As for the other two, well they had always been key moves in my set, so I wasn’t at all surprised to see them moving up. It was the final notification that part of me knew I should have felt nervous about, yet the nerves never seemed to come.
“Threat Level Increased. Your rapid assault on the Viper’s gang has caused you to become seen as a greater threat to their goals and they have increased their activity within your territory. There will be an heightened difficulty Crime Alert within Hell’s Kitchen deployed within the next 2 hours. Due to the increased range granted to you by your movement ability, you will now be notified of Crime Alerts that happen anywhere within Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Yo!” Jon said, his voice coming out garbled as I pushed the door open. He was huddled over the kitchen table, shoving a sandwich into his mouth to take another bite.
“Did you just see that notification?” I asked and he shook his head before swallowing.
“Nah, unless Angie reads it out while I'm in the Command Room or you're inside of the Safe House here, I don't get to hear it, even then I only see the notifications if I'm actively looking at the view screen I have for your P.O.V. Gonna guess you dinged from the dens? How many did you get through?”
“Well. yeah, just crossed over to 7 actually, but apparently the bikers don’t like how busy I’ve been. I cleared three of the bronze dens and now there's apparently gonna be a harder Crime Alert coming soon,” I explained as I walked over into the kitchen to grab a drink from the fridge. “The alert just popped up before I got here.”
“Ahhh, well nope, didn’t see that one. I wasn’t sure if you were gonna bother to slow down so I was planning on bothering you so that we could refresh your Well Fed buff, but yah texted me before I was able to get back to the apartment. If you did ding, then it’s definitely good timing. We can get you fed up and back out there before the alert hits,” he explained and nodded over to a wrapped sub on the other side of the table before he went in for another bite of his own.
“Cuban from Tio’s?” I asked and he nodded as my stomach growled in anticipation. I walked back over and grabbed a seat as I set my soda onto the table. Although maybe I should have been out there waiting for the alert to hit, getting my buff refreshed was definitely a necessity. “Okay, so am I still doing 2 into Luck? If so, should I just drop 2 into Intelligence to finish it off for the level? I’m gonna need it to be at 10 to absorb the Quantum Shenanigans book.”
Jon held up a finger for a minute, chewing down the large bite he had taken before reaching for his own soda to chase it down with.
“He’s even cute when he doesn’t realize there’s mustard on his chin,” Angie giggled and Jon immediately reached for a napkin.
“I’ve been thinking about that… well sorta. It’s more that I’ve been thinking about how we are distributing your points. Obviously you have plenty of skills that are still scaling with your Luck and we want to keep increasing it, but I’m just wondering if we are seeing diminishing returns by doing 2 points every single time. Maybe I’m trying to min-max you a bit too hard, I don’t know for sure and maybe I'm even wrong with my line of thinking here, but there’s some stuff we hadn’t considered when we first talked about point distribution.”
“How so?” I asked, opening the soda and taking a long drink.
“Well, now that we know that your Strength not only increases how hard you hit but has a direct effect on your stamina, I think we need to make sure, at a minimum, we balance how you drop points between Luck and Strength,” he explained and then took another drink before letting out a rather loud refreshed sigh. “As for Intelligence, you only need another point dropped into it to use Refractions for now. I’d say stick with a single point this time and then drop 2 in on the next level so that you can use it then instead of dropping in a point now for no inherent gain. Then the extra point this level can just go into Luck or Strength to double up. That one is sorta dealer’s choice but I’d say go with hitting harder. The main point would be to just alternate every level. One level we double up Luck, one level we double up Strength unless you suddenly get an ability that stacks based on one of your other abilities. It's honestly kinda a shame that there's no way for you to train these stat points without the level ups.”
“Yeah, guess I never really thought about it too much... been doing that way too much with all of this but I think that's a side effect of the Acceptance Matrix... right Angie?" I wondered as I tapped a finger against the side of the soda can.
"It is yes, again, the Matrix is designed to ensure new Augments stay focused on the tasks at hand and don't have panic attacks over the rapid change to their perspective on the world," She explained.
"Yeah, I think I'm glad I don't have one of those," Jon said with a raised brow. "Can't you disable it?"
I felt my stomach turn at the thought and I shook my head. "I could, I think... but I kinda think I need it. Angie's right, it does kinda help me just stay in the zone."
"Huh... well ok, if it works it works," he said with a shrug and took a bit before adding slightly garbled, "Now get those points dropped."
"Yeah... okay I think I’ll double Strength then, it is lagging a bit behind my Luck. I suppose if I really wanted to unlock the Quantum book faster I could run back to the Square and see if that Belt was still in stock, though I'd almost have to imagine it got scooped up with that cooldown feature,” I said as I distributed the points. Another notification quickly popped up as soon as the stat window vanished.
“Your Action Bars have expanded! All Bars on your Revolver now have an additional Activated and Passive Ability slot.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Oh sweet, I wasn’t expecting that for another few levels,” I said as I considered the newly empty slots. I only had 3 passive abilities so far, so I added Misfire back to my bar for both revolvers. Our training session the previous night really had focused on abilities that I could really use to deal out some damage, but we hadn’t really put much thought into passives, something we were probably going to want to revisit.
“Yeah that definitely gives you a few more options. What else are you thinking about adding to the Fight Time bar? One of the other new ones?”
“Maybe,” I said as I unwrapped the sandwich and took a minute to take a large bite. My Well Fed buff had expired and I wasn’t intending on staying in the safe house for too long, so I wanted to get the buff refreshed before I headed out for the Silver dens. After I swallowed that first perfect bite I continued. “Freeze is useful but I think it’s really situational, especially since the liquid has to be unpackaged for me to affect it. I only used it one more time after the yacht and I really think I have to thank Misfortune Abound more than the frozen puddle for the enemy that got KOed off of it the second time. So I was debating swapping that one off, I’m just not quite sure what for. Earthbound Impact has a similar situational issue to it. It’s not much help in most of the dens when the bikers aren’t just hanging out on the back of a yacht, but given that I just got an alert that there’s gonna be some more Crime Alerts, it’s probably a good idea to have a strong entrance.”
“Well how about you absorb Refractions of Reality and we can see what it’s going to do to your abilities. Let me get to my seat really quickly so I can watch it from my end,” Jon said as he stood up. “If it does something good, I could see Mirror Image falling onto your Fight Time bar, just as a good distraction mid-fight.”
I materialized the book onto the table and quickly absorbed it, watching as the book dissolved into a flash of light just as quickly as it shimmered into reality.
“Your Optical Refraction Knowledge has increased to Level 6. ALERT: Two of your abilities have evolved. Please Note: The evolution of these abilities will not remove the original, weaker ability from your Ability Catalog. Evolved abilities will have the option to transfer the original ability’s augmentations to it.”
“Oh shit, it wants to change both Mirror Image and Trick of the Light,” Jon called out to me and I stood up, carrying the half-eaten sandwich with me as I opened the first of the two screens.
“Mirror Image has evolved to: Fun House. Would you like to transfer Augmentation: Recording to it?”
I thought about it for a moment, rereading the ability twice before Jon and I decided moving the augmentation was probably for the best. Although this automatically took one of its three augmentation slots, the sudden expansion of the effect of Mirror Image left me positive that I probably wouldn’t be using the lesser version any time soon.
“Fun House. Level 1 Activated Ability. Creates 3 afterimages of yourself in randomized locations within your Local Area that will mirror your visible movements. You may choose to turn invisible for up to 10 seconds when you activate this ability and leave a 4th afterimage in your place. This ability has a 10 minute cooldown and costs 10% of your stamina. This ability has been augmented 1 of 3 times. Current Augmentations: Recording.”
“Trick of the Light has evolved to: Spectrum Veil. There are no augmentations to transfer.”
I pulled open the new skill, wondering how Trick of the Light could have even changed, and found myself pleasantly surprised as I went in to take another bite of my quickly dwindling lunch. I wasn’t sure if the way my abilities were being generated were directly connected to my recent knowledge on the difference between static and flexible cost skills, but I had things to do and knew Angie would probably just blame me for not asking earlier… Which wasn’t exactly something I could argue with.
“Spectrum Veil. Level 1 Activated/Passive Ability. Passive Effect: Creates a permanent shimmer directly around your body, causing cameras and telescopic lenses to improperly focus on you. This Passive effect can be disabled but must be reenabled manually. Activated Effect: Warp the light around your body, rendering you invisible to all visible waves of light. The activated portion of this ability costs 50 stamina per second to use and has no cooldown.”
The activated portion of the skill was certainly costly, even with the increase to my stamina from the Well Fed buff that reappeared on my status bar as I finished my sandwich. But it was the added passive ability that made the ability even more curious.
“Why doesn’t that passive have a cost? It feels like it should have a cost given that it’s a persistent effect,” Jon said before I could get the question out myself.
“This is a side effect of having higher levels of knowledge! Some abilities, when evolved from abilities that you have initially created, will generate these secondary passive effects and generally speaking, as long as the passive does not provide an immediate damaging effect, it will fall into this No Cost category. Additionally, some abilities when evolved, if they don't generate a passive effect, will have a chance to alter from having a percentage-based cost to a variable-based cost,” she explained. “I did say that there were benefits to higher leveled knowledge, but given the somewhat unique flavor of Loophole’s abilities, I couldn’t disclose the information on the chance that your abilities and utilization of the knowledge operated differently.”
“I feel like that’s just you lying as a way to hide the fact that you willingly chose not to disclose everything when we were talking about this earlier…” I said and rolled my eyes.
“Whaaaaat me? Noooo I would never do-” She started, her voice cutting off briefly before a new window appeared. “Crime Alert! Snake Rampage! A few of the Viper gang bikers in snake form have been spotted rampaging their way down 9th street, calling your name and claiming you lack the power to stop them. They were last seen causing random destruction to vehicles crossing 35th street. Stop them before they cross into Chelsea! Reward: You will receive 10,000 Credits and a Large Reputation Boost for stopping their rampage. This reward will be forfeited if any of them escape and you will lose Reputation Points equivalent to a Medium Reputation Boost. You have 10 minutes until they exit Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Well isn’t that just convenient,” I groaned as the timer started to tick down.
“Yeah, you’re gonna need to get moving, you just ranked up, I’d be willing to bet letting them escape would just knock you back down and I’d be willing to bet there’s some sort of negative consequence for losing a Reputation rank, isn’t there Angie,” Jon said as he started to activate specific screens in the Command Room.
“That’s correct, though not completely. Losing a Reputation Rank has a variable outcome, anywhere from a Major Level threat being deployed to your location or you ceding your claim to a territory you actively lose your rank within,” Angie explained.
“Cool, guess I’m just wasting time standing around then,” I said and clapped my hands together. I could certainly run for the roof, but they were nearly at the southernmost edge of Hell’s Kitchen and time mattered here. I dropped Spectrum Veil into the newly formed slot on my ability bar and then eyed the rest of my skills. If there were going to be multiple snakes, I didn’t think I could reliably utilize Freeze with my remaining venom vials to distribute enough of the weakness. I could certainly try to mimic how I handled Luca, but if the Snakes were spread far enough out, I’d end up wasting more than I wanted to use and I didn’t want to empty out my stock of the stuff either. Luckily, I still had two guns soaked with venom and dropped Fun House in Freeze’s place on the bar. The ability showed the two preset recordings that I had made for Mirror Image were already available, but also included a ‘Mirror Visible Movements’ option.
“Wait, where are you going?” Jon asked, looking over his shoulder as I walked toward the window that led to our fire escape.
“Roof will take too long,” I said, throwing the window open and activating my gear at the same time. “It could certainly burn a ton of stamina if I keep the veil activated for too long, but it’ll at least get me clear of the building for a quick burst use.”
Before Jon could follow up or make me question my decision, I simultaneously activated Spectrum Veil and Personal Gravity Laws, launching myself up and away from the building. My stamina quickly started to drop and I deactivated the veil once I was clear of the roof. I oriented myself to the south and took off.
“I definitely think that should be an emergency exit only, that took out like, 10% of your Stamina in the blink of an eye there,” Jon’s voice echoed in my head for a moment as I flitted my way across the neighborhood.
“You’re not wrong but I’m not risking letting them cross into Chelsea,” I said, scanning the streets as I tried to find my way to 9th. As I put on the speed, making quick work cutting my way across the few blocks that separated me from the southern edge of the neighborhood I quickly caught sight of the trail of destruction the pack had left.
“Um… Angie… that’s way more than “a few”,” I heard Jon say as I darted a hundred feet over head of a group of at least a dozen snake-men. They were attacking cars at random and a crowd of onlookers were fleeing in every direction. For what it was worth, it didn’t seem like the snakes were making it a point of trying to chase after the fleeing civilians, but any and all property that got in their way was met with vicious strikes and attacks.
I turned toward the sky and flew up higher, wanting to make sure I would hit the maximum strength on my Earthbound Impact when a sudden large flash of icy blue materialized both directly behind and in front of the line of snake-men slithering their way south along the road. Large ice walls had covered the entirety of the street on either side of them, locking them between two large buildings as the gang whipped their heads around.
I mimicked them, looking for the source before I spotted what looked like a speck of a person wearing blue on either edge of the road, just inside of the ice walls. One of them suddenly shimmered as their outfit changed to a bright yellow color and a sudden flash of an electrical arc went flying from the source. I followed the lightning to the gang and I saw the tightly packed snakes all seem to suddenly seize from the current jumping from one to the other. They were being held in place, but it didn't look like they were going down. A part of me knew that there was no way that this was a coincidence, but that didn’t matter, Hydramental and I had been thrown at the same task unknowingly before and I certainly wasn’t about to let him get all of the credit for taking these guys down, especially since they were still in my territory.
Quickly picking a spot at the center of the grouping and hopefully far enough away from the Hydramental clone, I activated Earthbound Impact and went hurtling down into the center of the Vipers. The sound echoed off of the walls of the buildings and ice as my impact left a crater in the cement and sent the entire group of snake-men scattering and collapsing to the ground. The arc of electricity continued to skip between them and I followed up my landing by activating Ring of Fire. A sudden burst of fire shot outward from my body and I directed it to stay low toward the ground. The fire licked over each of the snakes and elicited sharp cries of pain from more than a few of them.
“New Achievement! Alley-Oop! You comboed an ability off of another Augment’s ability, doubling the damage of both of your attacks on a group of susceptible enemies. Yup it even counts if the person you comboed off of had no intention of getting your help. This is a Silver level achievement. Reward: You have received a B:Tier loot box.”
“Oh fucking hell, not you... Not only do you have to crash my party, you have the gall to use one of my elements?” I heard three voices echo together and looked around. The attack had taken down 8 of the 12 snakes and I was barely able to highlight one of them to discover they were only level 5 before the body dissolved into ash. The 4 that still remained had taken a large hit to their bars, but at level 7 it wasn't enough to take them out right away and they were starting to slowly recover from the shock they had been given. "If you could fucking do all of that, why'd you make me do all the fucking work back on the train?!"
The blue version of Hydramental had reappeared on the inner side of his icy wall and I looked around, picking out his red version. Not at all surprisingly given the light show I had just seen, I also found a yellow shirted Hydramental had joined the original pair.
“Ah I get it now. You didn’t want to add me to your friend’s list because you knew you were just gonna make more of your own,” I said before I could stop myself. Given that I knew I needed to get some information out of him, I probably shouldn’t have been going out of my way to antagonize him, but normal people might have appreciated the helping hand instead of immediately going on the assault. The yellow Hydramental shot me a look that felt like he was about to throw a bolt of lightning at me when a sudden clang interrupted us.
“Now now fellassssss,” a familiar screeching voice said and I turned, looking around and finding Sal pulling his way out of yet another manhole. His level had somehow jumped all the way up to 9 since the last time I had seen him and the four remaining non-elites were gathering around him as they recovered from their shock. “As-ssss fun as-ssss it would be to watch you two tear each other apart… that’sssss our job.”