“Get the fuck outta the way Loophole,” The triplicated voices shouted before I felt the buzz of electricity cut through my area.

A burst of a lightning bolt went barreling toward Sal before one of the other snakes literally jumped in front of the strike, taking the attack and falling to just shy of 10% on his health bar. A blast of ice quickly followed up and took down the staggered snake-man before he collapsed to the ground and began to dissolve into dust.

“See! I can handle these fake Augment fuckers on my own!”

I ignored Hydramental’s jabs as I darted into the fray, activating Sting Like a Bee as I went. Sal quite literally towered over the others, standing easily three feet taller than I had remembered him but he still didn’t move as the smaller snake-men moved to intercept me.

“Sheesh you guys weren’t joking, he really does have a stick up his ass,” I heard Jon say as I activated Float Like a Butterfly and dodged under the first swing from one of the snakes. "

Although I had rushed my way over here, the small increase from the two Strength points I had placed meant that my stamina had only dropped to 75% by the time I had entered the fray. With several snake-men already moving to counter me, I was more than willing to drop some damage quickly to weed out the weaker of the enemies. I immediately threw a Gravity Punch with 10% of my stamina, connecting with the snake-man’s midsection. While I hadn’t thrown a hard enough punch to knock the enemy back, it still left an impact, dropping his health to nearly 10%.

I ignored his message, spinning on my heel as a second of the weaker snake-men tried to sneak up on me and I threw yet another 10% Gravity Punch.

“Eyes on Sal!” Jon shouted. I wasn't sure if he was about to attack, but I didn't risk it and activated Fun House, choosing to go invisible and skipping off to the side as I noticed several more snake-men were crawling their way out of the open man-hole.

"You know... if there was ever a time for some battle music... I'd say it's literally when you're fighting a whole bunch of fucking biker snakes," Jon wondered out loud as the street began to fill with snake-men hybrids.

"There is an interface modification that Loophole could get! A lot of Augments have complained about losing headphones while fighting," Angie responded. "I bet Loophole listens to some sort of weird shit, doesn't he? What would you suggest?"

"Oh, I know it's probably in bad taste or tempting fate, but I'd say go with 'Feel Invincible,' or maybe 'Kickstart My Heart,' though that one is a bit overdone," He suggested and Angie let out a curious sound.

"Huh, Skillet to Motley Crue... not the range I would have expected," She said.

"It's a good song!" Jon shot back before adding, "Wait... how do you know who sings those songs? That's not game related..."

"Not now you two!" I interjected before they could distract me further as I moved away from Sal.

A bolt of electricity arced through the air, catching my attention as it struck Sal in his chest just as the Elite crashed through my afterimage, validating my decision to use the ability. I shot a look over at the yellow Hydramental, noticing his eyes widen briefly before his expression hardened. The arc of electricity brightened and sparks went flying from Sal onto his nearby staggered associates. The strike of lightning didn’t put Sal down, but he acted as a jumping point as the lightning arced over to the two Vipers I had already struck. The sudden surge of electricity quickly dropped them to the ground and their bodies began to rapidly dissolve.

I took the opportunity to materialize one of my venom soaked guns in the last few seconds of my invisibility. With three quick squeezes, I fired, watching as the first two bullets glanced off of him before the third penetrated and left Sal with a Weakened (25%) debuff. His immunity had grown exponentially since our last encounter but I pulled the gun back into my B.E.L.T as my invisibility faded to save the last five bullets in the magazine.

As I shimmered back into existence, I told the afterimages to start mirroring my movements. They only had 20 seconds left, and one of them had already fallen to a newly emerged snake-man. I scanned the battlefield and counted at least ten of them on top of the ones we had already put down, though curiously none of the new Vipers were higher than level 5, with at least one of them being identified as a level 3. More were still climbing from the sewer and I found myself instinctively rushing the nearest one, trying to put some space between myself and Sal who didn't seem to be giving chase.

The new addition's lower levels were the only thing that gave me some form of relief about the sudden increase in enemies. Especially given the fact that Axio was clearly adapting how he sent them out. I wanted to curse under my breath, because not a single one of the monsters were wearing even a bandana, effectively neutralizing my Weighted Clothes ability.

“Why hasn't this alert upgraded to an ambush!? What the fuck is going on here!?” I halfway shouted in my head as I kept myself moving, striking Viper after Viper as I moved. I wasn't strong enough to put them down with unenhanced strikes just yet, but the weaker bikers took noticeable damage.

“I-.. I’m not quite sure Loophole, I have raised the question to Axio but he is refusing to accept my connection request. I do say that the proposed rewards for the level of challenge being thrown at you feels disproportional,” Angie said, her voice turning downwards in contemplation.

“Yeah, it’s not the reward that I’m worried about here!” I snapped. Hydramental’s barrage of electricity had stopped and I looked over, catching just as one of the new snakes snuck up on his yellow form and slammed a claw into his back.

“FUCK!” I heard a now duplicated voice shout as the yellow Hydramental burst into light, causing the remaining clone’s joint health bar to drop by over 30%.

Sal was sitting at 75% health and practically seething as his head whipped around, looking between my various afterimages and the remaining Hydramentals.

The blue Hydramental then did something I wasn’t expecting, he turned and fired several icy spikes toward the snakes that just happened to be closest to my afterimages. It almost could have looked like an accident as I watched the last two of my remaining afterimages vaporize when the ice went breaking through them.

“Wait don’t-” Jon started to say just as I sent my next message.

Had I thought about it for even a moment, I probably would have realized just how stupid it was to bring this up in the middle of such a volatile situation. But it was as if I had typed the message without thinking, shooting it his way as his red and yellow form shimmered and split, the red version bursting forward and immediately shooting a fireball directly my way.

I dodged to the side, escaping the blazing ball of energy by inches as it slammed into a snake-man that I hadn’t caught coming up behind me. I turned on the monster, delivering the last of my strikes enhanced by Sting Like a Bee and sending the snake collapsing to the ground in a heap as his body started to convulse. It didn’t matter that I had only gone to knock the unnamed Viper Soldier out, the moment the KO debuff hit him, his body began to dissolve just as each of the others had.

“Are you fucking working with them!?” The duplicated voice shouted as another sudden barrage of fire and ice came flying my way. “Are you in on this entire fucking scheme!?! HAVE YOU BEEN THE WHOLE TIME!?” he yelled even louder.

Many of the snake-men were taking collateral damage as the Hydramentals continued to go wild. His attacks were thrown in rapid succession, blazes of fire and icy bursts that dropped more than a few of the Vipers littering the street. The three forms split up, separating and moving as a shimmer of energy hopped from the red one to the yellow one. Had I not been paying attention I might have been caught off guard as he threw yet another bolt of lightning my way. Luckily I hadn’t stopped moving as I continued to dart toward the far end of the enclosed street, moving out of the way just as the bolt struck another Viper in its chest.

“Well.... I guess that at least confirms it is his brother. Though this was probably not the right time to bring it up,” Jon said as I dodged around another Viper tossing a few regular strikes that took down good chunks of its health with each blow.

“Probably not one of Loophole’s wiser moves, that’s for sure,” Angie agreed.

“Seriously, NOT NOW!” I shouted as I dropped the Viper with a final blow to the side of it's head and spun on my heel, barely avoiding another spark of electricity that left my hair standing on edge. There was another snake that had been unfortunately close to me that the bolt struck full force. Luckily it wasn't one of his hopping attacks and the snake seized up as its health rapidly sunk.

Given the Vipers I had already encountered, I wasn’t surprised to find that the soldier was only level 4 and I threw two more punches, chunking down the shocked snake's health until he fell to the ground like his compatriots. It was as if all the defenses that Gio had displayed were missing, or maybe the combination of electrical shock and my increasing strength just was enough to break through their defenses. While I knew I should be appreciative of the ease, the rapidly expanding number of them threatened to overwhelm the battlefield, regardless of how easy they were to take down. I saw a shimmer of light pass from one Hydramental to the next and started to move again before he could pin me down.

Hydramental was throwing attacks with reckless abandon and I dodged to the side out of the way of yet another fireball. I wasn’t quick enough though as a small blast of ice took me on my left shoulder, leaving a small icy patch and dropping my health by a healthy chunk.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I turned and threw a 10% Gravity Punch at an approaching snake-man, catching the monster by surprise as I followed my first strike up with three more rapid punches to his midsection. It took the level 4 attacker down, but another one quickly rushed at my side. I activated my jacket’s Fortune’s Guardian ability just in time as his claws glanced off my side, sending me stumbling to the side and into a small blast of fire that dropped my health to 50%.

“Oh wow, who knew Loophole could be assertive…. Or I guess… who knew he could try to be assertive,” Angie murmured and I bit my tongue as I materialized and used an Enhanced Health injector to bring my health back to full. I don't quite know why I did it, but as I looked around at the buildings surrounding us, I had to assume at least a few people had their phones out, so I deactivated the obfuscation passive on my Spectrum Veil just as another ball of fire was launched in my direction.

I skipped backwards from a few Vipers, letting one of them take the fiery blow as I kept my eyes on the Hydramental clones I could see. So far I had been holding back from actually trying to counter him, but that didn't mean I didn't have an idea of how I could. I had already seen just how it affected him when his clones burst from taking damage, and if I could rapidly take out his active forms, I had to hope they'd do enough collateral damage to knock him out. It wasn't the best plan, especially given the amount of enemies still on the field, but it would work if I could clear a few of them out of the way at the same time. I activated Float Like a Butterfly just as it came off of cooldown. It was the right move as another rapid set of icy spikes were sent flying my way and I skipped off to the side to let the attacks impale another Viper.

I toggled Center of the Universe on as I started to move, ducking and dodging between the cluttered battlefield. Though they had come charging onto the street, the Vipers weren't necessarily trying to overwhelm us by attacking us in a frenzy. The ones closest to me were trying to take swings that I easily dodged and countered, but the Vipers further from both myself and Hydramental tore into cars on the sides of the street with an animalistic rage. As I sprinted across the street and caught each of them in my area, one by one they started to feel the ever increasing gravitational pull within my zone of control. With none of the bikers in clothing, I knew that Weighted Clothes could be used to fully target Hydramental, but as much as he was pissing me off, he wasn’t my main enemy here and at that moment, it was the one ability on my action bar that I hadn’t used just yet.

I ramped up the strength of Center of the Universe as fast as I could, pulling the snake-men toward me as I tried to cut my way back into a centralized location. Before they could stop it, with the strength of my pull at its max, two of the three Hydramentals had gotten caught in my field with only the yellow clad version of him hanging out far on the sideline.

His demand for an answer came with another barrage of ice that glanced off my body, icing over bits of my jacket and taking down small chunks of my health as I watched the Vipers try with all of their might to slither away from me. The Vipers that had been unlucky enough to be closer tried to turn and strike me, but the pull sent them off balance and I was able to rapidly strike and take down the ones that were nearly right on top of me. The Hydramental in blue sent another shock of ice my way as he was yanked toward me by my gravitational pull. I didn't dodge the blast, letting it hit my hip before I swung a hard hook at the side of his head, connecting and sending the clone stumbling before my quickly changing position and gravitational pull yanked him along the ground my way.

It was my turn to ignore him and I waved the chat away from my field of view as I came to a stop near the center of the street. I had given him more than a fair enough warning and I wasn’t going to risk my safety just because he couldn’t settle down. Center of the Universe had reached the height of its strength and as far as I could tell, all of the snake-men were being yanked my way, forming a writhing serpentine-like moshpit in the street around me as they struck out at each other in anger. None of them were acting rationally and they seemed to be acting with an animalistic fear to flee from a force they didn't understand. The only one that had noticeably remained unaffected was Sal, who I briefly caught with a sinister looking smirk on his face as he quite literally watched from the sidelines. There was no room for me to cut toward him and it wasn't my intent to try either as I found myself completely surrounded.

The gravitational pull of my ability wasn’t going to do any damage to the bikers I had trapped and I knew I would burn through the last 30% of my stamina in a hurry if I tried to just throw punches and enhanced Gravity Punches over and over. I needed a quick way to clear out the crowd and a sudden burst of inspiration hit me as I realized I did still have one ability that would do the trick. The only problem was that the ability I needed was still stuck on cooldown. I knew I would need something very specific in order to make it work and started to concentrate. I wasn’t even sure if the ability would generate at my current knowledge level, but I focused on the outcome as hard as I could, remembering from our trial and error that ability generation required as specific of an idea as possible to get the exact ability you wanted. A smile crept over my face as a new window appeared, and I materialized an Enhanced Stamina Injector into my hand. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I knew it would do the trick before Angie even started to read.

“New Ability! Launchpad! So this ability has a whole lotta caveats and specific use situations but in case you weren't aware, you’re kinda busy right now, so let’s just focus on the specific situation that matters to you at this very moment. Don’t say I never did anything for you. While utilizing Center of the Universe, activate this ability to create a gravitational shockwave that pulses out from your location dealing damage equal to the numerical value of the total gravitational pull non-friendly targets are experiencing times 3 and stun each affected target for 20 seconds. Simultaneously launch yourself upwards a distance equal to the highest amount of damage you will deliver in feet. This ability temporarily takes Earthbound Impact off of cooldown for 10 seconds, with any remaining cooldown being added to its refreshed cooldown if Earthbound Impact is reused. This ability costs 20% of your stamina and has a 30 minute cooldown.”

I knew it would be temporary but I dropped the ability in place of Weighted Clothes and slammed the injector into my arm all while maintaining the force exuded from Center of the Universe. I turned and threw several more strikes at the closest Vipers, clearing the space immediately around me as I let out a breath I hadn't even realized I had been holding.

“Here goes nothing,” I thought and while Jon might have said something in return, I sure as hell didn’t hear him as I activated the ability.

Now, I had never been fired out of a cannon before, and while I was able to put on speed pretty quickly with Personal Gravity Laws, I knew that the force that I was suddenly sent rocketing upwards with should have been terrifying. The stakes of the battle should have had me laser focused on the task at hand, but as I left well over a dozen snake bikers and two of Hydramental’s clones stunned in the aftershock, the thrill of the launch itself made it practically impossible not to whoop just a little bit.

As I reached the peak of my launch, my momentum carried my feet up and over my head, flipping me backwards and giving me a solid sight of the street below. I only hung there for maybe a fraction of a second as I continued to pull my body up and over, but time still felt like it slowed as I took in the chaos that had formed in the mid day street. I zeroed in on the center of the group, as close to directly where I had launched from as I could. As soon as my feet were back pointed toward the earth, I activated Earthbound Impact and plummeted towards the ground.

“New Achievement!!! Knockout Royale! Well look at you, you’ve come quite a long way from tossing some gum on the ground and wailing on these bikers through some extremely mundane punches. Then again, the bikers have come quite a long way too, maybe not quite as far as they needed to in order to survive this situation, but they weren't a horde of snake-man hybrids two days ago so that is kinda progress I think… Sheesh… has it really only been 48 hours?! Anyway, the dust is gonna clear pretty quickly to reveal that you just took down over 15 of these temporarily augmented bikers with that single combo move, talk about efficiency! This is a Gold level achievement. Reward: You have received an A:Tier loot box!”

There was a sudden slew of notifications that stacked on the side of my vision, the top one actually claiming the Crime Alert had been completed as the dust started to settle. I didn’t think the attack would finish things off, especially with Sal still in the picture, but a quick check confirmed that it was in fact completed. Somehow Sal’s addition to the scene hadn’t changed the alert as it had at the hot dog cart and while I was sure that meant something, I certainly didn’t have time or mental energy to figure out what it meant.

While several car alarms were going off and I could hear indistinct screams and hollers coming from the windows of the buildings we had been pinned between, the sharp sound of a clap caused me to whip my attention over toward Sal, looming over Hydramental’s sole remaining form. Even though his form, now with a shirt split into three colors, was outside of my 17 foot radius, he was sprawled out on the ground with a clear KO debuff spinning over his head.

“Oheheheh,” Sal hissed out a laugh as he slithered forward and around the only actual collapsed form visible on the street. His tail casually but not violently slapped against Hydramental as he passed him. While his health had dropped to just about 55% from some of the collateral damage, his Weakened (25%) debuff had vanished. While I could try to activate my veil and hope to proc Defy the Odds yet again, I wasn’t sure if it would be enough. “You are ssssssstrong, aren’t you. Every killed peon, every one of our buildings you've cleared out... You’ve given ussss ssssso much knowledge. You've ssssshown ussss our weaknessesssss and it'ssss let our bossss make ussss sssso, sssso much sssstronger. Their deathssss will only do the sssssame."

"Sheesh, that is waaaaay too much hissing dude! You're killing my ears here," I shot at him before I could stop myself. I kept my hands up as I watched him carefully before I added, “If it's not you, then where the hell is Snakebite?! I have so many questions I have to beat out of him.”

This managed to stop him as his head fell backwards and he let out a spine chilling laugh.

“Oheheheh, you are cocky, aren't you. Don’t you worry, you already have the key, you’ll be meeting the bosssssss ssssssoon enough, though you might wissssssh you hadn’t. Now, I believe thisssss one hasssss far outlived hissss ussssefulnesssss. The bosssss issss tired of looking at him,” Sal hissed before he turned from me and went slithering back toward Hydramental.

Sal’s claws were fully extended and although Hydramental had been nothing but combative and had been quite purposefully trying to attack me, I wasn’t about to let him get anything worse than being knocked out. I sprinted across the street, simultaneously pulling the gun I had only recently used from my inventory out in my left hand and activating both Sting Like a Bee and my Spectrum Veil. I knew at that moment it didn’t matter if it was going to be enough or not, I had to try.

I only kept the veil up long enough to ensure I’d be considered Hidden before I unloaded every last remaining bullet in the gun into Sal. I wasn’t sure how many actually connected, but between the 5 bullets I shot, his health chunked down by 20% and the Weakened (25%) debuff returned to his status bar. His attention was ripped from Hydramental as he turned and looked for me with vicious intent.

It was already too late for him though, and I quickly slipped around to place myself between him and Hydramental before I threw every last bit of my remaining stamina into a Gravity Punch. My stamina had already dipped below 50%, so it certainly wasn’t the strongest attack I could throw, but with Sal’s health already nearing 30% himself and his Elite defenses neutralized by his weakness, I hoped it would be enough.

My fist connected directly with Sal’s oversized chest and his eyes went wide as a percussive BOOM echoed outward. The giant of a snake went hurtling backwards, skidding and tumbling over the ground. His health went hurtling downward, sinking deep into the red but didn’t bottom out as he came to a halt nearly 25 feet away from me. Unfortunately, my strike had also tossed him almost directly by the open manhole and Sal’s eyes locked onto it immediately before he glared back in my direction.

“Thissss isssn’t over, Loophole. We'll finissssh thissss ssssoon enough,” He hissed with a pained sound before he quickly escaped down into the sewer.

Although I didn’t like the fact that he had gotten away again, I dropped to my knees, taking deep breaths as for once I felt truly exhausted with my stamina fully depleted. It wasn’t even immediately starting to tick back up like it normally did and I took a few seconds to let the adrenaline of the fight wear off.

It was only at that moment that I noticed the ice walls had been crumbling into nothing and there was a loud roar of cheers that came from everywhere around me. My breaths were still coming in short, rapid succession as I looked back at Hydramental’s KOed form as a few more notifications stacked onto the already large pile of silenced ones.

More than a few police officers were rushing forward. The ice had crumbled enough that the red and blue flashing lights at the ends of the block were easily visible, even behind the massive lines of crowds that had gathered behind rapidly formed barricades.

“You gonna use that Resuscitation Injector you’ve been holding onto on him?” Jon asked and a breathless laugh escaped me as I fell back to sit in the center of the somewhat destroyed street.

“Maybe... but definitely not right away. He can sleep off his bullshit a little bit,” I said as I listened to the cheers still coming from around me. "Then he can answer some of my fucking questions."