“I must say, I am a bit surprised you messaged me. To be frank, up until this afternoon I sort of just assumed you were a slightly smarter version of the oafs that have been trying to hit on Pinky every day.”

  Although Axio’s daily announcement had been coming up, after opening my boxes up and absorbing my new bit of knowledge I had decided to find my way back to The Common Ground, but not before contacting the one person that I might be able to pick the brain of for the exact situation that I had found my self in.

  “Does that actually happen that often?” I asked, looking at BrainCraft curiously as he lifted a beer up, stopping just before he took a sip to stare at me. Or I had to presume that’s what he was doing given the large goggles that obscured his eyes.

  “I don’t mean to be offensive, but do you… I don’t know… swing the other way? You have seen Pinky right? I mean, I know she has the tusks when she’s fighting but anyone with half a brain can see that she’s objectively gorgeous,” BrainCraft asked and my eyes went wide.

  “What? No that’s not… Sorry I just… I guess I wasn’t imagining anyone would be using this place to try and pick people up,” I replied, somewhat grateful that we were in The Common Ground and neither Angie or Jon could hear me put my foot in my mouth.

  “Ah I see, you’re just incredibly dense then,” he said. "We're in a bar filled with literal super humans and alcohol, you shouldn't be surprised that some would try to be picking each other up."

  “I’m not- You know what, that's not important,” I said, deciding to drop it as I eyed a large digital display on a wall opposite of us. The clock was quickly ticking toward the top of the hour and Axio’s inevitable announcement. His voice wouldn’t reach us here inside of the Common Ground, but I didn’t necessarily think it mattered if I didn’t listen to his monologue during the lull between phases, especially since it did feel like there was an active problem that needed to be solved.

  After absorbing The Little Engineer’s Handbook, I had found that while I did have access to a much wider range of knowledge of at least cursory building techniques, it was still extremely surface level. Much like when I had received The Stupid Man’s Guide To Reptile Venoms, the knowledge that this book provided seemed to be more functional than just granting me a quick way to make a new ability. After Jon and I took a bit to try and think of an ability I could create, even trying to do something as simple as just disconnecting a power source using my new knowledge of basic circuits to no avail, we decided to take a step back and reevaluate.

  Although the only venom based ability I had came from my bracers rather than an ability of my own, my knowledge on reptile venoms had come in handy while fighting with reptile based Augments. There was a part of me that felt a rapid ball of suspicion crunch into my gut at just how relevant some of the knowledge I could pull up was, but I pushed it aside. It would have been painfully easy to try and assume a connection, but I had to assume it was just a coincidence.

  Given just how widespread the robots were and the other Augments that had been handling them so far, it didn’t seem likely that Axio was trying to maneuver me into a specific position as he had with SnakeBite. That wasn’t to say that I was writing the possibility off completely, just that I had to acknowledge that there were plenty of Augments out there and plenty of them were Miscreants that simply did what they wanted.

  So, while I hoped the knowledge would provide me with some sort of advantage that could help against the Clockwork robots, or even their progenitor, I realized that I had a potential source of at least some knowledge right at my mental fingertips. Luckily for me, BrainCraft didn’t brush me off when I asked to pick his brain and in no time I had found myself sitting opposite of him in a booth on one of the outer walls of the bar. While he didn’t have it activated, one of the small, spikey privacy devices he had deployed earlier in the day was already on the table.

  “So what exactly was so important that you needed to chat with me again today?” BrainCraft asked, setting his beer down before his hand moved to the device that I had only briefly glanced at. “Does it have to do with the topic our squads discussed earlier?”

  “Not quite,” I said, looking away and toward one of the screens mounted and facing our direction. “Is there any chance you’ve seen the stuff going on over in New York?”

  “I can’t say that I have,” BrainCraft said. “As I mentioned at lunch, Pinky and I have been rather busy with an odd infestation of giant bugs which hasn’t exactly allowed for scouting regions outside of our purview.”

  “Well, let’s just say we’ve had a similar-ish day.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, not with bugs for us, but… well like I said, similar,” I said with a nod. “Swansong and I actually met this morning while I was fighting a giant robot spider and it’s been a mechanical zoo that I did not pay to see since then. My P.A.I. indicated that they were Augment built, so I was curious if you maybe had any insights into… well anything to do with another tech based Augment since this dude is almost definitely a Miscreant.”

  “Ah, well that is… possible, but I don’t know just how much help I will be able to provide. Our powersets may have overlap or similarly named individual powers, but you should recall from your own selection that no two sets are exactly the same. While it is entirely possible that I could explain the functionality of this other Augment’s creations, I couldn’t guarantee that I could provide any real insight into their designs, although… you said they were robotic versions of animals?”

  BrainCraft brought a finger up to his chin and he tapped at it before his other hand waved. In a flash of light, a small tablet appeared on the table ahead of him, bobbing up and down ever so slightly. It was floating above the table ahead of him and a faint glow started to emanate from the screen without him ever even moving to touch it.

  “There’s such variation in design… Testing perhaps?” He began to mutter to himself as he focused on the tablet, reaching back for his drink once again as his voice dropped lower.

  “I think he’s actively modifying them. The ones that we fought this morning broke down into scrap but we fought another set a few hours ago and all of the ones we took down pretty much just self-destructed the moment they had been taken down,” I explained, drawing his attention back to me. “I only barely noticed the sudden gathering of their energy before we got out of the way of having our feet blown off.”

  “So what exactly were you hoping to gain from me? I might be able to offer a few ideas on where normal structural weak spots on devices like this would be, but my specialty is with smaller devices in general. I have toyed with some drone ideas, but I still need to raise my own level a bit before I’d be able to properly build a functional variant of my own,”

  “Really? That’s kind of interesting… I’ll be honest I wasn’t exactly sure how a mechanical genius or tech based Augment would really create or use abilities. Hell, I wasn’t exactly trying to probe you on that, but it might be beneficial if we could track down where this guy was deploying the robots from in the first place too,” I explained and BrainCraft nodded before he snapped his fingers. The privacy device responded to his command and rose into the air before it began to spin rapidly.

  “Again, I will say I can’t make any guarantee or presumption about another Augment’s powers, but I have compared notes with Gearshaft from the 6th Wave and there are enough similarities that I think I can exposit at least the generalities of your mysterious enemy,” BrainCraft explained. “Although… If I am going to explain some of how his, and by extension, my powers work, I would appreciate it if you’d do the same. Call it a transaction of information.”

  “That’s fair I suppose, are you really interested in what I can do?”

  “Not even a bit,” BrainCraft shook his head but then smiled. “But you did defeat Pinky without breaking a sweat and she’s been obsessively watching any footage of your fights so that she’s prepared for when you two do have a rematch, which as she has mentioned more than once, you promised her once you two were both at level 10. I believe she’d appreciate it if I did do a bit of information scouting for her given that she is a squadmate of mine.”

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  “Ah, I did promise her that, didn’t I…”

  “It’s why she was rather upset with you for ignoring her messages for so long,” He explained and I laughed.

  “She is persistent… isn’t she.”

  “As persistent as you are dense,” BrainCraft agreed before laughing when I shot him a confused look. “So do we have a deal? I’ll of course keep the privacy screen activated the whole time so that no one can overhear if that makes you more comfortable with disclosing that information to me.”

  “Yeah, we have a deal,” I said, holding out a hand. BrainCraft only briefly looked toward it, seemingly contemplating something before reaching out and shaking it.

  “So again, this is going to be conjecture and based on my own abilities. Tech based Augments will generally specialize in gadget or specific mechanical creations. Our action bars are even expanded slightly to accommodate that. While you and other more combat focused Augments will only have item slots for your stamina injectors, we get an entire extra bar for the devices we construct and we can only utilize devices we build from that bar. Our normal action bars are more for repair, build, and blueprint functions which gives us more space for passive abilities. We generally use these to amplify or give life to our creations without them having to make actual sense to normal minds, although to be fair, I believe this is actually just a game design to both prevent non-players from reverse engineering any of the technological advancements we make and to stop us from trying to just turn around and sell our own inventions.”

  “That… makes it actually make less sense that he’d set them up to blow up just because some people got their hands on the scraps of his robots,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest as I leaned back into the booth.

  “Yes, it’s more likely that it was a last ditch effort to hurt you or anyone else that was able to defeat them. Although that would still beg the question as to why they hadn’t been included in the first iterations you encountered,” BrainCraft said. “Another major factor to our powers is proximity. Our devices have to be within a certain range of us in order to work, although most of us rather quickly create workarounds to this such as repeaters and network nodes, though this also ends up taking one of our limited slots. Since these attacks all look to have happened rather simultaneously around the city, I think you’re going to want to be searching for whatever secret network this Augment has set up to provide reach and access for his drones. While it is possible his range is just that massive, I feel like if that were the case he’d also be entirely out of your league… no offense.”

  “Oh I had no doubt about that, he had robots deployed that were able to square off, at least briefly, with Pinneedle and Grand Strike. I’m not exactly sure what wave those two are from, but I think it’s one of the earlier ones,” I explained, looking over at one of the monitors again. “But got it, we should be looking for some sort of nodes, not sure if you’ve ever been to New York but that might be a bit difficult.”

  “Well that is part of the job,” BrainCraft said with a laugh. “The good thing for you is that they shouldn’t be that difficult for you to find. See, another key factor with our designs is that they aren’t supposed to look ordinary, even if we try to make them that way. Between that and the fact that our tech is considered a game item and can always be highlighted, you should have somewhere to start at the very least. Now, if I were in that position, I wouldn’t destroy the first node I found, I’d instead try to use it to trace back the source of the signal, but that may be difficult unless you’re also a tech Augment, which, as far as I’m aware, you are not.”

  “Definitely not,” I agreed as he looked toward me expectantly. “That’s not to say I don’t have some technical knowledge… but I did also just gain it about an hour ago.”

  “You just gained it? Aren’t you only limited to purchasing and utilizing knowledge books that align with your powerset?” He asked, leaning back in his booth and reaching out for his drink.

  “Yeah… well that’s the thing, my power is just a bit, well… versatile,” I said. I was just about to continue when every screen in the building started to pulse and flicker, the digital display on the far wall ticking over to the top of the hour. I looked around, seeing several of the other Augments in the building turning their attention to the screens.

  There was no noticeable fanfare that came with the change, something that was always present during Axio’s normal announcements and unlike when I was just following along from my apartment, the televisions actually were playing footage from various Augment fights and encounters. I had to look through several different screens before I finally found the one dedicated to our wave, catching it just before the footage flipped off a combined shot of Swansong and myself fighting the Clockwork Gorillas and onto Freakenstein charging, metal horn affixed to his head, directly for a robotic kangaroo that tried to counterattack with its large back feet.

  “Seems like there’s no shortage of robotic enemies running around,” BrainCraft said, having similarly found his attention drawn to the screen.

  “He’s also in New York actually, just a different borough,” I explained, watching as footage of the well dressed Quizmaster briefly played as he looked down into a pit at several police officers. The video cut off, but not before a rather deranged looking smile split over the dark-skinned man’s face.

  Immediately following Quizmaster, a video of a pink blur appeared and I immediately recognized Pinky as she went plowing into and through an absurdly large cockroach. The goo that was left behind made my stomach turn and I turned my attention back to BrainCraft.

  “Those… those are some really big cockroaches,” I said, eliciting a laugh from him.

  “They’ve been popping up all over southeast California, while my P.A.I. hasn’t confirmed it as yours has, I suspect an Augment is behind it, though I’ll admit I’ve never heard of giant bugs being a problem for anyone else before,” he replied. I turned back to the screen just as it rolled over and displayed the current top ten list.

  Tenth Wave

  Guardians: 201 Miscreants: 297

  1. Tempest’s Wrath - Level 15 Thunder God - Miscreant - 25180 Points

  2. Loophole - Level 14 Perfect Planner - Guardian - 23635 Points

  3. Swansong - Level 12 Healing Voice - Guardian- 17915 Points

  4. Freakenstein - Level 12 Patchwork Armorer - Miscreant - 16025 Points

  5. Quizmaster - Level 12 Gameshow Host - Miscreant - 15865 Points

  6. Pretty Pink Warthog - Level 12 Berserking Boar - Guardian - 15520 Points

  7. Duke Juke’em- Level 11 Highschool Athlete - Miscreant - 15260 Points

  8. Pigeon - Level 11 Pigeon - Miscreant - 14970 Points

  9. Vice Grip - Level 11 Toolbox Mechanic - Guardian - 14750 Points

  10. Lazer Tazer - Level 11 Lethal Lighting Specialist - Miscreant - 14520 Points

  “Did… did we gain Guardians?” I asked. My brain was a bit fuzzy from the last time I had actually looked at this list but I could have sworn that the number had been lower than 200.

  “I believe we did,” BrainCraft responded with a nod. “It is possible to switch sides of course, perhaps a few of the less violent Miscreants had a change of heart.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” I said and then looked over at him curiously. “I’m a bit surprised you’re not up on the list since you’re teamed up with Pinky.”

  “I’m sitting at 23rd at the moment. She had a much stronger start than I had, so I have been catching up, but most of my point gains come from our joint endeavors,” He explained and then once again looked at me expectantly, waving a hand in my direction as one of his tablets hovered in the air off to the side. “Now, you were saying about your powers?”

  “Sorry, it's easy to get distracted, you know how it is,” I said and he nodded. I didn’t need to explain every nuance of my power, but we had made a deal, and if I was going to be dealing with a tech based Augment, I wanted to keep on good terms with him, just in case I needed to pick his brain as we discovered new information. “Okay, so the basics of my powers…”

  Happy Wednesday! If you're enjoying the story make sure you Comment, Rate, or Review!

  I apologize for the late chapter! My son had a rather rough evening that required a trip up to the urgent care (he's doing just fine now though) which pushed my normal editing period for this chapter back to today. I may still end up editing a few more details into this chapter, but did not want to have it delayed too long.

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