Chapter 14: A New Ally and a Looming Threat
[Main Mission: Stop Jason from completing the energy device. Reward: 300 Coins, 1 Gu egg. Side Mission: Train Ava to master her new Gu. Reward: 100 Coins.]
Ava Starr, now Ava, wasn't exactly a bundle of joy. She was a woman who had lived in constant pain and fear for years, and while the Tech-Warp Gu had given her a semblance of control, it hadn't erased the trauma. She was quiet, wary, and prone to phasing out of the room when things got too loud or too emotional. In other words, she fit right in with our chaotic little family.
"I swear, my team is a walking, talking therapy session that occasionally fights bad guys. We've got a traumatized tech genius, a perpetually angry veteran, a fast-talking criminal, a bug guy, and now a literal ghost. And then there's me, the guy who's just trying to keep all the plates from crashing down. It's like a superhero version of 'The Breakfast Club,' but with more punching."
The first order of business was training. Ava needed to get a handle on her new power, and the team needed to learn how to fight alongside her. My apartment's warehouse was not big enough for this, so we had to find a safe space. I used my Strategic Gu to find an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. training facility, a relic from the old days that had been completely forgotten. Perfect.
The training session was… interesting. Frank, with his brutal, no-nonsense style, would just charge at Ava, forcing her to phase out of the way. "You gotta react, not think!" he'd bark.
Luis, on the other hand, was all about encouraging monologues. "Okay, so you're phasing, right? You're like a ghost. So you gotta be all like, 'Ooooh, I'm the ghost of Christmas past, and I'm going to phase through your punch and then… do something!' Tell me what you're doing! Get into the narrative!"
Ava just phased, her face a mask of confusion.
Skye was the most helpful. She understood the tech aspect of Ava's powers and the Gu. "Ava, the Gu isn't just about phasing. It's about control. It's about using your mind to manipulate the energy around you. Think of it like a sound wave. You can make it high-pitched, or low, or you can even nullify it. That's what you're doing to the electronic field of reality."
This seemed to click with Ava. She started to focus, and instead of just phasing through objects, she started to disrupt them. She would phase through a drone target, and the drone would just... flicker and die.
"Oh, that's so cool. It's like a magical EMP. She's not just a ghost anymore. She's a glitch in the Matrix. She's the ultimate hacker, but with her body."
While the others were training, I was back in the apartment with Skye, trying to make sense of Jason's schematics. My Meta-Knowledge Gu told me this was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea. This device was not just a portal, it was a weaponized portal. Jason wasn't trying to make a cleaner energy source; he was trying to create a weapon that could tear a hole in reality.
"The resonance frequency... it's all wrong," Skye said, her fingers a blur on the keyboard. "He's not trying to stabilize it. He's trying to make it unstable. It's designed to create a localized, short-lived tear in space-time. It would suck anything in the vicinity into the quantum realm, with no way to get back."
"So he's building a vacuum cleaner for people?" I said, a grim joke escaping my lips. "Great. I hate vacuum cleaners."
"Adam, this is serious," she said, finally looking at me. "He's going to use this. He's trying to impress his 'real boss.' And based on the energy signatures I'm seeing, his final location is in an abandoned warehouse a few blocks away from a major civilian hub."
The system notification popped up.
[Main Mission: Stop Jason from completing the energy device. Reward: 300 Coins, 1 Gu egg.]
"Well, that's just swell. Just when we get a new member, we get a mission that could literally rip the universe a new one. It's like the universe is testing us. It's like a villainous version of 'What Would You Do?' And my answer is: panic, but with a plan."
I took a deep breath. "Okay, we need to go in. Now. This isn't a training exercise. This is a live fire situation. And we have to save a lot of people."
Skye looked at me, a worried expression on her face. "Be careful, Adam. He's not as dumb as he looks. He's desperate. And a desperate man with a reality-warping weapon is the most dangerous kind of man there is."
"Hey," I said, a small, genuine smile on my face. "Don't worry. I've got a guy who can punch through steel doors, a guy who talks a lot, a bug guy, a ghost, and a genius hacker. I think we can handle a kid with a glorified vacuum cleaner. Mostly."
She didn't smile, but her eyes held a spark of a familiar feeling. It was trust. It was admiration. And maybe, just maybe, something more.
"Okay, Adam, don't mess this up. Don't be the idiot who falls for the brilliant, damaged girl. Wait, no. Do it. She's awesome. I'm just saying... don't die in the process. That's a deal breaker."
The team was ready. Frank was sharpening his knife, Ava was phasing in and out of a wall, Luis was giving Scott a detailed, rapid-fire rundown of the history of the color orange, and Skye was putting the finishing touches on our comms.
This was it. Our first real, high-stakes mission as a complete team. And it was all because of a kid with a bad haircut and a quantum-flux capacitor. I swear, the villains get less intimidating every time.
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