While I was pretty upset that Eve avoided telling me about her powers yet again, I can at least understand that now’s probably not the time. We just had to stumble upon the enemy base right as we were getting to the good part…

We turned off our lights and peeked around the corner, and what we saw was quite something.

A well lit underground warehouse that was filled with wooden crates and boxes. There were a good one or two dozen people inside. Some were moving crates around, but the rest were standing guard or patrolling around.

...does she expect just us two to fight this many people? Is she insane? 

I’m just a normal person without my power. So if there isn’t a single villain here with a power for me to copy, then we are as good as dead.

Boy would this be a good time to copy a certain someone's illusion power...if I actually knew how to use it. Thanks, Eve.

“Here.” The girl in question said as she passed me a small wireless earbud. I put it on at the same time she did, and she started talking in a low whisper. “Ghost, we’ve arrived.”

“Heard you loud ‘n clear.” She responded with a small bit of static coming from the connection. “Let’s see, if you’re at the entrance….Ah! Okay, do you happen to see a tunnel at the end of the far right wall?”

“Yea.” 

“Okay good, you’ll want to head down it. Preferably quietly. That should be where the target’s at.”

“Ghost, what about the stuff in the first room? I’m seeing large crates all over the place down here.” Eve asked quietly.

“Most of those contain stuff like generic supplies, some guns, and a few contrabands.” Skye responded, “But it’s not important to us Trick. Leave that to the heroes to clean up, our goal is further in.”

“Wait, heroes?” I ask with a frown, “You can’t be serious about calling heroes, have you forgotten that I’m not especially well liked by them?”

“It’s fine Mimica, I’ll send an anonymous call after you two escape. You probably won’t even catch a glimpse of a hero if everything goes right.” Skye responded.

I let out a sigh. “I don’t like it but...I guess that’s fine.”

If it was just one hero, then I’d be confident I could at least fight them or escape. But I know that when one hero gets called in, a second or third is right behind them. 

“You’ll be fine,” Eve said with a pat on the shoulder before her expression turned serious. “If that’s all you two, then we should get going. I don’t like staying in this place longer than we need to.”

I nodded, and Skye responded with a “good luck”. Then suddenly Eve reached down and grabbed my hand, causing me to jump. What was she..?

“Don’t let go.” She said in a commanding tone, “I’m going to make us partially invisible, but you need to stay close to me for it to work. As long as we stay quiet, and don’t get too close to anyone, then they shouldn’t see us.”

I slowly nodded, but something she said made me worried. 

“...only partially?”

“Sorry, but it’s the best I can do.” She said before she turned towards the entrance. “Let’s go.”

I followed behind her, holding hands, as we slowly started to make our way towards the villain hideout. After a few steps I noticed both of our bodies had become mostly see through, which was freaky as all hell. 

Looking through my own body, as if it didn’t exist, is something I wish I never have to go through again. Ugh.

I doubt anyone would see us, from what I can tell from looking at where Eve is at least. She was like a wavy distortion in the world. If you paid super close attention you would see her moving around, but anyone not looking for her would probably never notice.

I gripped my hand a little tighter on Eve’s hand as we entered the first room. I definitely do not want to let go and break the illusion in the middle of a horde of villains.

We stayed close to the wall and slowly inched our way closer and closer towards our goal. As we were about halfway to the tunnel Eve suddenly stopped, and I had to stop from crying out in pain when she started to death grip my hand.

Just as I was wondering why she stopped, I heard voices coming from the tunnel in front of us. I looked over to see three figures walking out of the tunnel and then they stopped outside of the entrance.

The first figure I noticed was huge. Easily seven feet tall, and absolutely shredded with muscles. If you were to tell me he was a professional wrestler, then I would have absolutely agreed with you. He wore a business suit of all things, and his face was covered by a multi-colored villain mask.

Surprisingly, the second figure didn’t have a mask. In fact, all he wore was a long white lab coat with a dark undershirt. Kinda figured that the villains would want their identities to be a secret, but then again maybe he didn’t expect someone to actually sneak in here. 

Though, technically, we don’t have masks either. So I’m not sure if I have room to complain, but at least the illusions make up for that.

And the final figure sent a chill down my spine. Standing next to the big muscley guy was a woman with fiery red hair and a black dress, the same person I met the other night.

I knew she was suspicious.

"Doctor, I trust you've been doing fine since your relocation? Have you made any progress on the task I gave you?" The familiar woman said as she faced the guy in the lab coat.

"My research on project green is moving along quickly, Nova. You can expect a finished vial in the following weeks." The depressed looking doctor replied without any hint of emotion in his voice. “And a change of scenery is quite welcome. But I do long for my experiments. I am starting to miss them. Ah, the noises I could get them to make…”

Nova frowned and seemingly wanted to say something, but shook her head and thought better of it. "Come Brute, the boss wants us elsewhere tonight."

“O.K.” The large man simply said as the two of them started to walk towards the tunnel we had just come from. I noticed the doctor guy continued walking towards a different tunnel on the other side of the room.

The pressure on my hand was lessened, as Eve loosened her grip. She tugged on my hand and we continued to walk towards our goal. We made it to the tunnel without any more interruptions, the ten to twenty minions behind us hadn’t spotted us yet.

We didn’t stop walking through the tunnel until we came to a single metal door. I heard Eve grab the handle and twist it, and surprisingly the door was unlocked. As silently as she could, she pushed the door open and pulled me through.

Once she knew that I was inside, she closed the door. We took a moment to inspect the room, which was much smaller than the last one and with even fewer boxes. Once we were sure we were alone, she turned off the partial invisibility.

“We made it…” She said with a sigh of relief, before her expression got dark. “Ghost come in, we have a problem.”

“What's up?” Skye asked through the earpiece.

“We nearly walked into an entire damn villain team, that's what's up!” She said in a stressed whisper. “Doctor, Brute, and Nova are here, though it seems the last two are leaving. I have no idea how much time we have before Doctor comes back. I’m really starting to regret coming now…”

“I don’t wanna be here any more than you do,” I said as I looked over the room. “So let’s just grab what we need and get out of here. That is the plan, right?”

“He’s right Trick. You guys need to find the spirits and get out of there ASAP.” Skye said, before she continued with an apologetic tone. “I’m sorry that you nearly ran into them, but I had literally no idea they’d be there. It’s not like they have a schedule I can just hack into.”

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you, because you're right. Nobody could have known how many of them would be here.” Eve said in her own apologetic tone, before she looked towards me. “We’re looking for Spirits, either red or blue. They look like the vial that you tried to steal back when we met.”

I nodded and we got to opening up the crates and boxes in the room. Some of the boxes were empty, and some of them were filled with random supplies for the base. Eventually though, we came to the same conclusion.

“It’s not here…” Eve said with a tone of disbelief. “Ghost, it’s not here. Please, please tell me we didn’t come all this way for nothing…”

“Give me a moment….let’s see here…Ah, how’d I miss this? There’s a secret entrance to a nearby room, check the left wall for a misplaced brick. You should be able to push it in to open the door.”

“How do you even know all this?” I asked as we checked the wall, pushing on random bricks to see if they did anything. “Also, how did you even know the base was here?”

“You remember where you and Eve first met?” Skye asked. I nodded, but realized she couldn’t see it so I responded with a “Yeah?”

“We found some documents there that helped lead us to this base, along with its layout. It was practically a goldmine with how much we found.” She said, “As for the Spirits...well let’s just say we have a bit of a personal relationship with them. That’s why we know what they do and what they look like.”

Sigh.

“One question answered, only for more to take its place,” I muttered, not expecting her to have heard me.

“Sorry, I’ll definitely tell you later but now’s not the time.”

“It’s fine.” I said at the same time as Eve exclaimed “Found it!”

Eve pushes in on the brick, and it slides backwards as the sound of stone grinding on stone starts to fill the room. A small section of the brick wall slid open, revealing a small room.

Inside the room was a small desk with a stack of papers on it, a chair for the desk, and a single briefcase. Eve went straight to the briefcase, picked it up, and laid it down on the table.

I stood next to her as she slowly opened it, breath held and fingers crossed.

Inside the case were five blue colored vials, and a single empty syringe waiting for a vial to fill it. Eve sighed out in relief when she saw it, before reaching over to the desk. She grabbed all the papers she could see, and stuffed them in the case before closing it.

“Time to go, we got everything we needed and more,” Eve said as she turned back towards the room we just came from. “Ghost, we found it. Heading back to-”

“Oh? What do we have here?” came a masculine voice ahead of us. The Doctor stood in front of us with his hand to his chin as he stared us down. He stood right in front of the door, with three of his minions standing behind him.

Shit, he’s blocking the only way out…

“New experiments huh?” He said in a cold, bored tone as he tapped his chin. “Well, maybe not yet, but we’ll get there soon enough.”

“Shit, Ghost we got a problem!” Eve exclaims as she positions the case behind her. “We were too late, Doctor showed up!”

I raised my arms in a fighting stance, or at least my best try at one, as I watched the villains in front of me. I was preparing for a fight, but Skye’s next words caught me off guard.

“Mimica.” She said in a cold, but furious tone.

“Y-yeah?” I asked, worried about what I had done to make the normally cheerful girl so upset like this.

“Give him hell.”