98… 99… 100. Whew! Just finished working out my legs. They look like they’re getting slightly bigger. Maybe I’ll have at least one asset for attracting boys. 

I got off the Atlas Supermachine and wiped myself with a towel. While I was working out, I was studying with my 2nd clone, who was being hugged by SpookyErind. Thankfully, SpookyErind wasn’t being annoying. 

Deen walked up to me, already clean of sweat. Damn, this girl was fast. She could change clothes and clean herself way faster than I could. Did she also put on makeup really fast? I was kind of jealous of that.

“Hey, so we probably won’t be able to practice sparring before tomorrow,” Deen said. 

“That’s unfortunate,” I sighed. “I guess we could do it next week.” It’d be so fun to beat up Deen. Even though she had her Guardian Angel, Deen couldn’t keep up with opponents who were way stronger than her. 

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But at least I can help you set up Snippet.” Oh right, I had to install that stupid social media app. 

“Ugh,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“What do you have against social media?” Deen asked. “Did it harm you as a child?”

“No,” I said, chuckling at her joke. “I just find it too much of a chore.” Imagine trying to keep up with all that nonsense that happens on there while maintaining a face. Furthermore, all my interactions would be recorded indefinitely. That meant people would be able to more easily spot any discrepancies in my face. And at that point, the face just becomes a mask. Unacceptable.

 “I’ll help you out so it becomes easy,” Deen said. I took out my phone from my shorts and pulled up the app store.

“Snippet right?” I asked. The icon was a pair of scissors cutting a thread.

“Yep,” Deen said. “Each cut from the scissors is meant to represent a snippet of our lives.” That felt like meaningless corporate bullshit. I’m surprised Deen memorized that. Did Snippet strike a deal with her? 

“Are you secretly being paid by Snippet?” I asked.

“No, I just know a lot,” she replied. 

“Humble brag,” I coughed. 

“Hey!” Deen said. She chuckled, indicating she knew I was joking.

I pressed the download button and waited for the app to load up. It asked me to sign up or log in. 

“Can I just use your account?” I asked. Maybe since we were best friends she’d just let me use hers so I wouldn’t have to make one. Although, that was asking a lot since she’d have to give me her password.

“It’s better if you have your own account,” Deen said. “Besides, I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?” I asked.

“You’re stalling Ms. Introvert,” she said, poking me in the side.

“Ahh!” I yelped. Fucking bitch. She should be glad I didn’t drop my phone, otherwise, I would have kicked her. “What was that for?”

“I’m just poking you to make sure you get back on track,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure that just distracted me instead,” I pointed out. I sighed and went to the signup screen. I was asked to put an email and insert a username and a password.  

For the username, I went with Hippo123456. The username gave nothing about me away. Also, Hippos were cute and scary. The best kind of animals. 

“Hippo123456?” Deen asked. “Do you like Hippos?”

“Yep,” I said, not elaborating further. “Also, don’t use my password.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll just constantly message you instead,” Deen said, sticking out her tongue. 

I rolled my eyes and pressed the sign-up button. It asked me for a verification code that was sent to my email. And here was another point against social media sites. Everything was so tedious to do. Like I needed to give away my email, make up a username and password, and then get a security code? How do people do this for each social media site that pops up? Society was absolutely insane.

After inputting the security code, I got access to the app. A bunch of random stuff popped up on my screen. Could I just uninstall this now?

“So, what’s next?” I asked.

Deen guided me through the process of how to turn on the friend-tracking feature on Snippet. She also sent a friend request to me. Her profile was a picture of her beautiful face smiling and with two fingers doing a peace sign. My profile picture was blank. And I was going to leave it that way. I accepted her friend request.

“And here’s how you see where I am,” Deen said. I doubt I’ll need that. I guess I could use it to get away from Deen if she becomes too annoying. Thankfully, I was way faster than her. 

She tapped a button with a map, and on it, several circular icons showed up with a layout of the city. In the center, was an icon with her profile picture. She typed Hippo123456 in a search bar at the top, and it got rid of all the icons that were not in this house. That just left her icon and mine.

“And that’s how it works, simple right?” she asked.

“Seems easy enough,” I said. I closed the app. Once Deen got back to studying, I’ll go work out some more. It was kinda impressive since I seemed to be getting a bit stronger. I wasn’t able to lift more than 6000 pounds last week, but now, I could lift a bit over 6200 pounds. Myra did say the rest of the team didn’t really get stronger, so it must mean my Adumbrae powers are fueling my growth. 

When I asked Deen earlier, she said she could only lift an extra 10 pounds compared to when she first got her powers last week. So yeah, it seemed she only got a bit stronger from natural workouts. 

“And you can also take selfies,” Deen said, holding out her phone in front of us and smiling. Before I could do anything, she clicked a button, and a picture was taken. “So cute!”

“Hey!” I said. “Don’t post that!”

“Did you know Snippet allows you to keep private photos?” she asked. “I’ll just keep this one for good memory.”

“Do you really need a photo of me - you see me every day,” I said. “I hope you don’t forget about me easily.”

“Haha,” she said. “But I just wanted a cute photo of us. Just hanging out with my best friend in sports bras and shorts.”

I was never one for pictures. Back when Mom and I traveled a lot, she would take a lot of photos. She said she didn’t want to forget anymore. I guess she was really upset about Dad ‘dying.’ But it was torturous for me because it forced me to unnaturally smile for my ‘picture’ face. At least I was cute in the photos.

“Thanks Deen,” I said. “You should probably get to studying and taking a shower.”

“Touche,” she said. “You’re welcome by the way.” 

 

Today was the big day. At least for Ento, who was sadly very short. Deen and I had gone shopping for clothes for Ento after we finished our classes. We measured Ento yesterday, so we didn’t have to worry about taking her into the store. 

Right now, I, SpookyErind, and Ento were in my bed room. I had resummoned them after putting on my mission clothes - a black jacket, black pants, and black sneakers with a mask in our jacket’s pocket. SpookyErind was also wearing those clothes. On my bed was a set of clothes and makeup stuff to make Ento look more… homeless. The clothes were a simple gray T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. 

It’d be pretty suspicious right if Ento just walked in there all clean in her scientist outfit? And most people going to Eloycira were having… troubles in their life if they really needed to try that ‘drug’. We didn’t want to make the 2M’s feel suspicious. The best enemy is an unsuspecting one.

Hey, before you change clothes, can you transform Ento back into a normal Erind clone? SpookyErind asked. 

“Huh?” I guess she wanted to do something first. Hopefully, it didn’t involve messing with me. I had Ento pull on her goggles, and she immediately returned to full height. She was wearing the same black outfit as us now.

Take my mask with you to the base, SpookyErind said to my 2nd clone. Once you transform out of Ento, I’ll help you there.

“Wait a minute-” I tried to say as SpookyErind pulled on her face and was replaced with that black and white golden mask. 

I picked up her mask with my 2nd clone’s right hand. So did that mean I could transport SpookyErind with my 2nd clone while she was transformed? I never even thought of that.

I had my 2nd clone hold out her left hand and focus on summoning her goggles. After they formed, I used my main body to help put them on since she was holding onto SpookyErind’s mask. 

My 2nd clone shrank to her kid’s height again. But something felt weird this time. When any of my clones transform into their mask form, I get the sensation of a switch appearing in my body. But now the switch with SpookyErind’s body had some kind of lock on it? So that means she couldn’t appear until I had Ento transform back into a normal Erind clone.

Wait, what if I did that with my main body and then transformed into Red Hood? I think my clones’ masks would just be stuck with my original Erind body. I should make sure not to do that in case I need help from my clones.

Anyways, it was time to create Ento’s homeless face. I had her take off her apron and lab coat, putting them on my bed. Next, I had her take off her gloves. I was about to take off her goggles, but then I realized that would just cause her to transform back into a normal Erind clone. Hmm. I’ll need to come up with a story for that later. 

Originally, I had planned on ripping Ento’s clothes so she’d look more homeless, but now I think it might be better to just make her seem sad and lonely. How the hell was I going to explain the scientist goggles to the 2M’s?

Underneath Ento’s lab coat was a white T-shirt. White was a bit too cheery, so gray would do. Next was the pair of pants. Ento’s pants and boots looked way too formal, so I had her put on the jeans and sneakers. 

Hmm. Maybe we should have bought a hoody. But we wouldn’t have enough time to get to the Eloycira office before it closed if we went shopping again. 

Ento and I walked out of our room to meet Deen.

“You’re not going to rip her clothes to make them like rags?” Deen asked.

“No, she still has to have her goggles on,” I explained. “So I can’t make her look like she’s poor. I was just going to have her pretend to be sad and lonely, like maybe her parent was a scientist, and they were no longer there. And she wants to try out the Eloycira drug.”

“Actually, yeah, that sounds like a way better idea now,” Deen said. “Anyways, are you ready to head out?”

“Yeah,” I said.

 

We arrived at our secret base. The rest of the group was already there. Our gray van sat parked. 

“Hey girls, do you want to see what upgrades we made to the van?” Everett asked.

“Sure,” Deen said.

We got into the van, and at the front was a bunch of computer monitors and equipment attached to the dashboard.

“What is this?” Deen asked.

“We got a self-driving system installed and added some computer stuff for Johann to use on our missions,” he explained.

“Wait, you installed this yourself?” I asked. 

“No, he was just trying to impress Deen,” Reo said.

Deen, I, and Reo laughed, while Everett sighed.  

“You all ready?” Dario asked while observing Ento. We all nodded. “All right, let’s do this!”

 

I had Ento walk into the Eloycira office. The building was medium-sized, so I didn’t expect too much from it. There was a distinct office feel, nothing like a lab or a hospital with sleek clean floors. I guess the 2M’s didn’t want to invest in this place.

At the front of the room was a clerk, an aging woman with gray hair. 

“Yes?” she asked, staring at me. I walked over to her. 

“I saw on the TV that you had an ad for an experimental drug to prevent Adumbrae seeding,” I told her. “It’s just, I’ve been having a hard time.”

“A hard time?” she said as she suddenly became more interested.

“My dad died, and he was a scientist so that’s why I’m wearing goggles,” I said. I hope that was believable for a 10-year-old. “And my mom kicked me out of the house. So I’ve just been wandering the city for the past day.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Are you sure she’s not going to come looking for you?”

“Yes, I don’t think she loves me anymore,” I sobbed. Thankfully, I learned to fake tears when I was younger. It turns out that cute crying girls easily swayed people.

“What’s your name miss?” she asked. “I’ll need it for the records.”

“Claire Ashton,” I said, making up a name.

“Anyways, generally we have this process for checking people first,” she said as she typed my name down. “But I feel bad for you. So I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“The person who worked here has gone missing, so I recently just got hired here,” she said. “I’m too old to do any of this busy work. And we’re not testing as many people as the CEO wants us to.” Okay, that was mostly nonsense. But the person who worked here had gone missing?

“Do you know what they looked like?” I asked.

“I’m afraid not,” she said. Aw. I just wanted to check if it was one of the 2M’s I ate. “Let me get the doctors so they can give you the drug.”

“Dr. Choe,” the woman said on her desk phone. “We have a new patient here.”

While we were waiting, I decided to ask the clerk another question.

“What would happen if my mom was looking for me?” I asked. “If she actually cared about me and wouldn’t just kick me out?”

“Well, the same as any other people, although we would have to get signatures from your Mom,” she said. Hmm, something was fishy here. Would they just continue kidnapping me if my “mom” showed up? That would be really suspicious. Didn’t Trenchcoat Guy say they only kidnapped undesirables? Maybe they just gave them some fake drug for people that were cared about.

I waited for a minute for the doctor to come. Finally, the doctor arrived. He was wearing a surgeon's outfit. He had tanned skin and blonde hair. 

“Hello miss!” he said energetically. “Umm, what’s her name?”

The clerk said, “Claire Ashton. Her Mom kicked her out of the house. And her dad passed away. He was a scientist so that’s why she wears goggles. It’s sad, isn’t it?  

“Indeed. I’m sorry for your loss Ms. Ashton,” he said to me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I just hope this drug experiment will help me.”

“It definitely will,” he said before turning to the clerk. “Have you checked her?”

“We’re not getting enough patients,” the clerk replied. “A handful of our staff has gone missing. The big boss wants to make sure everything is on time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he sighed. “This is going to be a pain if her mom shows up though. But I really don’t know where the others went. I shouldn’t be working on this alone. All right, we’ll just hope for the best.” He turned toward me.

“Miss Ashton,” he said. “If you would just come with me, I can get this over in a jiffy!”

I followed closely behind him into another room. 

“After you,” he said. Why what a gentleman, I thought sarcastically.

Inside was an office space, containing a desk at the end with a monitor on top. An office chair accompanied the desk while a normal chair sat on the other side. This room did not look like a place to test drugs. Although, I’ve never done drugs, so who knows?

“Is this where you’ll give me the pill?” I asked.

“Pill?” he asked. “It’s an injection.”

“Oh,” I said. Isn’t that what Surgeon Lady said when she tried to kidnap Joseph? Or was it Trenchcoat Guy?  

“You must’ve seen the ad wrong,” he said. To be fair, I haven’t seen it all, I just went off of what Joseph said. Joseph.

I wonder how he’s doing. I left him strapped on the stretcher. Did the police arrest him for trying to steal stuff? Or was he still kidnapped? Hey, it wasn’t my fault if he got kidnapped from the 2M’s. I already saved him once because he complimented me. Although, it feels kind of bad to have your work be for nothing. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll ‘save’ other people later on. Maybe even during this mission.

Anyways, I’m pretty sure this guy is lying. 

He leaned down and took out a syringe from his pocket. 

“Don’t worry, this will be over quickly,” he said. Like Surgeon Lady, Dr. Choe didn’t even wipe my arm before injecting me. He just put the syringe against my skin and pressed it.  “How are you feeling?”

“Really tired,” I said, slurring my words. Truthfully, I was fine. But I had to fake being knockout if I wanted them to kidnap Ento.

“Just sleep tight,” he said. I pretended to collapse on the floor and closed my eyes. Hopefully, that was believable. 

“We have another test subject ready,” Dr. Choe said. “All right, I’ll put her on the stretcher for you guys.”

Yes! This was it. They were going to secretly bring me into their base.

“I’ll check her for any devices,” he said. 

A disgusting feeling entered my body. The doctor was touching me! I hated being touched. I wanted so badly to punch him. But I couldn’t. I’d be breaking Ento’s face and never find the location of the 2M’s base.

“Hmm, no phone,” he said as he searched my pockets. “I guess that means her mom will have no way of tracking her. Yeah, guys, can you work with the police to make sure to clear the traffic cam footage for this time? I don’t trust that her mom will be looking for her. But we still need to make up for being short on our quotas and staff.”

He started carrying me. The disgusting feeling of being touched slowly got worse and worse. Come on! Just put me on the stretcher! I can’t handle this.

Finally, I got put on something soft. But then, something grabbed my hands. I so wanted to punch him. I heard the sound of a strap. They were restraining my body. Or well, Ento’s body.

“They drugged Ento and are in the process of kidnapping her,” I told the rest of the team with my main body. “Ento is the name I gave her.”

“Couldn’t we just follow their vehicle as they take Ento?” Myra asked.

“They might get suspicious of that,” Deen said. “And we’re not even sure if that’s the correct van.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Myra replied.

From outside, we saw two black vans go toward the back of the building, which was restricted. Minutes later, I heard footsteps from Ento’s body. 

“Here you go,” Dr. Choe said. 

“Come on, let’s take this twerp and get out of here,” a gruff male voice said.  Excuse me, I’m not a twerp. Sadly, I couldn’t rebut his statement because I was playing asleep. Is that a phrase? I know ‘playing dead’ is a phrase.

I could feel the stretcher start rolling. Eventually, I heard the sound of an engine revving up. 

“Okay, they loaded Ento onto the van,” I said. 

But to my surprise, instead of both vans leaving from the back and going together, they split up and went different ways. What?

“Wait what’s going on?” Johann asked. “Why are they splitting up?”

“I’m not sure,” Dario said. “But it was a good idea that Deen suggested tracking Erind, otherwise we might just follow the wrong van.”

I guess so. It’d be kinda sad if my main body wasn’t able to support Ento.

About an hour passed before I heard the van I was in stop.

“They stopped moving the van,” I said to my team. “I’ll get Ento up once they try experimenting on her.”

The stretcher was rolled for a while, going through a series of doors, until finally it stopped.

“Now, let’s see what we can do to that little brain of yours,” a creepy male voice said. Eww. No, thank you.

I opened my 2nd clone’s eyes and broke the restraints.

“What the -”