The site of the hive this time was what seemed to be a large department store of some kind—any identifier had seemed to have fallen off with the emergence of the hive. Although it was only this singular store that was hot, the stores that made up this collective of shops had all closed down indefinitely.

The most immediately concerning and, in fact, utmost surprising, aspect of this hive was something which was physically impossible; parts of it were floating. It’s not the floating you would see from a hot atmosphere altering visuals but, rather, a clear defiance of gravity--parts of the roof were utterly detached but remained stationary in the air while walls were raised off the ground.

In a way, since the Manifestation had telekinetic abilities, did that mean the hive did as well?

At the moment, I didn’t feel any strong compulsions to enter the hive myself so I was quite content with just standing around outside until further notice. Luna didn’t seem to mind as well, focused on watching this experience team prepare and plan.

Planning which we weren’t that privy to. As it turns out, being hired purely for S2 and myself meant that we wouldn’t be intentionally included in any fighting at all; our purpose here was to gather intelligence and so, putting ourselves in danger was antithetical to the reason why we were hired. S1, C1, and Luna were ostensible here to provide security therefore.

On the one hand, it wasn’t like I intended to purposefully put myself in harm's way, impeding my ability to be of use, but on the other hand, the decision rubbed me the wrong way; it felt like I was being sidelined and my usefulness deliberately curtailed.

Eventually, though, everyone was finished preparing and a clear line of action was given. To start with, we—that being S2 and myself—were tasked with determining points of interest and danger inside the store, perhaps pinpoint where the heart was. Needless to say, when they showed us a floor plan of the building, neither of us could derive any useful information from.

Interestingly, as much as S2’s System Specialisation was different from my own, she still needed the ability to physically look at the place to feel the future.

Even after I told The Hand how our specs worked, we didn’t give him very useful information; personally, I couldn’t see anything—all there was was a collapsed building presumably showing our success but nothing else.

S2, on the contrary, once looking through the doors, said that the bitten floor was more interesting than the top, but that was about it.

Unlike the school which had clearly segmented rooms, the openness of this place meant S2 struggled to ascertain hot spots of monster concentration.

It was rather interesting watching the Wayward gloves work; to begin with they had a member of their group called Shannon—it was fascinating to me that not all of them chose to hide their identities—communicate with us.

She was a woman unlike anyone I had met before; visually, she looked completely ordinary but apparently, she was mute. Instead of speaking with us, what I felt was like a warm hand brush over my mind, a flicker of emotion welling up inside me. It wasn’t like it was my own emotions, no, it was more like empathy; I could personally feel what Shannon was feeling.

Initially, I sensed intrigue, curiosity, when we were given our task to get a feeling for the place. She seemed to be interested in how we used our specs. Once I had explained to her roughly how my own worked, a wave of satisfaction washed over me.

It was the most perplexing and strange thing I had ever felt in a while.

What was far stranger, however, was when she tried to communicate with the servants; a small bead of annoyance Welles up inside her and after about a minute or two of trying, she was exuding a strong presence of distress and discontent.

I didn’t know what happened, and neither did she have the faculty to inform me—or anyone, for that matter—about what had gotten her so upset.

Luna, clearly noticing this, immediately chose to find out.

“What did you do?” She asked sternly and firmly towards S2. It was a hard time and not one Ibhd heard her use before. Quite frankly, it made me uncomfortable just listening in.

“I don’t know! I don’t know…” S2 blabbered out in a panic, seemingly as upset as Shannon herself. “I didn’t do anything,” She continued quietly.

Honestly, I very much doubted anything she did anything malicious; it didn’t strike me like it was in her personality to do so nor did I believe Luna would instil in her own servant even a modicum of rebelliness.

“Fine. I believe you,” Luna answered after a pause, either thinking on the matter or interpreting the signals that Shannon was giving her or both.

This was the first time I had seen Luna even remotely scold her servant and even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, a bad feeling befell me.

However, there was no time to ruminate or anything; the Wayward Gloves quickly assembled their plan and we were now about to begin clearing the hive. A giddy anticipation was building inside me.

The plan that the Gloves had made was intricate and relied heavily upon teamwork by the members of the team; a distinct difference from Jonathon’s team where the only indispensable part was Candace and her Specialisation.

Although I had heard of their various System Specialisations, it was only now that I could witness them in action.

Already having received information from our little subdivision, the team made their way forwards.

Entering a hive often proved itself to be more dangerous than simply being in the hive--it’s a compound effect of varying absences of information, such as what type of monsters there are, how many there are, and so on.

However, that was not an issue for us; we gave the Gloves necessary information--such as there being a group of twelve, spider-like creatures of startling alacrity and visually unpleasant appearance.

Although we were hired as an intelligence-gathering team, as I determined, that didn’t mean the Gloves were totally without their own methods. A rather strange looking individual--a man who wore a blindfold but otherwise dressed normally and didn’t seem to use an alias--held a stone in his hand.

The stone was roughly cut, black as ink, and about the size of the palm of his hand. With a swift and quite elegant throw, he lobbed his stone through the entranceway to the building. A few quiet thuds could be heard as the stone bounced and then rolled to a standstill on the inside.

Without waiting, the man began to speak. He described what he could see on the inside through the stone, the same monsters as I could, except his descriptions were far more explicit than my own. In addition to that, on his phone, he even appeared to be drawing a quick image of the creatures.

While this level of information may normally be unnecessary for any other team, it was vital for the plan the gloves had come up with. Once the man was done, he presented the finished image to the woman called Manifold, who promptly looked it over hard and committed it memory.

Throughout all of this, I was just staring in curiosity. My experiences thus far with planning and executing a plan to clear a hive were practical and non-specified--the sort of thing anybody could do regardless of Specification. Seeing how an experienced team went about it was fascinating to watch.

Next, Manifold, in the blink of an eye, transformed, quite literally, into the monster. She was now about waist-high, a purplish colour, and hideous to look at. Thankfully, she quickly made her way inside the building, the sound of her footsteps abruptly transitioning from a distinct quadrupedal form to a creature with eight legs.

While Manifold were inside, two Gloves raised their rifles; a bulky man dressed in all black and wearing a hockey mask painted with a grey skull, as well as a woman dressed in a kaleidoscope of colours--her suit was a nonsensical arrangement of conflicting colours while she wore a rainbow mask, hiding her face.

Both rifles were identical and while I didn’t know what they were, they looked loosely familiar to me; probably real, conventional guns you could buy normally, in any case.

They were armed and ready to shoot for a good minute or two before a rush of monsters flew out of the building. Thirteen spiders, all unique in their own disgusting fashion, emerged so suddenly I barely had time to react.

C1 positioned herself in front of our little subdivision as a bulwark while Luna adeptly raised her bow, ready to protect herself. Delayed, I copied her.

The monsters, a disorganised mess of separate wills, that had flooded outside, suddenly moved all at once, all to the left. It was an incredibly strange sight, compounded even more by a spider indistinguishable from the rest that had stepped to the right.

And then, suddenly, without even requiring time to think about the absurdity of their movements, the gun-wielding pair unleashed torrents of fire into the monsters direction.

They shot with unerring accuracy, alternating whoever was firing so the other could reload without creating a suspense of fire.

Far quicker and far more efficient than I could’ve imagined, the twelve monsters that were camping in the entrance were taken down without any effort at all.

Compared to the minutes-long slugging fight that I had gotten used to in the last hive, this brutal efficiency was unexpected, but welcomed.

Maybe this is what veteran teams are always like? Anyway, I should really get myself a gun.

This sudden induction into the ways and methods of the Wayward Gloves didn’t just end with breaching the front of the building, however. On the inside, they operated in much the same fashion.

A routine developed; our group would scout out locations and paths to follow, as well as give preliminary information on possible dangers, be them environmental or monsters.

Next, the blind man threw his stone into whatever location we were in, reciting the descriptions of the creatures without eloquence belying an experienced storyteller and drawing an image only a gifted artist could.

Manifold used that image to form herself into a convincingly double of the monsters, so realistic even I couldn’t tell them apart. I soon learnt, however, that she wasn’t exactly a shapeshifter; Manifold was an illusionist who merely made herself look like a monster. Her shape and scent were still that of the woman underneath.

Her form, however, was adjusted to suit whatever image she had turned into by The Hand. As it turned out, he was able to generate a form-fitting forcefield and shielded Manifold with it. With that done, whenever the creature she was disguised as placed its foot down on the ground, rather than merely being empty air, a forcefield made contact with the ground, creating sound and a physical disturbance to appear real.

It was a rather ingenious use and combination of their Specialisations, in my opinion.

However, that alone isn’t enough to fool the monsters. A cat wouldn’t realistically mistake a woven cat as one of its kind in a similar way.

This is where, in my opinion, the scariest member of the Gloves helped out in their plan. Shannon, with whatever mind-fuckery she was capable of, could conceivably affect the minds of the monsters, convince them that this form of Manifold was real and smelt real.

It wasn’t a strange, sped up form of Pavlonian conditioning or anything; it was, as far as I was aware, straight up mind control.

She denied it, of course, a strong feeling of disdain towards the word sent to my mind, but the concept of her System Specialisation was terrifying. I maintained my cool but seeing the Gloves all act casual around her… I was on edge.

We made our way through the hive with this plan and whenever it was not applicable, Shannon utilised whatever methods she could to subdue the monsters into such a state they posed no threat to the rest of the team, allowing them to cut them down safely.

Whenever a group of monsters were slayed our little group of five were tasked with cutting, carving, and scavenging from the creatures whatever seemed valuable and stuffed them into backpacks that we were given beforehand. Seeing how we weren’t hired to fight, the Gloves relegated us to pack mules. I supposed it made sense, not that I wasn’t dissatisfied with this treatment, though.

The hive itself was freaky on the inside; rather scaffolding or metal shelves floated in the air suspiciously. Sometimes, we’d come across a path which was like a minefield, rubble just floating in midair to be collided into.

There was nothing ambitiously strange or fantastical but these little moments of impossibility compounded together inside my head. It was feeling less and less like the real world and more like virtual reality.

Throughout it all, our group never once found ourselves in a spot of fighting; it was all handled by the Gloves. I wasn’t too much bothered by that, having been suitably disturbed and wanting just to get this whole thing over with.

Luna, on the other hand, seemed quite annoyed.

“We’re useless,” She stated directly. “We’re hardly doing anything and what we are doing they could do already.”

It was a sentiment I empathised with. However, I didn’t want to change things; I rather liked being this detached from the Gloves. I did not want to get involved with them.

Luna wanted more agency, though. She wanted her servants to fight and prove themselves useful. As it was, only S2 and I needed to be there and, frankly, we were providing so little help that I would’ve been enough on my own.

We didn’t talk much about this, though. The hive was only classed as a medium one and the Gloves got through it very quickly. Before we even knew it, there was only one last thing to do. And that was to kill the Manifestation.