Life Is But A Game: Emergence 2.3 (Un-Betaed Preview Draft) (Patreon)

Emergence 2.3

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Santa Prisca

July 22, 8:15 ECT

“You know, I kinda have a bad feeling about this mission,” Zeke whispered loudly, voice nearly that of his regular volume as he and the team — sans Aqualad — made their way past a powerful waterfall. The words left his mouth with a relieved sigh, the young teen thankful they had finally left the narrow cliff path they had been traversing behind them. 

“We. Know,” Wally bit back in a hiss, voice ringing with a double dose of annoyance as Zeke received it from both his earpiece and the boy’s mouth himself just a few meters away. “You’ve only mentioned it like six times, dude. Give it a rest already.” 

The redhead didn’t even bother looking back at him as he responded, quickly keeping pace with Robin as the Boy Wonder and lazily vaulted over a fallen tree. Zeke frowned as he continued behind the two boys in the lead, sloppily copying the same vaulting motion both the boys in front of him had used to traverse the wooden obstacle.

Acrobatics Lvl Up!

1→2

Landing on his feet, Zeke shot an annoyed glare at Kid Flash’s back. Yeah, you would say something like that. So excited to finally have a mission. What could go wrong, right?

 Seriously, he continued, a mental groan sounding off in his head, why am I the only one bringing up the fact that there are so many things wrong with this? His hands fell to his sides in utter frustration as he continued creeping forwards through the underbrush, eyes shifting from side to side as he tried to keep on the lookout for anyone that could sneak up on them.

Ability Learned: Stealth

Zeke ignored the rest of the pop-up, too nervous to even glance back at the thing as the five of them found themselves entering the thick depths of the jungle once more. 

A quick search on the internet before they had even left for this mission had told him that the very concept of a stealth mission — at the very least, a covert operation with any positive chance of remaining such — relied on the fact that any team handling any covert mission would be focused, trained, and experienced enough to pull it off with minimal complications.

The thing was, as far as Zeke knew, his team as a whole possessed absolutely none of these qualities. Apart from Robin and maybe possibly Kaldur, none of them could be said to have any experience with covert “anything”. In fact, the only thing most of them had done in preparation for this mission that could really be called stealthy was altering the colors of their costumes, each of them replacing the main color of their outfits for a subdued black.