A Test for Time Part 2

Death Valley, California, was no joke. Jake thought to himself, 'This place could pass off as a literal layer of hell,' as he saw even vultures dead on the side of the road from heatstroke. He had been flying along for only 20 minutes, but he desperately wanted some water.

Thankfully, he soon came upon a small town on the horizon, just like T.A.O's note said he would. Luckily, the first thing he saw when entering the town was a diner. He quickly touched down on the hot streets and hurried inside.

Relief flooded him as he entered the town's diner, escaping the scorching sun. The air-conditioning brought instant refuge from the brutal heat. He found a seat at the counter, eager for some hydration after being so rudely dumped in the hottest place in the world!

From the back area, a waitress appeared before him and walked rigidly towards the counter. Hello… welcome to this diner. I will be right with you." She said in a completely monotone voice with no emotion conveyed whatsoever. She seemed completely apathetic to the fact that they had a customer. Although Jake figured he would be pretty apathetic too if he had to work at a small town diner in this hell hole… She was still giving him strange vibes despite that fact though.

"Welcome, traveler," she monotoned, her gaze now boring into him. "You must eat… Your body… needs sustenance after being exposed to the desert for so long. I shall bring you food and water." She turned around without even letting him speak and walked back into the kitchen.

'Well, that wasn't super weird or creepy at all,' Jake thought sarcastically to himself. He looked around the diner and was very surprised to see how almost every other table was full. He was wondering why this small town Diner was packed with people and it was 120° outside. Besides that though, there was something about the other patrons that didn't seem right upon second glance…none of the other diners were making a single sound. No Small Talk, no chewing noises, nothing. They were all just sitting in eerie silence. He decided to investigate whatever this weirdness was.

Jake hopped off his seat at the counter and walked over to a man sitting alone in a nearby booth. In Front of him was nothing but a newspaper and a cup of coffee in front of him. "Hi there," Jake said, trying to make some small talk, "Anything interesting in today's paper?"

The man didn't respond to Jake. He didn't even glance at him. He just kept seemingly reading his newspaper before he put it down for a moment to take a sip of his 'coffee'. His sip also lasted for a really long time as the mug was still in front of the man's face after 30 seconds. Glancing around the man somewhat awkwardly, Jake was able to see the man's coffee cup was empty!

"Are you alright, dude? Your coffee cup is empty." Jake was hoping the guy wasn't having a stroke or anything…The man didn't seem like it though as he still didn't acknowledge Jake and just kept acting like he was drinking.

Jake, was starting to feel that something was seriously off with this diner. Jake picked up the paper the man had discarded and found It was from over 2 years ago! Not even noticing that his paper was gone the man just held up his hands in front of himself like he was still holding it and started reading out of thin air… his eyes were moving to follow non-existent letters and everything.

Jake walked over to the other tables and saw all the other customers had empty cups as well... Some of them had fake plastic food on their plates, and each of them kept alternating between fake eating/drinking and doing a random task in between.

"What the hell is going on here?" Jake whispered to himself. "Are all these people secretly robots or something?" Jake heard noise coming from the room where the waitress had left, and he slipped back into his counter seat in a hurry.

"Thank you for waiting. Here is your food and water," she said, still with no emotion, before placing a plate of pancakes and a glass of water in front of Jake. All of his instincts were obviously telling him not to touch the food. Not that he would anyway. It looked gross. The pancakes had freezer burn on them…They definitely weren't homemade,

"Please eat while I check on the other diners," the waitress said as she walked by him. Jake chose that moment when she was distracted to vanish the food into his inventory, to make it look like he ate it all.

"Boy, that was delicious," he said awkwardly out loud.

The waitress came back a minute later and once again stood behind the counter, staring blankly at Jake. Her eyes went from him to the empty plate and back to him again. She just continued to stare blankly, as if waiting for something to happen.

After 30 more seconds of waiting, she finally spoke. "Error. Confusion. Target has ingested the food but is not asleep. This unit does not know what to do in this scenario. Contacting Master Sinister for further instructions." Her eyes started to glow blue as she said that.

'What the hell!?' Jake thought to himself watching her eyes glow. Was she actually a robot!? Were they all robots? She was apparently calling someone, and he decided to stop her from doing that! Jake immediately summoned an ice blade in his hand before he stabbed the robot waitress right in the head! Instead of blood or other organic matter, his blade smashed through artificial plastic skin, followed by circuitry and wires! The robot waitress dropped to the ground, her head sparking from destroyed circuitry.

Jake glanced around the diner, and not a single 'person' so much as looked his way at what had just happened. They really were all robots! This whole diner was clearly some shady front meant to look real at a glance. Jake wondered if the whole town was too, but he shook his head at that. He could check that later after he rescued Thor. For now, Jake decided to go to the back room where the waitress came from and investigate.

Jake hopped over the counter and went into where the kitchen was supposed to be. The entire kitchen room was mostly empty. Instead of finding stoves and other kitchen appliances, all Jake saw was a single table with a microwave and a fridge next to it. On the table was a box of frozen pancakes with a bottle filled with some kind of weird powder. Jake figured it must have been the drug the robot was trying to knock him out with. He swiped that and placed it into his magical inventory as well.

What drew Jake's attention most, however, was the obvious elevator door in the room. This was a single-floor diner in the middle of nowhere, so why would there be an elevator? He figured he just found the entrance to where they were keeping Thor. Should he try using the elevator or look for another way down?

"..."

"Fuck it, elevator it is," he said aloud. Jake figured destroying that robot might have set off an alert anyway in hindsight.

Jake shrugged before pressing the button on the wall, and the elevator opened. He stepped inside and was surprised to see that the elevator panel had buttons 0-20 assigned to it! "Did I just find a secret Umbrella base or something?" He laughed to himself. Moving his hand towards the panel, Jake pressed the button for floor 1. He figured he was currently on floor zero.

"Error," an electronic voice spoke out. "User is not authorized to use this elevator. Please state your identity." The voice spoke from the panel, and Jake cursed as he noticed a freaking camera of all things pointing right at him, with a red dot glowing on it, signaling it was recording.

"Dammit," Jake said to himself. It looked like he was breaking into this place the loud way. If they didn't know he was here before, they did now. Jake summoned a small sphere of destruction in his palm before aiming it towards the elevator floor. The entire elevator floor disintegrated away, and Jake deployed his wings as he started flying down the elevator shaft.

Alarms started blaring loudly from all over as Jake descended the shaft. "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! WARNING! WARNING!" Alarms continued as a robotic voice announced his unwelcome presence to the whole secret base.

Jake eventually made it to the first floor down the shaft and blasted the closed doors away. He might as well start from the top now that he'd been exposed. Jake stepped into the hallway and saw that everything around him was made of metal. The walls, floors, and ceiling were all a metallic silver.

"INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER HAS ENTERED THE FIRST LEVEL!" The alarms blared out. Jake glanced towards the ceiling and sighed as he fired a small bombarda at another camera recording him.

"..."

Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!

Jake glanced down the hallway When he heard the sound of consistent metal thumping against metal. It sounded like awkward footsteps. And then four silver robots armed with assault rifles marched out of the hallways lone door towards him. They looked straight out of the Terminator, with metallic silver bodies and glowing red eyes. He figured they had no need for fake skin to look human down here.

"Intruder," one of the robots announced as they all leveled their rifles at him. "Master Sinister demands that you surrender or die."

Jake just smirked at them. "If your Master Sinister is watching, then he can just sit tight and know that I'm coming for him!"

The robots opened fire at Jake, and he felt a bit nervous about what he was about to test out. Jake circulated some magic through his body and clothing. An instant later, he felt the bullets slam into his skin and clothing as they harmlessly bounced off him and fell to the floor. The robots stopped firing at him as they turned and looked at each other in confusion.

"Target is bulletproof. Query: What do we do now?" One of them asked in monotone.

"You all can become scrap metal," Jake said as he fired a bombarda maxima right at the four robots.

BOOM!

In an explosion of metal and wires, the enhanced blasting curse destroyed them all. With them dealt with, Jake sighed as he took a second to examine his body and clothing. Not a scratch to be found anywhere. Serafall had told Jake a while back in Hogwarts that high-class beings were, for the most part, immune to smaller human weaponry such as guns once they let their magic flow through them. Furthermore, once Jake reached ultimate class, he wouldn't even have to circulate his magic anymore. He could just start taking bullets to his bare skin with just his natural durability and be fine. He would also easily be able to shrug off things like grenades and rockets once he reinforced himself with magic.

Jake continued past the scrapped robots and down the first-floor hallway. There weren't any rooms at all on this floor except for the one at the end of the hallway. Jake kept his magic circulating through his body in case he was immediately fired upon as he kicked open the doors. He found himself surprised at what he found inside. He was in what looked like a small underground hangar. There was a small plane along with a few unmarked cars and trucks parked inside it. What drew Jake's immediate attention, though, was the small group of people waiting for him in the middle of the hangar.

"And who might you be? Some hero here to save everyone? A mercenary sent by my competitors to take me out? It matters not, for you will fail like all the others," the man in the middle of the group spoke out to Jake with a cackling voice. Jake just awkwardly stared at the laughing man and his weird outfit.

"Jesus Christ, dude. What the fuck are you wearing?" Jake said dryly. He was honestly having trouble taking this guy seriously when the man looked like he was cosplaying as an evil anime character. The man was incredibly pale with a black mustache and goatee, and he had a glowing diamond mark on his forehead near his also glowing red eyes. He was wearing what looked like a black and red spandex suit with a cape and actual pauldrons on his shoulders. Everything about this guy screamed "I am a blatant supervillain…"

The man just glared at Jake and his troopers around him didn't respond or move. "Of course, you would fail to recognize greatness when you see it. Someone like you with such a pathetic intellect would never be able to comprehend my ambitions, my ACHIEVEMENTS!" The man just kept up his rant as Jake started to tune him out. "It is a miracle in the first place that you actually found this pl-"

"..."

This guy was straight up monologuing in front of Jake. What was the protocol here? He'd never faced a supervillain before. Does he let him finish his evil speech? Was it rude to interrupt him?

"-And furthermore! I'll have you know my latest experiment involving the fusion of two diff—" Jake just conjured an ice spear in the air and sent it hurtling towards the villain who wouldn't stop talking. Unfortunately, it missed as the man moved out of the way. He looked shocked that Jake dared to interrupt his rant.

"-GAAH- Fuck you!" The pale man screamed as he dodged out of the way of the ice spear. "No one interrupts Mr. Sinister! What are you idiots standing around for? Attack him!"

The four henchmen around Sinister seemed odd to Jake. They all looked completely identical, down to the last detail. Jake would have figured they were also robots had it not been for the fact that their bodies moved naturally, not the robotic stiffness the fake waitress had earlier. All four of the henchmen looked to be young, and they all had a strange-looking red visor covering their eyes. Simultaneously, all of them reached towards the side of their visors.

Jake felt something was about to happen, so he quickly conjured an ice shield in front of himself. Just in time too, as powerful laser beams fired out of all four of the henchmen's visors and slammed into Jake's shield. They held the blasts for a few seconds before they all cut off their beams and started panting, seemingly from the strain of firing those lasers in the first place. Jake noticed his ice shield had melted about halfway where the lasers struck it…Those blasts packed a punch but they also seem to have exhausted all of them.

Sinister scowled, "Damn. At the end of the day, clones really just can't match up to the real thing. Looks like I'll have to scrap these four later," Sinister said with a sneer from behind the apparent clones.

"Clones?" Jake asked, mildly surprised. That explained why they were all identical-looking.

"Hahaha! Do you see my greatness now!? Yes indeed, these are the clones of Cyclops from the X-Men! I am the first ever scientist to ever successfully clone a mutant, let alone succeed multiple times!" He bragged as if Jake had any idea who the X-men even were... He did not. "Unfortunately, I have big plans for the original Cyclops, also one of my greatest creations! He would have made a far better guard otherwise," Sinister said. Jake wondered why the guy was even telling him all that in the first place. Was he just in a dimension where villains liked to monologue and explain their evil schemes constantly?

The clones, meanwhile, were still panting from the short lasers they had fired earlier at him. Jake honestly felt kind of bad for them now. They were probably born in a test tube and had been forced to follow this guy all their lives. Jake cast four quick stupefy spells at them, and they were each too tired to even dodge as they all dropped to the floor.

Sinister just watched his guards drop to the ground with an eerie smile. "So that answers that question then," he said with a smirk. "You didn't kill them when you easily could have. You're definitely no assassin. You, therefore, must be one of those hero types here to rescue someone!" He smiled slyly at Jake.

"So what if I am?" Jake retorted. "There are 20 floors to this place, and I'll tear them all apart until I find them!"

Sinister just smirked at him. "Well now, there's no need for you to go that far. I have some pretty important research on many of those floors. I'll tell you what, I keep all my prisoners on the 18th floor. Come there, and we will have our showdown…"

"And why the hell would I do that when I've got you right here!?" Jake said as he summoned his spell circles and prepared to fire at Sinister. The man didn't look fazed at all.

"HAHA-ha, that's because you don't have me right here at all, hero. Come meet me on the 18th floor. That is if you survive. Hehehe... Unit, initiate self-destruct," Sinister spoke out to himself.

"What!?" Jake questioned when suddenly the Sinister in front of him exploded in a massive fireball! Jake quickly threw up another ice shield that managed to block the wave of flames in time!

"Fuck!" Jake cursed. That was another robot the whole time! When the blast finished, a large section of the hangar was completely scorched. Sinister didn't seem to care that he wrecked his planes or cars. What's more... The four clones were also killed in the blast. All Jake could see were piles of ash where he had stunned them.

Jake clenched his fist in anger. Mr Sinister may have looked stupid and spoke like an anime villain, but he clearly had no morals on killing. Jake needed a plan to deal with him. He definitely couldn't meet him on the 18th floor. That screamed of an obvious trap. Maybe Jake could throw the man off by going and wrecking all of his "important research" on the other floors beforehand…

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