“I’m pretty sure having 8 tentacles is better than having hands.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Human hands are way better, you’re crazy.”

Catherine wiggled her arms around to impersonate tentacles, much to the annoyance of Miley. Both Catherine and Miley were stuck at the base as it was not there day to go out searching.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, you can stay being limited on the amount of objects you can hold.”

“Your wannabe octo-ass won’t even be able to comprehend having more than 2 limbs. The human mind wasn’t made to handle it so you’ll have 8 sucky arms instead of 2 functional ones.” Miley was confident that adding extra limbs to people, while not adjusting how their brain functions, was a bad idea.

“You’re downplaying the human mind here, they’ve been capable of adapting to extremely bad situations.”

“Yes but those situations weren’t as drastic as having your arms replaced with 8 tentacles. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, you won’t be able to master controlling all the limbs properly.”

“Well let’s stop thinking about it in human terms, what about us androids? Are you going to say that it’s not possible to upgrade my AI to handle it?” Catherine smoothly swept her brown hair to the side and showed off a confident smirk.

“No screw off, that isn’t a checkmate you asshole.” Miley pointed her finger at the, still smug, girl. “You think the government is going to fund that shit? And if they were why would they put it on a humanoid, wouldn’t it be better to make an octopus robot?”

“Damn, an octobot does sound cool…” The girl took a moment to think about what life would be like if she were one, as cool as 8 arms is, not having legs is a hard sell.

“No Cath, please don’t try to think about what your life would be like if you were a robotic octopus.”

“Hm maybe we should ask Dr. Danglebutt about this.”

“Fine. Hey Dr. Diddlesdirt! Octolimbs or human hands?”

“I’m right here. You don’t have to shout.” The professor, who had to continue to listen to the two androids argue for the entire day, put down his laptop as he got off the couch and walked up to them.

“Also my name is Anthony Doogledert, you don’t even have to say my last name please just call me Anthony.” He pleaded.

The man adjusts his glasses before continuing. “I think I can give my opinion on the matter since I did minor in biology. I would have to go with hands here, due to how useful opposable thumbs are in our current society.”

Miley’s arms thrust themselves into the air as she got in Catherine’s face, her own face being one of ‘I told you so’. All Catherine could do was cross her arms and look away and try to pretend that this didn’t get to her, but it did. As Miley continued to silently and triumphantly stand over her defeated foe, Anthony shrugged and started to walk back to the couch seeing as the debate is over.

“A LARGE UNKNOWN GROUP IS APPROACHING FROM THE SOUTH!” The base’s voice boomed out across the room causing the professor to fall down. Meanwhile the two androids quickly ran towards the monitor room.

“Shit weren’t Silver and the others down south?” Miley said as she checked through each camera on a monitor to get a clear view of the group approaching them. She wondered who they were as they couldn’t be US forces, the base’s voice would have told them. They could be the kidnappers of Anthony’s pals but she wasn’t sure about it. All the possibilities were now running wild through her mind and she tried to think of different ways to approach them.

“Uh hey, why are you grinning? Also who’s jumping us?” Snapping her fingers in front of Miley’s face, Catherine kept looking back and forth from her and the monitor as if she would suddenly understand what’s going on.

Suddenly, the monitor switched to a view of a large group of people heading towards their base.

“Look at that,” Catherine pointed to the bottom of the screen. “I think I see Silver and Annie.” She was right, two familiar figures were there. Annie, especially, stood out from the crowd as she was about a head taller than everyone else.

“Did those idiots get captured?” Miley, baffled at the situation, left the room and headed towards the southernmost part of the base with Catherine just behind her. The room they entered had a great view on the south entrance of the base and they positioned themselves by the windows.

The professor rubbed his ears as he walked into the room. “Jeez, can’t you guys afford to have an alarm that’s less loud. My ears are still ringing.”

“Shut up dude, we gotta look out for the intruders.” Catherine slowly peeked out the window, she could see that they were right there at the entrance of the base. “Oh wow, they got here quick.”

Miley carefully scoped out the crowd and could see Silver, Annie and Engie. They still had their weapons, much to her surprise.

“Could they have been mind controlled?” She said under her breath.

“Well in my opinion, I think they want to be let in.” Anthony leaned in between the two girls. “Actually never mind, they’re heading in.” He pointed at Annie holding the door open for the strangers to get in.

“What? Dammit…” Miley got up from her position and headed towards the entrance to meet their new guests.

“Hey mom!” A giant girl waved at her as she approached.

“I thought I told you to stop calling me that, Annie.” Miley was annoyed, but relieved, to see that Annie was still her usual self.

A large gathering of 20 or so people were now hanging around the hallway, the way they dressed stood out the most to Miley as she inspected each one.

“Yeah, so I can explain.” Silver walked in holding her hands together, as if she was praying that Miley wouldn’t beat her up right away.

Miley nodded for Silver to continue. Seeing as she won’t come in harm’s way, yet, Silver took in a deep breath before speaking again.

“Sooooo, Miley meet Those at the Threshold.” She held her arms out towards them. “They’re a cu- religious group whose main goal is to reach the Equator. They’ll be staying here a while if you don’t mind, we do have a lot of free space now.”

She smiled the biggest smile that Miley has ever seen, Miley was caught off guard as she had never seen her act like this. In fact, none of her personalities were like this which led her to believe that she was actually being mind controlled.

As she attempted to comprehend what’s happening, Catherine leaned in and whispered into Miley’s ear. “She sucks at acting but if they’re buying it lets play along.” She gave a solid pat on Miley’s back as she walked forward from the confused girl. “Oh we don’t mind, the more the merrier right?”

“I liked to introduce you to my good friend Catherine!” The girl wrapped her arms around Catherine’s shoulder.

“Why thank you very much. We appreciate your hospitality especially during these times.” A man with the weirdest looking costume spoke up as he walked in front of the crowd. “I am Saint Paul Jeffrey the shepherd of this group.” He held his hand out towards Miley.

“Oh uh yes hello there.” Her face contorted into a smile as she cautiously grabs the man’s hand and shook it.

“Ah yes lodging, we can’t forget about that. Right Engie?” Silver looked over to the girl standing behind Annie.

“… Yeah…”

“Sorry to say that you can’t use the bedrooms since they hold important memories of our fellow comrades who passed away.” In truth, it was because they had data on the base as well as information about the UCNA army. This wouldn’t be a problem if they had cleaned through the rooms but alas they didn’t. “You guys can, however, live in the gym. We can provide sufficient bedding for you.”

“Hey, like I said before, a roof over our heads is all we need.” Bill gives a thumbs up to Silver.

“Engie, Annie if you don’t mind me asking can you two help these guys move in. We used some parts of the gym as storage so you can move those things aside.” Silver smiled at the two.

“Sure, we’ll do that.” Engie slowly turned and headed towards the gym.

“Oh Silver should I also do the thing?” Annie asked her.

“What? Sure, fine.” Silver waved at the departing group and quickly turned and pulled Miley and Catherine into another room.

As soon as they entered the room she put her weapon down and laid flat on a couch. “Oh god that’s tiring, I don’t want to go outside ever again.”

“You were supposed to go outside and look for a cool ass dinosaur, not bring home an entire cult!” Catherine expressed her concerns.

“I didn’t want to leave them out there, it’s dangerous.” Silver replied, muffled because her face was in a cushion.

Miley was still not sure what was even going on, what she did know was that Silver was an idiot for bringing civilians back to the base. “And why would you think they would be any safer here?”

“I dunno I’m just trying to stall them from going off and getting radiation poisoning.”

“Shit and they’re a cult too? What if they’re one of the crazy ones, well, crazier ones? They could kill us in our sleep and sacrifice us to some demon god of theirs.”

“I don’t think a lot of cults do that, Miley.” Silver turned her head to look at Miley. “And besides their god is some bright light guy, nothing too evil.”

“They don’t seem dangerous but they do have matching outfits, which means they’re on stage 4 of culthood.” The girls jumped up as they turn around to see Anthony standing in a corner.

“What are you doing there?”

“Well I thought they could be hired by those men in black so I had to be careful.”

Catherine leaned back on the same couch that Silver was on. “Those at the Threshold… like do you know if they’re a section of Christianity, Islam or Bryanism?”

“Nope, never heard of them.” Anthony struggled to think of their relation with any of the still standing religions.

Catherine tapped on Miley’s shoulder. “Should we call up Command or something?”

“I don’t think we have talked to Command since the incident. I guess we should.”

“Great, you guys do that and I can get in some Z’s after all the work I’ve done.” Silver got up and walked towards her living quarters.

“You’ve actually made shit worse!” Miley shouted at her as she left the room.

“Guess we just have to cancel the search while we handle this.” Catherine said. “I guess I’ll go help the other two out.”

“We’ll never be able to find the Loch Ness Monster…” Anthony sat down, depressed.