Metro Manila used to be engulfed in a despairing sea of green, but the moment we heard that Manila was going to be part of the Cassandra anomaly, agents from every area starting getting together clearing out green fields. In a matter of days, Luneta & Intramuros was a fortress farm of blue L8 portals and so were most of Metro Manila.
It was a farming frenzy, at any point of the day you would literally bump across another resistance agent, or a bunch of them walking around Luneta & Intramuros... this was when I fully appreciated that farming for gears is not a solitary activity, it is best done between trading war stories, gales of laughter and just plain bonding with other resistance agents.
2 days before the anomaly date, the announcement came in that the anomaly site would be moved from Manila to Makati. We were dazed, but that was a temporary setback and in some ways a relief.
August 18- the day...it was raining like mad.
Resistance agents in black started trooping into Ayala triangle armed with umbrella's and ziplocked powerbanks. It was an hour before call time and there was barely time for a final brief, everybody was just too busy, wrapping up phones, looking for teammates and plain just getting to know each other, for most of us, it was the first time to see so many resistance agents all in one place.
There was no gunshot, no flags waving to mark the start of the anomaly. Random blue portals started going neutral. Enlightened agents have started attacking. The battle has began.
Only fools and madmen would be out in the pouring rain, and yet there we were running around Buendia, Makati ave and nearby streets the first mark ended with a huge blue field and a win for the resistance.
After the mad scramble to move to the next location all hell broke loose phone and data signal bogged down, phones were going haywire and on top of it all, the enlightened managed to out-do our field with an even bigger one. Distress calls from different teams were coming in from every direction.
Insanity rolled from the second cut off to the third, it was midway to the third round and agents were just coming in. Barely settled the volatile portals have been announced and it was pandemonium all over again. We were supposed to outnumber enlightened agents 3 to 1, and yet somehow we were barely holding it in...Then my traitor of a bladder chose the wrong moment to act up, you can just imagine how it feels to choose to continuously pound on your phone over your vital functions, desperately keeping your act together and half the time praying that this war be over soon...
Relief surged. The message from command center flashed, IT IS OVER! I didn't even bother to find out if we won or lost. When nature calls, you heed it.
3 hours after, and we were back where we started, huddled together in Bonchon, Ayala triangle. Some too giddy to eat, some too hungry to care (I was one of those). It was much later when I made sense of the rabble, here we were, tired, wet, together, resistance, WINNERS.
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