The hivemind is conquering for me?

Once everyone’s eyes were once again ready for action, I returned to Valerica’s side and a very angry Tamara, who for the first time I agreed had reason to be angry.

”Well, although I couldn’t see the results of spar, I am pretty sure I heard a suplex being performed by Apollo onto you Tamara, so that makes him two for zero in your spars so far. Now, although you lost, I hope you learned your lesson, but I doubt it. Just because you are physically stronger than your opponent, does not mean you win in close combat. Apollo has impeccable combat reflexes and took advantage of your wanting to turn him into mincemeat by charging right into him and used your own momentum against you with his surprise attack. You are like me Tamara, strong of body, but Psionic powers are no joke, you need to be wary of everyone as they can always have sneaky little tricks up their sleeves, Or in Apollo’s case. A gigantic flashbang.

Now Apollo, that was a great use of surprise to discombobulate your enemy. Allowing yourself to be injured in order to win the fight, but that tactic can only work in a spar, not in an actual fight. Two times now you have used tricks to beat Tamara, first not announcing your Gyrokinetic attack and using her ego against her. This made her ready to go right at you today. However, using a surprise attack again will only work once, Tamara could, should and will expect something like that again next time and considering I heard a good amount of damage when she charged into you, I recommend you don’t try and rely on tricks as a sustainable combat plan and focus into something else more structured. Something that can be repeated without draining all your Psionics, because you and I both know in an actual combat scenario that could be a death sentence.”

I nodded my head at what Valerica said, she made perfect sense with everything and I saw no reason to disagree with her wisdom, Tamara however... ” Pff, yeah whatever, he just got lucky. Fight me like a man next time, why don’t you? Or is your little prick so small that you can’t even call yourself that?”

I looked at the pink haired terror, baffled by what she just said. ”Fight like a man? Where the fuck were you raised? Literally almost every woman in my life can beat the shit out of me and I have no problem with that. I would rather fight like one of them than ’A man.’ Ridiculous...”

The woman’s needless hostility was starting to rub me the wrong way. I decided the best course of action now was to just ignore her until I needed to speak to her. Ignoring the slightly baffled look on Tamara’s face, I then turned to Valerica and asked a bit more venomously than I meant. ”So, what’s next?”

’Aww, he is so adorable when he is cranky.’ Valerica couldn’t help thinking before collecting herself. ”Next is simply put- Oh first I need to bring them out.” Valerica then stomped on the ground extremely hard and a moment later the ground all around us opened up and a group of people emerged breathing heavily.

”Lady Valerica, what happened? We were down there for way too long! It was getting stuffy!” A man yelled in confusion as he was inhaling air. It just so happened to be a man I recognised as well. ”Iilr?”

The man then turned from Valerica to me and smiled. ”Oh, hey my guy! How are you? I didn’t know it was you who we are beating the shit out of today, that’s unlucky for you. Good luck dude, you will need it.”

I was naturally taken aback by this and turned to Valerica. ”Valerica?” Gone was the sweet caring mother figure in my life and in her place was an evil woman grinning wickedly.

”Apollo, Tamara. Meet some of your allies on your upcoming expeditions. Everyone here has at least four years of Psionic training under their belt and at the most sixteen. Every single individual here has pulled their weight in at least one major conflict. But see here. These individuals don’t know your potential. How could they? They just think you are some lucky schmucks that were ’better’ than the rest of your respective peers. They need proof you have metal. They can’t be thinking you are a liability when out together stomping heads, as it could be theirs on the line if you fuck up. So they are here to... See how resilient you actually are and if you are up to snuff.”

The group of around twenty to thirty individuals closed in and began chuckling to themselves. Some began brandishing weapons while others began flaunting their Psionics.

’This is bad.’ I couldn’t help thinking. The woman that healed my eyes only healed my eyes. My body was still severely injured and exhausted while my Psionic reserves were still filling back up and judging from the look on Tamara’s face, she wasn’t exactly excited by the idea either.

”Don’t look so worried you two. We aren’t monsters.” A woman in the group with half of her hair shaved off spoke up. ”We aren’t going to gangbang you here and now, that would be too easy. See, we like a good hunt against fresh meat so here is the plan. The both of you have fifteen minutes to run out into the planet’s jungle. Judging by what we know of you, that gives you a fair head start.”

A bald muscular man, of course, who was wielding a massive warhammer, then followed up his ally. ”Being a civilised lot, you do have a way of surviving a beatdown. Forty eight hours. You escape us for two days starting the moment you leave and you walk away unscathed. But if we get you... We get to have our fun.” He then began lightly swatting his hand with the head of his weapon and began chuckling while everyone else did the same.

Valerica, the traitor, then spoke up. ”Don’t look so glum you two. It’s tradition. All of us have been in your shoes going back millennia. It’s how we weed out the pussies. Now, I expect the both of you to survive at least the first day, if not I will be extremely disappointed.”

”How long did you last for Valerica?” I couldn’t help asking, considering what she wanted from us. ”Oh, not long at all, around three hours if I recall correctly? I was concussed and hospitalised for a week afterwards, no healing Psionics at the time, all healers were shipped off to fight the war with the Coalition. All hands were on deck as they pushed us quite hard, but not relevant now. Are the two of you ready?”

”Actually-” ”-Move asshole!” Tamara shouted as she pushed me to the ground and began sprinting away through the small gap in the group surrounding us.

I slowly got up to my feet and brushed myself off, ignoring the jape about the clock ticking down, I had other priorities. ”Valerica.”

”Yes, my baby?” She said all sweetly.

”Can you inform Orchid about what is happening? Here, take my jacket as proof that I am fine. If she doesn’t know where I am she will get... Destructive. She is quite protective.”

Valerica continued to smile sweetly, ”Of course darling, anything else you want or need? Though I should remind you again the clock is ticking down and this group has some scarily good trackers.”

I began to limber up. ”No nothing else, though I do regret doing that training with Nerissa last night now. Apollo likes to sleep and now he is going to miss out on even more.”

As I continued to stretch, allowing my body to collect the shattered bones and reabsorb them better, the woman from earlier then spoke up. ”You might want to get a move on pretty boy, we don’t care if you are injured. We won’t show mercy.”

I then stopped limbering up, ready now and smiled politely back at her. ”Good. Neither will I.”

*Fwoosh!*

...

The group looked on in surprise as the clearly injured man just cleared them all with a single leap. ”Wow, he can jump really good.” One said as they watched the man disappear over a group of trees in the distance.

The leader of the group, the woman with the partially shaved head then turned to Valerica and asked. ”So, my lady, battle prep. What should we expect? Are they strong?”

Valerica chuckled at that remark. ”Very. All this year’s pool is absurd in that regard. Now for these two. Tamara, you are going to want to slowly whittle away at her. Skirmish from a distance. Do not corner her. She will go feral with her rage enhancement and with her mental state, will be ok with death if it means defeating even one of you... As for Apollo.”

Valerica couldn’t help but to smirk. ”He is injured and exhausted, but don’t let that fool you. Do not give him a second. You find him and you beat him down instantly. His battle IQ is phenomenal. Give him an opportunity to figure you out and he will turn the tables on all of you. My son is incredible in that regard, I mean for fuck sake, you didn’t see it, but the reason you were delayed underground was because he conjured up a fucking miniature sun that blinded everyone, Himself included just to win a spar.”

Hearing the details, the group began putting together battle plans, whom to go after whom, all except one. Iilr who couldn’t help thinking.

’Wait what? He wasn’t lying about Lady Valerica being his mother? Crazy. *Gasp* I hope he didn’t tell her I found her scary...’