The hivemind is conquering for me?

”Ooh Apollo look at that one!” Gabrielle said with glee as she pointed at some kind of giant lizard with three eyes. Ignoring the insane amount of strength in which she was clinging onto my arm as she pointed, I looked the creature over and nodded.

”Handsome fellow.” I said admiring the creature. It reminded me of a tree gecko, just two meters long and with an aforementioned third eye.

The lizard then looked directly at me and nodded its head before scurrying off into its hidey hole. I was momentarily stunned as that was not the first time a lizard had given me a bro nod.

I continued to look at where it had gone into hiding before being dragged away by Gabrielle towards the fountain with the strange ice sculpture atop it. Apparently Yacob, our teacher, was running a little behind so in order to stop loitering in the hallways, we were allowed into the new wing.

Only a portion of the wing however, as like in the library, there is a restricted section that required Yacob’s direct consent to access. As we moved to the next exhibit, Gabrielle and I were getting some dirty looks, more so Gabrielle.

Apparently those that can disable others from using their Psionics were not well liked by other Psionic individuals... Who knew? I suppose it made sense, but I had been around that phenomenon since I was just over a week old. ’Though Anti Psionics and Psionic disruption are two different things. Meh, sticks and stones.’

It did not seem to bother her in the slightest however, as she was all smiles. And after seeing her cry like that, her smile now, as she dragged me around, warmed my heart. Ever since we first met, Gabrielle had been a bit... Eccentric around me. It’s like she had imprinted on me.

As Hailey had put it a few times, trying to make Gabrielle’s behaviour make sense, she has a lot of trauma and has a bit of a fractured psyche. With that and her literally crying in my arms earlier, it made me feel protective of her in a bizarre way. When I look at her I am reminded a little bit of Lele. I had only known her for a short time as well, but I cared for that child deeply and when I look at Gabrielle I feel that same urge to care.

Looking intently at Gabrielle, I suddenly had a thought: Her and Tamara will be my first...

”Apollo? What are you looking at? You are going to make me blush.” Gabrielle asked, twirling her hair around her finger.

”Oh, sorry. Science stuff. I won’t bore you with the details.” I said, but then Gabrielle pressed herself up against me and smiled a warm smile. ”Oh you could never bore me Apollo. I could listen to you speak for hours and hours and hours and-”

”-Everyone! Gather round! You can look at these exhibits later! Hurry, hurry I’m not getting any younger! He-he-he-he” A familiar man shouted from a raised platform at the end of the room. The entire class, which was more a giant crowd, considering there was over one hundred people present.

Yacob then looked over the crowd and nodded his head. He wasn’t a vain man, he long squashed those types of emotions. But seeing his work validated by a large crowd of experienced Psionic individuals wouldn’t stop feeling good.

”Everyone, allow me to welcome you to my little menagerie of exotic Psionic beings and entities. Before we continue on with our lesson today, have it be known that there will be zero use of Psionics around the exhibits. Many of these creatures can kill you a hundred times over and if the failsafes fails to keep you safe due to your chicanery, I will see to it personally that your corpse gets sodomised.”

That threat got murmurs from some students and chuckles from the veterans around, clearly to them it wasn’t a new threat.

”Now that the warning is out of the way, let’s get back to pleasantries. My name is Yacob Petrotis. I am what you would consider a bit of an oddball. See, unlike most of you, I really like aliens. I like studying them, learning about them, dissecting them. Raising them, breeding them and not necessarily all in that order. He-he-he. Just about anything you can think of an alien doing, I enjoy studying.

But that being said, my true love is Psionically gifted animals. I love how Psionic energy has changed their composition into something truly unique. Behold!”

*WHISTLE!*

After putting his fingers in his mouth and whistling at a deafening volume, a moment later I heard a shriek from behind me followed by a change in air pressure as something swooshed from above and landed directly next to Yacob.

It was a bird of some sort, over three meters tall. Its characteristics were clearly a bird of prey in origin, but what made it really stand out was it looked to be made of different hues of ice from beak to claw.

My mind was salivating at the sight of the creature and I wasn’t talking about Onyx. The beast was majestic. I wanted to know its secrets.

Yacob then reached into his pocket and pulled out a very large rabbit like a magician before throwing the creature up at the bird, to which it happily swallowed in a single bite. Afterwards the creature lowered its beak to Yacob’s level at which point the man rubbed it lovingly before turning back to us.

”Everyone, meet Jim. Hey! No snickering, he picked the name himself! Jim here has a deep connection to Ice Psionics to the point he has evolved past the Speok hawk he once was and is now this very handsome creature you see before you!”

Jim, hearing this, took his wing and dipped his head behind it showing his embarrassment at the praise of Yacob, causing some of those present to softly laugh.

After the laughter and murmurs of wonder over Jim finished Yacob continued. ”Now Jim here is one of my personal pets and due to that is given free reign of the place, though he likes to sit atop that fountain back there and crystalise most of the day so you won’t interact with him much.

The majority of the creatures you are going to see here aren’t exactly here by choice. And while you might think whats the difference between this place and a zoo you might ask? Minus the Psionic creatures of course. Well... Some of you might see creatures inside these halls that are... How should I put this? Some are feral beasts, untrainable. Unlike my good friend Jim here. Others are of a more civilised ilk. Here we also have members of the coalition and other spacefaring races. Intelligent species.”

My eyebrow instantly raised hearing that. That sounded very unethical to my ears, but I could hear the murmurs of those around me and true to their Speciesism mindset, I could hear delight and wanting’s to commit torture to the captured creatures.

Yacob then raised his hands and yelled. ”Everyone zip it before I have Jim turn you into ice pops! I have told you this information now to allow yourself a moment to compose yourselves as you will not harm a single one of my specimens without my direct authority. This wing has royal authority and as its leader, the only person in the empire that has more authority in this place is King Dickon. So, if you touch one of my test subjects or pets with malicious intent, your head can say farewell to the rest of your body. It took a lot of manpower and, in some cases, lives to get these creatures here and I will not tolerate fools inside the restricted sections of this wing. Does anyone have a problem with this?”

There were a few grumbles of discontent, but no actual disagreements. Seeing this Yacob nodded before turning back to Jim.

”Why don’t you go and perch again, you did an amazing job. I’ll make sure to get some extra treats from home shipped for you, as a thanks for helping me all this week.”

Jim then proceeded to screech with delight, stretching his massive wings out in celebration and in one flap of his wings he took off with a great amount of force before landing back atop the fountain in the distance at which point his body began making the sound of ice cracking and shifting before seemingly turning back into a giant block of normal sculpted ice.

’Oh man, I want to dissect that thing so badly.’ I was basically frothing at the mouth with my desire to uncover that creature’s secrets.

”All right everyone, with all the boring talk out of the way, we can make our way to the restricted section. Today will just be a look around. I will tell you about all our creatures. Oh! And before I forget, I have an assistant. Echemus. He is my nephew. A word of warning. He is a cunt. If he tries to force you to do anything or threatens to kick you out of the class, ignore him and come tell me. He is powerless to do anything to you, but I can kick the ever-loving shit out of his head for not learning his lesson...Again. Now, Right this way!