Seltron Super Academy Chapter 14

“Why is someone going to such trouble to hurt you?” I questioned as we ran away.

“I don’t know! You were controlled by them, do you have any ideas?”

I shook my head as we whipped around a corner. “They tried to make me afraid of you and were demanding I kill you, but it didn’t work when I questioned why I should be afraid of you.” That’s ‘mostly’ true. At the very least, it didn’t seem targeted or specific - someone who knew who I truly was better would have easier leverage points to get me to attack her.

“So you really were trying to kill me before? You were acting a bit oddly, but nothing like Bob.”

“They were trying to get me to, yes. It didn’t make me a mindless zombie or anything, though I’d hardly say I was at 100% peak brain power either. I think I was trying to ambush you.” A set of five overly large, glowing red eyes appeared a few meters behind us, turning and locking onto the two of us in half a second. Yuki assisted them a second later, her power causing multiple walls of stone to rise in front of us, even though she and the others hadn’t caught up to us yet.

I had no time to ponder who exactly was trying to fight us (and it didn’t matter since it was pretty much everyone else anyways), just to get ready. I swiveled and shifted my body, ripples coursing throughout everywhere repeatedly for dramatic changes.

I grew over a foot, some of the height from the heavy mask of bone encompassing my head. It was very thick and heavy, needing a lot of additional neck muscles to support it. The bones looked something like a dinosaur or dragon’s head, with spikes fanning out in the back. There were no holes for eyes, so I put eight of them on other spots on my body, the best I could manage to cover all angles and avoid disorientation.

A mouth grew out on either shoulder for talking and breathing, and I transmuted my skin to a thick reddish-brown hide. Four tentacles erupted from my back, each long, sinuous, and flexible. My legs split from two into four as well, my lower half twisting and stretching to support a quadrupedal base. My arms bulked up a bit, growing a bit larger and then sprouting massive claws in place of my hands. They forfeited some fine motor control, but I had my tentacles for that, and they made up for it in incredible cutting power, something I tested by easily scraping off a chunk of the steel walls beside me.

The insides were reforged as greatly as my outsides. The tough hide should protect me, but I moved about my vital organs and made as many redundancies as I could, just in case. I usually ran one or two for some vital systems but not like this. The energy drain it gives is annoying alongside the reduction of the maximum strength I can bring to bear, but I have a feeling I’ll need the redundancies soon. I also cut down on nearly all feelings of pain so only the worst would get through at a diminished rate.

My pajamas had been torn off by the change, but the shift had left no real nudity to expose. I wish I had a better circumstance to show off this ‘battle form’ in combat class, I’m quite proud of it. It had a striking, powerful look, if a heavily demonic one at that (an opinion that Alex seemed to share given her hushed ‘whoa’ at the change).

It was slightly too symmetrical and organic to be a true demon form, though only an experienced Super would recognize that. It certainly was strong like a serial demon, and I knew (and was partially inspired by) some demons that would kill any Emp just for the mutation, hoping to leverage it to make themselves stronger. Of course, those crazies died out ages ago. Murder everyone around you, and it’s not surprising that the whole world is eventually out for your blood.

There was no more time to reminisce, and I put my new form to the test as some classmates entered our line of sight. The boy in front had five orbs orbiting around him, and with a gesture, he tossed one out. I moved to the side, but it hit its intended target square on, exploding on impact with Alex’s face. I was further away, and the bright burst didn’t cause any damage past my hide, save two lost eyes, but those were easily replaced. That was a power I’ve never seen before. Why didn’t it come up in the tournament?

Leaping forward on powerful legs, I charged at the boy, lowering my head and raising my claws up as a shield. A girl and another guy moved around the sides to flank me as the boy redirected an orb my way. It hit, and lightning burst off, shocking all of us. I was stunned for a moment by the electricity, as were the other two trying to attack me, though the orb boy drew the energy up around him, forming another opaque orb, albeit one far smaller than the others.

He can absorb energy into those orb things, then direct them and make them explode! His first one must have been energy absorbed from the laser kid’s power. He never used it at the tournament, though, so even with a bad matchup, he likely can’t absorb all energy types. Maybe he can't take kinetic energy? At least not directly from another person, which means he'd have trouble stopping a punch. In that case...

He directed another orb at Alex, who had picked herself up from the first blast only to get knocked around again, but he underestimated how fast I would recover, two tendrils ramming into his chest together and smashing him against the opposite wall. He seemed incapacitated for the moment, but more students were rushing in. I picked up the two, still stunned from electrocution, only nicking them minorly with my claws, and threw them into the others.

“Break through those walls! We need to get down to the basement, I called out, trying to ward off the others swarming in, slowly retreating back. Alexandra didn’t answer back, simply turning around and punching at the walls rapidly, the sound of stone and metal practically being exploded apart by her fists covering up anything else.

A couple of students had swords and other weapons with them, slashing and stabbing at my frame. Despite their numbers, they had difficulty getting past my claws and lashing tentacles, and the few strikes that got through my defense didn’t pierce my hide deep. One of them had some kind of concealment power (that or I was far more distracted than I’d thought), because suddenly a blur appeared at Alex’s back, attacking her.

“How did they get all those weapons?” Alex asked a tad casually for the situation, raising an arm up to deflect a sword strike at her. The weapon shattered on her arm, and I picked the surprised boy up with a tentacle and threw him over my head like a ragdoll, scraping the top of the ceiling as he went.

I ripped a trident out of a girl’s hands with my claws, smacking the petite girl with my tentacles twice for good measure too. “They’re working together, the same way Eyeball tells Yuki where to put the walls,” I said without turning around.

“What?! That’s unfair, they can’t work together. Don’t they know they’re supposed to mindlessly charge at us? Behind you!” Alex cried out, running at the girl and rolling over me as I lowered my back to give Alex a clear punch to Maximus, who had been about to tackle me from behind. I had it covered with my all-around vision, but arguing about it would have taken far more time than he was worth. Plus, I’m touched that Alex would look out for me like that (and amused at how the feathered girl found no irony with that and what she had just said about teamwork).

While I said, and they were doing, our classmates didn’t really seem to be working all that well together. They could work together with rudimentary tactics, but whoever was controlling them didn’t seem to have perfect control, or coordination at least. The kids attacking me were, for the most part, ill-trained and got in each other’s way a bit when fighting in a tight hallway.

I saw a pinky finger go flying, and not from my clawed hands, which reminded me of why we needed to get to the gym. In these cramped quarters, our classmates are as much a danger to each other as they were to us, possibly more so. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but I have a feeling killing our mind-controlled classmates won’t be seen as very heroic.

Stone dust filled the air, obscuring vision, but Alex gave out a cry that the way was clear. Was it enough for- Yes, I can feel it. I turned, retreating, but not before making a quick shift, as the dust cleared at my level for one brief moment to give me line of sight to the most problematic one in the back.

I combined my tentacles to make one super long one, lashing out at the end of the hallway at the guy I vaguely recognized as the one making the Astral Eyeballs, now in view. It was somewhat risky, but these were desperate times, so I simply generated the acid on the end of my tentacle as I hit him in the eye, rather than trying to pretend I was generating it in a stomach and spitting at him.

He gave out a cry of pain as Alex and I ran down dozens of meters thick of wrecked stone walls. Angelica just missed me, jumping towards my tentacle as I retreated. Of course, I dealt with her during my first tournament fight and easily recognized the danger and slipped my tentacle away from her. That’s the other reason to retreat - enough powers and combinations, and eventually we’ll both be taken down, no matter how strong we are. I didn’t have time to counterstrike at the doll-obsessed girl as I was focused on fleeing and returning my tentacles back to their previous state.

There were no more glowing eyes following them, something I was glad for (not having been certain that taking out his regular eyes would take him out enough to stop him from divining our location), but we hardly had time to catch our breath as we outran them because Trevor came into view in the lounge room that led to the elevator.

I had no idea how he had gotten there ahead of us, but the glowing dome of light expanding around him spelled our doom. Wasting no time, I shifted again, raising my arm at him. Inside it, I made a 2-foot spike of bone unconnected from the rest of my skeletal structure, an opening in my hand, and a pocket of gas behind it. Triggering the function within, I forced the gas pocket forward, expelling the spike at the young man just before the wall of light consumed me.

The spike drove into his shoulder, driving him back against and pinning him to a wall. The light dome moved with him and cleared a path to the elevator, which we went towards, our friend whimpering in pain and clawing pitifully at his shoulder before slumping down against the wall.

I didn’t know if the pain had snapped Trevor out of it; he was falling out of consciousness, or he had just judged that from his position, his perception-blocking power would just hurt the other’s chances of getting to Alex, or whatever, but the glowing dome receded to nothingness. I let out a sigh of relief as we ran past him. I didn’t have time to check on him, rushing to keep up with Alex (even with my battle form designed for movement speed, Alex’s strides were massive due to her incredible strength).

The gleaming metal doors beckoned to us, and we dashed forward in an instant, Alexandra pressing the button so hard it cracked. “Oops,” she said with a sheepish grin, and I just palmed my bone-plated face with my giant clawed hand. Before I could say anything, though, we heard the ‘whir’ of the elevator rising up to our level. Alright, we might make it out of here.

We waited, the seconds stretching agonizingly onward as we heard our classmates moving down the hallways, running towards us. The doors finally clicked open, and we ducked inside, my tentacles pressing the buttons to go down and close the door before we were even fully inside (and then many times afterwards, because the elevator refused to heed how desperate we were to escape and wouldn’t begin the process of closing before we cleared the doorway).

The steel alloy doors closed again, slowly. Just before they shut, a short blond-haired boy, Major Edderton, came into view and sent a red laser blast from his hands at us, the crimson light just cut short by the doors. The elevator shuddered, but only slightly from the impact, and began descending normally.

The short ride down was silent, Alex still somewhat shocked by everything that had gone on, and I was focused on the challenges that lay ahead and the many questions this situation had raised. Do any teachers know? Could they get help? Who’s doing this?

The doors to the elevator opened, and we found ourselves staring at Kadir, the dark-haired boy, his arms crossed in front of him. I raised my hand and let off a bone spike instantly, and he dropped all composure and ducked while teleporting to the side and down the hallway.

“What the hell was that for?!” He cried, looking very upset and more than a little nervous. “Look, I’m truly sorry if my hitting on you upset you that much, Camila, but I think turning into a huge monster and trying to shishkebab me is a bit of an overreaction, don’t you?” He rose up into a fighting stance with a knife appearing in his hand out of nowhere, but he didn’t make a move towards us.

“Wait, maybe he’s on our side,” Alex suggested. I didn’t make another move towards the teleporter (not the least of which was because that would be less than pointless when he stood over a dozen meters away) but kept my bone spike arms and tendrils ready.

“Or he could be lying and trying to lull us into a false sense of security,” I countered. “They don’t have to act like mindless zombies; they can reason to a degree while trying to attack you.” Then we both heard a ‘thud’ as something hit the top of the elevator. Shit, I thought they’d wait until the metal box went back up. I snapped my eyes back to Kadir, but the boy was still just watching us warily, not taking advantage of the distraction.

“Do I get a say in the whole ‘attacking you gals’ thing? Cause, uh, I’d rather not if that’s what I get,” he said, pointing at the two-foot-long bone spike embedded in the wall. "Another thud hit the top of the elevator, and we shared a look (slightly awkward, given the eye I was using was beside my elbow) and darted out from there.

“Fine, if you aren’t being mind controlled to attack Alex, then try to keep up,” I said as we ran down the hallway.

“Mind control? Man, and here I worried this place might not be interesting enough when I first got here, he said as he teleported to keep pace with us. A chunk of molten metal fell down from the top, and Major leapt down, his hands glowing.

“Yes, it’s been a bad night. Bad couple of nights- why weren’t you affected by the nightmares?”

“Ah, is that the source of it?” Kadir asked, teleporting away as a red beam streaked through where he had been. “I wasn’t feeling too comfy here, so I’ve been sleeping... elsewhere.”

“So off the island then.” Some part of my mind noted that even in the most dangerous of days in my life, I hadn’t often experienced such faux-casual dialogue while in the middle of a fight for my life like Kadir could bring out. Then again, I usually didn’t have allies for those fights either, just enemies and ‘not-currently-dangerous-to-me.’ 

The other, larger part of my brain, was focused on avoiding the lasers Major was sending our way. Running partially up the wall, I then jump-fell over a red line of destruction. I landed with a heavy impact that even sent Kadir up in the air a bit. And that’s why I try not to leap around most of the time.

“I think the nightmares are being used to control them. The students, at least. It’s forcing them to attack Alex.” As I spoke, one of the beams hit the girl in question in the back of the head, to no real effect. Major stopped his beams, and I could see that several more students had dropped down to the basement now, though none of them seemed to have the same range Major did to target us all the way down this ridiculously long hallway (this is not the first time I’ve questioned the design of it, and I honestly don’t think it will be the last, though this might be the time I question it the hardest).

Major called something out, and the other students moved to the side as he drew his hands together in front of him, turning them over with one palm up and one down, fingers crunched down somewhat like claws. A blue-with-dot-of-red-in-the-center, very bright, charge buildup between them.

“Alex, dodge!” I shouted, and the winged girl obeyed without hesitation, throwing herself to the side, just in time to avoid the massive beam that ripped through where she’d been. Neither of us knew if that would be enough to hurt her, but we didn’t want to test it. Unfortunately, it looked like that was going to happen regardless as the beam stayed steady, moving across the hall.

I picked up Alex from the ground and righted her as I passed, running to the side with Alex once the winged girl got her footing again, but the beam was still closing in on us. This one was too large to jump over like I had before, and I didn’t think we could make it to the exit before it hit us. Should I pick a form to try and slide under it or bone armor to try and tank it? Time’s running out, and-

Kadir blinked into existence behind them, a hand on each of our backs (I restrained myself from instinctively lashing out at him with my tentacles). As he did so, he called out over the sound of the laser, “All aboard. Next stop, ladies-” the beam that was centimeters away from us was suddenly flying over our heads. “-The gym! Please, hold the applause, though tips are appreciated,” he said with a little bow.

Alex panted, placing her hands on her thighs. “Whew, that was a close one. Thanks, Kadir!” He shrugged easily. I wondered how tired Alex actually was and how much of it was just the moment getting to her. While it would be slightly interesting if she had a weakness in regards to getting exhausted, at the moment such a drawback would be very unfortunate.

“No problem.” Looking around the place, he asked, “Sooo... I assume there was a reason you were trying to lure the rest of our class into this place, right?”

“I thought they’d be easier to fight off in an open space, both for ourselves and for them. Also, it was the only path we really had open at the time. We should have a moment to rest up now, though that hallway will take a while for most of them to get down.” I paused, then turned my giant skull-head to face him. “Wait a moment- you can just get us out of here! Quick, teleport us away,” I demanded.

“What am I, your taxi?” Kadir grumbled.

“Yes.” At his look I added, “Ask a dumb question...”

“Ugh, I did kinda walk into that one. Do you know how weird your voice sounds with that body?” I folded my arms and made my tentacles writhe and thrash a tiny bit. “Whatever. Alright, let’s go to the teacher’s-”

“Wait! We can’t go!” Alex cried out. “Or at least, I can’t.”

“Why not?” Kadir asked at the same time as I said, “They’ll tear you to shreds if they get the chance.”

“Exactly, which is why I need to stay here. If we let them run amok, they could hurt someone else or each other if their controller got desperate enough. That’s not what a hero would do.” She said the words with a quiet conviction, and I knew there would be no changing her mind.

“Argh, fine. We’ll stay here and defend you then.” What did I just say? Why did I say that? Why am I volunteering for this? This is so dumb- no. No, I was just trying to match Alex’s level of sickeningly sweet innocence and heroism so I’ll be seen as a great hero in the making too. That was it.

“Uh, maybe you two can stay, but I’m gonna bounce,” Kadir said, casting an eye to the sounds of feet banging down the hallway.

“Why? You’re good in a fight, and we could use your help,” Alex said. I waved a clawed hand in a ‘so-so’ motion regarding the first part. Kadir tossed me a cool look and a smirk before shaking his head at Alex.

“I’m not going to be any good in a chaotic brawl like this. I can dodge well, but one stray blast and I’ll be out for sure. No, you two can handle yourselves, but I’ll see if I can get some help from the teachers.” He popped out of existence.

The sounds of feet running towards them grew louder. “How are we going to do-” Kadir teleported back, tossing me a tablet. “-This?”

“Coach’s tablet. Should let you control the gym a bit; hope that helps,” Kadir said and was off again in a flash.

“Well, that was nice,” Alex said as I grew a new, regular hand to manipulate the tablet better. After a moment of me tapping away at the tablet, she asked, “So, is there anything I should know to fight them, or...?”

“Don’t aim for the head. Or anywhere else vital. Breaking bones should be fine; even if Nursegirl isn’t able to heal them, someone in the hero community will be able to and come by eventually.” I wasn’t sure if Alexandra heard the ‘I hope’ in my words, but she was at least nodding seriously. The tablet was thankfully unlocked, but there wasn’t a whole lot that I could do to turn the gym into a trap for our classmates, not without risking everyone’s lives or possibly hampering us as much as them. “You did fine controlling yourself in the tournament and ramping up to match me; stick with that, and you’ll be fine.”

“O-Ok, got it!” She said, giving me a shaky smile and a thumbs up before taking a battle stance as she readied herself to fight the rest of the class again. It’s actually pretty admirable. She doesn’t have my experience dealing with these kinds of crazy and dangerous situations, but she always tries to put on a brave face to help inspire others around her.

I could send a message out to the teachers, but if they’ve been turned as well, I might just be calling more trouble down on our heads. Kadir is on that anyways; I’ll just have to trust him. Ugh, those are words I thought I’d never think to myself.

I made the floor and walls softer, so that no one would be hurt too badly if they were knocked into them (something that was very likely given the degrees of enhanced strength we had). Raised a few barricades and freestanding walls at strategic locations in case they needed cover. I cut off the ledge sides of the gym so only the entrance was open, feeling a need to lure them out but not wanting to let the students surround us. Satisfied with the changes I made, I focused my attention ahead, waiting for when their classmates would charge through.

And waited...

A minute passed, and Alex beside her dropped the boxing stance to turn to me. “Is this a trick?” She asked over the ever-louder sound of running. “Why is it taking so long?” 

“The hallway is ridiculously long, and we’re quite fast- here they are!” As I spoke, I saw the first students begin to pour out from the entranceway. Beams and other energy effects filled the air, and the fight was on once more.