Awakening, Pt 2

You run right behind your Dad as he whips up the rest of the Watch members around you into a frenzy. They all head towards the office closest to the stairs where they load up on all sorts of guns, from SMGs to rifles to shotguns. They stuff loaded magazines and spare shells into their vests and pockets, then run out to the sweltering heat outside.

Your Dad shoves a rifle in your hands, along with a couple of loaded magazines, then turns to load up himself.

"Help us out, wouldja?" he asks.

You're hesitant to do any such thing - the last thing you want to do is start your journey tired out from any kind of fight. But you can't exactly say no. Not just because it's your Dad, and not just because you don't want to leave them hanging at a time like this.

It's also because all of these people have helped take care of you these past couple of years. Those events from that day have only caused a deepening depression to take hold of you. And if it hadn't been for your community, you might have died long ago.

The very act of you leaving causes you to think you're abandoning them, though you know how silly that seems. More importantly, you know deep down that you can't stay. Something deep inside you is telling you to make a move, to finally do something about, well, yourself. Not that you know what that something is, just that you need to start doing it.

But again, you feel as though you owe them. Helping out would be a great way to start repaying.

"I don't know how to use this," you say as you place the rifle back into one of the racks and the magazines into a tray at the bottom. "All I'd do is waste 'em. But I'll come along and help, yeah. Of course I will."

"Alright, fine," your Dad says as he loads up a massive revolver, then holsters it. "But here, at least grab this."

He then picks out a curved sword and hands it to you.

The hell am I gonna do with this? you think to yourself. It's not like you've ever used a sword in your life. At least, not outside of some video game long ago.

But you don't find the energy to argue with him further. There's a lot more pressing things to worry about right now, so you take the katana from his hands.

"Let's get out there already," you say.

Now properly equipped, the two of you run down the stairs and out to the broken city's streets. The heat strikes you the moment you step out, though you hardly notice exactly how sweltering it is. The both of you chase after a few other Watch members, who themselves are running towards the sounds of gunfire a couple of blocks away.

As you run, you reach outward with your Telepathy in an attempt to probe exactly what all of you are facing. It comes with a small pulse of pain around the sides of your head, but you easily ignore it. And as the deputy had mentioned, there's a roving band of Crazed headed in your direction - towards the direction of the heart of the community.

You've certainly heard the others talk about them, about how chaotic and random and utterly violent the Crazed are. They seem to be regular people, but broken somehow. Perhaps turned mad by that initial blackout that heralded the start of all this…

Despite all the stories that have come trickling in from the Watch, or from outside traders, you haven't ever actually seen them before. And you're not sure what to expect. Thankfully, you'll get to experience them now, before you go out there, out on your own.

You expand yourself outward, but focused ahead of you, in the direction where all the fighting appears to be occurring. There, you find the minds of the various members of the Watch, as they struggle to fight off the oncoming Crazed.

Your mind is blown by the Crazed themselves - their minds pour out with random thoughts firing in every direction and with fluctuating intensity. Equally as chaotic are their emotions. Their auras spike and rush and vibrate at speeds that almost overwhelm you, and hinders your ability to make sense of it all. They surge out of them intensely and unceasingly, as though they're feeling everything they've ever felt throughout their lives, but all at once.

It's almost as though they're lashing out at the world around them, as though they're trapped in some kind of illusory personal hell.

The gravity of the situation truly hits you after you turn that last corner and see the massive fight brewing in front of you. Nearly a dozen of the Watch take position behind large, makeshift barricades that block up large portions of the street. But not fully.

They fire whatever weapons they've got into the Crazed further down the road with a healthy mix of panic and discipline.

On the other hand, the Crazed flit about as they run blindly towards the barricade. They're dressed like people did, at least before the day everything changed, though their clothes have long since become tattered and torn and dirty and bloody.

Some are wearing suits or work uniforms or simply just jeans and a t-shirt. All have this distant look in their eyes, as though they're a thousand kilometers away. More importantly, most of them move with preternatural speed, often zig-zagging randomly as they charge forward.

Others aren't quite as fast, but are able to literally withstand a few direct hits from the rifles. The rounds strike their bodies and tear into their skin, but all they do is slow them down bit by bit.

You don't even have to open your Third Eye to see what's going on - all of these Crazed have psionic energies. Somehow, they're channeling them subconsciously, even despite their wildly fluctuating states. Or maybe, as a result of that.

It's clear that majority of them are attuned to the Psionic Discipline of Control, just like Kaja and that shadow creature could do. And in your opinion, the both of them could channel much more energy than these Crazed in front of you. If the both of them utilized S-Tier energies at their absolute peak, then these Crazed can only utilize C-Tier energies at best.

Most are simply channeling their Temperance and hardening their bodies or making themselves faster.

Some are using their Telekinesis to fling chunks of brittle concrete and shards of broken glass and slivers of warped steel at the barricade. But they're wild and aimless, and otherwise do nothing against the many protective layers that make up the barricades.

A few slip through the cracks and crevices and slice and strike the Watch on the other side. Their pained shouts and yelps are almost drowned out by their compatriots' weapons fire.

Unfortunately, they're the least dangerous Crazed that are out there. As you sweep their minds with your Telepathy, you realize that there are also a few who are attuned to the Psionic Discipline of Connection, like yourself.

At this point in time you consider yourself a B-Tier with Telepathy and a D-Tier with Third Eye, though admittedly it's your own grading system. And it's equally subjective as it is objective. It's no doubt as flawed as you are.

But it helps you make sense of it all. More importantly, the more you see it all as a large game, the easier it is for you to deal with it.

Too bad it's a permadeath run on hardcore difficulty.

In any case, you don't sense any Crazed able to channel more Telepathic energies than yourself, so you determine that the few that are out there are C-Tier at best. Not that they aren't dangerous - they're far more effective than the ones flinging broken bottles at the Watch.

Intead, they lash outward with raw Telepathic energies and wound the Watch's minds with every strike. It's enough to cause them to panic and frenzy more and more as every moment passes. As a result, their aim becomes wilder and frantic and wasteful.

You quickly reach out with your own Telepathic powers and fling a mix of random thoughts and emotions at your enemies. Or, rather, your enemies' attacks. The differing streams of energies collide violently, which causes feedback to echo back downstream and slam painfully into their points of origin.

Your mind reels as it hits you and overwhelms your senses for a brief moment. Worse, it causes the dull ache at the sides of your head to spike at the same time.

But you shake it off quickly and refocus your attention back on the Crazed Telepaths. They too have been struck by the feedback and are reeling from its painful effects, but seem much more affected by it than you. A couple stumble and falter as they grip their heads.

"You gonna do anything?" your Dad shouts out as he fires a burst at the Crazed running towards the barrier.

"I am doing something!" you shout back. "Shoot the ones floundering around! Before the stun wears off!"

Your Dad and a couple deputies near him shift their aim towards the Crazed Telepaths fumbling around, and fire at them with decisive bursts. Their rounds tear into the Crazed with ease and fling them to the ground. Sometimes in pieces, sometimes with gaping holes in their chests or heads. But in all cases, dead.

You feel their psionic energies dissipate and sputter out before they vanish altogether.

The ones they didn't fire at eventually do recover from the effects of the feedback and individually regroup themselves. They then adjust their attention away from their targets, and instead focus solely on you.

Your eyes go wide as all of them assault you with waves of chaotic emotions and thoughts. They smash into you, and sweep through your mind, practically flooding you with a cacophony of raw, unintelligible thought.

You feel your mind and body go numb from the overwhelming sensation, and a deep sense of despair and defeat fills you. It's as though they're gathering everything they feel straight into you, and focusing it so finely that the sum of it turns into this unending amount of existential dread.

But you've felt worse before. Hell, you've used it before against others far more powerful than you. Their combined effort hurts, sure. But it's nothing you can't handle yourself.

You counter by opening up the depths of your own existence, large enough to swallow theirs like a vast whirlpool in the middle of an ocean. It swirls around and envelops the Telepathic energies being flung at you with a deep voraciousness, one that causes the Crazed Telepaths to stop in their tracks.

Waves of awe and fear and confusion emanate from them, temporarily breaking their chaotic auras and halting all their attacks.

You snap your Telepathic powers shut as you rub the side of your head - it's now pounding heavily and beginning to take your concentration away from the fight itself. Despite that, you decide to push forward and assault the Crazed Telepaths, just as they waver and take numerous steps back.

Like them, you focus pure Telepathic energy and fire streams of them into each of the remaining Telepaths. But instead of chaotic waves of random emotions and thoughts, you focus an overwhelming amount of urgency along with a single, stoic thought - Stop!

It pierces into each of them at the same time, tears through layers of their chaotic defenses, and fills their core with your concentrated Interrupt. It's enough to completely overwhelm their psyches and push out the chaotic mess that has been controlling their very beings.

The Crazed Telepaths stop absolutely, in mid-step or mid-thought. Their minds halt, causing their psychic auras to fade and flicker and falter. Not only that, but their bodies also stop every biological organ - their hearts, their muscles, their eyesight, everything.

It's about a second later that they topple over, dead.

You groan as pain wraps itself around your head, and you dutifully attempt to massage it out with one of your hands. Your fingers feel the veins on your head swell as your blood pumps violently through them. But no matter how much you try to ease the pain, it hardly seems to abate.

"Mighta overdone it a bit," you mutter.

The pain abates to some degree, even as a number of the Watch cheer you on.

"You kill those things by yourself?" your Dad asks as he fires off another burst. "Goddamn."

"Yeah," is all you can say.

"Think you can help us out with the fast ones?"

"No. Maybe. There's something else out there. And I gotta take care of it, quick."

"What'cha mean something? Mind elaborating on that?"

You're unable to answer - you're not sure exactly what's out there yourself. But you had sensed it just as your attack connected to the Crazed Telepaths. Connected to each of them was another mind, at least before your Interrupt put a stop to them.

You reopen your Telepathy and quickly sweep over the remaining dozen or so Crazed Telekinetics - and confirm they too are connected to another mind. They're linked, somehow. The details are fuzzy to you as you can barely see the connections themselves.

Maybe it's not a connection, and maybe it's more of an influence?

You close your eyes and activate your Third Eye fully, in an attempt to see what's actually going on. Now, you can visibly see the violent psionic auras surrounding the Crazed, and they're as wild as their thoughts.

Equally as important, you can see their glowing Threads flowing through them. But instead of being caught up with the regular flow of psychic energy, they're bound up towards one point. They're seemingly held together by another psionic source of power - the aura of that something else that's out there.

You watch as a wave of it strums the Threads it's holding, causing them to vibrate. As it does so, each of the Crazed Telekinetics launch attacks or leap forward in near unison.

You're horrified at the sight - at first you thought that this was a random happening. That perhaps this band of Crazed simply came this way by chance. But now, it's clear that they're being directed, or orchestrated.

Someone or something is out there, viciously conducting their miniature army with devastating ease.