You sweep outward with your Telepathy and your Third Eye in an attempt to find the Conductor of this dissonant orchestra. If you can find who and where this person is and disrupt their hold, then this attack would almost certainly fall apart.
Or at least, make it easier for the Watch to dismantle it.
But as you do so, you find your senses dulled the further out you reach. The psionic world around you becomes muffled and foggy, which makes pinpointing any other presences practically impossible.
You realize that the Conductor, whoever they are, is emitting a large amount of low-level psionic energy. It acts like radio or tv static, and blurs the lines of energy that weave through everything. Not only that, but this disruptive field is amplified by the chaotic energies of the Crazed Telekinetics running all over the place.
It's almost as though you're all fighting in a thick, soupy psionic mess.
Since you can't directly target whoever is controlling this fight, a part of you wants to pulse out a massive Surge to root them out. But you know that would most certainly affect the members of the Watch, and you're not sure if it would affect any of the Crazed in front of you.
Their chaotic psi armor is simply too robust to break through, not with a power so simple.
And since most members of the Watch barely have psionic powers, they would easily get hindered by your Surge more than anything else out there. Basically, all you'd do is cause more problems than solve them. That's the last thing that needs to happen right now.
As you search for your enemy, and as you ruminate on what to do about them, the Crazed Telekinetics continue their harried assault. They run and flit and leap with preternatural speed and precision as they assault members of the Watch.
A Crazed runs in from the flank and swats one of the Watch with a frenzied swing of their fist. It's strong enough to throw the defender off to the side out of cover, but not so powerful as to outright kill him. Although his armor easily absorbs much of the damage, the breath is still knocked out of his lungs.
One of the Watch defending their section of the barricade swiftly turns his rifle to the Crazed and fires a burst, but finds his target to be way too fast. It leaps away at the right time, and his bullets hit nothing but concrete and air. The Crazed then scrambles away into cover and out of sight.
As it runs off, the two Watch defenders pull themselves together then fall back to a more secure position behind them.
Most of the front line is assaulted just like this - the Crazed harass the Watch one by one, and whittle away at their defenses bit by bit. As they do so, the line pulls back slowly but surely. Simply, the Watch aren't fast enough to deal with the psionic forces in front of them. They need more psions in their ranks, without a doubt.
For the moment, you're all they've got.
Pressed for time, you push yourself to try something else. If you can't find the Conductor, then at the very least you could study it, and the powers it's using. You could analyze how they use their psionic energy to control the Crazed Telekinetics, and perhaps even turn it against them.
First you focus on their use of the Discipline of Connection - maybe if you can figure out how they're linked to each other, you could potentially sever or disrupt or manipulate it. But you quickly find that what the Conductor is doing is beyond your knowledge.
They're not using Telepathy, at least not in the same way you do. And most likely, whatever power is in use is one or two steps above Telepathy.
You grimace at the realization - if you don't know how that energy is shaped, then you certainly can't do anything to sever it. Throwing pure Telepathic energies into the streams could empower them rather than diminish…
As a result, you attempt to focus in further on those psionic energies, to try and figure out exactly how they're formed. The more you study it, the clearer it becomes that it's still transmitting information. It's like a Surge, but directed to specific individuals. And they're protected, much like a heavily muted Telepathic stream.
No, not just protected - scrambled perhaps. Or encrypted.
You determine that it's behaving similar to a computer Network, so you name it exactly that. The Conductor is using a psionic Network to issue… what exactly? Commands? Advice? Psionic energy? Actual musical notes? You have no idea.
The more you study their use of psionic energies, you come to realize that they aren't just channeling Connection. You also sense energies of Cognition laced within. The implication sends a shiver down your spine.
You've long since become aware that you're far more perceptive than usual. Certainly before the world descended down into this. You've been able to hear things most can't. You can see further than before. You can taste and touch and smell with a greater degree than ever, and everything's more evident to you.
Every physical sense you have is more highly attuned, and improving even more as the days pass. ESP, in the classic sense. Your senses are enhanced in every sense of the word.
You honestly believe that's the reason for your massive headaches - you've simply become more sensitive to everything, including pain. And just like your powers in Connection, you need to spend more time fine-tuning them. Doing so will only make you more powerful in the end. And also, hopefully, have less headaches to deal with.
A spike of pain shooting across your head tells you that you're on the right track.
Regardless, it dawns on you that these Crazed Telekinetics are being imbued with a low level of ESP. Not quite as intense as yours, but more than enough to make them more dangerous. It gives them the ability to react to the Watch with incredible speed and skill. And combined with their natural talents for Control, it makes them a truly powerful opponent.
But what's most astonishing to you is that the Conductor is clearly combining the energies of two separate Disciplines! By interweaving Connection and Cognition, specifically of Network and ESP, it creates a different kind of psionic energy.
Until now, that's not something you realized could be possible, and it dawns on you that your ideas about your abilities are far from comprehensive or complete.
But there's no time to rethink yourself quite yet - you have to act!
So you take a page from whoever's out there and attempt to combine your own psionic energies together.
After deconstructing the Conductor's Network, you're able to build your own, using your Surge and Telepathy as a base. You reach outward yet again using a directed, shaped Telepathic Burst, specifically towards the individuals of the Watch.
It's tough at first, and the effort comes with a sharp increase in pain, but you're able to successfully link yourself to them. The paths themselves seem shaky and almost fragile. Your mind feels slightly fragmented with each connection, as though portions of yourself have to focus on each individual link. If you don't, you feel they would all fall apart and shatter with ease.
Since the majority of the Watch aren't Telepaths, all you can do is affect them subtly and subconsciously. It's a bit like you tug at them and pull them in certain directions, as opposed to physically moving them or giving them direct orders.
But it's more than that - Networks move in both directions after all. As you imbibe the Watch with your Telepathic energies, their surface thoughts and emotions come to you in response. You feel their anxieties and fears flowing everywhere, and not just through you. They echo down the Network itself, and intensify as a whole.
Alarmed by the psionic feedback, you do your best to soften their dread, to prevent it from overflowing the Network itself. As you try it, you find that you're hardly able to tamp them down with any meaningful effort - you're also filled with fear and worry, especially against an opponent you can't even see.
You quickly compensate by tapping into your Discipline of Control, specifically your Temperance. Using those psionic energies, you force your body to calm down. First you regulate your own breathing, and purposefully slow down your heart rate. Then, you infuse your body with raw psionic energies - just enough to feel more confident and capable. More than that, you steel yourself, as though you're preparing to take a punch.
By doing so, you infuse those same energies into everyone within your Network.
The psionic energies of Control flow down Telepathic pathways and fill each of the Watch with powers similar to your own. It's a bit like you're lending each of them a part of you, a portion of your skills and powers.
Although you're nowhere near as proficient with your Temperance, it's more than enough to give the Watch a major physical boost. All of them begin to calm down and focus harder at the battle in front of them. Not only that, but they also become slightly tougher and stronger as well.
And thanks to that psionic feedback that's naturally present in the Network, their capabilities swirl and mix and swell more and more as time passes. Yours does as well, though not as effectively as the others. As you maintain the dozen or so connections, the pounding in your head intensifies, and your eyesight begins to waver and lose focus.
Despite the pain, you grin widely, and with pride.
It's the first time you've attempted anything like this, and it's working beautifully. Not only do the effects increase with time, but every individual link within the Network strengthens as well. You can see them intensify and grow as every second passes, though they ultimately taper off after a while, indicative of your own psionic limits.
Still, you're excited by the prospect of not only gaining a new power and ability, but of being able to share it in this way. That same excitement ripples through the Network as well, which contributes to the empowerment that the Watch experiences.
You steady yourself on seeing your energies propagate - your every thought and emotion makes or breaks the Network. As a result, you can't be reckless with your state of mind.
Then, with a burst of inspiration, you channel your Cognition energies into your Network. At first, you do what the Conductor is doing and inject some measure of your ESP into the Watch. Their senses quickly increase and heighten even as your own does as well.
As a result, they're able to almost go toe-to-toe against the Crazed Telepaths. You see them react to their attacks with such celerity and certainty that the front line stops backing up. They stop regrouping or retreating, and instead evade and reposition with increasing determination.
You know for a fact that if you give your Network a bit of time, the Watch will outperform and outmaneuver the Crazed Telepaths. In fact, one or two of them have become fast enough to fire their weapons more accurately.
They turn their weapons downrange and fire numerous bursts at where they think the Crazed will be, and end up clipping them with one or two rounds. More than enough to slow the wounded Crazed for a moment - enough for a second burst to tear through their chests.
But you decide to go further.
You can tell that your own burgeoning powers of Foresight have been increasing since that first fateful day. Although you're only able to glimpse a few fleeting seconds ahead of your current self, they come much more readily than before.
And in those slivers of time, it feels as though you're in a kind of trance-like echo where your consciousness exists at two points across existence. In those moments, it seems like you're stretched out over time, where you can see your past and your future at the same time. The experience is somewhat unnerving, even if brief
But now you need that ability - if you can imbue it into the Watch for this fight, then all of you could turn it in a heartbeat.
Your Foresight echoes across the network and gets woven into every member of the Watch around you. The psionic energies slip into their psyches and fills their mind's eye. It's jarring at first, seeing time fragmented and stretched in this way.
Thanks to the dire circumstances, and to the Network, everyone does their best to get used to the temporal dissonance. It's only seconds later that they begin to understand how to use those random slivers of time.
Though you're all far from experts, seeing them causes all of you to better judge when to attack, or evade, or rally, or retreat.
Fused with all three Psionic Disciplines, everyone in the Watch becomes like a super soldier - you can briefly see the future, can shrug off attacks, and can move and act as one. That realization sweeps through all your minds at the same time, as though you've all been awakened to some greater power, some higher calling.
All of you feel this attunement grow in your hearts and minds, as it pulses rhythmically like a war drum. That strength and power courses through all of you, with the psionic feedback causing a kind of harmonic note to echo all through your minds.
Emboldened by your Battle Hymn, all of you collectively decide to end the threat of these Crazed once and for all.
The battle between the Watch and the Crazed rages on in front of you, even as you channel your Battle Hymn to greater and greater heights. The Watch fires tighter bursts with relentless dedication while the Crazed launch assaults with unbridled ferocity.
Everyone involved is heated and deadly and focused to their absolute maximum, yourself included.
While the chaos of battle rages, you feel the tides of psionic energy toss and turn all around. Violent energies whip by in every direction as you fight against the unseen Conductor for dominance over the fight.
Both of you empower your team as best you can, you with your Battle Hymn, and the Conductor with their Orchestra. Though the fight began in their favor, your efforts are clearly turning everything around.
But not as fast as any of you want.
The Crazed Telekinetics leap at the Watch from all sides, swipe at them with incredible speed and strength, then retreat almost as quickly as they attack. And although more than half throw their own bodies into the fray, the rest stay further back and instead fling deadly detritus into the defensive lines.
Some use their Telekinetic powers to throw shards of broken glass or chunks of fragmented concrete or slivers of twisted metal. Every piece shatters or slams or digs into the barricades with incredible force - a few slip through the gaps and slash and stab and strike the Watch hiding behind.
Without your Battle Hymn, those wounds would be far more devastating. Instead, the Watch takes them in stride.
And in response, they counterattack with decisiveness. They peek out of cover in between bouts of Telekinetic attacks and fire at whatever Crazed are in their sights. Though few of them are hardened, trained soldiers, their temerity and desire to defend everyone keeps their aim true and their minds sharp.
The fight is fiercest at the furthest barricade - a handful of Crazed flank it from both sides and strike at the two Watch posted there. They swarm the two of them with unrelenting fervor and with such speed that they're completely unbalanced.
One of the Crazed slams into one of the defenders with such strength that both are immediately thrown to the ground. That defender is then swarmed by two more Crazed, while his partner is swiped and swatted over and over by a fourth Crazed.
Though he's doing his best to stay on his feet and block the attacks, they come so fast and so fervently that he's forced to back up and remain completely on the defensive. Not only that, but he's practically overwhelmed - even despite his defensive stance, the Crazed is able to slash his face and lacerate his skin. Blood trickles out of his wounds and down his face.
And because he's completely preoccupied, his partner is brutally savaged by the three other Crazed.
The three of them swipe and slash at the fallen Watch with their bare hands. And they're as vicious as clawed animals - their Temperance is amped to such a degree that they practically have psionic claws at the ends of their fingertips.
They rip and tear at the Watch member's armor and clothing with destructive ease, even more so against his unprotected flesh. His screams echo through the air sharply, and pierce through the gunfire with ease.
What's worse is that his pain echoes back down the Network into you. Every time the Crazed slash at his body, you feel it mirrored on your own body. You double over from the sheer pain, despite the fact that the transference is muted to some degree. You know you're not feeling exactly what he is, but the pain is excruciating nonetheless.
Even though you feel your chest and stomach ripped open, and topped by the pounding in your head, you do your best to maintain the Network.You want desperately to scream aloud, but instead do your best to hold it in, to bear the pain.
Not only that, but you try to prevent his pain from reflecting out to everyone else. But your concentration is already worn thin, and you can't help but allow some of that pain to slip through.
What the both of you are feeling leaks out to the rest of the Watch, and that amount of suffering causes everyone else to feel similar physical pangs. Every member of the Watch feels a fraction of the pain you're feeling and experiencing. It flows out in waves, which causes everyone to involuntarily take pause and grimace every so often.
They're forced to clutch at their chests or stomachs or heads as pain sweeps through them, hindering them for those few moments in time.
Although they share that pain, the rest of the Watch also become more united than ever before. Simply, they feel the suffering of the few, and are energized and motivated to end it. A thought and a feeling ripples out among them - they need to end the fight fast. If they can do that, they can stop the pain, and care for their wounded.
More importantly, they can prevent more suffering in the future.
Out of necessity and camaraderie, the ones closest to the Watch getting mauled turn their weapons on the Crazed that are piled on top of him, and squeeze their triggers. Countless rounds tear into the Crazed, perforating their skin, tearing their muscles, and shattering their bones. Their assault is merciless and vengeful and swift.
Though the three Crazed are ripped to pieces and thrown aside thanks to the hail of gunfire, the Watch member who has been mauled feels little relief. Pain continues to wrack his body in waves as his blood spills out of the countless lacerations on his body.
His chest has been literally shredded to the bone, and parts of his ribcage and sternum are clearly visible past the torn muscle and skin. His stomach is even worse - all can literally see his organs beneath ribbons of ripped flesh.
You can feel his pain acutely, enough to make you want to vomit.
He's quickly dragged to safety, where one of the Watch medics can attend to him. It's only a few seconds later that he's injected with powerful painkillers, straight into the wounds he's suffered. But the pain only barely abates. His wounds are far too grievous for even the most potent opiates to numb.
The medic works frantically to stop the bleeding with numerous sterile pads, but the lacerations are too long, too wide, and too plentiful. Whatever bandages he applies get soaked with red in a matter of seconds, almost uselessly.
It's worse when he attempts to bind and suture the wounds closed - the wounded Watch member flails around so wildly that the others are barely able to hold him down.
"Hold him down!" the medic screams.
But there's little they can do. Even you are way out of your depth in your attempt to help.
Despite the waves of pain that emanate from your body, you do your best to psionically slow your heart rate and relax your muscles. You also consciously increase your testosterone, which helps numb a bit more of the pain. At the same time, you do your best to still the echoes of pain before they reverberate and heighten through psionic feedback.
Of course, the same happens with the Watch. Their bodies subconsciously echo yours, thanks to the Network. It certainly affects the wounded Watch member - his body slows and calms and becomes much more tolerant to the pain he's feeling.
The Network helps in its own way as well - as your thoughts and emotions and energies stream down the psionic links, they echo and reverberate between each of the Watch. It all builds up and swells a great amount, building upon itself more and more as time passes.
But it doesn't ever remove the pain. Worse, the pain itself is intensifying, as though to balance out against whatever you and the medic are doing.
You're struck by the heartbreaking thought that you're simply not powerful enough. You can't undo those wounds, try as you might. You can't close them up with your mind, and you can't make his blood flow back into his body.
With your mind already juggling dozens of thoughts and emotions all rolled into each other, you can't help but allow that thought to slip out.
Everyone feels it as well, and it causes a pang filled with pain and guilt and sorrow and helplessness to strike each and everyone in the Network. It comes even as the wounded Watch member's thoughts and emotions are going wild. All he can think and experience and feel is pain - all of which wavers and spikes and ebbs with each passing moment.
All of you suddenly feel an incredibly brief sense of relief - one that seems to wash all the pain away.
But it's quickly followed up by a blank nothingness, of a sudden void. You automatically pour your thoughts in that direction, as though to fill it. Nothing happens, and nothing echoes back except a hollow emptiness.
That emptiness echoes out across your Network, and reverberates through every member of the Watch.
Each and every one of you is hit with the same gravity - that of the death of your compatriot. You feel his life literally wink out, along with the excruciating pain he had been feeling.
That sudden lack of life fills each of you with a deep melancholy, as though portions of your own selves have been carved out and removed. As though a piece somewhere inside has vanished, never to be seen again.
In a way, it's certainly true.
A couple of memories from the dead defender's friends leak out into the network, which further tightens everyone's hearts. Your shared sadness becomes deep enough to cause your hearts to slow to a crawl as an existential profundity sets in.
It's fractions of a moment later that a layer of fear entwines itself into that sadness. They mix together with such intensity that it morphs into a resolute anger.
What comes out isn't a rage about the death of a friend and comrade - it's a rage borne of a potential shared future, that everyone's fate is the same as his. It's a rage that fights against the promise of some unseen destiny, of a defiance of everything ending to a violent and senseless fate.
It's a rage that fills everyone significantly, yourself included.
All of you are momentarily sharpened by that shared mortality, that shared finality, that shared existential dread. And all feel a surge of energy flow outward as a result. That energy draws all you inward, and fuses your consciousnesses into a single point.
For that moment in time, all of you become a Living Nexus, brimming with raw psionic energy.
You all think and act as one, guided by your combined consciousnesses, bound by your shared losses. When one screams, so do the rest of you in absolute unison. Though your consciousnesses are separate, your thoughts are aligned.
It seems to you that though you all act in your own way individually, all your actions and decisions are also purely cooperative with those around you. It's a sensation you've never felt before in your life.
No, that's only partially true - you've sensed it before. This is exactly how a hive mind operates, just like those Crags. Only this is the human version rather than insectoid.
What happens is absolutely incredible to behold. It feels as though you're living in the past, present, and future all at once. And with everyone's minds woven together, you see this fight as it's occurring, or about to occur, or has already occurred from every angle possible.
Even better, everyone in the Network sees and feels the same thing as you, and intrinsically understands what the battle actually is, beyond their individual experiences. Everyone moves, guided by each other and by the psionic energy you've infused them with.
This new consciousness that you've all created is something truly awe-inspiring. It's a consciousness that understands the disparate parts that make up the whole, that your individuality contributes to what makes you whole.
With your expansive Foresight, and with your bodies powerfully Tempered, you outmaneuver the incoming Crazed with incredible ease. You leap out of cover, or roll out of the way, or sidestep into a flank with superhuman speed and temerity.
You then turn your many weapons not directly at the Crazed, but instead where they will be, and squeeze your triggers.
Your weapons erupt with explosive power in every direction, in tune with your thrumming heartbeats. The rounds strike each of the Crazed squarely, right where you predict they would be, where they were going to be all along.
Every single one of them are thrown aside as their bodies are literally torn apart by your coordinated attack.
To your collective surprise, the fight comes to an end much faster than it had begun. You feel chaotic energies from the Crazed fade and flicker one by one in quick succession, even as you ruthlessly snuff them out. A sense of relief fills you, along with a sliver of vindictive glee at the outcome. Every part of you can't help but feel joy at killing your prey, and you can't help but carve smiles into all your faces.
Even better, that overbearing aura that has been surrounding the Crazed withdraws. The Conductor's presence, or rather the lack of it, lifts. And so too does that psionic haze surrounding the area, which makes you breathe much easier.
All of you sigh collectively as the last of the Crazed falls to the ground dead, and as the Conductor's presence vanishes completely.
Then you let go of your Living Nexus and return you to yourselves.
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