Descend- Going Deeper Read online

  “Even the part about being eager?” Madison asked.

  Jay sent a pulse of Life Sense at her and could tell that her heart rate was elevated. Her face was slightly flush and her body seemed to be in overdrive, for lack of a better term. She wasn’t exerting herself, but there was no denying that her body was responding to something. “Yes, why fight it anymore. I admit, I’m eager.”

  “Eager for me? Or just for anyone in general?”

  Jay understood what was going on now. At least he understood it far better than he would have a couple months ago. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that this was ultimately a trap with his core girls, but they had told him to expand his connections.

  Before he could answer though, Mia and Amelia slid in on both sides of them. Amelia pressed him to his right while Mia pressed Madison to her left. The result being that their arms touched. Amelia said, “Whatcha two kids doing?”

  Madison blushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know how this works. Is there some… like… uh, policy? Do I have to talk to one of you first?”

  Mia laughed and said, “Why, Amelia, I think she is asking if she has to talk to you first before asking your husband to fuck her senseless.”

  “What, OMG,” Amelia said as she adopted an expression suggesting she was very indignant.

  Madison stuttered even more. “Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe it was too close to your wedding. Is there like a better time?”

  “Now, I think she is asking if we will rent Jay out for a stud service,” Jessie said as she came up behind them.

  “That’s an interesting proposition. I wonder what we could get for him. What would you be willing to pay, Madison?” Amelia said with a perfectly straight face.

  “How do we know she is any good anyway? She might be an awful lay and we wouldn’t want to waste Jay’s time unless she was gonna rock his world,” Huong added.

  Jay kept biting his tongue. He wanted to rescue Madison, but the girls kept pleading with him telepathically to let them have their fun.

  “I suppose you are volunteering to try her out first, slut,” Amelia said.

  “Maybe you’re just angry that she didn’t ask you to join them,” Huong snapped back.

  “Oh, oh. I know. We could all watch her perform with him. Like give her a score. Only the ones with the best scores would get to try again,” Jessie suggested.

  Amelia, Mia, and Huong all started to giggle, telling Jessie what a good idea that was. All the while Madison was blushing more. By this point Jay was about to intervene when he heard another voice cut through the laughter just as easily as her burning blade could cut through flesh. “Don’t worry, they are messing with you,” Meikiyo said.

  “Oh, you are ruining all the fun,” Mia complained.

  “I may have been teasing her, but I wouldn’t mind watching,” Jessie added.

  “I’d also be willing to test her out first, you know for science and all,” Huong said, “and don’t let Miss ‘I’m the first wife’ over there fool you, I can personally attest that she has a very talented tongue.”

  “Okay, okay, Jay’s right. Let up on her,” Amelia said.

  Suddenly looking very confused, Madison said, “What do you mean Jay’s right.”

  Meikiyo answered for her, “He’s been wanting to tell you that they were just joking and telling them to go easy on you since they started, telepathically of course.”

  Jay finally spoke up, “Look, this isn’t simple. If we were on Earth, I’d say I was a horrible person, but the circumstances are different here, plain and simple. That said, the path to peace that I have decided on is to give the girls on Team Jay a vote in all of this. So they may tease you and all that, but the truth is they did this and worse to each other before.

  “Now despite the teasing, they are very close and becoming something of a sisterhood. Don’t let Amelia calling Huong a slut confuse you either, that is just her term of endearment for our little inventor.”

  Amelia hauled off and slugged Jay in the arm, hard. She pulled her hand back then, waving it in the air. “Damn that hurts. You better not have hardened your arm.”

  “What so it’s all right for you to hit me for telling the truth, but I can’t use my abilities?” Jay asked.

  “He didn’t use his ability. That is just how hard he is naturally. And he knew you were about to hit him because of the pre-cog thing, but still just let you hit him because he thought you would get more satisfaction out of it,” Mia explained.

  Amelia stared at her. “What? How do you know that? I could only get a bit of emotion out of the bond. I knew he was upset with how much we were teasing Madison, but more concerned with upsetting us. Then I could tell he was expecting me to hit him and wasn’t worried, and I swear I felt a bit of smugness off of him when I nearly broke my hand hitting him, but with the pain I was in it was hard to be sure.”

  Mia imitated Jay’s patented shoulder shrug. “What can I say? I guess a fusion is more than a simple bond.”

  Jay felt actual anger surge out of Amelia with that. He brought his hand down in a chopping motion. “That’s enough. I mean it. Playful banter is one thing, but you will not talk to each other like that. We are a team and that comes first.”

  “Okay, but you promised we could talk about trying for a fusion like you got with Mia,” Amelia said. Jay could tell that a good portion of her anger was mollified because she felt he had stood up for her more than Mia. Whereas Mia still seemed to be purring inside.

  “Bond? Fusion? What are those? Are they levels of membership on Team Jay?” Madison asked.

  “No. I’m sorry, Madison, we will fill you and all the others in on this later. For now, though, we are not going to discuss fusion anymore. It’s time to train.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” Amelia protested. “I think we still need to talk about this.”

  “Later,” Jay said.

  “I hate to point this out, but that technically isn’t up to you, Jay. You are the leader but you agreed in all things like this that the members of Team Jay would get a vote. Right now that may only mean the six core members, but we are going to have to decide on how that works with all the new adjunct members,” Meikiyo said.

  “Not you too, can’t we just discuss this after training. We don’t want to miss out on the bonus we earned.”

  “I said that I love you, Jay, not that I always agree with you,” the Japanese beauty answered. Gah, she was so beautiful. And the fire in her eyes. He still didn’t know if that was a figment of his imagination or an aspect of her power.

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking about it and discussing with Mia more of the details of the fusion. It may or may not have had that much to do with the particular activity that you were doing at the time. We don’t know that. We do know that both of you had a desire to be with one another and were trying to be open. We also know that you were bonded,” Huong said, breaking it down scientifically.

  She continued, “The bonuses that you both got from that were staggering. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you jumped like eight levels at that reset and got massive stat boosts as well as each gaining extra abilities. What would happen if you fused while we have the quadruple bonus? It may be a risk worth taking.”

  “Fine, can we compromise? Let’s train for six hours and then I will discuss it with you all. We can take a vote then. Okay?”

  They all looked at each other, then Madison, so he had no doubt they were telepathically communicating with one another. Finally Amelia said, “Okay, hubby.” Then she giggled after saying it. “Wow, that sounded funny, but I guess it’s true. Maybe we didn’t have the fairytale wedding that every girl supposedly dreams of, but that was never me and I’m just happy to be your wife. Even if you take others, I will always be the first. But to answer your question, yes, we took a vote and agree that you are right. It can wait six hours, but we just ask that you don’t keep us waiting. Not us or the other girls who while not part of the core are now part of Team Jay.”

  Meikiy
o added, “We will need to sort out positions on Team Jay because we have all these newcomers to deal with. It would be best if you have your own house in order first.”

  “And, I’m counting on your help with that, Meikiyo. You and the others. I love you. Not gonna be afraid to say it. It may have happened fast, but honestly, this entire experiment is making everything happen fast.”

  “Not too fast, I hope,” Madison whispered as if she was only intending to speak to herself.

  Several of the girls laughed in response. “Oh trust me, that isn’t an issue at all. It’s more like how many times can you handle,” Huong said.

  While Jessie added, “I like her.”

  Chapter 3- Round Robin Training

  Now with that out of the way, Jay laughed at himself as he realized all he had done was punt the issue down the road. The reality is that he was ready to take charge, but in any relationship there still had to be balance. Balance for him was more like walking a tightrope while juggling 23 different balls. Still, he decided he was up for it, and if this was his new life, he was gonna embrace the good with all the bad. That just meant he had to still find a way to be fair to all of them.

  That was an issue for later, for now the focus was training. All the remaining members of the original cluster were here now, other than Miguel’s team. Jay appreciated the man’s support, even if there hadn’t been much choice and honestly liked him a fair bit more without Tyler around.

  “Okay, so here is what is going to happen. While not everyone has the bonus from the race, we all need to train. Training today is going to be broken up into hour-long segments, and we will trade training partners each hour. Your focus should be on strength or Durability training to help you deal with the increased gravity. The second focus is just as important and is learning how to create power combos with whoever your training partner is for that hour.”

  Jay shrugged when he heard some groans and saw grimaces on many faces at the mention of strength training. “Listen, this isn’t optional. We all want to survive and so you owe it to yourself, to me, and to each other, hell you probably owe it to the entire human race, to do your best. Work your hardest, so we can beat this experiment. We are all counting on each other.

  “I will fight till my last breath for any one of you, but I can’t be everywhere. Not all of you have skills that automatically lend themselves to combat, but you all still need to learn to defend yourselves and not just yourselves but each other as well.

  “Yes, I’m ultimately the one who stopped Jasmine, but stop for just a second and think what would have happened if Meikiyo hadn’t held her off long enough for me to wake back up. We’d all be dancing like puppets on a string for her and I have a strong sense that isn’t a future that most of us would have enjoyed very much.”

  His pep talk seemed to have a small amount of impact, but nothing like Jasmine’s had. Of course, he wasn’t manipulating their emotions, so he would just have to deal with it. “Any questions?”

  Ava asked in her far too rapid manner of speaking, “What are combos?”

  “Thank you for asking. We can give you a couple of examples. Amelia and Meikiyo, would you mind showing them? Then maybe Madison and Charlotte you can show them too.”

  The first two smiled at him before Meikiyo conjured a fireball and threw it against the cliff, where it splashed against the stone with little damage. Then she formed another fiery attack, but this time waited for Amelia to add her own special touch. The flames took on a dark shadowy appearance and when Meikiyo threw them this time they vanished into the side of the cliff only to explode a second later sending gouts of flame and stone out towards them.

  The rock pelted against a hastily erected psionic construct in the shape of a wall, preventing any of the girls from being harmed. Jay looked over at the two of them. “Overdo it a bit?”

  He expected a biting response from Amelia, but surprisingly she actually looked remorseful. What was more, he could feel that she genuinely was sorry for having endangered the others through her carelessness. The bigger shock was the way that Meikiyo put her hand on her hip and said, “What can I say, you always make me lose control. I can never hold back for long.”

  Jay shook his head and thought, “Freak, am I in trouble or what?” He probably was gonna have more than he could handle if even demure Meikiyo felt the need to stake her claim to him publically.

  After that Charlotte stepped up and said, “That’s nothing, just watch what we can do.” Then she turned to Jay specifically and said, “Wanna try a threesome with us, again?”

  He of course knew exactly what she was referring to, but seeing Charlotte’s long blond hair move as she flipped it out of the way to pull an arrow back still made his mind go to places having nothing to do with combat combos. Still, Jay did as she asked and reached out to accelerate her arrow as quickly as he could. He could feel Madison’s power mingle with his and saw the flash of charged energy that Charlotte added to the tip.

  When the arrow hit the stone wall, it had the mass of a motorcycle and was travelling over 2000 mph. The explosion was concussive to their ears and even though Jay had already had a protective wall up, everyone was still shaking their heads. When the dust cleared a space almost 10’ x 10’ had been collapsed in the wall to a depth of at least 3 or 4 feet.

  “And just who is trying to show off now?” Amelia asked.

  Jay just shrugged before addressing the group. “So does that explain what a combo is?” Everyone nodded, but some clearly still looked nervous. “We know that they can be done with two or three people, but who is to say that they couldn’t be done with 20 of us. We will never know until we experiment. Some of you are saying that you don’t have skills that work well for combat. I’m gonna tell you that may not be accurate, and even if it is, I am willing to bet that every one of you can contribute in some way.”

  Ava raised her hand, practically bouncing in place where she was. Jay shook his head before saying, “This isn’t kindergarten. You don’t have to raise your hand, Ava.”

  “Okay, I just like didn’t want to interrupt you or anything like that. You know, sometimes I just get so excited. It’s like I can’t sleep or I can’t think straight. There is just so much going on in here. I like hate it sometimes,” she said as she pointed at her head.

  “Was there a question in there somewhere?” Jay asked.

  “Oh… yeah… see what I mean. I get like all confused and my brain thinks my tongue said things that it never got around to saying. What I wanted to ask was, there’s like an odd number of us, so how are we going to pair up?”

  “Good question. We will run it one hour at a time. Samantha prepared a list of everyone and number 1 will go with number 23 and so on down the list. The odd person out will have an hour to train by themselves. Each hour we will switch it up. The second hour number 1 will go with number 22, and so on. Got it?”

  “That’s like a good plan. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it,” Ava said excitedly.

  “Samantha, can you read off the list?” Jay asked.

  “I can do one better than that. I can project it into the air for everyone to see,” the somber girl replied. Goth had never been his thing and if Jay was fair, she wasn’t fully sporting a Goth look, but her nails were painted black or at least it looked like that, and her spiked collar seemed a dead giveaway.

  Jay stopped thinking about how beautiful Samantha was in her own odd way when he looked at the list she projected up. He hadn’t told her how to organize the people, so he was a bit curious about the list. Even more curious because next to each person was a list of skills too. Judging by his list, it only focused on the one or two things they were the best at or maybe had the highest skill in.

  Amelia- shadow sheath, visual shroud

  Huong- cellular regeneration, scavenger crafting

  Meikiyo- pyrokinesis, flame form

  Jessie- bestial control, primal adaptation

  Mia- empathetic bond, shared potential

&nb
sp; Jay- temporal manipulation, psionic construct, hardened body, enhanced strength, enhanced speed, regeneration, life sense, iron will, precognition

  Kenzie- ice, healing

  Emma- induce pain, intellect fortress

  Ava- wrench, extra-dimensional space/holes

  Charlotte- zealous fury, hyper accuracy

  Madison- mass control

  Maja- probability shifts

  Samantha- judgment/truth detection

  Nalani - metal fibers

  Martina- Illusions/mental traps

  Alexis- sees psionic connections, ethereal form

  Olivia- electric

  Hanna- summons objects, melee combat

  Sofia- molecular separation

  Natalie- mental stimulation (fear etc…) mental decrease (sleep etc…)

  Rosa- trajectory deflection, vector step

  Oma- mind hunter, mental schism

  Daphne- power amplification

  After Jay and the others finished looking at the list, they all moved to their designated training partner for the hour. He then added, “One other command decision. Sorry. At the end of the six hours, I am gonna need one hour to myself. I need to do some personal training. So sorry, but gonna have to extend it by one hour. Then we will have a big group meeting.”

  “How many times do we have to tell you that you no longer need to do ‘personal training’? You have 22 girls willing to help you with that,” Jessie teased as she made air quotes while saying the words ‘personal training’.

  “Very funny, you know that’s not what I’m talking about,” Jay said, holding back a grin.

  “If you say so, but I think we may have to bring up a vote on whether ‘personal training’ is allowed anymore for you. You can’t go wasting valuable resources, you know, for science and all,” Huong added.