School Spirit (Part Twelve)

When things stopped being all trippy, I woke up facedown in the dark, by myself, with a splitting headache, slobbering all over the ground. You know, a really classy way to wake back up. The headache could not be overstated enough though. It felt like I had been hit by a truck.

I could hear the echo from every move I made, shifting on the hard floor as I started pushing myself up. I funneled enough light to my hands to make a glowstick out of myself . With the light, I could see bandages on my arms from where the jaguar tore into me. Whoever had been carrying those was my hero. The cuts and scratches still hurt, but at least I wasn't bleeding all over the place now.

Finding the way out easy enough, though walking wasn't kind for a while until my poor brain settled itself.

Outside of the cave, I saw we were in some kind of weird mountainous area. In the distance, I could see the jungle that I had more than likely come from to get to wherever I was.

There was a rocky outcropping right outside of the entrance, keeping it concealed from any overhead flyers that might have been scouting the location. As far as spots to stash me while I was a liability to the rest of the team, they could have done much worse.

"You done being crazy?"

I looked around for the source of the familiar voice and found Hisako trying to keep herself concealed close to the cave entrance. Not that it was hard. There was a lot of space for her to use, and when she wasn't totally armored up, she was fairly tiny enough to hide.

I made my way over to her and sat down against a rock. My head was still kind of spinning. It was manageable, but the sooner I could get rid of it, the better, "I guess so. So what's up? What happened and what's going on now?"

Hisako pursed her lips, maybe trying to think of where to begin. Every so often, we'd hear a faint rumbling sound in the distance. I wondered just how desperate some teams were getting to net themselves some points, "Well first, you've been down for twenty minutes."

Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of the test gone. That only left thirty for us to do our thing. I wasn't pleased to hear that.

"Fuck!" I hissed under my breath. No more yelling. I remember what happened the last time I yelled. I brought down a team of superpowered teenagers onto our heads, "Alright, so what happened?"

She scooped up a handful of dirt and threw it over my way, "Pixie dusted you," I brushed off the dirt that got on me and gave her a look that reflected the confusion I had. As if I were just supposed to know what that meant. Her explanation hadn't been thorough enough, so she tried again, "It's one of her powers. She flapped some pink dust into your face and that was that. You freaked out and started running all over the place."

I could only imagine how that had wound up making a chaotic situation even worse.

"Sorry," I apologized. It was the only thing I could think to say.

Hisako shrugged, "Nothing you could do about it. They had more people, she got behind you. That's all there is to it," A bit of a smile came to her face at that point, "You shot Wolf Cub though. Gave us enough time to grab you and get out."

I shot Nicky? I couldn't believe that I could hit the broad side of a barn, "...How?" He was actually fast and athletic. He was the last person I thought I would hit on that team.

"You were shooting at everybody, even us. So I kinda had to clock you."

Ooh. A punch from Armor. So that was why I had the headache. Not because of whatever Megan had done to me, "Huh. Fair enough," I said, "Did you enjoy it?"

"Not really," Hisako reached over and tapped me on the knot on my head that I hadn't known I had, "Poor Blindfold didn't know what was going on in your head. She had to break the telepathic connection with you so you didn't mess all of us up. She and Wing headed off to keep up with your plan."

"Wait, they're doing it alone?"

"Calm down. It's been working," Her little smile turned into a big grin, "They got one off of the Corsairs, actually. Ripped it right off of 'em."

"Just the two of them? How?"

Hisako couldn't wait to spill the beans on how they managed to pull that off. She was almost fidgeting in place, "The Cuckoos can't read Blindfold's mind, so they can't sense her. Wing was too fast for them to lock onto, especially in the jungle where he could dart in and out. He distracted them, she got the objective and got out. We were still connected for that part. It was beautiful."

I loved my team. Hisako threw me the device to let me see where the objectives were located. Two in particular caught my eye. Most of them were moving around, one faster than the rest. One was fairly close to us.

Sitting on my ass while my team did the work though? Not a chance. They had done great. They had done everything anyone could have asked from them in this kind of rough situation, and they had picked up my slack when I went down.

I thought to myself while Hisako stood up and looked around, trying to keep a watchful eye out to make sure we didn't get ambushed again, "Wing and Blindfold know you're up. When they get here, we can get you back into the telepathic link," She looked down at me, "What should we do in the meantime?"

My eyes were locked on the closest objective I could see on our radar thing, "You think we can grab this one quickly?" I asked, "No one else is this close."

No one I could see anyway. At this point in the challenge, protecting the points you already had was important, so I figured most teams would have clumped back together to better play defense. Then again, we hadn't done so yet, which was another reason I wanted to go for the objective – in case someone else had the same idea, we could beat them to it.

For all I knew, there actually were people on the way to go get it.

"It's worth a try. Wing can fly to us. We can at least start heading that way."

Sounded like a plan to me. Or the framework, at least.