Chapter 14

"So, how do you feel, Griffon?" Loyd was standing over him rubbing his back after he had doubled over and thrown up.

"Better than ever. I'm just super hungry now." Laughter ensued from the Legion.

"Yeah, that happens." Loyd patted Griffon on the shoulder. "You did good kid, not only did you win in a ten on one fight, you made the last three of them piss themselves."

More laughter arose from the group that had gathered around Griffon.

"Hey! Let's go give this guy a victory feast!"

The rest of Loyd's group cheered at Loyd's suggestion.

"Hey, now you've got a deal to finish with." Griffon smiled up at Loyd; his left eye had changed from blue to red.

"Didn't we get some resources or a harvest point? Whatever that is." Griffon stood up straight and stretched.

"Oh yeah, we do get one of those, don't we?" Loyd turned to the other corps. "Hey, Deric, you gonna go back on your wager with the general here?"

Loyd knew Deric had yet to go back on a wager but losing a resource point was going to be a really heavy blow to his corps.

"Yeah, like I would ever do that!" Deric pulled himself out of his pod. "I think I heard something about something being on me? Mind if I ask what that was about." He had a tablet in his hands and was tapping through something on it rather annoyed.

"Yeah, instead of taking five of your best troops, you're paying for the first round of drinks for my entire corps tomorrow night." Loyd watched as Deric just stood there stunned. "And if you go for another two rounds, I think we can let you keep that resource point." The rest of the corps looked at Loyd.

"Are you mad?!" Griffon was staring at Loyd. "One of those is worth at least three rounds."

"I can do five rounds total if you'll let us keep the resource point." Deric had dropped his tablet and looked hopeful.

Loyd stood there thinking to himself. "Five oughta be good enough and maybe throw in a little corps on corps training on Thursday."

Deric walked across the room straight up to Loyd. "You've got yourself a deal." The two boys shook hands and had their corps get ready to have a party the following night.

xX Sometime later on another planet. Xx

"Prime Sentience, the shuttlecraft is ready for departure. The best of our hunter-killers has been loaded on board and all we need do now is send it to the new Sentient one's location." The advisor shrank back. "Which none of us have been able to find since we only receive brief pulses from them. Perhaps you found it during the last pulse."

The Prime Sentients moved its massive head to the Advisor and in a very calm voice with a kind of fatherly tone, it said. "Yes, I have found it and another two with it. It would appear that this Sentient one is making its Advisors already. Are you certain the shuttle is ready?"

The Advisor pointed at a small shuttle held together with chunks of flesh and bone. "That is the shuttle we just have no way of getting it to orbit without you oh, Prime Sentient One."

"Good, then let me send it on its way."

The Prime Sentients pulled another massive tendril from its hulking body. This one was far thicker at the bottom and seemed to have extra sinew attached to another muscle. As the tendril wrapped around the shuttle, the sinew was being pulled taught to remove any slack that had been in it. The shuttle was lifted into the air as the sinew became taught.

"Good hunting, my killers."

The sinew was pulled by a massive internal muscle and the shuttle was thrown out of the atmosphere. Blood came pouring out of the massive hulk of the Prime Sentients body.

"You're bleeding?! What can we do to repair this grievous wound?" The Advisors all had a look of horror on their faces as they waited for guidance from the Prime Sentients.

"You already know what I need. Now feed me!" The massive head of the monster moved faster than the Advisors could react to it and bit down on them. It continued to devour more and more of whatever was nearby until it had enough biomass to fully heal. The head retracted back into the body with the launching tendril to preserve energy and heal.

xX Back to Mars before it decides to eat us too! Xx

Loyd was getting ready for Thursday's training with Deric's corps. Normally you had to get special permission from the General, or other personnel, for corps battles, but they had done away with that and set up different worlds for each corps, where another corps could be invited to join them for training or friendly corps wide battles.

"Hey, Loyd the last of the pods is swapped out now. You sure this is a good idea?" The woman Loyd had met the day his sister arrived, was the head engineer. Ruth was leaning on the door to his open pod.

"Yeah, everyone in my corps has shown quite a bit of promise when I ran their neural scan through my sim pod. Its gonna feel like I set some of them on fire for the first few seconds but they should be fine." Loyd was going through the world setup options, making the targets his corps would be using for target practice.

"Well, if you say so. Just call if you need anything else." Ruth pulled her head out of the doorway and walked off to yell at someone who wasn't doing their job right.

Loyd picked his comm-piece up off the console in front of him and put it on. "Alright, then I've got everything ready you guys can go ahead and head this way. I've also got a major surprise in store for you." Loyd sat back as a mix of chatter started coming through his comm-piece. He could make out every single word normally but this time he just wanted to sit back and relax.

"Hey, Loyd what did you do?" It was Jim talking now.

"You shall see when you arrive. Just thank the engineering team on your way in. They worked throughout the night to get you guys this present. Also, this upgrade is free so those of you with access to the catalog should be able to narrow down your search." Loyd got out of his pod and jogged over to the curtains the engineers had put up to block the view of what they were working on and waited on the side the door was on.

"Oh, and if anyone can guess what it is, send me a message and I'll pick out a prize for you later."

The first through the door was Griffons group, and they had already trained to be at least five minutes early. "So, what's the big surprise?" The girl asking was even shorter than Griffon and was maybe even younger.

"You'll have to wait for everyone else, or you can turn off your comms for the time being." Loyd smiled down at her ruffling her hair.

"You heard him guys, we can wait." Griffon looked just as excited as the little girl so Loyd knew that he was using quite a bit of his limited stores of patience.

"Hey, I also finished that prototype for you, Griffon. It's a little slower running upright but the drivers are even more powerful and I've also installed my Pinwheel Reactor."

"SERIOUSLY?! I got a Pinwheel Reactor?!" Griffon started bouncing up and down with excitement.

"Not just you. I upgraded every CTAS I thought might need one. It'll throw your balance off a little bit since it tries to push your upper body forward, due to the spark gaps location, but you should be able to cope with it in your spider form. Oh, and I did have an idea to make you kind of an artillery carrier but I wanted to ask you about it before I integrated that."

"Wait, how would you do that? The only area where I could even possibly carry artillery is on the underside of my shields? Right?" Griffon was still bouncing up and down but his face had a very puzzled expression.

"Well, you have a lower back, right?" Loyd watched as Griffon started jumping rather than just bouncing. "Well, the problem with it is you won't be able to stand on two legs and I would have to modify the dropship to be able to carry you."

"I can help with that if need be, Sir. I just want a big gun now." All of them laughed as the rest of the corps arrived.

"What's so funny?!" Argo was at the head of the group.

"Really bad joke. Well, now that everyone is here, I guess I can pull down the curtains." Loyd chuckled one last time before pulling the curtain down from where it had been tacked onto the wall.

The entire group could see their new sim pods. All without limiters and with the transformation capabilities of Loyd's pod.

"Say hello to your new toys." Loyd just stood there expectantly. The only people who were excited about this seemed to be him and Griffon.

"Are those what I think they are?" Jim was staring at Loyd, pointing at the pods.

"If you think that they are biotype sim pods then yes. The General offered me these for free as long as I could get the lot of you inside of them."

"Well, let's give this a try then." Jim walked straight for where his pod had been previously and opened the side hatch. "Wow, it's roomy in here, but where did the chair go?"

"Hit the blue switch on the wall straight across from you and it should pop back out of the rear wall." Griffon had already gotten in his pod and was starting to boot it up.

"Well, what are the rest of you waiting for? I personally paid for each and every one of your families to come and watch the practice battles today. You don't want to disappoint them do ya?!" Loyd laughed and ran over to his pod. When he looked over his shoulder, he noticed the rest of his corps had started to move to their own pods as well.

"Today we have target practice for the first half of training and then we get to have a mock battle with Deric's Fallen Angels."