Chapter 50 – Life at the Academy

Over the next week, those scouting around the city such as Alice, Tauriel, Selene, Lara, Natasha, Aeon, Violet and Selina found several other rune circles. 

There were farms devoid of life, and even a small family clan, all slaughtered and sacrificed for some sort of demonic summoning. 

As Melinda and Phoebe were brought there to try and figure out what happened, it was always the same story. 

The people and even animals were killed and sacrificed to summon a demon. They were always a different demon, but as before, they disappeared soon after. 

Based on the last count, there were around 7 demons that they knew of that were summoned, and there were perhaps more that they haven't found yet. 

Well there were 8 if you included the demon at Willow, but they had successfully taken care of that one. 

Sam of course informed Queen Serene and Merlin about this and they in turn informed the rest of the Council of Heroes, as well as did their own investigations based on Sam's information. 

The other heroes reported 4 other similar sites that they located in their cities far away. 

But they did not find anything new. Was this the beginning of a demon invasion? Was this a conspiracy of many parties and the demons? Or maybe summoning demons was just a normal pastime for people in this dimension?

The heroes and Sam sat on this knowledge with heavy hearts, not being able to do anything but wait for more news.

They could not anticipate what the enemy was up to, or even how many enemies were there. They were just reacting to massacres that were used to summon demons. 

As a precaution, Queen Serene ordered the army to get do military drills under the pretense of simply keeping sharp when they were actually getting ready for war. 

As for Sam, he continued living his life with his Avengers in the Nexus and in the Academy, enjoying whatever life brought him. 

Today, in the Nexus, Sam was lying down lazily on the bed, talking to Yuriko who was naked and draped over his body. 

In the movies, she was silent throughout the second X-Men movie, and only grunted when she fought as she was under mind control by William Stryker.

However, Yuriko here could talk, and Sam was trying to tease out her personality. Of course, her voice sounded like Kelly Hsu, the actress who played her. 

As far as she could remember, she was kidnapped by Stryker's group and experimented on, giving her adamantium claws. 

She could remember her days under mind control, but she couldn't resist the programming and silently watched as a passenger in her own body. 

Her last memory was fighting Wolverine and being injected adamantium into her body, killing her from within. 

As Sam talked to her, he found that she was rather shy and didn't like to talk alot. 

But she had a vicious side, perhaps a side effect of her programming. 

As they talked, Alex was in the background singing the "Bippity Boppity Boo" song and waving her wand around. 

There were clothes flying everywhere as they hung on hangers flying into separate open closets.

For most of the Avengers, they basically wore their costumes which were black latex or leather full body outfits, like for Aeon, Natasha, Selene, Max, Yuriko, Selina, Violet, Cameron and even Alice and Trix followed suit. 

So it was easy for Alex to simply conjure their favorite outfit onto their bodies. 

It was the same for Lara, Mindy and Annabeth. Although they were not uniformly black like the others, they practically wore nearly the same thing for battle. 

Only others like Alex herself, Melinda, Phoebe, Buffy and Faith preferred a wardrobe of different colored and style clothes to chose from. 

And Hermione's skill in summoning clothes was quite limited since she wasn't very modern or fashionable. 

Same thing with Sabrina who seemed to only dress in traditional old fashioned clothes. 

However, with Alex's help, even Hermione and Sabrina were starting to look more modern and had a modern wardrobe of their own. 

Even Harley had her own wardrobe, but her style was loud and garish, and very very short and revealing. 

Alex played with one of Melinda's bras, putting it on herself. 

"So large" she thought, as the bra she wore had ample room for more. She cast a spell, enlarging her own breasts to fill the space. 

"You like?" Alex asked Sam.

Sam smiled and opened his arms as Alex jumped into his arms as he played with her new larger breasts. 

While Sam and Alex played on the bed, Yuriko started watching a spar outside the Nexus. 

They watched from Princess Celeste's point of view as she sat with Aria and Arisa watching the physical spars of the girls in the Faculty of Combat. 

They watched as Mindy spared with Max using non-lethal wooden sticks. 

"That girl is amazing" said a girl nearby. 

"You should see the girls she already defeated" another said. 

Throughout the morning, Mindy had been on a winning streak, first beating most of the other top students in the academy. Battering them blue and black. 

Then she faced Annabeth, and defeated her even though Annabeth had superior attributes. 

Mindy was just much more ruthless, with each move aimed at a fatal spot, and ultimately outfighting Annabeth. 

Instructor Gwen was standing as the referee and she healed the combatants after every bout. 

Mindy defeated Buffy, then Faith, who were both stronger than her, hitting them with dirty fighting even shoving one of the sticks into Faith's ass in mid air. 

Faith screamed in pain as the stick was shoved in her when Mindy cracked her head with her stick, knocking her out. 

This was not to say Mindy didn't get hit, but her hits were all in lethal spots, so even though she might have broken a limb, she scored fatal hits on her opponents.  

Now she was sparing with Max who was faster and stronger than her. 

However, her training was too good as she anticipated all Max's moves and countered them with vicious counters to all her fatal spots. 

Mindy was actually losing to Max in terms of speed and strength, nearly losing her grip on her sticks when she blocked Max's attacks, but with another attack to the Max's lower region, she was momentarily distracted as she got dazed by a brutal hit to the temple. 

Compared to the rest who were merely good at fighting, Mindy loved to fight. She literally fought with a smile to her face. 

Finally, Max accepted defeat. Even though she could last longer, it looked bad as Mindy kept hitting her with her sticks and Max was just hanging on due to her superior durability. 

The last spar was with Cameron, which went pretty much the same way with Mindy hitting her multiple times, and Cameron missing all her king hits. 

Finally, Mindy broke both her sticks on Cameron's body, who simply did not react to any damage and just kept attacking even with Mindy's dirty tactics of shoving sticks into her.

Finally Instructor Gwen called the match in Mindy's favor since she was hitting Cameron at will, even though Cameron did not seem to react to the damage.

Everyone knew that Mindy was able to defeat them because they couldn't use their full strengths. 

But they also would out fight her and out last her if this was a real battle to the death as all the rest of them had superior strength, durability and endurance. 

Mindy herself knew this. But after meeting so many other Avengers with superior attributes, she had consciously honed herself to be more vicious, more efficient and more lethal in order to keep up with them. 

The only ones as ruthless as Mindy were probably Harley and Yuriko. 

With Yuriko's adamantium claws and healing factor, Mindy had no chance against Yuriko as she didn't have anything that could hurt her, and everything Yuriko did would kill Mindy. 

Yuriko was actually in the Nexus, her adamantium claws out and sharpening each other as she licked her lips, eager for battle. 

In another part of the campus, Hermione sat with Sabrina, trying to help Rey understand her abilities. 

Rey initially joined the Faculty of Magic, but found that her powers were not really magic based, and were more telekinetic in nature. 

There was a Faculty of Mentalism which had disciplines of telepathy and telekinesis, so Hermione and Sabrina brought Rey there. 

They sat in a circle, cross legged and Hermione started trying to test Rey's abilities. 

"Use your emotions Rey" she said. 

"You mean use the Force" Rey corrected her. 

"Yes.... use the Force" Hermione said as Rey lifted a large stone that was in the middle of the circle. 

They found out that Rey could manipulate objects based on her emotions, whether she was angry, fearful, sad, happy. 

"But I was taught that giving in to anger was the path to the dark side" Rey said. 

"Your abilities are linked to your emotions. How can you detach yourself from your emotions and then use the... ah... Force?" Sabrina asked

"As you said before, the most powerful Jedi and Sith were emotional people. So the foundations of your Jedi order is wrong!" Hermione said.

"Yes, the prophecies of bringing balance to the Force means that you will have to control and understand your emotions, and use them for your strength, not completely cut yourself from your emotions. That makes no sense" Sabrina continued

"For example, you cannot be brave without having fear. But not having fear? That is impossible unless one has no thought. There is no cold without the existence of heat. There is no light without the existence of darkness. There is no good without the existence evil. One cannot exist without the other." Hermione explained. 

Rey nodded, realizing that the Jedi were chasing after the wrong path, and the Sith took things too far. One wanted to devoid themselves of any emotion, the other took their emotions to the extreme. Instead one must find the balance between the two, the balance to the Force!

Rey bowed to Hermione and Sabrina. Although they were perhaps younger than her, they were no doubt as wise or maybe wiser than any Jedi master she's met. 

More accurately, the only Jedi Master she's met. After all Rey's training with Luke in the Last Jedi movie was basically rubbish. 

"Remember Rey. Use your emotions" Sabrina repeated. 

"..Force" Hermione whispered. 

"Yes, use the Force" Sabrina corrected.