The hivemind is conquering for me?

After giving the one called Hailey a courtesy warning about her master’s lack of filter, Sapphire began to explore. She didn’t really stretch her legs much, she didn’t need to. She could probably sleep years underneath the origin if it wasn’t for the constant interruptions, but today she was feeling like exploring.

The master’s current growth always affected her. She knew what she was, she was a part of the master, his growth was hers and with his Psionics getting stronger, it had begun to affect her in subtle ways.

She felt her own mind becoming clearer, more cohesive. She couldn’t outright speak, she doubted she would be capable, but she can mow and moo and relay her intent to the master and in return she received the wonderful reward of scratches and hugs due to him finding it cute.

Existence was good.

As Sapphire lumbered amidst the trees, not bothering to hide her presence, she felt the Psionics that she was composed of thrum. Her heart began pounding as a memory played out before her.

Up in the trees, she watched one of the yellow tall things pass through her territory. It was smaller than usual. A cub most likely. Alone. A perfect target. The next memory was her mouth covered in blood as she savoured the meal.

Sapphire then suddenly regained clarity and looked around confused. That was a new sensation. She had never seen memories of her catalyst body before. She would relay to Apollo about it later as she felt no danger from it, for now though...

Sapphire lapped her tongue out numerous times in a row. She didn’t require food, Apollo’s energy was what she lived off, but the succulent taste of that Ker’min blood was stuck in her mind, she needed something to satiate that urge.

Sapphire then stopped in her tracks and looked around and all of a sudden something just snapped within her. For the first time in her actual existence. Her hunting instincts kicked in. Not the ’fight Apollo and scare him during tag’ instincts, not combat instincts where they fight side by side. No, this was something else. This was the potential in her existence. The potential that made her so perfectly thick.

Sapphire immediately made her body become closer to the ground and let out a low guttural growl as she began to take in scents and sounds. The previous casual walkies suddenly became bombarded with stimulation. She could hear beasts breathing nearby, crying out in the distance, miles away. She could smell even further and she could even sense something absurdly powerful in Psionics very far away, like a resonance.

Sapphire had a feeling that if she was capable of true death like flimsy none unique psionic power beneficiaries, she would have felt a primal instinct of fear towards the beast, but her feeling was indifference and simply decided not to go and investigate.

She didn’t want to upset her human by being discorporated again after all. Especially with his excitement at the prospect of the new companion. So she decided to play it safe and just track down and kill one of the other beasts she found that were of similar strength to her.

...

Despite her size and colour, when she put her instincts to the test, Sapphire traversed through the jungle with such elegance and such speed, it was like she wasn’t even there to begin with.

After covering a great deal of distance in a very short amount of time, she made it to the edge of a clearing. As she began to prowl the edges of the clearing, blending in with her surroundings, seemingly impossibly considering her girth and colour, she watched.

Thanks to her being part Apollo, Sapphire recognised similarities between this crash of creatures and something called a rhinoceros. They had a similar bodily shape, only this prey had shiny grey scaled hides all over their bodies and three horns, one on their boop snoots, and two on their foreheads.

Sapphire had a suspicion they wouldn’t satisfy this taste for blood she was currently experiencing. No, they were too weak, her claws would rend right through them with barely any force.

However, there was one. In the centre of the crash. Nearly five meters tall on all four legs and with shiny blue scales that looked much more resistant to damage, evident by nary the scratch upon the beast’s surface. It alone was looking around towards the jungle around it. It was smart. It knew she was out there watching. The prey felt the predator watching it and Sapphire was excited for the challenge.

Sapphire began to climb a group of four incredibly thick trees that were all densely packed and waited. The beast was over double her size and empowered Psionically, but she didn’t care.

A tension must have begun to permeate in the air, like when her master knew he was being watched by her catalyst and the beast began huffing and snorting, alerting the rest of the crash, prompting them to retreat from the clearing.

The beast, now alone, began to huff louder, roaring while raising half of its body off the ground and stomping down with incredible power, shattering the ground below it and sending tremors through the ground.

Sapphire had the privilege of being an intelligent kitty and felt a sense of pride knowing what those tremors were doing. If she was still on the ground, those tremors would have revealed her to the beast. As she watched the beast continue to pulverise the ground, forming a small crater already, Sapphire’s back legs began to tense and the trees supporting her began to creak in agony.

Sapphire watched as the beast became more and more irate in its mannerisms that it couldn’t find its stalker, the result was not a rational conservation of energy, but began thrashing even more. Stronger. The friction of the beast’s assault was causing the ground to catch fire, but Sapphire continued to wait, the trees supporting her legs were on the verge of imploding at the force they were fighting against.

The beast began roaring, huffing and snorting even louder, as though in challenge as it began parading back and forth across the clearing at rapid speeds. Sapphire knew if she was hit by that creature’s charge on flat ground, she would be back in the Mindspace in one hit, so she waited.

After even more time passed the beast seemed to begin goading Sapphire, strutting with the occasional stomp, wasting even more energy. Perhaps on this moon this was the norm when two apex beings met? Simpler fights of might makes right?

Sapphire was not from around these parts though, so she continued to wait, her claws the only thing keeping the trees together at this point. She waited as this prey continued to expend energy over and over again. Its large body had completely decimated the clearing, its breath had become ragged, its actions had slowed down and Sapphire finally sprung her ambush.

The beast raised itself off the ground once more, getting ready to do yet another stomp of deterrence when all of a sudden it felt a dangerous threat. Using only its instincts, and the sound of a group of trees disintegrating with a loud boom in a certain direction, it had no time to react, it turned its horns towards the direction of the creature diving towards it through the air, but it was too late.

Claws embedded deep within the side of its scaled hide, and while the hide was thick enough to prevent severe injury, the maw around its neck had already done the damage as it began to drown in its own blood.

The beast in fury would not go down lightly to such a small creature and dropped its entire weight onto the blue beast, using the last of its power to unleash a devastating shockwave before its life slipped from it.

...

Sapphire, with great effort, crawled out from underneath the beast. In the fraction of a second it had to react to her, it had managed to gore her with two of its horns and broke a considerable amount of her bones with its death assault.

Still, as she lapped her tongue out, she felt a deep primal satisfaction at the blood she could feel in her maw. This was a kill to be proud of. The feeling was akin to scritches from her master...

Almost.

Though, telling Apollo about this tomorrow would get her pampered scritches for being hurt which made this even more worth it.

Sapphire then looked at the corpse to her side and felt another feeling from within her, this time closely tied to Apollo. She killed this creature because she wanted to, but she still didn’t feel the desire to eat. Leaving it here would be wasteful and against what Apollo felt about killing.

Picking up her damaged body, she then limped over to the beast that weighed probably five times more than she did and dug her maw into a thick part of the hide and began the long task of pulling the body back home.

Just because she didn’t want to eat it, doesn’t mean she didn’t know two other apex predators that would appreciate the meal.