Catalyst

Chapter 7: First Blood

Abathur didn't really understand Halloween, or for that matter, any human holiday. Why bother consuming extra food, and putting up random scraps at one's dwelling on a particular day? It wasn't any different from another, aside from the obvious temperature and meteorological variations. Some of them, from what he understood, functioned as methods of remembering significant events, which Abathur supposed was understandable, given the terrans flaws in memory. But some, such as the aforementioned Halloween, were simply baffling. From what he had managed to pick up, it was something about spirits, monsters, and pumpkins. What relations they had to each other, much less terrans as a whole, was beyond comprehension.

Still, they each had their upsides. Halloween, it seemed, had a feast of food, which was far from unwelcome. Abathur was running through biomass as fast as the school provided, all the changes he was making needed energy, so he was taking advantage of the feast to take in as much of it as he could, as fast as he could. He noticed some stares from the other Slytherins seated nearby, but ignored them. They hadn't done anything when he'd done it before. Not to mention, the bigger, lower intelligence one's a bit to his left were doing it too.

Abathur had had much less productive time periods. Of course, he had also had more productive ones, but no opportunities were preventing themselves for anything better than stocking up on biomass. That is until the terran with the annoying speech defect came running into the hall, disheveled, distressed, and screaming at an unpleasant volume.

"Troll! In the dungeons!" He screeched. At a lower volume, he added. "Just thought you ought to know." The terran then collapsed promptly. Abathur continued to eat. Noting the others' lack of attention, he also took the opportunity to grab a partially burned gluten structure from in front of the blonde one. What were trolls again? Abathur vaguely remembered reading about them. Weren't they those large humanoid mammals with moderately greater strength and thick skin? Certainly something worth investigating, if not necessarily collecting.

Abathur finished his plate, taking a last bite of the gluten structure, then stood. He looked around at the chaos from the other students, watching them panic as the teachers and prefects desperately tried to impose some semblance of order. It was certainly a scenario that would make it easy to slip away, ideal for his purposes. The only thing left was to actually find the thing, and make his way to it. If Abathur was still with the swarm, he could have bounced his mind through tens of thousands of eyes, ears, and minds, seeing, hearing, and knowing all. As he was, all he could do was work with the sensory organs he had, and his own, still underdeveloped psionic senses. It would have to do. Ignoring the mad scrambles of the terrans, Abathur made his way through the crowds, exiting the decently sized hall.

Abathur listened intently as he wandered the corridors, listening, hopefully, for grunting, heavy footsteps, perhaps random snapping sounds. As such, he was quite surprised to hear not only grunting, footsteps, snapping, and smashing, but the screams and shouts of younger terrans. Abathur broke out into a run, rounding a corner to find three children fighting the troll. Or at least, the assumed troll, although the castle didn't have a particularly wide selection of large, oddly tinted bipeds with large clubs. Well, not oddly tinted ones anyway. The terran-giant hybrid covered the other categories.

Abathur ran at the fight, attempting to get to the troll before the others damaged it beyond study, managing to reach it right when the troll was beginning a swing towards the red-haired one. Abathur leapt into the air, pulling back his arm. Right before he would have contacted the troll, he pushed the limb forward, striking the troll directly in the ear. A strike like that from a full zerg would have killed the troll then and there, either snapping its spine, or simply cutting through the skull into the brain. A blow from a terran would have barely drawn its attention. Abathur's blow staggered the troll, causing it to lurch a few steps, and interrupting its swing. In retaliation, the troll swung its club back at Abathur. Abathur managed to bring his arm up to block the swing, for what little good he did. When the club made contact, there was a sickening crack, and Abathur himself was flung backwards, flying into a wall, before sliding down onto the floor in a heap.