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by Davis 2/11/2014, 1:12 amIn hindsight, perhaps the addition of a brain to the 9C class of hyperactive egotistical superheroes (or villains) was a mistake. Though this fact didn't become obvious until brain (an affectionate term for anyone whose superpowers were related to using their mind as a power source) decided to scan through the teacher's thoughts, about a week ago. I suspect she was looking for answers to the pop quiz, but found information that struck her interest much more. A Fight Competition. One in a new arena hidden off institution lands somewhere, with zero rules.
Okay, maybe I should explain. I'm Clifton, though my friends mostly just refer to me as Cliff. And I attend PASI, the acronym for Palmer's Academy for the Supernaturally Inclined. If those words were too big for you? It's a super power school. For kids who, uh, do weird stuff. Like me.
From a young age, most kids were told by family or friends that their gifts were too special for the rest of the world to know--that it would get them into some seriously deep trouble, and unleash a chaotic force of military intervention that would inevitably end in the redaction of basic human rights and end in the genocide of our people, and mistakenly, probably some of theirs. Most of us shut up so we didn't step on people's toes. That, or we were forcibly shut up, but those details are a little too gruesome for me to explain, I think. But back to the point: every student at our academy has some sort of unnatural ability. Every. One. But freakish powers aside, we're all as normal as you can be. We're kids who like Starbucks coffee and blogging and sports, and we can be kind or sometimes we're mean, and we all love gossip.
So it wasn't strange when as soon as this Brain found out about the mystery fight, the news spread like wildfire around to school, and within less than a week, there wasn't anybody who hadn't heard of this secret fight by the time an advertisement had made its way to the news hall, which wasn't even a hall, rather, a massive corkboard in the lunch room with papers pinned up advertising various clubs and jobs and begging for "tutors" (people to do the poster's homework for them) that got swarmed whenever an official school letter went out.
The day the golden, laminated poster went up, half the school's population crowded it, squinting to see what the fine print said.
Evidently, it told no more than everyone already knew: a lenient fight with a winner and a loser, and some sort of mediocre prize. Hardly anyone showed interest in fight prizes--the prize came from the title of knowing you were superior to your classmates. And, yes, seeing as this was a super power school, we had plenty of school sponsored battle; approximately one a month in gym class. And you thought your gym class was brutal. Try landing a hit on a guy running two hundred miles an hour!
This lack of information threw the entire school into high spirits, and literally fed them adrenaline. Nobody cared for where they were going and how they were going to fight, so long as they got a free pass to cave someone's face in with their fist. To be honest, we're all kind of savage about it. But we were 14 - 18 year olds, still immature with too much free time on our hands and a lot of pent up angst. What else was their to do?
Originally, I hadn't planned to join. I don't like to consider myself above the fighting and all, but, it's not really my thing. I'd leave the fighting to the over eager Elements: those who can control a specific element, if you hadn't guessed, and Physicals: those with excessive strength, speed, body expansion, etc. (this includes a large stomach. One time, I saw a guy eat six hundred burgers. It was absolutely horrific to watch, but I'd be lying if I denied being intrigued.) It were these groups that ran the school, probably known as jocks anywhere else, and took home most of the fight trophies.
No, I mostly just wanted to hang back with the healers, who would watch in anticipation and then care for each battle's aftermath, tending the wounded. They were pretty nice people, and very sought after considering how valuable their gift was. I had a few friends in that group, not because I frequently needed to get patched up, but because of how relaxed and open they were. I had a lot of good buddies in this group.
It was a huge surprise to me though, that when, a few days after the golden poster was slapped up, some buddies spoke to me at lunch. I eat with a cluster of healers, brains, and Morphs (those who turned into someone or something else) and we all talk about the video games or music or... whatever. But as time was drawing down to the mystery date of the fight, and the dorms and theater and band room were all roaring with anticipation, when a friend brought up a peculiar idea. Hank, a portly guy with a heavy, unusual accent that couldn't quite be described spoke up. He had a mouth stuffed with salted crackers and american cheese from a Lunchable, when he suggested that I play a part in the bloodbath.
"It's not like ya got much to lose. What're a few punches? We can fix up any bruises 'er scratches ya might get, y'know? It's not like yer gonna die--teachers wouldn't allow that 'n neither would we. And how frickin' sweet would it be, to finally get a victory? Like, us. The lil' guys. We never win anything!" Hank was a funny guy, albeit very easy to peeve, and his power was to turn into a squirrel. He was and is my best friend, but sometimes he has some weird ideas.
With a roll of my eyes I chimed in a very important detail that was lacking. "That's because you guys never enter."
"That's 'cause we'd get squashed, yo! Ya got healers, yeah, but if my squirrel-y tail gets ripped off? 'M done, man. I can't get that back!" He treated into his food, propping one hand up on the mahogany table top and caressing his cheek with his palm, plucking up some sliced ham from the plastic tray and tossing it back into his mouth.
A girl across the table stretched her arms out, cracking her back before withdrawing, swiping some crumbs off the edge. "He's right, though. Out of all of us? You actually could stand a chance. I'd put my money on you win. Honestly, I don't know what keeps you away from the fights." Danny was a healer; With a single, soft touch she could take away pain and fill you with warmth and joy. She mostly spent her time at the edge of the battlefield, rushing anyone who staggered off and catching them, soaking the pain away. She was my girlfriend, and who I spent most of my time with. Her and Hank.
"So what if I win? Why would I want to?" I'd been eating chips as we discussed, but they were almost gone. That meant I might actually have to make eye contact. And when that happened...
"Because you can toss everyone into their place! We'd never be bullied again. The big guys would respect us. Teachers would respect us and maybe then we wouldn't have such a hard time fitting in." Derek whined. Derek was a short boy with an attitude and an addiction to smelling perfume. He was very weasle-esque in appearance, but surprisingly not a morpher. Derek's power was to add additional parts of himself... to himself. One time freshman year he came into biology with no eyes or arms but fourteen legs and said it was the reason he couldn't do his homework last night. The teacher pretended to be intrigued and then asked how many arms Derek could fit on his original body. The answer was 57. Then the teacher made him write an essay that was 100 words for every arm, on metamorphosis.
My chips were gone. Crap.
I met his eyes, blue with creases around them for him to squint, eyebrows furrowed. I surveyed the rest of the table, and everyone had a similar look of seriousness and knowing that I couldn't really deny. It was true--our group was given a lot of grief around campus for not being able to hold our own in a fight. We struggled to get our lunch table every day and were cut in front of in lines or shrugged off when we had questions. Even the teachers failed to notice us a lot. It wasn't bullying so much as it was like we didn't exist unless someone needed something we specifically could supply. And the only one that really applied to was Danny. Not having kids leaning against our lockers and getting special permission to take library books we had already reserved. Some recognition definitely wouldn't have hurt, but I wasn't really a fighter.
Danny's face was the last person I casted eyes on, and she didn't look much different than usual. There was no flicker of sadness or pity in her eyes, but hope. She looked at me like I could do anything, if I put my mind to it. And I had this sudden impulse not to let her down. So, reluctantly and with final hesitation, I agreed to try, for everyone's sake. But they'd never ask me to fight for them in the arena again, and Danny had to give me a good luck kiss.
Everyone was pretty ecstatic about that answer. Danny agreed, of course, and even Hank offered a kiss, which was quickly declined. After class that day I had gone to the office to register. The secretary didn't bat an eye, she asked me for my name and age and student number. Clifton Radley, Junior, 120994. She marked everything down and waved me off without much emotion. Wow, that was.. surprisingly simple.
After the sign-up, nothing happened out of the usual. Classes were long and boring and sucked, I did some homework and ignored 60% of it, and after classes the group all just hung out in the tree grove in front of the main building, playing in the snow before we shuffled into someone's dorms for cocoa and Super Smash Bros. The buzz died out, and it was nice, and for a while I had almost forgotten about the fight I had promised to partake in.
Life was normal, we all hung out at during Christmas break and provided each other with gifts and notes. My secret santa was Derek, who, as was expected, got me perfume, which I later tossed to Danny because it was more of her thing. My gift was for Hank, and he was pretty elated about it. All of Neon Genesis Evangelion on DVD. Danny received a gift card for extra minutes and texts on her phone, and Derek got a gift card to Chipotle, which was only a few blocks off campus. We drank cider and laughed and made wishes for the new year, and all crowded into Danny's place for the night, skipping the annual winter formal because we weren't really formal people.
Those were the plans I had for New Years, too. Skip the party and hang out with the group, then watch fireworks from the Girl's dorm's fourth floor laundry room, which had a window with a perfect view. They, however, were cut short when I received a notice from the Arena's director, stating my attendance to a midnight meeting was mandatory, and that I was not to bring guests. The little red paper had been stuffed in my mailbox literally the day before, which was rather curt, and had me groaning audibly with protest. It briefly crossed my mind to skip the fight and make it up to my friends through food (the way to everyone's heart is through their stomach, you know) but something stopped me from doing that. If I had to guess, I'd say it was the look in Danny's eyes, from back when I first got coerced into doing the damned thing, that instilled a sort of courage in me. Or perhaps I had some inner curiosity of whether I really could. Because the gymnasium fights were optional (coaches claimed it wouldn't hurt to utilize the abilities for self-defense, in the event that normal people did find out and try to destroy us) I had successfully declined for three years. Whatever it was, it had me leaving my friends mid-movie and blanket fort, planting a kiss goodbye on Danny's cheek and receiving hugs and good luck wishes from the others before slipping out of the dorm into the night.
I walked across campus, crunching through snow and watching my breath disappear in puffs, stomach churning. Odd, I didn't usually consider myself a nervous person. When projects required speeches, while they were dreadful, I breezed through without much fear. During finals and days where grades were posted, too. So I've been told, that's an admirable trait. But as I got nearer the gym, the quaking of my insides only gained strength. I felt restless, and squeezed my hands together into fists, hidden by coat sleeves. Was this normal? Admittedly, it was hard to differentiate general apprehension from a traditional bad vibe sometimes. I wasn't sure whether to run because I thought something awful was absolutely going to occur, or because I was afraid of the possibility. I found myself tripping over rocks and pebbles underneath my feet in the clearings around trees where the snow hadn't managed to puncture through the shields of leaves. My tongue slid across the back of my teeth arbitrarily and my ears burned red, though that just might've been from the cold. When I saw the line of black cars parked outside the gymnasium, I had to take a moment to stare. They weren't like any cars I'd seen on campus before--not belonging to the school, at least. A sleek darkness that glistened under the light of a waning moon, just waiting. Every part of me wanted to run. In that moment I was absolutely and undeniably overwhelmed with fear, so strong that my body seized up and I couldn't move a single limb or even take a breath for what felt like hours. Every part of me begged to escape as fast as I could, back to the safety of the dorm with Dereeme to put one foot in front of the other and continue into the gymnasium, under florescent lights into a crowd of powerful students that gossiped lightheartedly, though shifted uneasily from foot to foot, as though agreeably unsure about the mob of transportation outside.
With every step more hesitant than the last, he made his way into the ocean of faces--many familiar, though he'd never talked to them. Some were from class: A lanky, dark haired boy with a greek nose and thick, downward arching brows that give him a perpetually angry appearance, a smaller, heavyset girl from the volleyball team that always wore her golden hair in a ponytail, and two twins from the elements group with blue eyes and red curls who controlled water and fire respectively. He believed they were Otto and Oren, or maybe Arty and Arin, or... something. They were from oceanography, which Cliff hardly paid any attention to. But since they were the only people he even had a relative idea the names of, he approached them with a friendly smile. "Hey! So... uhm, do you know what we're all doing here?" His voice was pitched with forced pep, while his body fought off rising tension in his muscles and nerves.
They turned to face Cliff, now shoulder to shoulder with icy gazes locked onto him. He searched desperately for some sort of gesture of communication, and remembered. [o]oh, wait[/i] they were selectively mute and chose not to interact with a anyone who didn't possess a certain level of authority. Shaggy looking Cliff, with shirt hanging off of his skinny frame and slight hunched posture of 'I don't care' hardly fit the description.
"I heard they're herding us all together for some Hunger Games-esque battle to the death."
A female's voice made itself heard from somewhere inside the crowd, before a muscular girl with olive skin and choppy black hair that waved into a pixie cut squirmed out from the mass of bodies. Without hesitation she shot out a hand, which Cliff shook, looking her up and down. She didn't seem to pay attention to it.
"Lydia Burns, but you can call me Magic." She wore a vintage hockey t-shirt and mesh shorts that fell to her knees, sporting the logo of the Palmer's track team, the Guardians. Like the twins, and at least a dozen others, her resemblance was discernible from the rest and triggered the little alarm in Cliff's head that said 'I know her from somewhere.'
Cliff nodded, sparing one last look at the twins (who were still creepily watching) before turning his body to the new company. He was incredulous. "And you believe that?"
She cracked gum between her molars and gave a crooked smirk. "Nah, teachers would never allow it. Not that I'd mind if they did. Place is a little overcrowded, y'know?" Their was just a freeze-flash moment where just an inkling of mischief shimmered in her eyes. is
Another alert went off in Cliff's head, this one warning of a radiance of danger around this girl. A moment of silence paused as Cliff racked his brain for where he'd seen her, before her voice filled the silence, a soft hum of words that seemed so light on her tongue that it sent a shiver down his spine. "I'm just joking around, I wouldn't wish death on anyone like that." He smirk never faulted, and it clicked him his head.
She was Palmer's leading arena girl. She had a record something like a 90% win rate, and was the person that broke and mangled some boy's legs so bad during Cliff's freshman year that the kid's permanently wheelchair bound. The terror he suddenly felt welling in his gut at her homicidal suggestion and violent history was almost on par with the fear he had of the cars stationed outside.
Cliff shifted weight on his feet, trying to hold a calm demeanor, and opened his mouth to spew some excuse to leave, before being cut off by the shriek of a microphone. The voices of the crowd cut immediately, and every head turned to the front, where a man appeared. He was the school's president, indicative by the traditional blonde handlebar moustache and limed green bow tie. The man had always been slightly eccentric, but rather than smiling and holding his hands behind his back, they were in front of him, one atop the other like a diver, thumbs rubbing at pinkies. He fidgeted some before clearing his voice and speaking into a headset--something Cliff had never seen the guy use before--and address the gymnasium. Cliff missed the first few words, instead squinting at two suited men who stood rigid on either side, hulks in comparison. He glanced towards the gymnasium doors, which had since been closed, though he didn't remember hearing them, and two identical looking men stood cross-armed in front of them. Quadruplets? Or clones? Perhaps he had abilities like the rest of them. It was of lesser importance now, though; Cliff needed to begin listening to his principal, nasally voice breaking through his thinking.
"There's been quite a stir within the supernatural world, many leaders not agreeing on the future of you, our youth. PASI wished, and still wishes for you to grow up with the same education and opportunities as those without your incredible gifts, allowing you to gather life skills and live prosperous lives, while making a connection with those like you, who can understand you. However, the agenda has.... erm, changed."
TO BE CONTINUED [MAYBE PROBABLY NOT LOL]
Okay, maybe I should explain. I'm Clifton, though my friends mostly just refer to me as Cliff. And I attend PASI, the acronym for Palmer's Academy for the Supernaturally Inclined. If those words were too big for you? It's a super power school. For kids who, uh, do weird stuff. Like me.
From a young age, most kids were told by family or friends that their gifts were too special for the rest of the world to know--that it would get them into some seriously deep trouble, and unleash a chaotic force of military intervention that would inevitably end in the redaction of basic human rights and end in the genocide of our people, and mistakenly, probably some of theirs. Most of us shut up so we didn't step on people's toes. That, or we were forcibly shut up, but those details are a little too gruesome for me to explain, I think. But back to the point: every student at our academy has some sort of unnatural ability. Every. One. But freakish powers aside, we're all as normal as you can be. We're kids who like Starbucks coffee and blogging and sports, and we can be kind or sometimes we're mean, and we all love gossip.
So it wasn't strange when as soon as this Brain found out about the mystery fight, the news spread like wildfire around to school, and within less than a week, there wasn't anybody who hadn't heard of this secret fight by the time an advertisement had made its way to the news hall, which wasn't even a hall, rather, a massive corkboard in the lunch room with papers pinned up advertising various clubs and jobs and begging for "tutors" (people to do the poster's homework for them) that got swarmed whenever an official school letter went out.
The day the golden, laminated poster went up, half the school's population crowded it, squinting to see what the fine print said.
Evidently, it told no more than everyone already knew: a lenient fight with a winner and a loser, and some sort of mediocre prize. Hardly anyone showed interest in fight prizes--the prize came from the title of knowing you were superior to your classmates. And, yes, seeing as this was a super power school, we had plenty of school sponsored battle; approximately one a month in gym class. And you thought your gym class was brutal. Try landing a hit on a guy running two hundred miles an hour!
This lack of information threw the entire school into high spirits, and literally fed them adrenaline. Nobody cared for where they were going and how they were going to fight, so long as they got a free pass to cave someone's face in with their fist. To be honest, we're all kind of savage about it. But we were 14 - 18 year olds, still immature with too much free time on our hands and a lot of pent up angst. What else was their to do?
Originally, I hadn't planned to join. I don't like to consider myself above the fighting and all, but, it's not really my thing. I'd leave the fighting to the over eager Elements: those who can control a specific element, if you hadn't guessed, and Physicals: those with excessive strength, speed, body expansion, etc. (this includes a large stomach. One time, I saw a guy eat six hundred burgers. It was absolutely horrific to watch, but I'd be lying if I denied being intrigued.) It were these groups that ran the school, probably known as jocks anywhere else, and took home most of the fight trophies.
No, I mostly just wanted to hang back with the healers, who would watch in anticipation and then care for each battle's aftermath, tending the wounded. They were pretty nice people, and very sought after considering how valuable their gift was. I had a few friends in that group, not because I frequently needed to get patched up, but because of how relaxed and open they were. I had a lot of good buddies in this group.
It was a huge surprise to me though, that when, a few days after the golden poster was slapped up, some buddies spoke to me at lunch. I eat with a cluster of healers, brains, and Morphs (those who turned into someone or something else) and we all talk about the video games or music or... whatever. But as time was drawing down to the mystery date of the fight, and the dorms and theater and band room were all roaring with anticipation, when a friend brought up a peculiar idea. Hank, a portly guy with a heavy, unusual accent that couldn't quite be described spoke up. He had a mouth stuffed with salted crackers and american cheese from a Lunchable, when he suggested that I play a part in the bloodbath.
"It's not like ya got much to lose. What're a few punches? We can fix up any bruises 'er scratches ya might get, y'know? It's not like yer gonna die--teachers wouldn't allow that 'n neither would we. And how frickin' sweet would it be, to finally get a victory? Like, us. The lil' guys. We never win anything!" Hank was a funny guy, albeit very easy to peeve, and his power was to turn into a squirrel. He was and is my best friend, but sometimes he has some weird ideas.
With a roll of my eyes I chimed in a very important detail that was lacking. "That's because you guys never enter."
"That's 'cause we'd get squashed, yo! Ya got healers, yeah, but if my squirrel-y tail gets ripped off? 'M done, man. I can't get that back!" He treated into his food, propping one hand up on the mahogany table top and caressing his cheek with his palm, plucking up some sliced ham from the plastic tray and tossing it back into his mouth.
A girl across the table stretched her arms out, cracking her back before withdrawing, swiping some crumbs off the edge. "He's right, though. Out of all of us? You actually could stand a chance. I'd put my money on you win. Honestly, I don't know what keeps you away from the fights." Danny was a healer; With a single, soft touch she could take away pain and fill you with warmth and joy. She mostly spent her time at the edge of the battlefield, rushing anyone who staggered off and catching them, soaking the pain away. She was my girlfriend, and who I spent most of my time with. Her and Hank.
"So what if I win? Why would I want to?" I'd been eating chips as we discussed, but they were almost gone. That meant I might actually have to make eye contact. And when that happened...
"Because you can toss everyone into their place! We'd never be bullied again. The big guys would respect us. Teachers would respect us and maybe then we wouldn't have such a hard time fitting in." Derek whined. Derek was a short boy with an attitude and an addiction to smelling perfume. He was very weasle-esque in appearance, but surprisingly not a morpher. Derek's power was to add additional parts of himself... to himself. One time freshman year he came into biology with no eyes or arms but fourteen legs and said it was the reason he couldn't do his homework last night. The teacher pretended to be intrigued and then asked how many arms Derek could fit on his original body. The answer was 57. Then the teacher made him write an essay that was 100 words for every arm, on metamorphosis.
My chips were gone. Crap.
I met his eyes, blue with creases around them for him to squint, eyebrows furrowed. I surveyed the rest of the table, and everyone had a similar look of seriousness and knowing that I couldn't really deny. It was true--our group was given a lot of grief around campus for not being able to hold our own in a fight. We struggled to get our lunch table every day and were cut in front of in lines or shrugged off when we had questions. Even the teachers failed to notice us a lot. It wasn't bullying so much as it was like we didn't exist unless someone needed something we specifically could supply. And the only one that really applied to was Danny. Not having kids leaning against our lockers and getting special permission to take library books we had already reserved. Some recognition definitely wouldn't have hurt, but I wasn't really a fighter.
Danny's face was the last person I casted eyes on, and she didn't look much different than usual. There was no flicker of sadness or pity in her eyes, but hope. She looked at me like I could do anything, if I put my mind to it. And I had this sudden impulse not to let her down. So, reluctantly and with final hesitation, I agreed to try, for everyone's sake. But they'd never ask me to fight for them in the arena again, and Danny had to give me a good luck kiss.
Everyone was pretty ecstatic about that answer. Danny agreed, of course, and even Hank offered a kiss, which was quickly declined. After class that day I had gone to the office to register. The secretary didn't bat an eye, she asked me for my name and age and student number. Clifton Radley, Junior, 120994. She marked everything down and waved me off without much emotion. Wow, that was.. surprisingly simple.
After the sign-up, nothing happened out of the usual. Classes were long and boring and sucked, I did some homework and ignored 60% of it, and after classes the group all just hung out in the tree grove in front of the main building, playing in the snow before we shuffled into someone's dorms for cocoa and Super Smash Bros. The buzz died out, and it was nice, and for a while I had almost forgotten about the fight I had promised to partake in.
Life was normal, we all hung out at during Christmas break and provided each other with gifts and notes. My secret santa was Derek, who, as was expected, got me perfume, which I later tossed to Danny because it was more of her thing. My gift was for Hank, and he was pretty elated about it. All of Neon Genesis Evangelion on DVD. Danny received a gift card for extra minutes and texts on her phone, and Derek got a gift card to Chipotle, which was only a few blocks off campus. We drank cider and laughed and made wishes for the new year, and all crowded into Danny's place for the night, skipping the annual winter formal because we weren't really formal people.
Those were the plans I had for New Years, too. Skip the party and hang out with the group, then watch fireworks from the Girl's dorm's fourth floor laundry room, which had a window with a perfect view. They, however, were cut short when I received a notice from the Arena's director, stating my attendance to a midnight meeting was mandatory, and that I was not to bring guests. The little red paper had been stuffed in my mailbox literally the day before, which was rather curt, and had me groaning audibly with protest. It briefly crossed my mind to skip the fight and make it up to my friends through food (the way to everyone's heart is through their stomach, you know) but something stopped me from doing that. If I had to guess, I'd say it was the look in Danny's eyes, from back when I first got coerced into doing the damned thing, that instilled a sort of courage in me. Or perhaps I had some inner curiosity of whether I really could. Because the gymnasium fights were optional (coaches claimed it wouldn't hurt to utilize the abilities for self-defense, in the event that normal people did find out and try to destroy us) I had successfully declined for three years. Whatever it was, it had me leaving my friends mid-movie and blanket fort, planting a kiss goodbye on Danny's cheek and receiving hugs and good luck wishes from the others before slipping out of the dorm into the night.
I walked across campus, crunching through snow and watching my breath disappear in puffs, stomach churning. Odd, I didn't usually consider myself a nervous person. When projects required speeches, while they were dreadful, I breezed through without much fear. During finals and days where grades were posted, too. So I've been told, that's an admirable trait. But as I got nearer the gym, the quaking of my insides only gained strength. I felt restless, and squeezed my hands together into fists, hidden by coat sleeves. Was this normal? Admittedly, it was hard to differentiate general apprehension from a traditional bad vibe sometimes. I wasn't sure whether to run because I thought something awful was absolutely going to occur, or because I was afraid of the possibility. I found myself tripping over rocks and pebbles underneath my feet in the clearings around trees where the snow hadn't managed to puncture through the shields of leaves. My tongue slid across the back of my teeth arbitrarily and my ears burned red, though that just might've been from the cold. When I saw the line of black cars parked outside the gymnasium, I had to take a moment to stare. They weren't like any cars I'd seen on campus before--not belonging to the school, at least. A sleek darkness that glistened under the light of a waning moon, just waiting. Every part of me wanted to run. In that moment I was absolutely and undeniably overwhelmed with fear, so strong that my body seized up and I couldn't move a single limb or even take a breath for what felt like hours. Every part of me begged to escape as fast as I could, back to the safety of the dorm with Dereeme to put one foot in front of the other and continue into the gymnasium, under florescent lights into a crowd of powerful students that gossiped lightheartedly, though shifted uneasily from foot to foot, as though agreeably unsure about the mob of transportation outside.
With every step more hesitant than the last, he made his way into the ocean of faces--many familiar, though he'd never talked to them. Some were from class: A lanky, dark haired boy with a greek nose and thick, downward arching brows that give him a perpetually angry appearance, a smaller, heavyset girl from the volleyball team that always wore her golden hair in a ponytail, and two twins from the elements group with blue eyes and red curls who controlled water and fire respectively. He believed they were Otto and Oren, or maybe Arty and Arin, or... something. They were from oceanography, which Cliff hardly paid any attention to. But since they were the only people he even had a relative idea the names of, he approached them with a friendly smile. "Hey! So... uhm, do you know what we're all doing here?" His voice was pitched with forced pep, while his body fought off rising tension in his muscles and nerves.
They turned to face Cliff, now shoulder to shoulder with icy gazes locked onto him. He searched desperately for some sort of gesture of communication, and remembered. [o]oh, wait[/i] they were selectively mute and chose not to interact with a anyone who didn't possess a certain level of authority. Shaggy looking Cliff, with shirt hanging off of his skinny frame and slight hunched posture of 'I don't care' hardly fit the description.
"I heard they're herding us all together for some Hunger Games-esque battle to the death."
A female's voice made itself heard from somewhere inside the crowd, before a muscular girl with olive skin and choppy black hair that waved into a pixie cut squirmed out from the mass of bodies. Without hesitation she shot out a hand, which Cliff shook, looking her up and down. She didn't seem to pay attention to it.
"Lydia Burns, but you can call me Magic." She wore a vintage hockey t-shirt and mesh shorts that fell to her knees, sporting the logo of the Palmer's track team, the Guardians. Like the twins, and at least a dozen others, her resemblance was discernible from the rest and triggered the little alarm in Cliff's head that said 'I know her from somewhere.'
Cliff nodded, sparing one last look at the twins (who were still creepily watching) before turning his body to the new company. He was incredulous. "And you believe that?"
She cracked gum between her molars and gave a crooked smirk. "Nah, teachers would never allow it. Not that I'd mind if they did. Place is a little overcrowded, y'know?" Their was just a freeze-flash moment where just an inkling of mischief shimmered in her eyes. is
Another alert went off in Cliff's head, this one warning of a radiance of danger around this girl. A moment of silence paused as Cliff racked his brain for where he'd seen her, before her voice filled the silence, a soft hum of words that seemed so light on her tongue that it sent a shiver down his spine. "I'm just joking around, I wouldn't wish death on anyone like that." He smirk never faulted, and it clicked him his head.
She was Palmer's leading arena girl. She had a record something like a 90% win rate, and was the person that broke and mangled some boy's legs so bad during Cliff's freshman year that the kid's permanently wheelchair bound. The terror he suddenly felt welling in his gut at her homicidal suggestion and violent history was almost on par with the fear he had of the cars stationed outside.
Cliff shifted weight on his feet, trying to hold a calm demeanor, and opened his mouth to spew some excuse to leave, before being cut off by the shriek of a microphone. The voices of the crowd cut immediately, and every head turned to the front, where a man appeared. He was the school's president, indicative by the traditional blonde handlebar moustache and limed green bow tie. The man had always been slightly eccentric, but rather than smiling and holding his hands behind his back, they were in front of him, one atop the other like a diver, thumbs rubbing at pinkies. He fidgeted some before clearing his voice and speaking into a headset--something Cliff had never seen the guy use before--and address the gymnasium. Cliff missed the first few words, instead squinting at two suited men who stood rigid on either side, hulks in comparison. He glanced towards the gymnasium doors, which had since been closed, though he didn't remember hearing them, and two identical looking men stood cross-armed in front of them. Quadruplets? Or clones? Perhaps he had abilities like the rest of them. It was of lesser importance now, though; Cliff needed to begin listening to his principal, nasally voice breaking through his thinking.
"There's been quite a stir within the supernatural world, many leaders not agreeing on the future of you, our youth. PASI wished, and still wishes for you to grow up with the same education and opportunities as those without your incredible gifts, allowing you to gather life skills and live prosperous lives, while making a connection with those like you, who can understand you. However, the agenda has.... erm, changed."
TO BE CONTINUED [MAYBE PROBABLY NOT LOL]
- Spoiler:
- ooc//hI this was my entry that i wrote like 90% of while drunk/tipsy and didnt finish on time and considering it's like two weeks later and i only added a few paragraphs it prOBABLY WOULDNT HAVE BEEN LMAO. uhhhhh i'll update next time i'm drunk and not busy and ye it's not done or even close to it, though tbh my idea of how it will end is really vague and up to change