Mental

Chapter 9

Lunch was a bit out of the ordinary as we received well-cooked food for once. Another thing that was out of the ordinary was that Eona joined me at my loner table. As I saw her coming towards my table, I thought she was just on a route that went past my table but boy was I surprised when she stopped here.

I raised my eyebrow as she quietly sat down and the other successes were also confused as to why someone would want to sit with a monster like me. I could hear them whispering to each other about their curiosity along with their mean thoughts about why someone would want to sit with a weird girl. Then there were other successes who thought that weird people should stay together to keep the strangeness away from them.

That's stupid in many ways. Frankly, we're all sad experiments of The Screwer and none of us could be considered 'normal' by the populace. We're all monsters with powers that we never should have had in the first place.

Just as I was about to ask her why the hell she was sitting at my table, the one and only Screwer made an announcement.

"Alright, my wonderful creations, I have something I need to tell you all. It's super exciting and you all should listen up!" The Screwer said loudly as he gripped the microphone.

With all of our attention on him, he said excitedly as the microphone vibrated in his hand from holding it so tight, "For the last session of the day, we'll be holding a tournament! The top three ranking successes will receive a super special grand prize! So instead of going to your usual training hall, everyone will go to the gym!"

I snorted in amusement. The last time he announced a prize, it was cake.

I doubted that this prize would be much better.

With the announcement over with, The Screwer left the cafeteria. Once he was gone, every success started to talk to each other excitedly about what the super grand prizes could be. There was much speculation about it but no one could agree on what it could be.

I looked at Eona and asked her, "So why are you sitting with me?"

She ate her food as she thought, "Why ask when you can just read my mind?"

"Out of courtesy. Most people don't like it when I answer their inner questions," I answered.

She continued to eat, "You seemed lonely".

I rolled my eyes, "Apparently so, you're the second being to accuse me of that".

Eona seemed confused, "Second?"

"His majesty, The Brilliant, hassled me about being lonely last break time," I explained as I dug into my meal.

Her eyes widened out in shock. She whispered conspiratorially to me, "You talked with The Brilliant? You're so lucky!"

"Lucky? He's a pain in the ass," I retorted angrily. "He wouldn't leave me alone. I don't need friends".

Eona looked like she was slapped across the face, "Well, then sorry for disturbing you'. She then started to clean up her tray and move away.

Flooded with guilt, I quickly spoke, "Sorry, I didn't mean to be so cross. I'm not used to actually talking to people".

Eona cracked a smile as she set her tray back down, "Yeah, I can tell".

The rest of lunch consisted of Eona thinking of questions and conversation topics with me answering or adding to the topic.

It was surprisingly . . . nice. To just talk to someone who didn't hate your guts or wished that you didn't exist. I could read her mind so I knew she didn't have some hidden agenda with this . . . budding friendship I guess? Unlike with The Brilliant, I had no clue what his agenda in all this buddy-buddy thing was.

When the lunch bell rang, everyone quickly tossed their trash away and headed to the gym for the tournament. Eona and I walked there together while having a sporadic conversation. When we finally arrived, we saw that The Screwer and The Brilliant were sitting on a stage at the back of the gym. The bleachers already had some of the younger successes sitting in them. It seemed like the tournament was only for the older crop of successes.

I guess that makes sense since we've had more time to train our bodies and our powers. The overwhelming thoughts of the successes were killing my head.

I staggered a bit and Eona was concerned but I waved her away. By now, I should be used to the constant noise in my head, but it's something I can never get over. The constant noise and buzzing and splotches of conversations droned on and on inside my head.

Whoever thought telepathy was great, was a complete and utter idiot.

Over the loudspeaker, The Screwer was giving instructions to everyone. All the younger successes were to sit on the bleachers while the successes over the age of fifteen were to line up along the track by age.

You'd probably assume that this would take a while to line up by age, but due to our classes being divided roughly based on age it was accomplished fairly quickly. My group was near the end of the line since we were some of the older bunch. There was only one group that was older than us which were the first successes whose overall group was small since their generation had a big failure rate.

Anyway, once we were all lined up, a projection appeared around the entirety of the gym with the brackets for the fights. The Screwer explained the rules "The matches will be randomly assigned using a generator so it's fair. Like normal tournaments, each match will have a winner who will go on to fight other winners. There will be a set time for each match and when it's up, both fighters will be disqualified! You can win by either immobilizing your enemy for three consecutive seconds, getting them to forfeit, or knocking them out of bounds. So make sure you win in time. The top three left get the super grand prize that was before mentioned!" He smiled at everyone and added, "And no, I'm not telling until it's time to announce the fabulous winners!"

With that, the random generator was activated and our 'names' were placed in the brackets. When the generator was done, I saw that my name 1∞ was put with a success from the oldest batch of us. I looked over to the success I was to fight and it was the tall girl that enjoyed intimidating everyone. Behind her back, we all call her "the bully" but we all had the feeling that if one of us called her that to her face, she would laugh it off and then beat the shit outta them.

I sighed internally. Everything must hate me. Even technology.

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Woot woot, a bunch of new challenges appear!

What do you think the grand prize will be?

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