B.O.N.D.E.D.

1. Blaise: Propaganda Part 1

The word "propaganda" rose to Blaise's mind as she grimaced at her teacher's desperate attempt to promote the limited information his superior had given him. It was clear to everyone present that he had no previous knowledge of Trust Bonding.

She would compare the propaganda she experienced to the propaganda from famous works that feature totalitarian regimes, but it was nothing as serious. In fact, it was so benign that she would consider it boring if it was written in a novel; or in real life, such as this case that she had been living among.

The ten Bonders of Silver Valley High School were all brought to the multipurpose room, every single one of them. Despite their reluctance of learning about a subject that they could not care less for, they were nonetheless obligated to be present for "the most important speech in their lifetime" (quoting from Blaise's teacher). The speech was said to be around twenty minutes in length, given by a representative from the California Institute of Bonders. Its main purpose was to motivate normal, everyday students with the gift of Bonding to attend the institute and eventually work as professional Bonders.

Or so the officials had planned.

It did not come to Blaise as a surprise that the government was pushing young Bonders to pursue a career of Trust Bonding. After all, it was still a fairly new concept, and it had the potential to become something much much bigger. Just like any new drugs that needed testing, it also required subjects to be tested with; so naturally, the young Bonders of the newer generation became the ideal lab rats.

Blaise was not particularly fond of being a lab rat. In fact, she was not particularly fond of the whole concept of Trust Bonding. It was already hard to like something that everyone was so eagerly pushing down your throat, and it did not help that every time she actually had the interest in researching about this subject, she could not find any useful information.

According to the news, this ability was still considered "dangerous and controversial" by the government, and they regulated most information regarding the methods of Bonding. Conflictingly, they were also interested in promoting this "Satanic power" (quoted from a famous politician), resulting in the uninformative speeches Blaise and many other Bonders had been hearing throughout their life. These speeches often only had one aspect to cover, and that obviously being the moral obligation of promoting a greater society, which apparently lied upon every Bonder's shoulder. As a result, though Blaise was brought to more than twenty Trust Bonding hearings in the past few years, she still hadn't learned anything about Bonding except knowing it was a telekinesis-type power.

It was like The Trial, except more realistic and yet just as frustrating.

As Blaise's thoughts were wandering off to a galaxy far far away, her teacher finished his passionate lecture. With the last sentence being "sit quietly and wait for the representative from CIB to make a speech," the students burst into the loudest cacophony that ten teenagers could produce.

Needless to say, Blaise was not apart of the chaos. After squeezing herself into a tiny human ball on the corner of her chair, she dug her hand into her personalized trash bag of useless junks (or, if one was to call it by its more common name: backpack). She needed to find something she could hold on to, something that would disguise her friendless status and prevent the overly talkative kids from striking a conversation with her; instead, she found a pencil along with a few pieces of wrinkled paper, and was pleasantly surprised by the pencil's perfect condition despite it having lived outside of the pencil box for days and had possibly endured hundreds of fatal blows from her heavy binder. She held the pencil to her heart and swore never to lose it again, then managed to drop it on the floor and lose the sight of it.

"You dropped your pencil," said the boy to her left, patting her shoulder with one hand and holding her pencil with another. He was dark skinned and dark haired, wearing a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and the warmest smile Blaise had ever seen.