High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 15 - Black Hand generation

"Mean! Mean! You have to see this!"

While Mean had been waiting for Win to show up at their private study room a day after their short talk at the café, Viola had come storming in unexpectedly. She was so enthusiastic that Mean was a bit scared – even more so when he realised that she was waving around her unlocked phone.

"Look!"

She held the phone under his nose.

He actually needed to push down her hand a bit to see what it was open on. And her enthusiasm became even less comprehensible once Mean saw the title of the blogpost:

Is Mean fit to be White Hand leader?

"Viola!"

His angry shout finally got her to calm down a bit.

"Why are you so happy that there is an article questioning my leadership? You could have been the leader if you wanted to... now is a little late to question my authority."

He hated to admit it, but this title alone made him anxious. He knew he wasn't a good leader and it wasn't his fault. His family didn't want him to be one.

But somehow, seeing a headline bluntly confirming what he had already known only made it hurt more. Like he had embarrassed himself by even trying.

"No, no, Mean, not that..."

"Why don't you do it instead of me, then?"

"I said that wasn't the point... just read it!"

Viola shook the phone impatiently.

"You said no when I offered it to you. We both know you would have been the better choice as a leader."

"We've been over this, Mean. I'm better at advising a leader than at being one myself. Forget that title already! Besides... what would it do to my carefully cultivated rebel image if I took over?"

"You could be like Robin Hood, a rebel leader?" Mean suggested, rolling his eyes, "steal from the rich, give to the poor."

"Meanie, we are the rich."

"Well, according to this blogpost," Mean pointed at Viola's phone in his hands. He had been scrolling through the article while arguing with her and had read the subtitle, "my choice of new recruits isn't elite enough."

Viola rolled her eyes and pointed at the phone again, with more determination and Mean finally gave in and began to read through it.

The news that he had recruited Win into White Hand had made the round rapidly last night, as was expected. The videos showing him at the café had trended on several social media platforms, even though they only showed how he extended his invitation to Win, and how a baffled, but ecstatic Win had happily accepted it.

Apparently, this invitation, along with the one he had given to Plan on the first day of the semester, had ruffled quite some feathers of people who had had hopes of getting chosen instead. There were several conveniently anonymous testimonies in that blogpost by people who thought they would have been better and more valid choices than Plan and Win – but they were particularly critical of his invitation to Plan, who after all seemed to have had the good sense of not accepting an invitation that Mean had supposedly failed to see as inappropriate.

These anonymous people then announced at the end of the article that they would be forming a five-fingered Black Hand now, as a counterpoint to him and that they would do everything in their power to challenge and replace White Hand.

Mean could see why Viola was excited, though he... wasn't.

At all.

"Black Hand!" Viola exclaimed, jumping up excitedly, as soon as Mean had handed her phone back. "I've always dreamt of being part of a Black Hand generation! It's so exciting! Playing poker got so boring! Finally some real challenges!"