The Clash (Part 1)

Welcome to Jefferson High, where the halls stretch on for miles, echoing with the dull drone of fluorescent lights and the shuffling of tired feet. Amidst this labyrinth of lockers and classrooms, you'll find the world's most boring assortment of people. Your typical white bitch walking around practically naked, buff jocks that can't do simple math and clog up the hallways, the group of nerds always snickering in the corner. I always found this funny, since they never realized how dumb they truly were. 

It was my Junior year when I realized just how easy everything really was, I don't really know what clicked, just the world seemed so obvious to me. On the outside, I was your average high school kid, I wasn't very well-built, about 5'7, had the same npc-like outfit every day. I wore black tennis shoes, blue jeans that were faded beyond comprehension, and a solid black tee with my favorite band's name Crimson Eclipse on it. I usually walked around with my good buddy T.J. Juckson, we usually just referred to him as TJ. 

TJ was a work of art, stood 6'0 tall with a 6-pack and packed 6 inches, if you know what I'm saying. He was the fittest guy in the entire school, and also played football, if he wasn't perfect enough. At the age of 17, he defeated the world's strongest martial artists, and has an undefeated record in boxing. He is not someone anyone would want to mess with, and luckily for me, we happen to childhood friends. 

Our moms were friends, so naturally, we became close and always seemed to understand the other. One day, I was getting bullied because some other 5-year-olds didn't like the way I looked, and TJ noticed. Back then, he would've easily been able to knock out your average adult. I don't know what he is on, but it's some crazy shit. Anyway, TJ came over and threw them off me, and they crash-landed in the wall. Before they had time to tattle, I asked TJ to give me a quick slug in the stomach. The reason for this being that it would look like they did more damage to me and that TJ's response was justified, since TJ didn't know the limits of his own strength. After he did so, we had to sell it as perfectly as possible, and we ended up not getting murked that day, so it's a win in my books. After that day, we had always been close, making up what the other lacked, your classic brain and brawn duo, which I of course set up purposefully to help add to my profile of just being an average high schooler; ideally, my brawn wouldn't be the strongest person on planet Earth, but, I can't complain.

Something else that's important to note is time. I fucking hate the flow of time, it's always so inconvenient. Whenever I have an essay due in 2 hours it goes by so quick, honestly too quick. Then, it slows during my AP Biology lectures that last for 4 hours but seem to last for 20. It's honestly crazy. Sometimes, I feel like there's some device people just use to speed up time. However, one day, something interesting actually happened.

I was sitting in my English class, trying not to fall asleep, which, is by far harder than actually getting a good grade in that class, when I heard what sounded like a heated argument happening outside the classroom. I steal a quick glance at TJ, and he gives me a reassuring nod. I sign to him code 47-CAT. 

What I just said might be total nonsense, but allow me to explain myself. TJ and I knew from a very age that we would get into loads of trouble and other situations that would require us to communicate large sums of information in short periods of time. We came up with a system to transmit to combat this issue. This took us a long time to memorize, in fact, I think TJ is still trying to put certain patterns to memory. How it works is that since we 2 numbers in the first spot, that's 10 different digits there, and 3 letters after is 26 possible items for each. Using this system, there are 1,757,600 possible scenarios to prepare for. Obviously, no human can commit all of that to memory. What we do is only use the 2 numbers at before the dash, giving us only a mere 100 things to memorize, which over the course of several years of tricks and schemes, we've gotten quite familiar with. Each number combination represents a different scenario, 00 is a family related scenario, 01 is food related ordeals, and so on and so forth, I'm not going to bore you with the details. The remaining part of the code is the letters, and you may be asking what they are used for, and they are used for nothing. The reason for this is that if someone were to look at us and try to infer what we're doing, they would get lost in deciphering the 1.7m possible outcomes instead of the 100 that are actually important. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get back to the present. 

I signaled 47, which meant school diversion, to TJ, and he figured out my intentions by watching my glance to the hall, and he, of course, has ears as well and heard the commotion. Now onto the fun part, how do we get out of here, which quite simple really. I raise my hand and…

"Yes Mr. Thompson?" Asked my English teacher Ms. Smith. She was a wrinkly old hag, with white hair sticking out of her skull, always slouched over and wore a permanent scowl.

"I need to use the restroom, like really need to use it. With extra emphasis on the 'really'." I clutched my crotch section and twisted my knees inward to really sell the performance. She sighs and hastily writes out a pass and hands it to me.

"Don't be long, Mr. Thompson, you have no more than 5 minutes. If you are even a second late, you will be receiving an after-school detention. Am I understood?" 

She peered into my eyes, almost seemingly like she saw through my act. She of course was very suspicious of my intentions, as me and TJ had a bad reputation of fucking around during school hours because we didn't to pay attention in any of our classes. TJ has a rare birth condition called hyperthymesia. Hyperthymesia is a birth condition where a person is able to recall almost any event in their life with perfect clarity. Now, I also had decent memory, if I do say so myself, but nothing to TJ's level, but it was enough. Anyway, TJ would recall the entire lecture, feed it to me, and I would break down everything important in it. With this, I didn't need to pay attention, so I would often just leave in the middle of some of my classes. Anyway, while I was talking to Ms. Smith, TJ had snuck out behind me. Once she was done giving me the stinkiest stink eye of all time, I turned around, and exited the room.

Once we were out of the lecture hall, we could see, at the end of the hallway, a heated argument was going on. It was between the school's most popular girl, Emma Carrington, and a random jock, whose name I believe was Chadwick Wellington. Emma was built like your typical Instagram model, she had dark brown hair, glasses, a cute, pudgy face, she was about 5'4, and her body was very nicely portioned, to put it lightly. Every boy in the school would drool as she walked past, although somehow managed to stay single the 3 years we've been here, her standards were about as crazy as the way she dressed. Honestly, I'm both surprised and not surprised that she hasn't gotten dress-coded, since she probably seduced any teacher who would comment on her outfit. She consistently wore a zebra-striped crop top, and black leggings that were probably a size too tight to be reasonable, but I'd assume that's on purpose. 

Chad, on the other hand, wore a reasonable outfit. Chad was insanely built, standing a humble 6'2, always wore sunglasses and red and white baseball cap, a white tee with a leather jacket on top, and blue jeans to match, he honestly was my inspiration when it came to dressing, and good-looking too, but I'm a guy, so what do I know. 

These two polar opposites were having an all-out battle of words, Chad calling Emma a whore, saying she sleeps around too much, can't get into a lasting relationship, some other things I don't feel comfortable writing down, and she was firing back calling him unintelligent, a one trick, and a junkie. After watching the spectacle unfold, the entire school seemed to gather around, and those that didn't, didn't need to anyway with how loud they were yelling. No one seemed to know how this one started, but this wasn't the first time a fight like this has broken out.

Chad stopped short, and locked eyes with the floor. He drew his head up slowly with a dangerous look that had formed in his eyes, it was almost scary to look at. He slowly raised his fist, silent as an executioner. Emma was still babbling on about his clothes when she finally looked at him and realized what was about to happen. She completely froze, then frantically began searching for a way around Chad, but it was no use. In their argument, Chad had completely cornered Emma, and she was a walking stick, nothing she could do about it. She was shivering, trembling with fear, and when it seemed like all hope was lost…

WHAM

I had turned my eyes away as I didn't want to see such a pretty face get smashed in, but when I heard the sound, my gaze shot back towards the source. To my utter amazement, the punched had been flawlessly caught by none other than…

"Who the fuck are YOU!?"