Samuel’s P.O.V:
My name is Samuel Johnathan McClusky, I’m your average 16-year-old guy, starting year 11 in hell on Earth in the small land of England, hoping to make a decent living and live a relatively simple life. I’m 5 foot 11, a bit over the average height, but my constant small slouch negated that extra height pretty easily. I’m slightly pale, having regular brown eyes and brown hair. My hair was one of my more unique aspects, it seemed to take the shape of small strands, separated across my head, however, these strands bunched up to make peculiar looking spiky ends. While they did look cool, many thought it was a waste on someone like me. See, I’m what most people know as a complete and total loser.
In School, I’m falling below the passing grade I need in almost all subjects. The only one I’m not yet failing is Geography, but I’m sure it won’t be long until I flop in that department too. It wasn’t that I didn’t try hard enough, God knows that I’m doing my absolute best to revise and study everything that we learnt these past two years, but I absolutely blow at revising. My attention span is equivalent to one of a goldfish and my memory is worse than one, my notes are messy and impossible to read and the amount of knowledge I can absorb is absolutely tiny.
My athletic abilities weren’t any better, if anything, they were even worse. I could run for two minutes before I would be forced to take a breather. My legs and arms were measly little things that would work better as toothpicks for a hippo than limbs. My upper body was just as bad as my lower body. I was thin enough to the point where my ribs were visible, causing me a lot of trouble since others decided that during PE my shirt didn’t need to be in the way of their funny view of my small figure.
Despite all this, I was content with my life. I had lovely parents and an amazing sister to rely on if things ever got hard. Though, they aren’t my real family. See, I was adopted when I was a baby, according to my dad, I was found in a street a few weeks after my sister was born by the couple who went for a walk with their new bundle of joy and they found me wrapped in a small blue blanket, just lying there on the floor, no tears, no wailing, just a small cooing sound coming from me. After a long talk, they took me in, raised me to the best of their abilities with my sister as if we were twins.
I found out I was adopted at the young age of 11 and to say the least, I was devastated. To find out the family I loved so much wasn’t my own was absolutely heartbreaking. But, a few weeks later I had recovered, knowing that despite my unknown background, they cared for me deeply and I had the same sentiment. I begged them not to my sister though, I had absolutely no idea how she would react and honestly, I didn’t want to know, she was a bit… over-reactive.
Speaking of her, her name is Hannah. She’s only a few weeks younger than me, but because she always looked up to me back when we were younger, she usually refers to me as her older brother instead of my name - an unusual habit, but I can live with it. She’s a few inches shorter than me and had long flowing, straight black hair. Her eyes were, like mine, a light shade of brown. While she didn’t have much muscle on her, she was physically stronger than me in all aspects and her… assets… were rather large for a girl her age, landing at a C cup, maybe even a D cup at this point. Her bubbly personality was refreshing to say the least, in the year where our entire future was on the line, having a beacon like her to go back to was reassuring, and I knew I would need her a lot in the coming year.
Even though life was hard, they were always there for me. They were my family, and I would never let anything happen to them.
This all changed when the 18th of November, 2015, came. This day was the day that my entire world came crashing down.
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18th of November 2015:
Today was going to be hellish, he could already tell as much. He ran ahead of Hannah again today, making sure that she wasn’t involved with what was going to happen this morning.
Samuel was bullied on a regular basis. Whether it was the big thugs of the school or the sly students that knew how to break the rules without getting caught, he was always a target. Who wouldn’t want to target such a weak person? After all, with the bad record that he had, no teachers even batted an eye anymore. The weak deserved to be stepped on. He often saw this mentality used at his high school, the strong always bullying the weak, the weak just having to accept it. He wanted to change that. But he never could. One of the many unfortunate meetings that were bound to happen again today had just occurred after all.
A large figure towered over the boy, making sure to destroy any thoughts of fleeing from his mind. He wore the Verber High School uniform. A light blue blazer, black trousers, a plain white shirt and a dark blue tie. Contrasting his regular-looking uniform, his face was that of a battle-hardened warrior, he had a scar stretching from the top of his left cheek to the bottom of his right cheek, his black hair cut in a way that practically screamed “I am a rebel” and dark eyes that looked as if they had no light behind them. Of course, first one of the day and he was already in deep trouble.
The thug put both of his hands into his pockets before he began to speak, attempting to sound evil and threatening. “Now listen here Shithead Sam, I haven’t had the best week so far, you know how it is, this school has a lot of toughies here, and so far I haven’t won. Not even once! Hard to believe, I know. And so here’s your lucky day!” He faked his enthusiasm as a terrifying grin spread across his face, sending shivers throughout the boy’s body.” Now you get to be my first win of the week! I hope you enjoy being mincemeat ya useless cunt, cuz I know I’m gonna enjoy pounding you into it.”
Harsh insults continued to flow from the young delinquent’s mouth, bringing small tears to Samuel’s eyes as his knees continued to shake violently. However, despite the constant flow of these events, he was nonetheless terrified of the upcoming torturous event. He covered his face with his arms, trying to prevent as much damage as possible to his face. Little did he know the events that were to follow.
Behind Samuel, a dark figure appeared, seeming to loom over the boy. He wore a large cloak with a hood, hiding all of his features from all that looked at him. However, this figure didn’t seem interested in Samuel in the slightest. Instead, he faced the thug in front of Samuel, remaining unnoticed by the boy. The stare-off continued, before the figure’s glare hardened, his blood-red eye sending shivers down the delinquent’s spine. A gruff sound emanated from the figure that had locked eyes with the young thug.
“Do you truly believe that your darkness…” The figure offered his prey a similar, terrifying smile that the delinquent had used on Samuel, except this one had an incomparable amount of bloodlust oozing from it.” …Could compare to mine?”
“I-I-I-I…” He was shaking to his very core, his senses overridden with a sense of fear coupled with the overbearing feeling of death itself. His face became white as a sheet as a suspicious stain began to form under his overly shiny belt buckle. “AGGGGGGGGGGGH!” He then proceeded to waddle away as fast as humanly possible, trying to preserve both his dignity and his life in front of the obvious menace that was now behind him.
Hearing the unusual noise, Samuel slowly removed his arms from his face, assessing the danger around him. He could’ve sworn he had heard both a voice and an unbridled scream of terror, only to find nothing but a small breeze. “Hah. Haha. I, I guess today’s my lucky day. Thanks, God… I think. Well, at least now Hannah won’t nag me for getting myself into more trouble. Let’s hope my luck lasts.” After his small talk to himself, he continued walking through the gates of hell. Little did he know of the mysterious figure watching from the branch of a tall tree, a small grin on his face.
“So that’s how it is these days, eh? Hehe, this will be fun.”
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After the bell that signalled the end of 2nd period rang, it was Samuel’s time to play his least favourite survival game instead of enjoying a peaceful break time. This game, of course, was run and hide from the bullies. Over the years, he had wizened up to the patterns of the delinquents that took on the incredibly important task of either fighting each other or picking on the weak and helpless. Sadly, it was never enough as the bullies too began to use new methods of tracking him down, usually resulting in Samuel having the shit beaten out of him.
Today, he decided to take refuge on the roof. While this would normally be an incredibly obvious place to hide, he hadn’t been here for a long time to hide due to the repairs being done after a rather brutal brawl occurred up here. Little did Samuel know that he would encounter a man far worse than any bully, thug or other beings that could easily harm the frail boy. It was none other than Liam, Liam Mourningwood. That’s right. Mourningwood. Even a 9-year-old could see the obvious innuendo in his last name, so Samuel had commented on it every chance he got.
Liam, much like Samuel, had a very small and poorly built figure, a twig that could be snapped almost as easily as Samuel. His height was at 5 foot and 9 inches, making him one of the more moderately tall males at the school. He had unruly and unkempt dirty blonde hair, bright blue eyes that seemed to shine in the sunlight, and a small grin constantly plastered on his face. Despite his physical similarities with Samuel, with both being both tiny and thin, they were completely different in many ways.
One example was Liam’s natural aptitude to speed. His agility was insane, allowing him to easily run away from most situations and even dodge many dangers that would appear before him. Another exemplary ability of Liam’s was his mind. He got rather high grades in his classes, getting scores in the range of an A with the occasional B.
Both Liam and Samuel had been in the same classes since they were 8, so they knew each other rather well from childhood. However, being childhood friends was as far as the description of the two could be from the truth.
Liam had the tendency to manipulate others. It was the only reason someone with his last name and his weak figure was able to last this long. However, Samuel heavily disagreed with his methods. Liam used people as if they were his own pawns and nothing more, while no one ever got injured, his lack of empathy and the fact that he seemed to hold no issue to sacrifice the people he was using. His entire life was a web of lies that he used to trap and ensnare people, manipulating and corrupting their ideals for his own twisted devices.
Okay so Samuel may have been exaggerating a bit, but the excessive lying and usual manipulation of people were indeed true. This put him at odds with Liam as it completely went against the basic principles that Samuel kept. Despite this, the odd blondie had a very necessary use for the school as a whole. In this hellhole where power was seen as all that mattered by many, so there had to be one documenting their power. Someone to gauge the strengths and weaknesses which they would then compare to the rest. Someone to rank everyone within this endless battle arena, whether it be brains, brawn or every single minute, minuscule detail and variable. Liam documented them all. Being the head of the newspaper club gave him immense leeway with such things, a vast web of intelligence no one could even attempt to untangle.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Usually, people had to pay to get such information, such as win to loss ratio, power levels, strategies as well as any other information that seemed necessary for the school to continue its internal struggle of who’s the most powerful. It was all held in a separate section of the paper dispensed weekly by the ever diligent newspaper club. However, Liam’s old ‘buddy’ had free access to this information. But this wasn’t out of the kindness of Liam’s heart nor was it to ease Samuel’s feelings of unrest. It was purely because Samuel couldn’t use this knowledge. And so this led to many annoying encounters with the devil-like information handler, encounters that he could frankly live without.
“Oh come on Sammy.” Today, Liam had his left arm draped over the irritated boy, holding a piece of paper with his free hand. “You gotta tell me about this, to have number 302 on the list of ‘Most likely not to be intimidated’ run away screaming with piss dripping down his leg makes absolutely no sense. Especially considering he was only dealing with you. Come ooooooooooooon. I’ve given you information for years, free of charge too! And you can’t do me this one, measly, little, favour.” He began to wrap his left arm around Samuel’s neck, his voice a slightly higher pitch than usual, showing how he was trying to seem threatening again, usually his voice was deeper, but nowhere near deep enough to intimidate anyone. This wasn’t a threat in the slightest. After all, threat involved being able to go through with it. Instead, Samuel groaned in frustration.
“For the bloody millionth time, I have no clue whatsoever. I just opened my eyes, and he was waddling away, looking like Satan had dropped by to say hi.” Meanwhile, Samuel kept his eyes strictly on what was in front of him. Giving this fiend what he wanted was the first way to being ensnared by his trap, but Samuel genuinely knew nothing about what had happened earlier.
Liam suddenly stopped in his tracks and walked right in front of Samuel. He then proceeded to examine every feature on his face and body. While many people would probably be unnerved by this, Samuel simply sighed. Liam’s intuition and senses of observation were surreal. Even the slightest twitch of a finger from meters away could be caught by the eye of Samuel’s pseudo-friend. After a few seconds, he finally opened the rarely shut up that mouth of his.
“Hmm. Fine, fine. I believe ya mate. Still, it is a bummer to not find out what could send someone like Morty into such a terrified state. Meh, I guess I’ll file this one under unsolved myste-“
“Oh like hell you will.”
Liam’s retreating figure was stopped by a hand landing on his shoulder, invoking a small smirk on his face. “Oh? Little Sammy finally baring his fangs, eh? It’s been too long since I’ve seen you this serious.”
While Samuel was indeed a coward and a weakling, he did sometimes stand up on his own two feet, however, the only time this ever happened was when he was interacting with the cocky blonde boy in front of him.
“Don’t test me. Stay away from my sister.” Samuel had a rather peculiar look on his face. It wasn’t one that would imply he was threatening Liam, nor was it one that looked as if it were begging Liam. His face conveyed a simple message, this was neither a plea nor a threat, it was a statement.
“Oh? And why would you think that I, the honourable and glorious Liam, go after your innocent sister?” Liam, at this point, was trying to fuck with Samuel’s mind again. Giving a fake act while sporting a cocky smile would most likely set anyone off, but not Liam’s oldest playmate at this school. Samuel then proceeded to imitate Liam, though it was more like he was mocking the blonde bou.
“Oh cut the crap. I know what you deduced. ‘If he didn’t see, then maybe his sister did. After all, they do walk to school together.’ A simple thought, yet one that most people would probably miss. Don’t mess with my sister Liam. I ran ahead of her today so there’s no point.” The look in Samuel’s eyes was completely different from the one he had earlier, almost as if he had broken out of his cowardly demeanour. Almost. Liam knew better though.
Samuel had abilities in perception and observation, as well as intuition, that was on par with Liam’s. They could see right through each other. Neither of them could use it on an opponent with enough strength to pummel them into dust, like everyone in the school, but when in each other’s presence, the silent battle raged fiercely. Despite the fact that Samuel would probably never accept Liam, the two were much closer than either of them would ever believe or admit, they knew basically everything about each other. Samuel would forever be the only rival that could best Liam. And Liam would forever be the only pest that could rile Samuel up like this. They both revealed a nature hidden to the rest of the world with each other. Despite this, Samuel was still much lower on the food chain of life than Liam was, mainly because Liam lacked what most people had - morals.
“Heh. Still as sharp as every Sammy. Very well, I, the gracious and ever-loving Liam, shall leave your younger sibling alone. You are still keeping that little secret from her, right?” Liam gave a self-centred short speech before having the devious smirk return to his features. The secret in mention was none other than the adoption secret. A few years ago, Liam stumbled across this little piece of information when trying to gauge his rival’s mental prowess. Surprisingly, he rarely ever mentioned it and never used it as blackmail, a detail Samuel found odd considering Liam’s manipulative nature. Then again, he was always full of surprises. Samuel let out a long sigh.
“Whatever. Just back off of us on this one. Knowing how pig-headed you are, I doubt something like a loss of a few witnesses will stop your supposed investigation.” Samuel was massaging his temples to stop the flooding of memories where Liam would use him as a fellow “Investigator.” This usually meant being beaten up by someone so Liam would get the information he needed. On the bright side, since Samuel was probably going to be beaten up sooner or later, getting paid a bit of cash for these “Investigations” was a decent enough reason to not put a bounty on Liam’s head.
Bounties were a system made by the thugs that lived in the shadows of this supposedly amazing school. People could put small cash rewards on people they wanted the living shit beat out of, a good way to even the odds of weak and strong because if the weak put bounties on the strong, a lot less trouble would head their way. Most of the weaker class avoided this method though, in fear the anonymous bounty would have the trail sniffed out and get themselves absolutely decimated. One of these was Samuel.
Before the two could exchange any more threats or conniving statements, the bell rang loud and clear throughout the school, signalling the end of break time.
“Tch. Wasted time is unfortunate, then again, I did get to see the more carnivorous side of you today so I guess it wasn’t a total loss.” With a smirk on his face, Liam turned around and began exiting through one of the two staircases on the roof. Before he descended, he turned and did a little wave. “See ya McClusky!”
Samuel returned the comment with a smirk of his own. “See ya Mourningwood!” Seeing the twitch of his frenemy’s eye as a signal his comment had done its damage, Samuel too turned and descended down the other staircase located on the roof. Little did he know of the cloaked figure casually hiding behind one of the many structures on the roof, acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The figure, at the moment, was having a hearty chuckle.
“Hahahaha. Guess he does have some backbone in him. Good, good. Guess my purpose here isn’t as useless as I thought it would be.”
Smirking like a madman, the cloaked figure proceeded to run across the roof before leaping off of it, only to grab a branch of a nearby tree and slide down it, damaging his already tattered leather gloves.
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The bell brought about many student’s favourite part of the day – lunch. While many of the normal, upstanding students went to either eat lunch or have fun with their friends, the delinquents went around the school doing one of four things: Beating the ever-living shit out of some poor bastard; planning to beat the ever-living shit out of some poor bastard; watching the brutal underground fights held in the gymnasium; or participating in the aforementioned brutal underground fights in the gymnasium. One boy, playing as neither the prey nor predator today, was being dragged up and down the school building by the ear by none other than his violent sister as his crush and his sister’s best friend did nothing but watch, used to the event of Samuel pissing off Hannah to the point where she would administer her punishment.
“Oh? And running off ahead of me and avoiding me all day wasn’t because you’d be embarrassed if your sister had to protect her dear big brother?” Hannah was obviously irritated by the fact that her brother ran off earlier in the day without so much as a goodbye, but he didn’t seem to notice that until she stated it out loud.
“I-I wasn’t! If I was, I’d at least have a few bruises or scratches on me! But I don’t. See for yourself.” Samuel desperately tried to convince his sister that he was indeed innocent, trying his best to keep his face straight enough to make the bluff more realistic.
“Hmm. Okay!” She then finally let go of his ear, which he started to massage to ease the lingering pain of being dragged across the school like this. Sometimes he wondered who he should be more scared of, his sister or the entire deadly underground school system. He, like any sane man, accepted that his adoptive sister would forever remain much worse in his eyes. After giving him a once over under his shirt, allowing both her and her friend to see his skeletal frame, she sighed.
“Dammit Sam, I’ve been worrying all day about how bad they were gonna be today! Whatever I guess. I should just be happy you’re okay today. Though that won’t stop me from interrogating you when we get home about why you ran.” After getting over her apparent stress, Hannah seemed to remember something important, obvious to Samuel due to her facial expression changing from one of relief to one of realisation.
“Ah! Sam! The girls are getting more injections today, so I’ll be leaving after period 5 today with Giselle, we’ll be at home so I expect my dear older brother to make a tea for his sister and his guest, okay?” After giving the information she seemed to suddenly remember, she then proceeded to give a slight threat, her tone laced with false malice. Samuel got the message though. You run from this, you die.
The girl named Giselle was currently the target of Samuel’s affection. She had straight, blonde hair that reached under her shoulders that seemed to flow like the sea. Her eyes were a deep brown that seemed to entice all who looked into them to an eternity of bliss. Her skin was a smooth light colour and her smile was mesmerising, enough to make her one of the most desirable girls in the school. However, what attracted Samuel to her was none other than her kind personality, one that seemed to help any wandering soul, no matter how pathetic. Samuel remembered a time where he was one of those wandering souls.
Samuel let out a long sigh. “Fine. It was my fault that you were worried I guess. I’ll see you two later at home then, bye!” He then proceeded to run in the opposite direction, trying to avoid the giggles of the two girls he had left behind. After all, it’s not every day that you see a boy running away from a girl that trapped him with nothing but her left hand and his right ear.
The poor boy in question then proceeded to eat his lunch in the boy’s toilets. Just an average day in the hell known as Verber High School.
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A few minutes after the final bell rang, a small figure could be seen darting across the outside of the school, trying to increase the gap between himself and the general vicinity of the school. After a solid two minutes of sprinting, the boy finally reached his destination, the local convenience store. He needed to buy some snacks to calm the beast that resided within his home, his sister. However, before he could enter, someone bumped into the young snack seeker.
“S-sorry.” Samuel, who was used to the routine of being “accidentally” bumped into at school, immediately stood up and apologised, only to realise what it was that bumped into him. A figure, covered from head to toe in a filthy black cloak that seemed tattered beyond belief, stared down at the boy. His red irises penetrating the boy’s very soul. Samuel began to shake in terror, sensing the presence of Death itself before him. However, before Samuel could even begin to apologise profusely and then proceed to beg for his life, the figure grasped his shoulder with an equally tattered brown, leather glove before speaking.
“Why are you here young Samuel? Not even a cowardly man such as yourself would stay away from the scene where his family were going to die.” The man used a deep and ominous voice to convey the message to the terrified youngster, before releasing his grip and walking in the other direction. After taking a few seconds to realise what the cloaked man said, Samuel’s head snapped back to where the man should have been. Except all that was there was a silent breeze.
Samuel began to piece together what the man had said fully, trying to decipher whether or not this was just another example of the cruelty that Verber High School had to offer, except this time the damage was meant to be done to his psyche. However, one emotion gripped his heart and caused beads of sweat to slide down his forehead. An emotion he thought he was familiar with. An emotion that had never been felt to this horrendous extent before.
Fear.