Sybil woke up in her apartment. She stared at the ceiling until the sun's glare hit her eyes, forcing her to get up. She made herself some cereal, but forgot she ran out of milk. She checked Lush, her phone's dating app for any potential weekend dates, with a few matches.
Guy who confused her for her sister. Guy who looked nice but a concerning amount of his pictures were him smoking weed or had weed stuff in the background. The girl who messaged her seemed nice, but four of the five photos on her profile were either at a Sassy Jess concert or had Sassy Jess merch in the background, and she hated her music enough to reject her on that basis. So with the guarantee of another weekend alone, she decided to go to work.
Traffic meant she was only ten minutes late. But that barely mattered, it was exam season, baby! That wonderful time of year where she can just tell the students to study that years material while she plays ROM hacks of old video games on her phone, occasionally having to look professional when an older teacher walks by. Class went by, with the only issue coming from having to shush some of the rowdier students. The ones that'd probably barely pass. Hopefully, otherwise she'd have to deal with them again. That was the thing with teaching, the students who actually make your life easier leave earlier, but the ones that make your job hell have to stay in detention or extra classes or whatever. But the rowdy kids seemed at least a little smarter this year compared to the usual hellions. But early morning was a few of the students trapped in the death game with her. Blair, Natalie, and Elijah. Elijah and Natalie were sat at opposite ends because nothing got done when they were near each other, and Blair kept to herself, same as usual. Class ended, and all the kids calmly walked to the next class, resuming whatever conversations her attempts to teach geography were interrupting.
All except Blair. She looked more nervous than usual, and closed the door instead of leaving.
"Miss Collins, can I talk to you?"
"Your grades are doing fine." She said, glancing up from her phone. The hard mode platforming level she was playing was kicking her ass for a while, and she was near the end. Just had to land two more jumps and…nope, lost focus. She was dead.
"It's not about my grades." Blair continued.
"The games, got it." Sybil sighed, putting her phone in her cardigans pocket. "What's your issue?"
"Neither of us have allies for the games." She said, flipping through her notebook. "I was in the last one, and it was Elijah and Valerie working together, Ines, Mateo, and Tedros, and Ulysses working with Latrell. If we don't do something now, we'll be teamed up on in the final games and destroyed."
"So what's the plan?" Sybil asked. "Kill everyone with friends?"
"Look, we look out for each other and don't tell anyone." She whispered. "Slowly take out anyone with friends, without anyone knowing we've teamed up. And then, we have a more even playing field."
"And do we kill each other when everyone's solo?" Sybil questioned.
"This is temporary." Blair reassured. "Once we level the playing field it's everyone for themselves. But if it's any consolation, you have unwieldy powers, so you're low on my threat list."
"Thanks?" Sybil replied flatly.
"Anyway, here's some info you might want."
Blair ripped a page out of her notebook and handed it to Sybil, silently leaving the room after scanning the hallways to make sure all the other players were in class.
Sybil inspected the page, which contained two things. The first was a ranking of everyone left from highest threat to lowest. Of the twelve left, she was ranked ninth, just above Evelyn, Blair, and Ines. Like Blair said, her powers were harder to control, meaning she could easily be caught struggling and killed. The other was everyone's names written down and what groups they're part of. Her name was written next to Blair's, circled with a question mark next to it. Leon was the only other player without an ally, and everyone else was in some kind of confirmed group. Mateo, Tedros, Ines. Latrell, Ulysses. Janet, Evelyn. Elijah, Valerie. And now her and Blair. She had to admit, it was a pretty detailed analysis. If it was a fictional work she had to analyse for English class, she'd be on point for an A.
It was just kind of messed up someone her age had to think about this at all. She was about to do her final exams. When Sybil was her age a decade ago, her priorities were who her end of year ball's date was going to be, or if the money for a ticket would be better spent on the at the time new Like a Demon game. Like a Demon 3: True demon rising. What a game that was. Better than the new remake that added some stupid retcon the main villain survived the fall from a skyscraper, somehow. Well, she figured she'd have to survive. If not because she had more to prove than most of the kids she was stuck competing against, then to replay Like a Demon 3.
During lunch, Latrell grabbed a bag of wedges from the cafeteria and scanned the table to see what Ulysses was doing. Unsurprisingly, he was silently panicking. His acting skills weren't helping him hide it, he was staring into his packed lunch completely petrified, and if she had to guess he was like that since last nights round. She sat down next to him, and a quick glance in her direction before going back to staring into his sandwich was his only reaction. Latrell was shaken at losing Gabriela, and Blair didn't seem interested in showing up to her alliance, if she considered herself a part of it.
"Any idea what we do now?" She asked quietly. She wasn't sure what a panicked Ulysses would add, but this was a 'no such thing as bad ideas' situation. They had another game to get some kind of plan in motion.
"I don't." Was the only thing Ulysses managed to spit out. He looked to be on the verge of a straight up heart attack. Latrell's mind was firing on all cylinders to try and find something to convince him to keep going, but was drawing a blank. He might be falling into the pits of despair, which would be the worst case scenario.
"I killed Gabriela." He managed to whisper, after what felt like an eternity of spluttering to find the right words.
"You didn't kill her." Latrell reassured. Her mind was able to perfectly recreate the events of last night, and it was clearly Ines. "Ines was the one who-"
"I made the black hole!" Ulysses screamed in the middle of the cafeteria. All of the eyes were now on him, and he left the room.
Latrell considered following him, but didn't know if that would contribute to another outburst. She figured it was best to leave him be for now. She herself could probably lay low for now. All she had to do in the meantime was form a coherent plan around Ulysses. And that might be tougher than expected.