lethal //phan

t w o

Phil
He woke up in last nights clothes knowing he'd gotten more hours of sleep in one night than he'd usually get in three.

The reflection looking back at him from the mirror in his bathroom was a wreck: a curly black excuse for hair framed his pale face, his crystal blue eyes seemed to have lost colour, his lips looked a little more chapped than more usual. He washed his face and straightened his hair, whether it was his imagination or not his eyes had regained their blueness and his hair looked halfway decent.

The uniform looked awfully plain, his eyes were instantly drawn to the red badge, it was striking against the black and white. Phil made a mental note to ask Chris what its purpose was. He decided he'd ask at breakfast - which according to his timetable was in ten minutes.

Remembering he didn't have a clue where to go he walked down the corridor and knocked on the door of Room 48 for Chris.

The seemingly ever-happy boy opened the door and greeted him. Phil noticed his badge was the colour blue, not red like his. They headed down the stairs and walked until they arrived in the dining room.

Pairs of eyes looked up from their bowls of cereal and the room became filled with an eerie silence. Most of the students seemed to know about his arrival and the silence was interrupted by hushed voices, each one talking about him.

"You guys - that's the new kid."

"Damn it, he's a dude, everyone thought we'd get a girl."

"I wonder what his power is."

"Look, his badge is red!"

The room had erupted with chatter, it was like he wasn't there and couldn't hear what they were saying. He kept his head facing the floor and followed Chris who was heading towards the back corner to an empty table and was telling people to shut up and to stop looking at him every five seconds or so.

They sat down and Phil pushed the bowl of cereal away from him, after all that he felt that anything he'd eat would come back up, he hated being the centre of attention.

"Sorry about them. We don't get new people often and everyone gets pretty excited when someone arrives. They all become desperate to know the person's powers, why they're here, they want to listen to a new story after hearing each other's so many times, things will be back to normal in a few days." Chris explained.

"Don't apologise, thanks for helping me. You've been so nice to me ever since I got here. But why does everyone care so much about the colour of a badge, why couldn't I see anyone else with a red badge on? Is it that big of a deal?" asked Phil.

"Yeah, it is I suppose, red badges are really rare, I could probably count the number of people here wearing that colour of badge on one hand. The type of badge you wear shows the kind of power you have. There are five types: yellow badges for animal-related powers, so that could be talking to animals, healing powers et cetera; green badges for nature-based powers, that's plants and stuff; blue is anything to do with change, whether it being changing from human form into another or teleportation, it's probably the most common; purple for powers that don't really fit into any category; and a person wears red if they have multiple powers - but as I said are very uncommon and only usually occur if the powers are passed from multiple generations. Do your parents have any abilities?"

Phil shook his head, they would've told him if they did. He hoped they would anyway.

"So you're a first gen? Lucky. That means you get the best powers - each generation's powers slowly get shittier until you're third or fourth gen and are stuck with a really common one like mine."

A bell rang and everyone began to pile out of the dining rooms and began to walk to their first period lessons, Phil was thankful that him and Chris had identical schedules and that he wouldn't get hopelessly lost and get a late mark on his first day.

The first lesson was study of talents, it was obvious he'd never learnt any of this before so he had no idea what would go on in that classroom. He counted the rooms on the way there; 21, 22, 23 and finally Room 24, he waited with everyone else outside the door, ignoring the various people pointing.

The nerves he had were beginning to disappear until a strange sense of anticipation settled as he waited for the lesson to start. A woman let the class in and walking in he asked himself the question: how bad could it really be?