"WAKE UP! IT'S TIME FOR YOUR SECOND TEST!"
The sound of the speaker that emanated through the compound was blaring to John's ears.
John's eyes shot open.
A sense of dread covered him. There was something he was missing. Something that he had that he just couldn't go without. John knew that this thing was there. He knew that it wasn't present. But he had no idea what to do about it.
As he didn't know what he didn't know.
"YOU HAVE TEN FUCKING MINUTES TO GET DOWN IN THE COURTYARD OR I'M PUTTING YOU THROUGH ANOTHER HALLUCINATION!" Screamed the PA system.
John swung himself off his bed.
"YIP!"
"YIP!"
"YIP!"
Stove, refrigerator and Band-aid Yipped in unison.
"Come on, guys. Let's get going."
The dragons flew onto John's head and shoulders.
~Okay. Time to start the day.~
John sucked in a breath. Then, he pushed the door to his room open.
~I can do this.~
John began to speed shuffle down the halls.
...…
By the time John had gotten to the courtyard, everyone else was already lined up in rows before Harry. Harry came across as quite the eccentric figure. He had dark sunglasses on his eyes and was sitting in a white lawn chair. His feet rested on the back of a man with a hamsburg chin.
"YOU'RE LATE!" Screeached Harry.
John had to assume that someone other than Harry was screaming through the Pa because they had sounded nowhere near as screechy as Harry did now.
"HAAAA AHHHHHH HAAAAA AHHHH."
John could not respond to what Harry had said as he was wheezing like someone who had just recently gone through an asthma attack.
"I would make you replace Mister Hamsburg as my footrest. But you're too large for that, aren't you."
Harry looked at John for a few moments with a squint.
"Take your pants off."
"HAAAAA. AHHHHH. W . Haaaaa Ahhhhh. A. Haaaaaa. Ahhhhhh. H. Haaaaaa. Ahhhhhh. T!"
Harry couldn't understand what John was saying.
"TAKE THEM OFF RIGHT NOW!"
With shaking laboured hands, John reached down for his pants.
~UGHHHHHHHHH!~
John's dirty, blood-encrusted pants that he had been wearing for weeks fell to the ground.
His literal tree trunk-sized thighs and underwear with unicorns embroidered on them were revealed for all to see.
"Good. Now, step out of your pants. You're not allowed to wear pants for the rest of the day."
John bowed his head to the ground in shame; his face was beet red with embarrassment. He walked towards the line of people and slotted himself in.
~Why can't I just be faster?~ John lamented.
"Okay! Now, is everyone here!"
There were rows of nods from the rows of people in front of Harry.
"GOOD!"
Harry put his hand in his jeans. He spent at least five minutes rifling through there before he pulled out a small silver flip phone.
Harry was a younger-looking person. He looked about twenty-five and Couldn't be any older than thirty. So, the fact that he still used a flip phone was simply baffling.
"Back it in."
Harry then closed the flip phone and slipped it back into his pocket.
There were four minutes of silence.
Until finally backing into the front of the lawn bus with bars around it's windows. In the windows of this bus was a group of people with pale faces and empty eyes. The bus stopped just a few feet from the group.
"That bus is filled with innocent down on their luck citizens that we picked up off the street. To pass the test, you simply have to kill one of them with your bare hands. I'll let them out one by one until all forty-seven of you have fought a civilian. I'm going to choose people to fight on left to right rows. The two people who were late have to go last."
John grit his teeth. He wasn't sure if he was going to be able to survive this test.
He could already tell that people had gotten much stronger in the last week. Just based on the abilities that the system gave to Harry and Joe's strength, this was blindingly obvious.
Would he even be able to defeat a new generation of superhumans? Especially when he's going last. So he would be fighting the one who learned from all the other's mistakes.
~At least I can learn from their mistakes, too.~ John thought.
"Oh. And you all will be brought around the other side of the bus to fight. I don't want the people going last to get extra privileges." Said Harry.
~There's that added side benefit removed.~ John said to himself.
And so the test began. People would come back bloodied and bruised or bloodied with a grin on their faces. Or they wouldn't come back at all. There were a few outliers to this pattern.
One man came back with a smile on his face and a severed head in his arms.
A man crab walked out from the back of the bus with a goofy grin on his face.
One woman came back covered in bruises and a few cuts. But wearing a new pair of clothes.
Another outlier came back wearing a cape of skin on his back.
Next came the man with the hamsburg chin. He was the one who was going to fight before John. He came out from the back of the bus in pristine condition. There wasn't a scratch on him.
Then, finally, after all that waiting. It was John's turn.
John blubbered towards the back of the bus with his dragons on his shoulders. As he was walking, he paused.
~Would the dragons be too much of an advantage?~
"Can I bring my Dragons?" Asked John
"If you would bring them with you on missions, then sure."
John nodded. He planned to bring the dragons with him everywhere. So that wasn't a problem.
"Okay, thanks."
John started to walk behind the bus.
"OH! John!" Yelled Harry.
"Yes?"
"I HOPE YOU DIE YOU LATE FUCK!"
John's face paled slightly.
He walked behind the bus.
It was time for John to commit a murder.