Blackjack, a prisoner who was full of mystery, spent most of his time gambling with the other fellow inmates. During his time here, he hadn't made anyone he could really call friends to rely on, nor had he joined any group.
There was just one fact that everyone did know, and that was the fact that he was strong. Now it seemed like he was about to fight one of the strong newcomers head to head.
Both Gary and Blackjack had their eyes locked on each other. The latter had approached Gary thinking it was the right time, the time to use the other's powers to help him, but he just needed to see a little more from him before he could put all of his hope into this stranger. Especially since they were part of that group of people, and now, it felt like they were ready to clash at any moment.
“I’m telling you now,” Blackjack said once again, the tone of his voice shifting, condescending as if he was speaking to a dog. His eyes were slightly changing color. “I order you to stand down; this is not a fight that the two of us need to have.”
Gary looked back at Blackjack and noticed the shift, the change of colors in his eyes. Was this part of his Altered transformation that was about to happen?
‘Who is this guy to talk to me like that? My blood is just boiling with him standing in front of me!’ Gary's jaw was tensing, but at the same time, images of what was happening outside appeared in his head.
His mother—if the two of them were to fight and it was to get out of hand, it could delay his queue to get out of the place.
“Alright, if you weren't talking about fighting against you, then what did you mean by you needed to test me?” Gary asked, doing his best to ignore the disrespect.
Rather than replying straight away, Blackjack was left confused for a moment, staring at Gary.
‘Did my influence work on him? I don’t quite understand what happened. That wasn’t the normal reaction. I know our skills don’t work on them as strongly as it does compared to others, but I was quite proud of my ability. I thought I could at least be able to control him; why didn’t it work?’
“Hey, are you going to talk, or am I just wasting my time, because if you want to fight, we can fight!” Gary asked, thinking at least he could get some experience out of the whole thing.
Blackjack quickly shook his head. The reason for his 'influence' not working he could figure out another time. Right now, the green-haired kid was agreeing to follow along.
“Right, right. Look in here, we need to both be at a certain level of strength if we want to take on the Warden. I told you before, we need to create chaos if we want to get the Warden down here, but then what?”
“We still have the rest of the guards, as well as the White Rose to deal with. We can’t just deal with the Warden; we have to deal with her quickly and get out of here quickly. Even if all of the prisoners were on our side, it would be impossible to take on the White Rose, you should know that, right?”
Gary had to agree with this fact. What he was more worried about was how hard the White Rose would chase him down. Would they do so going all the way back to Slough?
If that was the case, would escaping even do anything? Or if Gary reached Slough with all the fighting going on, would they stop for a few moments to think about it?
“I can see you understand what I’m getting at. I have calculated just how much strength we need to escape from this place. It’s not that I don’t have confidence you can beat the South or North Leaders; I believe you can. But if I thought we could escape with one of them, well, I would have already approached them.”
“I assume that you have heard of a person named Ice?”
Gary shook his head; his roommate had informed him. There were two people who were strong enough to the point where the groups in the prison left them alone.
”So if you know about him, I’m sure you know what I’m getting at. I already told you, if I knew there was someone strong enough to help me get out of this place, I would have already teamed up with him.”
“So, Ice is not strong enough. I need someone stronger than him. So if you want to prove your worth to me, then go ahead and fight him.”
Starting fights with strangers he had no history with, or that did no wrong to him, was not Gary’s style, but he needed to win fights to get rewarded by the system, and he needed to fight strong opponents. He also had to remind himself of what type of place he was in; it was a prison, and most likely everyone who was in here had done something that was worth putting them in.
When Gary turned around, about to look for Ice, he turned to look back at Blackjack again.
“I wonder, how did someone like you got stuck in here?” Gary asked.
To which Blackjack just shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gary, none of us are good people in here.”
“Exactly,” Gary replied as he walked off to find Ice. “Which is why I was starting to wonder what kind of person it was that I was teaming up with, and who am I helping break free.”
As Blackjack watched Gary walk away, he had a glimmer of hope for what was to come, which was followed by a large, sick feeling in his stomach.
‘If anyone found out who I was meeting up with, my head would be rolling on the floor.’