The 6-Hour Energy had kicked in and the Awesomesauce was pulsing through him. Alsum's mind had reached peak consciousness. He hid seeking eyes behind a pair of custom-designed Ray-Bans. He saw the coach - an unusually shaped zombie of a man who held nearly all of his body-fat on his stomach. The skin in his arms stretched tightly around his muscles. When he tensed, his muscles pulled visibly under his skin. When he loosened, his muscles expanded. Sickly veins stuck out under the skin, purple and blue and bruised red, and needle scars left tracks in his skin. His legs looked too thin, and the outline of his skull was apparent, but he still wore that belly. It looked more like a tumor than blubber. 

Wind whispered through the corn. The fields stretched on for miles, growing against the judgement of the dry Oklahoma soil. There was something dark in those fields. His sect had been assigned here for that reason. Something old, and something hateful. It used bland simplicity of this land to cover itself. Would it ever be revealed? Alsum did not know. He kept a watch on the edge, where the fields met the schoolyard. It was instinctive. Someday, he expected to catch a glimpse.

"Top'o da mwernin' to yee Ladeo." He heard the awkward strains of a familar voice. He looked to his side and saw Janeway Jugelstein, the senior member of the Irish-American club. She had been a member since she entered high school four years ago, and she might have been president if it weren't for her inability to stay awake during their meetings. She had the same problem with classes as well. According to here, she was diagnosed narcoleptic, but in his subtleties of her behavior and scent Alsum could tell otherwise. Janeway's problem was that she had been babied sense she was a child, and that she had no true understanding of what effort was. It was because of the arm she had been robbed of at birth.

That was the other point of contention in Miss Jugelstein's story. She claimed to have been born without a left arm, and that she had been robbed of it by nature. A congenital defect. Alsum suspected otherwise. There were markers that suggested a hatchet job on the part of the doctor who delivered her. It was peculier.

"Top of the mornin'" Alsum replied with a sharpened smile. His voice was awash in honest empathy. He put his hand on her shoulder (the good one) and took a deep breath. "Is that Corned Beef?" he asked.

Janeway squealed like a helium-breathing bobby-soxer at a personalized Elvis concert. "Yes" she said, her voice threatening to become a dog-whistle. She talked fast. "I and DeSelfown made invented it with my grandmas lye soap kit. It is a deodorant."

That was weird, but Alsum expertly feigned acceptance. He also had caught a whiff of cabbage, but suspected that it had nothing to do with the deodorant. 

Janeway wandered off, leaving Alsum to think about the challenge. It was well thought out. Using one spool for all of the students was a recipe for a violent clusterfuck. Alsum accepted that it would be necessary for him to circumvent that fate. There were other problems, though. The structure was unsound. Clusters of half-hammered nails tangled together where there should have only been one. The was a suspicious lack of support beams, whereas other beams looked like they had been glued. The stones themselves were also questionable. It was early yet, and dew still slickened some of them. It looked as if they had been pulled from a creekbed, some sharper than they should be and others most likely clay. He knew that poor safety precautions had caused trouble in the past. One year, the school had chose Five-Finger-Fillet as the game. It ended when a particularly rambunctious student managed to get so excited while stabbing the knife between his fingers that he passed out and slammed his head onto the table, forcing a pencil up his nose and lobotomizing himself in the process. After that, the school banned pencils from the playground and suggested students use pens instead. 

Still, Alsum was a leader. He had nothing to fear. Years of conditioning, both physical and mental, made this task a simple one for him. It was what this task meant to his persona that worried him. He knew that he should focus on guiding the game to a safe conclusion, but there were other truths that had to be considered. Where would he end up? He decided second place, or third place if his focus on safety distracted him enough. To achieve first place would be folly - that would inspire jealousy, and a jealous student body would not do.

"Ayy, principal. Safe me a spot." he shouted. "Let's get our game on!"