7 – Revelations

Lunch hour was one of his less favoured parts of his day. Interaction with the other students including his bullies with only limited teacher oversight and nothing to distract them. His best outcome was being left alone and being able to eat in silence for the hour. Frequently this wasn't afforded to him though as it was an hour where Jeffrey could easily harass him and if it wasn't him it would often be one of the members of his group.

He ended up grabbing one of the more affordable lunches. He wasn't poor, but his father hated spending money on him so the affordable options were all he could go for. The only upside was that some of the healthy meals that would support the growth of his body were actually among the more affordable options. Usually he would have forgone those options for not being as tasty as some of the other cheap options available, but his gains would be much sweeter in the long run and he was fully motivated on that right now. He ended up going with a high protein medium fat and low carb meal consisting of mostly chicken and greens with some full fat milk to drink.

Searching the entire cafeteria he he finally found an open table to sit at when Jeffrey forcefully shoved him into the cafeteria table.

"Watch where you're going Scrawn. That table is taken. Find your own." Jeffrey sneered at him despite not even having grabbed his own lunch yet. He was surrounded by his buddies and of course Mara being Jeffrey's girlfriend was there too. Dave could only sigh at his bad luck for running into Jeffrey before he got distracted by his own lunch.

Thinking about his new system he wondered what ability Jeffrey had. He was sure it was something related to the brain due to Jeffrey's outstanding academic performance.

[Host can inspect other people's information.]

'What? I can? Ok inspect Jeffrey.' he ordered the system in surprise. As soon as he thought it a familiar screen popped up, expect it didn't show his own status this time.

[Inspect]

[Name: Jeffrey Williams]

[Age: 17]

[Abilities:]

[Cognitive Overload]

[The ability to rapidly absorb and digest knowledge. Allows for eidetic memory along with the the ability to easily acquire and synthesise knowledge.

Useful for learning and performing cognitive tasks. Useful for excelling at academics and in fields that require learning and applying large amounts of knowledge.]

'Not too unexpected. I was expecting as much with his academic performance,' he thought upon seeing Jeffrey's ability.

Jeffrey had excelled in all his tests for as long as Dave knew him, which was when they ended up in the same high school. He was always in the top performers of their school year, the complete opposite of Dave. With that ability along with the strong financial support of his wealthy family it really wasn't surprising that Jeffrey would excel in school. There was nothing holding him back. This world had been too kind to this douchebag.

How sweet would it be to take from him? It would be so satisfying to see him fall and all he needed to do was somehow manage to sleep with his first crush and former childhood bestie turned bully.

Speaking of the devil he decided to also check out "dear old" Mara who was of course present for his bullying.

[Name: Mara Adams]

[Age: 17]

[Abilities:]

[Neural Empath]

[Enhanced mirror neurons in the brain allow for much stronger mirroring of peoples' emotions giving the person a much stronger sense of another's feelings and emotions. Extremely useful in social situations and for manipulation.]

'Holy shit, this bitch!' he thought.

He had actually known he since they first met in the same elementary school and had actually been very close friends. He ended up falling for her when they got to high school. During high school their relation had radically shifted though. Once puberty hit and the boys with physical talents really took off showing how he really had no physical talent despite his father's abilities he was put squarely in the losers category in high school. At the same time also falling behind on the educational attainment front just cemented his status even further.

First she distanced herself from him when the class started to be split between the "cool" kids and the losers with her squarely in the cool kids camp while he was one of the losers. During her puberty she blossomed and became one of the most beautiful girls in class and always got along with everyone well which had lead to her popularity among both the boys and girls. Then when she started dating Jeffrey though it shifted from indifference to her actively being part of the bullying.

Seeing her ability though the bitch must have been fully aware of his feelings for her and also just how much she was hurting himself by supporting his greatest bully Jeffrey. He also suspected her being aware of his feelings for her and possibly sharing it with Jeffrey might be why Jeffrey has the biggest hate boner for him out of all of his bullying victims.

He could actually notice her eyebrow quirk a little as he was enraged at her causing him to immediately focus on cooling himself down. Couldn't ruin his cover. He ended up forcing a light form of self hypnosis to change his mindset at least at the surface level. He still "loved her despite the pain" was what he was hypnotising himself into while she was around.

"Sorry about that." he managed to say through gritted teeth. He had to remind himself he would have his revenge eventually. Even with just his new physical ability once he built up his body like his father's used to be he would be able crush Jeffrey in physical appearance and sports which was a good start. He wasn't going to be satisfied with just that though. Just stopping Jeffrey's bullying wasn't near enough. He needed his pound of flesh from Jeffrey and he would get it.

In the end all he could do for now was to find himself a new place to sit after Jeffrey and his clique took the table he found from him. All he could do was seethe while finishing his lunch.