Snippet #1571903

During lunch time, Jerome had made it to the cafeteria and grabbed a tray. He looked about and tried to spot an empty seat. He habitually looked for places to be alone.
" Yo! Jerome! " Basil was waving his hand at him.
Jerome took this as a friendly gesture and took a seat beside him.
" Well, feeding time at the zoo. As you can already see the people here sit amongst those most similar to them. They call it 'cliques'. "
Jerome observed them quietly.
" Who are those guys? " He pointed towards a small group at one of the corners. They appeared to have the best seats and the most space.
" Those are the tournament fighters. They think themselves Gods. Of course they are the most advanced of students. Many of them have student loans to pay off, or their crazy parents want them to overachieve. Some of them just compete for the love of the game. You know, glory. In my case, its my parents who want me to do it. "
" How come you're not sitting amongst them? "
" I find them annoying. Many of them have extremely violent tendencies as well. Always bragging about how much the crowd favors them. "
" So.. what is it like? Fighting in the tournaments? "
Basil sighed. " You don't want to know, or watch one. They're brutal and dangerous. Kids get badly injured, or even killed. The transition from a regular student to one of them is also very painful. The training they go through is almost torture. Our school competes against several other schools all across the globe. But, our school's performance had been anything but decent in the last two decades ago. People come from all over the world to watch them. They've been pretty disappointed lately though. Hence, we've lost alot of endowments and such. Our school is in debt. "