Ravnica 2: The Blackmailer

Ravnica 2: The Blackmailer

Standing on the other side of the door was a small freshman kid wearing a black shirt and blue jeans. On his forehead was a ‘D’ printed in blue marker. The kid seemed afraid of what Boros was about to do to him. Which was nothing, since this kid wasn’t the owner of the voice he heard.
“Where is he?” He asked, used to this kind of thing.
The freshman simply turned and began to walk around the gym, passed the outside tennis courts, towards an external hallway that connected one classroom to another. Boros knew that this hallway would eventually lead to an empty classroom that his pseudo-rival had set aside for his club, which he called the Chess Club, which was, in reality, where he held his club. What they did, exactly, Johnny didn’t know. The club was simply there, doing something on some day of the week, and he seemed to be the butt end of every joke.

Plenty of seniors have the same goal in mind that by the end of the school year they will be the valedictorian, or the ultimate skater, or the one who goes to the best college, or the one who will be the Editor-In-Chief for the newspaper, or the varsity captain for baseball. For Malcolm Dimir, none of those things were true. Dimir had high grades, good classes, and the teachers loved him, but he was hardly known amongst students from the junior class to the freshman class. Freshman knew Dimir only this year, and as a source of power from which they could draw from. There were bulletins placed strategically throughout the school that freshman read, and Dimir sent out email messages to select students to meet him after classes or between classes to assess their skills. His informants, as he would call them, were only out for one reason: to gather dirt and information on specific individuals, to blackmail them into revealing their deeper secrets, or to persuade them to hand something over.
Dimir was highly intelligent, but not on hard fact or textbook knowledge. Dimir knew how to use fluid intelligence to wrack peoples’ minds. His abstract thinking skills were among the best in the school, which allowed him to see patterns in chess and play chess to cover up whatever other club he might be running. For Dimir, the last year of school would be a way to obtain absolute power of the school, or at least certain figureheads in the school. He would do this from a position of absolute invisibility.
He needed to work quickly, however, and what better way than to continue his cat-and-mouse with Johnny Boros? He sat inside the nearly-empty club room, playing chess against a new freshman informant. In corners of the room were bodyguard-like students, there purely for security reasons. Dimir was playing an impeccable game of chess when the freshman led Boros into the classroom, only one of the classrooms he could use as his temporary ‘clubhouse.’ The freshman closed the door behind Johnny, and the athlete waited as Dimir finished off his opponent with a checkmate.
“An excellent game.”
Johnny absolutely despised looking at Malcolm’s face. He had pale skin, dark blue eyes, and a smug smile on his face like he was always ahead of the game. To top it all off, he styled his hair specifically to have the jet black strands fall down to his neck then curl diagonally and back, in an evil fashion. Malcolm motioned to the chair.
“Have a seat, Johnny.” He said, quietly.
“I think I’ll stand, thanks.” Boros crossed his arms. “Don’t need to play into any of your games. Not stupid, you know.”
The two were complete opposites. One, an athlete and a hero of the school. The other, a scrawny nerd and clear antagonist to the school and its rules.
“Johnny, I’d have thought you’d learned by now that whether or not you sit down has no effect on what’s about to happen to you.” Malcolm had that odd stare and simultaneous smile on his face, one that said he liked to toy with people. “How’s Felicia?”
“None of your business, even though I doubt you don’t know.”
Malcolm began to put the chess pieces on the board aside, into a small bucket.
“I’m not convinced she’s aware of your…escapades here on your first day of school, what with you putting your tongue down Trish’s throat and then proceeding to plan a date with Miss Caroline of the Journalism Club. I mean, if she were to find out, what trouble would you be in?”
“Not enough.” Johnny shrugged. “She knows I’m not a one-woman man. Go ahead and tell her.”
“Oh no, Johnny. No, no.” Malcolm folded the board in half and set it aside so he could fold his arms on the desk in front of him. “That would be much too easy.” Then he pretended to be surprised and raised a finger. It sickened Johnny to witness how robotic this boy was. “I’ve got a better idea.”
Every emotion seemed to come unnaturally to Malcolm. His face slowly went into each smile, or to tone down to a frown, and each emotion eventually froze back into a neutral position.
“I’m thrilled,” Boros said, sarcastically.
“I hope you’re not too connected to your sex life, Johnny.” Malcolm reached into the desk and pulled out a sheet of paper, folded horizontally. “Because according to this document, here, you have herpes.”
“Bull shit, dude.” Boros almost smiled at the ridiculous nature of the statement. “I don’t have herpes. Bring that up to me, let me see it if you’re so sure.”
“You may come and see it for yourself.” Malcolm gestured to the folded document on the table and folded his fingers together, methodically. “I mean, quite frankly, you have herpes or our baseball team is the best one in the world. Thank goodness it’s not.”
Johnny ignored Malcolm’s last statement and walked up to take a look at the folded page on the school desk. He unfolded it to see it had nothing on it. It was a blank sheet. Malcolm was playing at something.
“What is this? You have nothing. Just like I thought, bitch.”
“Oh?” Dimir feigned confusion and took the sheet from Johnny’s hands, looking it over carefully. “Because to me, this is clearly a health statement from an established doctor; a statement that says you would be ineligible to…perform in the bedroom.” Malcolm looked up, and in a split second Johnny had raised his fist and the other had jumped out of his seat.
“Ah ah ah!” Malcolm had his left hand balled into a fist and his right hand up for defense. “You are in a room with eight other men, several of which have already taken a careful step towards you in case you should do anything stupid. It is not wise of you to do anything more than stand and listen.”
“You have nothing, kid. You’re way in over your head.” Johnny put down his fist but still seemed very upset over what he was hearing. “I’m outta here.”
“Now, hold on, Johnny, you can’t mean you’re leaving.” Malcolm stuffed the page in his pocket. “Hear me, Johnny – I hold complete control over the newspaper. Directly after they’re done editing the pages, I can simply slip in a few errors, perhaps a whole paragraph stating that Johnny Boros is ineligible to perform in the bedroom, and by that phrase you know what I mean to put in.”
“So what? You think I’m gonna sit here and listen to this bull shit? You have nothing on the newspaper, and I could just ask Caroline about checking it over again.”
“You would gamble on that, Johnny?” Malcolm was actually calling him out at this point, as Boros got closer and closer to the door. “If I don’t hear about your resignation from your team sports by the end of this week, it will be widely known by the school that you have herpes by the end of next week. Do I make myself clear, Johnny?”
The athlete stopped in his tracks. This was the game Malcolm was playing; this was his entire game revealed.
“You want me to choose between playing sports with herpes and not playing sports at all?”
“Incorrect. Your decision is not what I want. I want you to resign from sports; that is what I want.”
Malcolm had made some sick jokes in the past, but he was going out of his way this time, Johnny could tell. He was serious or he was great at making it seem as though he were serious.
“And you can actually go into that journalism room and change the paper without anybody noticing, not even the teacher?”
“Johnny,” Malcolm walked up to Johnny Boros and did his best to put the most neutral expression on his face. “Let us just say that I am willing to do whatever it takes to make sure you are off the sports teams for this year. I’ve had enough of you playing the star for the Rebels. This school doesn’t need you being a hero anymore. For that reason, I am putting you out of commission one way or another.”
With the slightest growl under his breath, Johnny Boros stared down Malcolm Dimir.
“I’m playing the sports.”
Malcolm grit his teeth, but tried to make it appear as though he did nothing at all.
“Get ready for humiliation, then.” He walked back to his desk and sat down at it. “We’re done here.”