Vince hit hard. After each thrust, Richie was on the mat. The pain was unbearable, but the coach, with threatening shouts, forced the boy to his feet and continue the fight. After such a beating-for there was no other way to describe it-there would clearly be bruises that would take a long time to heal.
In the end, Richie, tired, angry and driven to the brink, became so embittered that after another blow, lying on the mats and not finding the strength to get up, he raised his head and exclaimed in his heart:
- I hope you get hit, slapped and twisted!
At that very moment, Richie felt himself losing consciousness.
When Richard opened his eyes, he saw a white ceiling. His nose itched with the smell of medicine and the indescribable aroma that comes from irradiating a room with an ultraviolet lamp. Looking around, he noticed that everything was white, and concluded that he was in a hospital.
A nurse peered into the room. Seeing that the boy had woken up, she closed the door. The loud clicking of heels could be heard from the hallway. Less than ten seconds later, Richard's worried father appeared at his bedside.
"Son, you're awake. The doctors said you lost consciousness due to exhaustion, but I didn't believe them."
- Dad, I wanted to ask you to make sure that the coach who taught us fencing today never comes near children again.
- Son, I'm afraid he won't be able to do this.
- Thank you, father.
"Richie, it's not my fault," Gerald shook his head.
- I understand, people don't talk about things like that out loud.
- No, Richie, I'm serious. What's the last thing you remember?
- Mister Vince beat me up, I couldn't get up anymore, I shouted something at him and then there was darkness.
- So, Richie. After you lost consciousness, something bad happened to Mr. Vince. He dropped his sword, slipped on it, and fell. In the fall, he knocked down a support column, and the ceiling of the training room collapsed. Luckily, none of the children were injured, but Mr. Vince was crushed under a concrete block. The doctors say he was severely twisted. The bones will heal incorrectly, and for some medical reason, there is nothing that can be done to change that. Mr. Vince is now disabled and will never be able to wield a sword again. The police investigated the ceiling collapse. Other children spoke about how Mr. Vince treated you. So, after he is released from the hospital, he will face trial.
"An interesting coincidence," Richard drawled.
- What are you talking about, son?
"Just some nonsense popping into my head. You know, Dad, I'm not going to that gym anymore. Either get me a decent personal trainer, or find another class where they don't hire crazy trainers and where the ceilings don't collapse!"
- Richie, I've already thought about this and wanted to tell you myself that you won't be returning to this section.
The transmigrator spent little time in the hospital. He was discharged the following afternoon. The attending doctor was amazed at how quickly the boy's wounds were healing. He mentioned something about his remarkable heredity and high level of regeneration.
There's nothing to do in a hospital, even the Royal Children's Hospital. Time flows like molasses. The only thing left for Richard to do was reflect on what had happened.
Ultimately, the transmigrator came to the conclusion that he was a mutant. Moreover, it was no longer possible to attribute the inconsistencies in historical events to a poor memory of a past life. The only reasonable conclusion was that the transmigrator had found himself not in the past, but in a parallel world, where time lagged behind the universe of the boy's past life.
And here's the question: is he the only one, a mutant with unusual abilities, or are there many of them?
Richie had no doubt that Coach Vince's misfortune was his fault. Just as he'd wished, Mr. Vince had been slammed, slammed, and twisted. But since this was the first time something like this had happened since the hit, Richard assumed his supernatural abilities only activated during emotional peaks. These abilities could also include enhanced regeneration and even a sharp memory.
However, the transmigrator doubted that this was the first use of Richard's supernatural abilities. There were enough facts to conclude that. First, some time ago, the main estate shook, as if after a powerful explosion. Second, after that, the mind of an adult transmigrator appeared in Richie's body. Third, it was known that the boy had previously experienced strong negative emotions: the reluctance of his school peers to interact with him, their ignoring him, the excessive workload for a child, a cold relationship with his father, his mother having run away, and the boy having only one friend whom he saw only once a week. All of this is enough for a child to, if not go crazy, then at least feel, to put it mildly, uncomfortable and want to die.
If the transmigrator understood correctly, then in addition to strong emotions, activating the mutant skill requires setting a premise with a clear wish. An example would be the incident with the coach. If so, the original Richie could have wished to disappear or switch with someone else. But then the theory about a scientific experiment transferring consciousness into the past can be considered invalid.
"Could I have ended up in a world described in movies, comics, or literature?" Richard wondered. "After all, many science fiction stories about transmigrators describe how the hero ends up in a familiar, fictional universe. There was even a scientific explanation for this: information knows no boundaries, and some people can connect their consciousness to the infosphere and read data about parallel universes. But if that's true, how do I know which world I've ended up in? And if I do, how do I know what version of the universe it is?"