Fighting Sleep

Alita belonged to a wealthy family who had a lot of influence over the school district. Her mother was a former Victoria's Secret model and her father was the top holistic doctor in the county. As she tells everybody who will listen about her parent's love life, it was pure destiny. Surely it's no surprise that Alita was a beauty queen. Students would describe her as looking like a modern-day Yasmeen Ghauri : one of the top models in the early 90's.

Alita was treated with favoritism which resulted in her parents and the school believing she could do no wrong. Despite being popular, Alita was not a "ditz" and was very intelligent, maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She was a perfectionist in every sense of the word and held several leadership positions, including student council president and debate team leader. She single-handedly led the debate team to first place last year in the state finals. It was the school's first time winning any award since early 2000. Since her arrival, she has been treated like the school's Queen Bee.

Along with her beauty and lifetime winning streak at virtually EVERYTHING, there was a dark side to her. Alita proved why no one should EVER piss off a perfectionist. While holding her role as captain, she ran the practices like a drill sergeant. Everybody in the school heard about the time Jamie Hernandez said the wrong year during one of the debate topics. Alita humiliated her by having her crawl on all fours and had her flunkies throw dunce caps at her. To add salt to the wound, a video of the incident wound up all over the school making her a target of constant torture by her peers. When Jamie threatened to report her to the principal, she threatened to have her parents deported.

After that incident, Jamie's parents pursued legal action against Alita and the school district. Of course, the school district did its best to cover up the incident by paying the family hush money. As a result, her parents dropped the charges but Alita made Jamie's life a living hell thus making her quit the debate team and change schools. All of the kids on the debate team feared her lest they meet the same fate as Jamie.

Unfortunately, with Jamie gone that left the team uneven. Eventually, the school had signups for a replacement debate team member for the fall semester. Alita of course was running the try-outs, as she put it "Only the best can represent the school." After a few students were passed over, Alita finally decided on a new member and her name was Yume.

Upon Yume's arrival at the school, Alita was too lost in her vanity to notice her existence. Even during debate practices, Yume held her own for all topics thrown her way, as long as she didn't outshine Alita. Yume was warned by the teammates not to piss her off and about Jamie. Yume was always a firm believer in the 48 Laws of Power. Rule #1 (never outshine the master). Alita did take notice of Yume's debating skills but not enough that she felt Yume was competition. At least until they had their first heated debate in their English class over the "real villain" of Beowulf. While Yume is usually reserved, this is the one instance where she couldn't hold back poking holes in Alita's logic. Alita was "Team Grendel" while Yume argued for "Team Beowulf". Just the thought of Yume even having the class consider Beowulf as the villain made Alita's blood boil.

"Who does this loser think she is?", Alita thought to herself. "I need to remind this peasant of her place."

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