One-four-three-one. One-four-three-one.

  My hand trembled, limp in the air, as I pressed down on the buttons of my dorm room's electronic passcode lock. After three tries, the door opened with a mechanical click, and I stumbled forward with two fatigued steps before collapsing on the floor.

  I was too exhausted to bother turning around. Instead, I used my legs to close my door, pushing against it with my feet. It locked automatically behind me, and I let out a soft sigh. After a long day at the Ability Research Summit, even the most basic tasks felt far more tedious than they should have been.

  As I lay there on the floor, my palms and face squished against the hardwood, I could feel a thick layer of grime and hair coating the bottom of my room. How long had it been since I had last cleaned my floor? Since I'd last washed my clothes?

  The answer, like it always seemed to be, was too long.

  I groaned, pulled myself to my feet, and shuffled to my bathroom. The girl in the mirror looked a little better, a little less worn down than I felt - I decided it must have been because of my makeup. I wiped away my concealer, revealing two dark flaps of skin under my eyes.

  Way to go, Meili. You're closer to eye suitcases than eye bags.

  I opened my phone, planning to distract myself with a video while brushing my teeth. Instead, a flurry of text notifications from Rei caught my attention, distracting me from my distraction.

  Rei: ## Hi Meili. I sent you the security footage files from this week ##

  Rei: ## Oh, and here's a list of all the fight timestamps for each recording file: ##

  Rei: ## Courtyard cam: 01:34.56, 06:21.93, 19:54.28, 28:33.65, 41:27.42…… ##

  Rei: ## Cafeteria cam: 04:09.35, 11:54.78, 16:31.85, 27:20.46, 36:58.21…… ##

  Rei: ## Hallway A cam: 05:40.90, 16:33.51, 35:56.75, 48:26.41, 66:21.30…… ##

  Rei: ## Hallway B cam: 03:35.77, 14:23.27, 37:16.45, 51:51.17, 64:19.08…… ##

  Rei: ## Hallway C cam: 02:52.24, 17:55.95, 29:42.59, 46:16.73, 58:49.08…… ##

  Rei: ## Hallway D cam: 07:30.69, 12:21.62, 27:36.57, 39:52.14, 56:36.50…… ##

  Rei: ## I haven't done the extra work to know which fights fit our criteria for action, but I figured this would help you out. ##

  I gaped at my phone, toothpaste dripping out of my wide-open mouth.

  I started typing back.

  Meili: ## You didn't have to do this. Aren't you busy with all your college applications and scholarship stuff? ##

  He quickly responded.

  Rei: ## Ehh… Sort of? ##

  Rei: ## College applications ended two weeks ago, like mid-February. Scholarship essays don't take that much time. I'm just reusing my college ones lol ##

  A smile found its way onto my face. Even in an alternate universe, some things stayed the same.

  Meili: ## That's smart. Still, finding all the fights must've taken at least a few hours. And I'm the one who's supposed to be in charge of gathering targets… ##

  Rei: ## Don't worry about it. I know how busy you must have been preparing for your research conference this week. I figured you'd be too tired to want to slog through a thousand hours of footage this time. ##

  I looked in the mirror again.

  Meili: ## Yeah. Thanks. ##

  Tomorrow would be Sunday. Like many of my recent Sundays, I was going to spend it researching targets, creating fight strategies, and sleeping off most of the horrible fatigue that had set in on my body. But there were at least a few hours of unoccupied time peeking through on the horizon. Of course, I knew that most of it would be spent on mindless chores, but mindless chores were in some sense exactly what I wanted.

  I went to bed with a relieved feeling in my stomach, dreaming of a life where nothing needed to be done.

  .

  .

  .

  When morning came, I declined an offer to go to the mall, and then another to go see a movie.

  I holed myself up in the school library instead, trying to marathon through a few hours of fight recordings before lunchtime. It wasn't a favored pastime of mine. After watching several movies worth of footage every week for multiple months, I'd come to the realization that most fights at Wellston were entirely unnecessary.

  "Wha-? Excuse me? Do you think you're funny, grabbing the last slice like that? Give it to me." the aggressor in the video, a tall brown-haired girl, demanded.

  My face scrunched up in annoyance - incredibly unfortunate that I had to witness yet another instance of fight scenario #9 (You stole the last piece of x! That's mine!).

  "What the hell are you talking about? Do you own the cafeteria or something?" the other party in the conflict, a red-haired boy who seemed no older than fifteen, shot back. "They'll make a new one in, like, ten minutes. Just wait a little bit!" Understandably, he didn't feel he'd done anything wrong and began to walk away, refusing to give his food up.

  Still, I winced at his response. That the brunette's first course of action had been to start a fight implied she was at least on the higher end of mid-tier, possibly even an elite.

  She simply stared at him. "Alright. You asked for it."

  Immediately corroborating my thoughts, the older girl's violet eyes began glowing with amusement, and a massive hand-like construct suddenly materialized into the air beside her. The red-headed boy quickly activated his ability in response, likely an attribute enhancement ability judging by the lack of visual changes – yet the fight was essentially over from the moment it began.

  With a sweeping finger motion, the girl mentally controlled her gigantic purple hand to wrap around the red-haired boy. She gave no other visual cues, and it shot through the air far more quickly than he could react to, catching him in a vice-grip hold.

  "Stop! Why are you- get off!" he yelled, struggling to move his limbs more than a few inches. The audio recording captured the creaking noise of fracturing bones.

  After trying to push against the crushing pressure of its grip for a few seconds, the boy became frustrated, crying out in anger. "Fuck! It's just some goddamn pizza! Why the hell are you taking this so seriously?"

  The older girl smirked.

  "If it 'wasn't so serious,'" she mocked, "why didn't you just give it to me?" She walked over to the boy, slapping him across the face repeatedly while his helpless body remained suspended in mid-air. "You may just be a stupid freshman, but I don't let anybody at this school disrespect me, least of all a weakling like you. You shouldn't have even tried to stop me."

  "Shut up! I'm not a weakling!" he shouted, writhing wildly. "You're the one who's weak – I bet your body is no stronger than a cripple! Once I break free, I'll fuck you up. Just wait and see!"

  "Wow. You're right," the brown-haired girl replied. "My body enhancement isn't that great. If I didn't have my 'Psychic Hand,' maybe you could even lay a hand on me." She tightened the purple construct even more, forcing the boy to thrash intensely to avoid having his organs rearranged.

  She grinned. "That's why I'd better slow you down a bit – just to be safe."

  Previously unused, the massive thumb of the purple hand began to press against his lower leg.

  The boy's ankle began to fold into itself, reshaped into a harsher and harsher angle by the pressure. He seemed determined to take it, but eventually, the pain grew too great, and he could only scream out hoarsely in agony. "Wait! I'm sorry! I surrender – I surrender!"

  She laughed and continued to bend his ankle like rubber, eliciting increasingly louder cries from the boy. "Could you repeat that? I'm so hungry that my hearing isn't working. Maybe if I could have eaten something…"

  "Please! I surrender! I'll never do it again!"

  Finally, the brown-haired girl deactivated her ability, dropping him harshly onto the ground. The moment she did, he ran out of the camera's view, a pained expression on his face as his right leg dragged limply behind him against the floor.

  Throughout their 'fight,' the surrounding students in the cafeteria only pointed and whispered. None of them tried to mediate in any way - and despite turning up the volume on my computer to its maximum, I couldn't hear a single word of criticism spoken against her. Instead, it was mostly silence, with a few words of ridicule on the redhead for being 'too stupid to recognize he was outmatched.'

  The slice of pepperoni pizza that started everything had long fallen to the ground. The brunette simply shrugged, completely unbothered, before walking out of frame.

  I paused the video, thinking.

  Obviously, it had never really been about the pizza in the first place. The older girl had expected someone she viewed as her lower to grovel and follow her orders. When he didn't, she threw a fit and went on an ego trip - so, all in all, it was pretty standard fare for a high-ranker at Wellston High.

  Taking a deep breath to calm my mind, I jotted down some notes about the conflict. Violation level: 6/10. Though not very well, the loser could still run away at the end. The winner continued attacking after the fight was clearly over, but only briefly. Benefit level: 7/10. Target is a singular lower-elite, and confrontation would yield moderate growth.

  I hesitated, trying to figure out the best response…

  Conclusion: Time and energy willing, confront the aggressor. This is lower priority, considering the likely existence of higher-severity, higher-benefit cases.

  Briefly, I felt the urge to rewatch the video, but I stopped myself short. I couldn't allow myself to get hung up on such a minor incident.

  'Minor incident.' That was the most unpleasant part - the fight was only a 'minor incident.' A few broken bones and a badly mangled ankle? A minute of public humiliation and torture? Similar events occurred every day at Wellston High.

  I unpaused the camera recording, skipping forward to the next timestamp Rei had given me.

  Twenty-seven down, seventy-one to go. Pick out five or six, and you're ready for the week.

  .

  .

  .

  "This is the third time I've seen you messing with my girl, Ademir."

  In the video, two boys stood in the center of a dimly lit hall. According to the timestamp, it was early morning on a Thursday - the perfect time for a confrontation. One was tall, or at least taller than the other, with mid-length silver hair. The other was shorter, his green hair cut into a spiky crown.

  Fight scenario #3: romantic conflict.

  Ademir (the green-haired boy) crossed his arms, leaning his back against a locker nonchalantly. "So? Is it a crime to be friends with someone? Clau can interact with whoever she wants."

  "Friends, huh?" the silver-haired boy said quietly, his tone dulled by the recording yet full of hostility. "That's a good way of putting it."

  Admir didn't react, keeping a poker face. "Exactly. So we're good now. If that's all, I'm just gonna…"

  "So what the hell is this, then?" The taller boy pulled out his phone, displaying something I couldn't catch due to the recording's angle. "Friends go around kissing each other on the lips now, that right?"

  Slowly, Ademir unfolded his arms, bringing them up in a more combat-ready stance. "Look, Ren, I don't think I can tell you any more than she probably already told you. We were playing Spin the Bottle with a couple of upperclassmen, and the bottle landed on her."

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  He began to back up cautiously, eyes glowing with ability activation. "Maybe it wasn't the right choice, but we were a couple of drinks in, and we were just going with the flow of the atmosphere. Also, wouldn't you say Clau deserves at least an equal share of the blame for playing when she already has you? She easily could have left, and-"

  "Enough!" Ren yelled, activating his ability as Dark gray blades began to grow from his palms. "I've had enough of your stupid excuses. This is far from the first time, and now I'm wondering how many times I never even realized you fucked with her!"

  In response, Ademir's arms lit up with neon green energy. "Look, man, I don't know what else to tell you! She's my friend, so we end up bumping into each other a lot at parties. That's all there is to it! Sometimes, you end up in a place where it's awkward to object – you understand what I'm saying?"

  "Oh, I understand, alright." Ren chuckled, seemingly broken. "It's strange. I always used to wonder why I was born with this ability. Why blades, out of all the powers I could have had?"

  He scraped his swords together, sharpening them against each other as he walked slowly closer to the green-haired boy. "I get it now. Thanks to my ability, I can make sure you never so much as desire a woman for the rest of your life."

  Three minutes later, I paused the video, Ademir's voice ringing in my ears. As was routine, I jotted down some notes. Violation level: 8.5/10. Perpetrator seriously attempted to permanently cripple the victim's reproductive capability. Benefit level: 6/10. Target is an upper mid-tier, somewhere in the range of 3.2-3.4.

  .

  .

  .

  Sprawled across the floor, the blonde girl frantically scrambled, snatching up stacks upon stacks of paper that had spilled onto the ground from her arms.

  "Hello? Aren't you going to say sorry or something?" a black-haired girl said, looking down at the blonde. She turned to her companion. "This is why I don't like low-tiers. I swear, Chakrii, they don't even know how to speak! Just look at her!"

  "I totally get you," the third girl agreed. "And they're so clumsy, too! Imagine not even knowing how to walk in a straight line – and getting papers all over the hall? It's so cliche that I don't know what to say."

  Fight scenario #6: "You need to apologize."

  The blonde low-tier simply ignored them, only focused on recovering all the fallen papers. With the video zoomed in, they seemed to be math printouts of some sort, but exactly why a student was carrying them, I didn't entirely understand.

  "Oh!" Chakrii exclaimed, scooping a page off the ground. "Aren't these Mr. Wagner's math problems for tomorrow's test?" She handed it to the black-haired girl. "Look, Kaira. These problems are the current unit, aren't they? The paper even has his name printed on it."

  "Ah! Please give that back!" the low-tier girl said, noticing they'd taken one. "It's super important that I deliver all of them. We didn't print any extras, and-"

  I winced.

  The black-haired girl activated her ability, responding not by dropping the paper but by punting the low-tier girl headfirst into a wall.

  "Wow. The little bitch really doesn't know her place." She rolled her eyes, strolling to the low-tier's bleeding, unmoving body. "When you bump into someone like me, you apologize."

  Chakrii walked up beside her, smiling. "She still hasn't asked for forgiveness yet, right? What do you say we teach her a little lesson - you know, about how people like her should behave?"

  Letting the video play on, I scribbled down my notes. Violation level: 8.5/10. Perpetrators caused further injury to a student who was already helpless. Benefit level: 8.5/10. Targets are a pair of high mid-tiers. In the files, both are listed at 3.3.

  .

  .

  .

  "Where's the fucking homework, huh? Where is it?"

  Fight scenario #5: academic extortion.

  The girl in the video simply stood there unmoving, eyes directed straight toward the ground. "I didn't – I don't want to-"

  "Huh?" her bully interrupted. "Can't you speak up a bit? Are you trying to say something?"

  I zoomed in on the video. The girl's fists were clenched, blood dripping out of nail-dug holes in her palms, and her body seemed to vibrate with anger.

  "I'm done!" she finally snapped, loud enough to make me grimace. "I don't want to do it anymore, alright? I'm gonna crash my GPA and lose my scholarship if this keeps up!"

  "Okay. I see how it is," the bully said. "In that case…"

  "Wait, please-"

  Knuckles made contact with flesh. Over and over again.

  I didn't look away. Violation level: 8/10. Broken bones and temporary facial disfiguration after clear surrender. Benefit level: 7/10. Target is clearly an augmentation type on the lower end of elite-tier.

  .

  .

  .

  The video showed hallway C on Friday night. It was too dim for me to recognize much, though I could faintly make out four murky figures walking in the dark. Three walked in front, while one walked behind them, chattering frequently as the other three remained quiet.

  "I totally get what you guys are saying. Double integrals can be super confusing to me, too! If you want, there's this trick I've recently started using…"

  "So, where's the classroom you guys were studying in? Is it that one over there, the one with the dim lamp on?"

  "Um, why aren't there any textbooks? I mean, the table is completely empty, and-"

  "Wait! What are you doing? Let- let go of- Mmmph! Mmmph! Mmm-"

  " …………"

  "He sure thrashed around a lot, huh? Glad we bought enough rope."

  "Yeah. What was his name again? Kradod?"

  "Think so."

  "I can't believe he was stupid enough to fall for it. Who the hell is still studying after college apps are already over?"

  "That's what I was telling you, dude! He must've cheated on his standardized tests. How else would stupid, low-tier trash like him manage a scholarship at New Seattle?"

  "In any case, it's good we have him tied up now."

  "Yeah. We need to make him confess."

  Oh. So you can scream in agony even when unconscious, I realized. But if you scream too loudly, it'll wake you up again. So that's how it works.

  Violation level: 9.5/10. Clear and unambiguous torture designed to inflict as much pain and bodily harm as possible. Benefit level: unknown. Targets are a group of three, each at least mid-tier. Still, this video shows a higher severity than even Zeke. This is the week's top priority incident, no doubt.

  I stopped my notetaking and paused the video, feeling a trickle of pressure sliding down my face. I brought a finger to my cheek.

  Wet. My finger was wet.

  "Oh. I'm crying."

  ***Beautiful***

  What a nice Monday afternoon.

  Rei hummed to himself, his good mood showing as he walked through the school. College applications were over, and the more time passed, the better he felt about his chances of qualifying for his top-choice program - Wellston University's prestigious 5-year Master's track in educational administration.

  Even better, the last student who bumped into him in the hallway had only apologized to him three times! A measly three times! It was amazing evidence that his effort toward projecting a friendlier, less overbearing presence was having an effect. Being a leader didn't have to be about power and violence alone.

  ...Not that he hadn't done his fair share of it. Contrary to popular student belief about his 'softness,' Rei had never felt he was incapable of getting his hands dirty.

  At the beginning of his freshman year, he'd been a 3.2. Now, six months into his senior year, he was a 5.5. How did he manage to get so strong so quickly? Not by going around making friends with everyone, that was for damn sure. Just like everyone else who'd reached his position, Rei had plenty of blood on his hands. The difference was that he recognized his necessary evils as evils - and tried compensate for them through his reign as king.

  And Wellston was getting safer under his reign; fights per week remained relatively constant, but broken bones and other incapacitating injuries were slowly dropping off. With less of a risk of spending multiple days recovering in the infirmary and missing classes, lower-tiered students were no longer at as much of an academic disadvantage as they were a year before. Of course, many colleges wouldn't accept low-tiers, no matter how good their grades were - but things were trending upward at the very least.

  A lot of it was thanks to Meili. The population of students who could match her was quickly decreasing, and anyone would think twice about breaking a downed opponent's legs when the same could very easily happen to them as a consequence. Even better, she was only a first-year, with three more years left at Wellston. Rei could imagine her holding down the fort for a few years while he went to college, and hopefully, he'd land a position at Wellston not too long after Meili left. As long as everything went according to plan, Wellston High would keep on trending upward.

  Then he arrived at the infirmary, and his lofty imagination blinked into nothing.

  There were bloody heaps of flesh piled on each bed. Making his rounds to the medical ward had lately become his most difficult responsibility as king, and each time he visited, he was reminded of exactly what they were trying to fix.

  This time was the worst yet, and the scene before him was a painting of war. He found elbows cracked the wrong way, legs with bone-deep craters gouged into them, and appendages that appeared closer to mangled stubs than a hand or foot.

  Finally, after ascertaining that the injured students were slowly healing and the medical staff were doing their jobs, Rei allowed himself to look away. He had rarely seen such a terrible scene in his years at Wellston, rarer still that it was the work of a single person.

  It wasn't as though he didn't understand what Meili was doing. Simply beating them until they surrendered wouldn't be enough to cause real change. If she were more lenient with them, then they would likely return to their original sadistic behavior without a second thought, and it would require multiple beatdowns to get them to stop. Instead, by being just as brutal as they were, Meili could hand out large attitude adjustments in a single fight, forcing Wellston's worst offenders to quickly change their behavior for fear of ending up like their own victims.

  Logical understanding didn't imply emotional acceptance. Maybe it didn't exist, but he still hoped there was a better way.

  If there was, he hadn't found it yet.

  "Horrible, isn't it?"

  Rei spun around in surprise, finding Meili standing behind him. She'd likely snuck there while he wasn't looking.

  "Horrible to look at, yeah." He noted the slight redness in her eyes and on the tip of her nose. "Are you doing okay? You look like you've been…"

  She nodded, shoulders shuddering slightly at the motion.

  "I'm fine," Meili said, a breathy shakiness to her voice. "It's just - some of the ingredients in the back cause you to tear up a bit. We need them for the serums, and-"

  Her breath hitched. "Yeah. I'm fine."

  Rei was entirely unconvinced.

  "If you say so. By the way, what did these four do, anyway? I get that we're aiming for equivalent consequences, but did they really…?" He motioned in the unconscious students' general direction.

  She groaned quietly. "I found it by sifting through the security camera footage you sent me last week. They're all Seniors. A low-tier guy in their class, Kradod, managed to get into a decent university on an academic scholarship. They were jealous."

  "Really?" Rei asked, confused. "But these guys are all 3.0-plus! Surely they did better off of pure level alone!"

  "They got into better universities," Meili replied, looking away. "But none of them got scholarships or honors, if I had to guess, and the schools they're going to aren't that much better. The thought that they might have done worse in the application process than a low-tier must have triggered their actions."

  He shuddered, a feeling of wrongness creeping up his spine. "Holy fuck. That's-"

  "Awful? Disgusting?" She prompted him, those same words displayed in her expression.

  "Lots of other synonyms," Rei muttered. "And what exactly did they do to him?"

  Meili hesitated.

  "What I did to them," she softly replied, "but concentrated on a single person."

  Rei reeled backward in shock, fearing those exact words would escape her mouth. "What? But that's-!"

  He stopped talking, noticing that the shaking in Meili's shoulders had reappeared.

  "Fuck! I don't know if I can keep this up anymore, Rei!" She burst out, tears trickling from the corners of her eyes. "These assholes are so fucked up, and I have to copy what they do every fucking time! But if I stop, what have I been doing all this for? For what?"

  He shut his mouth, saying nothing.

  Meili sat down on a bedside stool, head in her hands. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I know it hasn't been easy for you, either - and the idea sounded perfect in my head when we first decided on it, you know? Match the punishment to the crime! Once everyone realized the pattern, they wouldn't keep being so fucking cruel!"

  "And it's working." She sniffled, wiping her eyes with a tissue. "By the data, I know it's working. But then some assholes come along and do this kind of shit, and it doesn't feel that way! How many more times am I going to have to do something like this? How many more times?"

  Rei stood there, not knowing what to do. He knew Meili was having some difficulties, but nothing so serious. Yes, he'd been distracted by college applications for a large chunk of the year, but how had he missed it so badly?

  "But I just can't bring myself to talk!" Meili cried out, more raw and unfiltered than he'd ever seen her. "Why should I complain when I'm way better off than everyone else in this stupid world? Objectively, this whole period has been great for me! My level's been jumping up faster than it ever has before, and all the non-psychos at this school seem to respect me more! But I'm the one hurting people, not the other way around. None of this has come back to bite me. So what right do I have to be like this? I have none!"

  "Stop!" Rei interrupted her rant. "I get what you're saying, but making yourself miserable is never a good answer. If you're having issues like these, you need to tell someone about them. If the plan we choose is one you end up having trouble with, you need to be honest with me from the beginning."

  He sighed. "Now tell me honestly: do you think you can last three more months until break rolls around, or do you need to stop?"

  "I- I'm not…" Meili hesitated, obviously having a hard time between the two choices.

  She took a deep breath. "Look, back when Zeke was rampaging, and we were trying to come up with a solution to the brutality at this school, I'm the one who came up with 'mirrored punishments' as the best answer. 'People don't like to get hurt, so they'll start hurting others less to save themselves the pain.' Those were my thoughts at the time." Meili looked him straight in the eyes. "But there's more to it. Do you really want to hear the whole truth?"

  He nodded. "You should have told me everything from the start."

  "Fine. Another part of me wanted the plan, not caring about its effectiveness, because it would help me boost my ability level by a massive amount," Meili admitted. "I like to think of that selfish part as being a minor piece of my motivation - but that's just wishful thinking. It's a lot larger than that."

  She sniffled, wiping away more tears. "If I stop now, people realize that they can go back to being sadistic freaks, and things return to normal. They might even kick it up a notch to make up for lost time. No progress is made to make the school better. Who would benefit from that, Rei? Who would end up the main beneficiary of all this?"

  Beside himself, Rei answered honestly. "You. It would be you."

  "Exactly!" she cried. "I don't even have to do this for growth anymore. Next year, once you and Kuyo are gone, I'll be strong enough to make the Turf Wars roster as Jack - I'll have all the growth opportunities I need. If I stop now, I've won!"

  Meili nodded blankly, eyes glassy, as though she were trying to convince herself as well as him.

  "Yeah. I can't let myself 'win' that easily," she concluded. "Not when I live in a world like this. All this time, I've been wondering what I'm really doing this for. Is it truly to make the world a better place, or is it for personal satisfaction? Maybe I just want power for the sake of myself, and I've been dressing it up in lofty ideals for my own comfort."

  She smiled at him. "I won't allow myself to be that kind of person, Rei. I'm going to keep pushing. Soon, this school will be one where the words 'I surrender' stop any fight in its tracks, and I don't care how many more people I have to torture to get there."