“My Little Pony, My Little Pony. Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahhh...”

“Shoot!” I’m already on the My Little Pony theme song alarm! I can’t believe I slept through the theme song of “She-ra and the Princesses of Power” and the “Game of Thrones” instrumental!

“Oh shoot!” I repeat.

I rock myself straight into a standing position and leap out of my bed to my uniform. I glare at it with deep distaste. It’s a blue button-up striped collared long-sleeved shirt with long khaki pants which ran me a bill of 350$, not including the tie that isn’t included but still required. I find the black gloves I had tossed onto my sink and prepare myself. I ensure I have no makeup left from yesterday, removing the mascara, lipstick, and foundation. I take off the black-lace choker with an anatomical heart that I had left on overnight and stare into the mirror completely disgusted at myself. Oh, I still had long lashes and wonderful hair. My eyes were still the same. But there’s nothing quite as changeable as my fair-weather friend, emotion. I glance at the kitchen knife and then at my black fitness watch. Don’t have the time. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and head out.

I hop down the stairs like a bunny, when my fellow neighbor, a nice philosophy teacher I play chess with on occasion calls out “Can’t you be quieter, you idiot child?”

“Nope! Love you too, old man!” I shout back cheekily.

Elisa is waiting for me, tapping her foot impatiently. I put on my eyeball helmet (they don’t have regulations on helmets at least. Or, they don’t have it yet.) and off we go!

“WHOOOO!!! Ptui... leaf in my mouth... WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

We pull up to the door of Accelerated Eastside High School and Elisa drops me off.

“Now child, don’t get into any trouble.” she says haughtily.

I stick my tongue out. “Me? I am the paragon of perfection. And seriously, child? I’m 2 years younger than you. Not to mention, if I am a child, does that mean you’re the pedophile in this relationship?”

Her head rears back in repulsion. If she goes any farther, she’ll kiss her own ass. She chokes on her own spit. “Touche. You win this round.” She grudgingly admitted, still reeling from my sharp wit.

I wink at her and saunter off smugly.

I can hear the whispers of the girls and a few of the boys about my handsomeness as I walk by. I internally preen like a peacock at all the rightful praise.

_______

“They have to be fruity! Do you think I have a chance with them?”

“Dude, you have zero chance. Me on the other hand...”

“Oh fuck off! You don’t even care about them. You’re just trying to get a rise out of me.”

“It’s working though...”

“...”

_______

“My god he has such a fine ass.”

“Girl, seriously? Keep it in your pants.”

“I’d rather keep him in my pants.”

*Choking noises*

________

“... well I think he’s cute.”

“Yeah. He’s also taken already. By a monster!”

________

“That hoe’s just kissing ass so they can get out of the ghetto.”

________

“They have such a dreamy smile.”

“I agree... they seem quite kind. I’ve heard that they are going to be the main antagonist of the play next week. Maybe we can go there then, and you can spend your time daydreaming about them instead of actually watching the show.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, you precious bean.”

________

They are not-so-subtly telling me they were interested, while still being able to maintain a veneer of deniability. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what they are doing. The other option would be that they thought I would not be able to parse the crowd’s many conversations as I pass, but I think it is best to avoid assuming idiocy. It wasn’t until word spread that I was taken that people finally stopped asking me out daily. Now it’s only every couple weeks. I won’t say I did not enjoy it then though. I deftly avoid contact with any of the students and made my way to Pre-Calculus.

Fuck.

Apparently not deft enough to escape her though.

It’s Alexa standing at my locker with her gaggle of goons because why not? I had stopped using it a while ago because I was tired of the constant fruit stuffed in the locker. She manages to get ridiculous mileage out of mocking my “fruity” self. I mean, where does she even find a durian in this town? Those things smell nasty! Can you imagine opening your locker for your acting supplies and finding one of the smelliest things known to humanity? I still remember their reaction to my reaction to it. I ripped the durian open “accidentally” in their faces, spraying them with the juices, and then loudly thanked them for the present, before taking a big bite of the durian, pretending to savor the sweet pulp. They were disgusted! Hah... it warms my heart. Sure, they punched me until my sides were black and blue, but it was worth the pain.

I grin insouciantly. I am the best actor in our theater troupe for a reason. Really. I ain’t lying. I have the medals to show for it.

“How you doing, Alexa?” I ask amicably.

Her sharp green eyes focus on me. She has long blond hair framing her remarkable face. She does not look as good as those with high Charisma, but it’s certainly enough to be to be the center of attention at our large school. She somehow manages to be original and gorgeous despite the many cookie-cutter photo-shopped images of pretty blondies online. Her uniform manages to look scandalous on her while not breaking any rules. On top of all this, she manages to be both one of the strongest and most intelligent students of the school. In other words, I’m still not convinced she is real and not some eldritch entity here to make all teenagers feel incredibly jealous. Not me though. I’m hot.

I am disgusting. A beautiful trash bag contorted into a flat brick by refuse and sewage. I deserve nothing more than to be a doll in the hands of ghosts.

She grins menacingly at me. I felt my soul wilt. The damned bodybuilder has something up her sleeve.

“Just peachy!” she said, taking a bite of a peach she was just casually holding.

She’s making puns. I’m so screwed. And she’s not using the fruit against me. Which means that this one is particularly innovative.

“Well, I have to go to class. See you soon.” I said, going around them. Please don’t let me go, please don’t let me go, please don’t let me go. Grab onto my shoulders then go ahead to beat me. Please. It is far more preferable to whatever you’re planning.

“See you soon!” the class president said back cheerfully.

Crap. It’s nothing so simple. I can feel goosebumps rising as the fright rises within me. In accelerated schools, you don’t actually get less bullying with more nerds. It just means the bullies are smarter and crueler. To give you an analogy as to why, which would you rather attack you? A person who is well and truly ripped, with a high-level Warrior class, or a skinny low-level Torturer, with all of their tools and implements. The smart individual would choose the former. Unfortunately, I have no choice in the matter since I'm already in this school, and I will have to wait out today with the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

I speed-walk away to Pre-Calculus, making it just in time to avoid being tardy. I sit down, putting down my backpack and our teacher starts the lecture, looking super-focused, while bored out of my ever-loving mind. How does she manage to make such simple math incomprehensible? It’s truly a talent. I can feel my eyes glazing over. Is her ancestor perhaps Professor Binns? I could see the family resemblance. I can feel my exhaustion from yesterday trying to make me fall asleep.

“... and that ends this lecture.”

Escape! I get out with unseemly haste. I feel like I am forgetting something that is making me reticent to get out of class. I start walking haltingly to my art class, trying to remember what it is. It doesn’t come to mind by the time I get there. Unfortunately, I am very rudely reminded what it was I was preparing for. A truly horrendous pain blooms in my upper arm. I like to think I have a very high pain tolerance. This, though, is impressive! I hiss in pain. A cold, extremely thin object moves quickly out of my arm, flesh rubbing against and adhering to the metal needle. I collapse to the ground, giving up on my acting, though I still avoid screaming like most reasonable people would in this situation. It hurts so bad. My eyes bulge out in pain, and I start whimpering quietly. I collapse to the ground in truly exquisite agony. A person moves in my peripheral vision, before crouching down in front of me. Alexa is smug with victory. I could tell she is proud of her handiwork. She is savoring my emotions.

“Finally got you to react, didn’t I? It’s been a while since I achieved a victory, hasn’t it? You’ve really stepped up your game this year, so I thought I’d do the same.” She holds out the needle, suspending it by her fingers pinched around a loop at the end. It’s a thin but dull object about twenty centimeters long, or about eight inches long, for those old fuddy-duddies who still clutch onto the system after Magical Girl Crawling Code changed the U.S.A. to the international metric system. She makes it go back and forth in front of my face. My eyes focus on the swinging instrument of torture. My blood goes almost 8 centimeters (about the length of the long edge of a credit card) all the way up the needle. She must have stabbed me that far. Is she insane? My eyes widen at the realization, and I am shivering and sweating in pain.

A smirk flits across her face as she drinks in my pain.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Don’t worry.” she croons, clutching my hair, pulling my head up roughly.

“I study anatomy. I’m practically on par with the top doctors in terms of my knowledge on this subject. I made sure to avoid any lasting damage. You’ll feel a little weak, and be in awful pain, but maybe a week or so and you’ll be right as rain.”

She lets me fall back onto the cold plastic tiles, frizzes up my hair, and walks off. I just lay there, trying to catch my breath, grimacing.

I stand up, walk to the bathroom, and liberally pour hydrogen peroxide on my arm, nearly whiting out with the fresh pain. My hands deftly wrap gauze around the wound, before pulling my sleeve over the many wounds I have accrued over the years. From my backpack, I pull out a mirror and brush my hair straight again. A face wrought with absolute rage stares back, my teeth bared in frustration.

Unfortunately, if I'm being honest, hopelessness was definitely part of the expression as well. I can’t actually stop her from doing anything, because while I’m strong (one has to be strong to be great at dancing) I am just not absolutely jacked like she is. Not to mention, she can sue me ten ways till Sunday. She is rich, but unfortunately not even because of her parents. Oh no, they are upper-middle class, but that’s not quite enough to put me into the ground, or have the school prefer her opinion over mine. The school is not that corrupt. They have plenty of rich kids.

No, she’s all self-made, having patented a life-saving medication for malaria while not having any system access. This also means that I wouldn’t have the sympathy of rich person vs. poor person, because she earned it all.

I bet you already start to feel like rooting for her too, don’t you?

Why, it’s enough to make me feel like rooting for her! She’s saved millions of lives! What’s my life compared to the “Savior of the Sick?”

That’s a genuine question. What do you think?

I had already presented the bruises as evidence, but my own therapist said that it just looked like I had caused it myself for attention.

To quote all hippies, “Like, seriously, dude?”

It isn’t even my modus operandi. I use knives, not metal pipes (or needles like this most recent injury). Damn, if I don’t sound psychopathic saying “modus operandi” and “I use knives, not metal pipes” though. I’ll have you know that I did not get diagnosed as psychopathic. I might have checked a few of the boxes on the medical checklist, but not enough! That’s what really matters.

I open the bathroom door and look surreptitiously up, down, and side-to-side. Ok, maybe calling my scan of my surrounding environment surreptitious would be a bit too kind. I walk to my art class unimpeded.

I enter the class with the appearance of joviality.

“Hey guys! How is the theater troupe of Eastside doing?”

A chorus of welcomes comes from the collection of students. Ahh, my fellow actors. I sit down on my seat, surrounded by my fellow theater members. There is a heavy air charged and crackling with anxiety. This will not do. I mentally crack my knuckles. I look around and stage-whisper, asking what we were doing for this class. Wilbur pushes up his glasses and calmly says we’re going to be drawing a space scene solely using No. 2 pencils and erasers. Adorable kid is the epitome of gay panic. So easy to make him flustered. Such a precious little mochi. When he is the DM though, he is wicked! Always plenty of fun stories with him. I remember when the bard kept fucking everyone, and he slowly and subtly set up the storyline so that the bard's teammates had no choice but to kill them.

There's a reason why I specifically remember that.

Betsy raves about this application of an eraser that will enable her to make a gas giant more realistically. She’s really good at playing the drums and is great at playing the courageous main character. Maybe not as good as me, but she is incredibly nice and her acting actually draws on her personality. She stands up against bullies every time she sees them even though she pays for it every time. I mean, I do the same thing, but I think there is a qualitative difference between why we do it. I enjoy seeing the bully’s aggravated face when I interrupt their activities and it’s delightful to ruthlessly punish the assholes with pranks. And for Alexa, it’s better that an awful person like me gets punished by her than some poor innocent kid. Betsy on the other hand, she’s practically a Pink Magical Girl (but she’s not. Not yet at least. She has literally no unexplained disappearances for school). She is literally one of the most selfless people I know. She’s one like one of those anime MCs who will stand in front of the bully, make a speech about how cruel it is mock people, and how “we should be friends! Look at the Magical Girls! They get along! Why can’t we?” As much as I find her naiveté amusing, she is one of my closest friends in the theater troupe.

I mention that I’m going for a more fantastical bent to my space scene and ask whether anyone else is doing something similar.

Hahahaha. It’s fun being among such uncritical people. It’s nice. I can still go for some hard alcohol though.

The teacher is pretty hands-off except for grading, so we chat while we sketch our drawings.

I first sketched the hidden image, before I drew a glowing panorama of stars that you could almost feel surrounded by and reach out to touch. After she graded our drawings, we passed our papers around. We all ooed and aahed at each other’s drawings. I managed to sneak the details past the first eleven members of my troupe before Helix figured it out. I didn’t think it would get past them. They’re pretty insightful. Personally, I think they’re either going to be a bedside therapist or an art critic.

They raised an eyebrow at my drawing. They looked closer at it, turned it upside down, then turned it around to hold it up to the light, only to find the same painting from the opposite perspective. Haha! Can’t guess it from checking my first layers with light from a lamp!

“Wait a minute, are the stars actually casting light onto an endless void? Because I think I see something.”

I gave them a shit-eating grin. “Oh, do you? Pray tell, what do you see?”

They gave me the stink-eye back. “It is... wait, I see it! If you piece the ever-so-slightly darker areas and the places where light looks as if reflected, it’s a grinning face! Made of tentacles... that is impressively gross looking.”

“Why thank you!” I say demurely.

“So, you guys ready for the play? Just three days.” I ask.

Wilbur rung his hands in nervousness, a cold sweat appearing on his brow. “Ugh. Don’t remind me. I have been nauseous all day. I don’t know how you can be so calm in front of the entire town, playing the main role.”

I giggled. “Of course! I thrive on attention. You poor thing though! Hope you recover in time so that you don’t mess it up for all of us.”

He gulped.

“Ahhh, just messing with you.” I give a light fleeting touch to his shoulder. “Don’t worry. You will do amazing. I trust you. Just take a deep breath”

*inhale*

*exhale*

“Come on everyone. I’m sure you’re all nervous too. Don’t you want to join in?” I ask actually innocently, not the sarcastic innocence everyone uses.

Hesitantly, everyone joins in. Which is when I spring my trap. When we all take a deep breath, I put light pieces of paper right in front of the mouths of the people closest to me. The papers suction to their face and they look shocked for a brief moment, eyes widening before spitting and ptchooing the papers away.

I collapse off the chair laughing, safely of course. Everyone joins in, even the unfortunate victims of my prank. The mood is successfully lightened, and no one can even think of being stressed while splitting their sides. I have no intention of having the play fail when I could easily manipulate my friends into getting into the right mindset. One might argue that I shouldn’t manipulate people like this, but I argue that everyone manipulates the other without realizing. I see no difference between naturally and forcing oneself to have emotions that will achieve a certain result. Being waspish due to your personality or purposefully assuming the role of an asshole to make one defensive and off-kilter is the exact same.

Unless it makes a far greater amount of people outside of the group I am interacting with happier though, I try to leave things far better after I used it. I am a benevolent being after all, touching their hearts and injecting light into their lives. A doctor that wields a kind scalpel, a bright syringe.

I pushed and pulled, a shocking joke here and showing a level of selfishness there that will make me seem more relatable to the cynics of the group. I gave advice about drawing that actually subtly told Betsy how to cope healthily with her depression (Don’t worry, silly. I didn’t recommend that she use my methods. I know they aren’t for everyone). Most importantly though, I assured her that she was not alone and that she could trust her friends to get her analyzed by a therapist. All this without anyone except Helix noticing. Everyone left the room chatting eagerly, feeling prepared to take on our play, forgetting about their actual troubles. For a moment oh so blissful to them, Atlas forgets their wasted dad is constantly high on Magma and is quickly dying. Charlotte forgets about the ruthless beat-down her mom received during sex work. Fernandez and Angel forget about their brother getting... taken, yeah, that’s totally how I was going to word it... by Señor Screaming Fingers. Lea forgets about her sister being turned into a werewolf and needing to give her up to Luke’s Pizzeria for her safety and training.

I wave goodbye to them as I head to Chemistry class. Now that I blend with the crowd, I can rub the wound to physically pressure the waves of pain emanating from the tiny hole. It hurts so goddamn much. I duck around a locker corner. I see a metallic flash coming towards me. I tried to dodge with a well-chosen dance move, but the metal needle unerringly hit my leg at an oblique angle. It sinks deep into my thigh, before pulling out once again.

Aargh! Again! Why?!

I am already becoming uncomfortably familiar with feeling the cold bite of metal on the inside of my body rather than against my skin. I tripped over my own feet in silence. Unconscious tears welled up in my eyes due to my body’s automatic reaction to pain.

This time, she does not even stop to gloat. She just walked off like it was her perfunctory duty to cause me pain, which is almost worse than gloating. I once more return to the bathroom. The blood is trickling down my legs profusely. Strongest feeling of déjà vu, this.

I can feel my focus narrow, lasering in on the pain and humiliation. My pupils constrict and I bare my teeth. So help me, that pretty princess is going to face retribution if she violates my flesh once more. I don’t understand why she has suddenly and drastically escalated to such tactics, but I couldn’t care less now.

I exit the bathroom, palming my scalpel, when suddenly the alarms start blaring excruciatingly loud.

"Warning! A rift has opened. A Torment is forming. 1 hour until the rift reaches hazardous size. Everyone exit in an orderly fashion in order to make it to the safer shelters!"

A few students ran past, obviously frightened out of their wits. Well, I won’t deny I appreciate whoever gave the miasma the intent needed to form Torment Miasma or that the miasma happened to reach a maximum threshold today. Alexa won’t be stabbing again this time. She probably will not appreciate being interrupted and will ensure to start all over again, but this misfortune is in my favor. I calmly, but quickly, grabbed my supplies and started traveling through the halls.

Someone sprinted by me and knocked me flat on my ass. Oof. At this rate, I’m going to be best friends with the school floor. I aggravatedly looked in the direction they were running to. Oddly, I don’t see the asshole. Are they that fast?

MMRHMPH!

That’s the sound of me getting stabbed 3 times in the gut at a System-user with incredible Speed. In other words, I practically had metal rip through my body at the speed of a conventional firearm Then I was stabbed in the previously unharmed leg and arm. My vision swam with pain. I tried to turn my head, but I might as well have tried to rotate the rusted gears of a medieval portcullis. All I want is to focus on are the holes she put through my stomach. It’s Alexa. I know it is. As much as I want to vow that I will repay her in this moment, it seems unlikely. That doesn’t mean I will not do my damnedest to end her for these agonizing wounds. With one hand, I unsheathe the scalpel and try to thrust it back. She dodges with a laugh. I can barely focus. I blink back the pain, squinting as I shuffled around. I don’t care how illogical or hopeless it is, she has no right to do this. I intend to take an eye. A blurred blob stops in front of me. I take a step forward towards her, when suddenly she seems to just appear at the end of the corridor. She... was a system user? That made no sense, excluding this situation. While she could have lied about her age, I would have noticed her living at such a speed. It’s how professional law enforcement (and anyone in my neighborhood) knows whether you do or don’t have a focus on speed. You can’t really hide the twitches which are a tell-tale characteristic of it.

Ugh! I don’t care! I want to rend her to pieces! She needs to kneel and beg and plead. My line of thought derails when the alarm changes.

"Warning! Get to the safety shelters inside the school now. You will not have the time needed to exit. Miasma is imprinting quickly. 5 minutes until formation. 4 minutes. 3 minutes. 2 minutes. 1 minute left."

I am befuddled.

“Why on earth would it cut down from an hour to five minutes? And then shrink?!” I speak shrilly to myself. I can feel anxiety overtaking my rage. My breaths speed up, rushing out of my lungs as if they were trying to escape this deathtrap for me. I force a breath slowly into my clenched lungs.

I just need to make my way to a safety room. Yeah... that's all I need to do. It definitely isn't unheard of for people making it out of the rift. That's why there are precautions built into every Magitech safety room for that type of thing. I may be literally the farthest one can be from any of the hatches – kind of odd I just happened to be caught then – but I can make it.

There are a couple people who manage to make it to a safety hatch after 1 hour in a Tormented zone. After that, well, they often survived for a while longer, they just never made it to safety. A purplish tint rushed in, coloring the air. Purplish miasma. This color is new to me. I wonder what it represents? Last one I went through was white. That one represented... it does not matter. I shake my head vigorously to dispel the maelstrom of memories attached to it and the drops of moisture on my face. I stand up, clutching the blood-soaked uniform. I really hope that the Anathema here don’t have good senses of smell. Since every hatch is equally far away from me, might as well go for the one with the fencing swords.

Time to go to the gym.