I look around the chatter and try to pick out something interesting. Security guards try to remain as stone-faced and unaffected as possible. A lunchlady gives someone extra nuggets because they're clearly having an anxiety attack. The world murmurs on around me.

Jordan grabs my sleeve and gives it a tug. "Sam, I'm about to do something extremely stupid. Can you physically back me up in case a fight breaks out?" they whisper.

"I'm really not supposed to be getting into fights anymore," I whisper back, trying to scrunch away. "Not at school, at least,"

"Pussy," Jordan mutters, and then they shake my sleeve again and yank me into eye contact. For the first time in what seems like ever, I see something besides confidence in Jordan's eyes. Something a little rawer. A little shakier. I should probably tell them no. I should probably listen to my mom’s voice in my head, reminding me how much worse this could get.

"Dude, I'm like on strike two and they'll probably expel me if I start shit again unless there's a damn good reason," I answer, feeling the phantom of my mom sitting on top of my brain stem. "I can't... ruin my future over a stupid fight,"

"Great news, this is a very rational fight with a good reason to happen. Can you tell with your blood sense if anyone here is affected by the geas that just got announced?" Jordan asks.

I scrunch my face up. I can feel every drop of blood in here, but that doesn't give me any useful information besides "almost everyone on their period is also panicking". "If they've got a thousand contractors across all of Philadelphia, that's like, less than a 0.01% chance any given person has a contract," I think, doing some quick mental math, counting decimal places on my fingers. "Then you have to cross that with the amount of people bleeding in here - not a huge number - and I don't think there's any way to differentiate who's freaking out because they're scared and who's freaking out because their contract just activated,"

Jordan sighs and squares me up. They grab me by the shoulders and spin me around on the uncomfortable plastic slash metal stools that all of us sit on for lunch all the time. "Samantha H. Small,"

"Not my middle name--"

"Whatever. Remember when we first met? And I told you that you have to stop reacting to things? You have to be the bullet?" Jordan says. I can tell from their breath - heavy, cloying, smelling like soy sauce, shaking - that they're prepping themselves for something. Something stupid.

I scrunch my face up harder. "What about it?"

"Remember when our first plan together, the first ever scheme, was to fake a superhero supervillain fight for internet cred and news fame?" Jordan asks.

"Jordan," I say back, a little louder than a whisper. The goths, anime nerds, and Alex at the table all turn to look at Jordan.

"If there's one thing I want you to burn into your brain from our entire friendship, it's this; be the bullet, not the vest. Be the thing happening, remember?" they summate. Before I can grab Jordan's sleeve and yank them down, Jordan grabs their lunch tray, grabs my lunch tray, climbs up onto the lunch table, and starts smacking them together. "Hey! Tacony Charter Academy High School Lunchroom! Everyone! Shut up! Shut the fuck up!"

That starts getting people's attention, but not all at once. A couple of people laugh like it's a joke. Some dude near the snack machines yells "Shut up, bitch!" and keeps talking to his friends. Some of the goths start clapping along to Jordan smacking trays together like it's a bit.

Jordan does not stop. They smack the trays together harder, sharper, rhythmically, like an animal marking its territory. "Shut up. Shut up. Shut. The fuck. Up."

The sound cuts through the room like a fight about to break out. The laughter dies down. The whispering slows. The security guards, across the room, start moving. My heart jumps up, and my palms start sweating.

"My name is Jordan Westwood, and you may remember when I fucked up homecoming this year because a bunch of police officers and a superhero came to arrest me. And then they beat the shit out of my friend in front of everyone, and it went super viral on the news and shit. Remember that? Hey! Shut the fuck up! I'm talking! Give me your undivided attention for two minutes!" Jordan yells, watching, measuring, and occasionally smacking their trays together a couple more times until everyone has, indeed, shut the fuck up.

I see Officers Ridley and Nguyen at the front of the security guard heap - good to know they're still employed. But they're getting closer, talking amongst themselves. What are they saying, I wonder? Who gets their pick of the troublemaker?

"They had a good reason for that! I'm a supervillain that has been working undercover for the Kingdom of Keys. I can create temporary duplicates of things so I make fake drugs to cheat people out of money. Check this out!" Jordan shouts, kicking their backpack onto the floor.

That's not Jordan's power. But everyone's focused on the backpack - nobody's watching the walls or ceiling. Jordan huffs with exertion, and the room pulls apart at an angle. Tables are lightly stretched with duplicate laminate woodplastic, but where there was once one backpack, now there is two.

"Now you know my bona fides are real! And I'm just going to say to any Rogue Wave bitches in here - if you think you're going to stop us, think fucking again!" Jordan almost screams, their legs visibly shaking, almost buckling, although whether that's from fear or just how hard it is to stand on a lunch table in platforms, I can't tell. The Jordan I know isn't someone that experiences fear. Not in a way they'd ever show me.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I'm watching the crowd. Someone. Anyone. We all heard the order - "You will do your best to undermine the influence of the organization known as ‘the Kingdom of Keys’ without revealing your nature as one of our contractors, through any means available to you." - so who's going to step up to stop them? I'm watching for students, and all the students are glancing at each other. Surely, someone else has made this connection. Monkey Business stated his terms in broad daylight.

So who's going to stop them? Anyone here? The odds are low. 0.01% chance, if Rogue Wave's numbers are real. 500 students at this school. Statistically, that's... maybe one person? Maybe none? A fractional human. But contracts aren’t spread evenly. And if Monkey Business isn't lying—if it's 30,000 Philadelphians instead — then it's not 0.01%, it's closer to... what, 2%? That means ten students in this school. Maybe more.

The real answer is somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in this room.

A ripple moves through the cafeteria. Not a big one, but small things. A couple of kids look at each other too fast and then away. A girl near the back grips her phone like she’s about to break it. A guy near the vending machine shifts in his seat, like he just realized he might need to run.

"Alright, Westwood, fifteen minutes of fame are over, let's get you down from there," I hear from behind me. I whirl around to come face to face with Officer Ridley - he still has a job? Where's the justice? - looking beet red and slightly grayer in the hair than when I first aikido threw him in Septemberish. "Out of the way, Small, we don't want a repeat of last time,"

Jordan looks at me. I look at Jordan. I look at Officer Ridley. I sigh, and stick my leg out to trip him. He's too focused on Jordan to notice, stumbles, and swipes at empty air with open handcuffs while Jordan takes a step back, accidentally stepping on Alex's sandwich ("Hey!"). "Hey, Ridley, long time, no see. You still a part of Rogue Wave?" Jordan asks.

Knowing Officer Ridley as a racist idiot, I fully expect this to go nowhere - he just wants an excuse to handcuff a student for his jollies. I am... not exactly happy when his body goes stiff as a board and his eyelids start twitching. Really, happy is the least accurate emotion, but there is a twitch of some sort of vindication to it.

He swipes again for Jordan, and without thinking - or I guess, with a sort of instinctive thought - I switch seats and just put myself in his way. Passively. Not Aikido throwing him again. I know I'd get suspended if I did! He makes a sort of strangled noise and Jordan takes another step back, gently scraping sandwich off their boot.

"Hey, everyone, pull your jaws off the floor and watch me closely," Jordan shouts, exuberantly, terrified, literally shaking so hard that it's starting to rattle the lunch table. "Ridley, you better tell me everything you can about your contract with Rogue Wave!"

Ridley's face goes blank, pale, and drooping, like he's just had a stroke. Officer Nguyen, among the others, immediately catch what's wrong first, before anyone else does besides me. Ridley's pupils dilate, and then shrink to a pinprick.

Then, he draws his taser. Before I can yell for Jordan to get down, two electrodes are spinning through the air, twirling, unfurling, almost bullet fast, ripping through Jordan's hoodie and I assume embedding in the skin. I assume this because Jordan's already shaky legs immediately cramp up and they go head-over-ass down towards the ground, off the lunch table.

"Catch them!" I find myself yelling, shoving Ridley out of the way while two of the goths - and a watcher from the next table over - jump loose to grab Jordan before their head cracks open on the tile of the cafeteria floor. Ridley isn't focused on me, though - he's focused entirely on Jordan, shoving Alex out of the way with a meaty, sausagine hand. Jordan clenches up, their body pulling up into a fetal position, twitching, convulsing, pained, wet grunts escaping their throat, while the students helping them down cluster protectively around their body. No thrashing, just twitching.

No more.

"Ridley! Stand down!" Nguyen shouts, but it's about as effective as a fart in the wind. I'm already up and moving, but things are happening fast. Ridley draws a baton with his free hand and pulls the trigger again on his taser to give Jordan another shock. Ridley doesn't even say anything, he just swings, and people duck out of his way. He pulls the trigger again. Jordan lets out a pained, wet gasp.

I cut off Officer Nguyen at the pass and pull myself up on Ridley's back, hooking my legs around his waist, wrapping my arm all the way around his neck. Since my growth spurt it's become way easier to put people in headlocks, but he's still got a good two, three inches on me, plus all that pork muscle in his throat, so it's hard to get my forearm all the way around under his chin. "Lift his head up! We gotta knock him out!" I shout to the other security guards. "Everyone else, scatter!"

But people aren't scattering. People are trying to pull Ridley off of Jordan, while he climbs on top of them, knees to knees. I try to fit my arm under his chin but it's just not working, and Jordan isn't being given a moment's rest before he pulls the trigger on the taser again. Someone - I don't see who, probably another one of the security guards - yanks the taser out of Ridley's hand and kicks it away.

Ridley isn't thinking anymore. His body is on pure kill mode. The kind of hysterical strength moms get when their kids are trapped under cars or inside burning buildings, but laser-focused on his task of killing a high school student. With his now-free hand, he grabs Jordan by the hair, wrenches their face upwards, and uses the other hand to try and crush their throat with his baton.

"Get down, Small!" I hear from behind me - a woman, Nguyen? - and I duck my face down against Ridley's shoulder before a baton goes sailing into the side of Ridley's shoulder, dazing him just enough that another of the anonymous mass of hands surrounding me can grab him by the greasy hair and tug his head straight up. My forearm finds purchase in the curve of his neck, right up against the important arteries, my other arm starts levering my wrist, and the headlock goes in.

Come on. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

His state means that he barely even seems to notice the crowd around him. He's leveraging all of his body weight, all two hundred fifty, three hundred some pounds of force against Jordan, bearing down on them, violently, violating. Blood trickles out of his nose and I see his heartbeat - perfectly even, uninterested in the situation. His carotid arteries pulse against my arms, and the world narrows to a sharp point. His pulse fights me, hammering too fast, too strong - his body's in full kill mode, and the choke isn’t dropping him as fast as I want.

Six Mississippi. Seven Mississippi. Come on! Pass out already!

Hands slip underneath his baton, trying to make space for Jordan's throat to not get crushed. I can already smell the bruises forming across Jordan's windpipe and neck. Drool puddles on the tile floor.

Nine Mississippi, and he starts weakening. Ten Mississippi, and all the hands grabbing for him start to pull, and jerk, and drag him away. Eleven Mississippi, and he goes totally slack, collapsing into the crowd and getting thrown off like a drunk guy on a bucking bull. I let go, and his body wheezes out from under me like a deflating balloon. Ridley slumps, a twitch running through his fingers like a dead fish in a shallow pond. His chest rises once, sharply, before settling into that eerie, boneless stillness, dragged away by the morass while Jordan slowly, shakily comes to their feet.