"Fight!" The children were chanting. This was the final battle; this one was for the whole school. Everyone that had lived in fear of me and seen my cruelty: they all needed to see me defeated, once-and-for-all.

A very different me, the real me, had come back for them. It is difficult to explain why, much easier to explain how. To put it simply: I had to go back to my childhood, back to my hometown, my school. I did so as a visitor, and then as my new life. A new life for everyone.

"Straight A Braidy, you grace us..."

At the forty-year reunion I had finally come home. I had no words for the scattered and broken people there. Four of them stood off to one side and then there was Peter Allah, who approached me.

I had no words for the twenty years since I had seen them last. At the twenty-year reunion there were more of them, although nobody had really made it in life. Not me, I owned Braidy Industries (the world's penultimate tech company). As a billionaire I had responded by sending money to all of them. It had only made things worse, somehow.

I had enjoyed a succulent life, full of pleasure...

In my aging mirror I asked myself if I wanted something more. "Mirror, mirror..." I had said after that day.

I could do anything I wanted.

I had a supercomputer, a space station and a quantum particle beam. Toys.

My research and development of new technology gave me access to unbelievable vistas.

I looked across worlds. I looked across the divide, through its categorically temporality, saw those that had nothing, while I had everything. I realized then that I wanted more. So, I took what I wanted, reaching through time and space to a moment in my life when my future was still uncertain. Everyone's future, in fact.

I thought about the last five kids from my school that were left in the world. There was a whole world behind me, one I had abandoned. That world was the one where I was king, a world that belonged to me.

Everyone else that I was looking at had died off, all of them 'losers'.

Drug addicts, criminals and lunatics. The whole town was dead. Buildings were in ruins and rats chewed on the remains. I looked around, remembering all of that and seeing it like it was. My home, my people, my neighbors and friends. It was all back, but I could remember the future, could see how it all went down. I also knew what I would do to change it all. In the world before, I was the light of this town and when I left them there was only darkness. Now I was back except this time: I was the darkness.

"Oh, starlight." I sighed.

I tossed my beloved schoolbooks into the woodchipper and watched them die.

Then I sent in the two sticks of dynamite I had stolen. I ran and didn't look back. Mike Zerker wouldn't stay behind and waste his life. He would, with the insurance check his dad would get, go to college. There he would meet Zania and get married. Her family would put him through medical school and he would become a doctor.

Mike Zerker would never even taste whisky for the first time. He would live to see his fortieth class reunion.

With the burning woodchipper behind me, I made my way to class. My grades no longer mattered, but the rest of my work was going to be rough, very rough. I had no more clarity on the timeline. From the moment the fire engines raced through the small town to the burning woodchipper, everything changed. I had only a vague outline and my methods became limited, primitive - brutal.

For a genius I sure was stupid - I had actually thought I was going to fix it all with money, I hadn't really thought about the dynamics of the timeline. Not to the extent that all of my plans also had to account for the new variables as things progressed. I was forced to adapt my methodology.

I found Aaron Brook and said some words about how sensitive and boring he was. Then I quit stalling and broke his left wrist. "You'll be fine." I told him. Then, awkwardly, I added: "Wimp."

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I felt terrible about it, of course, but I had no time for my own personal feelings. If I got caught being myself, it would ruin everything. I had to become the bully.

Instead of swimcamp, Aaron Brook spent the summer at his aunt's ranch. There he learned he had a talent for poetry. His love of words was the true meaning and purpose of his life. His bestselling novels touched the lives of millions of people, giving them hope and happiness in a way my technology never had.

After my suspension I locked Mickey Strather in the janitor's closet overnight. He discovered how to master his fears and never gave into the pressure at home to try the devil's drug. But like his parents he learned a lot about chemicals. Instead of an illegal lab he built a pharmacy that won awards from the Mayo Clinic.

I took no pleasure from menacing everyone in my school. My insults became more carefully crafted and planned; I knew from retrospect what would hurt the most. The pain and suffering I caused kept me up at night and made me cry and hate myself when nobody was looking.

My parents, worried at my behavior, got closer together and never ended up divorced. I grimly contemplated how much happier they would be than when I had left them alone.

While I was stealing lunches, pulling punches and saying vicious comments: I told them every day that I loved them.

Brian August was a challenge. He was much bigger than me and I had to beat him up. It was the only way to save his life. If he didn't lose a fight to me: he would get murdered in eight years at a bar. I had to humiliate him. I fought him with everything I had and ignored the bruises he gave me. When he tapped out, I was relieved.

I needed him to stay in school, too, so I rioted. I yelled and trashed the principal's office. My expulsion brought peace to the school for a short time. My attorney parents easily flipped it, and I came back, with a vengeance.

The next schoolyear had started. My tactics became criminal and horrifying. My modus operandi bordered on terrorism. I became a psycho, a rapist, a monster and a legend.

Then came the day of my defeat.

I had crossed every line and there was no going back. It had to be this way, it had to happen. I couldn't take a dive, it had to end with no mercy, no holds barred. No prisoners.

We were surrounded by other students and the teachers were all missing. The crowd was chanting the monosyllable that would define their lives from that day forward. Whenever they were up against a wall, whenever life had them on the ground, kicking them over and over, whenever a monster was casting a shadow, they would hear themselves, one voice, united against implacable evil:

"Fight!"

At first, the smaller Peter Allah was terrified. He didn't know he was going to win, only I knew that. All he knew was that here was injustice in the flesh. I had to hit him first, that was an important rule. Still, I circled and waited, he wasn't ready. I needed to see the fear go out of his eyes.

Some voices stood out above the others. Mambi Sutherland whose cat was hanged, not so mysteriously. Jennifer Racko who had quit cheerleading and started victim's therapy. Carl Stone who had expensive dental work and an eyepatch, after what I had done to him.

All three of them were worth it to me, to have done so much damage. I had erased their awful destinies and placed in their paths their best lives. It had cost me everything I was.

I could hear them above the others, yelling encouragement to Peter. He was their champion - I was their nightmare. Peter Allah could hear them too, and he knew their pain. I saw the flicker of change as his fear became a thirst for justice. I smiled, he would never be able to quench such a thirst, although it would come to define him. I knew that after this he would try, with honor, to satisfy justice for the rest of his life.

I swung at his face at that exact moment and broke his nose. For a second the crowd went silent. Then their hero fell. He was supposed to win.

Terror nearly overwhelmed me as he lay there unmoving. I realized he wasn't going to get up and fight me. It didn't matter, he had faced me, stood up to me. The changes in the timeline were already rippling. He was not defeated.

He blinked and sat up, blood everywhere. He needed to see what happened next, needed to hear me, to know the difference he had made. I glanced at him and then I asked the crowd, loudly:

"Are you all just going to let me stomp his head in?"

My voice was trembling a little more than I meant it too. I knew my time was up, I knew: "This is it. I hope I put on a good show."

Someone threw a book, a beloved schoolbook. It hit the back of my head and I took a knee. The crowd had gone feral, their blood was boiling, I had won. The crowd surged forward, showing no mercy.

The beating of a lifetime began. They were all jostling to kick me and stomp on me. They were hitting me with their books, punching me, clawing at me. They were beating me down, breaking things, rupturing things. They were beating me to death.

As I lay down and their stomping feet eclipsed the skies: I did nothing to protect myself. There was nothing more for me to do. My work was done.

They carried Peter away, atop the crowd. They left me there, broken and bleeding. I did not die, no, that would be too easy.

I became a symbol, a living reminder they could all look down upon. I could see the time they would have, the world they would build without my shadow.

As I lay there in savage pain I laughed. I was pleased with my new wealth. I had more than I had ever had before. I contained the darkness, and the light was all around me.

All the grace of the world used to be mine. A broken and empty world had belonged to me, shadowed in regret and darkness. I had destroyed that world.

All the grace of the world belonged to the people I had known. They went forth and filled the world with light and hope. I had created that world.

And left the darkness where it had fallen.