'Here, in this world, fighting is a way of talking. Maybe the adults are different, but the children express themselves with their fists - mostly hate and antagonism.'

  I had once considered leaving the observation in a journal entry, one of the earlier entries from about a year after my arrival. It hadn't quite stuck, not for any inaccuracy but because it only told a partial story.

  It just wasn't that simple. As I had slowly figured out, there were a plethora of reasons for the average kid to get into combat beyond adversarial emotions, a fact you could grasp just by understanding the pure numbers. You could really dislike Nick from homeroom's attitude, and maybe Emma from English kept plagiarizing your papers… But even in this world, the average child didn't go through life with a massive, rotating cast of people they hated. They went through life with a massive, rotating cast of combat opponents.

  If 'hatreds per capita' was a far smaller number than 'fight opponents per capita,' then there were surely other factors making up the difference.

  My analysis of those factors had changed over time, becoming more refined as I gained experience. Still, one constant was that I had always drawn a mental distinction between 'me' fighting and 'you' fighting - the former being fighting for social status or benefit, the latter born out of a desire to harm your opponent.

  Many fights fit under both categories to varying degrees, but many were clearly only one or the other, which was why I differentiated between the two. A Turf Wars match between two schools on friendly terms was 'me' fighting. Being a part of a Turf Wars roster was something you could put on your resume for the rest of your life. If you couldn't call yourself a former Jack, Queen, or King as a high-tier, then that was something of a red flag.

  On the other hand, a high-ranker beating down a low-tier out of anger or jealousy, somewhat lowering their reputation in the process, was nothing but 'you' fighting.

  Of course, I was wholly a 'me' fighter. And as I approached the two-minute mark in my fight with Agwin's Queen, after watching her makeup-contoured face twist subtly with each call of the crowd, I felt sure we stood at near points on the axis.

  Silver eyeshadow to complement the green eyes and hair. I can work with this. "Is dodging all you know how to do?" I cried out. You're just delaying the inevitable!"

  Agwin's Queen danced around my flurry of jabs and sweeps, even as I constantly adjusted and readjusted the length of my claw spears. A strike seemed to pierce straight through her, forming the alarming sight of a teen girl with an impaled midsection, but it was missing the familiar feeling of gored skin and flesh.

  The image was gone in a blink. Nothing but an afterimage of her superhuman speed, and I hurriedly ducked to the ground at the knowledge. I felt the wind at my back a half-moment later, a likely jump-kick attempt sailing above me - but by the time I snapped my eyes to where she must have landed, Agwin's Queen was already circling into my right blindspot, slowly closing the distance.

  She burst forward when we made eye contact, using unnatural acceleration and deceleration to change direction and keep me guessing. I stalled her with straight pierces, slashes, and sweeps at her ankles, changing the curvature and length of my spears with each strike, but she seemed to process the movements too quickly for it to stop her. She blurred into a low tackle under a mid-torso slice, making it decently close, but I had predicted the move with a slash at what would've been her future position.

  It wasn't enough to catch her. She bailed out with a near-instant pivot to the left, backing up, and we were right back where we started. Spears were inherently good at area denial, and my main focus in the fight was draining her stamina. I could lead and anticipate her movements, successfully keeping her from getting her hands on me, but I couldn't land a hit.

  "If you want to hit me so badly, stop being such a coward and get closer," Agwin's Queen said. "What are those claws for if you stand all the way over there?"

  The home crowd responded favorably with calls and cheers, so I put a frustrated expression on my face. I stepped toward her, my claws morphing into two jagged, monstrous hands, all while trying to figure out the best way to seem provoked.

  I settled on a glare. "You'll regret that. Once I catch you in my grip…"

  I'd like to gently throw you out of bounds, I finished mentally.

  It was a contrived performance like usual, though more complex than I was used to. In most fights, the main issue was showing convincing happiness when I connected on an attack. Still, it was even harder to seem disappointed about a missed disembowelment, and I'd missed on all my attempts. Agwin's Queen was the fastest person I'd ever fought, which was the main cause, but I was also keeping a trick in reserve.

  I tried a couple of failed grabs, then swung purposefully wide with my right in an attempt to gore at her ribcage, and she slipped past my striking range into an accelerated right roundhouse. The move was predictable, given the reflective damage to her other leg from finishing Arlo, so I managed to block. The force of the blow sent me skidding, my claws dragging against the ground for extra traction, and I subtly lengthened them into the floor once I was two body lengths from the edge of the stage.

  The whole sequence had been to get myself to ring-out position in a near-organic fashion.

  If Agwin's Queen had been fresh, I would've lost without question… But injuries from Arlo were slowing her down enough for me to match her, and I was holding back on top of that. I'd kept the claws on both hands equivalent throughout the match, making my attacks easier to handle - you couldn't knock an unconscious body out of bounds.

  "You know… I've figured you out," she said, slowly rotating in a half circle around me. "You have to use the same thing on each hand, isn't that right?"

  I induced an 'involuntary' twitch in my face, and she grinned. "I see. So no matter what length or shape you choose, there's always an awkward distance…"

  "Shut up!" I shouted. "Just go down already!" I whipped out with my claws, now 3-meter scythes on both hands, but Agwin's Queen jumped and used one as a springboard into a flying knee. I turned my head and spun just in time, reducing the blow to a flesh wound on my cheek, though I fell to all fours as though I'd been rattled.

  "See? No weapon is perfect." Her voice came from behind me. "If it were, you wouldn't have to switch."

  The crowd was roaring now, completely eating it up, so I drew on Zeke and countless others to form the most desperate, vicious expression I could muster. Then I quickly spun, still crouched on the ground, to swing a long, thin katana at the left of her thigh.

  Agwin's Queen hopped over it smoothly, eyes searching to her right for a similar attack, but I had never sent one. Before turning around, I'd already merged the claws on my other hand into a bastardized cross of drill and tentacle, sending it burrowing a foot below the stage. If it were any faster, it would've kept her from dodging; any slower, she would have noticed my hand stuck wrist-deep into the ground. But I timed it just right: it burst through the ground behind her, wrapped around her leg, and yanked.

  My grip was firm. She tipped backward, flailing for leverage and finding nothing but air. The shock in her eyes and gasps from the audience merged into a satisfying moment, capped by the dull thump of her body on the floor surrounding the stage.

  Unceremoniously, without screaming or bleeding, Agwin's Queen fell out of bounds.

  The drop wasn't much; she didn't make a noise of pain as she collided with the ground, and she hadn't taken a single strike throughout our fight. I was the victor nonetheless. It was the best I could do, the 'coolest,' most interesting fight I could manage, but I wasn't sure that was enough.

  I retracted my claws to their default handlike shape, then began strolling to the spot she fell from.

  As I walked, I shifted my left into a Halberd, my right into a Poleaxe, my left into a longsword, my right into a Rapier. Each step came with a new weapon, and with each step, I made my left and right hands differ more and more.

  I came to a stop at the ledge above her, with my left hand a Claymore and my right a long loop of razor wire. I stared her down as condescendingly as I could.

  "I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your home crowd. This a mercy."

  She could only stare in shock. "Wha… You - you were -"

  "You were arrogant," I said. "You underestimated your injuries, and you thought it was only natural to hold the advantage against a lower-level opponent."

  I turned to a camera that I'd spotted earlier. "Put this in the headlines: Seventh-ranked Wellston student holds back against Agwin's Queen."

  I walked off the stage.

  .

  .

  .

  "That was a bit of a shock," Rei spoke cheerily. "Must be disappointing for the home fans."

  He gave me a congratulatory pat on the back. "I'm kind of wondering if this was how you planned it out all along."

  I glanced around, finding nothing resembling a recording device close to us. Instead of responding, I asked, "Do you know if the speaker system extends outside the battle stage? The home crowd would hate us even more if we started talking like it was already over."

  Rei pointed at the stage, where Sayila was putting a slow, methodical beatdown on Agwin's unfortunate Jack. "The sound system is all over there, so I doubt they can hear us."

  "...And I don't think they'd get too offended by the truth," he added with a smile.

  Arlo was away getting medical treatment, and Kuyo had left for the bathroom after briefly congratulating me for my first Turf Wars win. Nothing was stopping me from dropping the performance.

  I allowed myself a very long, very natural sigh. "My original plan was to experiment on a small scale, gauge people's reactions to an intentional ring-out attempt. Then I realized I could be a feature on sector-wide TV instead of a 30-second local news segment. I had to toss out everything, try to make it appealing."

  Rei tilted his head in thought. He recognized the implied question.

  "I'm not exactly the average audience member," he said, "but I thought it was good. The ending was great, and Kuyo was a big fan of your closing line - he just doesn't have it in him to give out compliments easily."

  'Like everyone else at level 5.5' went unspoken.

  "Okay. That's good to hear, but it's unfortunately not repeatable," I said. "It worked because she didn't see it coming, but if I try for a ring out even one or two more times, it'll be a pattern, and people will start to expect it. And then my larger agenda would be clear, too."

  Rei grinned. "Beyond fame-seeking, you mean."

  I rolled my eyes, letting out an involuntary snort. "I couldn't think of anything 'good' enough that would also keep me from coming off that way. It's not any deeper than that."

  He nodded. It was an exaggerated, up-and-down nod, and he wore an odd expression on his face.

  "I believe you."

  "...Somehow, I don't think you do."

  "I don't," he admitted immediately. "I'm not sure I've met a single Turf Wars fighter who doesn't go after popularity at least a little. Taunting someone to 'get them off balance' is a good excuse, but it never works unless they're a beginner without experience. People do barbs and insults to make their fights more entertaining, and that's it."

  But you don't want fans of the wrong demographic, I thought. Like an aspiring romance novelist whose only popular writing is a horror novel.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Sayila choking out Agwin's Jack, wrapping his neck with layer upon layer of turquoise psychic force. Would I take any satisfaction in being popular with the type of person who enjoys this shit?

  ...Which is most everyone in this world, don't forget.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I shook my head, pulling myself back to the conversation. "You're saying you go after fame too?"

  "Kind of. I'm not a good enough actor to say things I don't mean in the middle of a fight," Rei said. "But if I feel even a little negatively about my opponent or a little annoyed, I'll exaggerate. Most of the time, it's not even a conscious decision. But then a city newspaper will quote me a week later, and it'll look like the King whose attitude I only find slightly annoying is my nemesis for life."

  I frowned. "And then that King's school hires a guy with a voice amplification ability to shout insults about you," I said. "The home crowd starts spitting on you whenever you come... and it's not clear anymore, suddenly, whether your hate is all that exaggerated or not."

  Rei's smile wobbled a little. "You make it sound like… Well, I get your point. The dynamic with Turf Wars can definitely spiral out of control. But today was special, too."

  "So I won't be getting spat on every week?"

  "Just Agwin," he said. "They have a whole lot of specific reasons to hate us. Everyone else is just miffed that we win so much."

  "That makes me feel a little better." I pointed across the arena to the infirmary. "Unfortunately, reason number one is over there getting treated - we might see an inter-school war with Arlo as our King next year."

  "It won't be that bad," Rei said. After a conspicuous pause for thought, he winced and made a face. "I hope."

  Just as I was about to find something less negative to talk about, I felt my phone vibrate in the pocket of my combat uniform. I pulled it out and turned it on, finding it was a text from-

  I looked back at Rei from my phone. "Something just came up. I don't think I'll be riding back to the dorms with the rest of the team. Is that alright?"

  "Sure. Just remember to make curfew." He paused for a moment, tapping his chin. "Can you tell me why? We can wait if you need to do something quick in the area."

  I shook my head and showed him the texts on my phone screen. Alicia Moore.

  "She was my best friend during middle school," I explained. "She happens to go to Agwin, so we made plans to meet up at the dorms while I was visiting - as long as I didn't get knocked out or injured in the match. "

  This is too good to pass up. "Alicia was thinking of giving me a tour around Agwin's campus," I lied. "It'll be interesting to take a look at their facilities, see how they stack up to ours."

  A hundred feet away, Sayila accepted an official token of Wellston's victory amid thunderous booing and heckling. The sight seemed to stoke the audience's anger more severely than any of their losses. The arena of enraged, disappointed Agwin students and their families was an inch away from rioting.

  If they saw me strolling around their campus… Rei looked at me with a familiar, dumbfounded expression of disbelief.

  "What's wrong?" I tried to keep a straight face, but my lips twitched upward. "You're staring at me like I grew a third eye on my nose or something."

  .

  .

  .

  Alica: ## If you're quick you can sneak in. I was worried we'd have to bail, but there's literally nobody in the dorm right now because of Turf Wars. ##

  Meili: ## I'm following the directions. Do we have to worry about your roommate? ##

  Alicia: ## Not really. She'll be out for at least a few hours, I think. ##

  Alicia: ## Btw you guys really took our Royals down a peg. It was suuuper satisfying. ##

  Meili: ## I'm glad you liked it. Arlo did most of the hard work, though. ##

  Meili: ## How bad are they? ##

  Alicia: ## Their jerkiness scales to how much weaker than them you are. Like an exponential function. ##

  Alicia: ## JerkPotential = 10^(theirLevel - yourLevel) ##

  Meili: ## …… ##

  Alicia: ## If Ignacio takes his anger out in the middle of a hallway again, I'll beg my mom to transfer. ##

  Meili: ## So I'll see you in my class? : ) ##

  Alicia: ## Not to Wellston, dummy. I'll get bullied like in middle school. : ) Sent to the hospital for talking to you and being 'uppity' : ) ##

  Alicia: ## Plus I'd be an even smaller small fry, like one of those tiny bits at the bottom of the carton that are super crunchy. ##

  Alicia: ## I don't want to be crunched on : ( ##

  Meili: ## If we're all types of fries in this analogy, what kind of fry am I? ##

  Alicia: ## With that last move you pulled on our Queen? Maybe a curly fry. ##

  Walking through an empty hallway in the Agwin Girls' Dormitory, I put my phone down with an amused breath. When I first arrived in this world, Alicia had been among the only children at my middle school who I could genuinely befriend. She had an actual sense of humor, very importantly.

  Room number 3075, 3077, 3079…

  3095, I read, then stopped at the door. The light was on in the room, with brightness peeking through the cracks, and that was the number Alicia had sent me. I decided to check again to be careful, scrolling through our conversation to find the message.

  Yep, 3095.

  I gave a light knock. A few seconds later, the door slowly creaked open, with a single purple eye peeking through the crack.

  A hand followed. It quickly pulled me out of the hallway and into the room, closing and locking the door behind us in a single, smooth motion.

  Once I was in, Alicia grinned at me and tightened her arms into a hug, squishing me a little. "Meili! It feels like it's been forever!"

  I smiled back. "I know, right? I really missed you, Alicia."

  Her face had lost some of its old childishness, features just a bit sharper, but it was clearly her. She had her brown, wavy hair in the same long middle part as I remembered, and she wore familiar lavender flower stud earrings on both earlobes.

  I briefly leaned closer into the hug before separating. "Was that our old 'code of conduct' right there?"

  "The entrance and exit to a room should be as quick as possible," she quoted with a smile, then promptly dropped down on her bed. She patted the spot beside her, so I sat down next to her.

  I guess it's even more important to be secretive when meeting than before, I thought. I glanced around the room. "I like what you've got going on here. They didn't give you the best foundation to work with, though."

  The room was about as small as a two-person college dorm. It was heavily ornamented with bookshelves and posters on Alicia's side while sparse on the other. There was a singular, shared closet, no connected bathroom, and a large window on the far end of the room overlooked a mass of dumpsters and concrete.

  Alicia's eyes flickered to mine, then to the window. "What're you gonna do?" She shrugged. "My roommate's a low-tier here on scholarship, just like me. With the two of us together, I'm glad they gave us a view of anything at all."

  "I guess. But is everything else going okay?" I asked. "Nobody targeting you?"

  "Not me, specifically," she said. "I make sure to never raise my hand more than once per period, and I've been purposefully keeping my class rank in the six to eight range. It's kept me from standing out too badly."

  "Still, getting into trouble is unavoidable when you don't have a good combat ability. I've been trying to develop it, but, you know…" Alicia frowned. "Hey, wait a second. We need to talk about whatever's going on with you before we get into my boring life. What the hell was that? How are you - how did what happened today happen?"

  My smile widened a little. Maybe I took some pleasure in my level growth after all, at least at times like these.

  "For one," I said, "I'm not actually Jack just yet. That line about me being ranked seven was true - it's just that everyone above me is a Senior, so I'm lined up for the position. This was to help me get experience."

  "Okay… That resolves, like, number five on the list of things I wanted to know, but sure." She stared at me a little intensely. "What I really want to know is how you got to rank seven in the first place. You were a 3.0 less than a year ago, and now you're a 4.2? I know your mom is from some big-shot family on the West Coast Sector, but with that growth rate-"

  "I got 0.6 for free." It was intentional obfuscation. "So it's only half as impressive as you think."

  "What? You can't just say things like that without explaining!" Alicia grasped my shoulders and shook me around. "For free? What does that even-?"

  She stopped, face flushing red. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you."

  "Yep," I said, popping the 'P.' "The last six months have been hectic, so I wanted to tell you the whole story, starting from the very beginning. If you have any questions after, I'll answer them seriously."

  She collapsed backward onto her pillow with a moan. "Alright. Okay. No matter how insane, I can take it. Lay it all on me!"

  So I did. Starting from the day I moved into the dorms, I told her everything.

  I told her about the evolution of my ability and my internship under Darren. I told her about my connection with Arlo and the whole Lingard clan.

  I told her the story with Zeke, my conspiring and planning with Rei. I told her what we decided I'd do to him – what I kept on doing to even more students.

  I told her that I'd been breaking down mentally, trying to process and respond to the dozens of hours of fight footage Wellston High produced in a week.

  I told her how I'd benefited massively from the period anyway, growing from 3.7 to 4.2 in a tiny timespan. I told her about the unearned respect and admiration I got because of my position.

  I told her how everything combined to get me to the Annual Ability Research Conference, where I landed a research internship at NXGen.

  I told her that NXGen was the industry leader in ability research, and that I wanted to intern there because they had a god-tier woman named Jane as a research subject. I told her about the rumors that NXGen was using Jane to develop ability-altering drugs.

  It took me over an hour to finish the story and answer the following tidal wave of interrogation. Even after I answered every question Alicia could muster, she seemed shell-shocked. She'd curled herself into a ball, her hands around her knees, and started muttering to herself while rocking back and forth. Her eyes were so wide I could see the whites of them.

  It was about what I expected. This was her first time getting a look 'behind the scenes,' and she was smart and cynical enough to come up with a lot of uncomfortable inferences.

  I ruffled around in my backpack and pulled out a large plastic bag full of hair, which I handed to her. The movement snapped her back to reality.

  "Sorry, I... What is this?" She stared at the bag, poking it with a finger. "A bag of hair?"

  Here comes the hard part.

  "174 hairs from very important people," I said. "People shed, you know? I gathered them from Lingard mansion each time I visited, and then I took the hairs to a private ability gauger - to distinguish between home workers and Lingard clan members. Each hair in that bag belongs to a God-tier."

  Alicia's slow, dawning look of unease told me she understood, but I explained anyway.

  "Remember when we tried out that trick? The one where you used your Vision Sharing to see through my eyes as long as we were touching?" She nodded, and I kept going. "We both agreed it was useless back then, that letting a blind High-tier see through your eyes would be a much better application. But I think it'll work with hair, too."

  "So it's not useless after all." Alicia squeezed the bag. "This is a really big deal, Meili."

  With the right hair, I thought, it could be more impactful than every other ability in this school combined.

  "Right," I said. "I'm explaining because you deserve to know, but also because I need you to understand." I looked her straight in the eyes. "You get it, right? I need to know what I got myself into. Now that I'm an affiliate of the Lingard Clan, now that I've taken the benefits, there's no way for me to back out. They control half the City."

  "A few of those hairs are from Valerie Lingard," I said. "I know because she's the only blonde 7.5 who's been in the mansion - and she's the City Authorities' Chief of Law Enforcement. I also need information about The Authorities, even more than the Lingard Clan. If you could look through her eyes and see what she sees…"

  It was a big ask. I knew it was a big ask, and I understood the power dynamics when someone like me asked a favor from someone like Alicia. I understood just how unfair it was.

  I asked anyway.

  "Meili, I-" She struggled with the words. "What are you planning to do? I thought - at least, from the way you described things, that you just really care about ability research... which is fair! If drugs come out that can affect abilities, that's a really big deal! But now it's even bigger than that?"

  I grimaced. I couldn't say anything (didn't know what to say) because even I myself didn't know the answer to her question. I started regretting the way I'd done this, dumping everything on her right as we reunited…

  "I don't have an exact plan," I admitted. "But that's because I don't have enough information to work off of. What I do know is that the Sector Authorities have been pouring massive funds into NXGen recently, and the company is scaling up hiring rapidly. It's the reason they took me in the first place. If The Authorities really gain the power to control abilities, they're not going to go around making everyone equally strong."

  She sat silently for a while, her face twisting round and round as I waited for her response. I was afraid she would say no – I was also afraid that I might try to pressure and force her if she did.

  "I really am kind of sad, huh?" Alicia eventually said. She opened the bag and pinched a blonde hair between her fingers, almost invisible under the light. "Always cursing my parents for being born with such a weak, limited ability. I hated them, you know? Hated them for giving me such a sad, insignificant life."

  She put the hair back in the bag, then threw it a couple of feet to her desk. "And now that I have the opportunity to do something with it, I'm terrified. Fantastic!"

  I glanced at the bag, making sure nothing spilled, and shook my head.

  "If spying on the Lingard Clan and The Authorities didn't scare you," I said, "I would tell you to be scared. But think of it this way: if a single high-tier in this sector knew that your ability could be used like this-"

  "I know! I know what they'd do," she said hysterically. "They would've drugged me, kidnapped me, and kept me locked in a cage for the rest of my life. It would be as easy as scaring off a few weak policemen from my crappy neighborhood while I'm home for Winter Break."

  "But they haven't," I said. "And they would have already done it if they knew."

  All the information-gathering abilities to worry about, like Deception Detection and Ability Analyzer, had limited daily uses. What's more, they all required somebody to ask the right question: 'Can x ability do this?' Nobody important enough had thought to ask if Vision Sharing - the contact-based ability that never progressed beyond 2.3 - could be used for long-range spying.

  "Wouldn't it be fitting, Alicia?" I took her hand, squeezing it lightly. "If the hierarchy system got shaken up because nobody thought a low-level ability could do anything?"

  She said nothing. She took a deep, heaving breath and stepped off the bed.

  Alicia had been the first friend I ever made in this world, and she'd paid for it – with four broken ribs for having a mutually respectful friendship with someone so high above her rank. If she got caught this time, the consequences would be far worse.

  She grabbed a hair from the bag anyway.

  Her eyes became glassy, shining with the eerie, violet light of ability activation. "The person this hair belonged to is reading on their laptop," Alicia said, staring blankly at the wall of her room. "Some documents about the building insurance for an apartment complex, I think."

  Her eyes returned to normal, and she turned to me.

  "You were right. It works."