Walking the streets of Wellston City past midnight was a unique experience. After coming to the conclusions I did in Journal Entry #21, it was my best attempt to calm down.

  There were still people out so late at night, but they were few, enough that it was a surprise each time I met eyes. It was a nice kind of stimulation: two seconds of heart palpitations, a slight sense of surprise or danger, then two minutes of calm silence and night air after averting my gaze.

  It's not like this world's completely savage, I reasoned. You don't get beat up for looking at someone.

  Turning the corner to another street, I tried to decide if the sparseness of people could have something to do with Wellston City's nature as a minor metropolis and college town rolled together.

  It was halfway between a major city like Chicago and a mid-sized college town, say Berkeley or Ann Arbor. Unlike in Berkeley, where the university students and staff were basically the population, Wellston University was a small proportion of the city's 500,000 people.

  On the other hand, half the city wore Wellston U sweaters or jackets or caps. Most stores and bars gave Wellston University discounts if you showed your student id. The university had an outsized cultural strength, which you couldn't quite say for the schools in big cities like Chicago or New York.

  As I wandered, the occasional streetlamp illuminating my surroundings, I reasoned that the city's architecture matched my thoughts. Rather than forests of steel and modern glass, or the rustic brick and concrete buildings that were so common on American campuses, Wellston was a scattering of both.

  Glass and steel, brick and concrete, snakelike towers snapping toward the sky, and rectangular bastions hunkered on the ground. All of it was there, within the dozen blocks I'd walked.

  Across the dimly lit sidewalk, my eyes caught an unexpected figure in a suit, black fabric rendering him nearly invisible in the darkness. I activated my ability to see him clearly. The twentyish-looking man was a 'law enforcement' student at Wellston, I thought, in one of those fast-track employment programs that only accepted high-tiers and above.

  He was likely interning with The Authorities, if I trusted the stereotype (and statistics). Was that why he was out so late? Pursuing a lead or completing an assignment? I wondered about him, then became afraid that keeping my ability active while staring would count as provocation.

  When I deactivated it, he was gone.

  The black gloves he wore on his hands stood out. Every high-tier had basic cold resistance, so they weren't there to protect from cold weather. Instead, rumor said that the gloves were for camouflage, to mask the dark red of dried blood.

  In a city of Five Hundred Thousand, there was no shortage of disobedience in need of punishment or reeducation. And wasn't that the beauty of being an officer for The Authorities? You could never go out of work, when you were policeman and lawmaker and judge. Deciding who the criminals were, how you caught them, how you punished them, how the news reported it.

  The night air sent a shudder. Four and a half years, and I still didn't want to accept it.

  At the same time, who was I to blame him? He'd spent his entire life surrounded by the same types of people, entrapped by rules and an environment that praised him for violence. For thousands of years, his bloodline had probably been bred for aggression, so who was I to condemn him? And who was I to say that I would've been any better than him had I lived my first life in this new world? Who was I, an outsider from another universe, someone who had lived a life free from the conditioning and pressures of this world to say he was evil?

  Who was I?

  I had been a bit of a sentimental person in my past life, and when I was worried, I often stared up at the stars. It wasn't as though anything prevented me from doing the same here. But the landmarks I used to look for, the Big Dipper and North Star, had disappeared - symbols of cosmic power and eternity, my foot. The cities I'd been thinking about weren't even real anymore.

  Slouched against a rough brick wall, tired and delirious from a lack of sleep, I allowed my gaze to drift upwards. The stars were just as beautiful in this new world as before. In my hysterical mental state, they appeared to me as a sprinkle of diamonds against the backdrop of an inky ocean, somehow bright through the haze of city light.

  But they weren't mine.

  The stars are all gone, so why am I still here?

  ***Beautiful***

  As he sucked down his third bottle of water and loosened the sweat-soaked collar of his uniform, Rei Sterling concluded that being king of Wellston was nothing but a curse.

  His bright green hair had darkened to the color of seaweed from sweat. His usually upright posture was completely ruined from hours of sitting. Rei wanted nothing more than to head home and relax.

  He couldn't. It was his 'duty' to suffer.

  At a regular school, his only duties would have been to win at Turf Wars and separate fights that got too ugly. But Wellston High had 500 years of tradition behind it, tradition that couldn't be ignored – tradition that resulted in countless annoying chores for him to take care of.

  At Wellston Private High School, few events were more important than the Freshman Tournament. On the first day of every school year, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors tuned in to watch the fresh blood battle it out.

  Nobody could miss it. The tournament was an introduction to the Wellston hierarchy for a quarter of the student population, and freshmen who didn't participate were automatically labeled easy targets.

  It was also a chance for first-years to understand where they stood. Those who won match after match established themselves as future royals, while those who lost could only take their rightful places at the base of the hierarchy. The tournament was so crucial, in fact, that it was tradition for the king and queen of Wellston to oversee and referee the matches.

  Which ultimately meant that he ended up stuck beneath the awful August sun, watching mid and low-tiers tussle around for the entirety of his day.

  Rei was the king of Wellston by pure technicality. He knew it himself. He'd barely drawn a match with his rival, Kuyo, and had only managed to take the crown because he was more popular among students. Selecting a leader based on popularity… It was unheard of!

  It wasn't like he had anything against lower-tiered students. Their matches were actually pretty exciting; they were usually competitive and passionate (if a little inexperienced), and there were even a few stand-out Freshmen who were incredibly strong for their age. There was a short blond kid (his name was Arlo, or something) who won his fights without a scratch thanks to his powerful barrier ability. A likely candidate for next year's king.

  …But couldn't we have at least rented out an indoor gym with air conditioning? He wondered. Is it 'tradition' to hold the tournament outside in 100-degree weather?

  Everyone else had smartly chosen to watch the matches from the windows of the air-conditioned school building, leaving him to suffer in the blazing heat with nobody to accompany him but his counterpart, Sayila.

  His fellow royal was also flushed and sweating buckets, even after she'd tied her long, turquoise hair into a ponytail for extra breathing room. She was a traditionalist queen - certainly more traditional than himself - and so tried her best to put on a high-and-mighty, unbothered facade.

  It wasn't working.

  Rei prided himself on his understanding of others, but anyone could tell what Sayila was thinking just by looking at her dreary, tired eyes. It was something along the lines of, 'get me out of here,' or even, 'I don't wanna do this anymore.'

  Coincidentally, those were his exact thoughts as well.

  He tapped on her shoulder, motioning to the tournament battleground with his hand. Only eight students remained, the rest having surrendered or been knocked out and transported to the infirmary by student volunteers.

  "I think we're finally down to eight," he said, relief tinting his voice. "We're supposed to hold the matches one at a time from now on, make it a big spectacle, is that right?"

  She nodded back, a strange smile on her face.

  "I'm surprised you remembered, Rei. I didn't think you ever cared enough about the hierarchy to pay attention to events like this."

  "Oh, you know… Now that I'm king, I figure I should be a bit more concerned about how things are supposed to go," he laughed it off.

  It was a flat-out lie, the kind he hated most, but Sayila's goodwill was too valuable to pass up. Given how he planned to change Wellston High, he needed all the support he could get.

  ***Beautiful***

  Kindness and peace were the privileges of the strong.

  I wasn't.

  I wasn't strong enough to fight against a royal, not strong enough to contend against higher-tiered upperclassmen, and not strong enough to meaningfully influence the hierarchy in any way. If I had tried to skip the Freshman Tournament, I wouldn't have merely been brushed off as weird or strange.

  I would have been cowardly. Cowardly meant weak. Weak meant Easy target.

  Easy target meant broken bones, bruises, social ostracization…

  Instead, I had chosen to slice the guts out of my first opponent, an unlucky low-tier girl who had obviously been peer-pressured into participating. This first match left a deep impression of my close-range fighting on the competition - in my next three matches my opponents kept retreating before I got close, losing by ringout.

  My strategy worked flawlessly. It was my plan from the beginning – to destroy a single person in an attempt to save myself stamina and others from injury.

  Then we reached the top eight. I glanced at the competition on my left and right, realizing that I wouldn't be able to skate by any longer.

  Seven other freshmen lined up beside me; none would be easy to deal with, and two were far stronger than I was. Arlo and Cecile were future royals, standing proudly without a scratch, while future top-ten rankers Zeke and Holden also made it through mostly unscathed.

  It was interesting to see how the future school powerhouses put themselves apart so early on. Ability growth accelerated during high school, of course, but it turned out that future top-ranking students usually placed among the best in their freshman class regardless.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  "Alright, everybody, listen up!" Rei announced, hands on his hips as if he were a gym teacher explaining dodgeball rules. "We've decided the matchups through random chance, so I don't wanna hear any complaining. Got that?"

  The environment was a little too tense for anybody to reply.

  "Perfect!" He grinned, completely ignoring our lack of response. "It's already uncomfortable enough out here, so let's get this over with. It'll be Ventus vs. Arlo, Meili vs. Holden…"

  A couple of minutes later, it was my turn to fight. Arlo had quickly bound Ventus in place with his barrier ability, handing Mr. 'I was born to be above you' his second hard loss in only a week. At least this time, it came at the hands of someone who was actually stronger than him.

  Holden stepped confidently to the battleground, cracking his knuckles and tilting his head back and forth to loosen up the joints in his neck. The courtyard was spacious and the perfect location for spectator viewing, with windows peering down at us from multiple sides. I could see dozens of students looking down on us simply by looking a few degrees upwards.

  It gave me the nervous shivers. Maybe a bit hypocritical of me, given my mindow-watching five days ago, but they weren't exactly watching out of concern for my well-being.

  "You're Meili, right? A lot of people have been worried about your claw ability." He was tall for fifteen, with spiky blue hair. His eyes began glowing a coppery-orange tint, and massive bronze gauntlets manifested on his hands.

  With a smirk, he pounded them together in front of his chest, producing a loud clanging noise that sounded through the air. "You might've had it easy up until now, but unlike those wimps who got scared away, I'm not afraid to fight up close and personal!"

  I let out a huff and flipped my ponytail behind my shoulder, putting up a cold, unbothered front to mask my nerves. "Everyone's been having it easy so far, in case you haven't noticed. That's the whole difference between finals and preliminaries."

  It was painfully, obviously fake, the type of acting you would see from the WWE.

  "That's Right!"

  "Get her good, Holden!"

  "You gotta end her for that, dude!"

  "Kill this Corny Asshole!"

  "Crush this guy, Meili!"

  The spectating students either didn't notice or didn't care. Their heckling and shouting echoed all around me, jeering for two kids they didn't know to beat the crap out of each other. The suppressed frustration within me began to bubble and foam, slowly gaining magnitude and taking hold of me.

  You guys want to be entertained that badly, huh? I thought, slowly flexing and preparing the aura flow in my hands. I'll give you all a show if that's what you really want.

  I instantly formed my claws, but they were thin, 12-foot-long spears instead of the giant handlike structure I'd been exclusively showcasing that day. Their sudden proximity and length caught Holden off guard, and I didn't intend to give him a chance to recover - I immediately aimed for his chest with one claw and made a shot at his feet with the other, forcing him to jump and protect his torso with his gauntlets.

  Then, as he was prone in the air, I sliced at his legs with my claws, earning a bloody, vertical cut down his left pant leg. He landed badly, his body awkwardly contorted in an attempt to avoid my strikes, and a puddle of blood spilled from his flesh. I took the chance to retreat a few steps, until I was about 20 feet away.

  Holden wasn't an idiot, being capable of entering a school like Wellston. Surely realizing that he didn't stand a chance from a distance, he immediately leaped to his feet and rushed toward me in a full-on charge. I countered by extending a claw to its maximum length and swiping outward with multiple slashes at his ankles, knocking him off balance and leaving him bleeding from both legs.

  Once again, I backed off without a follow-up. Instead, I started bleeding him out through a meticulous hit-and-run – launching retreating potshots and dirty strikes toward his lower body as he threw himself toward me, circling away whenever he got too close. Both our abilities granted us enhanced speed, but neither specialized in it. I retreated nearly as fast as he could pursue, never letting him get a single hit in as he slowly exhausted himself.

  Finally, after a particularly nasty strike to the thigh, he couldn't take any more punishment.

  "Wh-What the hell is this?" He stuttered, dizzy from blood loss and struggling to pull himself off the ground. "Everyone said you were a close-range fighter!"

  I faked a laugh, beckoning him closer with a motion of my claws. "I am. You just haven't gotten into close range yet. Why don't you try again and see what happens?"

  The crowd of students roared in approval, their chants quickly swinging in my favor, and Holden's face contorted into something humiliated.

  "Fine then! Since you're so good at running, try running from this!" In a crude last-ditch effort, he pulled a nearby lamppost out of the pavement with his enhanced strength and swung it at me as an improvised club. I simply caught it by shaping my claw into its original handlike form – and after losing so much blood, he didn't have the strength to prevent me from pulling it straight from his hands.

  His face paled, realizing his dire circumstances, and I swung the pole back at him like he was a baseball and I was the batter. The force of the swing sent him flying into the school building with a brutal crunch, and though he managed to block the blow with his gauntlets, that didn't protect him from a head-to-wall concussion.

  Holden slowly slid to the ground, completely unconscious. I had won. The crowd's cheers were near-deafening as hundreds of students chanted out my name. It was all anyone could ask for out of a fight between amateur kids.

  The crowd felt a lot better about it than I did.

  I was drained, self-loathing welling up inside of me as the adrenaline and nerves wore off. Red copper escaped from the self-made crack in my tongue, mixing into a disgusting concoction with a clump of rancid-tasting bile. I could do nothing but swallow it back down and wait for the discomfort to stop.

  As I tried and failed to look away from Holden's bloodied body, I found myself really wanting the privileges of the strong.

  Peace and kindness. Kindness and peace. I thought about apologizing to Darren for the trouble.

  ***Beautiful***

  "Are you sure she's only a 3.0? I think there might be some sort of error in the documents," said Sayila quietly.

  It was the intermission period between rounds 1 and 2 of the finals; the four remaining victorious first-years were the strongest in their class. It wasn't surprising for a powerful freshman to make it to this stage without difficulty.

  But Rei hadn't expected Meili to beat Holden down so easily. In fact, when he paired the two together, he had anticipated a brutal, down-to-the-wire dogfight. From what he'd seen up to that point, they were both close-range fighters, one specializing in offense while the other leaned defensively. The winner between them was supposed to come out the other end half-dead.

  "You might be right," he answered, "Holden's supposed to be a 3.1, which seems reasonable from what I've seen… And she beat him pretty easily."

  She frowned, glancing down at Meili's student file. "Well, based purely on their difference in power, how many points above him do you think she is? I know you're quite good at appraising these types of situations, Rei."

  "Probably 0.4 or 0.5, considering she initially took him by surprise - so she's probably in the lower-elite, 3.5-3.6 area. The weird part is that I've never seen the back office mess up somebody's info so badly."

  He tried to recall a similar situation, but instead found himself blanking on any instances where they got a single piece of information incorrect.

  "Hmm... I have to question your familiarity with these files, Rei." Sayila pressed her lips together. "Not that I'm particularly knowledgeable, either; it's just that we've only held our seats for three months."

  "That's fair." He nodded, acknowledging the point. "But I at least know that some of the people working in admin have amazing abilities. There was the one guy who stared at me for ten seconds - and then told me my exact height, weight, ability level, what I ate for breakfast, what brand of toothpaste I used..."

  "Obvious Hyperbole." She rolled her eyes with a smile. "Fine... how do you explain the fight if they didn't make a mistake?"

  "Well, I still think her file is wrong; the caveat is that it's wrong because it's outdated. It was probably correct back when they put it together. The problem with my theory is that-"

  "Rei, this file is only two weeks old." She interrupted, waving the paper in front of his face. "Nobody can get that much stronger in such a short period."

  It was his turn to roll his eyes. "Right. But look at the bottom of the page. The medical office wrote an interesting note just a few days ago."

  She repositioned the page before her eyes.

  "Okay… After careful analysis of Ms. Strauss' aura channels, we concluded that her ability is not 'Demon Claws' but 'Devil's Hands.' 'Devil's Hands' is a rare enhancement-type ability that can only be accessed through ability evolution, typically characterized by a greater range and more precise control…" Sayila read the note, slowly trailing off.

  "Cool, right?" Rei grinned. "From my terrible understanding of ability evolution, it's, like, the only way for anybody to boost their level by a lot in just a few weeks."

  She nodded in acquiescence. "Alright, so your explanation is plausible. But ability evolution is extraordinarily rare, maybe even one in a million. Don't be too depressed if the medical office turns out to be wrong."

  "Come on," he said, "isn't the break ending soon? We know what 'Devil's Hands' looks like. We can judge for ourselves."

  A few minutes later, Rei found himself unable to judge much of anything. His state-of-the-art randomization technique of putting names into a jar and taking them out had paired Meili (3.6?) against Zeke (3.1).

  It was another lopsided matchup, not challenging enough for Meili to reveal anything more than she did in her previous fight. The gray-haired boy couldn't even get close enough to land a hit, forced to spend the entire fight blocking and dodging Meili's constant stream of slashes and stabs. His ability, 'Phase Shift,' allowed him to switch between two forms of augmentation, one focused on power and speed while the other focused on defense and recovery. Unfortunately for him, his defensive form was too slow to catch her, while his offensive form's defenses were too weak to withstand her attacks.

  Zeke ended up pinned against a wall, stuck in his defensive form, as Meili bled him out with a thousand cuts from a distance. Eventually, he used up so much aura that he couldn't keep his ability active, and Meili downed him with a nasty stab to the stomach.

  Fortunately, after reading the kid's delinquency record in his file, Rei didn't have to feel sorry for him. Zeke apparently had a mean streak a mile wide, infamous at his old middle school for singling out low-tiers and intentionally breaking their bones in the most painful way possible.

  Zeke had been the king of the jungle at his old school, but now he was merely an above-average mid-tier at the most competitive high school in the Sector. Rei hoped he would take the beating as a lesson in humility.

  ***Beautiful***

  Meili's Journal

  Entry #22:

  Dear future self,

  For some reason, after not writing any of these for over a year, this is my second entry in the span of a single week. It's funny. I wrote 'for some reason' as if to imply that I don't have a good reason, but I actually have a really good reason. Today was the first day of school at Wellston.

  Well, 'first day' by pure technicality. It wasn't like we actually had to go to class. And I don't mean that in the typical 'It's the first day, so all I have to do is read a bunch of syllabuses and introduce myself a few times' type of way. 99% of students skipped every class to watch the Freshman Tournament. Today was a school day in name only.

  About the tournament, I made the final 8, got two relatively easy pairings against Zeke and Holden, and then got utterly crushed by Arlo's barrier ability. I'm actually writing this on a sprained wrist and multiple broken fingers - thankfully, they're supposed to heal completely overnight, thanks to Doctor Darren's regenerative serum.

  Speaking of, he diagnosed my aura pathways as perfectly fine. Even better than fine: the changes to my ability are from ability evolution. Ability evolution is the same process that transformed Blyke's ability from 'Energy Beam' to 'Energy Discharge' in canon, and grew his level from 4.5 to 5.0 in just a few days.

  So I'm probably a lower elite-tier now? Looking back on it, I probably should have realized something was up when I beat Zeke and Holden. Meili was weaker than them in the original series. It's just so odd… a jump from 3.0 to 3.5(?) is a massive transformation in social status. The only comparison I can make is that it's comparable to a 7 getting facial remodeling surgery and becoming a 9. And that's still, like, a terrible analogy.

  God, all this rambling, and I haven't even gotten to the main point yet.

  I'm supposed to be writing about fighting. Fighting here, fighting there, and a little more fighting sprinkled on top.

  Varsity sports aren't a thing; they've been replaced by turf wars. Collegiate and professional-level athletics have been replaced by massively popular gladiator leagues. Debates are all but nonexistent because the stronger side can always exert their will on the other through combat. Even in a game as innocuous as middle-school dodgeball, abilities and injuries appear without fail.

  We didn't have a festival or school fair to celebrate the new school year. We had a bloody, 1v1 knockout tournament, with 99% of students participating or watching.

  Just the other day, I saw two preppy little ten-year-old schoolgirls, with their nice button-up blouses and pleated skirts, passionately squealing over the results of the Ability Gladiator Championship. "Oh my god. Imand Strauss is sooo cool! The way he uses his Venom Control ability to knock people out is just-" Those words came from the blonde, pigtailed head of a 4'6 middle schooler.

  Do you remember the way you looked at them? Like they were weird, or strange, or abnormal? You need to finally get this through your head. They aren't the weird ones. You are.

  People like to fight; they want to watch people fight, and they love to win.

  You don't like to fight; even beating up that asshole Zeke made you feel terrible about yourself. And don't forget that you just placed second in the freshman tournament. Some glory-seeking upperclassman is probably going to challenge you to a match. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about it in the short term, but the best long-term solution is to get powerful enough that few people want to challenge you. It sounds perfect on paper – but guess what? You'll have to do a whole lot of fighting to get that strong.

  It's a terrible solution, but I think the best thing you can do is pick your battles. Find situations and conflicts that you won't feel as shitty for participating in. Two mid-tiers are beating up a low-tier for bumping into them in the hallway? Stop them. A low-tier scholarship student is forced to do assignments for a rich, privileged elite-tier? Get involved.

  If you can get into enough conflicts by the time you graduate, maybe you'll be enjoying a privileged life as a high-tier. Mom and Dad would be really proud.