Tears brimmed in my eyes. I couldn't think. I couldn't speak. I couldn't look away from Emma's eyes. From her oh so innocent smile.

What had I been thinking? Why had I ever wanted to be friends with this girl? This demon?

Emma was the root of all my problems. She was the one who betrayed me, the one who led the bullies, the one who drove away anyone who could be my friend. She was the one obstacle I absolutely had to deal with to survive, the problem my power was meant to solve.

Now I was going through hell for her sake. Inviting her into my home, opening up my heart, breaking my brain with headaches, all to carry us into the thin, shining sliver of futures where we were friends again. And at every step, every step, she spat venom and breathed hellfire with an insane determination to prove herself a bigger monster.

Fuck that. Fuck her. She just made my decision for me. She wasn't worth my time. She had never been worth my time. It was far, far, far past the time I should have given up on her.

I had power, now. I could use it to find other friends. Real friends. Friends who wouldn't hate me and fuck with me on every little thing. Friends, who would protect me, support me, be there for me when I needed them. Who would love me like a sister, like a true friend would.

I could do more. I had used my power to pry Emma out of the pits of Hell. Made the infinitesimal sliver of our happy futures together grow larger and larger until it encompassed more than one third of the futures in my sight.

I could do the reverse just as easily. All I had to do was give my power the right demands.

I wish you were dead, Emma.

The great well of futures rose in front of my eyes, a vast selection of worlds brimming with potential and ready for my command. I could taste them, they were right there and all I had to do was pick and choose between them. Ways to ruin Emma, and her criminal father, and her murderer friend, and all the other bullies who were wastes of space in this world.

The trillions of ways to achieve my goal flashed before my eyes in an instant. Ways that wouldn't be traced back to me, ways to lead them into any fates I desired and make them suffer any torments I could imagine. Ways to get them humiliated, disgraced, thrown in jail for life without parole, disowned by their families, marked as child abusers, their money stolen away, their house destroyed, their lives crushed, killed in a car crash, killed by drowning, killed by a gas leak, killed by a fire, killed in a gang war, killed by the police, killed by a superhero, killed by a rabid dog, killed by an allergy, killed by a seizure, killed by a drug overdose, killed by a wasting disease, killed by domestic violence, killed by a fit of insanity, killed together by their own hands in a group suicide with their bodies lined up in a neat row in the school gymnasium all hanging limp from their nooses...

Most of the ways wouldn't even be hard. All I needed was time to think, the patience to plan, and the willingess to accept a few months of incapacitating pain. I had done it once already in the locker, when I tried to use my power to do good and redeem my childhood friend. She had rejected me, spit in my face and dug her claws into me all the harder for it. Fine. That was her choice as a free woman, and it was the last free choice I would allow her to make in her life. My final gift to her would be to accept her choice. I would accept her as the demon she so desperately wanted me to believe she was, and send her straight into the Hell she deserved.

...and yet...and yet...

What always sustained me in my darkest moments was my conviction that I was better than them. Better than the bullies. Better than this twisted shell of what Emma used to be. I didn't hurt people for my own benefit. I didn't take joy in their pain. I didn't give in to anger. I believed in love, and kindness, and mercy, and heroism, and all the other virtues my Mom and Dad had taught me.

I knew, in my heart, that if I dragged Emma to Hell I would be the first one to join her there.

Unbidden, a memory of the future danced in front of my eyes. One of the futures I had seen in the locker. Emma and I were having a sleepover with our other friends - friends, plural! - and chatting excitedly about the movie we had watched on pay per view. There weren't any bullies there. There weren't any bullies anywhere. Emma had done a complete one eighty on her attitude and apologized for all the bad things she did. She and I walked the school hallways together, and we stuck up for any students we saw who were being bullied, and if the bullies didn't stop we called in her lawyer dad to get them suspended from school. She had convinced me to join after school clubs again, and I was the star of the chess team, and when I went to the state tournament she came with me to cheer me on...

The Emma in the memory overlaid perfectly with the Emma in front of me. The auburn hair, the beautiful features of a fashion model, the quirk of an eyebrow, the faint smile. The only difference was in the eyes. The demon in front of me in reality was predatory, eyes gleaming with a desperate malice. But my best friend in the future past had eyes gleaming and vibrant with life and love.

I was so close. The chance to reach that paradise was 38.5146884170708337%, as long as I followed my plan here and now, and it was growing with every choice I made. I only had to stay the course.

I had to keep the right perspective. I couldn't put myself through pain for the sake of the Emma in front of me, the demon who deserved to die. But the present was temporary. Transient. It only lasted a moment. The present was little more than an illusion, a veil put up to distract me from the part of reality that truly mattered. The future. The reality I would live with for the rest of my entire life. I had to look past the ugly illusion of Emma before my eyes in the present, and focus on creating the new and improved Emmas I would live with in the future for years to come.

And with that thought, I realized why Emma's numbers kept rising as I got closer to my goal. I had thought my chance to redeem her was only thirty eight percent because she was too resistant to change; and that the other sixty two percent of futures, the ones where I failed, were futures where she was too stubborn and evil to change no matter what I did.

But...maybe the truth was that, in the sixty two percent of futures where I failed, I failed because I wasn't stubborn enough to make her change. Maybe those were the futures where I was too weak to endure Emma's struggles against the fate I chose for her, her desperate hissing and venom-spitting and clawing against my grip, and gave up on the possibility of redeeming her. Maybe those were the futures where I gave in to malice and turned my power against her, where I condemned the demon of the present to Hell for my own selfish satisfaction, and prevented the good Emmas of the future from ever being born.

I wanted to believe that was the truth. That I was the one in control of our fate. That my vast well of futures had trillions of paths that were certain to make her be my friend again, one hundred percent, and it was only my own reluctance and weakness holding me back from grasping them. I wanted to believe that I could change anything about anyone if I worked hard enough. Even someone as screwed up as Emma.

And with that, I made my decision.

I refused to respect Emma's choice to be a demon. That wasn't her choice to make. That wasn't a freedom that people were allowed to have. I wouldn't stand for it. A true friend wouldn't let her best friend turn into a demon and do nothing about it. I had tried to stop her fall when she started hanging around the bad crowd. I hadn't been strong enough to save her then, but I was stronger now. I would crush the demon in front of me and reshape her back into the friend she was supposed to be. No compromises.

Yes. I had the power to save her. The power that gave me the absolute confidence I could cast her into Hell gave me the same confidence I could raise her to Heaven.

I wiped the tears from my eyes and swallowed.

"Emma." I said.

"Yes, Taylor?" she replied sweetly. "Had a change of heart?"

"No." I said. My voice was firm. "And don't interrupt me with nonsense while I'm speaking. I'm not done laying out the terms."

She blinked. "Terms?"

"The terms for you to follow if you want to stay out of jail. Your dad and your cape friend, too."

Emma's mouth gaped open. "But-"

"As I was saying." I continued. "You don't touch me. You don't touch my stuff. You don't look at my stuff. You don't spread rumors about me. You don't insult me or try your shitty emotional manipulation ever again. I don't really care about it anymore but it's getting tiresome. Those terms aren't just for you, by the way. The same goes for Madison and Sophia and Julia and all the rest. You're all going to make them all stop. Or I'm taking you down."

"Then it's true." said Emma. Her tone shifted to anger. "You think your life is worthless and you don't love your dad either. You don't care if he dies and you have to bury him next to your-"

I folded my arms. "Go ahead. Throw more nonsense at me, if you think being an ass is something to be proud of. Have a hissy fit and a good cry. It won't change your fate. When you're done here you're going to go home, go to school tomorrow, and tell every one of the bullies to stay the fuck away from me. And you're going to make it stick. That's your fate, from now until the end of high school. Or you and your dad are going to be in the newspapers, and then you're going to be in jail."

Emma stared at me, a half dozen expressions flickering over her face as if she didn't know how to feel. Her hands twitched, curling and uncurling into fists. If my threat detector hadn't given me a better than 90% chance of safety, I would have thought she was about to slug me in the face.

Finally Emma's features settled into a mask of pain. Stung.

"Taylor. I get it if you hate me. I did a lot of shit to you. I admit it. You didn't show any spine, you can't blame me for pushing you to the floor with the other bottom crawlers. Now you're finally pushing back. I respect that. I'll stop talking about you, I'll stop messing with your stuff. If you want to punish me for what I did back then, that's fine with me too. I'm strong, I'm a survivor. I can take it. Do whatever you want to me if you think you can get away with it.

"But my Dad doesn't deserve to go to jail. He doesn't know anything about what I did to you at school. He's not a criminal. He only helped me cover up her stuff because I made him do it. I told him it would help my friend and keep a superhero in action, and he did it because he's a good man who cares about his daughter and wants the gangsters and rapists off the streets. If Dad goes to jail he'd lose his job. We'd lose our house. Anne would have to drop out of college, we couldn't afford the tuition-"

"Yeah, being a criminal sucks, doesn't it?" I said.

Emma flinched. "I get it, you want revenge on me, but you're talking about putting my family on the streets. Threatening innocent-"

I scoffed. "Like you threatened my family two minutes ago. Except with justice instead of death."

"I thought you were better than that, Taylor. Is that the kind of person you want to be? A person who gets revenge on a girl by threatening her innocent family?"

"I'm not threatening anyone. I'm having mercy. I'm giving you and your dad a chance for a better fate. Follow my terms, stop the bullies, and you'll be fine." I narrowed my eyes. "Why the fuck are you fighting me on this, Emma? Are you so obsessed with bullying me that you're willing to throw your family under the bus to keep at it?"

Emma's composure finally began to crack. "I'll stop, I promise I'll stop! I won't touch you, I won't talk to you, I won't do anything. But the others, I can't control their minds! They all think you're a target, weak, a prey animal-"

"I told you. The terms go for Sophia and Madison and Julia and the rest, too."

Emma was desperate now. "I can't! I can get Madison to stop, maybe Julia and Addie too, but if Sophia wants to hurt you I can't stop her! No one can! You haven't seen her fight. I've seen her take down ten grown men in a minute and that's when she's holding back, nonlethal takedowns. Probably only two or three capes in the city can stop her if she's really trying!"

So Sophia Hess was the cape, the murderer. Given the shit I'd seen her pull at school I could believe it. I was sure she was the one who had shoved me into the locker.

I felt a chill. I had asked my power if the cape would attack me if I went public with her crimes. I hadn't asked what she would do if I tried to blackmail her to stop her bullying. I had assumed that she'd take the former as a worse insult, but...

5.2824055985418114% chance Dad or I will be killed or seriously injured, if I try to blackmail Emma and Sophia into stopping the bullying.

I cringed at the pain, and then cringed that my false assumptions had been proven wrong. More than a five percent chance Sophia would go ballistic and hurt my family. Why the hell did Sophia care that much about bullying me?

It didn't matter. It was too late to change my plan. All I could do was use my power to manage the consequences.

"I told you, Emma. Sophia can't touch me. I gave the dirt on her to a lawyer, and if anything happens to me or Dad he'll make it public. Tomorrow you're going to tell Sophia that if she lays a hand on me her extracurricular activities will become public knowledge."'

"Sophia won't listen to me! She never listens, she does whatever the hell she wants!"

"You're her best friend. Figure it out. You're going to tell her to stop and make sure she understands damn well what will happen to her if she pushes me one more time."

"She won't listen! Do you think she'll listen to someone like me? She's on a whole other level. She's a killer, she's a predator, she's a superhero, and she fucking hates to lose. More than anything she hates to lose to people weaker than her. You? You're the loser without a spine, you're the prey animal at the bottom of the food chain. You have no idea how pissed she's going to be when she finds out what you're trying to pull. You have no fucking idea. She's going to beat the shit out of you and make you tell her who your lawyer is and then she'll kill you fucking dead! That's why I came here to make you back off and save your fucking life!"

I leaned back involuntarily, away from her outburst. She was overestimating the risk, given my numbers, but...how the hell had Emma gotten me into this nightmare?

It didn't make any sense. Apparently Emma dumped me to become best friends with a psycho killer cape who scared the hell out of her and beat up anyone she saw as inferior. What the hell, Emma? Now she was twisted, ranting about losers and winners, predators and prey animals and food chains.

And Sophia was apparently a superhero. Sophia. The sadistic asshole who picked on anyone she could get away with. Who apparently took schoolgirls and their lawyer parents out on secret night expeditions to watch her murder people and then help her cover up the crime. What the hell, PRT? What was a psycho like her doing on a team of heroes? Don't you have psychological testing to screen them out? Or capes who could tell what she was doing? Hell, my power could tell you in two seconds the chance she'd kill someone if she thought she'd get away with it.

The whole situation was crazy. I wanted to fix Emma and turn her into a friend who would stop the bullies, my power told me that I had a good chance of doing it, but the more I learned about the nightmare she'd dragged me into the less sense it made.

Then I realized what I was missing.

I couldn't fix Emma unless I understood what had made her like this. That was what I had been missing since day one, since the day I came back from summer camp and Emma rejected me. She never told me why. The not knowing had gnawed at me. Kept me awake on sleepless nights, thinking that I was a loser and it was all my fault.

But now...for the first time in years, I had her cornered. I could get answers. I didn't need to ask my power for a number. I could already see her tearfully spilling her guts, a scene rippling through my immediate futures and repeating itself in trillions of variations.

"Emma." I said. "You're not making any sense. If you want me to believe a word you say, start from the beginning. Tell me why. You were my friend, and then you weren't. It wasn't anything I did. I never did anything to you. Even after you tried to make my life hell I never did anything to hurt you. You never told me why. You evaded, insulted me, hid behind the bullies, and you never told me why. Why did you betray me? How the hell did you get so screwed up?"

"I'm not..." Emma's expression twisted, pain and anger and fear rippling across her face. Then she looked away. It was long seconds before she spoke. "Okay. I'm screwed up. I'm not stupid, I can see it. It's not like you think. I don't hate you, it's just, I'm...I'm doing what it takes to survive."

"Really? Giving your old friend crap every day for a year, stuffing me into a toxic locker, that's what it takes to survive?"

She looked away again. "I'm sorry. I'm not proud of that. We went too far. It doesn't excuse it, but it was the principle of the thing."

"The principle."

"It's what Sophia said. Sophia...she saved my life back then." Emma paused, looked to me with an unfamiliar expression on her face. One she hadn't shown me for years, one she had always hid behind her mask. Vulnerability.

I nodded, and she began to spill out her heart.