Ah, hello Winslow Floor Tile #2849. I'd say it's a pleasure to meet you, but unfortunately my current circumstances are less than pleasant.
"Oh wo~w Taylor, you should really watch where you're going! We wouldn't want you to hurt yourself now would we?"
Emma's voice was like sour honey- The false concern contained it was sweet enough to be sickening. I don't know why she even bothers with this game of hers. It was obvious that she cared for me as much as she cared for dog shit, and it's not like she was being particularly funny or clever.
The group of girls that follow her around laugh anyway. The laughter is joined by faint buzzing.
No. Not here. I push away that feeling, letting myself go limp against the wonderful Tile #2849. The crowd begins to walk away, but one pair of footsteps stop near my head. Oh boy, bonus bullying. God, don't you people have anything better to do?
"You know Hebert," Oh, hi Sophia, I'm fine. How are you? Punch any awkward girls today? "Maybe if you grew a spine for once in your pathetic life, you wouldn't be so weak."
Yeah sure, like the three of them wouldn't make it worse on me for daring to stand up for myself.
"...What?"
Shit. I must've said that out loud. Before I can say anything else though, Sophia tilts my head up, looking into my eyes through my askew glasses.
Curiously, her normal contemptuous gaze is tempered by confusion, as if instead of gum on the bottom of her shoe, I was instead radioactive gum on the bottom of her shoe.
"Hebert." She begins, insultingly slowly, "We do this to you for being weak. Why the hell would we punish you for being strong and fighting back?"
Wh-what? I just stare at her, baffled. Floored, even. She looks back at me. Oh god, is this not a rhetorical question?
You know what, fuck it. What do I have to lose at this point?
"Well," I croak out. Eugh, my throat was way too dry all of a sudden. Let's try that again. "Well, whenever I try to resist, or fight back, or even just stand up for myself, you three just… double down, and treat me even worse."
"That's because, Taylor," Oh great, Emma stayed behind too. "We have to make sure that whatever you do isn't just a fluke, that you really are capable of being more than just a worm."
If I was confused before, then now I was straight up flabbergasted. I twist my head to openly gape at the redhead, breaking out of Sophia's surprisingly loose grip.
"That's got to be the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard!" I sputter, the words bursting free before I get the chance to even think about them.
Though, now that I have thought about them, I think I probably would've said the same thing.
I stand up, just in time for Madison to also show herself. "I mean, it's not like any of us claim to be the brains of this scheme."
Emma nods. "Right! Why else do you think I'm so set on showing them how much of a survivor you are? Just how strong you can be? We need those smarts in our group."
"What are you three talking about?"
Sophia drags a hand across her face, as if I was the crazy one here. "Look- Y'know what, c'mere Hebert."
Without any warning, she grabs me by the waist, and lifts me up. I half expected her to suplex me, but instead she effortlessly carried me into a nearby classroom. I know I don't have the best eating habits, but I didn't think I was that light, not with my frog-like figure anyway.
The posters covering every square inch of the walls had cheesy literature puns with pictures of capes on them, which made it pretty obvious what this room was supposed to be used for. Right now though, it was currently devoid of any living things, save for a cockroach poking around in the bottom drawer of the teacher's desk.
"Madison, Go get the whiteboard." My captor says, before dropping me down on a table near the front of the room. I say dropped, but she was surprisingly ginger about it. Comparatively, of course. If anyone tried to describe Sophia Hess as 'ginger' she'd probably rub some real ginger straight in their eyes.
The point is, while she didn't place a pillow under me or anything, she didn't abruptly let me fall like two feet onto the solid fake wood of the table's surface.
As Madison went to get her tools of destruction, the other two members of the people who've worked together to make my life a living hell for over a year stood in front of the teacher's desk, leaning on it. Honestly, with how nonchalant they were, it kind of reminded me of the way Mr. Gladly would always lean on his desk in an attempt to look 'cool' and 'hip' and 'not a complete tool'.
He always failed at it, of course, but now I had to deal with the mental image of Emma attempting to curry favor with a group of cynical high school students. She'd probably actually be pretty good at it too, which was sad to think about.
One of those rotating whiteboards is wheeled in through the door, with my least favorite brunette pushing it along. It surprised me to see, as I was sure that they all have had their wheels removed, stolen, vandalized, or used as a weapon at some point.
The board is pushed in front of the desk, with the trio taking their places in front of it. Madison, taking a dry erase marker from the tray underneath the board, draws three circles- one with an E, one with an S, and the last with an M. It's pretty obvious what these circles represent.
"Right!" The short girl begins,"You're probably a bit lost, maybe frightened, and possibly even confused, so we're going to explain how our little group works to you!"
Emma takes this moment to grab a marker of her own. "So, as you can probably tell, these circles represent each of the core members of our group. Everyone has their own unique role to play here."
Sophia, markerless, spoke up. "Think of it as like an ecosystem or something." "Exactly!" My former friend smiles. "As you know, my job is to manage our reputation. Feeding the rumor mill, keeping tabs on secrets, and being known as the most popular girl in school all serves to keep us on top."
At the low, low cost of your best friend's mental, physical, and emotional health. What a steal.
As the redhead writes 'reputation' in the circle representing her, Sophia starts talking again.
"And while Ems does all that, I handle all the physical stuff. Protection, intimidation, persuasion, you name it." She said, as if I wasn't regularly at the wrong end of said 'persuasion' and intimidation- Hell, half the reason I stopped trying things was because I couldn't beat the other girl in a straight fight.
I mean, I could, but I wasn't going to stoop so low as to use my powers on a group of bullies. I was better than them. Even if they were trying to… recruit me, I guess? That's what this is leading up to, right? Despite being an insane prospect, it certainly matched up with what they were saying here.
Oh who was I fooling. This was a trap. A scheme to get me to lower my guard. Just another one of their sick and twisted games. As Madison stepped up to start explaining her role in the group, I wondered if this entire setup was her idea. It couldn't be Sophia's; she was more likely to just straight up assault me, and it probably wasn't Emma's idea either, as her bullying style usually involved her hanger-ons.
"Tay?" Emma asked, snapping me out of my thoughts, "You alright in there?"
I sigh. I had better things to do with my time than waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Look," I began, "I know you three are just gleefully waiting for me to attempt to take you up on this offer, just so you can pull the rug out from under me, revealing that this entire thing was a setup to make me look stupid and all that. I get it, you get off on finding new and inventive ways to make my life into a hell of petty torment. Can we just skip to the point where you dump a bucket of soda on my head and call it a day?"
The grins on Emma and Madison's face fall. I'm sure that if Sophia ever smiled for a reason other than to assert her dominance then it also would've fallen. Either way, they drop their facades, and turn to look at each other. Yeah, I figured as much.
The trio huddle together, beginning to whisper to each other. As they converse about their evil plans or whatever, I eye the door. Maybe I can slip out and get far enough down the hallway that I can lose them.
"Well, Hebert," Damn it. "It looks like today's your lucky day."
Emma nods. "After some discussion, we've decided that you are a survivor, and stronger than you first appeared."
God, are they still on this? I give Emma a flat look. I don't buy this- any of it, for that matter. Maybe if this had been pulled last year I may have fallen for the trick, but not anymore. It's more likely that she had fixated on me because she has some unresolved romantic feelings for me rather than her actually believing in all of that 'predators and prey' tripe that Sophia likes to spit out.
"As a token of goodwill," Oh christ, she still has more things to say, "We're going to let you in on a little secret. Sophia, if you would?"
The most athletic of them stepped forth. Oh boy, now I get to find out that she brought like a weapon to beat me up with today or something. Hopefully this wouldn't take too long- I'd rather spend the rest of lunch actually eating instead of recove-
What the fuck.
You, you've got to be- this is a joke. I'm hallucinating. When they tripped me earlier I fell into a puddle of drugs or something. I must still be dreaming. I refuse to believe this. There's no fucking way, that this bitch, Sophia Hess, is god-damned Shadow Stalker.
As I sit there, slack-jawed and buggy-eyed, the Sophia shaped cloud of wispy smoke turns back into a smirking regular Sophia.
"What the fuck?" Would you look at that, my mouth finally caught up with my brain. I'm sort of surprised it took this long, considering how my brain was still stuck on the fact that one of my bullies was a Ward. Protecting the city my ass.
That would explain how they managed to get away with so much shit, though. Blackwell probably gets a nice chunk of change from having a "Hero" attend her school, and unless Mr. Gladly is like Armsmaster or something, it's not like any of the other heroes would know that this was happening.
"So, Tay," Emma says, walking out the door, "If you're really a survivor, come meet us after school, capiche?"
Right, this was a recruitment pitch apparently. Fuck, they were serious about this, weren't they? They had to be, revealing that Sophia was secretly a cape. Now I'd be able to go straight to the PRT and tell them that a Ward was bullying me, bring along my journal…
Or, I could use this opportunity for more than just that. If the three of them let me into their group, I might be able to stop them from turning onto other hapless students- I've seen how they treat other unpopular kids. If they look to me for guidance, I could make them use their reputation for good.
As much as I'd loathe to admit it, it looks like their shoddy plan to see if I was strong could work out for the best.
I sigh. I had a lot of thinking to do.