"Say that shit again, I fucking dare you!"

John didn't know who he was attacking, he just knew he was being disrespected and they needed to get beaten and bloodied.

"Worthless trash! The hell made you think you could take me down?!"

He couldn't see anything clearly, his vision was muddled by blood and anger. He could only make sense of it all once he had finally relented in the beating. Only then, had he realized what he was doing, staring down at his hands with traces of blood covering them.

...Wait, W-Why am I...? I s-shouldn't be...

Then, he looked down at the person who had been the victim of his attack, a girl his age, long purple hair splayed out, and glowing blue eyes that gradually began to fade away, becoming hollow.

NO!

John awoke with a startle, pushing himself up quicker than he should've as a pained gasp escaped him, his arm instinctively placing itself on his core, clutching his ribs, not taking notice of the bandages that had been placed. Even moving his arms was rather painful.

A dream...just a nightmare, it wasn't real. Motherfucker... His ragged breathing became controlled, remembering the method his dad showed.

Once he settled, he rubbed his eyes, a miserable chuckle leaving him. It's been a while since that's happened. From the details of it, seems like that encounter with the Queen brought up things he'd rather not dwell on.

Only after this had he taken a look at his surroundings. "Huh, how'd I end up in the infirmary?"

"That's what I was wondering."

...Oh no.

A slight turn put him face-to-face with Darren, the nurse with the permanent resting murder face, standing at the end of the bed.

"Uh...what's up, doc?" John spoke with a nervous smile, trying desperately to stay on his good side, if he had one in the first place.

"Barely halfway through the week and you're already..." Darren inhaled a deep breath and let go of an audible sigh, one that John could hear the disappointment in. "Tell me, how does the strongest student in the school end up here?"

"L-Let's just say me and the Queen got into an argument." John explained, looking away from Darren's look.

"Hmph." Darren reasoned that was the only possible option, Seraphina and John were the only ones on par with each other, level-wise. Knowing John, maybe he shouldn't be surprised he clashed with one of the royals.

The good nurse pointed to the file cabinet to the right of John. The only thing of note from what John could tell was the glass of green liquid sitting there.

"Drink it." Darren ordered.

John looked back, terrified. "You're trying to poison me?!"

That earned him a smack on the head.

"Idiot, it's a healing tonic." A scary smirk came upon his face. "But don't give me any ideas."

Oh god.

Begrudgingly, John took Darren's word and downed the drink, having a slight bitterness to the taste but it looked like he was telling the truth, he could already feel the injuries he sustained begin to slowly heal.

"It's your first one, so it'll take some time for you to completely recover, but it'll do the job." Darren said.

John sighed, such a shame that he can't keep abilities once his own deactivates, Seraphina's fast healing trait would've come in handy. If she can control Time, she can probably reverse it, that's why her Recovery can be so high.

"So what time is it, doc?"

The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day.

"There's your answer." He spoke, beginning to turn away. "Your stuff's on the chair to the wall, don't forget it."

"Yeah, I got it." John nodded along, groaning as he realized he'd be behind on schoolwork already.

Standing up, he took a moment to stretch, making sure to not overextend anything past the point of pain, the tonic definitely helped with that.

He heard the door to the infirmary open as he gathered his things and stopped once he heard a familiar voice.

"D-Darren sir. Is John alright?"

"Hm, yeah, he's up. And cut it out with the sir."

"Oh!"

John only had to take a few steps forward to come into the view of the girl he was pleasantly surprised to see.

"Evie? What brings you here?" He asks, as well as noticing the boy she was sitting with earlier next to her, who gave him a timid look before looking away.

"John!" She spoke with a smile, walking up to him, holding a book in her arms. "How're you feeling?"

He rubbed his neck. "Fine, I guess."

Evie nodded along. "Thankfully! After what happened with Seraphina, I just...wanted to make sure you were okay." She explained, appearing to have become more nervous as she continued to speak.

"Y-Yeah, that hit looked pretty bad. I'm surprised you're even awake." The boy with indigo hair added before turning to Evie with a smile. "I definitely wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of the Goddess' punch."

Evie chuckled. "We'd probably die if that happened."

"It's not all that impressive, I'm used to taking hits is all." John half-mindedly responded, waving it off.

Darren felt a need to add to the conversation. "They carried your sorry ass over here, you better tell them thanks."

That surprised John. "Wait, seriously?"

"W-Well, no one else had done anything...I just wanted to return the favor for yesterday."

Wow. What a bro, Blyke, what a bro.

To keep too much attention off her, Evie pointed to the boy with her. "Roland was a big help, though, I definitely couldn't have done it by myself."

"I just figured if you helped out Evie, you must be a good person," Roland explained. "Even then it was still difficult, you're kinda heavy."

John was taken aback, letting out an incredulous chuckle. "Woooow, you're gonna make me feel self-conscious."

The two seemed to have become a bit nervous hearing that, clamoring up.

"H-He didn't mean it like that! You're just pretty d-dense is all!" Evie tried to correct him.

"Look, I suck at school but now you're just being mean."

"NONONON—"

"CAN YOU THREE TAKE THIS SOMEWHERE ELSE?!"

The three became equally terrified of seeing the angry nurse and speeded away out of the infirmary.

"Sorry, Doc! Thanks for the tonic, hope to never see you again!"

"I BETTER NOT!"

After some grumbling about it being too early for this shit, Darren thought to himself. Those other two, I see them semi-frequently. What were their names, Roland and Evie? He went to his computer, taking a quick look through the records to find them.

Hmm, 1.4 and 1.8, that's really low. And John's friendly with them?

He crossed his arms, softly sighing. They're good kids. If they got him by their side, then hopefully they wouldn't have to come around so often, sure they would have an easier time throughout the day.

He took another sip of coffee, chuckling to himself. I'm getting too soft, I need another kid to yell at.

His door creaks open, and a boy with green hair comes crawling in. "Ugh...doc...help."

I. was. joking.

After hightailing it out of the infirmary, John figured it was best to pick up the classwork he missed out on while he was conked out. Roland and Evie decided to tag along for whatever reason, but he didn't mind their company.

"John, I really didn't mean anything bad when I said that!" Roland spoke, a bit frantically.

He laughed, messing with these two had been pretty amusing. "You're still on about that? I was just kidding around. Chill out, alright?"

"We just don't want to come across as disrespectful." Evie reasoned.

John groaned. "Oh please, you've dealt with too many people who can't take a joke." He then turned to Evie. "Actually, that reminds me of something I wanted to ask you."

Evie perked up. "Oh! Sure, ask away!"

"What happened yesterday, with that girl who was bothering you, does that happen often?"

"O-Oh." Bringing that up looked to have dimmed Evie's mood a little. "Yeah, it does. If I'm being honest, it's probably almost daily."

"Evie's really smart but also the weakest out of us, which makes her the biggest target." Roland explained, before backtracking. "Crap, sorry, Evie! Didn't mean to insult you..."

"No, it's fine. I'm good for one thing at least, right?" She tried to joke.

Self-deprecation, John knew it well.

"Tanner and his group, they all suck." Roland spoke bitterly. "There's no escaping it either, so many of the others kiss up and snitch to them if someone doesn't follow their orders."

"Hmm, does a guy with a needle ability ring a bell?" John asked, eliciting a groan from Roland.

"Are you talking about Lin? I used to be friends with him but then he started being a lackey for those guys and I couldn't stand it. I just distanced myself from him."

"Wait, is he the one with the purple hair that covers his eye?" Evie wondered. "Cause I could've sworn I saw him yesterday, he looked absolutely terrified for some reason."

"Really?" Roland had a small smile. "I would've liked to see that, serves him right."

John mentally patted himself on the back. Hell yeah.

"I think Hower's the meanest out of them," Evie noted.

"Yeah, 'cause he's the weakest but he knows we can't fight back without getting punished by the stronger students, that's what he loves. He's an absolute prick."

"Mhm, those guys are the worst." John agreed. He's dealt with every kind of bully throughout his school life, but those ones absolutely infuriated him. Sucks for them that he didn't care about the punishment, he'd beat their ass anyways. "They're always the most condescending."

Roland nodded. "Exactly."

"So, it sounds like Tanner's the ringleader of these guys, who's a part of his group?" John wondered.

Evie was going to ask a question but got distracted by John's and she listed out a few names. A few he had already known from the papers she had with her, but there were also some new ones: Wenqi, Krolik, Misa, and Rouker.

"That's quite the gang." John hated the question he was going to ask because of course they would but... "Have you guys told any of the royals about this?"

As he expected, Roland scoffed. "Like they would care, we're too far down the totem pole to be of any importance."

"Oh come on, Roland, it's not like that! I'm sure...they're just really busy with everything else."

Evie tried, but the expression on her face betrayed any belief in her words, it was pretty easy for John to see. Adrion had been the same way.

In fact, he saw a lot of himself in Roland, they had a similar bitterness toward powerful people who couldn't care less about those below them when John was a low-tier. Even being one of the strong, he still held onto those feelings.

And of course, the Royals aren't doing jackshit to deal with this. Well, it's not like I didn't expect that to be the case.

Looks like he'll need to pick up the Royals' slack after all. He'll find a way to deal with it, but first...he'll need to grab the rest of his schoolwork.

"Math class is the last one I need to grab."

"...Worst for last?" Roland asked.

John laughed, looking back at him as he turned a corner to where he was pretty sure the room was, "Damn righ—Agh!", His sentence had been cut off by his shoulder colliding with something. He clutched it, swearing he had been far enough away from the wall not to knock into it.

"Hey, who do you—wait! Arlo, this is the guy, definitely!"

Arlo?

Looking ahead, John sees he'd actually bumped into a person instead of the brick wall as he thought. A tall one at that, with blonde hair and blue eyes who was looking at him peculiarly. Standing next to him was another tall guy with blue hair styled in a quiff, pointing a finger at John.

"You're sure of this, Holden?" Arlo asked, not even sparing a glance, keeping his eyes on John.

Holden nodded. "Yeah! He stands out like a sore thumb, doesn't he?"

Bitch I am right here—

"I haven't seen you around the school before." Arlo stepped closer as he crossed his arms.

John placed his hands in his pockets, staying calm and keeping eye contact. Something felt off with this guy.

"I just transferred this week. Besides, it's a pretty big place, shouldn't be surprised if you hadn't."

Arlo hummed. "That may be true, but I'd rather not have that be the case. What's your name?"

"...John."

Arlo smirked. "Nice to meet you. I hope I need no introduction."

Pretty full of yourself, aren't you?

John returns the smirk with one of his own. "Arlo, King of Wellston, right?"

He nodded. "Good, you know of me, that should make this easier. I've been told about your fight with Seraphina, you handled yourself rather well. I wanted to have a word with you." Arlo explained matter-of-factly.

John could take a guess about who told him about it—sparing a passive glare at Holden—before he looked back at Arlo.

"What's there to tell? I was being a smartass and the Queen knocked me out, it's par for the course, ain't it?" John moved to the side. "Sorry for bumping into you, but if you'll excuse me I need to pick up some classwork."

He would've taken a step, had Arlo not gripped him by the shoulder, stopping him. They exchanged a look that was barely disguised as a glare at each other before Arlo took notice of Evie and Roland. "Who are these two?"

Looking back at them, John saw how the former had an expression of awe and a blush on her face while the latter was looking away, uncertainty and nervousness apparent from him.

"You two need to scram, this is private royal business!" Holden ordered, making a shooing motion with his hand.

"We..." Evie wasn't sure what to do, neither did Roland.

"You two don't need to go anywhere," John called out, before looking back at Arlo. "To answer your question, those two are my friends."—John nodded toward Holden—"And I'd appreciate it if that lapdog of yours stopped barking orders at them."

"Who the hell you calling a lapdog?!" Holden had been riled up, getting in John's personal space and gripping him with one hand by his collar. "I'll kick your ass right here and now, asshole!"

John scrunched up his nose. "I might've been able to take that seriously if it wasn't for that breath of yours. It reeks."

"Why you—!"

"Come now, Holden, that's enough. You should back off." Arlo said in a jovial tone. He pulled his friend back, to Holden and John's surprise.

"But, Arlo—!"

"He clearly isn't in the best of moods, getting put in their place does that to someone." He looked back at John expectantly. "Right?"

John barely disguised his chuckle behind a sigh. "Yeah, that's it."

"I apologize about my friend, we can continue our discussion another time." Arlo gave John what looked to be a well-intentioned smile. "Good luck with your studies, make Wellston proud."

The way he was acting had thrown John off but it was his ticket out of this situation so might as well take it. "Sure, I'll do my best."

He gave a nod to Evie and Roland and they quickly followed after him, though they made sure to give a respectful nod to Arlo and Holden as they passed by.

Holden grumbled as he looked at the retreating figure of John. "Fucking jackass, who does he think he is?"

"Who do you think you are?"

"H-Huh?" Holden wasn't expecting Arlo to have that tone.

"You told me how easily he had been keeping up with Seraphina." Arlo's tone became gravely low. "Do you really think he couldn't've beaten you down if he wanted to? What way is that to speak to someone who's stronger than you?"

"U-Uh...I...I wasn't thinking about that." Holden said, embarrassed as he scratched his neck. "Sorry..."

Arlo hummed, before giving Holden another question. "Those two who were with him, how strong do you think they are?"

Holden thought for just a moment. "Low-tiers, probably?"

"And why is that?"

Holden shrugged. "The way they carried themselves, I guess?" Then, Holden snapped his fingers. "It's like with that guy too! If I didn't know any better, I would've thought he was just a careless dumbass!"

Arlo smiled. "Good answer."

Now, what would someone like him, with the supposed power to rival Seraphina's and who had the confidence to match, be doing spending time with low-tiers?

They shouldn't mesh together, it's unnatural. It's a disruption to the order of things and he didn't like it.

John left him with many questions. Arlo intends to know the answers to all of them.

"Hey, Arlo?"

"What is it?"

"...My breath doesn't really smell bad, right?"

...

Arlo rubbed his nose. "You put too much onion on your burgers."

"Fuck."

"Sheesh, how do I misread where her room's at by a whole floor level? She's almost as scary as the doc."

"Y-Yeah." Roland mumbled while Evie nervously chuckled.

"Hm?" John turned back to the two. "What's up with you guys? You've been quiet since we ran into that King guy."

"Well, yeah!" Roland responded. "First you get into a fight with Seraphina and don't end up being rushed to the hospital. Then you bump into Arlo, tell him off, and then walk off without him doing anything to you! These...These aren't regular things that just happen!"

"It was pretty cool..." Evie added.

"...Yeah, that's also true." Roland acknowledged. "It's just...I don't get how you can be so reckless. How strong are you?" He asked.

John grumbled, he didn't blame Roland for the question but he automatically becomes annoyed when that kind of thing is brought up.

"Strong enough to know it doesn't matter." He responded with a shrug. "It's not even about that, my strength. Regardless of it, I can't stand seeing people being talked down to because of something so meaningless as levels and power."

John acknowledges the hypocrisy within that statement, as it's only those with that strength that are capable of changing things for those without it, and it's a bittersweet understanding.

His fist clenched remembering the way his tormentors treated him and his friends. "I won't let someone walk all over me, the same goes for those I'm close with. That type of bullshit thinking, I'll go against it any day. There's more to people besides that."

John stopped it there, realizing he'd gone on yet another long-winded spiel.

However, Evie and Roland didn't seem to mind it. In fact, they looked taken in, absorbed in the words John spoke, the former especially. This was probably the first time they'd ever heard someone speak compassionately about those like them, it felt like a positive shock to their system.

"S-So, what you said about before..."

"...You really do see us as your friends?"

Evie began and Roland finished the question, one that John had no difficulty answering.

"I like being around you, so yeah I do." John stopped himself, getting too far into his self-doubting thoughts. "Wait, shit, was I being too presumptuous? I'm sorry, I just—"

"No no no, not at all!" Evie and Roland put a stop to that.

"Oh, well...great! Awesome!"

John couldn't keep that grateful smile off his face, even if he tried.

A/N: Feedback is always appreciated!