Megan was in a bad mood today.

She didn't know why. She wasn't really privy to what happened in her once friends day to day life anymore. There was a time in her life when she would have been the first person Meg spoke to on the topic. They used to share everything.

Then they got to high school and started to drift apart.

She hadn't originally thought much of it. She was meeting new people and making new friends yes, but there was always going to be a place at her side for her best friend.

That was when the bullying started.

Little things at first, that she didn't immediately connect with Megan. Rumors about her spreading like wildfire. That she was a slut. That she was part of one of the gangs. That she was a kleptomaniac and would steal things from anyone who let their guard down around her.

It had been horrible. She had cried to Megan for weeks about it. The rumors got so bad that no one would even talk to her anymore.

Well. The boys would. But never politely, and usually because they wanted something from her that she wasn't willing to give.

She still had a few bruises from when...

Well the police coming to the school hadn't endeared her to anyone, especially when the boys that got dragged out by them were considered innocent by the rest of the student body.

Honestly, if she didn't have Megan to talk to she... she didn't think she would be alive right now. The only thing that had kept her going was their friendship, and the driving need to understand.

Who could do this to her? Why? She wasn't a bad person! She'd never done anything malicious to another human being in her entire life! And yet suddenly, someone had decided to just... ruin her. For no real reason. Megan had said she would help but nothing ever came of the search.

The day the Simurgh had come, she had been eating alone, in the girl's bathroom with her feet drawn up onto the stool so no one could see her. It wasn't a very filling lunch - her family wasn't very well off recently - but it was enough for her. She had been considering trying to lose weight anyway. She was often called fat by her detractors - which made up a majority of the first-year girls - and while she had tried to brush off the comments, she had recently started to feel self-conscious about it. Every morning she would get up and try her hardest not to look at her stomach. She wasn't bulbous, or chunky. No, she was just... growing.

Growing... sideways.

So she had taken the reduced meal portions as a blessing, trying to see the positives in things.

And also, started wearing baggier clothes.

She was only partway through her meal - half of a sandwich and a banana that she dared not eat in public lest she draw more rude commentary down on herself - when the door to the bathroom had opened, and three girls walked in.

She immediately froze, going still so as not to make any noise that could draw attention to herself in the tiny bathroom.

"I'm just saying Meg, I liked Brian. Now he's got a criminal record and it's all that bitches fault." One girl said.

She immediately identified the owner of the voice as belonging to one of the two girls who were always around Megan recently. Sara and Kaitlyn were, in the politest terms, sycophants. They had hitched their social well-being to Megans and promptly rose to prominence as some of the most popular first-year girls in the school. They were also some of the only people who didn't give her too much of a hard time in public, which was why she had a hard time parsing Sara's statement declaring her a bitch.

She would get up and ask for clarification since she was pretty sure Megan should have set the record straight on that point by now but was just plain too embarrassed to admit she had been eating lunch here in the first place. She wasn't, and probably never would be popular with her ungainly girth and unruly hair, but she at least had some sense of self-respect left to her.

So instead, she waited. Waited quietly and patiently for the other girls to leave, so she could get Megan alone for a minute to talk to her about it. Megan always knew what to do.

"Well it's not my fault he thought cornering her after school was a good idea. Honestly why are guys so dumb?" Megan replied cooly. She had to resist the urge to nod her head frantically at the blunt response.

Megan was what she would describe as a severe beauty. She was thin, had long shapely legs, and was otherwise proportioned like a runway model - a fact she took advantage of by consistently choosing to wear shorts, or skirts that were only just barely this side of following school regulations. She was also, extremely harsh in how she dealt with most people. Sharp-tongued. She honestly doubted her old friend had ever held her tongue in the face of something she didn't like a day in her life. She knew what she wanted, and fought for it like an angry dog.

"But you started the rumour that made him think it was okay!" Kaitlyn pointed out, causing her to tense once more.

What? No that was- there was no way. That didn't make any sense. Megan was her friend, she would never-

"There is a wide margin between bad talking someone and assaulting them." Was Megan's damning response.

"Yeah but-"

The girl's conversation continued after that, but she barely registered any of it.

Megan? It was Megan? But... but why?

She barely even thought about what she was doing. In fact, she didn't even notice she had moved at all. One moment she felt like her entire world was shattering around her, everything she thought was once true taking on a new sinister light - and the next, Kaitlyn and Sara were on the floor, one with a pencil sticking out of an eye socket, and the other with a concave dent in her head matching the edge of the bathroom sink. Her hands were wrapped around Megan's throat, and she felt strength coursing through her veins in a way that was almost entirely alien to her. Feeling detached from the situation as she was, she barely even registered the feeble struggling from the girl in her hands as she experimentally lifted her with no more difficulty than she might a puppy or kitten.

A kitten she wanted to kill.

This was, of course, when the Endbringer sirens had hit, causing her to finally realize the situation she was in.

Oh god, she had killed Kaitlyn and Sara. She was killing Megan as she thought this. She- she-

The siren wasn't playing the familiar away call. The Endbringer was coming here.

Panicked, and realizing the halls would quickly be filling with people once their teachers got them organized, she did the only thing she could think of to save herself. Leaving the two dead girls behind her, she rushed to her locker - which was conveniently nearby, part of the reason she ate here in the first place - tore it open, and stuffed Megan inside before slamming it shut and locking it. She expected some kind of protest at the awkward positioning but didn't think much of it until much later.

Instead, she quickly fled the scene, ready to disappear into the flock of students no doubt headed towards the shelters.

If she was lucky, the Endbringer would get the school, and the deaths would be blamed on Leviathan or Behemoth.

If not... she... she would have to face the music.

Call her crazy, but Anna really didn't feel as bad about that as she probably should.