Along with my memories of my previous life, there were other benefits that followed, like a metaphysical package deal.

  The most tangible benefit was obvious. It jumped out to me whenever I did so much as look around. In this world I had once read about through a digital window, there were things that I alone knew.

  Yes, the exact future I had read would never play itself out in the world (due to my meddling), but it was clear to me that much of my information would remain accurate. The personalities of the characters I'd read and analyzed, for one, or the secret ability-modifying drugs that appeared later on in the story. They would surely come into existence unless I intentionally tried to stop them.

  But information was not the only gift I had received from my reincarnation, and neither was it the largest. I was far more thankful for the crucial experience and wisdom that not being a fourteen-year-old granted me. Just imagining all the knowledge I possessed being dumped straight into the mind of a regular teenage girl made me shudder.

  Information without wisdom would do nothing but grant its recipient more ways to screw up royally. Despite piloting a nearly-adult body, a fourteen-year-old was ultimately still a child, lacking the perspective to resist impulses and think things through consistently.

  Still, my so-called 'adult wisdom' wasn't doing much for me now that I was faced with genuine uncertainty.

  No better than a teenager, I could only default to calling my Mom.

  "…And so, after a close fight with three mid-tiers, Zeke manages to come out on top," I explained. "It looks like that's all the retaliation he's going to get for attacking a random girl out of nowhere, and Rei doesn't want to let things end so easily."

  My mother made a noise of confusion, slightly muffled on the other end of the phone. "I don't understand why your king doesn't take things into his own hands, then. He's a high-tier, correct? He could crush this Zeke boy with both hands tied behind his back, so why call on you to do it?"

  Right. I had forgotten that she had no idea about Rei's reputation.

  I sighed, resisting the urge to shake my head. "I can give you his reasoning, but I don't entirely agree with it. Rei wants to send a message that what Zeke did wasn't okay, but he thinks his reputation as a 'soft king' will make it seem more like a personal issue than an issue of crime and punishment."

  "I guess- I guess I can understand why Rei thinks that way," I continued after a moment of thought. "Everybody perceives him as caring excessively about fairness and compassion. They can already guess how he feels about Zeke. It's definitely odd, but a random high-ranker taking action instead of him would be a much stronger statement."

  My mother didn't respond to that, and it was hard to tell if her silence was skepticism or understanding.

  Finally, she replied, "Normally, the best advice is to always follow the orders of your king. Based on conventional wisdom alone, you should simply go along with everything he says."

  There was a slight pause. "But that's not a very satisfying answer, is it?"

  She chuckled into the phone, a sentimental sound, as if she'd always been my mother. "Your question is primarily a question of morals, isn't that right? If you only cared about putting yourself in the best position, you already know exactly how. But you don't know whether it's right or not, to beat down on someone who doesn't pose a threat to you. No matter how poorly you may think of them and their actions."

  I smiled a little. Maybe I hid things, but she still knew me really well.

  "If Zeke had recently tried to attack me, I could have mentally spun Rei's orders into a matter of self-defense," I said. "But once the gap in our ability levels became clear, he's done nothing but grovel and put himself down in front of me, just like he does with other elite-tiers. If he were stronger than me, maybe he'd beat me into a coma like he's done to others. But that's not enough for me to decide with."

  She hummed lightly in response, a familiar sound I recognized as her thinking. "Meili, did I ever tell you why my family sent me to Wellston for boarding school? You must have wondered at some point, especially once I told you that they live all the way over in the West Coast Sector."

  I blinked in surprise, and my hand squeezed tighter around my phone. The oddness of my mother's early life had certainly crossed my mind, but I'd always assumed she had a good reason for not going into detail. "I thought you didn't like to talk about your childhood?"

  "I wasn't avoiding it, precisely. It's just not the sort of thing you bring up on a whim," she said. "Where to start… Well, you're a smart girl, so you've probably realized that your maternal grandparents and I aren't on good terms."

  "That was my guess," I replied. "They've never visited us, and you've never taken us to see them either."

  "Right. Still, we weren't always like this. I was a mostly obedient child, and my mother and father were just as loving and supportive as parents ought to be. Up until the day I unlocked my ability."

  Instantly, my mother's voice became harsh, and I could visualize the look of scorn on her face. "From that point onward, they wanted me to spend every day fighting and brutalizing my classmates to stimulate my ability progression. It was an expectation I chafed under and avoided - I was already dreaming of being a doctor. I couldn't put it into words back then, but hurting someone contradicted my sense of morality."

  "Once I finished middle school," she continued, "I was a 2.9, not on track to reach 5.0 in adulthood. My high-tier parents simply wouldn't have it. No child of theirs, they said, would be a mere elite-tier." She sighed and laughed at once. "To toughen me up and eliminate my 'weak mindset,' they sent me to Wellston Private Boarding School. My parents thought an environment as competitive and harsh as Wellston would instill in me the proper level of bloodthirst needed to fulfill my high-tier potential. They weren't completely incorrect."

  "Simply being at Wellston forced me into more fighting than I was comfortable with," she explained. "Still, I never once purposefully sought out combat. By the time I graduated from college and my window of growth closed, I was only a 4.7. My parents promptly disowned me."

  I sucked in an involuntary breath, even though it was the ending I had suspected. "I think I get it. But - promise not to get mad at me - does this have anything to do with what's happening at Wellston right now?"

  "Be patient; I was taking the long way around." My Mom laughed. "See, by the time I reached my senior year of high school, my father realized that it wasn't weak-mindedness or cowardice holding me back. I had moral qualms that couldn't be 'treated.' He knew my chances of becoming a high-tier were rapidly dwindling, so he prepared a grand speech to pull me to his side."

  She took a deep breath. "If I can recall, the lines went something like this…"

  Through my artificial phonespeakers, the quality of her voice changed.

  "Imagine, for a moment, that our lives can be boiled down to a single number - call it a 'Goodness Score.' For every act of good we do, we add a single point to our score; for every act of evil, we take a point away."

  "Now say there is a man, an average mid-tier office worker, who has only done good deeds throughout his life. He walks elderly women across the street, never fights or injures others, and donates to the poor with whatever little money he has. What a saint he must be! His Goodness Score is firmly in the positives, in the high hundreds or low thousands. "

  "Opposite to him, imagine the god-tier CEO of a 200,000-employee company. He doesn't volunteer to help anyone. He has fought and injured hundreds of people throughout his life to rise through the ranks, and the money he donates is a minuscule fraction of his overwhelming wealth. Instinctively, one would imagine that his Goodness Score is below zero."

  "But let's say he does a good job running his company. He is not exceptional nor a super-genius, only maintaining slightly above-average company growth and working conditions for the 30 years of his tenure. He is just slightly better than the person who would have taken his place had he never existed. What would you say his score is, now?"

  "I'll tell you. His employees, all 200,000 of them, recognize that their CEO is slightly better than his potential replacement. By being there, they each conceptualize him as having done at least a single act of good for them. His goodness score is, therefore, at least in the hundreds of thousands, even after including the comparatively minuscule amount of evil he has otherwise done."

  "The CEO is not nearly as moral as the office worker, yet he has done objectively far more good. Compared to him, the office worker has done nothing. He has done nothing."

  "My ignorant, shortsighted daughter. If you do not become a high-tier, you will not possess the capacity to do very much good. Say it takes the hospitalization of a few dozen of your classmates – so what? By the end of your life, you will have done far more than enough to make up for it."

  "Do you merely want to think of yourself as a good person, or do you truly want to do a lot of good? Only fools believe these are the same. But past the end of your growth stage, you will not even be able to choose for yourself…"

  "…Right, it went something like that, maybe with slightly harsher wording," she concluded awkwardly. "At the time, I didn't find it convincing at all. It sounded like dishonest sophistry: an argument made not to help me do more with my life but to prevent me from dishonoring the family name as an elite-tier."

  "And now?" I croaked out, still trying to process the speech.

  She huffed. "Now, I'm a 48-year-old surgeon who has never even heard her name mentioned in promotion talks. I've held the same position at Wellston City Hospital for nearly two decades, but younger high-tier colleagues have always jumped ahead of me. I will never lead my department, and just as my father said, my capacity to do good will likely be forever limited."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Oh."

  Oh.

  I had already known my mother's grievances in a limited sense. But this was the first time I'd heard everything put together, with the cause-and-effect made clear without any confusion.

  "...I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the implications of that speech."

  "The point of telling you all of this, Meili, isn't to suggest you go around slicing up every student at your school to boost your level up," she replied. "I just wanted to make the reality clear to you. You can try to be a good person at every stage of your life, but peak ability growth only occurs from ages fourteen to eighteen or so. To be worrying about right and wrong at your age…"

  "It can be counterproductive," I finished. "I know what you're saying."

  "Perfect." I easily imagined the conflicted smile on her face. "If that's everything, I need to head back to work! We're doing a dreadful hernia repair operation, and they've saddled me with making the initial incision once again…"

  I nearly let out a snort at the timing. "Okay. I'll let you get back to work."

  Oh, right.

  "Hey, Mom?"

  "Mhm?"

  "I think- I think in a world without levels, anyone could see that you're a great surgeon."

  She laughed softly.

  "Thanks. Love you."

  After she hung up, I sat there thinking, my nails drumming over my wooden desk with faint staccato clicks. I hadn't gotten an answer, and I still wasn't sure if what I was about to do was right. But hadn't that been her point all along? Wanting to do good was nothing without the strength to do it.

  Eventually, my thoughts turned to my ability projections, to how high I could rise in the future. The Wellston staff had recently determined it: my maximum was 6.3.

  "6.3 if you're lucky," Darren had said, pointing at the steepest and highest line chart on his screen.

  6.3.

  In other words, one in a million.

  ***Beautiful***

  I stared out the window, picking at my lunch and watching, half interested, as the cloudy sky sobbed tears that splattered and crawled to the bottom of the glass pane.

  It was a horribly rainy day. Typical of the Great Lakes Sector in early November, the downpour seemed never-ending, and the school lunchroom had become ultra-crowded. Those who usually ate in the courtyard naturally took shelter in the cafeteria, resulting in each table being packed tightly full of students. The sharp pitter-patter of raindrops cut into the constant murmuring of densely packed teenagers, but it seemed, miraculously, that not a single fight would break out during lunch period.

  It was a rare pause of calmness, an hour of quiet peace, as the whole student body huddled together in observance of the elements.

  How sad, indeed, that I was going to be the one to ruin it.

  Tapping on my phone, I glanced at Rei's instructions one final time.

  Step 1: Start a fight with him in a location with many observers.

  "Hey, Zeke. Catch."

  My too-loud voice echoed through the cafeteria, drawing the attention of 400-some students. Only three tables away, Zeke reflexively stuck his hand out and stood up from his seat, ready to grab what I'd thrown into the air.

  Except, I hadn't thrown anything into the air. I activated my ability, fusing the claws on my right hand together into a thin, 20-foot blade. I forced it into the world at the speed of aura manifestation, faster than the naked eye could spot, and the sword pierced through Zeke's unenhanced palm as if it were made of air.

  But it was not made of air. It was flesh, flesh that could bleed and hurt and break. For a quarter-moment, the world stood still, as if I had only cut into a cloud. Zeke's eyes widened near-imperceptibly, twitching to glance at the inch-wide hole in his right palm - and only then did he cry out in pain.

  "Fuck!"

  He quickly activated his defense form, but it was far too late. His regeneration wasn't nearly powerful enough to force my claw out of his hand. Instead, it only enhanced his suffering, regenerating clumps of tissue that I immediately shredded as they formed.

  And I was walking closer. With each step, my feet carried me closer to Zeke, allowing the blade on my right arm to become shorter and thicker inside his palm. He kneeled over in pain, right hand stuck in the air unless he wanted it bisected, and I strolled toward him like I was enjoying a scenic walk in the woods.

  In defense form, he was too slow to run away. In offense form, he could quickly lose his hand. I approached him with only a blank stare on my face, and he realized he could only beg.

  "H-hey Meili!" He stuttered, staring up at me with a forced grin from his crouch on the floor. "Mind telling me what this is about? If I did anything to disrespect you, just tell me, and I'll fix it!"

  Step 2: Make him scared of you. Make it clear you don't like what he did.

  I glanced down at him, a near-flawless facial blank masking me. "Do you like your right hand, Zeke?"

  "W-What?" His voice contained a bit of disbelief.

  I moved one step closer.

  He blanched. "F-fuck… Uh, yeah! Yeah! I like my right hand. It's the hand I use to write, eat food, and open doors - I use it for a lot of stuff!" His eyes shifted around, searching for a way to escape. "I would be kind of sad! Y'know, if I couldn't use it for a while…"

  "Hmm. That makes sense." I rubbed my chin with my non-transformed left hand, miming a thoughtful expression. "And you also use it to fight, don't you? Most people like to punch with the hand they use to write, isn't that right?"

  He nodded shakily. Maybe he saw where I was going. "I- I think so?"

  "Very good," I praised. "So, putting two and two together, isn't this the hand you used to break her spine without warning?" I forced an unnaturally wide smile, eyes crinkling up into tiny little slits. "It would only be fair, then, if I broke it in return. What do you think?"

  "Y-yeah," Zeke said quickly. "Right, of course, that makes perfect sense!" He glanced at me expectantly, waiting for me to deactivate my ability.

  I thickened the sword once again.

  "Shit!" He whimpered, "Stop! Stop! Y-You've broken it now, yeah? It'll probably take two whole weeks for my hand to recover! If I could just get out of your way, you wouldn't have to see me again…"

  "Sadly, we're not done yet." I shook my head. "You also kicked her unconscious body with both legs and cracked her skull with your left elbow." My eyes roamed his body, lingering on the places I mentioned. "I'm going to have to break those parts too – just to keep things fair, you see."

  "What?" he whispered, with a look of devastation, and I cracked my neck with a smile.

  "Don't worry. My mom is a surgeon, so I know how to cut people up without permanent losses." I retracted the claws on my right hand to their original shape, forcing a hoarse scream from him as he dropped to the ground with all four limbs.

  As he fell, I leaned down, whispering. "Don't thrash around too much, alright? I need both hands to break your legs as cleanly as possible. If you move around too much, I could end up putting you in a wheelchair for a while."

  "Fuck that!" As Rei predicted, Zeke didn't go along. He switched to attack form and sprinted away, making a beeline for the cafeteria windows. With my enhanced vision, I could see the relief and joy on his face as he crashed through the glass and began to fall to the courtyard below… And his unmistakable horror as he looked down to find his leg completely perforated by the extended claws of my left hand.

  Step 3: Give him a tiny hope of escaping, then immediately snuff it out and mock him. Solidify his fear.

  I retracted them and jumped down after him, landing squarely on his back as he tried to crawl away. "Are you sure that was a good idea? To keep you from running, I had to do a lot more damage to your right leg than I was going to."

  "Shut up! Why? Why the hell are you doing thi-"

  I stomped on his head, molding a face-shaped hole in the mud we stood on. "I just don't get it. Why didn't you just submit to the whims of your 'better?' Isn't that what you expected out of the girl you beat up? Now you're crawling around on the muddy ground like a worm… But I bet you thought you were oh-so strong for beating up some random weakling out of nowhere."

  I sighed. "You've noticed, by now, that nobody's stepped in to help you. Zero of four-hundred think what you did to her was cool or impressive. Everybody knows it was cowardly and cheap. Attacking someone half a level lower than you from behind only made you a weakling and a snake."

  I let him force his head up, noticing him struggling for air. "Wha- What the hell are you talking about? You're doing the same thing I did!"

  "Not quite," I replied, pressing his face back into the ground. "It was four injuries for Melissa. I'll give you a discount on her friends... But I've only given you two."

  Step 4: Finish the job. Make it clear that he's done the exact same thing to others.

  I flipped him over, pinning both of his arms to the ground with the claws of my right hand.

  "Now I'm going to slice you into a million pieces," I told him, "and you're going to feel worse and worse and worse. What I'm about to do to you isn't fair or right. You'll be outraged. You'll feel like you've been stripped and defiled and murdered - and you're going to cry, cry like a goddamn baby as you learn what weakness feels like."

  I plastered a smile onto my face. "But by the end, you'll know how a whole lot of people have felt about you."

  ***Beautiful***

  Back in my previous life, there was something that always bothered me about Meili. I couldn't figure out the significance of her name.

  Every other character in Unordinary had some sort of wordplay or clever meaning behind their name. For example, Rei was named after the Japanese god of lightning, while Ventus' name was the Latin word for wind. Seraphina was named after high-ranking angels, most likely in reference to her high ability level and social status. Hell, even 'John Doe' held a special meaning, considering what John represented in the Early chapters of Unordinary.

  Meanwhile, Meili's name was the Chinese word for beautiful. It had nothing to do with her ability and was only tangentially related to her character. She was pretty, sure, but nothing special compared to Leilah or Cecile. Perhaps because she was merely a side character, the author of Unordinary didn't put as much effort (comparatively) into designing her. It made a lot of sense – she only played a significant role for about five chapters and faded straight into the background for the rest of the story.

  Then, right as I had that thought, the pitter-patter of raindrops on my soaking wet uniform shocked the world into clarity.

  My crimson claws pierced half a foot deep into my opponent's flesh. And while he gasped and bled over my red-stained hands, I had a sudden epiphany about the meaning of my name. 'Meili' was a pun on Melee, a reference to my close-range combat ability.

  "Pfft."

  And, after a small fit of situationally inappropriate laughter, I smoothly removed my claws from my victim's chest cavity.

  *Splurch*

  I smirked, deactivating my ability as I stared down at his unconscious form.

  "I wonder if he got the joke."

  .

  .

  .

  After calming my breathing, I craned my neck upward to find a crowd of students peering down at me. It looked like most of them had activated their abilities to watch, giving them enhanced senses necessary to see and hear what I'd just done.

  Keep up the act just a little bit longer.

  "Finally," I muttered. "I got to hand Zeke a taste of his own medicine." My eyes swept across the crowd. "But too many of these sick freaks are just as awful as he is. What the hell am I going to do with them?"

  A few of the observers flinched backward, struck by my words - and if I were a better actor, I'd have smiled, knowing I had procured more fuel for my future ability progression.

  Luckily, even enhanced vision couldn't differentiate between tears and rain from afar.

  To them, it was only rain that streamed down my face.