"Uhh... what am I looking at?"
Aria was standing in front of a punching meter with the expression of someone who was certain they were being helpful and was enjoying the certainty. Proud and settled. She was smiling at the machine and then at me in a cycle that communicated she'd already arrived at the answer and was waiting for me to catch up.
We were on the second floor of an arcade. The kind of place that smelled like overworked machines and spilled energy drinks, that operated on a specific frequency of chaos that was somehow always consistent regardless of the time of day.
This was her solution. A punching meter in an arcade.
I looked at the machine. Then looked back at her.
"What makes you think this is going to work?" I folded my arms. "I'm trying to get stronger. Not collect tickets."
Technically, I was aware of the irony. My entire development framework was a system with gamified combat and stat screens. But there was a difference between a system that put you in a dark alleyway against someone named Stone and a coin-operated machine in a room that smelled like synthetic butter.
"It worked for me," Aria said, with the shrug of someone who had pre-answered the follow-up question and wasn't going to elaborate until asked.
"What does that mean?"
"You'll understand." She nodded at the machine. Just nodded. Like that settled it.
"Fine."
I walked up to it. The monitor had a digital orc on screen, waving at me with an energy that seemed designed to be condescending. Beneath it were instructions.
[FIRST TRY IS FREE. GET ABOVE 300 HIT POINTS TO GET THE NEXT TRIAL FOR FREE TOO!]
"300 points." I looked at the number. Then at the bag. "That's too easy."
I stepped back, planted my feet, loaded up what I considered a serious punch, and swung.
WHACK.
The bag moved. The machine shook. I took both of those as promising indicators.
The numbers started climbing. 50 — 90 — 150 — 209.
It stopped.
Keep going.
It didn't.
[HAHA. YOU LOSE. NEXT TRIAL IS 5 CENTS]
Behind me, I heard Aria snicker. I knew what that sound was. I had extensive experience with it, it was the sound of someone who had decided they were better than you and was choosing not to fully conceal that assessment.
I turned around. "That wasn't even close to my best shot."
"Alright." She was working to contain it. Mostly succeeding. "Show me your best shot then."
I fished a coin out of my pocket. Five cents. I set it in the slot, stepped back further this time, and committed to the setup, fists prepped, weight loaded, the full main character energy of someone who had been secretly overpowered this entire time and was finally choosing to reveal it.
I swung.
The sound on impact was significantly better. Meaningful. The kind of sound that suggested something had been communicated.
The numbers climbed past a hundred. 130 — 170 — 200 —
"201."
[HAHA. TRY AGAIN LOSER!]
Aria's laugh became a full production. Loud enough that I felt it somewhere in my bones. Not the sound itself, the specific quality of being laughed at.
Losing to Ember had been one category of embarrassing. Being laughed at in an arcade by the person who dragged me here was a different and somehow more personal variety.
"And in Sancho's place you were like, 'I didn't need your help.'" She did my voice. A bad impression that was nevertheless recognisable enough to be worse than a good one. "I thought you'd at least be a little strong."
I didn't respond. I just pulled another coin out and went again.
Another coin. 208.
Another. 215.
None of it was breaking the average. Somewhere around the third or fourth attempt, Aria had stopped laughing, not because anything had gotten funnier, but because watching me fail repeatedly had apparently graduated from entertainment to just background noise she was comfortable with.
I could hear her behind me, working through a juice box, watching with the relaxed energy of someone who had nowhere else to be.
"What's your highest score on this thing?" I asked, feeding another coin into the machine with the specific aggression of a person who has stopped expecting a different result but is committed to the consistency.
"999." She said it the way someone says the time when they've glanced at a clock.
I turned around. "999. Like... the top?"
"Yeah."
"I don't believe that."
She didn't argue. She just set the juice box down, stood up, crossed to the machine, and hit it.
It took one punch. Not a demonstration, just a punch, the same way you'd open a door, the same way you'd pick something up off a table. And the screen cracked. Not from structural failure but from the number the sensor was trying to display.
The counter didn't climb. It concluded. 999. Like the machine had made a decision rather than a measurement. Like 999 was the floor of what it could say about what had just happened, not the ceiling.
[WE HAVE A WINNER]
[YOUR NEXT TRIAL IS — FREE!]
She turned and made a small heroic pose. The kind with the arms.
I straightened my face. Lowered my eyes into something that could pass for unimpressed. Added a slight yawn to complete the picture. Whatever was happening in my expression, I was doing my best to ensure it didn't resemble what it actually was.
I had no idea how she'd done that. One punch. The exact force of a truck, and she delivered it like a passing thought.
Physical type ability? That was the most coherent explanation, something that multiplied raw force to a degree that made what she'd done to Sancho's crew look proportionate rather than excessive. If that was what she'd brought into a fight against Ember, the whole temple scenario might have ended in about twelve seconds.
"Don't spiral into inferiority," Aria said, reading whatever I hadn't managed to keep off my face. She picked the juice box back up. "You have no idea how many months that took."
And coins. Probably a significant volume of coins.
"After I built my force to a certain level, everything else became easier to layer on top of it," she continued, dropping back onto the couch with the ease of someone who owned the furniture. "Speed. Stamina. Reads. All of it comes together faster once the foundation is real. And honestly? When it comes to jerks—" she tossed the empty carton into a nearby trash can without looking, "—one punch is usually enough."
I let that settle.
She wasn't wrong. The fights where things had gotten complicated were always the ones where I'd gone in trying to be strategic before I had the physical base to execute the strategy. Ember hadn't been a puzzle, she'd been a wall. And no amount of Analytical Eye or Flow State was going to solve a wall. You needed to be able to hit hard enough that the wall noticed.
One punch determined a clear victor. Not dramatic, just enough. More than what the other person had.
And apparently, the path to that started with a coin-operated machine in an arcade on the second street.
***
[External POV]
"What in the world is this?"
Mr Voss had a specific register he defaulted to when Cael presented an idea. It had been the same register since fourth grade, when Cael, at ten years old, had brought a documented plan for free library access for every student in Silvic High. Voss had called it idealistic then. Unhelpful. A waste of administrative attention.
The papers had gone in the shredder. And Cael had spent the next several years learning which ideas to show his father and which to keep to himself, and then eventually, through some combination of stubbornness and genuine belief, he'd stopped making that calculation and started bringing the ideas anyway.
It hadn't changed the outcome. But here Cael was. One year from graduation, still Jack of Silvic High, still standing in his father's office trying to make the case for something he believed in.
"An open tier system," Cael said, keeping his voice even. "Students move between tiers based on demonstrated growth, not locked in by their starting rank or raw ability classification. We build Silvic High's own internal ranking structure, something that reflects actual development rather than inherited position—"
"Three years." Mr Voss set Cael's documented plan on the desk and looked at his son with the specific patience of someone who has run out of it. "I gave you three years with the Jack position because you told me you'd use it to demonstrate your worth." His hand moved to the papers. "And this is what three years produces."
He pushed them off the desk. They spread across the floor between them, several pages catching air before settling at Cael's feet.
"If you'd let me finish, the current system creates a fixed ceiling for low-tiers with real potential. They can't develop because the structure doesn't allow for it. The moment you build in the possibility of movement, you change what people are working toward—"
"Hierarchy exists because people need to know their position." Mr Voss's voice was the kind of flat that came from having made a decision a long time ago and not finding any new reason to revisit it.
"The moment you introduce the idea that a low-tier can rise, you give them ambitions above their actual utility. Ambition creates instability. Instability creates weakness. A school that can't maintain its internal hierarchy can't project anything externally." The scowl that settled on his face was particular, not angry, just disappointed. "You'd understand this if you had any functional sense of order, Cael."
"..."
"Come back with something better." His eyes returned to his screen. "If you have something better."
Cael picked up the papers from the floor. He didn't say anything else.
He walked out.
The despair that came with him into the hallway wasn't new, it had the texture of something he'd been carrying for a long time and had gotten familiar with the weight of.
Three years. Three years of structured effort, documented plans, consistent presence in the role his father had given him with an invisible condition attached. And every time, the answer was the same. Too idealistic. Too disruptive. Too much the wrong kind of thinking.
And every time, through whatever Zael had done— through the recklessness, the power plays, the decisions that should have had consequences— the crown stayed on his brother's head. Zael Voss. King of Silvic High. Accepted regardless, like his position was a gravitational constant rather than something that could be examined.
Cael hated the acceptance more than the comparison.
RING. RING.
He pulled out his phone without looking up. Checked the name. Answered.
"I found him." The voice on the other end was direct, already past the opening. "The one who's been around Aria."
Cael stopped walking.
"Name."
"Ren Mora. He's a low-tier with no real rank to speak of." A brief pause. "Honestly, he seems unimportant. You might not need to—"
"Find out more about him." Cael's voice had settled into something even and cold, the version of himself he used when the decision had already been made. "And be quiet about it."