MY SCHOOL BULLY BEATS UP MY FAKE FRIENDS

Steven was really not liking today. 

"I'm here!" A voice called out. It was his friend Oscar, who had just shown up ready to save the day. Beside him was Shreya, who was hiding near a tree. According to her words, she simply didn't want to get her "dress damaged. This costs far too much!"

"Ahhh!!" Oscar rushed Ashley, engaging in a very cool fight. Steven knew Oscar was strong, but he hadn't expected this. Well, actually, Oscar was always bragging about the high school he had gotten into. It was this really cool and amazing highschool called Queen High School for the Cultivators, and "Oh Steven, you just wouldn't get it."

Was that the reason why Oscar was able to keep up with Ashley and her glowing-weird magic powers? Probably.

Ashley yawned and smacked Oscar into the ground in one hit. She muttered something about Oscar not being enough of a snack for her to entertain for that long. For some reason, that gave Steven a warm, fuzzy feeling. 

"Ah, no matter. It's time for fireworks," Ashley declared with a manic gleam in her eye, and Steven could have sworn he saw the trees themselves recoil in fear. 

Below, Oscar was groaning and Shreya had ran away. 

The bathroom nearby burst into flames. Then, as if to add insult to injury, fireworks exploded in the sky, tearing open ominous portals that looked like the gates to some otherworldly dimension.

Ashley, levitating with the ease of a leaf on the wind, began to draw red lines across the grass and lake with her whip, forming drawing red lines that glowed with an eerie light. Steven, battered and burned, could only watch in horror as the red lines formed what looked like walls of light across the park. 

If only he had a birds-eye view. He would have seen a red magic circle glowing across the entire park. He would have seen a large bird speeding through the air.

"No," Steven winced, falling on the ground. Not like this…

"Crawling on the ground!" Ashley laughed, watching Steven's pathetic effort to get to her. But she wasn't done yet. Spotting a little girl hiding near a tree, Ashley's twisted idea of revenge sparked up again. "Oh, well, then let's play some more," she hissed, grabbing the girl's teddy bear.

"No, Blinky!" the little girl screamed as her teddy bear was taken away from her.

Ashley then flew into the bathroom, taking out Mrs. Phalla's wallet. 

"This is the wallet of Mrs. Phalla, the teacher you hate so much! Look, it turns out she hates you so much because she thinks you spread a rumor about her stupid husband! But it was all me. I was the one who spread it." 

Okay, at this point, Steven kinda already knew that.

Ashley pulled a picture out of the wallet, showing a young couple smiling. Was that Mrs. Phalla? Steven had never seen his math teacher smile like that before.

"Now, I'm going to give you a choice." Ashley held up each item in her hand, "Should I burn the teddy bear or the wallet?"

Such a hard choice: Save the wallet of the teacher he hated or save the cheap teddy bear of some random girl. The choice was obvious—

The teddy bear. 

"Save my teddy bear," The crying girl agreed. 

"Save that teddy bear!" Dieze said in his contacts. See, even Dieze wanted to save the teddy bear.

"What, why?" Steven asked, "What about Mrs. Phalla's wallet?"

"You hate Mrs. Phalla." Dieze logically indicated. 

"Yeah, but still, that wallet has an important photograph of her husband. I can't just let it get destroyed."

"Are you sure you won't regret this decision?" 

"Yes," Steven said, telling Ashley his decision. 

"Alright," Ashley said, throwing the wallet at Steven. With her other hand, she tapped Blinky, "Cute thing."

It exploded into little cotton balls. 

"No!!!!" The girl sobbed, screaming at Steven. "You evil monster!"

Hey, it wasn't even his fault! He wanted to complain. 

Ashley came down from the sky, smiling. "I WIN!"

The adults, still unconscious, began to rise in the air. Steven watched as their veins and arteries started to look awfully choked.

"NO!" Steven shouted, but his body was wracked with pain. His clothes were singed and burning.

It was hard to explain what happened next: 

The next thing he saw, a teenage boy dropping down from the sky. The boy sent Ashley flying back with a harsh kick. Then… 

Steven saw a flying bird made of what looked to be clay. And on top of it, a girl?

"Aw yeah, kick that crazy chick!" The girlie on the bird cheered. "Yeah, turn that lunatic into a fugging statistic!"

"Left hook, right, no right! Girl deserves dem punches, give her a good one for me! Yes. YES!" 

A couple moments later, the park was back to normal. Ashley was tied to a tree, unconscious, with a sign that read: "It was me. I'm sorry!" The adults nearby began stirring in their sleep. 

And the girl and boy who had saved him were standing next to him, staring. 

"Who are you guys?" Steven asked.

"Us?" The girl smiled, mysteriously. 

Her olive-green hair looked really familiar. Beside her, the boy spoke. 

"Why don't we talk about it somewhere safe."

The three of them disappeared into the night. Soon after, reporters began to swarm the area.

* * *

"Was it you who fought off this girl?" The reporter pointed to the unconscious Ashley tied into the tree.

"Yes," Oscar was talking to the reporter, bragging about his impressive feats. "I fought her and then managed to beat her."

"Oh you should have seen him!" Shreya fluttered her eyelashes, hugging him. "He was so brave!"

Shreya knew she had chosen the right boy to stick to. See, this boy? He was going to Queen's High School for the Cultivators, and if that said anything, it definitely said: "BRIGHT FUTURE."

She smiled and waved. They were going to be on TV now. 

* * *

"This is my room." Steven introduced. 

"Nice room," The girl said, who Steven had learned was named 'Olive'. 

"Olivia."

He stood corrected.

Next to Olive, the boy named Locust began to speak. "So you don't remember us?"

Steven shook his head no. 

According to them, the two were his cousins. Locust was the older, more-rational sibling, and Olive, the younger, more-reckless, more-snippy counterpart. They had been looking for him, because he had suddenly disappeared off the grid a couple months ago. The two tried summarizing what they knew, but Steven still had a couple questions left: 

"Who… what was that girl Ashley?" Steven asked, "How could she do all that?"

"She was a cultivator."

"She was a cult member?" Steven muttered. It all made sense.

"No, cultivator! Look, we're also cultivators." Locust explained, before sighing, "Cultivators are people who take energy from the natural world. It allows us to do stuff that otherwise wouldn't be possible. 

"—The thing is, not all cultivators are good people. Ones like Ashely, they use their powers to try to stay forever young. They use forbidden, twisted techniques because those allow power faster. Sometimes, those techniques require the sacrifice of innocent lives." 

"And also, we kinda need you to come with us," Olive chimed in.

"What, why?" Steven demanded.

Locust looked at the room. "We… need you. We're dreamwalkers-"

"Dog-walkers?"

"N-no!" Olive groaned. "Stupid Steven. Dreamwalkers."

He didn't know what that was, but if he got the feeling that he asked again, he would get a violent earful from Olive. 

"Point is, we want you to join us for our, er, part-time job." Locust said. 

"Why would I-"

Locust whispered the pay.

"Okay. I'm in. When do we start?"

* * *

"Was your brother involved?" The police officer asked. They were sitting in an interrogation room.

Ashley glanced around the room, bored. "That idiot?"

"Answer the question," The police officer stared at her.

She looked at the gray door separating her from freedom. Would she go to jail now? How lame! Totally not a good place to get a manicure. And what about her luxury-items? She couldn't possibly live without her handbags. Oh, her stupid brother, too? Ashley looked back at the police officer and said:

"No."

* * *

The little girl had just got home. 

Boo-hoo, her little stuffed animal had exploded. Sad-face!

The poor kid had spent an hour collecting the remaining cotton balls, sniffling. Then, she walked back to her apartment, alone. Who would allow a kid to wander a park alone? Well, her parents weren't home. 

Of course they weren't. They never had time for her. She was always alone. But the TV was always there for her. So she turned it on:

"Hi I'm Bora, the Restorer," The cartoon-girl on the TV said, "with my pet chihuahua Sandals. I'm a super cool restauradora!" 

The girl sat there, watching the screen. 

"Hey, want to know a secret?" Bora said, "I know how to restore lost things!"

The TV made a wow sound effect.

"What's that? Your teddy bear got a boo-boo?"

The girl nodded.

"Don't worry! I can fix your teddy bear Mr. Blinky! All you have to do is play a game with me! It's a place where all your dreams can come true!" 

"I want to play the game!" The girl said, hopping. 

"Yay!" Bora said, "Que Fantastica!" 

The air in the room grew colder, the shadows stretching like fingers across the floor as the sun dipped below the horizon. The girl, eyes wide with anticipation, didn't notice the way the light from the TV flickered, casting her face in brief moments of darkness. There, Bora turned around, looking at something… 

"I love children," Bora smiled, her voice dropping, "Don't you?"