The SSS Rank God Of High School Chapter 8: Back To Zero

[External POV]

"Funny thing, really." Sancho didn’t look up when Tyler walked in. "I didn’t think you’d actually co back here on your knees."

The chuckle that followed was quiet, almost private. But it landed exactly where it was ant to, right in the centre of Tyler’s chest, where what remained of his dignity was sitting in pieces.

If Tyler had known it would co to this, that he’d end up at Sancho’s door, head down, asking for help, he might have treated his position in the gang with a little more care. Might have paid more attention when Sancho told him, more than once, that overusing power had a ceiling.

Sancho Reeves. Ace of East High, technically. But technical titles weren’t really how Sancho preferred to be described. He was the boss of the Sancho gang: small, by gang standards, but notorious in a way that had nothing to do with size.

Students from multiple schools had filtered into it over the years, drawn in by the two things Sancho consistently offered: protection and power.

The best analogy for Sancho was a snake. Not for any particular dramatic reason, just because it was accurate. He was quiet when it suited him, nearly invisible until it didn’t, and the mont you forgot he was dangerous was usually the mont he reminded you.

Tyler had been given access to that power and had spent it recklessly. Sancho had flagged it. But Tyler had kept going anyway, comfortable in the assumption that picking on low-tiers was a victimless way to burn excess energy.

And then Ren Mora, without an ability, no rank, no business being able to do what he did — had beaten him in front of an audience.

The evidence was still sitting on Tyler’s face. Swollen around both eyes, features rearranged in ways that would take ti to settle back. And sowhere underneath all of it, a headache that hadn’t stopped since that day and that suggested the skull might have opinions about what had happened to it.

The highest form of embarrassnt Tyler could imagine. And it had co from the weakest student in Silvic High.

"This matters." Tyler forced the words out around the headache. "A mber of your gang just got publicly humiliated. Are you really going to sit there and do nothing about it?"

Sancho’s smirk appeared and left in the sa second. He unfolded himself from the couch, stood, crossed the room toward Tyler with a cigarette already between his lips. He lit it, crouched down in front of where Tyler was sitting, and took a long, unhurried drag.

"And?" He removed the cigarette, let the smoke out slowly. "You got humiliated. Specifically, what is it you want to do?"

Tyler t his eyes. Held them.

"Teach him a lesson. Ren Mora." The determination in his voice was the only thing in his face that wasn’t damaged. "Make him understand who he actually touched."

Sancho looked at him for a long mont. Not studying, more like assessing whether the request was worth the energy it would take to respond to it. He took the cigarette out again and breathed a slow stream of smoke directly into Tyler’s face.

"Alright." He stood, turned away. "I’ll help you."

Tyler blinked. Sothing small and victorious moved through his expression. He got to his feet, brushed off his knees.

"Yeah? You actually—"

He almost didn’t register the movent.

Sancho turned and hit him, one punch, full weight, no announcent, and Tyler went down again, hitting the floor the sa way he’d hit it on Friday. Not again. He’d absorbed enough today. His skull was filing a formal complaint.

"There." Sancho looked down at him, took another drag, almost serene. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his foot. "Now we’re square." He tilted his head slightly. "So. Tell more about this Ren."

***

[Author’s POV]

"I’m sorry to confirm this, but the rumours turned out to be accurate, and earlier than any of us anticipated." Mr Chen set down his notes after the session. "Registration for the BHA entrance examination opened this morning."

The Monday morning timing was its own particular cruelty.

The room responded the way rooms always did to news that was genuinely alarming, not with silence, but with a low, spreading murmur. The kind that ant everyone was doing their own private calculation simultaneously, trying to determine how worried they were supposed to be.

Justifiably worried, most of them. The BHA’s examination wasn’t structured to be approachable. It was structured to be passed only by people who were actually ready, and announcing it at the last possible mont was part of their design.

They didn’t give warning because warning wasn’t the point. They wanted students as they actually were — not as they’d had six months to prepare to present themselves.

Random season selections, last-minute announcents, rigid formats. The BHA had been doing this long enough that unpredictable had beco one of its defining characteristics.

"Additionally," Mr Chen continued, "this year the terms have been expanded. The BHA will be allowing cripples to participate as well." His eyes moved across the room and stopped, briefly, specifically on . "They want to make sure that anyone interested in a trial has access to one, regardless of their current ability status."

I processed that.

An open slot. Technically an invitation, on paper, for students without abilities to walk into an examination designed by and for people who had them.

In practice, what that ant was a front-row seat to watching everyone else demonstrate flashy, developed abilities while I contributed whatever it was a person without abilities contributed to that kind of environnt.

The bottom. Sa place everyone already expected to finish. Just with a more formal setting and more witnesses.

"The examination runs from the fifteenth to the seventeenth of this month. Registration closes this Friday, so handle that before the week is out."

Mr Chen left. The room filled in behind him.

The low-tiers were the loudest, not out of excitent, but out of sothing closer to quiet panic, the kind that expresses itself through urgent whispering and repeated phrases.

Even so of the middle-tiers looked like they were running numbers they didn’t love. The only person not contributing to the noise was Tyler, who was sitting with his eyes moving to every few minutes in that flat, expressionless way he’d developed since Friday.

He looked like soone who hadn’t entirely accepted what had happened yet. Like he was still processing, still sowhere in the early stages of understanding that the outco had been real.

Good. Let him sit in it.

Though the more I thought about it, if he’d actually kept his word and gone to Mr Chen with the truth about the cheat note, he should be dealing with more than just wounded pride right now. A suspended student didn’t generally sit in class looking bruised and vacant. He’d be sowhere else.

Which suggested he hadn’t said anything.

"Ren Mora, report to the principal’s office imdiately."

The announcent speaker voiced flatly.

I hadn’t been summoned to the principal’s office since the incident with the senior, the one where I’d been accused of raising my hand against soone who outranked , a situation that had been planned from beginning to end by soone who knew exactly how those accusations played out.

That soone had been Tyler.

He was the throughline. Every significant piece of school trouble I’d been in traced back to him eventually, and this, arriving on the Monday after I’d put him on the floor in front of a crowd, had his fingerprints on it before I’d even stood up from my seat.

I looked at him on my way out. Held it for a second. The ssage wasn’t complicated: if you’re involved in whatever this is, I’ll find that out. And then we’ll be back where we were on Friday, except I’ll have less patience for the buildup.

He didn’t react. I left.

I knocked on the principal’s office door and opened it in the sa motion, not waiting for the response. I wanted this finished.

"There you are, Ren." Mr Ross Williams. Three years as principal of Silvic High, and not once in that ti had his voice defaulted to warmth, even on the occasions when he was technically being welcoming. It was just how he was built.

Mr Chen was standing beside him, holding a sheet of paper I recognized imdiately. My handwriting. My answer sheet. On the desk in front of Mr Ross was the cheat note, Tyler’s— sitting there like evidence that had been patient.

This is not gonna end well.

"I asked you here because Mr Chen raised so concerns regarding your last class test." Mr Ross settled back in his chair. "The reports I received were... not what I expected. Specifically, that you were involved in malpractice."

"Those allegations are false," I said.

"Ren." Mr Chen exhaled the word like he was tired of the shape of it. "You told you were going to take responsibility. Why are we still having this conversation—"

"This note." Mr Ross lifted the cheat note. "It was found inside your test papers. What’s your explanation?"

"Tyler planted it." I kept my voice even. "He admitted it to directly and agreed he would co forward and confirm it to you. That was the arrangent."

Or what had passed for one.

The two of them looked at , Mr Ross for longer, with the specific intensity of soone trying to determine whether they were being told the truth or a very confident lie. He humd once, tapped his announcing device, and spoke into it.

"Tyler Wilson, report to the principal’s office imdiately."

The wait was a few minutes. Tyler walked in, took in the room, took in standing there, and arranged his expression into sothing neutral before directing it toward the principal.

"Clear sothing up for , Tyler." Mr Ross raised the note again. "Ren is telling you planted this in his test script. Are you confirming that?"

Tyler was quiet. Long enough that I thought, briefly, that he might actually do it, that whatever remained of the deal we’d made might surface and produce the one honest thing I needed from him.

"I don’t know what he’s talking about." His voice was even. His face was clean of everything except a practiced look of confusion. "I don’t know anything about a cheat note."

"You son of a bitch—"