Finding a fallen foe

For the first time in a week, I leave the central structure of the school, and the tetrad of buildings that delimits it. As a teacher, my workplace, living quarters, and most amenities I need in daily life are all within that core, but the school grounds do extend quite a bit outside of it.

Most of it is just a green buffer zone, so to speak, to further isolate us from the rest of the world. An academic island in a sea of perfectly maintained lawn, with a beach of asphalt to park any cars that may visit. But there are a few points of interest too — most of them sports-related.

My destination today is one of those, a small stadium used by the school’s football team.

Sports is one of the only areas of education that’s actually taken seriously by the school’s leadership. They’re all about looking prestigious without actually putting in the work to deserve it, and having good sports teams is a relatively easy way to ensure that. After all, giving a good education requires having to make a constant effort on every teacher, every class, and every student, but for a good football team, all you need is a decent coach and 11 girls that are good at that one thing.

Tatiana plays on the team, as a pretty selfish striker type, and she often likes to hang out in or by the stadium with her friends. The fact that the locker room has a fridge with free beers for the players is probably a big reason why.

As I follow the serpentine dirt path down the hill that the quad was built on, strolling under the shade of grey clouds auguring the imminent arrival of autumn, my gaze rests on the football field’s squat figure.

Like most things here, it was built to a scale betraying the school’s arrogant opinion of itself. It could easily host several thousand people watching a match, but the actual number of spectators is barely ever above 200.

That does come with a few perks, though. It’s the first stadium I’ve ever been to where everyone could comfortably watch the game while laying down on their side like Roman nobles enjoying their meal.

As I approach the structure, I start to make out a few chattering voices rising up above the hissing of the wind.

“Yeah, no, I don’t know, I guess it just came to me,” explains a voice I recognise as Tatiana’s.

Which does confirm she’s here, as I hoped.

“I mean, I’d never thought about doing things that way, humiliating ourselves and stuff, but it makes sense when you say it...” concedes another voice.

I see her kingpin trait has kicked in already.

“Hell yeah it does! We should’ve thought about it a long time ago,” Tatiana replies.

“You’re so smart Tania!” a third voice touts sycophantically.

The way she’s gotten all those girls to suck up to her in fear of being ostracised is even creepier now that I know her actual age.

Yes, I know I’m not any better, but at least I admit it.

I turn around the corner and I see them, standing right next to the entrance to the locker room, smoking cigarettes.

I flinch as the memory of what I saw in the music room comes back to haunt me once again.

Jenny might not be the only person I get off tobacco in this school. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see this piece of shit smoking without getting angry.

There’s four of them in total. Tatiana herself, and three of her most loyal subordinates, whose sense of identity is so reliant on their subservience to their leader that I never even bothered to remember their names. Maybe they forgot it too.

They notice me approaching and stop talking, looking at me with a certain antipathy. Tatiana’s eyes seem to lose their focus for a moment, as if she struggled to even perceive the person in front of her, like her brain was blocking out some crucial information about me.

I love seeing that confusion. Seeing the extent to which their very minds were altered by my ingress. Seeing their face contort in addled reflection as some deep part of their brain desperately tries to break free of the app’s overwhelming power, before giving in, always giving in, and sheepishly accepting its indisputable new truth.

And so she does. In a short few seconds, her expression goes from confusion, to reflection, to discomfort, to acceptance. And it’s only when she reaches this final stage that her eyes are finally allowed to focus on me.

And once the moment has passed, she looks absolutely fine. Hale and hearty. Which means I have no scruples about using the app on her again.

“Hello, Tatiana, can I talk to you in private?” I ask in a soft voice, the likes of which Theodore Roosevelt would’ve appreciated.

I’ll let you figure out what the second half of his aphorism refers to in this case.

“What do you want?” she asks with unveiled hostility.

“I’ll tell you as soon as we’re alone.”

“If you’ve got something to say, say it here. I’m not gonna follow you.”

I want to tweak her Path, and her kingpin trait means that her Path effects also apply to her goons, and if I make an argument in front of someone who’s the target of that argument, they won’t be able to see anything strange happening. So... technically, I could probably make my points right here, right now, and her lackeys would be none the wiser.

But I don’t want to bet on “probably”.

And besides, I have a new trick up my sleeve that I’m dying to try out.

“Oh but you are going to come and talk to me. I demand parley,” I assert with a stately tone.

I’m not sure what I expected. A zombie-like trance maybe, or a reverent obedience perhaps, but certainly not an annoyed “Ah, fuck. Fine, if you’re gonna be like that. Jesus...”

“Ah, fuck. Fine, if you’re gonna be like that. Jesus...” she says, annoyed.

Looks like Parley doesn’t do much in the way of fixing a bad attitude. But in a way, that’s what makes it fun.

“I knew you’d come around,” I respond, going back to my imperiously soft voice. “Let’s go inside, shall we?”

I show her into her own locker room, or more accurately the small rec room next to it. She enters it, but not without eyeing me in suspicion as she does.

I kinda like that rebellious streak. It’ll make her fall from grace even more satisfying to watch.

After throwing a quick glance outdoors to make sure her friends aren’t listening in, I make my opening argument.

“Tania... You don’t mind if I call you Tania, right?”

“Whatever.”

“Alright then, Tania, are you a coward?” I ask earnestly.

“What!? What the fuck are you talking about?”

She actually sounds a bit hurt in her ego.

As she should.

“Well, it’s just simple logic, isn’t it? The way you’ve been bullying people out of sight, when nobody could see it. You care so much about your status, and yet you hide in the shadows. Only a coward would act that way.”

“Fuck off! I’m not a coward!”

“Then stop hiding! Whatever you do, do it in public. If you’re not afraid, then act like it!” I demand, letting my tone rise just a bit, before lowering in fear of her friends hearing me.

It’s a bit hypocritical of me, when you think about it. I’m telling her to be open even though I’m about as devious and manipulative as it gets.

That thought won’t stop me though.

“I shouldn’t... hide?”

Her eyes go back to the unfocused, glazed out look they had when she first saw me today.

“You shouldn’t. If you bully someone, let yourself be seen, and face the consequences like the adult you are.”

It’s still weird to think she’s 26. She might be the most unbearably immature girl in this entire school.

With maybe one exception, whom I’m already dreading having to deal with next week.

“I need to let myself be seen... and face the consequences! Ah shit, you’re right. Fuck me.”

Even when her mind’s being rewired, she can’t stop swearing for more than two seconds.

-10 BS. 5 remaining.

As I expected, this was very cheap. Making her bully in public will make the whole ordeal even more humiliating for her, which means that this belief goes in the same direction as her Path, which lowers the cost. And since it’s just a fairly small tweak to already existing behaviour, it wasn’t super expensive to begin with.

Why did I decide to make this tweak?

Well, last night, as I was laying in bed wondering if Tatiana was okay, I realised that her Path had two major loopholes. The first one has already been brought up during the conversation: the fact that she would still hide. In and of itself, it’s not really a problem. It means I won’t be able to watch her humiliate herself, which is a bit of a shame, but it doesn’t hurt anybody. The problem rears its head when you think about the second loophole.

She thinks that self humiliation is the most effective way to bully, but not the only way to bully.

As things stand, it’s perfectly possible that she’ll still try to pull shit like beatings and cigarette burns on others, just not as often as before.

And if she does it in secret, then other girls can still suffer because of her, and I’d be none the wiser.

By making her bully in public, not only will I be able to monitor her descent as it happens, but I and the rest of the staff will be in a position to intervene if she does some actual bullying. And since third parties will not see her self-humiliation as bullying, it’s the only kind she’ll be able to get away with from now on.

Doing this satisfies the third rule of using the app, since it protects the other students from her.

Of course, I could’ve simply convinced her to stop bullying altogether, but it would’ve been much more expensive, since it’s a much bigger change and it’s one that goes against the course of her Path, which would've increased the price even further.

And besides, if she stops bullying, I want it to be her own decision. The door is open for her to decide to reform herself, but I won’t **** her to, I’ll just make sure she can’t hurt anyone in the meantime. The ball is in her court.

You can become a better person than this, Tania, but it has to be you who makes that decision and puts in the effort, redemption has no value if it’s only sought under the yoke of compulsion.

I might be fooling myself in still having a faint hope for her, but what are we if we let go of this conviction that our fellow human can always improve? The hard part is keeping that hope without letting assholes who have no intention of improving **** your kindness and your faith, but that is something I’m a lot less likely to fall victim to nowadays.

Of course, there was also a third reason for giving her this new belief.

I want to see her humiliate herself. I want to know what her mind will come up with, what abyssal depths she will stoop to, what shameful deeds she will abase herself to in the name of a status she is now fated to lose.

But beside this tweak to her belief, there is also one more thing I wanted to do here today.

I have made sure she can’t bully anyone going forward, but I still haven’t disciplined her for what she did to Rachel.

I want to try giving someone a proper spanking.

“Tania,” I begin, having already grown fond of using that pet name. “I’m glad to see that you’re not a coward in the end, but we still need to talk about yesterday.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

Wait, is she still denying it?

“Tania... You tried to burn another student with a cigarette. Why would you lie about it?”

She looks confused for a second, before raising her hand to her temple and tightly closing her eyelids in pain.

“What... I don’t...”

Oh shit.

She actually doesn’t remember.

Why doesn’t she? Ellen and Rachel still remember the arguments I had with them, and Jenny’s obviously aware of everything.

Wait, didn’t the app’s rules mention that under some circumstances, the targets would forget about what happened? Like when I fail an argument?

The argument did succeed, but maybe the aggressive way in which I **** the belief into her made the app wipe her memory to prevent her from figuring out what I did.

That must be why she went blank when she first saw me today, and why she didn’t seem afraid of me.

But in that case, bringing it up here may have weakened the app’s effect, which means I’m in dangerous territory again. I still have a handful of minutes before the end of Parley, and an energy potion should worst come to worst.

I’d feel really frustrated if I had to use my potion barely an hour after getting it, though.

Okay, I can still salvage this.

“Oh well. I was hoping that would make you own up to it. But clearly I was wrong. There are rumours about you, you know?” I explain, trying to pass my accusation as some failed attempt at bluff.

She manages to open her eyes again, and focuses them on me.

She looks pissed, but I think I managed to take her attention away from trying to remember the events of yesterday.

“Rumours? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Look, I don’t know who it is that you’ve been terrorising, but people have been talking.”

“Well people are gonna keep talking, cause I ain’t gonna hide anymore! You wanna know what I’m gonna do? Well just you wait, I’ll make sure you’re there to see it!” she yells while she stomps away towards the door, before turning around and asking, still angry but with a genuine request in her voice “Are you done talking? Can I go?”

Oh right, Parley’s still on for a few minutes, she can’t leave the conversation without my permission.

“Er, yeah, sure, go ahead.”

I won’t be accepting that kind of outburst in the future, but with only 5 BS to my name, a Parley about to expire, having almost accidentally made her aware of the app, and three of her underlings ready to come to her aid at a moment’s notice, I’d rather not take any chances right now.

I think I underestimated her, or overestimated myself.

I’m not sure if power corrupts, but it certainly makes you reckless.

Just because I’ve unlocked somebody’s Path doesn’t mean they become my mindless puppets. I came here with the intention to spank her, only to nearly lose everything to thoughtless hubris. I need to be more careful in the future.

And I need to accept that I haven’t defeated Tania yet.