Arielle was sitting on a closed lid toilet seat in the girl's bathroom with her arms curled and clutching her stomach and her back leaning forward. She was dealing with the pain of her menstrual cramps when she heard the noise of a group of girls who had just entered the toilets, "She's in here," said one of them. Arielle recognised that voice. It was one of the girls who had been tormenting her.

She had been trying to stay under the radar as so as not to bring trouble to her friends, but only one month into the first school term in the new high school, trouble had come to find her. These girls often mocked and laughed at her. She had always ignored them and walked away and did not mention what was happening to Bryan and Callum, who were oblivious.

That was until the week prior, on the final period on Friday, the leader of the group of girls, Emily Chen, who was the sister of one of the leaders in CHNS, began to push her around and slapped her.

Arielle had finally responded and punched the bitch in her smug face, to which Emily had responded by cowering in fear and running away. Since then, they stopped bothering her, but now that they were here, they had probably come back to get revenge.

"Are you sure?" Arielle recognised the new voice too. It was Emily's. "Yes," the previous girl replied. With a scowl, Emily raises her foot and kicks on the stool door as hard as she could. With the resonance of a loud clamour, Emily says, "Heh, I know you're in there. You better come out or else."

Inside the stool, Arielle had gotten up and was thinking about what she should do, "Wait." She then unlocked the door and came out to face the group of girls. Emily stood at the front with a twisted smile on her face as she looked down mockingly at Arielle.

Facing Arielle, Emily continued while staring down at her with a satisfied expression saying, "Did you think I would forget what you did?" Arielle met her glare, continuing to look her down without responding.

"I'm talking to you, fucking bitch!" Arielle's lack of response had invoked her ire as she swiped forward, trying to grab Arielle's hair and yank it, but Arielle had sidestepped and dodged her advance.

Emily's expression twisted as she called for her goons to apprehend her. Arielle's train of thought was disrupted as two girls pounced on her. She moved to the side and punched the first girl coming at her with a fist to the stomach. The girl fell to her knees and clutched her stomach.

With no time to react, a second girl was in her midst, trying to grab her. Arielle responded by grappling with her. With her arms locked, the girl quickly responded with a knee to her liver area.

Arielle's legs gave out as she flopped onto the ground with a quiet groan, the pain was unlike anything that she had ever felt before, and she felt like that knee had knocked all the air out of her.

While Arielle kneeled on the floor, struggling to breathe, a third girl came from the side and kicked her to the back of her head, and she hit the hard ceramic floor face first.

Emily stood in front of Arielle, who was groaning with a mixture of tears, blood, and saliva covering her face. With a sadistic smile on her face, she ordered her lackeys, "Hold her up." Then two of the girls went to Arielle's side and held her up by her shoulders.

The sight of Arielle's suffering greatly excited Emily as she ordered the girl who was punched by Arielle to "Start recording," with an ever-widening smirk on her face.

-

Right after arriving at the cafeteria, I found Bryan. He was on the very top-most left side of the cafeteria, on the table where we regularly sat and was waving at me to get my attention. Walking up to him, I said, "Hey." He replied with a weird expression, "Hey, you seen Arielle?"

I was a little confused, as they were much closer to the cafeteria and should have met up a few minutes ago, "No, I haven't," I replied.

Then Bryan continued, "I haven't seen her either. Her English class is nearby. Even if she stayed behind a few minutes, she should be here already."

"What did you just say?" I asked grouchily.

"Huh, what do you mean?" Bryan replies, confused.

Uneasiness began to creep into me, "I told you to look out for her!" I shouted. What the hell was this guy thinking?

My eyes shifted around, glancing at every corner of the cafeteria and the hallways outwards. I couldn't see her anywhere. Taking in a deep breath to calm myself down, I said, "Ok, let's go to her classroom then." Bryan nodded warily.

As we made our way to what should have been her last class, the students we passed would again give me weird glances as they backed away from me. These weren't the glances I was getting this morning. This was something different. Something wasn't right. Some of the wimps were even looking at me with pity.

We made our way to her class and found the teacher locking the door. I called out to him, "Hey sir!" he turned to face me, and I continued, "do you know about the whereabouts of my friend Arielle? She should be in your class."

He looked at me for a while before responding, "She left to the toilet in the middle of my class and did not return," before continuing with a scowl, "I am not impressed and will have a word with her later."

I gulped loudly, a premonition overcoming me, we had agreed that we would always meet up after our classes, and we had always stuck to that, the only exception being when we were in trouble, and overtime that became our way of identifying that one of us was in trouble.

Arielle was in trouble. I was sure of that much. I thought back to the way she was acting in the morning when we passed by the CHNS gang and thought that it might have something to do with them, but other than the fact that she had gone into the girl's toilets, I had no other leads.

"Let's go," I motioned for Bryan to follow me. When we had arrived outside of the girl's toilets, there were several girls standing outside, with uneasy expressions on their faces and seemingly hesitating to enter the toilets. The premonition that something was wrong was ever-growing.

One of the girls approached me, seemingly having something she wanted to say to me as she reached her hand out towards me. I subconsciously swatted it and then glared at her. She turned her face away, intimidated, and backed away. Then Bryan and I entered, and that was when I saw her.

Thump.

Ahead of me lay the sight of the grotesque, bloody mess that was Arielle. With her back leaned against the wall, the eyes on her bruised, and bloody face was so swollen that I could not see her pupils; as she tried to call out to us, bloody spit drooled from her slack jaw onto the rest of her mangled body.

She weakly reached her hand out towards me from afar, where I could only lift my arm up to reciprocate the same reaching out grab motion. I couldn't look at her anymore. I couldn't move or do anything.

I only felt this strong aversion for everything. Why was it always her? Hadn't she suffered enough? Why was the world so unfair to my friends?

I hated them, those bitches who did this to her, and for what? I wanted to retaliate. I would find them, kill them, destroy them all, every last one of those scum.

Bryan quickly ran to her and gently pulled her into his embrace, "Callum!" he called out, but to no response, as Callum just stood there, still, seemingly petrified, his head was spinning, ears ringing, and vision blurring

There was something knocking, it wanted to be let out, to be released from its confinement, like a violent beast wanting to be let out from its cage, but it was not a violent beast; no, it was something, far, far more terrifying than that.

The clamouring would get louder and louder.

It struggled, seemingly desperate to get out, to form the link that would connect the two.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

And then, in an instance, it was let out. With Callum as the epicentre, an invisible shockwave travelled outwards, affecting everything in its midst.