Chapter 2 #2
Handheld weapons: swords, daggers, knuckle braces, garrotes, anything that requires you to be intimate with your violence.
No guns.
No bows.
No standing fifty yards away and taking the coward's route.
If you want to kill someone in Ruthless, you have to mean it.
Work for it.
You have to get close enough to smell their fear.
To feel their pulse stutter.
To watch the light leave their eyes.
I fucking love the rules here.
My breathing shifts—two counts in, four counts hold, eight counts out—centering myself. My toes flex inside the ballet shoes, testing grip, calculating angles.
The world narrows to sensation:
The cool press of metal against my spine where my blades wait.
The whisper of wind through the buildings.
The distant hum of the academy's infrastructure waking up.
And closer—so much closer—the sound of footsteps.
Three sets.
Two heavy, one lighter.
Alphas, probably. Maybe a Beta. Definitely stupid.
I hold my breath.
It's an old trick, one I learned during my first month here when I was still figuring out how to survive. When you hold your breath, everything else gets sharper. Louder. More present.
Your hearing amplifies.
Your awareness expands.
Time seems to slow just enough to give you an edge.
And in Ruthless Academy, an edge is the difference between walking away and bleeding out in the gutter.
My mismatched eyes drift closed.
Blue and green hidden behind pale lids.
The world becomes pure sound:
Footsteps. Getting closer. Twenty feet. Fifteen.
Breathing. Heavy. Nervous. They're not professionals.
Fabric rustling. Weapons being drawn.
Ten feet.
A leaf crunching underfoot—
There.
My grin widens.
Amateur.
The first attacker comes from my left—big, heavy, telegraphing his movement like he's never learned subtlety. I hear the displacement of air as he swings something blunt. A bat, maybe. Or a metal pipe.
Doesn't matter.
The second comes from my right—lighter step, faster, probably thinks speed will make up for lack of skill.
It won't.
The third hangs back slightly—smart enough to let the others engage first.
Not smart enough to run.
My hands move to the sheaths behind my back with practiced ease, fingers finding the leather-wrapped handles of my dual blades. The weight is perfect, familiar, mine—custom-balanced for my height and fighting style, sharpened until they could split silk falling through air.
I pull them free in one fluid motion, the metal singing as it leaves the sheaths.
My eyes are still closed.
I don't need to see to know where they are.
The first attacker swings—I hear the whistle of metal through air—and I drop.
Not backwards.
Not to the side.
Down.
Into a full split that makes my hip flexors scream, my hamstrings burn, and sends me sliding between their legs like I'm made of water instead of bone and rage.
My left blade comes up as I descend—
—and sinks into the first attacker's inner thigh with a wet schlock that sounds like poetry.
Femoral artery.
He'll bleed out in under two minutes.
My right blade arcs wide as I continue the motion—catching the second attacker across both Achilles tendons with enough force to slice through leather, skin, and tendon.
They drop.
Both of them.
Screaming.
Delicious.
I'm already moving.
The split transitions into a roll, my body remembering choreography drilled into muscle memory since childhood.
Tombé, coupé, relevé—ballet terms for combat movements, because violence is just another kind of dance.
I come up on my feet in fourth position—weight distributed perfectly, blades extended, finally opening my mismatched eyes to see—
The third attacker stares at me.
Young. Beta female, probably nineteen. Holding a machete like she knows how to use it, but isn't sure she wants to.
Her eyes are wide.
Terrified.
She looks at her companions—one clutching his thigh as blood pumps between his fingers, the other writhing on the ground with severed tendons—and then back at me.
At my smile.
At the blood already dripping from my blades.
At the absolute, crystalline joy on my face.
"Run," I suggest pleasantly.
She doesn't need to be told twice.
The machete clatters to the ground as she bolts, disappearing into the shadows between buildings with the kind of speed that only pure terror can inspire.
Smart girl.
I turn my attention back to the two on the ground.
The first one—the one with the femoral bleed—is already fading. His eyes are glassy, unfocused. He's trying to speak, but all that comes out is a wet gurgling sound.
I crouch beside him, tilting my head.
"You attacked me first," I tell him conversationally, like we're discussing the weather. "Under Ruthless Academy's 'survive or be killed' clause, this is completely legal. Just so we're clear."
He doesn't respond.
Can't respond.
His hand reaches toward me—whether in plea or attack, I'll never know—and then drops.
Thump.
Dead weight.
One down.
The second one—Achilles girl—is still screaming. High-pitched, desperate, the sound of someone who knows they're dying but hasn't quite accepted it yet.
I move to her with economical grace, my ballet shoes leaving bloody footprints on the concrete.
She looks up at me, tears streaming down her face, and I see the moment she understands.
That I'm not going to help.
That this is the end.
That she fucked up by thinking a packless Omega would be easy prey.
My blade moves almost lazily—across her throat in one clean motion.
The screaming stops.
Silence crashes back down, broken only by the wet sound of blood pooling on concrete and my own slightly elevated breathing.
Two. Four. Six breaths before my heart rate returns to baseline.
Even numbers.
Safe.
I straighten, surveying my work with the detached interest of an artist examining a painting.
Both bodies are positioned almost symmetrically, one on each side of where I'd been standing. Their blood is already spreading, dark and viscous, creating abstract patterns on the grey concrete.
It's almost beautiful.
In a fucked-up, deeply disturbing way.
Mama would be so proud, I think with a giggle that bubbles up unbidden. Look at me, doing extraordinary things. The world definitely didn't know what hit it.
The bodies are already starting to cool, that peculiar stillness of fresh death settling over them like a shroud.
I should feel something.
Guilt. Remorse. Horror at taking human life.
But I don't.
Haven't for a while now.
Does that makes me a monster?
Maybe that makes me a survivor.
Or it's the same fucking thing in a place like this.
Blood pools around my feet—I can feel it seeping through the satin of my ballet shoes, warm and sticky—and some distant part of my brain screams that I need to move.
I hop.
Once. Twice.
Little bunny hops that would look adorable if I wasn't covered in someone else's blood, my blades still dripping, my smile still too wide.
The blood pools connect, spreading outward in a perfect circle that will trap me if I don't—
I jump.
A proper saut de chat—cat leap—that carries me clear of the blood and landing me on clean concrete six feet away.
Perfect.
My blades slide back into their sheaths with practiced ease, the leather grips kissing against fabric with a soft shick that signals the end of combat.
I don't look back.
Don't check to make sure they're dead—I know they are, I'm good at my job.
Don't feel anything about the two lives I just ended, except maybe a faint sense of satisfaction at a fight well executed.
"Survive or be killed," I murmur, already turning away. "They chose wrong."
My hands flex at my sides—open, close, open, close—four times before I shove them back in my pockets.
The letter crinkles slightly against my palm, reminding me why I'm out here in the first place.
Right. Post office. Mission. Focus.
"Ro?" I whisper.
"Vital signs returning to normal. No additional threats detected within immediate vicinity. Bodies will be discovered within approximately—"
"Don't care." I start walking again, my steps lighter now, almost bouncing. "They attacked me. That's on them."
"Legally correct under academy policy."
"See? I'm a model student."
"You're a statistical anomaly."
"Same thing."
The pre-dawn air feels different now—cleaner, crisper, like the violence purged something stale from my lungs. My body hums with residual adrenaline, that post-combat euphoria that makes everything feel sharp and bright and alive.
This is why I'm still here.
Not because I'm trapped—though I am.
Not because I have nowhere else to go—though I don't.
This place lets me be exactly what I am: a beautiful disaster wrapped in pink hair and ballet shoes, someone who can kill two people before breakfast and still make it to the post office on time.
It's honest.
It's brutal.
It's my sweet reality.
My humming starts unconsciously—that slowed reverb Summer Walker track still stuck in my head, the melody threading through my lips as I pick up my pace.
Oh, it's over... all the mess, over... all the stress, over...
The words take on new meaning after combat, after violence, after watching the light leave someone's eyes.
Everything ends.
Every fight.
Every life.
Every moment of peace before the next storm.
I spin once, just because I can, my arms extending in a perfect en couronne position. The world blurs—buildings, streetlights, blood-stained concrete—into streaks of color and shadow.
When I stop, I'm grinning so wide my cheeks hurt.
"You know what, Ro?" I announce to the empty street. "I think today's going to be a good day."
"You just killed two people."
"Exactly. Got that out of my system early. Now I can focus on the important things. Like mail delivery and stalking my mystery pen pal."
"Your priorities are deeply concerning."
"Your face is deeply concerning."
"I don't have a—"
"Semantics."
My feet find a rhythm—step, step, chassé, step—turning the walk into a dance, because why walk normally when you can turn everything into choreography?
The post office is only three more blocks away. Three blocks through gradually safer territory, where the violence decreases, and the civilian population increases, and people start pretending this is a normal school instead of a pressure cooker designed to forge weapons from broken children.
The sunrise breaks over the eastern buildings, painting everything in shades of orange and pink that match my hair.
Beautiful, I think, tilting my face up to catch the first rays of warmth.
Absolutely fucking beautiful.
Somewhere behind me, someone will find the bodies soon. They'll document the scene, file a report, and add two more tallies to my official record.
Fourteen confirmed kills.
Maybe fifteen.
Sixteen and seventeen now, I guess.
The numbers are starting to blur together.
But right now—right this moment—I don't care.
Right now, I'm a girl walking to the post office in the early morning light, humming a song about endings, with a letter pressed against my heart and blood drying on my ballet shoes.
Right now, I'm exactly who I'm supposed to be.
My whistle joins the humming—a cheerful, discordant melody that probably sounds deranged to anyone listening.
Let them listen.
Allow them to hear the crazy bitch with pink hair.
They should be warned of my lovely rising in this place of the damned.
My voice rises slightly, singing the words under my breath as I skip over a crack in the sidewalk; step on a crack, break your mother's back—not that it matters anymore, her back is already broken by bullets.
"With you, love doesn't hurt... love is for better or worse... so I do..."
The post office looms ahead, its ugly concrete facade somehow welcoming in the growing light.
The postal staff are probably already inside, brewing terrible coffee and preparing themselves for my weekly appearance.
Morning, Sera. Blood on the seal again?
Yep. And on my shoes. And probably in my hair. Wednesday mornings, am I right?
I giggle at the imaginary conversation, my steps quickening with anticipation.
The letter. S.W.
Maybe a response is waiting for me.
Please let there be a response.
Please don't let him be dead.
Please—
I shove the thought away, forcing my smile wider, my humming louder.
Three more blocks.
Two more.
One.
The post office doors are just ahead, promising fluorescent lights and bored civil servants and the possibility—however slim—that maybe I'm not entirely alone in this nightmare.
I whistle and hum, singing on my way to the post office despite that mini "distraction."