Becoming Monsters is the creation and property of Ai Loves, setting used with permission.

  —

  Chapter 24: Extra Credit

  “And you’re sure that’s exactly what happened?”

  “Yes, officer. I have the exam paper turned in, so you can check with my professor on that point. Tim can vouch for the next part, and I have bruises for the rest until Professor Otterly and his wife intervened to save my life.”

  Sergeant Michaels sighed, head in his hand as he asked Todd questions for the second time in 24 hours. “And after that, all reports are completely identical, due to Mr. Ruddertail using a Css ability. Thank you. Do you need a note or something for missing exams?”

  “No sir, Literature was my st one for today.” They were seated in the small police station situated on campus. It had been rather crowded in here for most of the st hour as the limited staff took statements from all witnesses they could get a hold of. Dozens of them. With three officers on staff, that led to a slow process.

  “That’s good. Now. This is where I ask if you want to press charges. The sequence of events seems clear enough that I wouldn’t bme you for wanting to get the ball rolling.”

  Todd thought for a moment. “That’s just paperwork at this point, right? I’m not going to have to run off to court any time soon? I’m here for an education, and despite his best efforts I’m still able to get to css.”

  The policeman chuckled. “You really are something, huh? It is just paperwork for now. The complicated part with the wyers comes ter.”

  Todd nodded. “Alright. I don’t want Bradley around to try to do that to me or anyone else on this campus. There’s two hours until dinner opens, think it’ll be ready by then?”

  “One way to find out.” He dropped an intimidating stack of papers on the table.

  “Funny that you had that ready. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted me to do it.”

  “I think you’re a smart young man, Mr. Reed, and it would take a moron to not want to make sure the legal system is involved. Either that, or someone with no faith in the system. As soon as five students gave the same story, I made sure to get copies of this run.”

  “Thanks… I think.” Todd had plenty to get it started. The medical evaluation, the eyewitness reports, everything. His wrist was more of the limiting factor, by the time he was done writing down what he needed, he was feeling like he was about to become left-handed for a bit. Sergeant Michaels was both patient and helpful, a fact which made Todd start to suspect he had his own reasons for it. If Bradley had been as much of a problem before now as more than one person had hinted, this police officer might be eager for the chance to actually pin what was coming around to the hulking Demon. He found the thought encouraging.

  Nearly an hour ter he was out the door, ball rolling and ready to try to scrape what he could from the rest of the day. Todd was feeling sexed out, which was a heck of a thing to say for someone who had been so desperate two weeks ago, but there it was. Even the math major had lost count of how many times he’d cum in, on, with, and for the various sexy women on campus. Maybe he could do some actual studying for the csses he knew he wasn’t going to get to skip. Maybe he could pull up a video game. Maybe even call his dad, he realized with a brief pang of guilt that he had been at school for a week and a half and still hadn’t done so. The thought was enough for him to start heading towards his dormitory room to fix that, but he hadn’t made it halfway there before he was stopped again.

  Professor Ruddertail was walking towards Todd, and his wife was at his side. He saw Todd and picked up the pace a bit. “Todd, it’s good that I caught you. Apologies for the abrupt nature of the conversation earlier, we had other goals in mind.”

  Mrs. Reina Ruddertail held out her hand. “Gd to finally be able to put a face to the name. My husband has sunk quite a bit of his own time into you, along with a few others.”

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am. He talks about you all the time in css, and the tray of cookies you sent smelled amazing from the front row.”

  Reina ughed a bit as the Professor facepalmed. “Alright, while I’m sure my wife enjoys the compliments as much of the next otter, I do have some instructions for you, Todd.”

  Todd felt his spine stiffen a bit. “Yes, sir?”

  “Oh, don’t be like that. Dean Hightower isn’t going to fire me, and the investigation should be done in time for me to be back teaching Monday. I’m on record several times warning him that such an event was coming, and if you haven’t figured it out yet I always keep the evidence.” His whiskers twitched. “No, what I am trying to do is keep several of our best and brightest from being… dragged down, shall we say, by things at work behind the scenes. You seem to have linked up with several of them already, but I need you all on guard.”

  “That is awfully vague, sir.”

  “I’m still under a nondisclosure agreement for many things, and I would not dare viote it. Not now, when investigations are ongoing.” His whiskers twitched again. “We have to get going, but I will see you next week. Tell your friends not to be too mean to the sub.” He turned and left, heading towards the staff parking lot.

  Todd stood and stared. He just didn’t know how the man could be so calm about all of this. He’d literally led his wife in beating the tar out of an undeniably dangerous student, talked about conspiracies he couldn’t discuss directly, encouraged him to form and maintain networks of friends, and got temporarily suspended from his job. It made Todd’s week look tame.

  He found himself alone again and panicked for a moment before realizing something important. The person he was scared of, the reason why he wanted to make sure he was guarded and witnessed? Yeah, that guy was in the hospital. If he had any friends left, they weren’t likely to try anything. Not after witnessing two events like that in two days. Todd once again thanked the Status for his friends and his Luck score, since he’d likely not be able to walk otherwise. Further musings were interrupted by a PING from his phone, a tone that grabbed attention by imitating the Status. Nobody liked it, but it kept resetting. He pulled it out to take a look. The message was from Martin the Weasel. “The League rankings just came out. You might want to check out the rankings. Now.”

  Todd started walking a bit faster as he typed a return message. “What’s going on?”

  Martin’s response was almost instant. “It would take too long to expin.”

  Todd started running to his dorm. Then slowed to a jog as his injuries reminded him that they still existed. Plus his lungs reminding him that running wasn’t something he ever did. The distance still passed quickly, though, and he was at Suite 222 before long.

  “Hey, Todd, how are you…” Jem’s voice trailed off as Todd made a beeline for his room.

  “I’ll be out in a sec, Jem, League rankings just came out.” He was already in his room, powering up his ptop and digging the school website address out of his brain. It wasn’t something he gave much thought to.

  The Amazoness was leaning on his door frame. “I didn’t think you cared about your rankings on that.”

  “I kind of don’t, but Martin saw something there and thought it might be important.” The site was acting slow, and it kind of made sense that it was. If those rankings just went up, then everyone on campus was probably trying to access it at the same time unless they were still in exams. What ended up loading was a pin if functional spreadsheet, not directly sortable, but with a drop down for certain views. By Order, by year, a list of major event winners. It didn’t have Race, Css, Level, or other private info. On the combined leaderboard, though, Todd found his name. Twelve points, three each from the four events so far, was apparently good enough to put him in the top 20.

  Problem was that there were not one, but two marks next to his name. An asterisk and a plus sign.

  Both were expined after scrolling all the way down to the bottom of the page. Turned out that both of them were statements of points that were not yet shown. The plus sign said that the student had gained at least one level. That was expected. The problem was the other one. The legend said that the asterisk indicated “major innovations or contributions to the Yellowstone University campus, faculty, staff, and/or student body.” Todd could not think of anything he had done that might qualify.

  “Hmmm, try looking for other people with that asterisk? Maybe that will give you a hint?” Jem seemed unphased by being well below Todd on the rankings, or by the fact that she cked any additional notation after her name.

  “Good idea. I didn’t see any while casually scrolling, but I could have missed them.” The list was a short one. Michael Deleon and Amelia Cantor, the two Order Leaders, both had it… but neither of them had Leveled up, and neither had participated in any of the actual events so we’re sitting at zero points showing. Sienna Usher had the mark, whoever that was. That was it. Nobody ahead of Todd in the rankings had that mark, and only one other had a note that they’d gained at least one level.

  “Todd… I need you to take this very seriously.”

  Todd’s spine stiffened a bit in his seat. “What do you mean by that?”

  Jem blinked. Then she remembered. Todd had been living most of his life on the margins of the social scene. He simply didn’t know what turn his life was about to take. “Todd. Look at me.” He did, wondering where this was going. “Assume for one moment that the bonus you didn’t know about is also worth ten League points, like they told us the levels were. What is your point total right now, including hidden bonuses?”

  He did some quick mental math. “I’m at 72 League points.”

  “Next up, assume this guy,” she tapped the screen at the one person ahead of him who had the level note, “actually Leveled up three times. What’s his total?”

  “Sixteen showing, so 46.”

  “Last question. If everyone viewing this screen thinks each of those notes is worth ten points exactly, which most will since Leveling up five times in two weeks is kind of unusual, who are the top three scorers in school?”

  “Uh… it looks like I’m at 32, the other Leveled guy is at 26, and then the guy with the highest public score is at 18.” He seemed shocked at this. He was in first pce by a mile and a half, even given assumptions that he knew were lowballs.

  “Todd, think about the st 48 hours. Your face and name are known to everyone on this campus, and now this? You have a giant target on your back to anyone who cares about their scores.”

  Todd sighed. “And given what we know, I could elect to not participate in the League for the rest of the semester and still probably get in first, top three if there are a couple of overachievers about to go ham.”

  “Yeah, they don’t know that. To them, this is a gulf that can be bridged. You were probably the only person who came here at Level one, and also probably the one with the most thorough power leveling pn.”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot for both of those.” Todd’s voice was dripping with sarcasm

  “I regret very few things in this life, Todd, and failing to check you when you told me what you were is one of them. Other than that, though? I’ve acted in a way I’m perfectly happy with. By the end of this week, you will be on course to be the most popur man on campus, and if that continues then you will also be one of the highest-leveled Bards alive by the time you graduate. Especially if you go for your Masters. That is the demand you made of me on move-in day.”

  Todd sat and thought. It certainly was what he had said when he turned the curse around on her a week and a half ago. It just wasn’t exactly how he’d imagined that she would go about it. “At some point I’m going to need to talk to you about discussing pns with me before you set them rolling.”

  “Sure, we can talk about it all you want.” Her tone left zero doubt that no amount of talking would significantly change her course on the matter. “Still, dinner time. Can’t crush the charts and all the dies’ pelvises without dinner!”

  “Jem, your enthusiasm for me to get more girls in my bed than can easily fit in one of these dorm buildings is both encouraging and terrifying.” Todd stood. “You’re right that I’m super hungry, though. Let’s go.” He made sure to lock the computer, then followed Jem out.They didn’t talk much on the way to the cafeteria, but this was at least partially due to the fact that she decided to take it at a jog. Todd was struggling to keep up within ten seconds. He was always just a few strides behind her, though she was obviously having no problems whatsoever. Almost like she was goading him to run to keep up. He did not appreciate this, but managed to st almost halfway there before having to slow down to a walk.

  “Hey, you’re doing better, Todd! Looks like the exercise is doing you good!” Her face was halfway between sincerity and mischief.

  “Fifty percent exercise, fifty percent that I have self-buffs running now. Once we’re back onto my regur schedule tomorrow, I get to test how far that goes. Plus set my spells back up, I know Bradley’s in the hospital but I’ll feel safer with them ready to go. Song gets it tonight, though, she has it hardest without that.”

  “How generous.” Jem obviously had other opinions about who Todd needed to pound into the bed. Todd wasn’t sure if that meant her, or if she had some other semi-random woman on Campus in line so that he would gain more Css Progress from the encounter. Regardless, they had made it to dinner.

  The thing is that dinner was oddly quiet and subdued. The usual din of conversation just wasn’t there. People were tired, not even counting the ones who had one or two of the exams left to go. As Todd found his normal seat, Jem and Song already there, the tter in Human form, he couldn’t help but notice that they were not the only ones looking his way. Stolen gnces were flying around the lunch hall, but a great many of them happened to nd directly on him. Jem noticed, too, and gave Todd a Look as if to say “I told you so” through the sheer force of a lifted eyebrow. It worked, too. Song was nibbling on some curry, seemingly lost in her own thoughts until Todd politely coughed for attention. “Song? You okay? And where’s Ghata?”

  She shook her head, less of a negative and more of a way to reset her brain to where it needed to be. “Oh. I’m fine, just tired. Ghata had to go back over to Alpha Omega. Order Leader Deleon wanted to talk to everyone about something. Probably something to do with Bradley. Seriously, are you okay, Todd?”

  “Just a bit banged up. Seriously, I felt more sore waking up Monday morning after Jem’s scheduling stunt.” He stretched a bit in his seat, the words reminding him that he was not, perhaps, doing 100% well.

  Song breathed in. She seemed to be steeling herself for the next part. “Actually, that leads me to the next point. I… ah… tradedmyslottoahealer…”

  “Whoah! Slow down, Song, I didn’t quite catch that.” Todd was starting in on his fries before he got to the sandwich, a BLT with guac that the serving guy had handed him with a pointed look that Todd had no idea the meaning of. Still, the sandwich wasn’t bad. Just maybe not his thing.

  She took two more slow breaths. “Okay, you need a healer, and I found one in Theta Delta, so I’m trading my spot tonight to her to convince her to heal you up. You need to be at a hundred percent in case something else happens and you haven’t really gotten the chance to recover.”

  “Song, more importantly, are you going to be okay not having it? I know just living around here is harder for you than any of us.” Todd’s face indicated real concern and worry.

  Song leaned back. “I’ll be fine. I went without for two of the more stressful days we’ve had, and May helped.”

  Jem seemed confused. “May? How did May help?”

  “By sticking her tongue up in me until I came two or three times and the feelings of stress, hunger, and aggression floated away.”

  Todd almost choked on his sandwich, but recovered. “A girl’s gotta eat, I guess. Speaking of, where is she? I didn’t see her at the dorms.”

  “Oh, she needed some fresh air and privacy after hearing about what happened with Bradley earlier, so she went out to the national park to get them.” Jem was looking out the window again, though. “Looks like there’s another event setting up, guys. Doesn’t look as colorful, but the podium’s out in the same spot. Definitely League again.”

  Todd followed her gaze. “Booths and a scoreboard. Some kind of vote or exam? I don’t know. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, I’m not sure that I want to go to this one. The track record has been kind of rough recently.”

  “One problem with that,” Jem interrupted. “You said it yourself yesterday. Whatever the heck is going on around here, that’ll be the best pce to see it.”

  Todd defted, dejectedly biting another fry. She was right, of course, and now he didn’t have a professor feeding him information and tasks. “I don’t like it, Jem, but I don’t see a way around it. Send a message over to May and Ghata and see if they can join? I know Bradley’s not going to be a problem tonight, but just in case.”

  “On it. Song, can you make out anything over there?” Jem started tapping out messages.

  Song shook her head. “Those booths look big enough for one person to have privacy or two to get really comfy. One door each, and it looks like they’re bringing a small table into each of them. Looks like this is going to be testing brains and not brawn, the tables look like cheap pstic.”

  Jem nodded. “Alright, Tidbit, looks like this event is right up your alley, too, and with how high you pced it will look really strange if you didn’t show.”

  “Fine. Any response from the others yet?” Todd was sending out messages of his own. His own networks of friends would want to know.

  Jem shook her head. “If the pattern holds, this’ll start in about thirty minutes. Looks like people are already gathering.”

  Todd took another breath, then looked at his pte and realized he was out of fries and therefore excuses. “Okay. Let’s check out what’s going on, then.”

  The usual bombastic instructor was not present, oddly. Might be his evening off, might be having to do something else. Either way, a slightly bug-eyed Bat Beastfolk was there, wearing a name tag that read “Neil” and a pair of sungsses to protect against the fading sunlight. He was looking around as the other staff brought ptops into the eight or so booths that were already set up, then nodded. Neil started counting up the number of people already there. “Okay, ready to hear about tonight’s event?”

  His softer voice was lost in the murmur of the crowd. The staff kept setting up more of the booths. More students started gathering, seeing that someone was trying to talk.

  He seemed to remember he had a megaphone there, and picked it up. “Ready to hear about tonight’s event?” The response was loud enough to force him to y his rge ears down and wince in pain. “Okay! I call it ‘How Well Do You Know Your Fellow Students,’ and there will not be any person-to-person interaction. Inside each of these booths will be a computer, set to quiz anyone who steps in. The more you know about the people around you, the better you’ll score. When you start, you will have five minutes or until you say you’re done, so be quick! As our systems check your work, scores will start appearing on the screens behind me. Whenever you’re ready, go ahead and line up for your attempts.” He set down the megaphone.

  A few students immediately rushed to try to get in early, or at least get in line, but others weren’t so sure. Many hung back, muttering. Todd, Jem, and Song noticed that one of the other booths had just finished getting set up off to one side and calmly walked over to it. There was exactly one person ahead of them, entering and closing the door as they got in line. Todd turned to the others. “There has to be more to this, but without knowing what’s inside I can’t make any educated guesses.”

  Jem and Song agreed, but what could they do? Other students had already noticed them in line, though, and Song reported that she could hear some of them specuting about Todd. Jem nodded in a very “I told you so” kind of way. Again. As more people got in line, the man ahead of Todd stepped out, shaking his head. Todd stepped in.

  The ptop was up, and on it was a simple set of instructions. “When you press the Go button, you will have five minutes to write down student names and what of the following things you know about them: Race, Css, Level, and decred Major at this college. These will not be dispyed anywhere else. You will get one point for each correct answer, and only the aggregate score will be shown ter. If you present at least one correct fact that nobody else does, you will receive three bonus points. Sharing the contents of this questionnaire with anyone who has not already taken it before midnight tonight is an Honor Viotion and may result in disciplinary action.”

  This is one of the most obvious information grabs I’ve ever seen… but if I don’t put anything down they’ll know I know. Okay, I’ll start with my own info… actually, scratch that. My info from before this st Level Up. Level five Human Bard Math major. That’s open knowledge, if I stick to things that are easy for everyone to know it won’t help them. Bradley’s a Greater Demon Brawler. Tim’s a Human Mesmer, I’ll call it Level six since it’s really obvious he can’t do what he does before that, but he’s probably higher. Jem publicizes what she is, I’ll include her Css and Race. Ghata and Song don’t, I’ll just include their majors. Lowball level estimates? Yeah, I’ll do that, along with omitting some finer details on Race. May can just be a Succubus, no need to say she’s a Greater. It might just poison the data set they’re harvesting…

  The time flew by fast as Todd did his best to make sure that whoever was gathering information didn’t get anything useful from him… including the fact that he was doing so.