✦ After the Math Fight✦

The classroom door hung crooked on its hinges, one fluorescent light overhead buzzing like a dying fly. The desks were scattered like broken teeth. Posters peeled off the walls, corners singed. Everything stank of ozone and burned paper.

You stood in the middle of it — breathing hard, trembling, the red glow still fading from your fingertips.

The monster was gone. Gone for real.

Strength’s voice rang high and sharp in your head, invisible but very much present.

“You did it! You did it! You were amazing—absolutely—okay—but also: WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ARMS—"

It hurt to hold them up. Cuts streaked along both of them. Deep ones. Scraped ones. Your sleeves were soaked, sticking. There were bruises, too — blooming dark up your wrists, your shoulders, even your knuckles.

You didn’t answer. Your brain had locked onto something else entirely: the mess.

Chalk dust. Splintered desks. A flipped chair with its leg snapped in two. A shattered window letting in the last orange slant of daylight. The floor was awful — covered in bits, scattered and wrong.

Too. much.

You stretched your fingers open, ignoring the sting. Magic gathered at your palm, warm and crackling red. You could clean it. Fix it. Put the desks back, the floor, the posters. That’s what you always did. It wouldn’t feel over unless it was fixed.

But the second you reached out—

Your knees buckled.

Your legs folded too fast, too weak. The spell shattered in your hand, the energy escaping like steam. You hit the tile hard. Your arms didn’t catch you. They couldn’t.

There was a bright flash — white, familiar. You felt your clothes melt away into your normal ones, the transformation undoing itself in a wave of sparkling light. You couldn’t see it. You barely felt it. And then you were on the floor. Detransformed. Just… you.

A heartbeat later, a little thump beside you — Strength, now fully out, scrambled across the floor with wild, floppy limbs and jingling bells. He nearly tripped over himself, gloves smacking your cheek as he tried to shake you awake.

“Nononono don’t pass out—don’t you dare—Hey! Say something! Blink! Sneeze! MOVE!”

You didn’t move much. Just blinked once. Maybe twice. That was all you had left in you.

Strength’s voice cracked with worry, half a sob.

“You always do this, y’know! Always trying to clean up first like a little janitor superhero and then—THEN—then you collapse like a rag doll!” His jester hat drooped as he climbed awkwardly onto your shoulder, smaller than your head but full of buzzing, frantic warmth.

“This time I mean it… I’ll clean it. I’ll figure it out. Just—don’t... not this time.”

You weren’t sure you even heard him clearly. But you stopped trying to lift your hand again. That was enough.

The classroom sat still for a while.

Dust floated lazily in the sunset light. Somewhere down the hallway, a janitor’s cart squeaked by, oblivious to the wreckage inside Room 2-B.

Strength curled close, muttering half-worries, half-promises.

“…next time we bring tape… and snacks… and maybe we don’t fight in math class...”