My SSS Beast Rank System

"Weak! Slow! Beastless human trash! Say it!" The scream tore through the hallway and slammed into my spine before the hand did. My shoulders hit the growling lockers of The Cabildo Academy so hard my teeth rattled. The air was knocked out of me. Laughter exploded everywhere. Not just a few giggles. Dozens of beast students, leaning against the old stone walls of the French Quarter academy, all watching, all laughing. Chloé Beaumont had her manicured claws twisted deep into the collar of my grey uniform. Grey. The color they give you when you have no beast. When every other student and teacher and even Principal Leon has something roaring inside their blood and you have nothing. I hated grey. "Look at me when I am talking to you, Marie-Jeanne!" Chloé hissed, her panther eyes glowing that bright, cruel gold. Her perfect black curls bounced as she shook me. She was beautiful. She was A rank. And she had been in love with Finn Lacroix since they were children. That was why she hated me. Because I existed near him. "I... please..." My voice broke. My fingers were numb. I was clutching the only thing that kept me from falling apart completely - the old, rusty, ugly necklace Mamie had pressed into my shaking hands the very morning I started this school three months ago. It was dull. The chain was green. The pendant looked like a lump of rusted iron. The other girls called it slave jewelry. Mamie had been so sick that day, coughing blood into a rag, her eyes burning with fever, but she held my face and whispered, "Never take it off, bébé. No matter how much they laugh. Never." So I never did. Even when Chloé tried to rip it off. Even when it did nothing. "Please what? Please save me? Who will save you?" Chloé laughed and shoved me harder. My head cracked against the iron. Stars burst behind my eyes. "There is no beast inside you! You are slow! You are weak! You are a mistake they let in because Principal Leon felt pity!" Someone in the crowd shouted, "Beastless!" Someone else threw a paper ball that hit my cheek. The chant started low and got louder. Beastless. Weak. Slow. I looked through tears, past Chloé's perfect face, desperate for one person to not look away. And I found him. Finn Lacroix. Eighteen years old. White wolf. Heir to the pack that owned half of Jackson Square. The coldest, most untouchable boy in Cabildo. He stood at the end of the hallway, his uniform black, his hands in his pockets, but his eyes... his eyes were not cold. They were burning gold, locked on Chloé's hand on my collar. A low, dangerous growl vibrated through the floor. Every beast in the hallway heard it and flinched. "Finn, baby, this does not concern you," Chloé purred without even looking back at him, her claws pricking my skin now, drawing a tiny bead of blood. "I am just teaching the human where she belongs." Finn took one step forward. The temperature in the hallway dropped. "Chloé," he said, his voice low and quiet and terrifying. "I said let her go." That was the moment my rusty necklace burned. It was not warm. It was not hot. It was blazing, white, searing pain, like someone had pressed a branding iron straight into my skin. I screamed, a raw, broken sound, and grabbed at it with both hands, trying to tear it off. My skin smoked where the metal touched. Chloé reeled back, startled. "What the hell is wrong with you now? Doing voodoo tricks, freak?" Nobody else saw the fire. But I heard something else. A sound that was not in the hallway. A sound that was inside my skull, ancient and cold and amused, like a beast waking up after a very long sleep. DING! DETECTING HOST STATUS... BEASTLESS HUMAN LABEL CONFIRMED! PUBLIC HUMILIATION LEVEL REACHING ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! RAGE LEVEL REACHING ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! DESPAIR LEVEL REACHING ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! CONDITION FOR SSS RANK AWAKENING... MET! I choked, my knees giving out, sliding down the lockers. My hands flew to my head. "What... who... who is talking?" I gasped out loud, tears streaming down my face. The hallway was spinning. Chloé stared at me, her lip curling. "Who are you talking to, you crazy human? There is no one! No one wants you here!" The voice ignored her completely. It got louder, clearer, and it felt like it was wrapping itself around my spine. MY SSS BEAST SYSTEM... ACTIVATED! SCANNING HOST... NAME MARIE-JEANNE DUBOIS. AGE SEVENTEEN YEARS. STATUS... GOD CAGE DETECTED AROUND HEART. BEAST SUPPRESSED FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS. CURRENT LABEL: WEAK. SLOW. BEAST-LESS. VERDICT OF SYSTEM: PATHETIC LIE. My breath stopped. My heart hammered so hard I thought it would burst. SSS Beast System? God Cage? What was it talking about? The rusty necklace cracked. Not shattered. Cracked. One thin, hairline crack straight down the middle of the rust, and from that crack, pure white light bled out. FIRST QUEST ISSUED! QUEST NAME: MAKE THEM BOW! THEY CALLED YOU WEAK FOR THREE MONTHS. THEY CALLED YOU SLOW EVERY SINGLE DAY. THEY CALLED YOU BEASTLESS HUMAN TRASH. REWARD FOR COMPLETION: FIRST AWAKENING OF SSS RANK BEAST. FAILURE: REMAIN WEAK FOREVER. DO YOU ACCEPT? OPTION ONE: YES. OPTION TWO: YES. Yes. The word ripped out of my soul before I could think. All the mornings scrubbing BEASTLESS off my locker with bleach until my hands bled. All the nights hearing Mamie cough and cough and whisper that she was sorry she could not protect me. All the times Finn looked at me like he wanted to say something and then turned away because even he could not save a human with no beast. "YES!" I screamed, not in my head, but out loud, with every piece of broken, humiliated, furious heart I had left. "YES I ACCEPT! I ACCEPT!" The entire hallway went dead silent. Every single student stopped laughing. They stared at me like I had finally, truly gone insane. Chloé blinked, then burst out laughing, loud and cruel. "Accept what? Who are you screaming at, you dumb, slow—" She never finished the word. The necklace did not just crack anymore. It exploded. Not into pieces. Into dust. Rusty dust that hung in the air for half a heartbeat and then was sucked straight into my chest, into my heart, like it had been waiting seventeen years to go home. And then the cold came. It was not the cold of Finn's wolf. This was older. Deeper. The cold of the bottom of the bayou where no light has ever reached. The cold of a tomb that has been sealed since the world began. My back arched off the lockers without my permission. My feet left the floor. My mouth opened and what came out was not my voice. It was not human. It was a roar. It was not a wolf howl. It was not a panther snarl. It was something that made every single beast inside every single student in that hallway whimper and try to hide. ANCIENT ROAR - THE STONE WALLS OF CABILDO SHAKE. WINDOWS RATTLE. LOCKS CRY. The invisible wave hit Chloé first. She was thrown backwards as if a giant hand had slapped her, her body flying six feet through the air before she crashed hard onto the marble floor, sliding, her claws scrabbling. Her beautiful face was white. Her gold panther eyes were wide with pure, primal, animal terror. Because behind her, the shadow of her proud A rank black panther was on its belly, ears flat, whimpering, bowing to something it could not see. One by one, down the whole gothic hallway, beast students dropped to their knees, clutching their throats, gasping, their own beasts roaring in fear inside them. Only one person did not fall. Finn Lacroix stood in the middle of the hallway, his whole body shaking, his white wolf claws fully out, tearing through his gloves, his eyes blazing like twin suns, staring at me - at what was rising behind me. From my back, from my shadow, two enormous claws made of smoke and starlight and chains slowly reached out and dug into the stone walls on either side of me, holding me up in the air. The voice whispered in my head, its voice no longer cold. It was hungry. It was proud. WARNING! GOD CAGE BREAKING! SSS RANK BEAST AWAKENING AT TEN PERCENT! BEAST TYPE: UNKNOWN! RANK: BEYOND MEASUREMENT! APPETITE: ETERNAL! Chloé, on the floor, scrambled backward on her hands, pointing a trembling finger at me, her voice a broken squeak. "What are you?” were supposed to be beastless...you monster... what ARE you?"