Ashley was bored.
Monumentally, soul-crushingly bored.
Classes were over, Ava was unconscious in a laundry basket for reasons, Cleo was fiddling with a particle gun, and Sera was binge-watching lightning documentaries at 1.5x speed.
Ashley, meanwhile, had just finished carving a death poem into the side of her bed with her fingernail. And still—nothing scratched the itch.
She blinked slowly, exhaled through her nose, and whispered:
"…I'm gonna go to the moon."
No one responded.
So she walked out the window like it wasn't fifteen stories up, and ignited mid-fall.
Her Engulf Form took over—fire blooming from the inside out, bone turned to plasma, blood vaporized into heat. Her entire body burned into a sculpture of living combustion.
She didn't fall. She launched.
---
Moonlight
The lunar surface cracked when Ashley landed, glowing footprints etched into the stone. Her flames dimmed slightly in the vacuum, but her smile burned brighter.
She walked across the moon with the same energy as someone browsing a mall. Until she saw them.
Creatures. Pale, hunched, gnarled. Mooncrawlers—subterranean hivelings disturbed by her heat.
Ashley crouched, licking her lips.
"I love a challenge."
She didn't just kill them. She vaporized them—turned one inside out, kicked another into orbit, breathed fire until one popped like overcooked spaghetti.
And when she was done—when they were all gone—she knelt in the crater, face flushed and sweatless from the heat, and let out a strange, shuddery sigh.
"…Better than sex," she whispered. "Easily top five."
Her eyes rolled slightly as she stretched her back, a weird little aftershock twitch following.
Then—
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Ashley turned.
Standing calmly on the moon, unaffected by vacuum or logic, were two women sharing one body.
The Conjoined Principal Sisters.
Vice Chancellor Faith smiled warmly, wrinkles creasing kindly as her half of the face sparkled with gentle amusement.
"Darling, that was impressive."
Chancellor Mercy, by contrast, had a rigid jaw and piercing gaze. Her side of the face was stone. Her voice was colder than space.
"She burned fourteen unauthorized lifeforms and moaned while doing it."
Faith chuckled. "She's passionate."
Mercy sniffed. "She's a liability."
"She's a student."
"I stand by my statement."
Ashley stared at them with a half-raised brow. "...You guys always do the Good Cop / Space Nun routine?"
Faith gave a little bow. "We've come to say hello. We're reopening classes with integrated team combat and wanted to ensure our little firestorm was coping well."
Ashley smirked. "I'm great. I exploded things and emotionally climaxed."
Mercy turned away in disgust.
Faith beamed. "Lovely!"
Ashley exhaled, stood, dusted off her molten knees, and looked at Earth.
"…So I can't kill the other students, but I can kill anything you throw at me, right?"
Faith nodded. "Oh, of course. We installed revival protocols. Death is a learning opportunity."
Ashley grinned. "You're my favorite school staff."
Mercy muttered, "God help us all."
Wait.
Wait.
She narrowed her eyes and pointed.
"Hold on. How the hell are you two on the moon?"
Faith smiled politely.
Mercy didn't even blink.
Ashley gestured around. "Like—I'm literally made of fire. I get here by being a walking combustion engine. You two? You look like PTA moms on a shopping trip. How?!"
Faith gave a serene shrug. "Tenure perks."
Mercy added, dry as desert bone, "Quantum folding. And a very good coupon."
Ashley blinked. "What?"
"Admin teleportation override," Faith said sweetly, "lets us appear wherever a student's behavior reaches critical concern."
Mercy added, "Or if you orgasm mid-murder. That... triggered an alert."
Ashley snorted. "Okay. Fair."
She crossed her arms, still smoldering slightly. "So you just warp wherever you want?"
"Of course," Faith replied.
Ashley squinted. "So you could've stopped that monster in the gym last week?"
Mercy smirked. "Yes."
Faith smiled. "But then you wouldn't have had your learning moment."
Ashley stared at them. Long. Hard.
"…You're both evil."
Faith giggled.
Mercy nodded.
"We're administration, dear."
She crashed through three clouds, scared an entire flock of geese into cardiac arrest, and landed barefoot on the academy rooftop with enough force to rattle the vending machines two floors below.
Cleo, sitting with a snack in hand, barely looked up. "Have fun on the moon?"
Ashley grinned, hair still flickering with lazy fire. "The view was boring. The principals were worse."
She dropped onto the ledge beside Cleo and leaned back like she didn't just break several atmospheric laws.
"They teleport," Ashley muttered. "No spacesuits. Just popped up next to me. Talked about 'quantum folding' like that's not a phrase stolen from a sci-fi convention."
Cleo nodded slowly, crunching a chip. "Yeah, they did that last year too. Popped into my dreams once to tell me to stop overthinking my math homework."
Ashley paused. "I—what?"
Cleo wiped her hands. "Also they both smell like lavender and regret."
"…Yeah. That tracks."
Just then, Sera kicked the roof door open, half-dressed and blinking blearily. "You maniacs woke me up with a sonic boom again."
Ashley waved a hand. "I was having an existential crisis!"
Sera yawned. "Have it quieter."
Behind her, Ava stepped out too, rubbing her neck. "I swear to god if this ends with us getting assigned extra classes—"
A loudspeaker blared from inside the building:
"All students are to report to the stadium in twenty minutes for Combat Team Showcase. Mandatory attendance. Bring flair."
Ava scowled. "I hate being psychic."
Ashley was already standing. "I call dibs on first kill."