how does it feel to be the rat grinders in that final fight
building up to a ritual you've spent the last year on, angry and tired and expending effort on this one thing so that you might finally get the recognition, the accolades you think you deserve. being special for once, in the face of a party of legend. of oracles and saints, angels and devils, great wizards and bards, inheritors of family legacy and tragedy alike who all seem to skate.
having to work hard in the shadows because you took the easy path and yet have to catch up with these people who so easily belittle you. seeing them rake in the benefits of popularity, running on a platform of flimsy ideas instead of true policy and yet still they have the school dancing to their tune. it's for the ritual, but the ache of it stings as they call you out again and again, laughing in your face for wanting something.
so much work, so much research, traveling and hiding for months as the bad kids are lauded and pass the year with a bullshit exam that you fail to rig against them, catching you in a moment of chance even as they survive what would kill you easily.
seeing them (her) haunt your dreams and die on your front lawn, forever chasing after someone who never existed in the first place. they imitate what they've seen of you. she disappears and yet is there to strike you down because the girl you think you could love hates you with all of her being.
being used by your teachers against your rivals and yet somehow they are nicer, closer to them than to you. more angry about their success, more invested in their progress.
summoning your full force, putting your family in danger, finally getting one over on them (her) only for them to be struck from the sky and thrown in your face as an insult.
seeing them going to work simply to decimate you and strike you down, with less power than you but more tenacity, more stamina, more true experience earned in the wide world. not knowing what to do as they do so with ease, dancing through the lava and flames with nary a thought but your destruction.
seeing them survive and bounce back from the attacks that struck down lucy. they didn't need rage to get here. they didn't need a nameless goddess, or midnights in the forest with monsters, spreading crystals in the dirt for a pieces of a plan years in the making.
18 seconds in and three of you are dead. there's no rage crystal that can save you this time. there's only blood and fire on the floorboards and the bad kids coming in for the glory again. they don't care that you're kids in their class.
with every moment it becomes clear that you are no longer people to them, just obstacles, failed investments, minor villains in their heroic journey.
was it worth it?