This story references some violence, actually quite a lot of it. No sex though so it should be safe for the US market.

The Monday it all started I sat alone on the bus to school as usual. This was OK since I could spend the time to forge a letter from my parents recusing me from the upcoming school camping trip. Yes, I was not really the most popular kid in school. The fact that I didn’t conform to the usual stereotypes didn’t really help. Petite, long hair, artistic, dancing ballet and sometimes wearing a skirt made people peg me as gay, which I’m not, I prefer to think about myself as ”equal opportunity”. On the other hand my black belt in karate confused people as did the fact I was the school’s star pitcher. However, all this wasn’t really the direct reason why everyone kept their distance from me. I was also the favorite target of the group of bullies that styled themselves ”The Magnificent Seven”. They even had an ongoing ranking list of who was the worst bully.

You might think that with black belt in karate I’d wipe the floor with them. Unfortunately I’d really be in trouble if I used karate against them. I did once, in self-defense, against one of them and then together they made it look like I attacked the bully and the bully’s parents tried to label it an unprovoked ”armed” attack. My detective cousin managed to get the charges dropped but it was too close for comfort. Now I just take everything they dish out and try to minimize the damage. Most of it really isn’t physical either.

The reason I brought this up is what happened when we got to school. When we got off the school bus there was a crowd at the end of the parking area. The police was there and had sealed off part of the parking space. When the kids saw me they looked strangely at me but left space for me to get to closer. Then I saw Bill Bailey, the current, well late, nr 1 Magnificent Seven on the ground, his abdomen nicely cut with a Wakizashi next to him. I had seen that very Wakizashi a couple of weeks earlier during a not very pleasant Saturday I had spent in Jozef’s (ranking nr 4) basement. Jozef’s family had a very impressive collection of knives, swords and other old weapons from all over the world that they usually kept hidden away. I felt really honored to have seen them and even been on the receiving end of some of them. Will the word "FAG" be a permanent scar on my back?

I waved to my cousin who was walking around the corpse. He came over to me. He told me that he was the lead detective and that even though it appeared to be a suicide they’d investigate it further and that I was one of the persons they’d interrogate. Not that we ever were that close but he’d let a colleague interrogate me.

We all figured that Bill had offed himself but why? We were all sent home and told to come back the next day. I stayed to be interrogated. Interesting experience. Much less stressful than my usual school day.

We didn’t have any lessons on Tuesday either. That day I had ridden to school early to discuss my art project, forgery, with my art teacher. I was the one that found George (nr 2 on the latest ranking the previous week). The block had been carefully set in the middle of the school yard. The executioner’s sword carefully placed next to his body and the head neatly stuck on a pike firmly planted in the ground. I didn’t eat anything that day.

Well, this obviously wasn’t a suicide so my cousin and his colleagues were all over the place. The school closed until further notice. We suspected that somebody was going for the “Magnificent Seven”. Wednesday we stopped suspecting when an arbalest bolt went through Donald Derringer (nr 3).

Some people suspected me since I was one of their favorite victims. Jozef even accused me of stealing his family’s weapons collection. Sad really how unhinged he’d become. I think it was his car that almost ran me over later that day when I rode home.

The rest of the Magnificent Seven got police protection. Something they didn’t really like since it cramped their style. A week later school opened again and the remaining bullies started slipping away from their protection at times. I could have sworn that Jozef was behind me when I felt a push and I fell down the stairs but when I got on my feet again no one was there.

Maybe Jozef was more careful than the others since the next victim was Bully nr 5, not nr 4. Amazing the amount of damage a kris can make.

I was lucky that the shot that destroyed my cap wasn't couple of inches lower. It must have been someone careless since shooting really wasn't the “Bully-basher’s” style. Bow and arrow was. And now there were only number 4 (Jozef) and 7 left.

Number 7 had an unfortunate run-in with a halberd.

Jozef disappeared. He finally slipped his police protection completely and no one heard a word from him for over a week. Wierdly enough I received a letter bomb a couple of days later. Why me? I wasn't a Magnificent Seven!

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The lead detective answered his phone

- Harry, we just found Jozef Tajkovsky.

- Is he OK?

- Not really. It appears he hanged himself. However, he left a suicide note that explained everything. In it he confessed that he killed the other bullies. The reason was that he really was transgendered. His bullying was way of trying to repress this but at last he couldn’t deny his real self. He realized how much he had hurt others and couldn’t let the other bullies live to continue making life miserable for so many kids. Now that he had finished his mission he could end his own miserable life. With his size he could never become a true woman. Harry, you should know he was wearing a dress when he hanged himself and had make-up on. Not very well done.

- OK I’m coming. The usual routine. And send me a picture of the letter.

The lead detective thought a little bit about how sad the whole issue was. How many lives destroyed one way or another, and for what? Stupid gender norms! When he saw the letter with Jozef’s very characteristic handwriting he absentmindedly noticed that Jozef misspelled the word “weird”, wierd, the same way as the lead detective’s wimpy cousin.