My mad dash takes me to the factory in less than ten minutes, but when I get there, it all looks as quiet as usual.

"NEWT!" I call out, but I don't hear any reply, or anything else except for the sporadic car speeding down the road. My mind begins to race with thoughts. Maybe they gave me wrong directions to make me lose time? But then, why would they call me in the first place? It doesn't add up; Newt has to be here, somewhere, and I need to find him. I call out his name again, and then I remember this dusty dung-hole is bound to be filled with footprints and, sure enough, a bunch of those lead to a wrecked room on the far left. With my blood pulsing in my temples, I dash that way to finally find Newt, all alone, lying on the floor in fetal position, naked from the waist down.

"Newt!" I take off my jacket to cover his legs before assessing his injuries and help him sit against the wall. "Newt, what happened?"

Both his eyes are black and swollen, and there's a cut under his right one. A trail of dry blood comes out of his nose, and there's a huge bruise to the left of his mouth. There's no way of telling how much of a beating they gave him. Newt opens his eyes and meets mine. "I was waiting for you outside..."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know..."

"I heard... something happened, and then..." he says, curling up and rubbing his legs with my jacket, but then he winces and lets out a painful wail.

"Easy, take it easy, Newt..." I offer, but truth be told I don't really know what to do. How am I going to walk him home like this? "Where does it hurt?"

"I couldn't fight back, John..."

"I know, pal..." It doesn't seem to be as terrible as I had imagined it to be, even despite the obvious bruises, but whoever did this still managed to send Newt back to square one, back to being afraid. "Can you tell me who did this to you?"

"Harrison, Evans, and the others from Rude's class... I couldn't do anything to stop them, John..." he laments, fighting away his tears, but he's truly heartbroken about this whole situation, and I get him. Just when he thought he could regain his normal life, these idiots do this to him.

I fight the urge to punch the wall, even if I know that won't help me relieve my frustration. "Those motherfuckers didn't see the last of me, I promise you that."

He curls further, buries his face in his knees, and starts crying silently. I sit right next to him and pull him into a one-handed hug.

"I want to fight like you," he says, without looking up. "I hate being weak and small, and useless..."

"Yeah, no. You're not useless at all," I say, cutting his rant. "You figured out yesterday that Potato was behind the messages in the forums."

"Big deal," he says softly. "Even Lyle could have figured that out."

"It was your idea to access the server, and to delete the messages, and save a copy of the database to find out it was him."

"And none of that saved me from getting my ass kicked! AGAIN!" He then jerks up to look at me, pointing at his face with both hands. "Look at me, John! Look at me and tell me I'm safe with my computer knowledge!"

I take a deep breath, and sigh. "Okay! Let's pretend you know all the martial arts on earth, and then you cannot get the lights punched out of you!" I tell him, and he clenches his teeth, looking down. "Then what, Newt? If they can't get to you in a fight, what's going to happen? They'll go after Lyle. Or after Corrine. They'll find other ways to hurt you!"

"Oh, and was that a concern you had when you kicked the dung out of Rude?"

"That's something I'm learning now that I see one of my friends on the floor, bruised and half naked," I reply softly, pointing my palm at him. Newt clenches his jaw but doesn't reply. "If they weren't so scared of facing me, they probably wouldn't have gone after you."

"You can't be serious, John."

"What do you mean?"

"You can't be thinking this would be much different if they could bully you instead of me."

"Well, for one, we wouldn't be here, don't you think?"

"I'm going to kick you in the dick," he says, looking back up at me, anger still etched in his bruised features. "I'd still be the outcast I was when you arrived to Maple Heights. My mother would still be too scared to show her face out the door. Lyle would probably be an outcast, too, because problems always find their way to him. Rude would still be a thing, and would still be roaming the school, pushing people around, and you would be one of his bitches if not worse. So yeah, maybe it would be best if you were a computer whizz instead of a good fighter."

I slump against the wall next to him, looking at the cracks in the ceiling. I sigh in defeat. Newt is right, of course he is. But I can't help feeling responsible for the bad that has happened since I arrived as well. Especially for the amount of trouble I got myself into just because it was unfair that people got bullied at school. Rude wants my head on a plate, I ended in the hospital fighting him, and now his friends are assaulting my own... I befriended Scar (and, yes, that IS a problem I got myself into), I may or may not have become a bully myself; Eugene, one of the very few adults who want something good for Maple Heights, kind of hates my guts now... And where did it all start, anyway? Ah, I know where.

"Motherfucking Potato and his stupid rumors."

"That fool is probably shitting his own pants now, right?" Newt asks in a sudden burst of euphoria.

"That's what I heard from Eugene," I reply, not matching his enthusiasm. "I need to figure out a way to get him to tell me the truth."

"The truth about what?"

"I wish I knew how the hell he came up with the rumor about me and Scar before I fought Rude."

"Well, he didn't see you, right?"

"No, no way he could, because I haven't really seen her outside of school, and we never interacted there, either."

Newt thinks about this for a minute. "So there's absolutely no way Potato could have known from you, then."

"Not a chance."

"Who else knew, then?"

"Well, Lyle and you."

"And you don't really suspect us, do you?"

"Not really, no."

"Then there's only one person left," Newt says, bending his feet to keep them under my jacket, leaving me to complete the puzzle. I don't want to admit Scar herself got us in that kind of trouble, or the one with Amanda today. And we don't have the time to talk about that, either. I almost forgot Newt is butt-naked here.

"So, any ideas on how to get you home without pants?"

"Walking," he says, shrugging as he looks down. "Won't be the first time."

"Assholes..."

"I wish there was a way to get rid of them..."

"I'll find a way," I say, surprising even myself. It's not like I know how I'm going to do it, though. "I promise you they won't just get away with this."

"I..." He hesitates before speaking, picking the dirt under his nails. "I don't want to be an outcast anymore, John."

"John!" A voice reverberates across the factory, and Newt lets out a soft shriek. It sounds like Ralph, but just in case, I stand ready to fight. "Are you here, man?"

"I take it back! I wanna go home!"

"Chill, Newt," I whisper, signaling him to stay quiet. "I'll go check. Don't make a noise."

"John, dude! It's us, from the ranch!"

"In here!" I reply, recognizing Ralph's voice clearly now. I turn to Newt, smiling. "It's okay. They're friends."

Ralph files into the room followed by Ajax and Dave. Ajax goes straight to Newt and checks his injuries, touching his blackened cheekbones, asking him if it hurts.

"Eugene called me," Ralph says, making me turn to him. "Told us to come here immediately. Are you guys okay?"

"They were already gone when I got here."

"Yeah, about that..." Ralph starts, and fidgets a little before looking into my eyes. "Eugene is pretty mad at you for coming here alone."

I roll my eyes. "Of course he is."

"Look, John. I understand that you were worried about your friend, and I would have probably done the same," he says, giving me a condescending look. "But it could very well have been a trap." Then he turns to Newt and asks, "How many were they, kid?"

"Five, sir."

Ralph turns to me again. "Do you think you can handle five guys at the same time?"

"Probably not," I reply, but I'm not exactly digging this talk, so I change topics. "They took Newt's pants."

"That's more common than you think." Dave says, taking off a backpack and pulling a blanket out, which he hands to Ajax. "Not exactly pants, but it's the best we could manage, given the rush."

"We're driving you two to the farm to treat his wounds first," Ralph explains, and then he kneels in front of Newt. "Then we'll see if we can find something you can wear."

"Thank you." I watch Newt's features light up a bit at his words, but he doesn't smile. "Can we do something about these guys?"

"We can, but it will take some setup," Ralph explains.

"Since they're mostly underage, we can't just wipe the floor with them the way I would like to," Ajax says.

So that means... "Can I...?"

"No, you can't," Ralph replies. "Your situation is already delicate enough: you should not be triggering Eugene any more than he already is."

"Oh, awesome," I retort. "So, while Eugene figures that out and decides to take any actions at all, we have five high school seniors banded together doing whatever they want."

"Look, I know you're mad, but we're not the fucking police," Ralph counters, standing up and facing me. "And I don't know if you realized this or not, but we're doing this because we care, not because we are in any sort of obligation with you. So shut your mouth for a fucking second, and let us do our thing without being a total nag; otherwise you're more than welcome to see yourself out and get those five bullies to send your ass to the hospital however you please."

"The boss chose to help you, kid," Ajax says, also facing me. "But that attitude of yours is a big problem, and I love slapping the dung out of problems like you. So go ahead, please. Give me one more reason."

I clench my teeth and rub my eyes with my palms, taking a deep, loud breath. My fingers twitch in frustration; I'm really itchy to give Ajax a reason to slap my dung right now, just to prove him that he doesn't stand a chance one-on-one against me. But then I really would be like Rude's friends, and Newt is also here, and he's getting helped, better than I could help him myself, so in the end I take another, even deeper breath, and do what I suppose is the right thing.

"I'm sorry. That was over the line."

Dave carries Newt in his back, while Ajax covers him with the blanket, and the three of them leave the room.

Ralph pats my back on his way out. "Make sure you apologize to Gene later, all right? He's honestly worried about you, you know?"

"I know, I know..." I reply, rolling my eyes. "I just feel so useless waiting while those idiots are out there."

"I know, John. We all feel the same way," he replies, escorting me outside. "We'll figure something out, I promise you that."

Then the silence of the factory gets shattered by my phone's ringtone. I take it out of my pocket and realize it's a call from Newt's phone. These bastards not only took Newt's pants, they also took his phone.

"It's them," I tell Ralph before picking up. "I will take that phone back from your broken fingers."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say," the guy says, and he chuckles. "For now, I would go home if I were you. Your mommy might need some Band-Aids, too."

"If you touched her...!" and then the call ends, just as Ralph snatches my phone from my hands, too late to do anything.

"What happened?"

I grind my teeth, feeling the war cry roaring from the pit of my stomach, my heart aching as it pumps blood to my head. I can feel Ralph shaking me and demanding explanations over the same ringing in my ears I felt with their first call. I look at him in the eyes, and say the one thing I can without exploding.

"Take me home."