The True Elites

Chapter 2-1: Vigilante

Ayanokōji's POV

"What a ridiculous strategy!"

Lelouch placed his hand against the wall to steady himself – he looked like he was in danger of collapsing from laughing too much. Right now, I was standing outside Class E with Sora, Shiro, Lelouch and Light. We had gone around to check how the other classes fared in the midterm exam, which was what lead to this situation.

"Do you not find this funny, Ayanokōji?" Sora asked me.

"I do."

"You don't look very amused."

"I'm just bad at expressing myself." I responded truthfully.

After a minute or so, the laughter echoing through the halls subsided.

"But honestly, who would've thought Class E would be so bold?" Light said with a grin.

"That's gotta be the riskiest thing I've ever seen a group of people do." Sora said, his sly grin even more prominent than usual.

"Mhm. All it would take is one traitor and their entire class would've been expelled." Lelouch said, returning his gaze to the Class E scoresheet.

"It's a good strategy if you're unified though. They probably felt kinship after being mocked so much by the other classes. A common enemy or goal will bring a group together no matter how distant they initially are." I replied.

If someone were to repeatedly mock a group of people, those people would target their hostility towards that person, overriding any grudges that may be held within the group. Such was basic human nature.

"So, someone in Class E found a loophole in the rules, huh?" Sora scanned his eyes through the window at the Class E students.

"Yeah. They found a loophole that even we didn't think of." Lelouch said.

"Well, we didn't really try to find one. Our class is very good at academics, after all." Light replied.

If all of our class was bad at academics, we would've probably spotted this loophole as well. For a Class E student to find it, though...

"The thing that sets the exams in this school apart from exams at normal schools is the way that they decide whether you pass or fail." I analysed stoically.

"Yeah. You don't fail at this school by scoring below a set threshold. You fail by scoring noticeably low relative to your classmates." Sora continued for me.

"Which means that no one will fail if the entire class gets the same score, no matter what that score is." Light added.

"And the easiest score to get is zero. If your whole class scores zero out of one hundred then that makes the class average, and therefore the passing grade, also zero, doesn't it?" Lelouch finished with a laugh.

"But what would've happened if someone like Kōenji didn't play along? Even if he just scored ninety like on the pop-quiz, that would singlehandedly bump the average up to 2.25 and the passing grade up to 1. Every single one of them except for Kōenji would've failed and been expelled." I said.

Your entire class scoring zero, thus causing the passing grade to also become zero. It was a sure-fire way to make everyone pass, but if just one person decided to take the test normally then it would've been disastrous.

"That's why it's risky. How exciting! Class E could provide us with some entertainment after all!" Sora exclaimed, completely overrun with glee.

"Say, who do you think it was that came up with the idea?" Light posed an important question.