If you can live up to an ideal, then it’s too easy.
Not trying to be too facetious but if saving the bully’s life meant he subsequently disappeared off the face of the earth, seems like a win/win for everyone.
Agreed.
You’re right that bullying isn’t a capital crime, which is why someone who murders their bully is probably going to get in a lot of trouble. OTOH, some bullies make their victim’s lives absolutely miserable, and if letting their tormenter drown is something that eliminates such a font of misery from their own life, then it may be regarded as an instance of self-defense rather than punishment.
I gather you weren’t bullied as a kid. Some bullies torture their victims on a daily basis. Someone I know spoke once of how when they were a kid, their older brother would pin them to the ground and cover their nose and mouth until they passed out. Lather, rinse, repeat every day or so.
Kids sometimes take their own lives over bullying - is it really so shocking to imagine that they might be willing to eschew rescuing the very people who inflict that level of suffering on them?
Heh. My next D&D session is gonna spring almost this exact scenario on the players. A navy admiral has become a royal pain in their collective ass, and also supports a repressive government and its slave-labor mines, and also might (quite correctly) charge them with treason and murder if she uncovers their latest shenanigans. They just came across a naval vessel that’s sinking, with dozens of sailors already in the water; and they defeated the enormous two-headed shark that sank the ship.
We’ll begin the session with the aftermath: do they save the sailors? How? What further heroics will they engage in? After a few rounds of rescue-missioning, a sailor will cry out, “There she is! The admiral!” She’ll be floating face-down in the water, and nobody but the PCs will be in a position to save her life.
I really don’t know how they’ll go with this and am curious how it plays out.
Yes, of course I know that bullying can be horrible and devastating, and that sometimes children take their lives because of bullying…
If the OP wants to come back into the thread and say that the bully did indeed commit offenses on the level of Ken McElroy, then we’ll know that said bully did that. Or at least that the OP believes the bully did that.
Still, I don’t think it would change the way I look at this incident (as described by the OP).
For those of you saying that they’d rescue the bully , would your answer change if the bully was someone who ruined your life on purpose (made you can outcast or got you fired from your job) or outright physically/sexually assaulted you?
Or poisoned your dog? … Or killed your family?.. Or raised your village?..
What answer are you really after with all these (hypothetical) questions? Do you want to know at what point it’s okay to decide to not save your tormentor? Clearly it’s different for different people. How about you tell us where your breaking point is.
I’d try to save even if they had razed my village.
I would stop trying at the point I was risking my life or safety. An innocent child? I’d keep at it until we were both saved or both perished.
Your a butter man then I.
Which option will get them more XP? 
At what point can a child not be innocent?
We’re talking about 12-year-olds in the OP. Now, obviously, a child of twelve is responsible to some degree for his or her actions. Much more so than a four-year-old, for example.
But I think we’d all agree that the twelve-year-old is far less responsible for his or her actions than, say, a 28-year-old.
And we’d all agree that states that impose the death penalty on minors are barbaric.
And here we are talking about a bunch of 12-year-olds not acting, when they could, when they had a choice, to save the life of another 12-year-old, because he was a bully.
Something to think about.
We are talking about a story where the OP admits up front that it is possible by an unreliable narrator.
The bully was saved due to the actions of one of the children, so it’s not as though no action was taken.
That they did not save him themselves does not really reflect on them. They may have thought it was a prank, and even if they didn’t, it’s not like most 12 year olds are trained for water rescue.
The right decision was made, get an adult involved. That decision was made by one of the 12 year olds in question.
All true, of course.
But the story, whether entirely accurate or not, is certainly thought-provoking.
My thoughts were provoked. Nothing wrong with that.
I actually started to drown a bully and then saved him. We were both 14 at the time.
We were in a lake and he kept dunking me under the water. Every time I came up he would dunk me again. On the last dunk I came up, was able to take a deep breath, and as he dunked me I grabbed his arm and pulled him under.
I hit bottom and stuck my foot under an old tree root for anchorage.
Then I pulled him in. He struggled in terror and could see me smiling at him.
After he choked in a few mouthfuls of water I let go of the root and dragged him to the dock.
He coughed, then puked, and then started cussing me.
I grabbed his arm again and started to pull him away from the dock. He screamed like a little girl and bolted out of the water. The asshole never bothered me again.
What if the bully would, upon being rescued by you, falsely claim that you’d endangered him by pushing him in?
I’d walk away.
Being the victim of years of relentless bullying for being gay (not) or Jewish ( was), I can attest to the enduring damage done.
After enough beatings, one cares a bit less.
Let em die.
Interesting question. I can’t say what my twelve-year-old self would have done, but here’s an account of something that might indicate what I would do today, as an adult:
Just a couple of years ago, I was working quite late with a young woman associate of the law firm that employs me. It’s one of the monster worldwide law firms with thousands of lawyers that expects 60, 80 and more hour work weeks out of its young associates. I’m an older (59, then) IT drone. She was a second-year associate. And she had a well-deserved reputation for being abusive towards the support staff.
We were offsite at a client’s offices. It was maybe two in the morning, and I don’t think she’d slept more than four or five hours in the last week. There was nobody else around.
And she had a nervous breakdown. No joke, she completely came unglued, right then and there. I mean total, incoherent collapse. Crying, falling on the floor, just saying over and over that she wanted to go home, and it was clear from context that she meant home where she grew up, not home to her apartment in New York.
So I talked to her enough to elicit her home address. I took her downstairs, and got into a cab with her. I found her keys in her purse, and got her upstairs and into her apartment. I found her phone, and called what seemed to be her closest local friend, judging by her phone log. I did not call anyone at the law firm – my hope was that she’d wake up the next morning, feel better, and just get back to work, and I didn’t want anyone at the firm knowing about this.
I called the friend, said her friend needed help. Turned out I was right about their friendship, they were old friends from college or law school or something. The friend came over. I stayed in this young woman’s apartment until the friend showed up.
Some friends (including lawyers) said I took an insane risk. The kinds of accusations I opened myself up to, these days, would have been career-destroying, and even life-shattering (what if my wife believed I’d done something inappropriate?). And the woman in question was clearly mentally disintegrating, and might have misunderstood the situation. Wouldn’t mean she was lying, wouldn’t mean she was being malicious, just that a really bad misunderstanding could have arisen.
So, yeah, as an adult, I’d rescue the bully even if there was a risk of a false accusation.
Oh, ETA: She never returned to work at the firm.
Heh! They’re gonna hit ninth level after this encounter. The only effect will be whether they maintain an enemy at the top, who owes them her life, and have a reputation of heroism with the rest of the navy; or whether she gets replaced by a more milquetoast admiral, and the rest of the navy looks at them with suspicion for not saving the admiral.
Doesn’t apply to the Karmic Police.