"Five more minutes..."

Something kept poking his cheek. It made it hard for John to stay asleep, so he rolled over to escape the unwanted pestering, only… he wasn’t in bed. Halfway through the fall from his desk chair, John opened his eyes just in time to see the floor coming up to meet him. The thud of his impact sounded exactly as painful as it was: very.

Laughter like chiming bells rang out, and a familiar voice proclaimed, “Fuckboy sticks the landing! Ten points!”

“Ow… Morning to you too, Adorabelle,” John groaned as he pushed himself up to his knees. The jarring awakening did wonders for his lingering drowsiness, but it still took a second for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight streaming in from the window. Everything was so damn bright.

As things came into focus, he caught sight of his fae roommate fluttering about. She turned, the morning light filtered through the petals of her dress and making them glow a peachy pink. It accentuated the visible outline of her body, particularly her hips. John couldn’t help but stare; based on the hint of a blush on Adorabelle’s cheeks, she noticed.

The fae girl descended and landed with a little twirl on the side of his bed, leaning over the edge on her stomach to look down at him. Her feet kicked the air aimlessly as she gave him a curious gaze, “Why were you sleeping there? The bed’s comfier.”

“A long story with a lot of cats,” John replied, brushing himself off and getting to his feet. Where did he even start with explaining his adventures in the Dreamlands? Ulthar was absurd enough, but the Tavern… Bearnard… If not for the evidence of experience on his character sheet, it’d be easy to assume everything had just been an elaborate fever dream.

Adorabelle made a face, “I don’t think I want to know then.” She rolled over onto her back to keep eye contact with him as he stood, stretching in a way that flexed her tiny chest enticingly. “It took you long enough to wake up, anyway; I’ve been waiting for forever!”

He gave the fairy a confused look, “Why didn’t you just leave then?”

In reply, she gestured at herself then the closed window, then the closed door, before ending with giving him a sarcastic glare. Right. John walked over to the window and pushed up on the frame to let some fresh air into the room. Droplets of rain from the night’s storm still clung to the nearby trees, making the world smell wonderfully clean. He took a deep breath and savored it.

“Sorry, there you go,” he said, turning back to the fae girl. Instead of being pleased, she looked… disappointed. Had he done something wrong? She’d been complaining about being stuck in his room…

Adorabelle sat up, her wings blurring as she lifted off his bed and flew over to the windowsill, hesitating at the threshold. She turned to give John an unreadable look, her eyes searching his for something.

“You want me to leave it open for you?” he asked. “I might be out late, and it’d be bad if you were locked out. Just uh… try not to let my mom see you. Please?” Explaining how he’d made friends with a magical alcoholic fairy wasn’t something John had any idea where to even start with.

The fairy’s expression bounced between incredulity, irritation and exasperated amusement, eventually landing on a mixture of all three. She said something quiet that sounded like ‘asshole’, and John leaned in closer to try to catch her words. He received a ‘gentle’ punch to the nose for the trouble.

“Ow! What the fuck?” he winced and closed his eyes because of the pain. A sensation cut through it, the feeling of something soft pressed to the corner of his lips. John reopened his eyes to see Adorabelle stepping backwards towards the edge of the windowsill, floating away from him with one hand pressed to her smile. She flew off without another word.

John watched her go, then stepped back from the window and stretched. It was time to start getting ready for the day; after all, he wouldn’t want to be late. He checked the clock on his bedside table to set the pace for his morning routine. 9:44 AM… John rubbed at his eyes and checked it again. Yep, it read 9:45. Holy shit, he was already late!

Math would be over by the time he got to school, but honestly, that didn’t matter too much… no, the real problem was his rapidly approaching second class of the day: history. It was the only class he shared with Erica, and, far more importantly, it was Mrs. Wentworth’s class. Even before he knew she was a literal witch, skipping her class was at the top of his ‘terrible ideas’ list. He wasn’t about to start now.

Panic instilled him with **** energy, and he threw himself into preparations. There was no time for a morning shower, so he grudgingly swapped out his clothes for fresh ones and splashed his face in the sink. A quick glance as he passed his mother’s room confirmed she was still out at work. He’d need to get to school by himself. Fortunately, his newly stuffed bank account could handle that burden.

Stopping in the kitchen long enough to grab a muffin off the counter for breakfast, John headed for the door and only paused when he used his left hand to open it. His tattoos were fully visible; Glamour must have worn off overnight. It took two casts of the spell to manage something largely believable: a mess of light purple bruises that looked like he’d slammed his arm in a door repeatedly. At least people probably wouldn’t ask too many questions about it.

He shoved open the door and walked face first through a popup.

The sudden and unexpected appearance of the window caused him to nearly trip over the air, and he stumbled forwards a few feet, swearing loudly. Behind him, the quest popup trailed like an anxious dog. John stabilized and whirled around, “Can you not?” It dawned on him that he was more or less yelling at a computer, so he **** down his outrage to skim the interface. He did, then read it again from the start more slowly.

‘Non-standard’ rules, John found himself hesitating at that component of the quest. Without any idea what alterations could be thrown at him it was a gamble… but… he’d made it this far. Battered and bruised, perhaps, but alive. If the Developer wanted to kill him, she’d have had a dozen opportunities to do it already, and she hadn’t yet. Presumably she didn’t want to… right?

He accepted the quest with a hint of trepidation.

With no more time to waste, John’s earlier haste renewed itself. Public transit would take too long, and the Ashcroft busses had already run their routes an hour before, so his only remaining recourse was private transit. He pulled out his phone, found Dryve after a minute of searching through his jumbled apps and sent a request for a ride to the academy. Time was money, and he had little of the former but a lot of the latter.

It took fifteen minutes before he arrived at the entrance to the academy, and John barely took time to thank the driver before rushing up the stairs and past dawdling students to arrive breathlessly at the door to Mrs. Wentworth’s classroom… exactly one minute early.

“Mr. Newman. Good of you to join us.” He jumped at the unexpected voice behind him and whirled around, hand still on the handle of the classroom door. Mrs. Wentworth stood barely two feet away, giving him a sharp look, “I’d heard you were neglecting your schooling: absent from class without justification, late on your assignments… I do hope you’ll take my lessons a bit more seriously.”

As John stood frozen, she reached out for the handle, causing him to flinch away from it. There was something about her expression that screamed ‘run away’; it wasn’t just stern or terse, the witch looked at him with muted hostility. What had he done wrong?

“See me after class.”

Seriously, what the fuck had he done?

John spent the entirety of history class rigidly fixated on the material, so much so that when Erica gave him a sidelong wave he barely acknowledged her. The berserker seemed a bit hurt and kept glancing in his direction when she thought he wouldn’t notice. In the past, the attention would’ve been welcome, but with the Witch of Ashcroft’s focus on him… John only hoped that being related to the Order would save Erica from whatever Mrs. Wentworth intended to do to him.

While he was thinking of the Order… Moira’s seat was unusually empty. John hadn’t been the most attentive to the paladin’s attendance before now, but it seemed oddly out of character for her to miss a class for any reason. If he didn’t know better, she got off on following the rules… so, where was she?

All too soon, class was over, and with hardly a minute to breathe, he found himself standing before Mrs. Wentworth’s desk, in her office, with the witch herself staring over steepled fingers at him.

“Three days… and as many meetings in that brief time. I’m beginning to believe you enjoy making my life difficult, Mr. Newman.”

John swallowed and held his tongue.

“In fact, I find myself with less and less reasons to tolerate your continued chaotic presence… so I will give you a single chance to explain yourself. Do not think you will receive another,” Mrs. Wentworth snapped her fingers, then John felt something tighten around his throat. A point pricked at his Adam’s apple.

“Do not try to lie to me. What did you do to Vanessa Hawthorne?”

Fuck.

Of course, it was her. Vanessa was the only rule that Mrs. Wentworth had laid down in their prior interactions, and he’d broken it like a dumbass. John closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then did the one thing that his instincts screamed most against, tell the truth, “I stole a SD card from her phone yesterday for **** material, but I didn’t do anything to her.”

A second passed as he waited for Mrs. Wentworth’s spell to decapitate him, but whatever it was around his neck loosened and vanished. The witch’s gaze never left him, and John felt he was somehow in even more danger than before.

“I believe I gave you a specific instruction regarding her,” Mrs. Wentworth’s tone was flat, “but while you disobeyed me, it would seem you are not at fault for the current predicament.” John let out a sigh of relief at that, but then his teacher smiled her sadistic little smirk, “You’ll simply be cleaning up another’s mistake, instead. Hawthorne. Find her.”