The Edgy and Strangely Popular John Newman

John Newman sat idly in history class, staring out the window and into the school courtyard below. It had been just over one month since he’d awakened to his ‘Gamer’ powers and his life had spiralled into the hell that was the Abyss. Maybe another person would be thrilled by such divine intervention; if John was being honest, he had certainly been excited initially. But it had only taken a week for that mindset to be firmly quashed. Leave it to a homicidally insane werewolf to help you truly appreciate the mundane routine of reality.

Of course, despite his best efforts otherwise, he couldn’t just leave the Abyss. For one, several people very dear to him lived in the Abyss and he could never just leave them. Secondly, his powers paid well and his mother’s life depended on both the technology and magic the Abyss had to offer; technology which was expensive to maintain. If it hadn’t been for the assistance from the Order of the Golden Rose, John would have seriously struggled to pay for his mom’s medical fees, a fact which he was thankful for every time he visited the hospital. But he couldn’t in good conscience allow the Order to pay for the stupendously expensive medical fees and not repay them with his aid, so he helped them with Abyss-related incidents where he could.

“Mr. Newman,” Wentworth’s sharp voice cut through his daydreaming like butter and pulled him back to reality. “Since my class seems to bore you so, perhaps you could enlighten us all on what has captivated your attention.”

John shrugged. “Ms. Summers has gone braless today,” he replied casually, earning a shocked but quiet chuckle from the class. It was an outrageous line he would never have had the confidence to deliver a month ago, but with a Charisma stat that was now well on its way to a lot of things, he’d found he could get away with saying a lot of things. ‘I probably would have been called a creep by those same people a month ago,’ he thought wryly.

“How very… base of you,” Wentworth tsked before spending a moment’s thought on his punishment. “You’ll be reading the textbook passages to the class for the rest of the period.”

“Sure,” John agreed quickly. It was far from the worst punishment she could have given him. She held the prestigious title of grouchiest teacher at Ashcroft and, as John recently discovered, happened to live a double-life as a powerful sorceress in the Abyss. He had no doubt she was aware of his own double-life as well, not that either of them had ever confronted the other about it. They’d reached a sort of mutual understanding without so much as a single word on the topic of the Abyss. Neither gave a flying shit what the other did in the Abyss so long as they kept out of each other’s way, and John was perfectly content to leave it that way. And as far as school life went, John regularly got top marks in history so she had very little to complain about.

He stood up and began to read the next passage on the Opium Wars out loud. Most of the class had been more interested in counting the minutes until the bell rung, but there was a subtle shift in attention when John started speaking, causing Wentworth to let out a satisfied smile. John eyed her suspiciously, unable to shake the feeling that she was deliberately exploiting the natural articulation that came with his Charisma stat to get the textbook passages across to the class. It would explain why she singled him out of the many slackers in the class.

“Thank you, Mr. Newman, that will be all,” Wentworth told him five and a half pages later.

As soon as he sat down again, the bell rung, signalling the end of class and the start of lunch. John quickly swept his books into his backpack before making for the classroom door. He passed by Wentworth’s desk on the way, but her attention was fixated on a weighty looking tome.

“Hit me up anytime you need me to teach the class, I love the sound of my own voice,” he grinned at her. Maybe giving cheek to Wentworth wasn’t the best idea, but John was curious to see how much he could get away with.

“I have clones for that, Mr. Newman,” the history teacher replied dismissively.

“Wait, seriously?” John wondered. His attempts in the past at casting Observe on her had yielded no useful information, indicating that she was powerful in her own right — certainly stronger than him. In any case, clones would be far from the craziest thing he’d seen in the Abyss thus far.

“Leave before you become a nuisance,” Wentworth replied simply. Her eyes never left her book but her tone told him they were done.

“Alright,” John held his hands up in defeat. “I hope you have a lovely day, Ms. Wentworth.”

John hurried out of the classroom before he got zapped, or turned into a rodent, or something else equally unpleasant. He really had no clue what she could do. ‘Maybe I should ask Moira over lunch,’ he thought as he began heading over to his locker to drop off his things. He figured Moira was at the very least aware of Wentworth’s double life, but there was a good chance she knew more given she had the resources of the Order behind herself.

John’s school locker was easy to find amongst the many that lined the school’s hallways. He didn’t even have to look for the number, just the fist-sized dent courtesy of Frank the last time they’d fought in the hallway. Despite John requesting it to be fixed a number of times, the grounds staff never seems to ‘get around to it’. John imagined Vanessa had something to do with it. She was certainly a spiteful enough bitch and had enough influence in the school to do so. Still, both Frank and Vanessa seemed to be avoiding him lately, which was perfectly fine by John. Either the blood Frank had found in John’s house had made him wet his pants or they both sensed he wouldn’t be so easily pushed around anymore.

“Hey, um, John?” a girl’s voice approached him from behind as he sorted through his locker.

John turned to face a somewhat familiar brunette girl. He was pretty sure her name was Emilia, but he wasn’t certain.

“I know it’s kind of short notice and all…” Emilia began, “but it’s my birthday today and I’m hosting a party at my place tonight. Do you want to come?”

“Oh, happy birthday then,” John smiled warmly. Being approached by a random person and getting invited to an event would have been a foreign concept to the John Newman of a month ago. It just wouldn’t have happened. Ever. But it had been occurring fairly often of late.

He was actually kind of in a strange place in the social hierarchy of school at the moment. For the longest time he’d been a gawky nobody at Ashcroft. One of the many smart but quiet nerds who failed to stand out amongst the chads and rich bitches that saturated the academy. But since entering the Abyss, John’s own home had been the sight of a grisly triple-homicide at the hands of Vulpis’ pack a few weeks ago. By the next morning the worst of the scene had been cleaned up and the house was locked up under the assumption that it was a private residence and there would be no problems while Vulpis was dealt with. As it had turned out, Frank Dickinson had chosen the very next day to break into his house and discovered what was left of the crime scene. The rumour that John had been murdered spread like wildfire around the school. Of course he hadn’t been, causing a lot of speculation and misinformation to spread upon his return. Some went so far as to say he was a killer himself, and his own silence on the matter probably didn’t help either. Still, his Charisma was well above the princes and queen bees of the academy, making him strangely popular in a dark and mysterious kind of way.

TL;DR, he’d gone from nobody nerd to being a charming mystery for girls (and even some guys) to fling themselves at when they wanted some thrills to spice up their life.

Emilia’s expectant expression reminded John he was yet to answer her question. “Oh, I’ll have to check if I’m working tonight but I’d love to come.” Might as well take advantage of the new opportunities his increased Charisma offered him.

“Well, if you can show up, that’d be great. Oh! And there’ll be a horror theme if you’re able to pull together a costume in time…” she explained, her face pulled in an apologetic expression for telling him so late.

She seemed kind of nice John supposed. “Ah, I see, guess I’ll fit right in as a murderer, then,” he replied lightly.

The girl’s face blanched at his reply. “Oh, uh, I didn’t mean it to-” she panicked, the conversation clearly not going the way she’d planned.

“Don’t worry, I was joking,” John gave her a wide smile to reassure her.

“Right… hahaha,” Emilia laughed nervously. The way she fidgeted told John they weren’t done. Judging by her doe-eyed look he had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to say.

“If I do show, is it okay if I bring my girlfriend?” John asked before she could find a voice of her own. Sparing her the embarrassment of asking was the gentlest way he could think of to turn her down.

“Oh, girlfriend?” the light in her eyes dimmed as she repeated the word.

‘Jeez, and here I am breaking a nice girl’s heart,’ John sighed unhappily. ‘Am I a Chad now? Or just plain edgy?’ She was a cute girl and she was nice enough as far as first impressions went. But John had determined that he would never date anyone that wasn’t already part of the Abyss since, realistically, he could never date someone and keep that part of his life secret. Just being around him regularly was a danger in itself given the breadth of threats the Abyss had to offer and there was no way in hell he was putting anyone else through what he had suffered.

“So those rumours that you’re dating that second year girl are true?” Emilia asked dejectedly.

“Moira?” John was surprised to hear that. He definitely liked Moira, but the potential for that kind of relationship between them was up in the air right now for a mess of reasons. “Oh, uh… no. The girl I’m dating doesn’t go to Ashcroft,” he replied.

“Well… I guess it’s fine,” Emilia replied as straight faced as she could manage. “I’ll, uh… be seeing you tonight then — hopefully.”

“Yeah,” John replied as she swiftly left. ‘Well, I guess that’s something to look forward to,’ John thought, feeling both excited and just a little bit nervous. It was the first house party he’d ever been invited to. He hadn’t been all that social in high school, y’know, being a gawky nerd and all. He’d heard stories of how ‘wild’ house parties could be, though. Now he could finally see if there was truth to them or not.

John hummed to himself as he headed to his usual lunch spot with Moira. ‘School’s actually been pretty good lately,’ he thought with a smile.