The Hawthorne Crisis

"No," Mrs. Wentworth snapped as she shot down another one of John's ideas. They had been talking through his plans and ideas all morning, and so far there wasn't a single one that he could come up with that she would agree to. He tried throwing every idea he had thought of so far and then some, but there was nothing that the teacher would agree too. Changing her, taking her to be trained by the Orcs, dosing her up with a Succubus Elixir... none of it was good enough. Hell, she didn't even like the idea of putting Vanessa into a control collar. Whenever John brought it up, she just told him how notorious those things were for completely erasing the personalities of their victims and reducing them to mindless obedient husks once the collars had been donned. It didn't sound like the same kind of collar that he had found in his kingdom... but Wentworth didn't care. She just kept repeating the same answer over and over again.

No.

No.

No.

"Something has to be done!" John finally snapped and watched as his teacher merely folded her arms over her chest and stared at him. She was making it clear that she wasn't going to budge on the decisions that she had made. "It doesn't matter what your plan is if she gets so crazy that she ends up in jail! She- she-" A single look at Wentworth could have told John that she didn't care about the everyday laws. Even if Vanessa had broken one of them, she probably could have erased the event from happening entirely. "She's gone too far, and you need to pick one!" There was a slight pause as Wentworth continued staring at him blankly, and John realized that she wasn't going to agree with anything that he has said so far. She made a decision and it was final, but those were all the options that he had. There was nothing else he could do... but he wasn't the only one there.

"Or... you come up with an idea that will work." He was struggling for some kind of hope when he tried to redirect the problem back at his teacher. Mrs. Wentworth stared at him for a long moment, her brow gradually tightening as she tried to ignore his last sentence... but her clever mind was already racing before she could try to back out of the challenge he had set before her. A... curiosity dashed through her thoughts and her features softened as John was looking at her, like the impossible had somehow actually happened... but she didn't give him an answer.

"How did you change Ms. Summers?" she asked suddenly, and this time, it was John's turn to furrow his brow as they talked.

"W-What?" he asked, and so his teacher repeated herself.

"You've been quite busy lately, with powers that you certainly did not have a month ago. With all these... 'events' going around at my school and the public displays of your abilities, one should think that you're supposed to be some kind of martial artist, like Kim Moon." She paused for a second as John interjected with a question of his own.

"Kim is a part of the Abyss?" he blinked, and she ignored him.

"However, your... escapades with the women around you and the way you change them also suggests that you might be a more... 'magic-focused' individual. Your 'abilities' seem to vary drastically. One moment you could be a mage delving into Biomancy and the next you seem like someone who just likes to 'hit things.' So... how did you change Ms. Summers? What is the limit of what your abilities can do?" She waited for a couple of seconds for John to answer, but he didn't have any information that he actually wanted to share.

"I don't know." In a way, it was the truth. He didn't know what his abilities could do. He only barely knew more about them than the people around him simply because he hadn't told others about them.

"...Can you change anything with your powers?" she asked.

"I... I don't know. Why?"

His teacher didn't answer him. Her gaze traced over his features in slow, methodical movements, scanning for signs of... something in his expression before she seemed satisfied with whatever answer she found. Her arms dropped from in front of her chest, leaving her modestly-sized breasts to drop and bounce in their wake. She snapped her fingers at the Gamer who watched as the hallway around them began to stretch and grow in the wake of the noise her hands made. Line after line of lockers sunk into the marble white flooring as Wentworth remodeled one part of the school in her barrier with no more than a single spell. Beneath his teacher’s feet spread a wave of darkness, seeping into the white ground they were standing on like ink. Alabaster stone slabs melted together with each passing second until only a single giant plate of Onyx was left. The walls curled, joining from one side of the hall to the other to form a seamless circle around the two of them before Wentworth addressed him again.

"A little while back I discovered a strange race of creatures hiding on the outskirts of a dying kingdom. Vermin, really, but interesting nonetheless," she punctuated the word 'vermin' with another snap of her fingers. The air in front of her hands distorted and wavered, shaking as the empty space was pulled taut... and then torn open with a loud crack of thunder. A dark jagged line split open the space between the two of them, drawing the nearby light and color into it like the opening had created a vacuum, and from it came a soft hissing noise. "They're carnivores, in a way." A couple of seconds passed and then the gap that Wentworth had created widened abruptly. A soft gurgling sound spilled out from the hole... and then a single tendril followed and fell out of the hole right after it. "They just can't feed without a host, something or someone to physically bond with."

Grey, gelatinous chunks of slime dripped off the black tendril as the gap widened more and more. The creature never got thicker than a couple of inches... but it was surprisingly long. After a few feet of smooth, slick, black skin slipped out of the gap, the rest of the creature fell out with a horrible squeal. It slapped wetly on the ground and began to writhe in place, shaking in place like an eel out of water. Strangely, it fit the description of an eel quite well. The creature had no protruding head, eyes, nose, or ears to speak of. Just a mouth on one end and a tail at the other. When it finally found enough purchase on the floor to turn towards John, it flashed him its gaping maw with another horrible, ear-piercing squeal. Countless rows of crimson red teeth glistened at him as the 'head' of the monster turned towards John, like he was looking into a tunnel of miniature spikes... and then he shuddered as the creature's head followed his movements as he tried to step back away from it. He didn't get very far before the snake-like beast coiled up and then lunged at him.

When the beast snapped and bounced back off an invisible barrier, John started to breathe a little bit easier. It floated up into the air as the dark line that Wentworth had used to summon the creature gradually closed back up, and then John finally caught up to what Wentworth was trying to tell him.

"So... it's like a symbiote?" he asked and watched as his teacher cocked an eyebrow in his direction. She stared at him like she was confused for a moment... and then rolled her eyes at the Gamer.

"Symbiosis usually implies a beneficial relationship for both of the organisms involved. The Vamprell do no such thing. They inhabit their hosts and infect them with a gluttonous, cannibalistic hunger that is almost impossible to control. This is a monster. Make no mista-" John interrupted his teacher before she could finish explaining the creature to him.

"Vamp...rell? Wait, like vampires?" He paused long enough to look over at the creature and then back at his teacher, "This thing makes vampires?"

"No, it doesn't make vampi-" she started.

"It doesn't look like it could be big enough to actually consume meat. Maybe rats if it could stretch enough, but even then..." John rubbed at his chin as he spoke.

"The host usually digests the meat. The Vamprell itself lives off a liquid diet. They-"

"So it is a vampire then!" John interrupted her again.

"No. It's a-" she took one look at the expression on John's face and then shook her head in defeat. "Fine," she sighed. "It's one way to make a 'vampire.' Only without the lack of aging or the weakness to sunlight. Happy?"

Surprisingly, he was. The geeky side of him was... Well, actually almost all of John was overjoyed to hear that yet another mythological being that he used to fantasize about was real. He knew he should have been worried about it or scared of the creature... but for once... he wasn't. He was just... curious.

"Okay... what does this have to do with Vanessa or my powers?" he asked. He didn't have to wait for her to answer. He caught on after a couple of seconds. "Wait... you want me to turn Vanessa into a vampire?" Both of them went silent as they waited for the other to speak up.

"I suppose it's fitting," he admitted after a while. "Then she'd be a vampire in more than just spirit."

"No," Wentworth snapped again, and John turned to face her. She was turning down her own idea, denying a resolution to a serious problem once again. "Making her crave the flesh and blood of her friends and family is not a fix.

"I want you to use your powers on the Vamprell. Change it so that the beast's instinct is to teach her how to forget her cruelty instead of making her worse."