Multiple missed calls from Zoe; several frantic text messages which say something about Ashley running off unexpectedly; and then, silence. As of right now, Zoe isn’t responding to any attempts to follow-up with her. Ashley is similarly unresponsive. This is not the jolt either Alyssa or I wanted to receive just before arriving at the school to pick them up.

“They’re not by the band hall,” Alyssa points out to me as I pull into the back parking lot where we usually pick them up. “Something’s wrong, Gregg. I have a really bad feeling about this.”

“I know what you mean,” I agree. “While it can be hard to indicate tone when communicating through text, I got the impression that Zoe was quite worried by the unusually large number of typing errors. And there is that teacher at their school who is suspected of planning to molest a student, so maybe that has made her feel…”

“No!” Alyssa shouts, her voice breaking with stress. “Don’t bring that up… oh God…”

I likewise find myself highly uneasy about the situation upon remembering those recent events. I decide to pull into the back parking lot and park the car.

“It would usually not be advisable for us to go inside the school on our own, but… I think that given the circumstances, I’m not willing to sit here and wait on them.”

“We’ll go in through the band hall,” Alyssa suggests. “Mr. Castro knows us.”

“Good thinking,” I say.

Upon entering through the band hall, we learn that Mr. Castro does not know where either of them are either; only that he recently saw Zoe walking around the band hall, and that she looked very worried. We decide that the best next step is to visit the front office and tell them of the situation. Wandering the halls ourselves may raise the wrong kind of alarm.

Clearly it is an unusual day all around at the school, based on the scene we come across in the office. Nobody is at their usual desks, and instead there is a small group consisting of a couple of administrators, a few teachers, and a police officer surrounding a woman who I recognize as being Ashley’s English teacher, Shari Truman. To the side, another police officer and a school counselor are talking in hushed voices, agony etched into their faces.

“Huh… is this a bad time?” Alyssa questions, speaking to nobody in particular. “What in the hell is going on here?”

Shari catches sight of us, and gasps dramatically. “Oh dear… aren’t you… Ashley’s parents?” she asks.

The others in the group turn towards us, and an administrator whom I can not remember the name of says, “I take it you have heard the news?”

“News? What news?” Alyssa asks, starting to sound mildly panicked.

“I’ll tell them,” Shari says. She is visibly in no hurry as she gets to her feet with a deep sigh and walks to the other side of the front desk, looking at the ground in a dejected way. “I was there… I saw it firsthand.”

“Saw what ?” Alyssa demands.

“Please do get to the point,” I urge her. “Neither Ashley or Zoe are currently responding to any calls or text messages, and we have no idea what is happening with them.”

Shari looks up at us sadly. “Your daughter was… assaulted by another student,” she says.

At these words, my blood feels as if it has turned to ice. Alyssa shouts, “Where is she? Who did this?” She is close to losing her head now; her breathing has gone erratic.

“I… don’t know where she went,” Shari tells us sadly. “I intervened to give her time to run away, and…” but she seems unable to finish her sentence. With a loud sniff, she buries her face in her hands.

“The boy turned and started lewdly assaulting her instead,” the one administrator finished. “Please go take a seat Shari, you poor thing…”

“And what about Zoe?” I question.

“She and a few friends ran off to go find her,” Shari explains through her hands, before breaking a loud sob.

“WHY DID YOU LET THEM JUST RUN OFF WHEN THERE IS AN AGGRESSIVE KID ON THE LOOSE?” Alyssa explodes. “GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND GO TRACK THEM DOWN!”

“Ma’am, control your temper or we will have you escorted out of the building!” One of the police officers chides her.

“I rather think she has a point,” I say in her defense. “I want your assurance that you are getting a handle on the situation as quickly as possible.”

“Uh, right. I’ll go see if I can find them,” the officer concedes. He briskly walks out of the office, getting out his walkie-talkie. The others, talking in low voices, lead Shari out of the room, still wailing.

The other police officer, the one who was previously talking to the counselor, steps forward. “I’ll help you find them,” he tells us. “I’m sorry to say that it was my son who did this.”

“Oh, you!” Alyssa says in a hostile tone, seemingly recognizing him. “Maybe you should’ve spent less time pulling people over for minor speed violations and more time raising your son, huh?”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “Dear, please. This can wait for later. He wants to help us right now, we should let him.”

“I just can’t believe he’d do this!” The counselor cries hysterically. “Kevin was always a troubled boy, but I never dreamed he’d… this is just awful!”

“We will take responsibility for the behavior of our son,” the police officer assures us. “We are truly sorry…”

“Right…” Alyssa says, taking slow, deliberate breaths. “Thank you for that… let’s just work on finding them all as quickly as possible.”

“As a police officer, do you have access to the school’s security camera footage?” I ask him. “I think that is the wisest place to start.”

He nods. “Yes, I can do that. Follow me, please.”

----------------------------------------

I throw the first punch. At last having a clear shot at her with unencumbered limbs, I dive through the air towards her to slash her in half with my sword.

A vine smacks me across the face, sending me spinning backwards several yards, until I steady myself again, anchoring myself to my mid-air space. In the time this takes, she goes on the attack. No longer daring to try and hold me, she now uses her vines as blunt melee weapons. She jabs me several times in the stomach, making me keel over and groan.

She moves too fast… time to change my course of action. I put my sword back in its holster, and then refine the energy that is keeping my feet off the ground into a burst. In the blink of an eye, I shoot towards her stupid face and punch her hard enough to make her stumble back several feet. She yelps like a hurt dog, and glares at me with the deepest loathing, making me feel quite pleased with myself.

A vine wraps around one of my arms and tries to slam me against the ground, but due to the fire she lets go too early and instead just jerks me sideways by a few feet. I get a sudden burst of inspiration and grab the vine. I pull on it with all the force I have. I’m expecting it to be yanked off, but it proves to be sturdier than I thought. She digs her other vines into the ground to pull back against me, looking visibly strained. She also has tears forming in her eyes, possibly because my touch is burning the tip of the vine to a crisp.

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I suddenly let go, causing her to stumble backwards from the force she was exerting. I take the opportunity to concentrate my energy again and sock her straight in the stomach, getting her back for earlier. I hear her gasp loudly in a choked sort of way. She is so shaken that the vines propelling her off the ground start to tremble.

I swoop down, and fly from vine to vine, pulling all the vines together into a bundle in my arms. Her support now entirely gone, Ms. Truman hangs a short distance below me, flailing around frantically. I propel myself another ten feet in the air, and then I swing all the vines at once in a circle. I then release as she is moving down, sending her flying straight into the icy ground. Her whole body gets buried into the snow by several feet, leaving only the vines visible. They continue squirming helplessly, until burrowing themselves into the snow to ice the burns they got from me holding them.

----------------------------------------

I feel a cool wind running through my hair and coat. I open my eyes and take in a scene entirely different from the one we just left.

There is no cottage at all; we are standing on a flat base of wood, but there are no walls or furniture to speak of. The landscape is dark and snowy, with trees and mountains in the distance, although we appear to be in a clearing with only a few hills. The moonlight shows what appears to be two figures fighting while floating in midair. I recognize one of them as the messed-up Ms. Truman with the vines coming from her head, but I can’t identify the other one at first, although I can make out a lot of fire. The other one grabs all her vines and uses them to slam her hard into the snowbank.

“Hey, who gave her permission to start the ass-kicking without us?” Nova grumbles. “And what’s with that crazy outfit?”

“I think that Ashley went Dark Phoenix on us,” Anja observes.

I look closely at the midair figure… sure enough, it must be Ashley. Now that she is still, I can distinguish her long red hair from the fire. She’s wearing entirely new clothes, which are red and black and make patterns similar to the flames around her.

“Huh, so that little trinket did do something,” Ted comments mysteriously. I don’t know what he means by this, and neither do the others, based on their expressions. Zoe, Nova, Anja, Ruth, Zoe, and Fake Ashley all look puzzled. Wait… there are two Zoes?

“Okay, security check,” Anja says commandingly. “Who’s the real Zoe? Tell me, what is the seventh track from the Twenty…”

“It’s that one,” Ruth says simply, pointing at the Zoe standing next to Nova.

“One P- Oh, right. I forgot you could do that,” Anja says, looking slightly foolish.

The other Zoe blushes. “You brought them here too early,” she says anxiously. “She’s going to be really mad…”

I’m unsure of who she’s talking to, until Fake Ashley replies with, “You worry too much, my sweet.”

The real Zoe blinks, and then starts running towards the on-fire Ashley, and the rest of us follow suit.

Ms. Truman is still stuck in the snow, while Ashley is slowly lowering to the ground, the fire dying away. When she touches the ground again, the color seems to fade away from her armor, and it returns to its usual silver.

“Ashley!” Zoe yelps, leaping towards her. However, Ashley grabs her by her shoulders and pushes her back.

“Don’t you… touch me…” Ashley growls, panting in between words.

“It’s the real one, Ashley! It’s okay!” Anja assures her.

She looks up at the rest of us, having just realized we were here. Then, she sighs with relief, and then wraps Zoe in a big hug.

“Ooh, you’re still warm!” Zoe comments, smiling and snuggling herself into her arms.

“Yeah, you looked pretty hot in that.” Anja says, grinning. Ashley doesn’t react, and instead just continues panting over Zoe’s shoulder, causing Anja to look worried. “Oh no, she didn’t yell at me for making a bad pun… Ashley, are you okay?”

Nova grabs a part of one the vines and yanks it sharply, bringing Ms. Truman back to the surface of the snow, where she crumples to the ground on her stomach. She is sniffling and crying shamelessly, her nose bloody.

“That’s so lame!” Nova complains. “We didn’t even get to fight!”

“Don’t let your guard down!” Ted growls at him. “These people, they do nothing but manipulate… this is all another trick.”

“Wait, Ms. Truman?” Zoe asks, gasping. She releases Ashley and goes up to our English teacher, as if she’s not fully believing it. “ You were the one behind all the vines?”

“Oh, did you guys never… pant… figure it out?” Ashley asks, a hint of smugness back in her voice. “I had that down like four chapters ago.”

“I knew you were in cahoots with the palace owner!” Anja gloats. “Although… admittedly I never put together that you were the palace owner…”

“Well, I long suspected that she was using the blog post to mask her identity,” Ruth says. “As it turns out, part of that identity was her gender.”

“Yeah well, women can be pretty evil too,” Nova comments darkly. “Y’all would know if you met my mother…”

“’Evil’ is right,” Ashley grunts, walking up to Ms. Truman and looking down at her with disgust. “This woman… well, let’s just say… this is not even close to her first attempt at this.”

“Please,” Ms. Truman says weakly in between sniffles. “Don’t… don’t tell…”

Ashley kicks her harshly on the side of the head, causing her to weep loudly and cover her head with both her hands.

“Shut the fuck up,” Ashley says, with such venom that I recoil a little involuntarily. “You’ve tried to rape half of the people standing here. Forget about getting any forgiveness. You better go confess to this, and to molesting that middle school boy, and all the people you abused in college. Or, I can personally see to it that you are burned alive. Your choice.”

“ Middle school boy? ” Anja repeats, looking about equally vicious as Ashley. “I dunno, maybe we should just burn her.”

“If that’s what you choose, I can do the honors,” Ted offers, grasping his hand as if ready to make a fireball come from it.

“No, wait… please…” Ms. Truman pleads. “I promise… I’ll never bother any of you ever again… but you can’t tell…”

“And what about all of our classmates?” Ruth questions relentlessly. “We’re not going to let you go only for you to go after some other kids who can’t defend themselves.”

“I won’t bother them either!” she promises. “I’ll live a clean life…”

“And what about Coach Everheart?” I ask.

The others turn towards me, and Ms. Truman looks up and makes direct eye contact.

“Kevin… I’m so…”

“Don’t you dare talk to him!” Ashley snarls.

“I’m so sorry… You’re such a good boy, Kevin… Please don’t let them… I made a horrible mistake…”

“If you’re really sorry, own up to it!” Anja chastises her. “You deserve to be fired and locked away for all you’ve done.”

“You don’t understand,” Ms. Truman simpers. “They’ll kill me…”

“You think you’ll get the death penalty?” Nova questions. “I know Texas does that way more than other states, but…”

“No… the men who gave me this app,” she explains. The mood around the group changes. Suddenly the others are facing back towards Ms. Truman, listening to her intently.

“They told me… if I use this app, I can bring a student in here, and do whatever I want with them. And in return, I’d have to do some work for them…”

“What work?” Ruth asks sharply.

“I don’t know… I hadn’t gotten it yet. They were going to give me a week to play around with it…”

“And so you started preparing to try it out on Kevin here,” Ruth explains, and I feel a chill run down my spine that has nothing to do with the weather. “And while at Coach Everheart’s work party, you created a temporary e-mail address to make a burner Tumblr account. You posted about your plans, but gender swapped yourself and the victim, and made it sound like you were a coach at the school. You engaged a few blogs in the MAP community to ensure the post would be found. Is this correct?”

“Yes,” Ms. Truman admits. “That idiot, leaving his personal laptop sitting open…”

“So my theory was true,” Ruth confirms, cutting her off. “But there is one thing about it that always bugged me. Why go through that effort at all? Why sound the alarm? Wouldn’t it have been easier to pull off if it were completely unexpected?”

“They already knew,” she says simply. “It was the very day I downloaded that app, and the district knew someone in the school was up to something. At the party, an administrator told us all about it.”

“How did they know that?” Zoe asks, her mouth open with horror.

“It seems like someone in this weird network was on our side,” Ashley says. “And now, you’re going to go tell everyone you faked the post.”

“No!” she pleads. “Didn’t you hear me? They will kill me! ”

“It’s better to die than to live the way you are,” Ashley responds simply.

“No! I’m not letting this happen!” Ms. Truman shouts, defiance finally returning to her voice.

“Dude, Ashley fucked you up all by herself!” Nova taunts. “You really think you’re gonna win against all five… uh, six… how many do we have now?”

Nova’s counting is interrupted by a simultaneous motion that happens all around us. Figures are rising out of the snow… I think of zombies at first, but upon closer inspection they look like normal kids from our school. None of them are dressed for the weather; they’re all dressed like I do when I run every morning. Some of the girls are even in booty shorts. I recognize several of them. There are some of the others from Ashley and I’s English class, a few guys I know from track, and… one of them looks just like me.

The others seem remarkably unphased by their appearance. Ashley scoffs. “What are you all going to do, throw snowballs at us?”

“It’s not them you should be worried about,” Ms. Truman says, getting to her feet. “You didn’t really think I’d go down that easily, right?”

And then, before our eyes, she wraps herself up with her vines so tightly that not an inch of her flesh can be seen. And then, they seem to melt together and crystalize, forming what appears to be a very large cocoon…

“Oh, fuck this!” Anja shouts.

“I thought we were done already!” Zoe says worriedly.

“You will want to stand back,” Ruth advises us. “That cocoon is far larger on the inside.”

“What? Larger on the inside?” I question, terror beginning to well up inside of me.

“Yeah, this is the part where she turns into a horrifying monster,” Nova tells me nonchalantly. “Let’s see how bad it is this time…”

Huge, spindly insect legs emerge from the cocoon, and out comes a monstrously huge, green, insect body with four legs, two bent arms, and a very long and thin thorax. Ms. Truman’s face is horrifyingly imposed over the creatures, with the same blonde hair as her previous form, only now she has larger buggy eyes and antennae coming from her forehead.

“I’d say pretty bad,” I whine, feeling as if I may wet myself.

“Well, she’s still less horrifying than Pavia’s,” Nova explains, still seeming mostly unphased by the transformation. “Although this is freakier than Palmer’s for sure…”

“Save the meta-analysis for later,” Ashley chides him. “For now, we play pest control.”