Y'all are the best. Love you. Y'all be safe out there. Oh, and Black Lives Matter.
Dr. Ivory Moretti is former GLOW and WWE Superstar Ivory. Just so y'all know.
Chapter 7: Investigations
It took longer than it probably should have for John Cena and Mickie James-Cena to decide how to handle the sleeping teens in their den. John was very eager to separate the two before things got "weird," but Mickie pointed out that awkwardly asking them to get up and have a conversation would be much weirder than just waiting downstairs for them to stir on their own. After much whispered deliberation, Mickie won out, and John and Mickie silently gathered their children and readied their dinner.
It took Dean much less time to come around than his blonde companion. Gathering his shoes, intending to make an appearance at his dad's house before going to bed. Instead, his attention was wrangled by a loud cough from the Cena kitchen and a deep, firm voice beckoning.
"Dean, come in here for a second, I need to talk to you."
Fearing a chastising from John, Ambrose briefly considered making a run for the door and freedom, but Alexa would still be there, and he didn't want to show a cowardly streak right after finally breaking through.
"Okay," Dean responded. Traipsing cautiously into the kitchen, Ambrose took a seat across from Alexa's guardians, noticing that they didn't seem as angry as he thought they might've.
"You hungry?" Mickie began, trying to break the ice.
Dean shook his head in the negative, still unsure of what was about to befall him. He simply didn't know John or Mickie well enough to ascertain any hints from their demeanor. "I will take a soda if you have them."
John nodded. "I got Pepsi One. That okay?"
Ambrose grinned. "Yeah. I love that stuff."
Mickie rose from her chair to procure beverages from the refrigerator, hopeful that John wouldn't embarrass her or Alexa before she could sit down. As Mickie handed out beverages, the gorgeous waif who'd been asleep upstairs came closing down the stairs clumsily, not yet fully awake.
"Hey everyone," Alexa mumbled sleepily, her trusty puppy following her down the steps, wagging her tail and panting lightly at the light exertion.
"Lexi! Come sit with us. We have a few things we need to discuss," Mickie called brightly, doing her best not to make it sound as though she were irritated.
"Okay," Alexa responded hesitantly, before opening the fridge and choosing a Pepsi One of her own. Turning, she took a cautious seat next to Dean, lightly sliding her hand to his knee.
"So, first, John and I know that we aren't your parents, and we're still a little unclear as to how all this works with a teenager in our house, but we would like to set a few ground rules in terms of what you and Dean are and aren't encouraged to do here in the house."
Alexa tried not to betray how mortified she was to have any version of "the talk" with the aunt who'd become like a big sister to her.
John, clearly uncomfortable with this situation, chimed in. "Don't worry. We aren't gonna yell or act like jerks. And, for the record, how you were situated when we came home was completely acceptable. We'd just like for you to keep it that way under our roof. If you want to take naps together, I can't really object to that, especially since Alexa seems to sleep so well with you around, Dean. Just… one of you needs to be above any blanket that might be involved. You both need to be fully clothed. Maybe not how you'd dress for school, but if you were going to the beach or something. Fair?"
Dean nodded, while Alexa was so embarrassed she contemplated checking herself back in to the psychiatric care center. Finally, she opened her eyes long enough to see that everyone else was waiting for her to respond. "That's fine. Anything else?"
Mickie, understanding how ridiculous this seemed to Alexa, slid a hand over her niece's manicured fingers to try to comfort her. "Just be smart, okay? You're both bright kids with a lot to lose if you don't make good decisions." She turned toward Dean, while keeping her hand where it was, feeling Alexa start to relax.
"Dean, I like you. I know your dad from the restaurant and your stepmom from the salon. They're wonderful people. I'm trusting you with a lot. My sister thought enough of me to put in writing that I was to take care of her children if something happened to her. If I let Alexa get knocked up or if she gets so distracted her grades slip, then I've failed my older sister. I'm not gonna do that. Be smart, be honest with us, and keep being good to my sister's daughter. Okay?"
Dean nodded again, this time much more resolutely. "I understand."
Alexa hid her face in her hands, still in shock that this conversation was happening right in front of her. "Ohmigod, can we not talk about me getting pregnant please?"
John did his best not to grin at his niece's discomfort. His own parents had gone out of their way to playfully embarrass him in front of his friends in high school, and there was a part of him that felt like it was an important part of Alexa's adolescent experience to do the same to her.
Deciding that this was enough agony for Alexa for one sitting, Mickie elbowed John to remind him to move on to their second point.
"So, tell me more about what happened earlier."
Before Dean could even gather his thoughts, the tiny blonde to his right launched into her version of what happened. She emphasized the hooded nature of the prowler, and how quickly he'd made for the woods after being spotted. John looked like he might interrupt to ask questions a few times during her would-be deposition, but instead allowed her to recount the story in the manner she saw fit without interrupting her a single time.
Finally, the cheerleader arrived at the part where Dean had gone outside to potentially confront her "peeping Tom," where Dean was surprised to hear her recount the tale without breaking down even once. When she finished, she took a deep, satisfying breath and slumped back in her chair. John, having not heard a lot of this rendition before, reflected briefly on Alexa's tale, before a single inquiry ran through his head.
"You said there was a picture from your house in Ohio?"
Alexa nodded firmly. "Yeah. Dean has it. It's of my family from when I was just a real little girl."
John's eyebrows raised in curiosity. "Really? Can I see it?"
Dean nodded this time, sliding the photo across the table to the broad-shouldered Deputy. Cena studied the photograph carefully, before something hit him from earlier in the week.
"This symbol on all your shirts. Do you know what that is?"
Alexa shook her head, puzzled as to why that would be important.
"Well," Cena continued, his eyes still locked on the picture, "this symbol looks an awful lot like one that was drawn in blood on the back windshield of James Ellsworth's car." Cena sighed deeply. "That doesn't leave this room. No one needs to know that."
Dean and Alexa nodded, almost in unison. Slowly standing, John Cena had a slight pang of dread in the pit of his stomach. If these attacks were somehow connected to whatever had happened that tragic night in Ohio, then every bit of information the Sheriff's Department thought they had on these killings would be effectively rendered useless.
The rest of that week went on in as normal a fashion as could be expected in the middle of what could be considered a killing spree. Alexa and Dean were now effectively Blue River High's "it couple," and Bayley and Dana enjoyed following them around giggling and observing all the cute little interactions between the pair.
Adding to Ambrose's list of concerns was that week's football game against perennial powerhouse Lakeview High. As highly funded and well coached as the Blue River program was, Lakeview was another animal entirely. Boasting a senior class with seventeen players signed to division one colleges the next year, Lakeview was the school every other institution in the great state of Georgia wanted to be.
Sitting in a cavernous, dank room in the gymnasium complex, Dean did his best to pay attention to the complex offensive schemes his coaches were trying to educate his teammates about, all the while going over a setlist for the Harvest Fair in his head and where he might take Alexa for dinner before the Homecoming dance.
He was dragged back into the conversation by the irritated voice of his coach, who'd noticed the mental absence on Ambrose's face.
"Hey! Dean!"
"Yeah Coach?" Ambrose barked in return, clearly agitated by the interruption.
"You wanna pay attention to what we're doing here?"
Dean snickered. Coach Anderson had walked right into this one. "I mean, not really, but if we're both already here I might as well, right?"
Anderson rolled his eyes, unwilling to give Dean the response he was clearly looking for. Instead, he turned his focus back to the large video screen, which continued to display the superiority of firepower that was the Lakewood Lancers offense.
The strategy going into that week's game was very simple; the Lakewood offense was too talented to stop. The Raiders knew they might get lucky and get one or two plays on third down, but asking these kids to consistently go toe to toe with a group of athletes as gifted as the ones coming to Blue River this Friday night was borderline irresponsible. After spending the weekend strategizing and taking stock in what they had at each position group, the Blue River coaching staff had determined that the best way to defeat the Lakewood offense was to keep them on the sidelines.
To do that, the Raiders would need to hold the ball, using their own talented offensive personnel to kill clock and move slowly down the field, accumulating first downs and freezing out the Lancers.
"Look here," came the gravelly, authoritative voice of running backs Coach Booker Huffman. Huffman, known affectionately by his peers as "Booker T," was smack dab in the middle of a hall of fame coaching career after what had been a moderately successful professional football career. He'd achieved some degree of additional notoriety for often appearing on highlight shows by performing his patented "spinarooni" end zone dance.
"Look here, y'all," Booker continued, every eye in the room locked on to him, "we're gonna use every running back we got this week. Crews, Otunga, Lashley, Alexander, Woods. All you guys. We're gonna rotate every few plays, and we're gonna stick this fuckin' ball right down their fuckin' throat." The coach paused for a moment, letting the chuckles swell and then die down almost in unison. "That's the only way we're gonna get past them. Y'all be ready for a fistfight, ya dig?"
Just about every Raider nodded their heads resolutely. With that, the team rose as one, reflecting on what their coaching staff had repeated to them. Before they could leave for practice, however, defensive line coach Steve Huffman interjected his booming voice into the proceedings.
"Look here, men. Defense, our goal is 'no mistakes.' They might kick our ass on that side of the ball, but they earn every yard. You feel me?"
"Yeah," came the responses from around the room.
"We hit them hard early, and they might fold up. No one's really punched these guys in the mouth in three years. Ambrose?"
"Yeah?" The shaggy linebacker replied, unsure why he was being singled out.
"Don't actually punch anyone, you clinically insane motherfucker…"
The room broke out into laughter again. "No guarantees, coach," came Ambrose's sarcastic reply.
As the team filed out, their well-worn practice jerseys still reflecting the overhead light, Ambrose smirked to himself. This week's game would be the biggest test he'd faced as an athlete, but he couldn't have known then that Friday night would be memorable for many other reasons…
John Cena was stumped. Staring down at his desk, the pair of photos laid out before him made almost no sense. From the naked eye, it appeared that the symbol on the Bliss' matching shirts was the exact same as the one the anonymous killer had crudely painted in blood on James Ellsworth's rear windshield.
"This can't possibly be connected, can it?" Cena mused to himself, unwilling to allow his mind to follow that train of thought. Her having an intrusion into her life in Georgia that carried over from Ohio would vastly and irreparably change the course of their investigation. Considering for a moment that it could be a coincidence, the next step to cracking what was unfolding in Blue River was to find out what that mystery symbol meant.
His contact in the Atlanta Police Gang Unit had already gotten back to him, confirming that the symbol found on the Ellsworth vehicle carried no significance in that world. To John's knowledge, the symbol wasn't a letter in any latin based language.
"Hmm," muttered the perplexed detective. "I know it isn't English, Spanish, Latin, Italian, French, or German." Continuing to speak to himself, Cena allowed his deductive reasoning to process internally. "This could be Cyrillic or Arabic of some kind."
There wasn't a reason that John could figure why the entire Bliss family would be wearing shirts with a Cyrillic or Arabic symbol on them, but it would be worth ruling out any linguistic meanings where the symbol was concerned.
"There's only one person I know who would know if this was an Eastern language," Cena thought to himself. And it was true. The University of Georgia was an hour's drive to the east, and there was a professor there that John trusted implicitly to keep the details of his investigation quiet.
Grabbing his car keys from his massive metal desk, Cena glanced over at his partner.
"Michelle, I'm gonna take off for a minute. I'm gonna go home from there, but I'll see you first thing tomorrow for our briefing with the Mizanins."
McCool nodded, though she seemed taken aback by his sudden exit. "Need a travel companion?"
Cena shook his head. "Nah, you go on home. You got a baby I'm sure is missing his mom."
Michelle grinned. "Yeah, that's true. Okay. I'll see you in the morning. Want me to bring you a coffee?"
Cena nodded. "Yeah. The usual."
The attractive detective nodded her response. "You got it. See ya."
Cena acknowledged her with a halfhearted wave, before taking his long strides out to his personal vehicle.
The ride from Blue River to Athens was one John Cena had made more than a few times. In fact, the back roads from one idyllic suburban destination to the other made for a familiar, welcome reprieve from the hectic nature of John's recent day to day.
Which, as it often did, meant that in John's mind the drive wasn't nearly long enough. Stopping only briefly to update his wife on his whereabouts and that he hoped to be home in time for dinner, Deputy Cena took advantage of his Police privilege and parked directly in front of the building he was destined for. Flashing a badge at the University parking monitor, Cena threw open the glass double doors and hurriedly traversed the multiple flights of stairs to his destination.
"You get my message?" Cena asked the professorial woman with her back to the door.
"Deputy Cena," the woman's voice called in recognition. Turning, her gray-streaked chestnut mane shook about her head, her designer glasses catching the overhead light and reflecting brightly.
"Doctor Moretti," John responded, an air of familiar affection in his voice.
"What can I do you for, Deputy?" The energetic woman asked, her enthusiasm for her subject matter clearly radiating through her effervescent nature.
"Well, Doctor-"
"Ivory," the older woman corrected him. "I've told you this several times before. Doctor Moretti was my mother."
"Okay, Ivory," John redirected, "I've found this symbol on two separate crime scenes now. I know you're one of the world's leading experts on symbology and ancient languages, and as far-fetched as it seems, I don't want to leave any stones unturned, and you did such good work with us last year on that thing with the old Native American stuff on the Condrey Farm-"
Ivory cut him off with a hand wave. "I gotcha. It's no problem. I love this kind of stuff." The professor extended her hand, meaning for John to give her the evidence she was supposed to be examining.
"You can't talk about this at all. One of these pictures is of an actual murder scene."
Moretti nodded. "I know the drill, detective. Your secret is safe with me."
Cena raised his brow and stared down at the pictures he had on him, as though he was considering the consequences of what he was handing the professor. "Okay. Here you go."
Moretti checked out the Bliss family photo first. "Cute family. Matching shirts."
Cena snickered. "Can you tell me anything about the symbol on their shirts?"
Moretti squinted, before crossing the large lab classroom and procuring a magnifying glass from a closet. "Let's see," she mumbled, her train of thought now speeding from the station. "Not Greek or Roman. It could be Aramaic, I guess, but it wouldn't match any letter I've ever seen. Hmm," she continued. Looking up at Deputy Cena, Moretti inhaled deeply. "Is the other picture of the same symbol?"
Cena nodded. "Yep."
"Well, shit," Moretti spat, exasperated by her lack of recognition. "You know, I have several graduate assistants who would love to take a crack at something like this. If this means anything, and if there's any connection, one of these kids will find it. They're all brilliant."
Cena considered this notion. If this evidence leaked anywhere, it would put his job and his investigation into these murders in jeopardy. On the other hand, John was shit out of luck, and he could use some input from experts.
"Sure," he acquiesced. "Just make sure they keep it quiet. Nothing leaves this room. This is an ongoing investigation."
Dr. Moretti nodded solemnly. "Absolutely. No one sees this but my grad assistants. And I'll call you the minute they find something."
"Great. Thank you," Cena fired back.
"Anything else?" Moretti asked.
The Deputy shook his head in the negative. "Nah. Not unless you can give me tonight's winning Powerball numbers."
Moretti grinned. "If I had them, I'd keep them for myself."
Both adults laughed, as adults often do at jokes that they make that aren't really funny. After a few more pleasantries, Deputy Cena bid the professor a cordial farewell and returned to his vehicle, anxious to get home to his family…
Far across town, away from the toils of the Blue River football practice field, or ongoing murder investigations, Sasha Banks and Adam Page were doing what so many high schoolers do on a daily basis; testing the limits of their physical relationship.
"Mmmmm, Sasha, that's really great," Adam moaned as Sasha's magenta-hued head bobed up and down in his lap. The two were enjoying a rare weekday rendezvous, splayed out on a blanket in Adam's backyard, which overlooked a vastly different section of Lake Lanier than what Sasha was used to.
"I'm glad you like it," Sasha lilted, briefly disengaging with her task to speak briefly. Giggling haughtily, she returned to her prior ministrations, enjoying the feel of Adam fidgeting with pleasure beneath her.
"Fuck babe, I'm almost there," he rasped, the euphoria building up within him. After just a few more seconds, Page's body became overwhelmed with release, a loud final grunt of complete satisfaction unearthing from deep inside his core. Allowing her man a moment to relax before removing her lips, Sasha finally raised her head, swallowing resolutely and wiping her lips with her thumb.
"That was really hot, babe," she finally muttered softly, repositioning her body to rest her head on his shoulder, laying on her side along him.
"You're telling me," the young man responded, a half smile creasing his mouth.
Popping a piece of minty gum into her own mouth, Sasha chuckled and nuzzled her cheek against Adam's muscular chest.
"You never gave me an answert about Homecoming," she cooed, fully expecting Adam to now be putty in her hands.
"Sasha, I told you I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to get off of work."
This time, Sasha let out a guttural sound expressing her objection to that response. "Uggggggh, excuse me? You'd rather work than take this-" she ran a hand up and down her body, as though she were a game show model showing off a prize, "to Homecoming, where I'll be sporting a thousand dollar formal dress?"
Adam Cole's eyebrows raised in a mix of curiosity and shock. "You're spending a thousand dollars on a dress for a high school dance? The hell would you do that for? You know you could spend five hundred, get a really nice dress, and we could get a sweet hotel room with the rest, right?"
Sasha raised her eyes in curiosity. "You want to get a hotel room after Homecoming?"
Page snickered, pulling his baseball hat down a bit more snugly on his head. "Of course I do. Aren't you tired of foolin' around outside, or in movie theaters? Neither of our parents will let us spend time in our bedroom alone. It makes sense."
Sasha considered this a moment. "Fine. But you better find a sweet-ass room for that kind of money!"
"I will," Page drawled, his Virginia lilt betraying his good nature.
"Good," Sasha returned haughtily. With that, the pair began straightening their clothing, making sure they were presentable for dinner with Adam's parents. What neither of them could see, at that particular moment, was a figure, clothed entirely in black, watching them from the thick woods some thirty yards away…