Bad Choices (Hypernaturals 8)

Marvin Status Report

It has been a few weeks, and a few followup calls with Victoria and Denise about the investigation in Galveston. Denise takes every opportunity to chew me out in front of Victoria about this whole thing. It does not matter that we are all on the speakerphone on our end, Denise manages to get in a comment or two about how dumb I am.

Morgan asked one time "Denise: Why am I not equally unintelligent?"

"Because sister: You are not the one I need to have become smarter." Denise told her.

"I do not think genetics works that way. Helen has been telling Adrian he is a dumbass for years, to no avail." Jessica pointed out.

"Bloody right." Helen agreed.

"Nothing to lose. Might as well try. If nothing else, when the time comes again, he will not be that stupid with me. Leaving me out... Idiot!"

It was a very careful fan dance around why Denise might care about the intelligence of me in particular. A conversation on two levels.

Victoria found that entire series of comments amusing.

That entire warehouse event is staying solidly a mystery for local Arson and the FBI.

'Crew Goo' is a trade secret.

Victoria routinely asks after Marvin, and that is probably her being a little bit nervous about him not being on Parole. She broke ancient tradition with that move, so her ass is out there in the breeze. He is surrounded though, so we will never let anything happen that would endanger him or her. Victoria is right about one thing: You put someone in the middle of our family, and you are engaged twenty-four seven. No time to get into trouble.

Most of us are sitting at the big family table, other than Nakoma, who is doing homework upstairs and Diana, who is with her because those two are peas in a pod.

Diana went from being the oldest sister to not, and it is interesting how she utterly accepted that change in the birth order without a moment's pause. Diana likes being Nakoma's sibling though: there is no doubt. I only hope Nakoma does not tire of having her little shadow.

Laura and Rachel Helena are sitting in Helen and Morgan's laps, eating things off their plates. Rachel (Home again) is next to her namesake, watching her, smiling, and suggesting things to try.

Marvin's hair is over half an inch long, and the color of Morgan's. His chin has less crepe, and rather than looking mid-sixties, he is now beginning to appear to be early fifties, give or take. His physical strength is improving, and of course, his Doctor has him on every 'baby Vampire' supplement known to her.

To cure cancer, all you have to do is change species. I am not sure that will be a correct use of species though, if Mom and Jessica figure out how to make Vampires and humans inter-fertile.

Mom and Jessica take weekly blood samples and measure everything they can with the lab they have. All of Marvin's medical data is stored using encryption, and Morgan and I are watching all the current technology to be sure that if something better comes along, we move everything to it. The passphrase is complete nonsense as well.

Marvin is not changing at the same rate or in the same order I did, but that is to be expected. For one thing, we forced this on his DNA. For another, he started at a different human age than I did. For another, he has not been as traumatized at an early Vampire age as I was. No one slammed him with a car, or beat him with a stick while hanging upside down. I got new fangs earlier because I had teeth to replace and my body said 'What the hell: Might as well lay those in now: Rebuilding everything else around here.'.

Marvin is getting a smoother and slower transition. Lucky.

We have no idea which version of the Vampirophage or whatever they are is correctly technically called that is working on the re-write inside Marvin. If it is mine, then I assume he will be like me or Morgan. Since he was exposed to Helen, Jessica, and Skye at the same time, could be any of theirs as well.

We assume that the Helen / Jessica / Adrian / Morgan line is similar. Skye's Vampire line came from some unknown someone else. We have no idea who they were. If we did, they might be up on rape charges, but given the Vampire community, rape charges are judged by Council and sentences are enforced by Crew.

I wonder if the person that turned Skye was brand new as a Vampire. Maybe even unknown to the community, the same way that Dona Marquez was down in Mexico before we pulled her out of the drug trade. Some poor guy unable to control himself and perhaps not even aware of what he had become.

Skye has no idea. All she knows is that as a young mother she was seduced, had sex with, and was bitten by a male Vampire. A thing her very loyal and faithful self would NEVER have done without male Vampire pheromones taking away her ability to resist him.

We have no idea who bit the male that bit Skye, so that Vampirophage line is utterly unknown, other than we know Skye is a standard-issue, full power female Vampire. Not Jessica strong, but right on up there.

There is variability inside of Vampiredom that we do not know how to account for. Helen gave rise to Jessica, and Jessica is physically more powerful than any other female Vampire we know of, in the sense that she can deadlift more weight that Helen, Skye, or Rachel. The only easily available Female Vamps to test this with. It is a larger difference than can merely be assigned to the fact that Jessica is physically larger and weighs more than any of them.

That Morgan and I are mutants is completely obvious, and we descend from Jessica. Marvin was hit by ALL of those lines, other than Rachel. Mom and Jessica are looking at some new human work being done to remove typing from blood so that she can donate too, in the future. That will add ever more variables. Rachel's line is from the 1200s.

No matter how Marvin came to be created, and no matter which line dominates inside him, if ANY do, he seems like Marvin. No blood lust. No need to run up and down Dirty 6th on Friday night seducing drunk college girls stumbling out of the bars that line that street.

I wonder whether having a lover when turning is important. In the Nature vs Nurture discussion, does it matter that as your DNA is re-written into making you an apex predator that uses sex as a primary weapon if you are not experiencing any sexual needs? A sticky conversation to be sure: a human male is expected to keep it under control except and only as they are invited to NOT to.

What happens when one is flooded with youth and hormones and all the related needs, AND the ability to do something about all of them. What happens especially in some cultures that do not do a great job teaching men to be responsible for themselves? The 'Boys will be boys' attitude.

I was brought up to respect women, but I know many men are not. Now they are suddenly worse? They never respected women and now their brian is melting down? Are two years enough to teach guys like that how to get themselves under control? Then there is what just happened. We flat out killed fifty-seven men that indulged their basest, most evil desires because the only attempt they made at controlling that evil was hiding it. If ANY of those kinds of people turned, I am all for termination on the spot. I'll cry about it later, as we did, and apparently even seasoned killers like Denise do.

I do not have answers to any of this. I just wish and hope that, if given time, more men than are allowed to COULD learn to keep a lid on it.

I am a hypersensitive Vampire. I know Marvin and Skye are very active with each other. I would say that must be weird for Morgan, but she is under no illusions about that. When she found her mother it was because her mom was sneaking into the house for some loving.

Jessica had been there for me in this way at this point in my turn. If I have any fame across Vampiredom other than being the Siren Liaison, it is how fast I got off parole because I was never an aggressive male Vampire.

When would I have had the time? Jessica teased me all that time back then, calling me 'EverReady', but so was she. She may have had different reasons for being ready, but she was, and so I never had a chance or was even remotely interested in anyone else. That does not even count Helen appearing unexpectedly in my love life.

Assuming Marvin never becomes the prototypical overly aggressive male Vampire, we'll not be able to figure that out from this one data point if it was my mutant line or Skye's love that made the difference.

This is important to know because mom is thinking about herself and Dad. Getting Mom over should be easy, but we need to be sure that if we induce the change in Dad, that he is my variety of male Vampire. Not a Tommy. Not a sexual predator of any kind. Just a young Dad. With fangs maybe: Morgan really wishes she had some.