Revenants & Misdemeanors [Arc 7]

[ARC 7: 21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID MAN]

Atori's illusions hadn't found anything in the tower, and Mia kept Akira from her mind, knowing she would be stronger by the next time he showed. It saddened her that she wouldn't see Aimee again until Christmas, but her relationship lightened with her protege, who she learned had two vulgar traits: her mouth & her level of violence.

In late October, they cornered a man in to an alley, and as streams of fog filled his ears -

- his head exploded like a crimson water balloon, leaving a laughing Mia & Serena.

Mia took her tablet out to scan. "What was it that time?"

"Helium." laughed Serena. "Yuruko said he'd die from oxygen loss, but I guess it was the pressure."

"Apparently." said Mia, and her scarabs showered the two blood-drowned women. "Scan for Revenant, and -"

" - error." stated her tablet.

"It happened again?" said Serena.

"Again." Mia set an ice scarab to clean the gore off the scanner's lens, fire scarab drying their hair & clothes. "There. Another for both of us."

"Sweet." chimed Serena, and the two started out to the street. "Um, what are we at now?"

"After last month, it should be… #29, and you… #63, already." Mia smiled at her.

"The top four are gonna fall behind too, aren't they?"

"Aimee has a large lead built up, but I assume so. Er, speaking of - she was planning to call me tonight, so we should head back, now."

Serena gave a vague gesture in the opposite direction as they passed the corner and Mia laughed. "You're still buying those?"

"I'll split half with you if I win." grinned Serena.

"Then I'll see you back home. Let me know when you're on your way back." chimed Mia, and the two went separate ways.

Serena checked her phone for a local gas station, and put her badge away as she found one a few blocks away.

She checked the conversion rate as she walked: at her current salary, and including the $20,000 she already had, she would have her $50,000 in sixty months. She still hadn't told Mia what she was saving for, though she worried it would be too awkward by now.

Streams of fog flew in to her pocket and jingled it with sudden quarters. She was aware it was illegal to buy or sell anything made with a creation Revenant: she kept careful on when she'd buy tickets.

She stepped off the sidewalk, line of buildings behind, and crossed the road to the gas station across. As she stepped inside, the register was up to her left, aisles of snacks right.

She walked up and gestured to the $1 lottery tickets. "Um - three, please."

The cashier nodded and the two exchanged. "Have a good day, sir."

Serena frowned as she walked out. She was a transgender woman, but even three months at Urasaria hadn't yet given her confidence to correct them.

Stepping out of the glass doors, she came halfway across the lot -

- a scream of terror broke out behind, followed by three gunshots; with the speed of light she turned -

- and saw through the glass doors a man at the register, cashier already dead. With no time to waste, she rushed back up the lot, came quick to the doors, and as she readied to breach through -

- a volley of glass bullets erupted out of the entrance, piercing her chest and hands; the pain staggered her back, and as she swept underneath a second volley -

- the glass projectiles curved in mid-air, burst through her back and out of her chest -

- and flew back in to the door, ensuring an infinite barrage and direct path closed. She rushed right, keeping along the outer wall, fog filling her wounds as she ran to the store's corner; fog drawn, she cut around left -

- and filled a section of the wall with smoke; the portal buckled inward and released the clouds inside, distracting the man as she ran along the back end, cutting around another corner to the back alley.

The back-left corner was up ahead, and as it drew within range -

- a stream of fog filled the wall with water, collapsing a watery entrance. She swept herself inside -

- and there, at the front doors stood her foe, thirty feet separating she and he -

- and she sighed as he turned and ran, fleeing out of the doors and slamming them shut behind. Rushing in pursuit, she came up to the doors -

- which burst in to a hundred glass pellets, shooting towards her and seeking her chest -

- but the next scene was instant.

'Blackburn.'

Blackburn filled her jacket as she turned, and as the projectiles hit her back -

- they wilted uselessly inside, and fell suddenly rigid, her clothing filled with spider silk and far more durable now. With a laugh, she began her chase again out to the lot, her foe running between tanks of petrol ahead; and he hurtled out to the road -

" - Outrun-My-Pellets!" he shouted, and in the next instant -

- a barrage of gasoline pellets hit her jacket, leather taking every hit chest-on; stumbling back, she saw him reach the sidewalk -

- and her blood turned cold as she saw him pull a lighter out his pocket. A flick of his finger lit the flame, and it formed a solid pelle; and as the fiery projectile hit her jacket -

- she laughed as her fog repaired her clothes with new leather, leaving the fiery projectile as useless as the glass had been.

"Hey, pellet-bitch, leather's not flammable!"

And with fog in her cup, she ran out to the road and hurled it forward; the man instinctively caught it, and as the cup turned to pellets -

- he screamed in agony as the dry ice inside burned his fingers black. The agony slumped him against the wall, and as Serena cleared the distance between -

" - let me show you what leather -can- do, though!"

- streams of black fog filled his ears with a rope of leather, and the tether coiled around his brain -

- and as a woman might perform a magic trick, she ripped the rope out of his other ear, crushing his skull and brain taut. His limbs sank, and she knew he was dead.

"…ugh." She sighed, lowering her voice's pitch. Something she hadn't been able to do in a while. "Another one down."

Thinking of Yuruko, she smiled and sent a picture of her handiwork to her. Over the past weeks, she had tried prodding lightly with her, complimenting her lightly enough so as not to reveal her own romantic intentions. None seemed to imprint on Yuruko: a lifetime on the internet had made her mostly consider her own appearance as superfluous. This was a trait Serena envied about her, and with her being a Revenant research student, she was smarter than Serena, too.

Still, Yuruko seemed to ramble on about anything. with her Her rants against online feminists made Serena consider that Yuruko didn't even think of her as female: not because she thought she was transgender, but because she had so little of the traits she despised in other women. Serena still felt it was only a matter of time before she would have to come out to Yuruko or Mia, and she did not enjoy feeling like she was deceiving them by her secrecy.

But, when it came to videogames at 4AM, she enjoyed that they were mostly the same type of person, eating too many cornchips, and sitting at their computers in ways that contorted their spines in to all sorts of unholy positions.

(Yuruko) "did you try the helium?"

(Serena) "yeah, but his head just exploded"

(Yuruko) "lmao that owns"

(Yuruko) "I gotta study for my exam. let's play dota when you get back?"

Serena nodded to herself as she left, forgetting to dissolve the corpse.

The next morning, Mia & her were called in to the Council of Four's office, where Nuiko was assigning contracts as her temporary role of Urasaria's acting student body president. Jeanne was there, too, and after asking Serena to refill her energy drink, explained that a Revenant storage facility guard in Greenstale had recently been arrested for stealing Revenants.

Where they were now, he had refused to say, but there was a second recent occurrence in the area: corpses found sliced in to seven sheets. Nuiko would send more information on their way over, but for now, asked them to pick another pair to come with them. After Mia teased Serena a little about it, she eventually decided on Yuruko & her protege.