I Command This Particular Solar Beam To Be Really, Really Hot! [Arc 24]

[ARC 24: SPLITTING UP AT THE BORDER]

In the course of the strange shared affair which we call life, there are occasions where we must suppress the more frayed parts of ourselves for a while. One must be careful in doing so for too long, for reality will always exert itself upon us, even if it must use the slow but ever-working fingers of time to do so.

In the past year, charity or contract work as useful for Rochelle Beasley, for it was hypnotic, monotonous, and sublimating. She was the smartest daughter of her family, and compared to her two younger sisters, was simply beyond them in all intellectual aspects. It seemed the Beasley parents had spent their entire pool of luck on their host of a daughter, for she had not only become the highest-ranked Black student but a minor celebrity herself.

The middle Beasley sister was Asia. She was 20, and had recently become pregnant with a fetus she refused to abort, to a man who had abandoned her shortly before he was arrested up in North Carolina. Yet she displayed nothing but fondness in her memories of him, and she would demand that Rochelle somehow bring him back to Florida; just as in their childhood, she had asked her host sister to help her exact vengeance on many other ex-boyfriends.

Rochelle wished she didn't have such an unlucky hand with men. She felt rather blessed herself, as she had still been dating Tiffany around this time, a woman who seemed an avatar of feminine beauty. Yet she had not brought Tiffany with her for this visit to her family, late in her second year.

[The Raven characterization should go at the beach scene to underscore how fucked she is due to her sister's selfishness.]

"Rochelle, baby, when's your next magazine cover? You're looking awfully thin."

"Same weight I usually am, mom. I been working lately." muttered Rochelle.

"Well, you need to keep up your energy. Lemme fetch you some more to eat." Their mother picked up Rochelle's plate and left. Rochelle turned to Raven, and asked if she was alright, along with if there was any legal way she could help her recent relationship troubles.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I guess. Just a little shook." said Raven.

"Man, men are fucking pigs." muttered Asia. "Damn, Rochelle, you're lucky you're a lesbian."

"Hey, you're still dating that white girl, right? What's her name?"

"Tiffany." said Rochelle. She had some difficulty finding a non-nude photo of her saved to her phone, then eventually showed her social media profile picture. "I didn't bring her 'cause of how dad gets with her."

"Yeah, I feel that. She's your apprentice or something, ain't she?"

"That just makes it hotter." said Asia. "Hey, what happened with that chick with white hair? You still talking with her?"

"Yeah. She's dating somebody else, though."

"Damn, that sucks. Well, hey, from what you showed me of her, you hit the jackpot instead. She is *fine*."

As they spoke, Rochelle discreetly scrolled through more nude photos and other smut saved to her phone, just as she assumed every other lesbian did in these situations. She wondered what it would be like to have a penis and fuck Tiffany hard up the ass, or dip her balls in her mouth and cum on her face. She preferred straight material to lesbian; the latter was too inaccurate, and there was something distancing, aggressive about the former that Rochelle liked.

"Hey, Rochelle, that's what you should do."

Rochelle looked up. "What?"

"You know, now that you're 3-star you can get away with shit, right?"

"If you need me to steal something, I'm cool with that, but none of that other shit. I don't like using it on other people's personal business." said Rochelle. "You keep forgetting I got an image to keep. People make opinions about black people based off of me."

"Damn, Rochelle, you don't feel any responsibility for your family? I know you've always had a stiff back about it, but you gotta straighten it up sometime."

Rochelle's mouth stiffened. Few understood Rochelle's attitude towards her fame, and as she was reticent to discuss her emotions, these conversations usually petered out in nonverbal dismissals like this.

Despite the demands made of her, Rochelle's home remained a home for her; it acted as a museum of herself and a refuge from her present relationship with Tiffany. These familial memories were not only triggered directly, but in every sense or object which evoked them, and as Rochelle was a thoughtful woman, she found little more interesting to plumb than the past.

Early in her second year, she remembered having awoken on Tiffany's & her's first morning-afters. In the kitchen, she could hear Tiffany on the phone: "Well, it's not like I ever got any support from you. So what if I'm... Oh yeah? You can go eat shit for all I care. Fuck you!"

Rochelle waited before going to the kitchen. Tiffany was sitting on the counter and told Rochelle good morning, and as Rochelle poured herself some orange juice, Tiffany jumped on her back and started kissing her neck. "Hiii, babe."

"Hey." Rochelle went to put the orange juice back in the fridge. "Want any?"

"Sure. You mind if I just drink it from the carton?"

Rochelle shrugged and gave it to her. "I guess it can't be any worse than having my tongue inside you."

"Yeah, exactly." Tiffany slid off of her, rubbing herself against Rochelle as she drank. "Mm. So, in a little bit, do you wanna go again, or... I could really use some right now."

"Sounds good to me."

Tiffany smiled, stamping her feet on the ground. "Yay."

This childishness tended to carry over into other domains, as Rochelle later learned. When stressed Tiffany would often sit by herself and refuse to speak to Rochelle, and watch children's cartoons as if a retreat to somewhere far from here. She soon became Rochelle's defacto manager of her minor celebrity gained from being a Black Urasaria student, and would promote her on social media, staging romantic skits between the two, comedic bits of their Revenants or embellished vlogs of their contracts.

With celebrity came the natural imbuement of authority into Rochelle's words, no matter the topic. The appellation she received was one she had always hesitantly accepted; it was more because she had felt it would be socially good to do so rather than enjoyment of the unnatural tint of life as a celebrity. She would frequently be approached when she was out near Urasaria; a woman once has asked her to examine her breasts for lumps she thought was indicative of a Revenant; underage lesbians would giggle, and call her sexy in front of Tiffany, who throughout was usually ignored.

When she would shop for groceries, she would bag them herself, only to have the cashier look up at her and realize: "Oh shi- you're Screwball! Rochelle something, right?"

"Yeah man, that's me."

"Wow. I just assumed, you know, you must buy groceries from some place really upscale, or get one of your maids or something to do it."

"Is she some kind of celebrity?" said a white woman behind Rochelle in line.

"Yeah, she's... I mean, you're some high-ranked student, right? My girlfriend loves you."

"Highest ranked... Black student, yeah."

The white woman shoved a notepad at Rochelle. "Can I get your autograph?"

Rochelle smiled and signed it incorrectly.

She's obviously quite attractive & muscular, which you surely would agree with, looking her up. Yet she felt there was no real reason for all of it, lest those with such miserable lives that they must latch on to more fully-formed persons. They needed to fill themselves with something, or stop feeling their own life in some way, which one supposes is better than addiction.

That would bring her back in a way to her girlfriend Tiffany, who over the months she had began suspecting possessed an internal life resembling the play *Waiting for Godot*. She moved through the same topics daily and varied only in her satisfaction level, usually tethered to whether Rochelle had interviews & travel opportunities, what celebrity they might run into. Many times, she would attempt to involve Tiffany in a topic beyond daily ruminant; rarely did it lead to anything.

Besides Tiffany, Rochelle often made appearances with Shea Ruby. Shea was a black lesbian musician who came to fame after her hit album "Can't Buy Me Love" and ability to project wealth as an everydyke. Years later, her music sales would wane and she would file for bankruptcy, no doubt hastened by her fiscal irresponsibility that left her no better than if she had never made it at all.

If mostly because her & Tiffany were friends, Rochelle preferred her, and she never felt Shea disdained her for dating a white woman. Perhaps she couldn't help but read that into other influencers due to her father's view of Tiffany, and herself as a self-loathing Black. They usually met up before autograph signings in a backroom.

"You two are lookin' gorgeous, just gorgeous, come in. What've you been up to lately?"

"Hey, what happened to Divina?" said Rochelle. "Wasn't she supposed to be here?"

"Nah, didn't you hear? People dug up a bunch of her old tweets and a bunch of her sponsors dropped her."

"Yikes." said Tiffany.

"Tough break." said Rochelle.

"I mean, this business kills people like the Black Plague. Damn, she was about to get some gig on that show Fastwood High. You two seen that?"

"No, I haven't." said Rochelle.

"I have!" said Tiffany. "It's *sooo* good, I keep trying to get Rochelle to watch it, but she just isn't in to stuff like that."

"Aww, what? Girl, you gotta. You know, I love shows like that. They've got this real nice message about how everybody gotta love everybody, you know? It's original stuff."

"Maybe I'll check it out." said Rochelle.

"And how everybody can succeed, you just gotta work hard." said Tiffany.

Shea nodded. "So, you got any weird stories of fans? Man, I had somebody comin' up to me the other day to try to pitch me in some horror movie they're writing, one where I'd be playing a student."

"A protagonist?" said Rochelle.

"What's that?"

"A hero."

"Oh, nah, they wanted me to play the bad bitch. A villain, like somebody who goes around killing people."

"Well, that's awfully nice." sneered Tiffany. "Some people just hate students."

"Yeah, that's why I turned it down. But, I mean, if you think about it, ain't you two kinda like, *somebody's* villains or whatever? That's kinda deep, or something. But damn, yeah, I gotta be careful around some of these people, they got messed up heads. You two ain't got nothing to worry about unless they're a host or somethin', but today they love you, tomorrow they wanna stab you."

Someone dipped their head in the room. "Ruby, five minutes."

"Okay, let's get set up."

As the two left the room, Rochelle saw out the window a bus passing through an intersection. Soon it disappeared into the end of day, and for a moment she wished it was her leaving into it.

"Hey, my name's Babydoll, I'm a lesbian musician and -- we gotta look out for each other, you know? I brought my mixtape here, it's straight -- no, it's *gay* fire." She handed it to Rochelle. "S-So, can you get your label to look at it for me? Please? Seriously, I love your music, girl, I'm a huge fan."

Another fan came up, who was holding a violin and looked like a typical classical musician (an escaped Hungarian). "I wrote this song about you, Ms. Screwball." She played for 2-3 minutes: it was quite a good performance, and Tiffany enjoyed it, though at the end she asked what exactly had made it specific to her and Rochelle. Rochelle said that she understood and would explain it to Tiffany, though privately she felt odd the whole performance as the violinist left with an autograph etched in her instrument.

"I made brownies for you." Another fan handed them to Rochelle.

"You mean for us?" Tiffany looked over them. "Are they special brownies? You know those don't affect us, right?"

"Hey, you'd have to put ten times the normal amount in it." Rochelle smiled. "Thanks."

Throughout the day they continued to give gifts, have autographs signed, make requests of Rochelle's legal immunity she declined: all directed for Rochelle. Sometimes this would agitate Tiffany to where afterwards, as Rochelle finished the final autographs and spoke with a few fans, she would look over and see Tiffany sidled against a wall, clasping half of her face. Had Rochelle ever seen the film Repulsion, the scene where Catherine Deneuve hallucinates a hallway of groping male hands would have aptly metaphorized how Tiffany sometimes moved.

Her attitude towards sex, and openness about it, seemed to confirm such suspicions for Rochelle; yet she never quite knew what may have happened. But after a while, she preferred to just not deal with the minor outbreaks she would have. It was not that she once had, either; she seemed almost predisposed to not care, yet whenever she would think of why, she could conjure no reason. She felt that there had to have been a reason why she felt the way she had with Tiffany, or an origin of their former closeness, but she could not discern it. Relationships, since her first year, had often felt an act to her, as if she was attempting to track the score of a game whose rules were only contained in another's mind.

Whenever she needed to do so, she would return to her family and stay with them for a few weeks. On the weekends the family, along with Asia's child, would visit the beach and Rochelle would go out to the water as Asia sunbathed and Raven watched over the baby. Rochelle would return to them and feel the sea in her lack-of-hair, and enjoy the recognition of whatever waxed, beautiful lesbians happened to pass by her. They reminded her of Tiffany and the sex they had, though she was beginning to feel ashamed whenever they had it.

It was a sex that was always vulgar, rough, yet pleasurable. In a typical week the two would fuck every day, interspersed with Rochelle's usual groping or fingering of Tiffany, sometimes publicly.

On the night prior, she had Tiffany sitting on her lap and was repeatedly smacking her ass, as Tiffany's labia & clitoris rubbed against Rochelle's stomach and covered it in her juices.

Her back was thick with scratches from Twinfast's claws, and her breasts a bit bruised. (Host & host sex is typically this rough, and some is left unsaid here so as not to corrupt you, innocent civilian.) Tiffany would beg her to be even rougher and harder, until her moans would become loud enough even she felt embarrassed by them.

Then she would slow down, and kiss Rochelle more intimately. Rochelle would continue to finger her and claw down her back as Tiffany kisses her neck, running her fingers across her. It would continue for a minute or so, yet it would shrivel Rochelle and cause her body to tense, until Tiffany would roll off of her and masturbate alone.

Presently she asked Raven how the baby was doing.

"Oh, he's good. He loves the sun. Isn't he just the cutest?"

"He's a cutie." Rochelle ruffled his lack-of-hair. "Gonna get a lot of girls when he grows up. Or guys."

"Yeah, mom didn't like him at first, but she's coming around to him."

"Lemme know if you need more formula or diapers or anything. I don't got any problem stealing that for you."

"Yeah. Hey, what's happening with all your magazines and stuff? I didn't see no reporters or anything snooping around, so I guessed they don't know about dad."

"I didn't tell nobody about it. Tiffany just thinks he's sick."

"But ain't they gonna like, drop you or something? Don't you got sponsors?"

"They might, but they were gonna replace me soon anyway. They just want some black dyke with superpowers, all that, it being me don't matter. I don't really get it."

"Damn, Rochelle. I don't get how you got all famous."

Rochelle shrugged. "I guess it's luck. You know, I got lucky getting born with a Revenant, I got lucky finding somebody to help manage me, I got lucky being born in a time where people care about superficial things like... sexuality, race. You know, diversity's a great business today. So it's luck, maybe, maybe I'm just lucky."

Raven nodded, and smiled as they looked out towards the tides folding over themselves.

Rochelle looked at her youngest sister, and though she sensed the essence of what she had said was being missed, she felt it no use to be upset over. Long ago she had predicted how her sister would end up. She had been expected to be the caretaker of her sister's child since he had been born, and left little time for schoolwork. Seeing this child's connection to Raven moreso than Asia, for he had spent more time with the former, if there was hope for a different existence it evaporated then.

She would work a mediocre job because it had health insurance and shack up with a man because he provided companionship. When she comes home some nights they argue, but life's slow mutability blends it into the next, and their child is essentially decent. They watch bland cable television, or perhaps stream it, but never much enrichment, and their sexual encounters increasingly decline until they are both middle-age and one dies of a heart attack. It was no great existence, but at least it was stable. It was still better than any Rochelle could hope for in Asia.

It had never been enough for Rochelle, however. She felt guilty over her lack of interference in her sister's lives, but she wondered if her mother had known this as well, for she had always attempted to keep Rochelle separate from them. Did she dislike Tiffany for similar reasons? Had she sensed that Rochelle's girlfriend might have been not only an embodiment of ignorance but no wish to go beyond it? Raven was a shallow teen; but her existence had been mostly limited by the poverty in which the family lived and her sister's refusal of an abortion; Rochelle could not disdain her. She loved her sisters. Tiffany had no such reasons. It was not so much she disliked Tiffany, more that she represented certain things to Rochelle, and after a while she preferred not to think of them.

She watched out the ocean, which seemed the edge of the world, the end of physical imagination and its limitations.

Throughout her years at Urasaria Rochelle had a friend who tended to be her intellectual companionship, which as you surely guess is Mia Schultz. Tiffany had never liked their friendship, and on several moments alone with Rochelle would accuse her of cheating. Much like the aforementioned outbursts, they rarely made much difference to their relationship; they would simply blend into the next.

"I saw what you were doing with her, you know. I could see it the entire night. Don't you have any self-respect?" said Tiffany. "The way you were looking at her, fucking her with your eyes like that."

With half a lung in it Rochelle replied: "You think I was flirting with her with her girlfriend right there?"

"Well, you were sure giving each other *looks* all night! God, Rochelle, I let you have your little get-togethers, I stay shut up when I see you looking at her on campus, I don't even mind when we're on contracts with her and that protege she has, the one she treats like her kid. But lately, it's like you want to fuck and worship and date her all at the same time."

"Hey, are you Rochelle? Screwball! Rochelle Beasley?"

"That's not me, man."

"No-no, it is you! Screwball on the badge, white girlfriend, self-loathing. Can you make this out to my ex - 'Cheryl, you fucked up a good thing, you lying cunt'?"

"Tiffany, we've been over this. I don't like constantly getting put on trial and then you pardoning me. Plus, I don't like getting intimate on it like that, dude."

"Yeah, but I got a thing to prove between me and her. I mean, you're a lesbian, you know how many cheating sacks of shit there are out there."

"Okay, fine." said Rochelle.

"You think I'm overreacting, don't you?" said Tiffany. "That's why you've got that look on you face. You think I'm being funny. Or I'm in one of my moods again."

"What, I can't smile? I don't think you're overreacting. Here you go."

"Thanks. Hey, I don't wanna take up your time, but you've gotta help me out with this whole relationship thing and dating, I've been a mess lately since she left me. Got any advice?"

"Uh, be lucky. Sometimes that's the best plan, having good timing. I don't think you're overreacting, Tiffany, I just think you're misperceptive, I don't look at Mia like that."

"But could you make a slash mark with your tail? I mean, I think that'd look so cool."

"Yeah, sure, I can do that." said Rochelle.

"Hey, you don't know Fifty, do you? Fifty Cent?"

"Please no mixtapes. I don't take those."

"Sure, but give it a listen, it's epic. It's got this one song about that host you killed, the one who vaporized that Walmart and killed eighty people. It's a *banger*."

"You know, I sensed this before from you. God, you always make me doubt myself. I should've known from your fucking sign." said Tiffany. "Maybe that's why you've been acting this way lately, but I'm sick of it. You think you can just look down on me like you're God. No wonder you hate your fans so much."

Months later, Rochelle was having lunch with her friend Mia, alone. It was early summer, and Mia had already begun some of her presidential duties but was not yet married to Aimee. Rochelle usually dressed up for their dinners, and it was a trend Mia had begun to match recently.

"I seriously can't stand astrology at this point. I get too many women asking me for my sign."

Mia laughed. "Of course a Cancer would say that."

"You don't think it's shallow, though? I mean, it gives me an immediate impression about somebody if they ask that. I'm not saying it makes them a bad person, but it's just shallow."

"Well, the people who take it very seriously, yes, but... some people need that sort of guide to tell them how to live, or who to date. They treat it similar to religion, but I do think it's usually harmless in comparison. People always want to imbue some sort of meaning into meaningless things." Mia sipped her water. "How did we get on to this? Did someone ask you your sign recently?"

"Yeah, every single lesbian I match with. You know, they've got moon and sun and mercury signs now, too, that I need to keep up with. I've gone on ten dates in the past month."

"And?"

"It never goes past one or two. Usually just a week, sex a few times, maybe."

Mia smirked. "You have to commit to somebody eventually, you know. Is it students or civilians?"

"Students or professionals, mostly. Can't do much in bed with civilians."

Mia grinned. "Oh, I'm sure. … By the way, I wasn't sure if I should bring this up, but I've had to assign contracts to Tiffany lately. She's acted very passive-aggressively towards me. Was she like that when you were mentoring her?"

"No, she always wanted my approval. I mean, she worshipped me, you saw she had that tattoo of my name. And she projected some things on to me just because she thought it was mutual. I never looked down on her, or liked to."

"To be honest, I've never understood what you saw in that relationship." muttered Mia. "She was shallow."

"Well, but she was mostly nice. Some days she was really *on*, you know? And I hate how my family never liked her, but she was real pretty."

"Yes, and how was she to sit around with?" Mia smiled. "I don't want to offend you, so please tell me if I am. But I've seen her before, and Serena's told me about her before. I never saw anything that distinguished her from most other women on campus. It doesn't make her a bad person, but it does make her rather average."

Rochelle considered it for a while. Eventually, she reached over and straightened out Mia's left blouse sleeve; it had become a bit folded. "That's been bugging me all night."

Mia crumpled it back up and smiled. "I like it like that."

Rochelle brushed her own sleeves against the table to match Mia's. Their back and forth soon enacted a rhythm between the two, plucked from the oceans that seemed to house such important matters, even if they were only facilely important to Rochelle.

Yet as their conversation petered out, and the impingement of the outside universe came, it was then that she noted a small spider on the wall across the diner, crawling over to a tinier fly. It is as ignorant of Rochelle as she previously was of it. Its compound eye is impenetrable to her visage. Snared in this delicate web, the thought of the lesser creature gave way to the realer toxin injected into it.

Then she was no longer at the diner, but walking with Mia through an underground government facility.

Mia had called Rochelle, Serena, and Tiffany to her office after being alerted by the government that, having been deemed fit for further work after the events of Arc 11 and the labyrinth monster, there was yet another contract for them that would give the 4 their professional hero licenses when completed.

Mia nodded. "Well, we have been at Urasaria for four years. I still cringe whenever I think about how I was in my first year."

'Or my second year.' she thought. 'Or my third year.'

She wondered if she would just be a Russian nesting doll of embarrassment until her thirties.

"Yeah, I was thinking lately about some shit I said in my interviews." Rochelle rubbed the back of her neck. "I think I started to get too self-critical about the whole thing, since I haven't gotten a call in a year. Seems like they're mostly moved on to newer students."

"I never thought you were that suited for it, anyway." muttered Mia. "I've been declining most of those requests, lately."

Rochelle shrugged. She did not miss life as a celebrity, though she still used her status occasionally as a way for easy sex.

It certainly hadn't harmed her sexual prospects - Rochelle was an attractive woman and could generally bed women as she wanted to. On recent contracts, and since her breakup with Tiffany, she would either find a lesbian in town to fuck or hire prostitutes. It discomforted her at an internal level when she could not.

Mia came up to room 234, hugged Rochelle, then went inside alone. The man inside gestured Mia to two sets of scales, one for humans and one for Revenants. Various measurement tools were organized around the room.

"President Swarm, yes?"

"Yes. What are we measuring first?"

"Set down one of your scarabs. We'll weigh one of each element."

She set a fire scarab down, then continued with the others. Worldwide's scarabs weighed barely over an ounce & were an inch long, and her sword was thirty pounds & fifty inches.

"We have a special room for measuring Worldwide's temperature, which will... hopefully not go how it did last time."

He led her to another room covered in black material, with a sensor behind twenty transparent walls. Her ice was at absolute zero, and her electricity held ten trillion volts or so. Her Frozen Ray wasn't any stronger than 0, and her electrical ray was only two quintillion volts. He gave her a wearable device to test her flames, and she found her purple fire burned at, give or take a few hundred million, one quintillion degrees. Her blue Solar Beam found a sextillion degrees comfortable.

When she finished, Serena met her with her new license & her measurements. She had shrunk a few inches after Kamon, and Blackburn's fog could fill twenty gallons, but replenished at about a gallon a second. Her tentacle subtracted a few pounds, and they guessed it was six, though the suction cups could carry at least five hundred.

As the four stepped up to room 133, where they had been told to meet for debriefing, Mia saw the man from earlier coming towards them. "President Swarm. I need you to come with me for one last thing."

Mia went off with him and to his office, and sighed as she sat across from him. "First the measurements, and now interrogation?"

"It's just an interview."

"No, it isn't."

"You seem to prefer directness, so I'll begin by telling you this is actually regarding Ryumi. It isn't part of an active investigation or you murdering Kirihara, nor am I logging your answers for some later 'extermination'. Or whatever you may believe professional hosts spend their time doing."

Mia shrugged. "If you could have killed me, you would have done it after I killed Kirihara."

"You might be surprised to know how little anyone in the government cared that you did. To civilians and professionals, students and what they do to one another is a bit like one of the endless internal wars Greek gods were always waging on one another. It's sometimes amusing, but it doesn't affect our lives to the extent it does your's." he said. "Now, my name is Codex, and I write the government profiles. I also interviewed Ryumi - Queen of Scarabs. I can tell you more about her, if you'd like."

Mia's eyes went off to the side and sank into the wall.

"She married Magnus, you know. I know you know who he is."

"I'm aware."

"He was her protege. Do you know what she looks like?"

"I do."

"In her uniform?" He pulled a drawer open, handing a picture to Mia.

Ryumi was a black-haired woman wearing a purple gasmask and gloves with holes in the palm. Her husband was often more concerned for her safety than she was.

The sight made Mia uneasy. The sight made Mia uneasy. She had looked at the photo of Ryumi & Magnus after her own wedding, and their now-dead joy reminded her & Aimee too much of their own. She looked at it for a while and handed it back. "What is threat level existential?"

"Will you answer my questions?"

"Answer me first."

"A few questions - your answer - and the rest of my questions. Alright?"

"…fine."

"Good. I'll start off easy. Mia, have you ever murdered any civilians?"

"No."

"Not even Edgar's father?"

"Edgar murdered him."

"Any students besides Kirihara?"

"Only a few I would like to."

"Good answer. Do you have any information relating to the Eastern League that might be of interest? Anything Magnus told you about his conduits?"

"No. Answer me."

"Fine. What was your question?"

"What is threat level existential?"

"My general rule, though not a hard guideline, for threat level classification is what damage they could cause if they were to go rogue. A local level threat may be able to threaten a single community, but is generally able to be dealt with by any third or fourth-year student. A national level threat usually entails a level of quick building damage, the ability to demolish a large city quickly -- I had your friend, Matoi Kujo, recently reclassified to a national level threat for this reason. Your protege Serena Kunst straddles that separation; I haven't quite calculated how quickly she could destroy a skyscraper or apartment complex.

Existential classification is typically beyond that - not only someone who could easily deal with students, but would have little trouble with most professional hosts. Obviously, there's an element of skill involved there, but it entails country or even global-level destructiveness innate to a Revenant's ability. Only two hosts are currently classified as existential, both deceased: Ryumi Egashira and Daigo Yashukure."

"You said 'innate to a Revenant's ability'. What do you mean by that with Worldwide?"

"Consider your trip to Japan. Despite what I mentioned earlier, there was a point where we considered intervening, out of concerns it would cause a diplomatic incident. It might have, in the 80s or 90s, but fortunately, the world has become much more accustomed to a certain level of Revenant-related destruction since then.

But to the best of our knowledge, Ryumi killed Daigo and Daigo killed Ryumi. As you might already be aware, however, Nikolai -- the Eastern League's leader -- had a meeting with us scheduled a month after her death."

"And he was killed by Magnus before it."

"Precisely. Before you ask, we actually don't know what it would have been about. ... Have you ever been to Moscow, Mia?"

"Are you talking about the ring?" Mia paused as she remembered Japan. Around 2011, Moscow had been reduced to literal nothingness; no vegetation nor weather grew there. It was assumed to be part of Daigo's nuclear weapons before he had been killed by Ryumi, yet she had never looked closer at the ring around Moscow or its properties. "…it wasn't destroyed by Daigo."

"What I am currently authorized to tell you is that the Eastern League had given her a device to record her temperature that day. The one you were wearing earlier. She didn't normally wear it. It was in Nikolai's possession along with its last measurements."

"Was it to measure her Solar Beam?"

"The last reading on it from her was over one nonillion degrees Celsius. I assume you-"

"A nonillion is … thirty zeroes?"

"One followed by thirty zeroes, yes."

"Why would she have possibly needed to go that high?"

"That's where our knowledge is equal. I had already considered her for Existential classification, given how tremendously destructive Worldwide can be, and I was given orders to do so after that measurement was discovered."

Mia frowned. "How hot did you say my Solar Beam is?"

"One sextillion degrees. Or as a ratio -- 1:1 billion."