Timeline

As expected, the apartment had not been disturbed; clearly the FBI had not given a shit.

"Alright, let's revert some stuff." said Natasha.

"Wait." Iris closed the door. "I've got something I was thinking of doing last time, but it takes about an hour to set up. Alright if I do it?"

"Sure, unless another Revenant shows up. What are you planning?"

Iris sat on the floor and focused. "Phantom: Timeline."

Her eyes became as multitudinous as Phantom's as it crawled off from her.

The vapors of eternity were long, but Phantom's eyes could tune them and refine them into the real. Future and past became filtered slips of immortality, objects adrift, that had made their way into the lakes and the grasslands, of a footprint that an early snow moment contained, the eons that mountains and rivers knew. As a young girl, she had sometimes laid in the park and focused Phantom onto one spot, to let it shift to what fauna had stood there decades ago.

Yet to chronoshift an entire area at once was not something she frequently did, for it was long and difficult work to force Phantom away from her body, yet still attempt to direct its flow from without, even though it must thrive upon. The occasional gurgle of its limitations, that even then it could still exert by forcing her to use a certain threshold of web to access the lip of time and be swaddled in liquid moment.

Phantom left layered webs in its retreat, as it crawled through each room of the apartment, forming a bubble. The pattern of this room from minutes, then hours, days, and weeks ago was returning.

As Phantom crawled into her back, she looked back around the reconstructed room. It was as it had been before, the doors repaired, walls unscuffed and gore gone.

And there was Natasha, munching on a sub-sandwich she had made from ingredients in his fridge.

"I thought you don't eat carbs."

"I'm sorry you have to see me like this."

"If it makes you feel any better, it won't come back up when I start chronoshifting forward."

"Host aura, yeah."

Iris looked away and Natasha set her mouth to the innards of the sandwich, sucking the meat & cheese out like a bird does an earthworm from its tunnel. "I've done this before. First time I've done it for a crime-scene, though. It's silent, though, and I still can't revert... what did you call it?"

"The host aura? It protects our clothes and what we're carrying from Revenants. Kinda just an extension of our own durability. Dead hosts don't project one."

"Would explain a few things." muttered Iris. "There's something odd that always happened whenever I tried to do it. We might see it later."

"Maybe. Shit, though, you were just sitting there for an hour. Thanks for not messing up my sandwich."

"I filter out food." Iris shook her head. "…a-alright. I worked up an appetite, so see what was in his fridge a month ago."

Natasha smiled and made her another sandwich, one with a more human proportion of meat:sandwich ratio. "So, always takes an hour? Can't do a smaller area faster?"

"It won't work without a particular threshold of web."

"Makes sense. So, do you want me to tell you everything I saw while you were reversing, or will you be good seeing it when you forward it?"

"It won't take as long going forward, fortunately. Is the woman's corpse still in the freezer?"

"No. When you were reverting it, she actually came back out while I was making a sandwich and I nearly punted her out of the building."

Iris had never tried a scene involving a corpse, so she could not tell if Natasha was serious. But she finished eating and verified the time & date with a digital watch she kept with her for this purpose. 30 days before the present: -30 days. "I'll start moving it forward. Check the other rooms and let me know if you need me to pause it."

Natasha went to the kitchen as Iris began to play the timeline forward. The door opened, and Iris turned to see the male host's corpse. He was mutilated as he had been at death yet was holding the bottle of poisoned wine, only a few drops in it. This was no concern; Iris doubted she could revert the metabolized poison out of the corpse.

But what was odd was that his pieces seemed to shudder together as he resumed his regular path; she realized that Phantom was attempting to stitch together the shape he had held in life. He did not change clothes a once, though she ignored him until a week before his death as time resumed.

A shuddering, nude and mutilated female corpse entered the living room with the clothed man. What seemed a typical romantic encounter played out, with drinks shared, until she was clearly intoxicated and went with him to the bedroom.

The two followed them to the bedroom and averted their gay gazes from heterosexuality, as they usually did and as this text shall do. Natasha noted the bottle of wine, there again and undestroyed. The man & woman stayed together for a few hours, though Iris fast-forwarded through this until she began to convulse, and he cut her open. Soon the man's corpse left the apartment, ran back in, away from past-Iris&Natasha, and tried to destroy it.

Time was present again.

"Didn't quite expect that." muttered Iris. "Never knew Timeline could manipulate corpses."

"Any idea why the woman is nude and this guy never took his clothes off? Why he's still sliced in half?"

"I'm… not exactly sure."

"Damn." said Natasha. "Hey, also, about the bottle. You were right about him not using it only here. He poured it into their drinks in the kitchen. Obviously, there was nothing in the bottle but those few drops, so I filled the bottle up with water just to check how it'd look if there was. Look at it now: it's still half-full. He didn't pour all of it out."

"And when we found it, it was empty." nodded Iris. "Smart. Still, I can understand why he would poison someone here, rather than use his Revenant, but elsewhere? He might've been poisoning on someone else's behalf and just took it with him."

"I looked up the chemical online, too. It's definitely not something a normal civilian could get. When you were reverting it, I saw he had brought in some take-out, so maybe we could-"

Iris felt a presence and turned to a middle-aged woman standing outside the doorway, who said: "You two are students. Am I right?"

"What makes you say that?" said Natasha.

Iris looked around to the webs covering the apartment, their absurd reaction time, the gigantic spider crawling on her shoulder, her own currently-million eyes, the patches of flesh & blood & bone in Natasha's pockets, the mutilated corpses, the badges that read 'URASARIA ACADEMY', the-

"I'm not a host." The woman laughed. "Would it help if I did your little... what's it called? Flicking Decks? The Flicker Dicker Tricker?"

(The Flickendecke Trick/Flicker Dicker Tricker is a variant of a common way of testing hosthood: make a minor scrape on someone and see if a medical Revenant heals them.)

Natasha threw a Flickendecke patch over to her, who viewed it with appropriate disgust. She scraped her knuckles against the doorway and Flickendecke did nothing. "She's cool."

"Did you need something?" said Iris.

"Oh, I just heard the door repeatedly opening. Are you two students looking for the man who lives here?"

"We killed him, but we might still be interested if you know anything about him."

"Oh, that was what I heard a week or two ago... your fight." She looked around the webs. "Am I allowed to step in these?"

"As far as I know."

She tested with her finger first, then closed the door behind herself. "Well, a few weeks ago, I had heard this terrible ruckus out in the hall. I don't normally get involved, but I had heard this woman yelling, and so I decided to peek my head out. He was bringing some woman home, although... if you told me to describe her, I'm sure I'd be too unreliable. I'm not sure what he was doing, exactly, but she dropped something and he didn't exactly hide how fast his reflexes are catching it. Host fast."

"You didn't report it?" said Iris.

"I was worried he would hear the call if I did, with his host sense of hearing."

"His what?"

"His host sense of hearing. I have a daughter who goes to Urasaria, I know all about your little traits you don't like to tell anyone else about." She smiled. "Come on over to my apartment and let me fix you something. I'm sure this one over here has to eat a lot to keep up those muscles."

They walked with her to her apartment a few doors down, Phantom's webs & Iris's spider-eyes disappearing. Natasha seemed nervous to be in the home of a civilian woman, not solely because she was a student. Because of her size there were often particular habits she needed to stifle in these situations, lest she be misunderstood.

She gestured them to sit down at the table as she continued into the kitchen, not a word missed in her speech. "But, I was glad that someone came around and killed him. Sometimes I think Urasaria is the only thing in this society that works to women's advantage."

"You said your daughter's a student?" said Iris.

Natasha was retracting herself inward. Given she was about 5'5" and 170lbs with low body-fat, this looked completely absurd.

"Yes. She's my pride and joy, and all that. I'll admit I'm a bit of a Urasaria mom when it comes to her, but why shouldn't I be? She's the main way I'll be remembered, if host lifespans are anything to go by. And even then, there's still the lifespan of a Revenant. People want to have that part of themselves remain after they're gone."

Iris preferred to avoid this discussion. "Who's your daughter, though? Is she a first-year?"

"No, she's a third-year. Maybe you would know her." She fetched a picture frame off the counter and showed her to them: with a face like that Iris presumed she had a wonderful personality. "Her name is Catherine."

"I don't recognize her."

"Well, say hi to her the next time you see her. I'm sure she would love a little bit of attention from you."

Iris looked at Natasha, who shuddered when the mother's back was turned. But she made them spaghetti & meatballs and a store-bought chocolate cake, the bulk of which only Iris could eat. She asked them about the food and spoke even more about her daughter, lamenting openly that she had not yet found a girlfriend.

"I'd like to ask about the man we fought." said Iris hastily. "Had you run into him any other times?"

"Occasionally, but he was always on the periphery of everything. We never talked or anything."

"Any favored hangout spots for him?"

"Well, the only place I can remember is that he would always bring take-out boxes home from some Italian place... Little Alfredo's, I think it's called. I remember the smell of the, what I assume, alfredo."

"We should go there." suggested (heavily) Natasha to Iris. "Actually, I'm pretty sure I saw one of those boxes in his fridge, anyway."

Iris nodded, and after thanking the Urasaria mom, left her until she would try to match her daughter with the next students.

They checked the nearby Little Alfredo's and went to the one closest to the apartment; it was a small, personal glass-front diner with the kitchen visible from the counter. Natasha went up and asked to speak with the manager, then clarified that they were students and not the type of bitchy white women who usually ask such things.

He was a bald stocky Italian man with the usual complexes all 4 implied. "What? Whadya want?"

"We're Urasaria students looking for this man. He's a regular at this restaurant." Natasha showed the man's picture, gained from their FBI handler. "Any idea who he is?"

"No, I ain't got no clue who he is." He turned to leave, but Natasha called him back. "What? What, he a host or something?"

"You don't have security camera footage of him or anything?"

"No, I don't. I ain't never seen him before in my damn life. I mean, really, I know you students only work about two hours out of every week, but I got more important things like runnin' a restaurant to think about than stamping everybody who comes here into my memory. You dig? Use your head. It'll make you a better student."

"You mind showing us your security cameras to check?" said Iris.

He laughed. "This restaurant is twenty minutes away from your academy. Any criminal who wants to come here'll have the whole place destroyed and everyone in it killed before you even start to respond."

A yell came from the kitchen. "Vito, did you buy any more eggs?"

"They're still there!" he yelled back.

"I don't see 'em!"

"Check again, you git!" He sighed as he turned back to them. "Done? Eh?"

Natasha did not react. "Do you mind letting us in here once you close up, so we can investigate?"

"No, but I can't stop you if you did, now can I? If you got nothing else to do than harass me over an agin' man's memory, then get the fuck outta my sight. I ain't got a timeslot carved out for getting interrogated by two rug-munchers."

He started laughing, though his right cheek trembled in a way that annoyed Iris. Why, she didn't rationalize: it just hooked into her mind. Her hands tensed and she thought she might need to solve this by her usual philosophy. "You think this is funny, you fat fucking pig?"

"No, just that tough no-bullshit attitude you students put on is amusin'. Even if this whoever is a host, what goddamn reason do I got to care? I don't give two shits if some Revenant goes around killin' people, so long as it ain't me." He turned to walk away, muttering: "Two ugly dykes walkin' around like they got cocks the size of freight trains, just like everybody else from that fuckin'-"

Iris slammed her fist into his right arm and every bone in his arm shattered; he staggered with a scream of agony as he hit the floor. She tried to raise her fist again but a wind held her back, and then Natasha was forcing her out of the diner. "Maria, stop, fuck!"

She saw him wincing at both of them, almost a laugh, and over Natasha's shoulder she threw a blast of white lightning that was swallowed at the last instant by a pillar of snow. Natasha was far stronger than her and succeeded in shoving her into a nearby alleyway, then dragging her further down it.

Natasha relaxed her grip. "Now, look, what the fuck was-"

"God damnit, you don't think he knows something useful? You want me to just fucking stand there and be disrespected?" Iris tried to move back but Natasha held her in a tight hold. "Let go of me, god damnit-"

"Okay, first off: lose the attitude or I'll punch you, and I really don't want to hit you. Secondly, maybe he does, or he could just be a clueless prick. But disrespect or not, you don't hurt civilians who haven't proven themselves guilty of anything. That's how cops are, and I fucking hate them. You're a student. Don't you recognize that?"

She released Iris but still stared at her.

Iris had not ever really been rebuked in this fashion before, at least not by someone she couldn't similarly maim or hurt. Anger had rushed her emotions and accessed her habits; she felt this rebuke stabbed at herself, in a sense, even as she had joined Urasaria in hopes that it might feed a better angel into her nature. A friction had occured between this desire and the need to show she was worthy of respect in front of others; alone she might not have done so, yet around Natasha she had.

But she was still pissed, while not sure how to handle this, so she simply withdrew into herself.

"You're a student, Iris. What does it matter if someone you can paste across the wall disrespects you? They know nothing about you and you still reacted like it was an act of war against you. Not only that, but you hit him in the back? Iris, are you listening?"

"Yes."

"Alright, but it feels like what I'm saying isn't sticking to you." Natasha rubbed Iris's shoulder. "Hey, look. It's okay. If he was a criminal, I wouldn't have cared. If you pranked or inconvenienced him, sure. But when there's no reason to believe someone being a prick to you is a host, then you can *remind* them, you don't *hurt* them. Got it?"

"I do."

"Alright. … And remember, you're my protege. You aren't the only one who would get into trouble."

Iris did not reply, and her inward world seemed temporarily unillumined as Natasha could tell.

Was her protege displaying genuine guilt, or only because she believed she should? Whichever it was, it disappointed Natasha. She was conflicted herself, for he was a dick and she subtly felt he had gotten what she deserved. But there was a sort of chivalry Natasha latched herself to when it came to civilians, that she could treat criminals as harshly as she wanted if she was gentle with civilians.

But given her isolation at Urasaria, had she not sometimes set up rather arbitrary standards, in fitness or love or fighting? Was she not merely using these boxes to demarcate herself away from others and erect imperviousness against their opinions of her? But she thought of her protege as a new generation of a student, in that there was a need for Iris to be more than herself and Iris's protege would be more than her; without difference first there could be no betterment.