Raisin On The Counter For A Few Days

Iris went back to the car and checked if Natasha had yet responded. She had not. The car drove far from the city, and the buildings thinned. There was a bridge over water ahead, but it pulled right and parked on the side of the street. The doors opened & closed, and when the car moved again the passenger door had not opened.

She stopped it and got out. A park separated her from the bridge, and as she walked across it, she saw that there was a small, concrete alcove underneath the bridge, beside the water.

She checked again for Natasha's message. No response, but her messages were still not read either... tentatively she sent her the street she was near. She crouched down and focused, setting much of Timeline's web into the water to obscure it. She needed only this small patch of concrete.

The timeline began, and she accelerated until she saw the young non-host & his friend's corpse enter. They waited for someone, though the non-host seemed weaker than usual, likely the poison. She thought it odd they would both poison & kill him.

A host aura and a corpse entered. Iris could not entirely tell what occured, but the host aura seemed to grab the friend-corpse's face, then discarded it to the side; the other corpse kicked the non-host's knees and he folded to the ground.

Another host aura entered and the non-host looked up at it. His mutilated face moved and seemed pained yet angered, as the corpse pulled the non-host's cellphone from his pocket and forced him to unlock it via fingerprint.

She felt the host's Revenant, but she could not shift it, make it something that moved again. A sense crept upon her: that he had felt this attempted chronoshift and he had prevented it not for his own good but for her's. A cold feeling laid in her stomach as the pieces of the non-host's corpse erupted outwards.

Iris paused the scene and grabbed the unlocked phone, then began looking through it.

"Iris!" shouted Natasha in the distance. "Iiiiiirrrrris!"

"Natasha!" shouted Iris back.

Soon Natasha found her. She was decently scuffed, but not too bad, and was panting some (surprisingly). "A-Ah, sweet. H-Had to lose them, but we're good."

Iris showed her the cellphone. "This was on our young corpse."

They went through the phone's internet history. None was directly saved, but Iris could revert it; it had not been part of his corpse at time of death. The day of, he had been looking up Urasaria Academy's number and how to anonymously report a rogue host. She scrolled through to the photos.

Only two were of note. The first was a photo of a restaurant basement with a table in the center. Upon it was a corpse with its heart upon it. A tall Nordic woman seemed to be offering it to two men across the table; one was the size of three men and wore a suit, sunglasses & bowler hat, while the other was stocky yet shorter; perhaps 5'9. Off to the side was a third, wiry man cleaning the floor.

Another was of himself and a woman his age, and of an older man. The older man had his arm wrapped around the younger woman.

"Shit, that's the woman who died at the diner." said Natasha. "That other dude looks like if you left a raisin on the counter for three months."

Iris frowned as she looked over the three. They did not seem terribly happy, the photo more of a forced obligation than genuine love. This young woman, young and older man... she thought over something and resolved to check on it again later. "How old do you think they are?"

"Dunno. Maybe 20s for both of them, 50s for him?"

"I'm not so sure." She scrolled back over to the photo with the Nordic woman. "I'd like to send some of these over to our contact."

"I don't think it's safe to send him pictures, but maybe we can check with his... handler? Is that the word?"

"Maybe. I've got an odd idea for who it could be, and why he would be considered special, but..." Iris frowned. "…well, I'll work through it with you on the way home."