Liquid Mind Experiment

The following morning they left their hotel with Ike, whose chauffeur picked them up and they sat in the back.

"We're not going to the airport?" said Eva.

"N-No, just driving." Ike shook his head. "It'll t-take a few hours, b-but I still prefer it to the airport. Y-You know, getting swarmed by people a-asking you to sign 50 autographs for all o-of their parents."

"You should have said something. Iris can drive us very quickly." said Violet.

Ike looked to her. "Oh, can you? I-I've never gotten driven by a host before."

"I can if Eva'll be my second set of eyes."

Eva glanced at Iris, who knew she was thinking: Man, fuck you. But the chauffeur pulled off the road and they swapped with him anyhow.

Iris muttered to Eva: "I can drive hosts. I'm not sure about civilians."

Eva flashed a slick grin to her. "Remember G-forces. Careful on accelerating and decelerating."

"Right." Kairos appeared in Iris's lap. "Let me prepare..." She spun the wheel into every configuration, then pressed both pedals fully down and up. She whispered: "Eva, how fast can civilians go without imploding?"

"...umm... I've never been a civilian."

"Neither have I..."

Eva scratched her head. "...okay. We can figure this out, uhh... I think I've seen signs that say: speed limit, 60mph. So maybe 60 is the highest they can go, safely?"

"Think I've seen ones that go 70."

"I think there's this highway in Germany with no speed limit."

"But Germans are different."

"And their cars are different, too."

"Everything alright up there?"

"Yes! We're just... discussing... Ike, what's the fastest you've ever driven?"

"Drunk or sober?"

Iris winced. "...whichever's faster."

"100 on the freeway."

"Okay, so 100. That's the limit." nodded Eva. "Damn. Civilians are really fragile, I guess. I bet it's like boiling water where if you go over 100 their whole body explodes."

Iris nodded. That seemed plausible, so she started out at 100mph. She checked on Ike before she, with some fear, ramped it up to 101mph. He did not implode. She looked to Eva and mouthed: 'What the fuck?'

Eva was running some calculations in her head.

"Yeah, crank it up some." said Ike.

"Al...right."

She ramped it up to 150, then 200. He seemed visibly stressed yet gave her the thumbs-up. Cars and foliage blurred by them as she passed other cars with such dexterity that a civilian following them would've flattened into a wall 50 miles back.

Also in the back, Olivia gripping tightly the straps of her dress so they would not slip. Iris saw Eva notice this, then whistle innocently. Of late Iris had noticed many lesbians on campus liked to look at Olivia in this way; her appearance and behavior would cause sexual desire to press up against their frames.

Iris did not entirely understand why; she was a beautiful and sexual woman, yet she felt if they knew her personality like she did, they would no longer find her attractive, for she was calm; this was not what Iris found interesting in a woman.

In the back Violet and Ike were talking.

"In the 90s musicians never wanted fame. Fame was just a shitty byproduct of being good at something. Now we have it where no one cares about being good but they love being famous. Now, art still h-has to make money, of course. But I used to write stock music for television, a lot of mind-numbing, creativity-stunting work... television really has rotted out anyone's abilities to think critically. This whole degenerate modern culture prizes cheap expediency rather than anything of lasting, real value. Sorry, I like to get a little preachy at times." he said.

"And so your music now is more lasting?" said Violet.

"Well, I-I'd say so, y-yeah, and the critics agree. You know, sometimes I-I almost get a little sick of it. I can't go out without a girl or two recognizing me and giggling, y-y'know. Now I understand why musicians in the 90s never wanted fame. Fame was just a shitty byproduct of being good at something."

"And worst are the people who find it more important to be liked than to be talented, no? They hope to collect light on themselves, whether directly or through the eyes of others."

"Well, n-no... not at all. That's not what I'm s-saying. Ike shook his head. "No-no, that's not what I'm saying, not at a-all. You gotta think closer, right? Everything that's worth knowing deserves a closer look.

Violet glanced to Olivia, then said: "Well, perhaps some people need a surplus of luck."

Ike continued to talk for the rest of the drive to Violet, who occasionally would make a remark like the above; enough that Olivia would know the insult yet not enough that Ike would feel it. She collected the light from both their eyes upon herself, and so too did she come over the course of the drive to view outside of herself; her outline woozed in and out of her sight.

Yet just as she had allowed others to seep into her, had she seeped herself into others; not only in her sense of propriety, but her sense of humor. She was dry yet acerbic when necessary; she trained Eva harshly and had made her almost above Iris in rank, to which Eva was thankful for even as she despised her daily strums. But she would tell her protege much of what Matoi and Kate would have told their own: that one cannot expect results better than others by doing what others do. She matched the continuum of what a good mentor was to Eva's mind, thus she was one.

As she walked with Olivia later that night to pick up some food before the concert, she made this observation of Ike: "He attempts to organize others' notions of him upon a single stage, yet for all of that he isn't very good at it. You can see very well that the man lacks a perspective on anything, even the only thing that's brought him fame. If he were to lose it tomorrow, he would simply draw back fully into his own irreality."

Olivia snickered. "When you put it that way, he is pretty pathetic."

"I don't assign it as pathetic or not. It simply is. People in this celebrity-obsessed culture believe that they can have access to the reality of celebrities' lives, but very often, it's simply one angle of truth, not reality."

On their way they came across a disheveled man in the middle of the city road. He was berating a civilian woman who had gotten out of her stopped car, although with enough distance that he did so only via words and not physical strength. He seemed agitated, albeit incoherently and in a way detached from reality. Olivia was wary, for she remembered Naomi had once been attacked by a host pretending to be a drunken homeless man, in a bit of a callback to how ninjas of old ambushed their targets by pretending to be homeless alcoholics laying in gutters.

They did so by being homeless alcoholics who killed for money.

She watched as Violet approached him without her badge and spoke with him. He was agitated with her as well, yet she listened to him for some minutes, calmed him, then gave him some money and came back to Olivia on the sidewalk as he went off to the side.

Olivia said nothing, so Violet asked: "Nothing to comment?"

"Not the way I would've done it, but it's fine. Guy's a fucking creep."

"Some people come from bad circumstances. It doesn't make them bad."

"I don't know. Something about homeless guys creeps me the fuck out." said Olivia. "Like, for someone to truly be homeless, that means they don't know a single person who would even let them sleep on their couch. How many good people lack a single friend? If they're gay, sure. Straights, though?"

"Perhaps so, but talking with a mentally ill man rather than threatening him is a test of decency most people fail." said Violet, and in the next instant -

- a fist of asphalt arose out of the road and shot towards them both -

" - Baal!" shouted Olivia; Baal's tongue emerged and shot underground, and a glob of liquid concrete blocked the fist for now, Violet cursing at her side as infernal chains unfurled from her sleeves, stumbling back into a nearby store and leaving Olivia alone.

She recalled Violet's Revenant:

[LIQUID MIND EXPERIMENT: Subjugation of objects. The chains form a conduit through which friendly Revenants can be allowed to pass.]

Another set of asphalt fists shot from the road and towards Olivia, but two fists of the store's own answered and blocked for her; she glanced right and saw their foe standing in the middle of the road, and knew instantly it was control over asphalt; below, she felt tendrils of asphalt extend from the road and form drills that attempted to breach the sidewalk below -

- but the sidewalk itself flipped her up & away, landing 20ft behind her former position as Baal's tongue planted and steadied her; during this time she had seen the unique trait of Liquid Mind Experiment -- Violet immobile with her chains reined around her hands, their range expanding as Violet danced her channeling, and within these chains there slithered a conduit that allowed friendly Revenants to act upon & what it had subjugated, regardless of range.

Ahead, their foe was forced to inch closer ahead, blades of asphalt bursting from the road but none able to strike Olivia as she continued her backstep, until with one lurch in her direction his range encompassed her once more -

- but Baal's tongue shot through the wall at her right, and up she climbed to the roof, backing herself further away and taking a leap off to the ground below there; this was what Violet had told her to do in these fights, and as she kept her steady pace down the sidewalk away, she saw a jewelry store at her left. She swept herself inside, as did Baal's maw, chewing through the entire stock and micro-pausing as it decided which meal to permanently swallow -

- until she heard a scream like a man crushed alive, then sighed as she heard the familiar noise of death. Slightly cautious but with the knowledge there was no need for it, she went back and saw Violet scanning his Revenant, the sidewalk that had encased him covered in gore.

"Much easier with someone who follows the plan." said Violet.

[SHOOTING TARS IN THE NIGHT SKY: Control over asphalt.]

"Talking about Eva?"

"She's a rather difficult protege, yes. She won't disobey me in fights, but training her; very difficult. She seems to have more a desire to be active in fights than to succeed at them. Do you have the same trouble with Iris?"

"I don't know. Iris is pretty self-directed. It feels like her own version of Natasha is still mentoring her... I just still don't know how to comfort her when she takes any display of sympathy as an intrusion. I worry sometimes that she'll feel awful if she ever disappoints her own idea, and I won't know how to help her."

"But a fear of failure can be a good thing. I wish Eva had a bit more of it. She's below Iris's rank, despite the obvious break Iris took, and despite asking me to slow my own progress, despite..." Violet sighed, then breathed. There seemed a displacement of self for a moment, as if she needed to reorient her mental state to where she was in physicality. "No, Eva is good. She's been rather receptive to the strict training I've placed upon her. It's just a protege is a difficult thing."

"Well, yeah. You can't force her to train more if she doesn't want to. That's what Viktoria would try to do with me, when she wasn't calling me a used-up slut."

"Well, are you one?"

"No." laughed Olivia. "Not recently, anyway. The last serious relationship I even had was... I don't know. Sex is easy, but almost everyone I've dated; they have such intensity and romance outside of a relationship and yet they become completely disinterested inside of it. And eventually, it's tiring having to constantly ask someone to find you as alluring as they once did."

"Or it could be they never were as attracted to you as you would have liked them to be."

"I prefer not to think about that."

"Oh, of course; and I don't mean to imply you aren't beautiful, because you are... and don't do me the favor of misinterpreting that, okay? But people often become much less excited by their dreams at the possibility of achieving them. With reality, there's a constant pressure to stabilize it; ideas have no such requirement. People can be very unqualified for their own ideals. Don't you agree?"

On their way back they passed by where the homeless man had been, yet he was gone once he had left Violet's perspective; she saw no glint nor outline of him left. She did not see his blanket, although she was unsure whether he had actually worn one and had not the benefit of this chapter to know. These disappearances were a typical theme in Violet's life, yet Olivia saw it affected her deeply, as for their trek back to their hotel, she would glance back at something out of Olivia's vision, and mutter that she would not forget this homeless man, at least not until the end of this chapter.