The Lady From Changwon [ARC 35]

[ARC 35: THE LADY FROM CHANGWON]

On Iris's walk home, she cogitated over things she had thought of many times. There was her relationship with Amelie; there was Natasha dying; there was her flirtation with Emilia; there were Eva's various rebukes of her. In these remembrances, she would often feel her mind give into the might of some fluidic thing, and the viscosity of the medium would allow her to stand outside of her own memories, rearranging them in the order and intensity she desired, denying or playing them off as quirks of her masculinity as required.

Yet she had felt recently a hardening of such; she was on the other side of her own prior nature, and realized that she had grown up. Not wholly, but a return to the old ways was no longer possible. Her memory no longer held quarrel with the rest of her imagine. She had loved Amelie; her mentor had died; she had acted selfishly with Emilia; Eva had been correct about her; she loved Olivia. There was an equality to all that had been varnished through her, and as she noticed these things, she kept them tucked into the near-midnight of her reflection's landscape, for it was there that she had once felt these shells tossed upon the changeling sands of her moods.

Not all things were going as well for Iris, however. She still had not melded fully with Suki, who seemed at once wild-eyed and a brat. For now she had spoken to Suki about Metamorphosis; tact was not one of Iris's better traits, but she possessed enough to make Suki believe that it was their mutual idea to go see Hirogane in the infirmary. She had let Suki explain, in her usual hesitant sense, that her ability was creation of animal parts but was not functioning properly, nor had she grown in strength or speed since its activation. As Hirogane had a medical Revenant and a license to do surgery on hosts, but not diagnoses, he took samples from Suki to send off to Dr. Yuruko, who did not have a medical Revenant and was not licensed to do surgery on hosts, but did do diagnoses.

A week later, Suki received a call from an unknown number. She reflexively sent it to her (never setup) voicemail, then was texted by it asking her to please pick up and that it was her Revenant test results, then went off and called it back. "Hello?"

It was Aimee Schultz (who Yuruko had asked to speak for her, as she was afraid of phone calls). "Hi, Suki. So, about the sample you sent... me - you have a mutation in your Volgari protein production. They do not possess their own RNA... poly meowases?" A pause, her hand over the phone. "Polymerases." 

"Okay." said Suki, understanding none of it. 

"They cannot replicate themselves. In normal hosts, Volgari protein production increases as a host trains, and more bacteria reproduce. This is what causes Revenants to grow in strength. Your bacteria does not have that ability, and thus cannot naturally grow its own strength. However... it also possesses nearly octuple the amount of regular pili, which are... little poles on bacteria." 

'Like dicks.' 

"Yes. They're sometimes used in reproduction." 

(Suki didn't realize she said it aloud.) 

"But they are also involved in horizontal gene transfer. If I had to guess, it's possible your Revenant has an ability to consume other bacterial colonies, possibly by touch, and that may be how it grows in strength. More than that, you may have to figure out yourself."

Suki nodded, thanked her, then hung up. In typical Suki fashion, the nuance of Yuruko's advice were all pulled into the single word *consume*, which she enjoyed, for it was aggressive, violent, and did not require her to venture past her powerful physicality, all which she rend easier than the intricacies of human imagine. 

She went back to Iris.

"Who was that?"

"It was my test results. They said my Revenant has to grow stronger by consuming other Revenants."

"Did they explain what they meant by consume?"

"No, she didn't explain anything." said Suki. "Whatever. I'll figure it out."

"Alright. I was meaning to talk with you about something after."

"Like what?"

Iris rubbed the back of her neck. "We've been better the last week, but I know we've had some trouble in the past, enough to where I've had the feeling that you dislike me. I don't know what I've done to upset you, but if I have, I apologize. We don't need to be as close as I was with my mentor, but I was hoping we could at least be friends."

"I don't know what you're talking about, dude."

"Well, when… when you felt I was abandoning you. I had a hell of a storm rolling through my mind for the past few weeks, and that accounts for some of it, but it's … I know I haven't been the best mentor yet. But I do want to help, Suki. I want to be a good mentor to you. You don't need to be dependent on me, but I would appreciate it if you do try to incorporate some of what I'm putting out to you."

Suki frowned. She mostly just grunted in that way she usually did. Iris suspected she would not get much more out of her, yet she did not know what this meant. Did Suki agree with her and did not want to show it, or was she trying to tell Iris to back off her again, that the time for discussion had passed? No matter how Iris viewed it, it all saddened her. 

Yet as Iris had spoken, she had noticed she seemed to induce fear in Suki; of what she did not know, but Suki did. To her unconscious mind that later simplified its directives to the upper hemispheres of her consciousness, she had known she had acted such a way, yet now she denied such, for by outside observation it had become an expression of weakness and not dominance. Formerly of an inward, afraid nature, had the partitions of herself begun leaking in with this newly found identity of host, authoring something not entirely of its constituents.

Given the transformative power of others' views it was no wonder she feared others. It was part of why she wanted to be liked, even though the actions she took were often in direct contradiction to such; to Suki's mind she would be hated for who she was regardless, and at least through belligerence could she determine that herself. She distrusted Iris, even moreso because she seemed able to grasp that which plagued Suki; she thought the sight of such weakness would calcify it and make it an object visible to all others as well.