[ARC 2: LANACCA STATE OF MIND]

  Mia's borrowed tablet had been shattered in the fight, but she was able to regenerate enough to come to the nearest town, find that she was in Virginia, then call Aimee to pick her up. Aimee came with Marisa in tow; with Rider's acceleration and that no student cares to ever drive the speed limit, they were back at Urasaria in under an hour. As Mia laid down in the infirmary, she smiled at Hirogane. "Well, tell me how my colony is now."

  Hirogane drew Pulse's tendril up her right arm vein; her left hand was still gone. As had occurred last time she had been amputated, she braced, then Pulse calmed her as a fully formed left hand burst out from her stump and she regained her senses. "...colony feels healthy, now. Guessing you received the last piece."

  "I did." She held her hand out as if to receive something, and a line of golden scarabs melted into their respective scarab-metal, able to harden, boil, arc lightning when hit by a respective element. "I'm... still not certain how useful this one will be, but I'm eager to train it." She sighed. "Do you want to hear his motivation?"

  Hirogane nodded and Mia relayed it. She noted sadness upon Aimee's eyes, and again there was the coalescence of humanity into he who was inhumane; yet both Mia and Aimee wondered if they truly wished he had been prevented earlier.

  "Ryumi." said Hirogane after a while. "That was her name. Staff hadn't been able to find it. Magnus's was findable, but not her's."

  "Wasn't she a student? I would think she and Worldwide should have been in student records." Mia sighed. "Which makes their interrogations even more stupidly bullshit, but, whatever."

  Hirogane shrugged. "From what little I listened to in faculty meetings, Ryumi's records were so redacted that nobody had any knowledge of Worldwide but hearsay. Only I remembered her, vaguely, which I chose to not reveal because I thought it might get you into more trouble. Not uncommon for students to have their information redacted post-graduation, but even her name had been removed."

  Mia frowned. "Why would that have happened?"

  "S'beyond my scope as medic. But that's partially why they treated you as they did. All we could guess was that something significant enough had been done with it to warrant redacting its previous host out of history."

  "If we know when she died, I can look through what I've got." said Aimee. "Nothing with a name, uh, of course, but can't imagine there wouldn't have been something."

  "Magnus said she died... five years ago. 2013." Mia frowned. "I would appreciate that. I wish I knew more about what she was like. Hirogane, do you remember anything about her personally?"

  "S'far as I remember, she was a very dangerous host. Seem to recall a lot of incidents involving her over the years. Her worst trait was that she knew exactly how strong she was. Never assumed her and Magnus to be a couple, but she had enough of a personality packed into her that I'd bet that was primarily her decision, not his."

  "I suppose that softens the blow of finding out my Revenant comes from a straight woman." muttered Mia quite dykeishly. She realized something and slightly panicked. "Aimee, show me your abs." Aimee did so. "Oh, wonderful, I'm still gay." She grinned dreamily. "Very gay."

  Hirogane sighed. "You know Revenants don't convert women who were lesbians before activation."

  "Yes, but it's always good to remind myself. Aimee, please remind me more when we get home."

  Aimee blushed and smiled. She felt giddy; she had not been much appreciated throughout her life, but the masculine traits her parents most despised in her were those that Mia loved.

  Over the following week, Worldwide's final piece alighted into its whole, a sensation that made Mia realize that she had been feeling repeated attempted extensions in battle to that which was not there. Her formerly fragmented colony had repeated itself as a fragmentation of strategic thought; she had several times thought of loosing forth something she had not yet been able to actually loose. Now that she could, she would continue to rank up quickly and gain strength quicker; Marisa would soon remark she was like a second-year in strength already.

  Yet another feeling counterwaxed in Mia now, that of the need to stifle her Revenant, lest it erupt outward in ways that will later be seen. Rather than, as with every other student, the growth of a Revenant that trails a growth of ego behind itself, with Mia she was always aware of the strength she would need to grow herself into, and this was why failures & setbacks affected her deeply. Worldwide was a chosen and fought-for part of herself now, yet one whose prior history weighed like a dead nightmare upon her mind.

  For Christmas, she brought Aimee to meet her parents Alina & Stefan at the prison in which her father was housed. That Aimee was student-president allowed her some leeway, enough that they could have Christmas dinner at an outside restaurant rather than the prison's meager offerings, so long as Stefan was returned before midnight.

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  Alina was Mia's mother; subsequently they looked a bit like each other. In recent years, she had developed a consistent pain in her hands along with tremors, which made it difficult for her to grip things or work long hours. As Stefan finished pouring her glass of water, she said: "He could have simply given it to you rather than kill all of those people for it, you know. What is it about men where they always want to make murder heroic?"

  "Well, given your daughter's profession, I could say something about that." said Mia. "But I believe he rightfully assumed I may not have cared as much without the motivation. It doesn't... excuse it, of course, but part of it was molding me into someone more able to accept Worldwide."

  "Mm. Well, and perhaps he chose his victims well enough. I have a friend who knew one of those husks. A very nasty little man, he was."

  Mia nodded. For a moment, she hoped that they all were deserving of their fate, yet found she could not access the crevice of such an emotion as deeply as she once had; as if it had been engulfed from her, or perhaps the indifference of memory to the past had already begun in herself. "I'm very happy at Urasaria, at least."

  "I'm not surprised by that." said Stefan. "You still get a college education outside of killing enemies of the state, though, don't you?"

  "We do, yeah." said Aimee. "I mean, it's not the type you can really fail, but it's just a general education. Doesn't really filter anybody out, so it just amplifies the education gap between lazy students and non-lazy students anymore."

  "Which one is Mia?"

  Aimee looked over at Mia, who placed her hand on her chin, gazing down at her as her eyelashes fluttered; instinctually Aimee's body responded in rather Pavlovian ways. "Non-lazy."

  Mia smirked. "Good girlfriend."

  "Can't imagine it has much real-world carry-over into what you do, but then again, you've already learned the most important life lesson of making sure you're on the boss's good side." said Stefan.

  "Oh, as if." laughed Mia and kissed Aimee on the cheek, who laughed. She placed her hand over Aimee's. "Really, as if I hadn't already liked her back when I was still a little fangirl. Perhaps I achieved that fantasy after all."

  Aimee nodded, but she was reminded again that she often felt she had somehow tricked Mia into being attracted to her. It was not an insecurity Mia could help with, not in the main, and so like many others she simply stowed it away within herself. She had never felt it good to rely on others for her conceptions of herself, although that she rarely had the option to do so had made this rationale easy to adopt. "Just hope I can continue living up to that for you."

  "You always do." Mia stroked her hand reassuringly. "But really, Aimee's been very important to me for the past few months. She's a wonderful girlfriend - kind, supportive, smart, and very strong. I cherish you. And I- am admittedly glad you have a Revenant so strong that I don't have to worry about you dying."

  Aimee winced, but nodded; she had heard more than a few Urasaria relationships end in such a fashion. Her own mentor Renee had died, yet there was no blame nor survivor's guilt she felt for it; she had merely killed his killer, and occasionally, years on, a scent or a noise would rocket his memory to the surface of her thoughts, until it again sank into the brew of memory. "Just hate that you're going to start having to take contracts without me. I trust Marisa, but, um... yeah. I trust you, too."

  Stefan looked over to Aimee. "Mia's mentioned they hardly pay her much over there. What's it like at the president-level?"

  Mia sensed where this was going and headed it off defensively. "Professionals make enough."

  She had noted that throughout the night, Stefan had asked of Aimee largely functionary questions; her Revenant, her rank, if she would be student-president next year, her plans after graduation. It was moreso what she was that interested him more than who she was, Mia felt, though perhaps it was because he would not see Aimee again for another year, and so needed the factual foundation of her being so that his thoughts might bring her otherwise alive in the emptiness of his time in prison. He asked often of Aimee during Mia's visits, but she was never certain if he understood why Mia loved her.

  This frustrated Mia, for her father had always taken up a large partition of her mind; she felt the least she could be was grateful for him, yet she had at times noted her own resentment. Unconsciously and without much rational thought put into it, she felt vaguely that there was a version of her life where he could have both been present and middle-class and she a natal host, and the mismatch between these realities frustrated her; she despised the limitations her yet-life had placed upon her, and wished she could invest all emotions into what she had now at Urasaria so that she could not be caught in these past conceptions. Time, not will, would be needed to remedy this.

  As the night continued, Aimee noticed the tremors in Alina's hands grew more frequent; something in the evening tended to worsen them. As Alina went to pour herself a glass of water, she gripped her trembling hand with frustration, but as Aimee reached out to her, a sudden flinch in Alina's shoulders withdrew her.

  To Aimee's mind, she recalled when she had hunted once with Renee, and the black holes he had summoned had engulfed an enemy host's legs in a whirl of tar, affixing him to the road. As they drew nearer, they had watched as he pulled up at a nearby lamppost, harshly enough his body began to fray, yet he continued to pull and yank, until with a single snap, he ripped his torso free from his legs and bled to death in separate halves.

  She wondered if that same beast ever inhabited Mia as well.

  The topic of Stefan's arrest came up some time before he was to be returned back. The trauma of the family was such that they had become frozen around the event, and though Mia attempted to steer from it regardless, it was not long before they were speaking again of the arrest itself, the media coverage of it, his sentencing, and other familiar memories for Mia. The pain or discomfort such memories brought did not matter, insomuch as avoiding their discussion. There was merely a latch the family had to it, for it was the most recent significant event that they had all experienced together. Yet, as she returned home with Mia that night, who was rather sullen, Aimee felt she had violated some private thing for which she was not meant to observe.

  In short, it was a curious dinner, and none gathered would have thought any different.