As they walked outside of Urasaria's gate together and made their way into the city, Mia looked over Aimee again, who as always was dressed in masculine clothing. That she was also physically fit played well with Mia's preference in women: external masculinity contrasted by inward softness. She had been a very humanizing presence as a fellow Urasaria student to Mia, yet she worried that she would eventually find Aimee boring or pitiful in some way; she had already been noticing the ways Aimee preemptively subordinated herself in social situations.

  But she had heard some of Aimee's childhood and supposed that both her & Aimee were still attempting to compensate into their recent identities; Mia as a civilian turned host and Aimee as a religious child turned lesbian.

  "So, Marisa said you assigned her to me." said Mia teasingly. "You could only get me the third-best mentor, hmm?"

  Aimee tensed, then felt idiotic as rationale swept away her unconscious habit into the recognition Mia was not truly mocking her. The damnable part of herself was that she was constantly needing to disprove her own instinctual reactions. She relaxed. "Third-best second-year, but first-best mentor, y’know. Second-best second-year is male and the best second-year is Matoi. I figured you didn’t want a male mentor and I don’t think anyone would want Matoi as a mentor."

  Mia smirked. "It sounds like you chose correctly. Which one is Matoi?"

  "Oh, Matoi's... black hair, Japanese..."

  "Strong eyebrows?"

  "Killer eyebrows. In two years, she'll either be president or not need to be because she'll have already killed every rogue host in America. But her Revenant can't protect you like Marisa's can. But if you do meet her and prefer her, then- yeah."

  Mia smiled. "So long as you aren’t playing favorites. You don’t need to do favors for me to want to be around you."

  "I’m not- I’m not trying to do anything to make you owe me, if that’s what I’m making you think."

  "No, not at all. I'm just making sure you know that you don't need to be more than yourself for me to like you."

  Aimee nodded, though she resisted this observation still. She had tried to never be stuck upon someone else's conception of her, regardless of accuracy. She had for many years nursed both conceptions and counter-conceptions of herself, whether based on what would make her be liked or would make her disliked; she suffered from an instability of identity, beyond the traits she had learned to not display to others.

  As example, she was internally a good deal angrier and more headstrong than her well-put exterior suggested, yet, as was often with her emotions, certain stressors restrained her away from fuller expression; whether it was her socialization as a child which still held powerfully over her, or her position as student-president of an academy that with its legally-immune populace was itself moreso a palace of urges, stabbing and fleet, yet herself restrained by the gentle temperament that had been abused into her and expected from her.

  It was why she felt so unstable in her desire for Mia. A part of her feared romance, but another wished for it as well, for romance meant that she could loft herself upon someone else and know that the self she had constructed was attractive - but would she then not become dependent on that self she had constructed? She would be anchored even moreso to this creation, caught in the like or love another had for her, and, not entirely confidnet in herself, she often preferred to measure herself by Revenant or physical strength, precisely because these were areas that did not involve other people and could be measured objectively.

  "Did you want to know more about the investigation?" said Aimee.

  Mia quickly nodded. "Yes! I almost forgot with everything that’s gone on today."

  "They’re still looking, but they should have something for me this week, hopefully. Urasaria’s staff tends to be pretty slow, unfortunately."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "That’s alright. It’ll give me more time to get acclimated to Worldwide." said Mia, growing giddy. "So, what should we do? For hunting? What should I know? Marisa told me a little bit, but-"

  "I’ll dip Rider’s tendrils in your veins and tell you what to do." Aimee smiled. "It’ll keep you safe and get you feeling stronger, too. But killing is as easy for a host as breathing. Hard part is learning where to direct it."

  They passed by a glass-faced diner, and in the next instant, glass shards burst out of the diner’s window and shot towards the two; Aimee pulled Mia down with her as the two hit the ground and the shards sailed uselessly overheard, Mia shrieking at the sudden attack and then blushing a moment later as she felt Rider’s tendrils dip into her veins. The world slowed as if a disturbed pond; the pace of her heart grew until she arose with Aimee’s helping hand. She turned her head as if her movement made the rest of the world move, and a deep enjoyment that was not entirely her own seeped into herself as she saw a man she knew was their foe, now fearful at the sight of Aimee, stepping away and backing away within the diner.

  "You got this." whispered Aimee, only her words without the veil of sloth that seemed to cover the rest of the world. "Rider will keep you safe."

  Mia felt a movement from the shards of glass behind them, and a spike of glass formed from behind and extended towards her; a swift set of fire scarabs set it molten and burnt it away before it could reach her, Rider’s enhancement allowing the two to sidestep the next glassy barrage that came from within the diner but sailed past them again, turning back upon them but wilting upon a wall of scarabs self-destructing into fire.

  "Step ahead. Burn the glass." whispered Aimee.

  Mia nodded; a tongue of flame ate out the entire face of the diner and burnt the rest of it molten, Rider’s remaining tendrils shooting through the molten flow and infusing it with the acceleration of time until they decayed to nothingness, then decayed an aperture into the diner through which the women rushed; he was 30ft ahead and within their Revenant’s range when spikes of the glass shot up from the floor ahead, blocking Mia’s step; beside, Mia heard Aimee begin to tell her something, yet pulled her hand back and a ball of flame shot through him from behind, leaving a hole of charred veins & burnt blood dripping from the ghastly aperture of his chest as he fell dead ahead. A moment later Aimee appeared beside him and stomped through whatever of him was still breathing, then looked to Mia, blood dripping down her strong hands. "Um, you got him. Can you- back around the corner?"

  Mia felt a bit embarrassed as the civilians in the diner, previously either huddled under their tables or still eating, either turned away or cheered for her. Despite the ultraviolence of students, she would learn eventually that straight women tended towards the more pro-Urasaria demographics because they were usually the intended victims of rogue hosts. She realized his corpse had disappeared and heard Aimee calling for her, then went back around the corner and saw his body carved into many pieces, stacked so that atop of them was his still-beating heart.

  Aimee crouched down. "Hey, the beating is normal, Rev-"

  "Revenants do that, I know." Mia nodded as she walked up. "Er, you don't think I was too light, do you?"

  "You did great." Aimee smiled as Mia crouched down beside her. "Sorry. I was trying to tell you that… don't let up on rogue hosts. They might try to manipulate you. Not that … yeah. Just don't want you getting hurt."

  "It's alright. I knew what to do before you told me."

  "Just going to scan the Revenant so you get credit." Aimee took her student-tablet out, a crude & armored device that suffices for all student-specific functions. "It’s got a scanner to tell you the name and ability, too." She scanned.

  [Glassy-Eyed: Control over glass.]

  Mia laughed as the adrenaline seeped out from herself, still giddy. There was no trauma of murder to be had, merely that she had vanquished an enemy and the sense of accomplishment that went with such, buoyed by the swell of student identification that such gave her. "T-That was very fun." she laughed. "I m-mean, I'm a little giddy and a little emotional right now, but I could really - it felt good! Very good. Even with all of the blood, and I- actually, I kind of like the blood, maybe that's new, and- it looks good on us, I think, I just wonder if I'm going to need to get a spare set of clothes every time I've-"

  "I'll help you." laughed Aimee. "Stay still. Not trying to accidentally touch you anywhere. Sorry, that's a weird comment." Rider's tendrils extended out from her veins, until they were about three feet or so long, then wrapped around Mia's sleeve and slid down, blood vaporizing into wisps and leaving her clothes clean.

  "That's your time acceleration, isn't it?"

  "Yeah. Lot of students figure out their own ways to do some cleaning." Rider slid over the remaining blood and vaporized it. "You didn't want to keep any on you, do you?"

  "Well, actually, I would have liked to keep a little bit here as an accent." She tapped near her stomach, then seeing Aimee seem genuinely guilty, took Aimee's wrist and stamped her bloody hand on her clothes. "There we go."

  Aimee looked down at her own clothes and, feeling that she had brought Mia enough into Urasaria's stench, decided not to clean herself.