Neither Aimee nor Marisa spoke much to Mia about what began occuring across New York, but Mia picked it up from the news. There were mass civilian suicides and dozens of hosts dead by the Revenant version of suicide-bombing; they continually fought and did not hide themselves from students, nor fight them well at that. They had been impelled by some invisible strand to continually fight, which disturbed Mia, not the possibility that they had been hollowed into husks or shells, but that their consciousnesses still pressed outward against their eyes and made them witness to actions that were not their own any longer.

  She wondered, for she had seen many people who exerted so little choice over their own lives that they had essentially already surrendered such, and yet, like the searching for a clock once the only one available has broken, if the only choice their impelled state allowed them to make was to hope for their choice to return. They were not difficult hosts to fight; they did not counter well nor was their ability to coordinate remotely taken much advantage of, yet their point was civilian death rather than student death. But the appearance of these hosts was largely agreeable to certain students, because it meant that they did not have to fight hard for their kills; all students had a mandatory kill quota per month.

  But however the increased portion of civilian death and hollowing out for this month, little effect was made on either news nor public outcry; the world has become accustomed to this heightened death by Revenant primarily because it has affected all countries; no culture nor social differences have yet quelled that impulse for humans to fight by whatever means available, the destructiveness of such only differencing by which tools are most immediately wieldable for it. Perhaps there should be more fear, but there is not.

  Over the rest of this week and the next Mia would investigate alongside Marisa and Aimee local tattoo artists with the initials ‘R.D.’. Their search gradually spiraled out until it covered the entire state of New York. During this time, Mia was one of the few students who attended class regularly, tied as she was to the immediate surrounding area. Most students by now had picked up an investigation elsewhere or other contracts, whatever hotel rooms they stole or paid for moreso their abodes than what housing they earned at Urasaria.

  She learned a rudimentary college-level general education interspersed with Revenant strategization or the history of hosts. It was a subject Mia enjoyed but was primarily hagiographized so as to actually compel any interest in it from students. She began to feel a deep identification with herself as a host and moreso a student. But to identify with a thing is a different act than to merely be a thing, so she was still exaggerating herself along what she believed a student to be because she still felt she was not yet one. Those formerly foreign to a group are generally far more zealous in their identification with the group than those who have always been part of the same.

  She shared much of herself with Aimee now, her various Urasaria fan-art and fan-writings, of corpses rimmed in fire and headless men in graffiti-stained streets. They were crude and unhinged and all expected of what had been, to be fair, a bizarre teenage girl, yet Aimee valued them regardless. Whenever one was forced outside of Urasaria without the other; Mia with Marisa or Aimee with presidential duties; then they would certainly return with a gift, usually a flower or some trophy of a kill; a joking tradition Mia had not realized entirely the playfulness of.

  From physical attraction there came the sinking of deeper desire into their respective mental pores, though no overt romantic gestures were yet being made.

  As Rider's tendrils extended throughout the dozen eggs in her frying pan and accelerated their cook, Aimee made a gesture to Mia like she was trying to drill her tendrils through the right place, who giggled at the kitchen table.

  "Are you sure you don't need my help?" said Mia.

  Aimee shook her head, but Mia came up beside her regardless; mostly to be closer; partially because she found herself strangely resentful of her own superfluity in this matter. She wanted to be needed, though her desire for this necessarily meant she wanted Aimee to be dependent. She did not like the things this implied in herself.

  Aimee went over to her fridge and picked a plastic bag out of the fridge filled with various groceries, then began plucking a few ingredients out of it; eggs and spinach and sundried tomatoes and sourdough bread for Mia's breakfast. She handed the rest to Mia, who smiled. "And are you certain you don't want me paying you for all of this?"

  "No, I mean- I make three times more than you do. I should be the one buying things for you, not the other way around. Um, plus, I set up the theater in the back with a few of those films you mentioned, and..."

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  The two women were at the earliest precipice of relationships where mutual attraction is not a certainty, yet enough of one to be able to harm its bearers. There was no hierarchy nor mismatch of affections, but that their relationship did not display any of the hierarchies that Aimee felt were obvious and objective demarcations was why this entire situation with Mia unnerved her. She needed to be put into a hierarchy and to be made into something other than herself to be deserving of love, for she felt the subjective dislike of herself was instead an objective demarcation of where she should stand in relation to Mia, who stood above such things. She should have been made into a pleading and meek thing, yet she was not nor asked to be.

  As it always was for Aimee, anxieties layered within her own attractions. With each dollop of attraction she invested into Mia, she was further distancing herself; at her most attracted did she feel most abandoned; she felt unqualified for her own desire. Mia was beautiful and wonderful and caring, becoming as much a student as any natal host, but still Aimee could not quiet the idea in her mind that such traits were beyond her grasp.

  A week into their search for R.D., Aimed and Mia slumped together on Aimee's couch. Aimee said: "Nothing tonight either. But I think you've got it right. You were mind-controlled the day you were dropped off here. Knocked unconscious with electricity, given a Revenant, then mind-controlled until you were healed and able with Makoto. Lot to happen in your first month. ... What are you feeling?"

  "Rather normal, oddly." Mia frowned. "I think it's tempting to believe I could have been one of those husks on the news, but I'm so obviously not and there was never any intention of making me such. So, why worry for myself? What I don't understand is the purpose of it all."

  "I hate to say it, but it might be centered around you."

  "If their idea of villainy is fulfilling a fantasy I've had since I was a child, then perhaps they should do more of it."

  "Just worried they'll start publicly linking it to you."

  "It wouldn't be my first media frenzy. And I'm much better equipped for it mentally now than I was then."

  "Did people know back then it was you? That you're his daughter?"

  Mia smirked. "They couldn't publish my name due to being a minor, but they had pictures of my family. Six-foot tall teenage girls aren't exactly in high supply. It isn't the most unsympathizable crime he did, of course, but around Urasaria..."

  "Around Urasaria, yeah. Only area in the country you can run on the death penalty for theft and doubling funding for lesbian pride parades."

  "We've assimilated so well." said Mia dreamily. She scooted closer to Aimee, who started to move away to make room, until Mia said: "No no, come back here."

  Aimee moved closer, though with enough expression of anxiety that Mia worried she had asked something wrong. But to bring this up would invite discussion of what she had intended by asking, emotions she herself was not certain of. "Must've been pretty hard on you."

  "It was traumatic. And I very much resented my father at first. I blamed him for the constant media, the police attention, the mockery at school - all of it, which I know must sound strange. It wasn't that I felt he had caused it all, necessarily, but that I felt so pressured in every direction that I needed to direct my anger to someone. He was the only assailable person I found. It was easier to believe my father was selfish than that the world was."

  "Are you close to him now? I know you said you were visiting him before this all happened. I'm sorry you haven't been able to lately."

  "He can annoy me, but I'm able to... smooth out my view of him better now. And as I've gotten older, especially seeing how much he loves my mother - admittedly, more than he loves me - I understand why he wanted to sacrifice himself to help her. But it made me feel like an accessory to her when he would expect me to do the same. It wasn't simply asking me to provide for her when she couldn't work. It was that I had it drilled into my mind that everything I should do should be to her benefit, and anything else would be selfish. She's never asked for that. She isn't struggling. She has enough money for the rest of her life."

  Aimee nodded. She continued looking over an opened notebook that Mia had left out on the table: she had enjoyed reading it for the past few nights. Mia was not a skilled visual artist - her talent was in her erudition and the way she put words together. She had traced pictures she found online or personally witnessed, yet what stuck with Aimee was that among these images there was never a depiction of weakness or difficulty; Mia seemed to find the whole idea detestable in students. She had developed this strange locus of control that acted throughout herself in wholly mental ways; that because she could not act physically she had chosen harsh mentality, as if an ethereal fist were able to punch out of the wall of actual life.

  "Before you turn to the next one, just remember I never claimed to be normal." chimed Mia.

  Aimee turned to it and became flustered; the drawing was more than a bit sexual. An unstated fact of studenthood and masculinity both is sexuality and violence are not entirely separate spheres, however denied but apparent this fact is by both groups. "Pretty nice. I like it. I like it a lot, honestly."

  "I'm glad."

  "...Urasaria's staff is getting onto me, too. Asking what we found after Doppori. Mind control Revenants are one of those categories of Revenants that can get professional hosts involved if we don't deal with it soon."

  "Do we have a deadline?"

  "Professionals get involved at a certain number of dead rather than days. Something gives me the feeling this guy has been intentionally skirting right underneath the line that pulls us out and professionals in."