The next morning, the four met with their FBI contact, who gave them their assignments. Markus told the agent that Julia changed their plan with the strip club owner, and he scolded her for not notifying him earlier. This bothered Julia little; she already figured him to be one of those sad little assholes whose only confidence came in following procedure.

Out of any student, Aimee always received the most reports about Julia. She enjoyed indulging her legal immunity -- smoking indoors, trespassing in to closed stores, trying her hand at a few legally-gray pranks. More impish than devilish, she never physically harmed civilians; even Manufacture's rods blocked any secondhand smoke. In her view, life as a host meant exposing herself to any number of horrific deaths; if she had no right to special privileges, who did?

Markus took this only as more evidence of the type of woman she was; she never saw decency in anything. It was selfish of her not to use her position as a student not to advocate for *something*. He usually thought of her as an arrogant pissant who never met a situation she couldn't mock, and one of their main conflicts as mentor & protege was the assumption that the other only held their positions insincerely.

As for the corpse Mia had created last night, it had been autopsied. He was found to have alcohol in his system, and after a few visits to local bars -- not so much asking for their security footage as it was taking it -- they had found him speaking with another man outside, who Julia & Markus were following by the evening.

Peeking around the corner, Julia & Markus watched as he walked up to the glass showcase of a local shoe store, 50ft away. A mother & boy were inside, and the man seemed to flinch when the mother struck her child. Stepping towards the door, he paused, and in the next instant -

- he turned to face the car launched towards him -

- but a superheated wind sliced it in half, both halves pausing against the glass front before they crashed in to the store. Across the street, Julia frowned a second later, thinking it was probably good he stopped it as he rushed inside. Manufacture's two metal rods were in her hands as she watched their foe run inside the door; Markus was at her side with Baal's pentagram carved in his arm.

No time to waste, the two started rushing across the street, and in the next instant -

- the car's halves came together again and one piece flew towards them -

" - Baal!" shouted Markus, sweeping his arm out -

- and the next scene was instant. Baal's demonic maw erupted out of the pentagram, teeth & tongue gnashing as the car flew towards them -

- and a whirl of supersharp teeth went through the automobile, chewing & carving it to bits before it could hit them, Markus muttering to Julia that it had absorbed glass & metal & gasoline as they came up to the store's glass front doors.

Baal's tongue licked it and all the glass disappeared from the storefront, and as Julia stepped past the former-door -

- the glass reappeared and tried to close in on her -

- but Manufacture's dual rods swept out, and when they popped an electrical arc came out of them that shattered the renewed glass; Markus stepped in with her and noticed it was slightly chillier than usual.

"No ampu-amputation today." coughed Julia. Their foe was ahead in an aisle of shoes 50ft away, and Markus shouted for the civilians to stay calm & sit down.

He loathed Julia's joke after about how living in a country with Revenants, they should've already signed their wills. They stepped up to the entrance of the aisle where their for was standing at the opposite end, back wall behind him & shelves of shoes separating them.

Grip tightening on one of Manufacture's rods, Julia readied to throw the other forward -

- and heard something crashing through the storefront behind; she turned and saw the same car crashing through the front again, and as it came near a group of civilians -

- the next scene was instant. She threw both of Manufacture's rods over the vehicle; they both sparked & their electrical arcs hit the vehicle -

- slowing it just enough to keep the civilians safe; another spark stopped it for good, and behind her, Baal's maw devoured a superheated shoe that their foe had thrown at them.

"R-Really hot." muttered Markus, 30ft separating them & their foe. "C-Could be elemental."

Julia's head shook as she turned. "I-It's time-based-"

- and her face caught a thrown-boot so cold that it shattered on contact & cut through half her face; wincing as she staggered back, she wondered if her protege had intentionally not eaten that one.

Two facing their foe again, they saw him grab another pair off the shelf, readying for another volley. Julia muttered to Markus to check Baal's range, and he set his devil-worshipping hand to the side of the shelf, out of their foe's sight. Baal's tongue burrowed within it, and in the next instant -

- a dozen spikes of metal burst out of the shelf; Julia threw Manufacture's rod out, and when it sparked a line of electricity shot through spikes & towards the man -

- with no harm seemingly done.

"You still sure it's not like Worldwide?" muttered Markus, relevantly.

"It's a-acceleration and re-reversion. He's generating a cuh-countercurrent."

"If you say so."

Baal's maw began gurgling.

Ahead, the man began backing away; he set his hand to the wall and the material started to drip, temperature beginning to rise in the room. Julia realized another difference; Worldwide had a range, but the center of his temperature was probably its hottest. She tapped Markus's shoulder -

- and the next scene was instant. Baal's tongue burst out of the shelf; a bile spray of gasoline followed and doused the man -

- and Julia laughed when he burst in to flames; he hit the ground screaming as his fire started extinguishing itself, and Baal's maw gurgled before it spat out a ball of glass towards him -

- nailing him straight to the floor; Markus's mouth moved as he saw Julia rushing up to him, and as Manufacture's rods bashed the glass -

- it shattered in to a hundred shards that sliced through the man in 101 ways, and he stifled his protest as their foe fell dead ahead. Julia glanced back to him and he just shook his head.

"Good?" he said.

Julia nodded. "Mmhm. Good on the -- picking up orders."

"Thanks."

She crouched down to scan.

An hour after, they met up with Mia & Marisa at a local diner. As Julia & Markus sat down with them, and Marisa pushed their remaining deep dish & some Boudoir bandages over to them, she checked her phone. The agent let her know that the lead prosecutor for the civilian case against a few mafia members would be arriving in an hour, and her & Mia would guard him for a few days, until a professional could come. She showed it to Mia, who nodded.

"Did you get the guy?" said Marisa and Julia nodded. "Okay. Uh, speaking of. How many hosts did you guys like, deal with before last night? Any idea how many they have left?"

"We might know more if Julia stopped killing all of them." said Markus.

Julia shook her head. "They're- they're not gonna talk, those guys."

"That wasn't my only issue with it."

"Yeah, because you want to see a future doctor out of every low-life. Buh-believe me, they would have spent their talents in a boardroom otherwise." she said. "It was t-two, before last night and this morning."

"Cool beans." said Marisa.

Julia nodded. As she started eating her deep dish with a fork & knife, Marisa noted this, to which she said it was more lasagna than pizza.

"We should try their hotdogs, while we're here." muttered Mia.

"They're not that good." said Julia. "Around here, you-you ask for ketchup on it and t-they can't imagine you wanted to besmirch their $1 piece of pig intestine."

'She just always has to be different.' thought Markus.

Marisa shrugged. "I guess I'll try it. Are you from here, Julia? Like, you don't have much of an accent."

"I never picked o-one up. That would have requi- required socializing."

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Marisa laughed a little. Julia dug further in to her deep dish, annoyed she had left her poetry notebook at Urasaria. How she was interested in observing others, but not *in* them, she chalked up to a need for intellect only art usually filled in her. Yet she recognized, even in herself, the tendency to rationalize her loneliness & make it like an inevitable outcome.

A bit nervously, she started patting her pocket. "M-Mind if I smoke here?"

"I guess hosts don't get cancer." shrugged Marisa.

Julia pulled a cigarette out, lit one with a Manufacture rod, and directed the smoke away with it.

Mia frowned. "Don't you still become addicted?"

"She's been smoking since before her Revenant activated." said Markus.

Julia coughed. "S-Since I was s-sixteen. I-I was trying to kill myself, but I should have bought a motorcycle instead."

Halfway through her cigarette, the manager came out and asked her to smoke outside. Julia flashed her 'MINT CONDITION' badge and he repeated his request. Trying some humor, she waggled one of Manufacture's rods at him. "You know, h-half the people you've got back there probably smoke, a-and worse stuff than this, believe me. I mean, jesus, I thought I saw a swastika tattoo on one of those goons."

Seeing that none of the others found the joke funny, she grumbled as she stepped out.

"There she goes again." said Markus. "She acts like everything can be joked about. You know her, don't you, Marisa? She's in your class. I bet she's as much of a hassle there as she is here."

Mia kept sipping her water.

"Umm… not really." said Marisa. "Like, she just keeps to herself. I always thought she was just depressed."

"Oh, no, she's not." said Markus. "She has enough confidence to fill this whole table. Completely full of herself. She treats her badge like it's a note saying she can do whatever the hell she pleases."

Marisa sipped her soda. Why every other protege & mentor pair seemed to enjoy dragging them in to their dramas, she never understood. "I mean, you only have to deal with her for another month or two. You don't have to, like, get worked up about it."

"Well, sure, but I think it's disrespectful when students abuse their legal immunity like that. We're trying to set a good example -- we should be better than just some regular civilian or a thief."

Her brow tensing, Marisa kept sipping her soda as Julia came back. "God, I-I swear, every third person out there is talking about whatever comic book movie came out lately. They get all their gray matter rotted out by that c-crap."

"People have different likes, Julia." said Markus.

"Yeah, and there's a difference between like and quality. There's some p-puh-people that get their k-kicks from getting electrocuted."

He noticed Mia & Marisa only exhaled through their nostrils for that one, and seemed not to listen to her for the rest of their dinner. That was alright, he figured: there were some people ostracized for good reason.

◆◆◆

On her way to the gas station at next dusk, Julia saw some women dressed for summer, and decided to first ask where the bathroom was when she entered. The clerk told her it was for paying customers only, but no matter, she went in anyway. After taking care of herself, she bought her cigarettes and went back to Markus. He told her he wanted to ask her something as she sat down in the driver's seat of a car, parked a few houses down from their 2-story target.

"I want to leave this host alive, if he shows up." he said.

Julia laughed. "Good one."

"I had a feeling you'd react like that." said Markus evenly. "You said I needed experience leading. This is how I get experience."

"Yeah, and eventually you're going to learn there's no reward for having good principles. I'm not going along with that pacifist c-crap."

"Christ, I'm so sick of you." he muttered. "I mean, jesus, you act like you're God."

Julia made an intentional reference to Woody Allen's Manhattan by replying: "I-I gotta model myself after somebody."

"There's that cynical attitude of your's again. You don't have to do any real introspection when you can just deflect with some ironic joke. You know, I noticed you didn't tell the one you told me around Mia and Marisa."

"Which one?"

"The one about how to fit six million Jews in one car."

Julia grinned. "You - you see, that's why you should've been an intellectual and not a-a cop, y-you've got a great passion for fighting the world's most insignificant issues. And buh-by the way, I-I'm more than allowed to joke about that, c-considering if I had been born in some Polish village, I'd be a lampshade right now."

"And I wonder sometimes if you don't wish you were. You've got a great passion for milking out your problems."

"Do you expect me to say something to that?"

"No. I'm just glad that we only have two months left together. I've cut plenty of toxic people out of my life before."

"Yeah, two months until you have some protege you can b-brainwash. Make sure they brush their mouth out with bleach."

These arguments never changed much of their rapport; they simply washed in to the next. They weren't caused by any particular deficiencies in Julia's mentorship; she had spent most of the year writing down uses for his Revenant, complimenting him after every fight and lecturing him later what he could've improved. This, more than inertia persay, had kept Markus from asking for a different mentor.

Leaning back, Julia noticed the time in their car read 6:35AM and frowned. "The hell is taking him so long?"

"He might be sleeping in."

"A union leader sleeping late?" she said. "Those g-guys are supposed to, y-y'know, be the backbone of the working class. That's why all the good ones get shot."

Markus leaned back. "I get the feeling you want to go in and check on him anyway, so do it." He heard the car door open and looked over, sighing as Manufacture's rod lit up a cigarette. The hardest work she did some days was going through those damn packs.

Fifteen minutes later, they knocked at the front door to no answer. Eventually Julia bashed a window in and they came in through the living room, then walked down to the hall to the third door on the right. Revenants readied, they opened it and stepped inside the bedroom -

- and found someone's guts blasted all over the walls.

"Oh, great." muttered Julia, and as she turned -

- an unseen force slammed the door shut, and she repeated herself as missiles began burrowing through the ceiling, then shot towards them -

- but Manufacture's rods bashed two; Baal's maw devoured another three -

- but one missile blasted Julia across the room and in to the wall, landing in a pile of scrap that had been his television, with a screen size made affordable by the salary of a union man. Manufacture's rods disappearing, she winced as she saw more missiles form in the ceiling -

- but fall in the center of the room, explosive barrage erupting but no damage or smoke coming. Markus was in the north-east corner, Julia in the south & door outside at the east. The explosive barrage began moving like it was scanning the room from above, slowly enough they could speak.

"It's not doing any damage?" said Markus and Julia patted her wound.

"Well, o-only internally." she said. "He doesn't know where we are."

"I thought I saw them homing in."

Julia shrugged. "I-I could just be perpetually unlucky."

Markus frowned. Baal's maw erupted out of his pentagram scar and fired six missiles in to the roof -

- which didn't budge at all; he rolled to the door -

- just in time to dodge the counter-barrage coming from above, moving the opposite direction from him now as it kept scanning the room.

South-side, Julia threw a Manufacture rod out, and as it sparked -

- the missiles homed in to meet it -

- then changed course towards her -

- and she groaned as she threw her tablet at it, missiles meeting with it & exploding but no apparent harm done to it. "It's by-biological, or R-Revenants only."

East-side, Markus tried the door and frowned as it wouldn't budge. "It's- it's not moving. Something's pressing against it."

"You sure?"

Julia waited until he was looking to bash her own head against the wall, and he laughed a little. The barrage began moving towards him, only a dozen seconds separating it from him. He looked over to Julia and saw her rifling through the pieces of blood-soaked television, and she rolled away from it -

- for the next instant scene. The explosive barrage homed in on the television scraps, exploding as they hit it -

- but no harm done to it; Markus noticed one of Manufacture's rods underneath it, covering itself by pulling the scraps to it. A constant barrage of missiles rushed in to it and left them free to walk as she came over to Markus.

"Did you t-try licking the doorknob?"

"It's illegal on other planets." he muttered, relevantly.

Julia frowned. "What?"

He shook his head, and as Baal's tongue slobbered the knob -

- it disappeared and left a hole in the door, gusts of air rushing through it so fast Julia nearly lost her footing; quickly, Markus shoved his pentagram against the hole -

- and Baal's maw devoured the air on the other end; at his side, Julia bashed the door down and they swept back out to the hall -

- just in time to see the enormous turbine at the start of it, blasting hurricane winds; sudden counter too quick, the two were caught up in it and launched midair down the hall -

- but as they passed by an outlet, the next scene was instant. Julia shoved one of Manufacture's rods in to it and grabbed it & Markus tight -

- keeping them with a safe handhold as the wind continued, and an electrical current went through every wire within the walls -

"-I- fuck -" groaned Julia, seeing the last scene before the lights went off in the house -

- of the homing missiles rushing out of the bedroom door. They heard a constant barrage of explosions erupt as it hit the walls, collapsing them & battering them down; evidently it only worked in one room, and as the entire house started to collapse in on them -

- the turbine's winds blasted most of it away, and Baal's maw devoured the rest of the smoke & concrete & rubble for the rest of that hellish minute. Eventually, the two stood up and saw their foe's corpse laying in the ruins.

"Guess that makes it easy." said Markus.

Julia nodded. "I saw you were ab-bout to fire at the ceiling, too."

"You noticed."

"You k-know, if you a-applied your head like that to your poetry-"

-she paused as she saw him roll his eyes. Why some cared so little about their craft, she never understood; cliches & melodrama were the most obvious forms of bad art she could think of, and the most popular. Necessarily, she didn't even care why he chose to only write about homosexuality: only that art required something broader than the self. Her sexuality was her least interesting trait -- not that she had put it to use recently.

They rested for a few minutes, and eventually Julia crouched down to scan, paused, then handed her tablet to Markus. "Here. You work it. You'll get used to it."

"Is this the button?" he said, tapping it.

"Mmhm."

"Thanks."

As he crouched down to scan, Julia saw someone passing over in to another street, and said: "Sorry, I-I gotta - just stay here." She ran after the woman, managing to catch her over in to the next street. "Dory?"

The woman turned. "I- Julia? Julia, right?"

Julia shook her head affirmatively. "I- yeah, I didn't realize you were -- I figured you had moved, or…" She gestured vaguely. "I'm a-a, uh, real student now. All this sweat isn't, isn't from shooting hoops."

Dory nodded. "No, I remember you tried out, and… it just didn't work out, but - but your Revenant activated, too! That was good. I'm actually on my way to practice, I was about to call an Uber…"

"You got in to college?"

"I am. I found a good one around here. I got in… well, it wasn't because of my grades." she laughed. "But they said they could overlook that so long as I keep playing, even if… well, you know, you remember. People don't watch much women's basketball. It's probably the only women's sport most people *do* watch. And I bet it has as many lesbians as that academy, too."

Julia nodded. "Do you - I mean, do you remember anything about our relationship? I know it was a-a while ago, but I-I was just mentioning it to someone recently."

"You just… you were kinda clingy." she smiled. "That's mostly what I remember, is just - you clung to things too much. You were really passionate about your writing, I remember that. Did you find any success with it?"

"I-I wasn't that passionate. It comes down to s-skill, not passion. That's the difference between a-art and bumper stickers."

"And I remember that, too, you were always trying to put yourself away from other people." She wiped her face. "A-And me, actually, a little bit, but, I'm sorry, I've really gotta get going. I'm sure you have some investigation you need to be on, too."

As Dory walked away, Julia watched her sit down on a bench, and take her phone out to call a taxi. Seeing Julia still standing there, most of her face turned away, an abstract expression made by the notch of her eye socket & curve of her cheek, and a non-face that was her to Julia.