[ARC 11: SEASONS DON'T FEAR THE REAPER]
It was not yet mid-evening when Serena knocked at Yuruko's door on Valentine's Day, carrying three gifts. Yuruko answered in her lab coat & scrub pants: she always wore the same outfit for routine.
"Happy Valentine's Day." Serena smiled.
"Wait, it's Valentine's Day?"
Serena handed her the three gifts as she stepped inside. "Okay, so, I got you Doritos, Cheetos, and the Pringles are the new cheeseburger flavor."
"That sounds disgusting." said Yuruko. "I can't wait to try -- uh, why is it already open?"
"Um, I got hungry on the way back."
"Are they good?"
"No."
Yuruko looked down and noted half of the chips were gone, but no matter. As they ate together on the couch, she asked Serena how Mia was doing. Serena replied that she was doing well, and they would attend Jeanne & Nuiko's funerals later that month.
Yuruko nodded and turned on her monitor, flipping it to a videogame stream: early footage of the Final Fantasy 7 remake.
"Um, I needed to ask you, too -- I'm gonna hit two-star soon, but I dunno what to choose for my hero name."
Yuruko sat down next to her. "Fogwoman?"
"No."
"Filler Episode?"
Serena frowned. "But I'm not a filler episode."
"That's true. What about Weatherwoman?"
"Maybe. Man, this is hard. Do you know any anime reference I could use?"
"There's one anime with something like, uh, Fleet of Fog, but…" Yuruko frowned. "We'll think of something. Are you gonna get a costume, too?"
Serena shrugged, taking off her jacket, her white tanktop underneath. "Mia said her mentor would make me a custom jacket with my hero name, since, uh…"
Yuruko realized. "I- shit. Yeah. Whoops."
Keeping her shoulders shown, Serena laid her jacket off to the side and Yuruko smiled. She felt no pressure to make eye contact with Serena, and Serena usually let her voice drop around her, too. She kissed Serena and asked if she was planning on staying the night.
Serena smiled. "Sure. Um, if we do anything again, though, just try not to touch around my…"
Yuruko eyed Serena's right arm. "What about your tentacle?"
++++++
If you remember the analogy of great minds and the bacterial colony from earlier, then it should also be noted that some minds have the function of merely passively accepting whatever is shit in to their mouths. Not the majority of minds, however, because as a Mark Twain quote goes: "Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy."
But there do exist a rare few minds too dull even for art. These minds inhabit perfectly functional, but rote shells of humans. For example, they may have conversations like this:
"Hey, Serena. What's that word on the back of your jacket mean?"
"Um, it's something from a videogame. It's my new hero name, since I got two-star recently."
"From a videogame? Oh, like an Xbox or Nintendo?"
"Yeah, I guess like a... Nintendo or something."
"Oh, I play videogames sometimes if I get bored. Well, only when I'm bored, though. Not when I'm not bored."
Inspiring. Tap Tiffany Sotomayor and she responds, but put your head beside her ear, and all you shall hear is the faint echoic roar of the ocean. That is why part of this narrative will not focus on Tiffany, but instead her girlfriend (and mentor -- what a fantasy, right?) Rochelle Beasley.
And by all accounts, Rochelle was a good & caring girlfriend for Tiffany, and they were frequently gossiped about by the types of students who filled their heads with romance novels & fantasies of love. Even Mia, who generally removed herself from such bullshit, would have been able to tell you the times she had passed by Rochelle holding some present or flowers for Tiffany as she came back to Urasaria. Neither did Rochelle ever seen to pressure Tiffany or let this interfere with her duties as a mentor, and so the ethical qualms of dating her own protege never posed an issue.
(In fact, she had been asked of it once and replied: "What do you mean? She's the one who asked me out.")
It's an unfortunate state of affairs when such an average relationship is idealized, but such it tends to be in life. So many people are content to never cast off their own inherited islands, and for reasons ranging from laziness, neuroses, or just a fear of loneliness, hold up the solid relationships as the best of the bunch.
But Rochelle knew this, as did Mia, and both were possessed of an intelligence and curiosity of horizons many unfortunately lack. Both were similarly passionate hunters of Urasaria, as well, and many a times the two could be seen together on the train back to the academy, talking of what they had read recently while their respective proteges slept besides them. This was a trend that had extended back to their first semesters, where Rochelle would make a habit of trying to end up around anywhere Mia would be. Do you need to be told why?
Okay, good.
It's possible all of this is superfluous, as you may have already read of Rochelle years ago: there were always a swarm of articles about her, perhaps more than any other student besides Matoi Kujo; but a little celebrity is a dangerous thing.
She had once gone hunting in a department store near the end of her first-year, killed the host at the other end of the aisle she was standing at, when she suddenly took 3 bullets to the back. She turned and see the source as a civilian police officer, who shouted again at her, then saw her Urasaria badge, lowered his gun, and slowly began backing away. Rochelle still had Twinfast's claws & tail summoned and was righteously pissed, but saw out of the corner of her eyes a nearby magazine, whose cover she recognized, lying on its rack.
Her white mentor came out of the aisle and realized what had happened, then shouted to the officer: "HEY! What the fuck's a matter with you, huh?! What, you think-"
"I- hey, it's alright." said Rochelle quickly. "He just thought I was a host. Uh, sorry about that."
So while Rochelle recognized the greater benefit of agreeing to such appearances in the media, part of her despised how her accomplishments were always sublimated by one adjective: no article ever called Matoi Kujo Urasaria's highest-ranked **Japanese** student.
Yet she also disliked -- despise would be too strong a word for Rochelle, in anything -- how the press made such disproportionate grief out of her life. She could remember her father who had fallen ill recently, but none of it was proportional to the ass-kissing she had been given over it. But the truth is that in 2020, and perhaps to readers of years on, most of the time recognition was linked to money & if you could make it; otherwise you were an ethereal class.
Back in the past-present of 2020, Serena stepped in to her & Mia's home wearing her new Boudoir-jacket. Mia hadn't yet seen it and was sitting on the couch.
"Okay." said Serena. "They said I could do this and it'd work with the scanners, so." She turned around.
'This is a videogame reference, isn't it?' thought Mia.
"This is a videogame reference, isn't it?" said Mia.
On the back of Serena's jacket: 'MIASMA'.
Serena nodded and turned. "It's from Final Fantasy. Um, it means something kinda like fog."
"So long as you like it." nodded Mia, utterly clueless. Her tablet rang, and she took it quick. "Hello?"
"Hi! This is Charlotte, Prettiest Pink. Aimee left me as acting president. Swarm, right?"
"Yes. You can call me Mia."
"Alrighty. Good-good. Your protégé is… Serena Kunst, right? Miasma?"
"Yes." said the lesbian mom, her punk daughter sitting down beside her.
"Get extra breadsticks." she whispered.
"So, I noticed she hit two-star recently, and… okay, it's a federal government escort contract. You know what that means, right?"
"Er, no scanning Revenants and full confidentiality."
"Confiden-what? Anyway, you can't tell anybody else about it. I already have two people, and I need two more..."
"Get two large with no toppings." whispered Miasma. "I can make the pepperoni."
"Alright." muttered Mia.
"Come to the Council of Four's office and I'll assign you, okays?"
"See you soon."
"Seeya."
Mia hung up, told Serena they needed to go in for carryout, then explained the rules of federal contracts: Serena surprised her by having studied that section of her textbook, even if she didn't understand what "confidential" meant. They stepped inside the Council of Four's office and Rochelle & Tiffany and Charlotte were sitting there, talking over something.
Serena frowned as she recognized Tiffany, who was in her year, holding hands with her mentor Rochelle. She whispered to Mia: "Is that legal?"
"Serena, it's femme and butch." whispered Mia. "…and, er, I'm not sure."
Mia didn't care for the ethics of their relationship, but it reminded her of herself & Aimee: that was good enough.
"Oh, hey, guys. Come sit down." said Charlotte. Her hair was a permanent rainbow: Serena thought of Ragyo Kiryuin.
Mia & Serena sat down next to the unethical duo; Mia made a comment to Rochelle about how at least neither her or Rochelle would be left at a disadvantage now.
"With not being able to scan?" laughed Rochelle. "Yeah, I guess we'll be even. What's your rank now?"
Mia grinned. "#26."
Rochelle mock-winced, and was about to say something when Charlotte cut in: "Okay, so they need you to escort somebody. Palette." A paintbrush appeared in her hand, she pulled a blank paper out of her drawer, and she painted over it. "Hey, you ever think it's weird how they don't pay out for these contracts, they just give some vague bullshit about how they'll 'put in a good word' for if you wanna get hired? Anyway, here's your two addresses, codeword, codephrase. Got it?"
"Yes." said Mia.
"Good."