Mia sprayed forward and kept burrowing, ceiling of ice supporting her tunnel as Tiffany walked beside her, checking her map.
"Few more seconds." she muttered.
Mia nodded. Tiffany hadn't spoken any on Rochelle, and Mia didn't try to peel it out of her. Even if she had, Mia would've assumed it was exaggeration or lying; she had no like of Tiffany.
Tiffany poured Contagion's potion in to the dirt. "I feel hedges."
"Go ahead."
The soils parted for Tiffany as she walked right.
Mia glanced up, and a puff of gold disintegrated a hole; up through the burrow she swept -
- to find herself standing on a gazebo in the middle of a circular hedge maze, swift ice replacing the ground. Mia crouched down and scanned the area, then stepped up to the edges with her ear put out. She put her hands up to the branches and icicles formed as she lightly pushed them forward, testing to see if anyone was on the other side.
On the other end, she felt someone touch the absolute zero chill and they opened their mouth to shriek, but a jet of water shut them up and the last no one saw of him was Mia's golden hand yanking his neck through the hedge.
She waited a few seconds to see if anyone reacted, then walked to the entrance to the rest of the maze. She came up to where he'd been and checked the ground for his gun, noting it had a suppressor that she knew from Yuruko didn't actually silence. A puff of golden flame disintegrated it like she'd been ordered to do.
Crouching down, the ground froze to silence her feet as she snuck through the maze. Twenty feet from the exit had a fork leasing inside. Someone's footsteps came near her hearing and she planted her back against the foliage, tri-swarm raid giving her oxygen so she didn't need to breath.
A man walked in. If he saw her he didn't show it. He walked the opposite way, and Mia disintegrated a hole underneath the exit so she'd hear him trip if he came back our. She took one step out of the maze and got a good view of her target ahead; a set of stairs leading up to the side of a raised plaza. Trees & fountains ran parallel, east of her, the manor further beyond.
Her feet got under her in a hurry and she ran towards the stairs, diving at the raised edge of the plaza with a golden kick
that was meant to bring her through the barrier -
- but it didn't part as Mia's legs smashed against it; she froze herself midfall and got back to her feet. Staggering for a second, Mia heard Tiffany hiding her laughter inside. One golden leg kicked through the barrier and a scarab whip yanked Tiffany over as Mia slid inside; Tiffany shrieked as Mia plugged the hole with ice and slammed her against the wall:
"If you EVER do that again, I will put you in the FUCKING GROUND."
"O-O-Okay."
Mia released her. "I hope how easily I dragged you over teaches you one very important lesson: you do not nearly have the level of Revenant to be this unprofessional."
"S-Sorry, I-I-I, I brought the guards." panted Tiffany, gesturing to the two glaze-eyed guards.
A pillar of gold disintegrated one with nothing but the clothes off her back and Mia redressed herself, sweeping back outside with the other zombie in tow. She glued her limbs to her side like he was walking as they went up the stairs and towards the manor, keeping the tension out of her muscles whenever another guard passed them. The manor was five stories, a minute away northwest and looked like it took ten to get from one side to the other. Ten, twenty guards were at the main entrance and on the roof.
Their bullets would hurt, but she'd been told she probably outclassed everyone here. Lately, she was enjoying that.
The zombie tugged on her sleeve and she stopped.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"Raaaange…" he groaned, relevantly.
Mia sighed. The glint of a rooftop scope looked at her. Another set of stairs was a bit ahead and led to a side-entrance. "Can you not -"
- a shriek came from the maze of hedges, and the roar of her zombie's weapon followed as he rushed towards it shouting in Spanish; Mia checked to see if their eyes were pulled away -
- and shoved a few spikes of ice through her chest that made her uniform rip and leak blood, gasping as she staggered over to the stairs. She heard more shouting she knew wasn't for her, stumbling up the stairs just as someone rushed down past her.
"What happened?" the woman said, glancing back.
"Someone f-fucking s-shot me." grunted Mia, staggering up.
"Do you need-"
"- GO FUCKING DEAL WITH THEM!"
Mia had a good vocal whip from working with Matoi.
The woman rushed down, and Mia disintegrated the crimson trail once she threw herself through the side-door and in to her first hallway. Ice closed her wounds as she heard the noise fade outside and closed the door.
'Worldwide.' she thought, tracing down the door's hinges and filling it with ice to lock it. She walked up the hall and up a staircase in the next room, hearing someone try to open her frozen door as she came in to another hall.
Down the hall was a set of footsteps traveling towards her. A shadow pointed towards the stairs and Mia got her back against the wall. When the guard got close, Mia caught him with a frozen knee that smashed an icicle through the back of his head and he staggered five feet back down the hall, knocking over a vase before Mia could run up in time. She knew it was another host or she would've been looking at a corpse right now. He opened his mouth to scream -
- but a flash of golden flame sealed his lips shut and Mia slammed him in to a silent wall of ice. Her grip shot to his right arm, her knee knocking the air out of him as she glanced up the hall -
- and with the strength of Urasaria's presidency, the next scene was instant. Her fingers tightened on his right arm, and as a woman might pull a weed -
- tore his right arm off in a geyser of blood, and a golden flame disintegrated him without a single ash left. Her eyes went over the shattered vase and she didn't waste time before rushing up the hall, ice quelling her noise as she came out to the next room, a few chairs next to a set of double-doors and a hall that led left. Forward would've brought her closer to the target, but she dropped to the ground out of the prior hall's sight as she heard two guards coming up the stairs.
Another tri-swarm raid let her silence her breathing for a minute. Back around the corner, she saw two women standing over the shattered vase mid-mumbling.
"No, it's my back these days, it's killing me." replied one. Her hand was bleeding from picking up the pieces of the vase. "I went to a doctor for it."
"What'd they say?"
"Oh, he gave me something for it. I swear it doesn't do anything for me besides these spasms, though. I tell you, ten more years of this shit and they can just throw me out back and shoot me." She sighed. "I'll go wrap this up."
"You need me to come with you?"
"No, it's fine." she said, walking Mia's direction. She passed out of the hall and in to the next room. A drop of water she thought was sweat dripped off her neck, and her brow scrunched as she left through the next hall.
Mia took a breath, claws of ice securing her to the ceiling. She swept her legs up and disintegrated her way up to the next floor's room. Two windows led outside and two led inside, and a record player & grand piano were sitting next to a couple of chairs & tables. More guards were patrolling from further in the mansion and about to see her if they passed by, but four gusts of steam fogged up the windows.
On the inner window, a gloved silhouette tried to wipe it clean, then stopped for a few seconds. Gun readied, he opened the door and made a pass through the room that found nothing, even if he couldn't understand why the mist was gone off the glass.
Mia waited from inside the spot she'd disintegrated under the piano's lid. Seconds, minutes passed until she was sure, and she rushed back to her initial hole & crawled back down on to the second-floor ceiling.
Three guards passed underneath her.
Once they were gone, she swept her legs to the ceiling, heels of ice forming to let her peek upside-down in to the southern hall. No new eyes coming, she landed and ran up to the northern double-doors, burning a pinhole and looking through it. No windows or lights were on, but she sensed it was a dining room, finding another set of double doors at the end because her mind strained to lift a thought too heavy if she tried to fire beyond it.
She checked for any cameras and burnt a larger pinhole. An ice scarab crawled out of her hair.
'Do you see anything?' she thought, helping it enter the hole. She tended to sentient-ize Worldwide.
Someone smacked the scarab and the room's inner walls froze as Mia rushed in to the darkness. All she saw was a spot of motion staggering away from the wall and Mia hit it with a running tackle that sent them both crashing through a table and against a wall. Mia slammed the woman to the frozen floor with a thud and the crack of her shoulders shattering, then pinned her down and put a hand over her mouth before she could scream.
Mia grabbed her face and thrust her thumbs through their eyes. It felt like it went all the way to the back. She jerked her arms and her skull split open like a zipper, and Mia disintegrated the gore off her gloves as she stood.
'Samuel would have loved that.' she thought, relevantly.
"Maria?" came a voice from the next room. "Maria, was that you?"
Mia had to answer. "That was me."
"Can you come out, Maria?"
Mia glanced at the corpse before she disintegrated it, picking her gun up. She was about her height & hair-color and could've swung it. It wouldn't make any difference now, so she opened the door. "Yes?"
"There you are.)" laughed the woman. "Thought I heard you trip over something."
"I did." laughed Mia. "I'm still a bit clumsy, even with the nightvision."
She stifled her frown as the woman gestured her to walk with her. Every step was taking her further from the target, but she hardly could protest now.
"Right." said the woman. "Even with, uh, even with Twilight?"
Mia knew what she was doing. "…Twilight?"
The woman laughed, stopping at a side-door. "Just checking you. Guess it's a bit like a Revenant, right?" She opened the door. "Let's, uh - I wanted to talk to you anyway. Catch up a bit."
Mia stifled her frown as she walked through the door, and in the next instant -
- the barrel of the woman's rifle bashed her head from behind -
- and an expression of unholy terror arose in the woman's face as Mia turned with no reaction or pain. The door slammed shut in Mia's face and Mia lashed out with a whip of scarabs that yanked the woman's face in to her golden hand, and Mia grunted as she felt her eyes melt between her fingers. She threw the woman's corpse to the side. If she was crafty, she could use it for bait -
- and she sighed as a storm of gunfire rose outside; she knew it wasn't because of her.
With no time to waste, Mia started rushing back the way she'd came.
'Serena, why can't you be stealthy?' she thought, sighing as the alarm rose. Running along the wall, she set her left hand to it -
- and a trillion-volt current knocked out every light in the manor, golden flame lighting her path as she kept her run going.
'I should have forced Rochelle and Tiffany to pair up together and gone with Serena myself, I don't care if…' Mia sighed. 'Of course Serena can't be stealthy. She can't even play videogames quietly - she probably tried to shittalk a guard while she was hiding, and…'
Admittedly, she smiled a little, then sighed again.
'God. How am I going to explain that to the government?'
She imagined the conversation. No, they were unable to reach their target before he was executed. An unknown punk had tripped the alarm after shouting at a guard she would give him a wholesale circumcision.
Shouting growing closer, she shook her head as she came up to her waterlogged door and burst out of it, pool of frozen corpses at the main entrance -
- and she frowned to see Rochelle standing at the center of it. Pretending she knew it wasn't Serena to begin with, Mia ran up and the two rushed inside, speaking as they ran.
" - hey." winced Rochelle, relevantly - " - sorry I -"
"- have you seen Jolyne?" said Mia, eyes looking around -
" - nope."
Mia frowned as they ran. While grateful Serena hadn't chosen a codename from a Japanese cartoon, it somehow seemed more likely she had left the area entirely than successfully infiltrated the manor. She felt a little guilty over her unconfidence in Serena, especially since she knew her better than Rochelle or Tiffany - but she had never seen *them* wearing Godzilla pajamas & watching an anime where women became stronger the less clothing they wore.
Mia shook her head and rushed up the stairs. They passed through the dining room and Rochelle curved right in to another hall first. Mia ran up after her and all she saw was ten white stabs that was Twinfast's spine impaling through a dozen sets of eyes, corpses frozen mid-fall as the two rushed through them.
"Left up here, right?" said Rochelle and Mia nodded as they turned.
Three men were standing at the end of the hall. Mia knew they were hosts from their not being terrified. They should've been.
"Find Paradise." muttered Mia and Rochelle nodded, running off.
Mia started stepping up the hall, grinning as she heard more guards block her exit from behind.
"Watch this carefully." she laughed, knowing there wouldn't be an eye left to report it. "(Worldwide.)"
An expression of mortal terror shot through them as a familiar cloud of scarabs wrapped around their queen. Worldwide screeched as they started backing away. Purple walls of fire burst up behind to trap them in with her. The roar of gunfire erupted behind Mia and she didn't turn back because she felt no pain, the bullets enter but not bleed.
"And I thought these were supposed to harm hosts." she laughed. She watched one of the hosts carefully as he started rushing towards her. Ten feet separated the two when something that might've been a knife formed in his hand -
- and a whirl of unnatural & golden metal cleaved his arms off in a geyser of blood. Mia shoved his corpse to the side as a woman might flick a straw and six-feet of scarab-covered president started stomping forward. More purple flames forced them closer to her; behind, a terror was breaking out. Men fled from her and ran in to the quintillion-degree flames, and the two hosts backed away from her, their hands staggering on the walls.
"You can be a corpse now or in five seconds." she grunted as fire filled the hall. Her sword disappeared as the second host ran at her. Green electricity covered his body as he rushed her and she touched him with one electrical finger in the chest that stopped his heart and sent him to the floor.
The last host tried running away. He hit the floor facefirst and his hands crawled up the hall. Mia grabbed his neck and nearly tore it off when she turned him to face her. A cloud of scarabs covered his head and all that was left when they disappeared was a red stump.
She smiled a little, then rushed off to find Rochelle & Tiffany, mid-running down a set of stairs.
"All good?" said Rochelle as they ran & Mia nodded.
"Have you seen Jolyne?" said Mia and Tiffany sighed.
"No, we - we haven't."
Mia checked her map and frowned as they ran in to no new guards, eventually coming to the room with stairs to the basement. The room was full of cardboard boxes, but Mia felt a presence nearby, as did Rochelle & Tiffany stopping behind her (but not too closely). Cautiously, she nodded to them and ripped a box off the ground -
- and found Serena inside, covered in paint. "...how did you sneak past everyone?"
"You just saw it." shrugged Serena, relevantly, standing up.
"You used a cardboard box?"
"Yeah. I just filled up my clothes with whatever dyes I needed for camo, too." she said, rainbow snakes licking the paint off. "Like an octopus."
"…shit. Good idea." said Rochelle, and Serena solidly nodded.
"…right." murmured Mia. "This isn't exactly how they wanted us to do this, but…"
"Hope they didn't kill him when they - yeah." winced Rochelle.
"A bunch of guys tried to come down, but I just dissolved them." said Serena, relevantly.
The four stepped down the basement stairs. A golden flame lit the floor -
- and a green wall of ice burst up just in time to block the wall of gunfire coming from the other side; the four swept behind it as more bullets flew towards them -
" - we're here to help you!" shouted Mia, seeing their target at the other end & groaning as she tried to remember the phrase - " - do you know when the train is coming?!"
- and received nothing but another storm of bullets for her trouble, ice wall starting to crack but more invisible scarabs reinforcing it as the four spoke.
"That's the right guy, right?" sighed Rochelle, relevantly. "Is he mind-controlled?"
Serena groaned, no cup or jacket for her rainbow snakes to vomit a flashbang into. "I can try sleeping gas, but -"
" - not here." said Mia, head shaking as another round of gunfire entered the wall -
" - why the hell is he acting like this?" winced Tiffany.
Serena nodded to herself, then whispered to Mia. The two rushed up to the basement wall, and as rainbow snakes burrowed in to it -
- Serena pulled Mia with her as she swept back with the speed of light, head rapidly shaking - " - there's fucking mines in there - can't burrow -"
" - his Revenant's name is Armory." muttered Mia. "Of course." She peered through her ice wall and saw a dozen turrets set up at the other end, target hiding behind one firing; a golden wall of flame burst up ahead -
- and right through it went the bullets, blackened but still hissing as they hit the wall of ice. The four sighed and their backs hit the frozen cover just as a rocket blasted it -
- and the explosion shattered a hole right through it, more bullets cracking it & making it shatter as another round of gunfire flew at them -
- but a swift sweep of Rochelle's spine froze a solid wall of bullets in midair, formerly-bald butch still at the front and wincing as more bullets hit her wall of ammunition. "Still going to get pushed back, but -"
- inch by inch, the pressure of the fire forced them back, more missiles blasting holes in the wall that another dozen rounds filled up again -
"- maybe I can defuse the mines?" winced Tiffany, and Mia's head shook, vocal whip threatening -
" - it's safer here - we know what's here -"
" - yeah, but -"
" - BEHIND ME!" shouted Mia, and the three swept behind her as she aimed her palms forward. "Solar Beam!"
- a blue beam erupted from her palms, scorching ray disintegrating the wall of bullets as she swept her aim carefully -
- and disintegrated every last turret without a single ash left, man hitting the ground just in time to dodge as the blue beam pierced the wall above his head -
- and disintegrated a clear hole through it, mines not triggering because they'd died before they could. Mia ordered the three to stay behind as she started stomping forward, scarabs readied with the man crawling on the floor ahead. "Why the hell are you attacking us?"
He glanced up at her, and in the next instant -
- she felt a dozen turrets form aiming at her back -
- but the next scene was instant. She swept right as a green ice wall burst up behind, and in to the frozen barrier went the -
- rockets, shattering her wall in to a thousand shards -
- that sliced through his throat in a way that wasn't pretty and left him with a gasp that might've been a last word as his neck spilled out on the floor.
Mia turned to see the turrets disappear, then sighed, tapping the device she'd been given. She didn't feel as strong now.
++++++
The following day, the four returned to Mia's office for debriefing, their normal Revenants, appearances, and one of the government agents, back.
"You were forced to kill him?"
"Yes." Mia sighed. "I thought he was working with us. Why did he attack us?"
"Work for the government and you may be able to find that out one day."
"So you're saying that was intentional?"
He ignored her. "Did you experience any other trouble?"
Mia considered telling him about Tiffany's unprofessionalism, but she figured she could discipline her better. "Nothing I won't soon deal with."
"Then if that's all, I'll be leaving."
For the third time Mia realized that she knew this man, whose faces seemed constantly in flux as he spoke in them. Yet it now solidified, and she doubted she would forget what it looked like again. Was this intentional and for her gaze only? Had Worldwide grown in strength enough to resist it? She did not look to see if the others were caught in his respective Revenant, but saw him smile simply at her before he was gone.
Mia glared. "Tiffany, I'm going to speak with you in private. The rest of you, leave."
Serena nodded and stood up, as did Rochelle. Looking over at Rochelle seemed to calm Mia, or so Rochelle felt, and if they were dating these telling eyes could have made her indestructible, not unlike the feeling of planting a sapling, then returning to that spot years later and seeing a mighty tree had grown.
Yet there was no sapling, there was no tree, and her naive fancy was destroyed as she walked out with Serena and closed the door. Sometime before Mia's marriage she had entertained the possibility she could be single again, but no longer did it seem possible. Time had robbed her of opportunity, just as her younger sister's selfishness had her youngest. She felt this moment not as Rochelle, but as an essence set separately from her physical body, one that had molded itself yet was still subject to external forces, a life that could act for itself yet never entirely evade the corruption present in its creation. In her loneliness she felt rudderless from her own rationality, and that she had now only a bit of structured freedom upon which she could ashore herself.
As she walked to the hall, and down the steps, she thought over these things. Halfway down, another female student was going up them. She smiled at Rochelle. She had nice legs, nice long legs, that Rochelle watched as she swayed up the stairs.
[END OF ARC: SPLITTING UP AT THE BORDER]