[ARC 25: MIRRORED IDENTITY]
When Yuruko's mother Tammy first took Yuruko to her breast, she felt that a small lizard had latched on to her. After weaning Yuruko, she would often leave her alone as she went about her daily business, or entrust her into the care of her husband rather than deal with the infant herself.
So, to state that there were biochemical issues between the two that needed resolution seems obvious. None would come, however.
As Yuruko grew and her autistic delays in speech & social skills began to assert themselves, the more Tammy withdrew from her and grew to think of her daughter as a representation of the most annoying traits of her husband. She blamed him for having made her wait so long to have a child, and now that she had, giving birth to one retarded. Whenever she would walk into Yuruko's room and call out to her in her crib, it would take a good 5-6 'Yuruko, Yuruko!'s for her daughter to respond, too busy playing with her stuffed octopus. In frustration she would pick away the octopus from Yuruko and walk out of her room.
And while Yuruko eventually learned to speak, she acted more like a stereotypical boy; she was sullen and ugly and awkward, not of the beauty Tammy thought that a daughter should possess. She resisted any attempts from Tammy to make a young lady out of her, and with each attempt Tammy made to foist some sort of love upon her, the more Yuruko withdrew and identified with her father.
But as her father was the primary breadwinner, this left Yuruko at her mother's behest for the majority of the time at home. On the weekends, and when her father would work late, Tammy would drag Yuruko to outings with the rest of the family members, usually forcing her to dress up so that she could prop Yuruko up as normal, and could fairly compare her to her sister's children. In these years, it was rare for her to berate Yuruko openly; always it would be done by comparison or another's cudgel.
In this way, Yuruko's mother's would dig at Yuruko yet rarely with her own cudgel; always it was contracted out to others. There was the time when Yuruko was ten or so and had to meet her cousin; she first resented that her mother forced her to dress up for it, and secondly that this conversation occured while her mother talked with her aunt, as they walked around the mall:
"Yuruko is growing awfully big, isn't she?"
"Oh, don't touch her too much. I don't want her freaking out on us."
"Oh, she's just the cutest thing. Now, what were you saying about her earlier? What's got you worried with her?"
"Well, Cass, it's just that I don't know if she'll ever be able to move out of the house on her own. I'm worried she won't ever be able to get a job, or hold a career or nothing. Sure, she's doing alright in school, but she's just... You know, you try to raise a child to be as good as they can be, and sometimes life just repays you like this. "
"Well, she seems to be... alright and everything. I don't know, I think you're being a touch melodramatic about it, don't you think? I mean, maybe she's one of those... hosts, or something. Don't they all act weird at a certain age? Has she gotten tested yet?"
"Oh, we're still waiting on that. But she's not going to go to Urasaria, even if she does have it. She's... I love her, I really do, but she's not as fast as Sammy is. She doesn't socialize as much as she does. I'd almost have to get it removed for her safety if she had one of those things. You know, sometimes I compare where Sammy was when she was 12 to where Yuruko is now, and she's falling badly behind..."
How both daughters had been spawned by eggs ostensibly related could only be, Yuruko's mother sometimes thought, the work of her lousy husband. At first it had not been that she hated Yuruko for Yuruko herself, but rather that she represented the worst of her husband. In this regard, the birth of Yuruko was perhaps loaded in that even had she turned out more favorable to her mother, she merely would have been used as a weapon like children in these marriages often are. That Yuruko had not meant there was nothing she could tape together but ideas.
Her earlier suspicions of Yuruko's immaturity seemed affirmed again, as Yuruko continued to play with her toys past an appropriate age. She had slept with her stuffed octopus until she was 15, and had only stopped because she had lost it in the laundry, after having been asked to give it up by her mother several times.
The relationship between the two seemed ossified by this point, or perhaps a few years earlier, and this had led to a sort of nihilism in young Yuruko. It was not that she had never attempted to gain Tammy's favor, or even participate in makeup & other feminine rituals she despised in an attempt to please her; she had. Yet Tammy would soon make a disparaging comment about her autism, or side with a teacher of Yuruko's over herself; and the malaise between them would reassert itself.
As example, it had been Tammy's idea to place Yuruko into remedial speech therapy classes in middleschool. Yuruko hated that she was forced to be along children so mentally disabled they could not form complete sentences on their own, and throughout her life, she raged against similar barriers others had constructed around her, the sources of which she primarily identified as the female bullies she had and Tammy. And as stated once earlier, enter one room of the house and one enters all of its rooms; thus such themes were repeated throughout her life, even as they were at a root prejudice.
So, whenever Yuruko would think of Tammy, her fingers would gnarle and her lips would thin. She could often hear her saying: 'beauty is on the inside', or one of her digs at her autism that confused it with mental retardation. The wholeness of Yuruko's hosthood means that there is too little space to detail these fantasies here, only that she would often wonder what may have happened if she had killed her, that one time.
Yet she would then remember how her father would have felt about it. She loved her father. In her early years, she had learned as much from him about her Revenant as she did from chemistry textbooks. So it brought Yuruko guilt to think of such things; not the thought of killing Tammy, but because in parts of herself she rarely ventured to, she sometimes identified herself not only as the primary reason Tammy abused her, but also as the reason why her father could not leave her.
What she would often do was to commonplace the two parents, in a way, and contrast how they would interact with her in certain situations. She fixated on a time Tammy had brought her to the beach to meet up with her aunt & Sammy, , and as they walked along the shore, Yuruko saw a seashell standing in the sand. Before she could reach out to grab it, Tammy yanked her forward like one would a dog. Always she disdained her daughter's natural curiosity towards the world.
As Yuruko looked back, the next wave landed upon the seashell that it was lodged deeper in to the sand. She would revisit this memory frequently through the years, for some time in between the event and her first memory of it, there had been a stingray nearby that swam away as the seashell deepened in the tide, and the sands folded over themselves.
In late November, Yuruko awoke in her & Serena's mansion and was a little drowsy. She cuddled with Serena for a while, and Serena made her breakfast in bed, as today was Yuruko's big presentation.
"Oh, um." said Serena. "Before you leave, I got you something, too."
"What did you get?"
Serena went over to her bag in the corner and pulled out her notebook for class. "Um, it's not really a gift, I guess, but I just wanted to show it to you."
She showed Yuruko one of her recent notebook pages, filled with doodles of "YUR<3UKO". (You read that right.) Yuruko saw it and stifled a laugh at how the hearts were clearly meant to replace the U's, as Serena looked at it, realized what was wrong, but continued to show it and was very proud of it. This was who Serena was to Yuruko: Serena was no great in romance or intellectually, but she knew this and did not make more from herself than what she was. This was Serena at her most Serena, and why Yuruko loves her.
She squeezed Serena's tentacle, who kissed her goodbye before Yuruko went off to her Phantasmology class (of which she was the only student left: by difficulty, not death). Her professor said hello to her, and she mostly just nodded as she set up her laptop into the projector. Not that she didn't know social customs: she just thought them silly and disregarded them.
"Today, I'll be presenting my r-recent metareview of the currently known effects of Kaisei Syndrome, before spreading out to a wider overview of Revenants acting against, or without, their host.
To begin, Kaisei's Ring in Japan was formed after Urasaria student, now-president, Swarm, was attacked by eight hosts during the course of an investigation in Japan. Mi- Swarm's given explanation is that due to the circumstances around her Revenant having been transferred to her, she occasionally loses control over it under extreme stress. Swarm is the only currently known living host who has survived a self-Revenant attack, but she has refused to allow any samples to be taken of her or any testing to be done.
The mechanisms by w-which Revenants can out-control their hosts is currently unknown, although the most commonly cited theory is Lang's hypothesis that, faced with the increased Volgari protein production that stress induces in hosts, the bacteria created by the previous host attempts to compete for newly-introduced resources. Why this does not happen in natal hosts is unknown.
But, as for Kaisei's Ring. I believe that the extent of damage that Kaisei's Ring induces in functional Revenants is not only useful for diagnosing what age-related diseases may arise in hosts in the future, but also for ascertaining which structures of a bacterial colony may be essential or vestigial.
Kaisei's Ring has similar properties to the ring around what was formerly known as Moscow, theorized to have been created by Daigo Yashukure in 2013, after having escaped arrest for nuking Los Angeles.
Artificial Volgari proteins denature quickly when brought inside the ring. Unimplanted Revenants become damaged, with bacterial decay rates of almost 3x the normal amount, and half-life of bacteria brought inside the ring lowers from 30 to 13 days. This image shows the extent of both external damage to the heart i-itself, and microscopic damage done at the level of the Viscera exspiravit colony. Lesions and irregular mutations are shown to appear every five microns.
Unlike in Moscow, the surrounding area was not evacuated prior to this, and much of the towns nearby remain inhabitable. This has led to an unusual psychosomatic disorder characterized as a minor f-form of motion sickness, due to the lack of features to ground an observer's eyesight. A-As you can -- due to the absence of any distinguishable features. A wall was soon constructed around the ring, and symptoms appear to have been alleviated in recent months."
"Similar to the paper on Moscow I had you read, then." he said. "It's the same, physically, but most of the lasting effects of that disorder were really psychological. Can you go back to where you were showing the photos from True Sight?"
She clicked back.
"Yes, there. Do you see what's damaged in particular?" he said.
"The FNI fragments near the mitochondria."
"Yes. What do you think would happen to a prospective host if that damaged colony were to be implanted in them? No, let's say it was entirely destroyed."
"…they would age faster than a regular host, because their mitochondria would begin accumulating damage. They would have to rely on free radicals, rather than the Revenant-specific method hosts use to disintegrate age-related damage."
"Correct. In most hosts, microscopic versions of their Revenants' abilities deal with age-related damage. But there are Revenants that cannot harm people. True Sight is one of them -- he can only project images. What process does his colony use?"
Yuruko thought and frowned. There were only five cases of this: one of them left with Saya 2 years ago. "…um. It's… they use left-handed enantiomers of their native Volgari proteins to neutralize the ROS free radicals and slowly repair themselves."
She realized it was right-handed chirality, not left-handed, and she felt embarrassed. It was an emotion that always affected Yuruko to an unhealthy degree. Her hands scrunched, and she twisted her fingers together.
"That's correct. It'll be on your midterm, so make sure you know it."
'Retard.' thought Yuruko and untensed.
"As for the rest of your presentation, go ahead, though I'll need to look over your information after. My first thoughts are that I don't like the font you've decided to use. Helvetica is too stylized for a serious presentation."
Yuruko did not really regard most of his advice: if he knew anything about Phantasmology he would not be a professor. Throughout her life, she thought of teachers as despising their job, their students and themselves, and they had little to offer her. Oftentimes her professor would first learn of a new concept through her. "It's what Nature uses."
"Really? I thought they used… well. Maybe I'm getting old. You know, it's interesting how theoretically, hosts could probably live to be 150 or even 200 years old naturally -"
" - but they all die before then."
"That's right."
Yuruko frowned as she saw him write down 'poor font choice'.
She finished her presentation and returned home, and saw a note by Serena saying that she loved her and was out hunting with the rest of the Royal Four.
Of late, Yuruko had not really been attending these hunting sessions; she would often use her midterm workload to bulwark against such invitations, and, to be fair, there was truth to it. It had left her with little time for Serena in recent weeks, and worse yet was that it had dulled her already low sex drive; she had not enjoyed Serena's tentacle in a while. She worried that if this continued past her midterms, the bond she had formed with Serena would pull away, just as her father claimed it had with Tammy.
Her usual method of dealing with such stress was looking at images of Rei Ayanami, the blue-haired teenage girl from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. She viewed Rei as a sort of fictional extension of herself, an imaginary friend she had once spoken to as a child. Her primary identifications were with anime characters, and that seashell, underneath the blanched bones and calcacerous test of creatures no one had cared for, apart from and without her species in many ways.
It was why she seemed to lack recognition of herself in other women, aside from her girlfriend, whose circumstances had brought her to an experience of womanhood as peculiar as Yuruko's own. She trusted Mia moreso as an extension of Serena's trust for her, and the ways in which Mia supported Serena, rather than an organic friendship between the two. It was her usual reserve against trusting other women, and that Mia was beloved by lesbians on campus intensified this further.
But then there was Serena Kunst. Rarely did Yuruko think of her in terms of her gender. She loved Serena and Serena had always been good to her. She was calming, a source of stability upon which Yuruko could draw in times of sadness or suffering. Serena had acted as a therapist for other girls in highschool, and with Yuruko she had continued this deferential capacity, no matter how implicitly granted by feelings of inferiority it may have been.
Yet none of the above was in Yuruko's recount before she slept that night.
++++++
In her office the next morning, Mia received a call.
"I thought they banned me." she muttered and took it. "Yes?"
"Hello." replied a Japanese voice on the other end. "This is Ms. Swarm, Urasaria Academy's student president?"
In her usual habit since Edgar: she softened the ice her chair was sitting on so that even a civilian could shatter it, tapped her squadron's names on her tablet to call them, and spoke slowly. "Yes. I'm with my squadron. What is this regarding?"
"My name is Hamada Matsumoto, with the Japanese government, and I need to discuss something with you urgently, please. It's regarding Ms. Rain-On-A-Wedding and Ms. Frostbite's recent infection."
"What? Infection? Ms. Frostbite?"
"Yes. Matoi Kujo and Rin Higashikata? The recent infection?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"…er. It may be best to speak with them first, then."
Her three didn't know any more than she did, and Aimee quickly arranged for her to meet with someone at Timepact.
"What happened?" said Mia.
"This is the first time we've seen each other in person since I graduated, and you start off like that?"
Mia paused and nodded. "I apologize. Hello, Matoi, what the fuck happened?"
Matoi laughed. "First, I forgot if I told you this already: I'm firstly glad that you murdered Kirihara, and secondly jealous I didn't do it sooner."
"God damnit, Matoi, I can see you have this glowing scar on your hand. What is it?"
"Is it contagious?" said Samuel.
"Obviously not." said Matoi. "Regardless, it isn't as if it's terminal. It's only appeared yesterday."
"Only yesterday?" said Samuel.
"Do you think I was intentionally keeping it hidden from the two of you?"
"Hmm." Samuel put his index & thumb under his chin. "Let me think. Yes. Yes, that is exactly the type of thing I think you would do, because you despise showing any type of vulnerability."
"I agree with Samuel." muttered Mia.
"Both of you are being very disrespectful for someone in piss-hose range."
"God, don't remind me." winced Mia. She looked over to Serena & Yuruko, who were seated like two clueless gremlins. "Just tell me. Does Rin have it, too?"
Matoi sighed. "She does, yes, which is fortunate for a reason I'll soon mention. Hirogane has told me it's causing Wedding to weaken -- the bacteria is deactivating. Yet it also appears to act like a compass." She held her scarred, softly glowing hand up. "We were testing it a few days ago. Rin is with Aimee and the others."
"I thought you said it only appeared yesterday."
Matoi shrugged. "Regardless, Hirogane doesn't heal it, nor does Hagakure -- Ueno's medic." She glanced at Serena & Yuruko. "Japan's academy."
Serena nodded, thinking it must've been exactly like anime. As Yuruko was the smarter one in their relationship, she knew it was likely only 50% anime.
"Do you have any lead who could have caused it?" said Mia.
"Rin and I never fought the same Revenant together before last March. During that time, we were investigating a host who murdered his sister - Sharp. It's either a post-mortem Revenant from one of the men we fought, or Sharp's Revenant infected us while we were questioning him."
"…er. I thought you caught him?"
"…I gave it over to another student. Rin had … asked me to."
"Ah."
"Regardless, Rin discovered it first - it began glowing one week, then gradually dimmed over the next. Mine activated shortly after. She was searching with the others around Japan to see if he's hiding somewhere there. They've temporarily lifted your ban if needed."
Mia sighed.
"Wait, we're going to Japan?" said Serena and Matoi's head shook.
"No. When we spoke with Sharp, he mentioned running a charity operating across Africa. Our best lead is to travel across Africa and see how the scar reacts. I still have most of Wedding's strength, so I doubt we'll have much trouble with random Revenants. We'll start in Mali and see which direction it brightens."