It was late September, and Iris & Natasha had been called up to Kate's office to step through the wall into another office, far from Urasaria. The man's face constantly shifted like a steadily tuned radio dial.
"Before I begin, confirm what you are here regarding."
"We fought a mafia Revenant and we want to kill more mafia." said Natasha.
"The typical Urasaria directness. Natasha Flagg and Iris Valentine. Meteorology and Phantom, an interesting combination of Revenants. As you've been told, we have an ongoing investigation into the Marivelli Family. They've recently begun encroaching into the areas around Urasaria in the past few years, so consider this one small segment of a wider investigation.
Your textbooks have primers on the mafia and other organized crime: short enough that even your generation's attention span can get through it. But the structure of the modern mafia is generally as such: at the top is the Boss. Below him is the, or an Underboss. The Underboss has several capos who report to him, underneath which are dozens of soldiers. These soldiers and associates form the undermuck of the family, engaged in the tedious work of murder, theft and narcotics that allows the continued operation of the organization, suffering the consequences so those higher-up won't."
"Sounds like any business." said Iris.
"It seems to be a structure replicated across several planes of human existence: religion, historical monarchies, high-school, even Urasaria in some aspects."
"Isn't who the mob boss is usually an open secret kinda thing, though?" said Natasha.
"In the past, somewhat, but no longer. It isn't like Goodfellas, where even a teenager can be allowed an audience with the boss or underboss. Very few people have even a suspicion of who the boss of the Marivelli Family is -- most likely a pseudonym -- because every mafia was forced to re-organize, once the advent of Revenants made a tedious court trial superfluous. If we have a suspect, we test them for a Revenant, and execute them if they are a host. The list of men I'll give you haven't yet been notified that they tested positive."
Iris shifted somewhat. "Are these tests accurate?"
"Of course. Every criminal host is executed, and we know that they were criminal hosts because they were executed." he said. "Iris, I sense your trepidation, so I will ask you a question. I find that having students think through an answer is better than condescending to them in explanation. Why would the FBI give ambiguous work to a first-year student? There's no shortage of professionals, locally or nationally, who possess a more frayed moral fiber. But we already have trouble recruiting future employees from Urasaria, where we generally poll below cancer and hemorrhoids."
Iris thought through it. "I suppose it wouldn't make me want to work with you again, if I felt there were doubts."
"See, she's intelligent. It's often forgotten that while the FBI has some shameful history - as do even the great men of history - that it also prosecutes domestic terrorists and kidnappers. It isn't as if you have no choice to decline, or no discretion allowed in your methods. Verify their host status yourself, if you'd like. But we do not ask first-years to solve ambiguities."
He seemed much more interested in Iris than in Natasha, which she thought was odd. She looked over at Natasha and was comforted by her discomfort. She nodded to her.
"Okay, sure. But we're checking." said Natasha.
"That suits me." said Iris.
"Do well and you'll be recommended for future work. Government work is far less-regulated than the private sector, so far as hunting hosts is concerned. An attractive trait to many students." He gave Iris the list. "All information you need is on there. Leave through the wall to your left."
They did so and were back at Urasaria, inside Kate's office. They nodded to her and left, but Iris frowned. "Natasha, do you remember what he looked like?"
"Nope. Government Revenants are scary, dude." said Natasha. "Ugh, okay. Lemme see the list. Let's verify the first one we do though, okay? I'll do a small attack, and if it doesn't injure him, then he's a host, okay? Then we can just obliterate the other ones."
"You sure that'll work?"
"Hey, I did it before." said Natasha, self-relevantly. "I hit a dude with wind, he didn't die, he turned out to be a host."
The following day, Iris looked past the corner of this street and saw their target doing some window-shopping ahead.
"Okay, you stay here, come in if I need help." Natasha walked past her.
Iris watched as Natasha walked up to the man, pat him hard on the back; he didn't buckle and before he could look at her a bolt of green lightning blasted his guts into the store.
Natasha came back. "Oh, he was a host, by the way."
"Do we just never clean up the gore?"
"No, there's some federal janitor Revenant that does that. Also, speaking of, you're 100% getting called up for re-construction duty at some point 'cuz of your Revenant."
"Oh, great."
The next day, Natasha & Iris stood atop of a restaurant and could see their target across the street, about to walk beside a 2-floor store. They crouched and watched.
"Fuck, he has three other guys with him." muttered Natasha.
"Do we wait?"
"Nah, fuck that. Iris, have you ever wanted to ride a cloud?"
Iris frowned. "Yes, but I just realized something. Why don't you use your wind to get in closer range to hosts?"
"Because the faster I go towards them, the less time I have to react to anything coming against me. I'll put up a tailwind when we're running, but it's honestly less risky fighting regular than just launching myself, most times." Natasha grinned. "But that's not gonna apply here. Ready?"
"Go."
A gust of wind hurled them up and over the barrier, and as another gust blasted them across the street, a cloud formed to slow their fall; the goons below looked up -
" - Meteorology!" shouted Natasha mid-air; a gust of wind blasted out the store's windows and shot the glass down into the goons below, as the two hurtled and landed on the roof rolling -
- the rain of glass fell and punctured the goons' skins -
- then reverted and fell again -
- the third -
- the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall -
- Iris checked over the railing and their target was dead. She ran back to Natasha and grabbed onto her again. "Quick and violent!"
Another gust of wind carried them off, clouds forming to keep their step fluffy.
"Alright, now the hard part is landing. The first 5,000 feet is pretty easy, it's just the last 5 that are hard."
Some minutes away, they descended down into another urban sidewalk and scared a few civilians. Across the street, there were two other students, male and female, that noticed them but said nothing.
Mostly Iris was interested in the woman. Her name was Isabelle Sandoval, and she was a curly black-haired Mexican woman in Iris's year; she wore a black sheath dress. Iris had seen others interact with her a few times, yet were usually dismissed in this fashion. Out of any student she seemed the most professional.
Natasha checked the list. "Last guy. Lists his apartment, so maybe we can stake that out for a bit."
They waited outside of the complex's parking lot, sans badge, and Natasha pointed out his car as he pulled in. "Same thing."
"Alright."
Iris watched as his car pulled into its space and he stepped out. Natasha was approaching him, and was a few spaces away when another empty car pulled out to slam right into her -
- she took the hood rolling and Iris saw a wind blast a jet of gasoline into their target; he rushed away but a line of fire separated them as Iris rushed up beside Natasha, catching up to her quick.
"Meteorology." groaned Natasha; a wall of snow claimed the wall of fire and melted into water, and she groaned again as she saw him already in the building's lobby ahead; no time to waste, they rushed in pursuit.
A few seconds separated them from the entrance when Iris saw a metal chassis appear on his back, a bit like a vivisected robot whose wires drooped like entrails; beside her, Natasha spoke as they ran: "He's on the fourth-floor, so he's gonna go home, let's cut him off-"
- a set of wires shot towards them -
- then shot low and burrowed underground beneath the two; Iris glanced down and kept her eyes sharp for when they might appear again. At her side, Natasha readied a gust that would carry them up to the 4th-floor -
- but nothing happened, and the next scene was instant.
More wires shot around them and burst out of the ground, forming a cage as the air constricted around themselves; the two burst into flames, and as Iris tried to move her face -
- the air itself scraped her cheek bloody; she realized the Revenant then but could not move her lips, the fire deepening and beginning to char at their skin -
- but she had her own instant scene. Ahead & in the lobby's front doorframe, Phantom accelerated a section of the roof and it collapsed; when it hit the ground, chunks of concrete spewed out from it that another rot soon made sharp as it flew towards the wires -
- but another wire shot out of the ground and blocked its path. The concrete shard fell limp outside of their cage, yet if Iris could've she would've smirked here.
'There's what I was looking for. That sound.'
Phantom peered into eternity and looked for the sound the wire had made unburrowing; it rebirthed into reality, and as she accelerated the microscopic shockwave its sound had made -
- it shot out of time's womb like a cutting shockwave that slashed through the wires and freed them from their cage, black cables falling limply beside as Natasha's snow extinguished themselves. Her mentor was sputtering and gasping, staggering forward slightly; Iris was injured but able to speak freely: "Friction."
Natasha glanced back, nodded, and another wind blasted them up & to the fourth-floor hall. Apartment doors were at the left & right as Natasha checked his apartment number again, a line of lights keeping the hall lit above. Glancing up, she pointed to one at the middle of the hall and saw him enter the other end of the hall; the two & one rushed to meet at the center, but he was quicker and would reach his apartment before then -
" - Phantom!" shouted Iris, focusing her spider on the line of lights; a few careful rots & decays, and the lighttubes within fell & hung from the ceiling like stalactites in a cave; one smacked him right in the face -
" - Meteorology!" shouted Natasha, sweeping her hand forward; a bolt of green lightning shot out of her palm and into the first lighttube -
- and the next -
- and the next, and the next, and the next, arcing further than its normal range to hit the man's right arm -
- and blasting it clear off in a shower of blood; his chassis's wire covered the lightning and snuffed it for now, frictionless step still allowing him to reach the entrance to his apartment, and as he opened the door -
- another wind blasted a metal rod into him and the shards burrowed deep in his skin; a pained whimper came from him as he staggered into the apartment, his left arm still peeking out as the two came 20ft within -
" - GET OVER HERE!" shouted Natasha like a scorpion might; a hook of white lightning shot out and hit the metal spikes -
- but nothing happened, and he was soon out of their sight as he entered his apartment.
"Dude, I swear that worked once and it was the fucking sickest thing I've ever done."
Wires hung down from the doorframe, so they took a quicker & safer path. Phantom decayed the floor below, Natasha's wind blasted them into the apartment below his, and another blasted them into the bottom of his apartment.
He shouted in surprised as they burst out into his living room, a bedroom up ahead with him standing in the doorframe. He tried to lurch out of sight -
" - I SAID GET OVER HERE!" shouted Natasha; a hook of white lightning grabbed the metal spikes burrowed in his skin -
- pulling half of his body apart and into the spikes Iris had decayed into the doorframe, slicing him into thin yet manageable & utterly dead slices. Dark hands reclaimed his Revenant and Iris noticed a scorch mark on his right hand; a typical trait of these hosts, she later learned.
"TOLD YOU!" shouted Natasha. "And DON'T ask me to describe how that works physics-wise, because I don't know SHIT about science!"
Iris laughed as Natasha made an exaggerated display of arcing her lightning like a dancer does their fabric. She checked the bedroom to see why he had ran in here, and noticed a shattered bottle of wine beside the bed, a few final wires fading around it. Natasha came up to her. "Alright, sweet. That's the last one. You wanna head back or jack some shit? Not like he'll need it."
"No, not yet. Did you notice him trying to destroy something?"
"Yeah. Did you want to revert it? Or maybe we could..." Natasha looked to Iris. "Dumb as shit question incoming: can you revive somebody using Pha-"
"No."
"Dumb as shit question done."
"It doesn't do well with biology. Let me just see what it was quick." Time reversed, and the bottle of wine repaired itself. Iris examined it. "Seems mostly empty, but... Natasha, do you understand what I mean when I can see the previous states of this bottle, but I can't revert it back to any of them?"
"Because you can't manipulate human biology? That was on your registration."
"Right. Someone's already drank and metabolized this. I've got the feeling that it's still within Phantom's normal range, too."
"I'll search the kitchen. If I scream, run in so you can die too." Natasha went up to the kitchen, and a few seconds later: "Found it!"
Iris went up and Natasha showed her the contents of the freezer: a woman's mutilated corpse. Both students viewed it with no disgust. "Is it possible the wine was poisoned?"
"Maybe. She's definitely not a host. Poison doesn't do shit to hosts. And I still see a heart."
Iris checked the bottle. She tried to pull its past states into itself, to make it a thing that moved again in the present. Only a few drops returned, yet an almost untranslatable twitch of Phantom hinted why. "It's attempting to revert the wine back into this bottle, but it can't, given Phantom can't normally modify biology, is my guess. There's a few other shifts... four more, I think... but they're outside of Phantom's normal range."
Natasha frowned. "…well, damn. Might've just been a few one-offs, but I don't know why he'd use poison to kill people and not his Revenant."
"We aren't certain yet there is poison in this. Although I'm inclined to say I don't see why he would destroy it if there wasn't."
"Right. There's still some drops in it, right? We can get it tested."
"Almost looked like something he just had lying around. I'm curious if he bought it himself."
"If the bodies got found, they wouldn't link it to a Revenant. Maybe? Then they would send cops after him and not a student." Natasha shook her head. "I don't even get why they tested these guys to begin with, dude. I wasn't joking about thinking they could've been civilians, because the only place with less oversight than Urasaria is the FBI. But still, they might just cut us off, so... even after we test it, I'd like to ask our guy in the FBI first. Okay? You can just revert all the evidence back to the present, too, right?"
"I can. I wouldn't worry about it going cold, especially since we've already killed him."
"Yeah. We'll come back if they ask us to. We'll tell… whoever... here not to touch it, either. Just say it's a Revenant and every civilian in a ten mile radius won't even look at it."
They took the bottle of wine with them to a local crime lab; they were told there was a backlog until they saw they were students. Iris offered to help accelerate their tests, and was allowed to do so on the condition she would lie & say she hadn't if ever questioned. After a few toxicology assays, they spoke with one of the lab technicians.
"It's dosed with thallium." she said. "It's a colorless, odorless chemical. It's used as a poison, although it's difficult for... I'm a little curious, since you're students. Is this involving the death of a host or a civilian?"
"We're currently thinking it was a male host poisoning a woman, trying out murder without his Revenant." said Iris. "He might've thought it less traceable."
"Oh, another male host and female victim. What a surprise." she muttered. "You give a woman a Revenant and she uses it to help people; give it to a man and he'll just destroy. At least I'll never have to live with them again. I tried a few times, but it's just much smoother with women."
Iris caught this. "And living near a bunch of hosts does expand the dating pool."
She looked to Iris and smiled. "Mmhm. I'd like to eventually move out of New York, but I do enjoy that part of living near Urasaria; even when I've never been quite sure whether it's safer closer or further from it. I'd like to not still be coming home to two cats and an empty dish by the time I'm 30."
"Is this more a temporary job for you, then?"
"Oh, certainly. I'm going through grad school to get my Master's in Biology."
"Is it stressful? I've always thought of academia as somewhere where almost everyone in it is psychotically depressed."
She laughed. "Only the women. The men are just terminally arrogant."
Natasha watched this banter develop between them, not unlike she had seen Iris engaged in with other women before. Iris seemed to enjoy this little game, not even for anything that might result from it, but what the ability to do so meant of herself and her own charm. It always seemed rather inexplicable to Natasha why women were drawn to Iris, though it was not a trait Natasha was jealous for.