They arrived at the police station and spoke privately with the chief, asking about the recent investigation. He led them to his office and sat down with them.
"What your president has told you is true, generally speaking. We found a potential host-on-host murder recently, and we've begun combing back through many cases we thought were previously solved or unsolvable. It's led to a tremendous amount of backlog, here, as you might imagine." He sighed. "Still, we told her there was no need to send any students here yet, but I suppose your president is rather forceful. Some of these deaths, we aren't even sure were murders, but we've decided to put anything suspicious as open to potential investigation."
"You aren't sure they were murders?" said Iris.
"Some died from poison; some in apparent suicides. But I'm also aware you students sometimes become too accustomed to seeing a host behind every assault."
"We're usually correct."
"Did our president not warn you we were coming?" said Amelie.
"She said she would send a few students, and one of them would be quite gifted." he said to Amelie. "I recognize you from the news. You're out there every day, aren't you? Night Surgeon?"
"Yes, either patrolling or killing."
"And you, you're..."
He looked to Iris.
"…don't tell me. You're..."
He stared at her some more.
"…alright, tell me..."
Iris sighed as Amelie giggled. "Frankly, I can't know whether there's a host involved or not until I'm given the site of some death -- any death -- that you think might be involved."
"We've done our own testing on-"
"I host something better than any test you could conduct. I was told to investigate a serial killer; it doesn't make much difference to me if I'm to return with the head of one or many. Where was the last body found?"
He sighed. "Tell me, do you get called stubborn much?"
"I've found it to be one of my best traits that whenever someone suggests me to do something, I do the opposite. All I need is where the last body was found. Any death you think might be linked to a host."
"I suppose we could start collating a list for you, given that's why you're here. But I warn you, I doubt you'll find anything. Some of these deaths are old enough that we've already cleared them out -- there would be nothing left but witnesses, and even then, memory's decayed their perception enough to where their testimony wouldn't be reliable. … well. Still, there's one I remember off the top of my head. Seemed to be an apparent suicide, but you can use your own judgment with your Revenant -- whatever it is that's got you so confident. She died outside of a Gap store, inside Evermont Mall. You need an address? We can take you there, if you'd like."
"I'll figure my own way."
They left the police station, and Iris checked the address on her phone. "Going to be a ways. Parked my truck nearby."
Amelie shook her head. "That won't be necessary. I finally figured something out with Delinquent."
Delinquent's armor extended and continued to do so, until it formed a motorbike, the pedals extending from Amelie's sneakers. She smiled and pretended she was dipping her shades to Iris, patting the seat behind herself.
Iris looked at it for a while. Eventually she piped up: "Where's the gas stored?"
Amelie laughed. "Oh, stop it. Just get on."
Iris got on, a little closely. She did not touch or grab Amelie, though she still had urges; to deny any remnant of romanticism between the two would be ridiculous, as it would be to say that time had not eroded some of the rhythms that had once been between them.
She had thought over her previous relationship with Amelie, and while there was tenderness and yearning in that past, cold refuge, she has always felt a little fearful of her; for Iris believed she had been made to feel guilted and dependent again, even as for much of her life she had worn a mask over her own tendency to attach.
Amelie paused at their destination; the parking lot of a crowded shopping mall. "Alright, now get off."
"I still need to put it in park." Iris placed her hands on Amelie's shoulders, gently squeezing like she was trying to park her. Amelie laughed and pushed Iris off, who went back in a second time, until Delinquent sheathed and Iris fell on her ass.
Amelie looked back. "Are you finished?"
"Yes."
Iris checked Amelie's chest to make sure neither were wearing their badges, then nodded to her as they went inside and through a few walkways. She checked one of the maps for the Gap, muttering to herself about how crowded the place was. "Think he killed someone in daylight here, or they just got sick enough of me to lie?"
Amelie smirked. "You are rather forceful, you know. But I don't doubt a host would kill here. They usually prefer to kill in crowds; it hides who is the host."
Soon they came up to the Gap store. There were several civilians around, and Iris noted to Amelie that she did not want to reveal Kairos here nor ask them all to leave.
Amelie whispered back. "I could form a megaphone and tell them to leave. Or pull a fire alarm."
"No, I've got something better."
"What is-"
- Iris shoved Amelie hard into the wall and a geyser of (lukewarm) lava consumed them both as she shouted: "Cheryl, you and everyone in this mall are finally going to get what you deserve, you no-good lying cunt!"
Cacophony went through the civilian crowd, and they scattered and screamed. Geysers of lava shot forth from the floor and herded them away, out of their stores and away from this lunatic, until Iris could clog up the hall with a perimeter of snow and snickered to herself as she stepped away.
Amelie was utterly mortified. "Iris, that was horrendously unethical."
"But very funny." Iris smirked.
"No, it really wasn't. You traumatized an entire..." Iris saw her smiling: just a little. "…you... damn you. Stop your smirking." She laughed. "Stop it."
Iris enlarged it. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"No, so I certainly hope that wasn't your hottest temperature." Amelie sighed. "…oh, fine. I suppose that works. But please warn me next time you'll shove me into a wall like that."
"Alright, I will."
Amelie smiled. "Even though I used to like it when you didn't."
Iris was not sure how to respond, so she looked away. They stood in silence for a few moments, until Iris texted Olivia to let her know that if a Revenant call came from the mall, it was them. She came to about the center of the hallway.
She had been relieved lately to find that Kairos seemed a perfect combination of Meteorology & Phantom. She still worried occasionally that one colony would overtake the other, as she had read about in textbooks, yet Hirogane assured her that they seemed not to be competing. Why was for the future.
The emergence of Kairos had not taken away Timeline. She explained this to Amelie, who nodded. "Alright. Is it alright to interrupt you if a Revenant attacks?"
"I sure hope you would."
Amelie laughed at that, but not too much. "You know what I mean. I was asking if it was some sort of deep transcendent state and if I would kill you by interrupting it."
Iris smiled. "Still. Silent, can't revert host auras, corpses are stamped at time of death. Makes sense?"
"I'll understand it better seeing it."
Iris crouched down and focused, her eyes as multitudinous as Kairos as thin weather curled around its ethereal webs.
"Kairos: Timeline."
"…you're mixing Greek and Latin." muttered Amelie. "Kairos is Greek. Timeline is Latin."
"Bring that up with the spider."
Amelie smirked a little. "Well, perhaps you could rename it. Something like… Omniscience. No, that's also Latin."
"Oh, omniscience, very humble."
"As if you've ever pretended to be humble."
"I'm plenty humble." muttered Iris. "I'm not narcissistic in any way. If I could choose any Greek god to be, I certainly wouldn't choose Narcissus."
"Oh, who would you choose?"
"Zeus."
She focused. During this, she realized that the police had not given her a time of death, and deepened so that she might better access what moment slides underneath time. It will suffice to say Iris was somewhat tired by the end of this, and in playing the months forward she filtered out all civilian clothes but for their possessions, a walk of hovering cellphones and wallets. She watched over the entrance of the store, yet after many days she was growing frustrated and angered.
"Iris, filter to only the hours the mall is open."
Iris followed her suggestion; Amelie was generally the only person she had listened to for help, besides... She shook her mind of such thoughts and tried to keep her focus.
Still she saw no possessions halt; she tried to unfilter the clothes of those who had passed directly by the store, and with some frustration simply reverted & fast-forwarded the same month at a much higher pace. This process took about 45 minutes, and by the end of it Iris thought to call the police for time of death; yet another part of her rationalized that if she failed due to their incomplete information, at least she could throw it back up at them as an example of their poor judgment.
"Iris."
"What?"
Amelie was sitting beside her and looking down at her phone. "…there's two Gap stores in this mall."
Iris sighed and stood up. "You think it's the other one?"
"Well, I'm certain we'll have plenty of time to check, now that you've assuredly scared out the entire mall." Amelie smiled. "Come on. I can tell you're getting frustrated. I'm sure the death was at the other one."
In front of the second location Iris Timelined again, and here she saw the murder occur. Many civilians had been walking as usual, yet she saw a host aura -- an invisible outline that made invisible what it touched and held -- walk beside a female corpse. It had no visible wounds. Iris could not see how she had died, but she merely collapsed and the host aura moved ahead. No civilians seemed to react to her death.
"See? Sometimes it's better to check the information first." said Amelie.
Iris nodded, though she was perplexed. "Do you remember when Kate said the last murder was?"
"About... two or three weeks ago, wasn't it?"
"This is six months ago." She grumbled. "I asked them for the last body and they give us something from six months ago. Why?"
Amelie watched as Iris pulled her phone out, with some perverse pleasure in knowing that Iris was assuredly about to bitch out the police. In isolation she would not say she liked Iris's anger, yet she had once thought of it as a supplement to her own; in times of difficulty standing up for herself she had liked that Iris may be able to do so on her behalf.
"Hi, this is Iris Valentine. You mind telling me why I ask for the most recent murder and you give me something that happened six months ago?"
"How do you know it was six months ago?"
"Do you think this is funny?"
"W-Well, no... but ma'am, I didn't intend to... You asked for *any* death that might be connected to this case, not the most recent. We have a policy in our department not to unveil an ongoing crime scene to students. Yes, there was another murder two weeks ago, but we haven't yet finished on our end with it. You aren't properly trained in protocol for handling evidence; it can become contaminated and screw up your own investigations, as well as take up time."
"You don't have to worry about me contaminating evidence, god damnit. My Revenant makes it impossible for me to-" She saw Amelie pick the cellphone out of the corpse's pocket, then flash it to her. "…god damnit. I'll call you back." She hung up. "What?"
"It's locked. Would you be able to unlock it?"
Mentally, Kairos shifted through the phone's various states... but death was a barrier against its manipulation. She could not manipulate it to a pre-death unlocked state, though she took it regardless, with some fatigue. "…can't unlock it here. Still, I know the police or... some shops have ways to unlock phones without resetting the data on them. They take time, but I can accelerate that later."
"Alright." Amelie twisted her fingers. "I'll… Claire will likely want me with her, later, so..."
"That's alright. I'll go out with Olivia."
Amelie nodded, then looked to the corpse again. "Can you play back the death?"
Iris did so, and again the female corpse simply collapsed. "Can't feel much of a Revenant usage, but... think he just struck her?"
"One punch would kill her, but it should have also left a bruise."
"Or a gaping hole through her chest." Iris mused. "Might be poison. That's what started the last investigation Natasha and I were on, but... not seeing why nobody came to help her."
"It's possible the host told them not to touch her, or that she was diseased in some way. People are willing to believe any absurdity when it concerns their own skin."
"Right, but they don't even seem to stop."
"…hmm." Amelie frowned. "I'm not certain, Iris. But I do believe this may be poison; I can't explain the lack of visible wounds otherwise, or that you haven't felt a Revenant."
"…could've made her invisible. Or both killer and her could've been invisible."
"Then why come here to kill her at all?"
Iris rubbed her head some. She was speaking a little slow; one Timeline tended to tire her, let alone two. "…not too sure. I suppose I said I'd call those lying sacks of feces down at the police station, so I'll ask them for an autopsy report, if they conducted one at all... maybe take some samples of the corpse myself. I don't like how they didn't tell us the time of death and gave us an old corpse, department policy or not. That's deliberately leading us to a crime scene that nobody but I could've wrung any evidence from." She glanced to Amelie. "No offense."
"I take as little offense to that as you should my being ten ranks above you."
Iris slumped like it was lethal. "You know, I'm hitting two-star soon, and I... and why, I..."
"Have you decided on your hero name?"
"I have, actually. Thought at first I might try 'Natural Disaster', but... my therapist told me Meteorology is remembrance enough. More than that might be harmful."
Amelie nodded. "Well, I hope it's Greek, at least."
"Still, I'd like to get a second toxicology assay, assuming they ran one themselves."
Amelie agreed, and helped Iris take samples while verifying the woman was not a host -- her heart was in her chest and did not beat -- then went back to the hotel where Claire & Olivia awaited.