Carefully, Iris Timelined at the parking lot of the shitty motel, next morning, around where he had fled by truck. The truck returned, but as Iris skimmed through its states, she knew it was mangled in the present. Still she sat in it with Olivia and accelerated it through the present; it had not gone far and Baal's damage ensured it could not refuel, so only an hour away from where he had left, he had parked at a rather nondescript business.
Iris glanced up and saw no security cameras, but she would not need them. She gestured Olivia to step out with her, and they watched as the truck was rapidly sliced into pieces, then thrown with great heft into a nearby lake. A hook of wind grabbed bits of the mirrors and returned them to Iris, and their previous states shown that he had continued to flee on-foot, albeit far slower. "10:53pm. Fairly late. Doubt he was going to be up for much longer, even with the fear."
She checked the phone: it had similarly been destroyed around 11:03, although it had made thirty calls beforehand. They were of various businesses nearby, including motels, though the length of each was such that they could not tell which he might have checked in to; he could have also used a public computer to make a reservation online. Iris understood that walking distance would be their guide for this, though how to verify where he had checked in without use of her legal immunity had been the overarching question that hung from her mind the night prior.
They checked the nearest hotel first and ducked into its lobby quickly.
"Hi, we were looking to book a room for the night." said Olivia. "Do you have any-"
"One moment, Olivia. We need to inquire about their services." said Iris.
Olivia glanced over and saw Kairos skittering underneath Iris's jacket. "Oh, of course. Do your rooms have separate beds?"
"Yes, it's two beds to a room. Umm, but if you're a couple, then we do have rooms that-"
"No, two beds is excellent. Then we can sleep separately, just like we do at home." said Olivia. "Are these two beds spread far apart?"
"Umm... I think so. I guess they're like six feet apart."
"Oh, excellent. That'll come in handy given Iris's recent lice infection."
"Yes, the doctors traced the source of those little bugs to your pubic hair." said Iris. "Of course, we should've expected that a colony of ravenous creatures eager to breed anything that moves could only have come from you."
Olivia glanced to Iris and seemed to realize she was rapidly losing this. "H-How many bathrooms do you have?"
"Umm... one per room."
"That may not be enough." said Iris. "She's had a terrible tapeworm recently."
"Yes, Iris, we should have never gone on your silly little diet of raw meat and insects." said Olivia. "But I was asking for your sake, Iris. I know that you've been having some trouble with your stomach recently." She rubbed Iris's shoulder. "Isn't that right? Like last night, where you were huddled over the toilet with such pain. I woke up in the morning and found a shit so big I thought a bear had broken in."
Iris glanced to Olivia, then back to the clerk. "I apologize. She's been very out of sorts recently, asking all sorts of odd questions. She's just been feeling a little self-conscious about this birth mark she has on her stomach, ever since the doctors told her that was where they wiped off the word 'Goodyear'."
Olivia smacked Iris.
Olivia then apologized, then quickly walked out. "We aren't doing that again."
"You wouldn't be saying that if you won." snickered Iris.
Olivia's mouth stiffened. "You didn't find anything, right?"
"Nope."
Iris sat in her truck, as did Olivia. Iris looked up the next hotel's address and began driving.
"…I'm not actually fat, am I?"
"No."
Olivia frowned at her stomach. She pinched it. "You know, I have been eating like shit on the road lately. Maybe I'm putting on some weight and don't realize it yet..." She looked to Iris.
Iris did not know how to answer, so she continued to drive. Eventually Olivia said: "Well, I know Naomi is about ten pounds heavier than me, so I'm sure it's fine."
Iris thought it odd how Olivia could apparently convince herself that her weight was alright so long as it was comparable to Naomi's. Shit like this just did not make sense to her.
She pulled up to the next hotel and went inside the lobby.
"Do you have a room for tonight?" said Olivia.
"One moment, Olivia." said Iris. "We need to inq-"
"Do you offer room service?" said Olivia.
"Er, no, but there's several places that deliver around here."
"Shame." said Iris. "I suppose it'll have to do. We'll just stay for the night."
"No, I wanted to ask something else." said Olivia. "Do you allow pets?"
"We do, but it's an extra $10 per pet."
"Good, because I know most hotels don't allow big, dirty, stinky animals. But it looks like Iris can stay."
Iris's mouth stiffened.
She took the key card, then pretended she needed to figure out where to go as she stepped inside the elevator and accelerated up to the 30th floor, then walked directly to room 3078. She had scanned the hotel's room key encoder; at 11:13pm it had been encoded with room number 3078.
As she stood in front of the door she scanned its previous states; it had been opened around the same time and within lurked an aura she could not manipulate. She blasted the door off, and as they stepped inside he was there at the other end of the room and knew who they were. In a moment that will likely upset you as much as it did her, Iris did not monologue; she could not make apparent the facts of the case before the trial. But she shall do so next arc!
Iris glanced to Olivia as Olivia glanced at Iris. It was their domain again, and in that fog of regulation and limitation, there was now silence which formed the seal between them. He would not come peacefully nor did they want him to.
His right hand twitched as two glass hooks emerged from his shoulders, and their chains wrapped tightly around his arms; Iris knew that he was attempting to grow his hooks through her phone again, but they had intentionally left them in the car and Olivia had prepared Baal the night prior. A glob of acidic vomit spewed from its daemonic maw and he swept his left hook to block it -
- but a curved wind curled the acid into the ceiling and splattered it upon him from above; his right hook swept up into the ceiling's stain as his left hook entered the floor below -
- and a platform of clouds lifted Iris & Olivia up as their entire half of the flood sizzled below, Iris scanning with Kairos; his host aura permeated through what his hooks had latched and could not be breached by her own mentality, yet she felt his host aura leave the floor, and the ceiling slammed down to crush them from above -
"- Baal!" shouted Olivia and aimed its thrashing teeth high; a floss with Kairos' strand accelerated its chew and a thousand bites tore through the ceiling in seconds, swallowing its material for later destruction; at the other end, Iris felt his hook lose its latch to the ceiling and decayed the roof above him, accelerating a rain of rubble upon him -
- but his twin hooks swept out towards them -
- but Baal's tongue tapped the floor below and it disappeared completely; his hooks fell before his body and Iris hit him with a green bolt of lightning that charred his lips before he hit the floor below, the two women still on their platform of clouds above as he hit the ground staggering below. Catching himself up with a seize of electrocution, he turned and saw a glass pane at the other end of the room, rushing up to it as Olivia & Iris landed 30ft behind and another bolt reached for his skull -
- the next scene was instant. A hook sprouted from the glass and shot into his mouth, his right hook slamming into the glass; he stepped through the pane like it was made of water and was gone, grappling to the left & onto the outside wall of the hotel.
Iris & Olivia came up quick yet early, knowing more hooks could sprout from the reflection ahead; a pane of magma coated it and Kairos accelerated its cool into igneous rock.
Iris glanced over and saw Olivia rummaging through the room, grabbing a lightbulb from its lamp and letting Baal eat its glass; it was her habit to scavenge in fights. "Transfers properties between hooks."
"Had to have been his saliva to the glass."
Iris scanned outside and felt shifts of pressure on the outside walls, the intrusions of his hooks; he was not planning to flee but fight, and a glass hook sliced through the wall like a knife through drool and sought to decapitate one or both -
- but a glut of wind shoved both to the ground and the hook swept past & over them; it would return for a second sweep in seconds, and as Olivia shouted for the room's mini fridge, a hand of wind brought it to her; two seconds before the hook returned Baal's maw was vomiting the lightbulb filament's tungsten into the fridge like a drunk sorority girl into the toilet, and her hangover had just ended when the hook swept back into the room -
- but a gust of wind launched the dense fridge into the speedy hook -
- and into the fridge went the hook and stalled its speed; before the host could reacg Iris blasted it out of the room and to the hall, hearing his scream as he was pulled along for the ride and smashed through another room's wall. No time to waste, the two rushed out to the hall and saw him staggering out of a room far up the hall, yet he seemed undamaged as of yet.
Tentatively, Iris caught an idea in her skull. She launched herself towards him as he pulled a penny from his pocket, his right hook latching it as his left hook latched the floor, and in the next instant -
- Olivia appeared ahead of her; she realized the hallway's position had swapped and his right hook now shot for her back, but a curled wind turned her around and another spewed a sandstorm's gust into the shooting hook, which latched upon the grains -
- and the floor fell like the flood of a beach; she blasted herself & Olivia down to the next floor and the hooks sailed uselessly overhead, retracting back around their butcher's arms as he fell on his ass ahead.
"Penny." muttered Olivia quickly. "Fuck -- speed, flip, rotation, what else-"
His right hook shot into something in the room at his side, but Kairos' strand threaded every wall she saw and decayed them to reveal their contents; his hook was aiming for a television whose electricity could be loaned to the floor, but Iris swept her hand out and a tornado shot out that reached the television first, sweeping it up in its current and throwing it back to her & Olivia, another wind punting it into Baal's maw as Iris continued the same with every television in his range.
Baal hummed happily as it chewed with its mouth open, repeatedly micro-pausing as Olivia considered which element she would take from the television.
Their foe was on his feet again ahead, and as Iris readied to advance, Olivia whispered to her and she stepped aside, letting Baal's maw vomit an enormous ball of nitrogen trifluoride gas into him -
- but his right hook shot him up into the ceiling above and he swung back into what segment of floor was left there, disappearing into the hallway above & ahead before Iris could accelerate that fuse. No time to waste but cautious, Iris launched herself & Olivia up and hit the ground running down that hall, Kairos scanning the floor for any spot she couldn't manipulate as they kept in pursuit of him ahead; he had gained some ground but not yet escaped.
More hooks burst from the room doors ahead and tried to half their advance, their sources the television within their rooms; Iris tried to blast them apart with wind, but their hooks were thickly entangled and sought to slow & slash; she could not break the barrier approaching her rush five seconds ahead, and as she began to slow to decay another path-
" - can't break it?" winced Olivia in anticipation -
" - no, I-"
- Baal's tongue shot into Olivia's knees and she hunched over in pain, cursing at it to not take more synovial fluid than necessary; once it was pleased with its offering it spewed a red vomit onto the hooks and a slight breeze slipped them apart completely, the two resuming their rush as he turned left ahead, Olivia speaking: "J-Joint fluid -- slipperiest - fuck, I hate that fucking counter-"
Ahead, he turned the corner left and they were forced to take it with far more caution; he was already 50ft away with a hall of pendulum-esque hooks swinging from the lights overhead, their host at the other side of it and yet still undamaged, keeping within his Revenant's active range. His right hook shot into the base of the swinging hooks above, his left hook latching into his penny that he threw with the speed of the host ahead, transferring its speed to the hooks as he unlatched himself from it -
"-oh, you dumb son of a bitch." said Iris for the next instant scene.
Kairos' strand wrapped around the penny and accelerated its flight into Iris's hand; a gust of wind blasted it back into the swarm of swinging hooks ahead and transferred its hyper-accelerated momentum back upon itse owner -
- and twenty hooks ripped through his body and sliced his skin off in thin sheets, slamming him back against the wall 30ft away and hanging him from his own hooks like a slab of bloodied man; all hooks but his two arms disappeared and he fell gored to the ground, yet his wounds seemed to rapidly heal as he staggered around the next corner right.
Iris frowned as she rushed in pursuit, as did Olivia; something was not right. "A reflection of himself?"
"Why do you put things on hooks?" said Olivia rhetorically and Iris groaned, realizing it now as she turned the corner; it was a short hall with the elevator at his right; its 50-floor shaft was viewable from the lobby and made of glass. With the strength of a host, he ripped its safety doors open and leaped down into the shaft, and after him did Olivia & Iris fall and fell down the shaft after him below.
In midair, his left & right hooks shot into the glass shaft at his sides; one to break a hole and the other to transfer its speed inward upon the two, but Iris shouted for Kairos' and its million-eyes peered into the past state of glass, a tower of sand refined into the real that now fell upon he & they; she launched herself & Olivia up as she accelerated the sandy descent below that crushed him underneath to the floor, yet in the next instant, she heard the flick of a lighter and its heat transferred into the desert of glass that now sped back up towards her -
- but the next scene was instant. She launched herself & Olivia over the lobby and left the glass behind, turning midair to see the elevator falling down its former shaft; she hyperaccelerated its descent and its downward slam crushed every bit of glass back into his body; a horrific scream of agony escaped him as the elevator slammed, slammed, slammed and crushed him again as Iris & Olivia landed 60ft away, glass spewing from his broken & mangled body, until after a few seconds of pause he crawled out from beneath the elevator with no damage done.
"Reservation." muttered Iris. "Reservation of an undamaged reflection."
"Gotta be the arm-hooks." said Olivia, seeing him pull his familiar penny with his right hook ahead, and in the next instant -
- the tower of glass shards arose once more, then fell towards them; Iris's eyes remained on the penny as another swarm of hooks emerged and fell towards the two, but a single sweep of wind blasted the shards back; they would return once more, but with the recklessness of Natasha did she concoct the next instant scene.
She blasted Olivia aside 100ft and decayed a tunnel underground ahead that her wind launched her at full-speed through, decaying another hole behind him to distract himself as she found herself directly below; in microseconds the next scene occured, for as she decayed her view from below, she saw his undamaged image reserved within the glass hooks and knew she could not permanently damage him; his penny was in his right hand and was unmanipulatable, yet she chose a spot of air and accelerated its electrons' spin into mighty magnetic pull that tore the penny from his grip & lighter from his pocket and decayed both to nothing; glass hooks shot out from her eyes and blinded her as she launched herself out from her tunnel and launched herself in the direction of Olivia's shout, landing somewhere in the lobby but with no specific sight of where.
"I- fuck, are you blind?"
"Completely."
"Then head back to Urasaria, I can-"
"I still have the other million eyes."
Kairos crawled over her face.
"You wanna come close to me again, you fucking cocky bitch?!" she heard a male voice shout from 50-100ft ahead.
"He's bullshitting." muttered Olivia. "His Revenant fucking sucks without an easy manipulation, but -- be careful-"
"I could just decay the entire fucking hotel on us, you property-dependent baldheaded shit!" shouted Iris, and all within her radius the hotel began to decay: "What are you going to conduit now?! The fucking dirt-"
"Now he's fleeing with the hooks- c'mon-" Olivia grabbed Iris's right arm and pointed her in the direction of her launch ahead & right, a constant aura of decay as Kairos' legs rapidly massaged her face; "Ash!" Olivia aimed Iris's hand at a patch of ceiling she could manipulate and volcanic ash spewed into it as they continually launched, then launched, then launched once more; the past became a mosaic that Kairos occasionally unveiled to Iris's senses, yet she did not realize they were outside until the humidity shifted and she heard Olivia shout about the pool he was leaping into ahead, then heard the enormous splash of many droplets from which many hooks flowered -
- but she sensed their direct locations through what she could not manipulate; a swarm of igneous rocks blasted into each hook like a counterswarm of meteors that slowed their advances, Baal's tongue catching a rock for a snack that it spewed back tenfold as well; "-forward!"
She launched themselves forward once more and her boot caught a tuft of sand below; she needed no explanation for what could soon occur, and asked Olivia how close he was, to which she replied: "About seventy feet ahead, but don't-"
- two winds yanked out Iris's eyes and made obvious her blindness as she launched herself forward & solo ahead, then oncd more as she felt him turn to face her ahead, laughing at her blind boldness; the outlines of two hooks in manipulatable air shot at incredible speed towards her, but she shouted for Kairos as her drills rejected from her hands -
- and the hyper-accelerated volley caught the hooks midflight and twisted their chains tightly around the man's own arms, squeezing and crushing his flesh as he screamed like a man in mortal agony -
- until his arms popped off with two horrific geysers of blood that Iris wished she could've seen, as a green bolt of lightning struck his skull and his unconscious head hit the dampened sands, no image reserved within the amputated arms in the waving sea.
"You got him!" shouted Olivia, running up to her.
She reached out for Olivia and got two handfuls of her hands, then noticed her quivering slightly but did not wish to consciously recognize why. "Flickendecke?"
Olivia handed her two patches and crouched over his body. "I don't see too much smoke coming out of his ears, so his brain's probably mostly intact."
"If you let me do it a few more times I can make him vote straight-ticket red."
Once Iris's sight had returned, they brought his unconscious body to Urasaria for amputation healing, then to a local Revenant surgeon to have it removed and scanned.
[PUSH PULL HANG: Two reflective hooks that act as mirrored conduits between two objects; sprouts from reflections; host may rapidly regenerate through reservation of undamaged image.]
And afterward to the local police as Roy had recommended. They explained as best as they could who he was and asked them to interrogate him on a few subjects, then left to meet with Roy in his office the following morning.
"Tried to explain what we could." said Iris. "Not sure how much of it got through to them, but they have proof of him being a former host. They certainly weren't happy to see us, though."
"While I'm certain you share my faith in the police, we shall see how they treat another host." Roy shook his head. "My supposition is they will brag about your catch as if it was their own, and most will be too busy to ponder the ridiculousness of such a claim."
"Claiming him or not doesn't matter much to me. We completed the investigation and we helped Thomas."
"Kronos, might I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"It's rather unusual for a student to see a host assaulting a civilian and to still defend them, especially to the extent that you were prepared to argue it. Enough that I might suppose you have done the same in your own past."
"Maybe so." muttered Iris. "Sometimes I looked at civilians a bit like Thomas might. To me, I never wanted to work a meager job for decades, cashing paychecks from somebody who didn't care for me to be spent on people I don't even like, with nothing to show for it. Maybe they go to church on Sundays and they're told that their helplessness compared to the strength of the world makes them more virtuous, but I thought it all bullshit. And I had always hated that as a woman, I couldn't be seen as... well, that isn't relevant here. Suffice to say, giving up my Revenant was never an option, student or not. And in a way, maybe this proves my decision right with its contrast against my own better choices."
Roy nodded. "In my talks with Thomas, he has noted similar, though not quite so elegantly. He has such little personal introspection that, though you noted his violence, I can hardly see it more than I might the movement of a creature whose hatred of the sun allows it to live in darker conditions than our own."
"It's stupid, looking back on how I used to act. I would get in to fights usually about once a week, just over stupid shit, or defending Angela, or... just stupid shit. It's odd, since I'm sure people would have thought that exciting, but when I was in its midst it was normal, boring, even."
"I would not be so arrogant to pretend I understand the condition of your life, though it seems you know you can only elaborate in miniature the sea from which you've come."
"In some ways I've managed to bring that water ashore with me."
Roy nodded, and he clasped his hands. "I apologize if this is too personal a question, so perhaps you might prefer to not answer it. Iris, what did you think happiness might be like?"
"I was planning on becoming a student eventually."
"That was what you planned to do. I asked what you thought happiness might be like."
"I... I'm not sure. I suppose it's not really something I've thought of."
"Nor when you were younger?"
"No. No, not when I was younger, either. I suppose every day was just refreshed in an eternal now. I had never seriously given it much thought. Maybe if I didn't I wouldn't get focused on what I couldn't have."
Roy nodded. "I had a similar talk with Thomas when I met him. He will still go to prison, but hopefully no more than that. Ask him what he wished to do with his life, and he does not know. I once questioned why he has and has not attached to certain things, which I shall not share the specifics of, but he shrugged at the question. It has never seriously occured to him that there was life above his own conditions. Ask him to grope above that dark, and he does not understand. Prison, at least, will offer him a number, which is more identity than he has now."
Diana knocked at the door. Kairos opened it for her and she tentatively walked inside. "Roy, the police called. They were asking if the two students were here. They said they released the suspect they brought in."
"Excuse me?" sputtered Iris.
"They said they briefly interrogated him and found nothing of interest, and so, let him go."
"I somehow doubt he'll return to the same place you found him." muttered Roy.
"That's fucking unbelievable." said Olivia.
Roy sighed. "Thank you, Diana. Yes, it certainly shocks me. Confirmation bias and the preference for earlier results over later revision, yes, but at a certain point there is simply ludicrous incompetency."
"What do we do now?" said Olivia. "We already solved it, and they just..."
"Unfortunately, with that, I doubt there is much more information you might uncover to help Thomas... although I may think of more soon. Ironically, it will be more difficult to convince the jury that not only did the police apprehend an innocent man, but let the actual culprit go free when he was in their clutches."
Iris frowned. "Sorry we couldn't do more."
"You've done far more than I might have expected students to do, Kronos and Lucifer. You limited yourself to civilian law when your profession does not require it. I thank you for that, as does Thomas. Difficult does not equal impossible, of course. The trial will take some months, and you will need to return here for your testimony; we shall rehearse a few weeks before."
"Call me if you need another Timeline."
Roy walked them out of the building. Iris got in her truck and sat where she was hated for being a host, and there she watched Roy return to his small office where he was hated as well. But surprisingly she had found an odd harmony in this hatred and and of being hated, and she missed it. In talks with him she had felt she would not be judged, the ability to grasp to another and know what she currently could not herself understand.
She sometimes feared the hardening of her habits, the formation of herself into a callus that would drink its ire to dust. Lately she had been aware of a loneliness she had felt since she left Amelie, and that no matter the urges & desires she had rationalized and denied, she would be made to feel such again. In her conscious mind, she could not understand that there was a necessity for such things to emerge, regardless of whether they were beneficial to herself or not. But they would, and it frustrated her.
Though she cared for Olivia, whenever she looked to Olivia, she worried that the universe would deny her even this small joy, and so she was tempted to be inward; there her nature would not be true but it could not be harmed.
As she sat down in her truck, she took out a broken piece of her gun from her pocket, and watched her refracted self array in the image. As she usually did, she practiced reverting it until no image was contained within it, and felt drawn to such. But occasionally the curtain of her eyes would lift, and the great will that Natasha had once evoked in her would pace unparalyzed, until it retreated again into the circular dance of despond in her reflection.
[END OF ARC: FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE]