[ARC 32: FORTRESS OF AN EGO]
It was not easy. It never was. But a woman needed to take opportunities, not wait for another to fill them.
Using Avalanche's arm, Naomi pinned his head down and sat on his face. She pressed his face hard against her, but frowned as he seemed less skilled than usual. "You do know where the clitoris is, right?" She looked back and peeled his pants down. "Oh, your brother is the one with the tattoo. My mistake."
She got off of him and left dressed.
Naomi's ethos, if it could be termed that, was that by matching men's attitudes in bed she could match their sexual satisfaction. There was no shortage of good sexual partners for an attractive young student, so why waste herself on the mediocre? Dick was plentiful at this time of year when the harvest was good; they were colorful and grew well when the season was wet.
So the general dick was going quite well for Naomi, but the dick specific had been annoying her recently, and this dick went by the name of Viktoria Zamolodchikova.
While Naomi had squandered her opportunity to kill the woman in January and decided not to risk it again, she had secondary plans. She had despised Viktoria for being a sick, abusive bastard to her protege, and she had even heard that this slimy shit tried to attack Iris, who Olivia cared deeply for. Turnabout was fair and fun to Naomi, and she had not an iota of guilt for the sadism she had wrought back upon Viktoria. She had been called many things by her before, as was Olivia; a whore or an orphan, even a dyke before she had known Naomi's sexuality. To Naomi Viktoria was a lunatic who raved in a cardboard box, and why? Just to rave.
As her thoughts of the dick specific flaccidified, she thought again of the dick general. She had prioritized her own pleasure in these sexual encounters, and though she enjoyed penetration, she knew enough of men to know many viewed penetration as degrading; what they were reviled by the thought of being done to themselves, they expected to demand from her; this was not something Naomi enjoyed. She was an active arbiter of her sexual life, including the choice to not have it.
But this casual sex was usually enjoyable for Naomi; she could usually wring out an orgasm or two from it. Sex was no replacement for emotional intimacy, but she could partially access a relationship in encounters such as these; with a few good men in particular she would allow herself to be caressed and touched, even as she entertained no thoughts of dating them.
Of course, the coming presidency would mean she could not long continue such casual encounters due to their danger. It was then that her mind would turn towards relationships and the difficulty she faced with them again. She lived with Serena now, and while happy for her mentor, she admit that she had always felt a bit jealous when Yuruko would come visit, for she desired that relationship Serena & Yuruko had in which no barrier of gender paused one from identifying with the other. Naomi had enough worries for herself and had no desire to add a man that would expect his own to be cared for, yet she still desired, vaguely.
She sighed, then filtered out the fourth-years on her tablet and checked the rankings.
TOXICITY (320)
MIDNIGHT (308)
MASTER BLASTER (300)
BLANK SLATE (293)
She frowned and decided to call her good friend Olivia.
===
In late March, Iris & Olivia were called by Roy to return to Penrose for the trial of Thomas. From his own money he backpaid them for their investigation, though Iris gave her portion to Olivia; Kairos could withdraw infinitely from any ATM.
Iris repeated the locations of her previous Timelines so as to better prepare, and Roy & Diana had copied from her notes all relevant information and had it entered as evidence. Kairos was allowed on the condition that the jury understood it fully, and Iris sat with Roy during the trial as the prosecution began going over the time of death of the first girl.
As she would do several times in the trial, Iris prodded Roy. He glanced at her, then registered his objection: it was sustained, and Iris explained that Kairos had established the time of death three hours, fourteen minutes, and three seconds earlier than the autopsy report. The judge had been amused by Kairos, and so would allow this throughout the trial. A deep satisfaction pervaded her whenever she did so, to establish herself not only as an investigator but one above even the best civilians, all in a combination of her wits and Revenant.
Then there was cross-examination. After much coaching Roy had been able to wrangle something consistent from Thomas, and decided given the bias surrounding the trial it would be best he not stay silent. But whenever the prosecutor questioned Thomas, Iris grew angry; she took too personally what they said about him. Much like the impoverished neighborhood her pedophiliac girlfriend Angela had once lived in, and where Iris frequently visited, she felt that the prosecution here cared only that they could put another lowlife in prison; which one did not really matter.
Far from the good mood of a good deed, she left the trial feeling even angrier than before. A few days later, Thomas would be declared not guilty for charges of murdering with a Revenant, but guilty for hosting an unregistered Revenant and sentenced to prison for 20 years. Into that world he had gone just as Iris and Roy had left to where both were hated for how they had been born, and Thomas had smiled faintly, wryly at the sound of steel bars closing.
For the next few days Iris was in a funk. Never again would she willingly interact with civilian police, and when she was forced to she said as little as possible. She demarcated herself and civilian police work apart; here she was always fully cognizant of her target's guilt, there they would lie and send innocents like Thomas to prison. Malice or ignorance or media it did not matter to Iris.
Removed from Thomas's situation, so too had she been from the prior empathy she felt towards him. Seeing him again she grew to loathe him, for he had not been able to escape consequences like she had. She hated that he had allowed himself to be arrested; he had a Revenant and could easily have fled. Having always prioritized the preservation of the self, Iris could not understand such a seemingly altruistic and weak attitude. Thus was the nature of her dilemma, for Iris hated those who tried but failed, but more than that she hated people who did not even try, thus ensuring failure at whatever endeavor they were engaged in.
This was rarely understood at this intellectual of a level: it was moreso again a trait of Natasha's that she had tried to pull inheritance from. But Olivia still comforted her just as she had after Natasha's death, something that Iris grew more grateful of the further she was from it. Maybe that was one of life's main compensations, having the bad roughed out and the good polished by remembrance.
Contracts were slower in these months, and many times Iris could solve a case within a single Timeline, so she spent the rest of March mostly on campus. During that time she worked out as much as she could in Urasaria's gym; no other gym could match its poundage, though she would use Kairos' air pressure to approximate a loaded barbell elsewhere. She would usually leave in the afternoon and come back in the evening to some collection of raw ingredients Olivia had prepared, waiting only for a Kairos acceleration to cook it in two seconds.
She never did stop teasing Iris about her appetite.
On March 26th Olivia told Iris that she needed to talk with her about something private, without their phones or tablets. She drove her out to a pier a few miles from Urasaria and went where they would not be heard.
"What's with the privacy?"
"I wanted to make sure we could talk about this without getting tracked." said Olivia. She placed her fingers a little above Iris's chest; she had been touching Iris more often recently. "Look, Naomi wasn't able to hunt much this year, because Kate kept her on stand-by except for *important* contracts and shit. She's worried Viktoria'll beat her."
"And?"
"So, I want to let her scan a few Revenants here and there. We can just say she went hunting with us, or she intervened, or something." Olivia smiled. "Because I don't want Viktoria as president, and neither do you."
Iris did not show emotion, partially so as not to upset Olivia. Iris did not really care for Naomi; she had always assumed Naomi was nearly as bad as Viktoria, given Natasha had declined her mentorship. That Naomi was in Natasha's last words did not matter to Iris, for she had seen many times Natasha's ill-placed sympathy in Viktoria, a woman she so despised that she agreed to help Naomi solely because she hated Viktoria more.