It would be some time before Iris would summon her new red lightning again. It was a trauma for her, and only under Olivia's care would she practice it.
Still she thought herself weak, but Olivia relayed a story of how Serena's mentor had cried over her near-death, and it helped Iris commonplace herself: if she cried at 21 over the memory of her mentor's death, then this was not so different from crying at 20 at a protege's near-death.
But she never grew to like that godforsaken color. She trained twice a day now to be rid of it sooner, for it is well-known at Urasaria that many Revenants subtly change appearance as they grow in strength.
Of late she had been harassed more by Viktoria beyond what you have seen, and though she had hated Viktoria for months, she truly was beginning to boil. It seemed that Viktoria's grief was sublimated whenever she attacked Iris's; she did not want either of them to feel better but for Iris's feelings to become as inwardly ugly as her own. The language she hated most from Viktoria was the rhetoric of obligation and guilt, for she did indeed feel a deep binding to Natasha and Meteorology itself: and at such harassment, she would feel hard and stiffly the death again in memory and the hatred of herself that went with it.
She recalled an encounter she had with Viktoria recently. Iris had been waiting for Olivia outside of a store, and turned to say: "What? What the fuck do you want?"
"Ah, for a moment I hoped your bitchy attitude might have left you." said Viktoria. "I had heard Meteorology developed a new color recently, something beyond Natasha's. Show it to me."
"No."
"Do you intend to make me beg?"
"No, I just refuse to show it to you. You can beg as much as you'd like, although I'd prefer to hear a goddamn apology."
"Ah, so only once I grovel for your forgiveness will you allow me the small joy of seeing what my protege could have become. You realize the importance such a gesture would have to me, of course, and yet you refuse to grant it; a restriction I somehow doubt you have extended to Olivia."
"Olivia respects my lingering grief over Natasha, unlike you who's only ever seen it as something to exploit."
Viktoria sneered. "Olivia torments Natasha in life yet suddenly respects her in death. You are even stupider than her for believing her lies, but I see that same tendency to distort has spread to you as well, given that you try to speak to me of your 'lingering grief': yes, how you joyfully launch yourself around with her wind; how you playfully mock your opponents while you use her lava and how you stole her lightning to claim as your own? Not once have I ever seen a moment of grief from you aside from our trip in January, and even now I wonder to what extent that was genuine. Nor have you attempted to rebuild the relationship Natasha and I shared, despite that I have given you numerous opportunities to do so. Instead you side against her and attach yourself most corrosive to her: you pay heed in word but are impoverished in actual action."
"That I refuse to let a miserable cunt like you infect me like you did Natasha means nothing. Carrying Meteorology is enough of a memento for a woman that loved me a hell of a lot more than she ever liked you; that I don't use my grief as a weapon means nothing to the anguish I still carry in my flesh over her. You don't host a reminder of her in yourself that for the rest of your life-"
"It's precisely due to you that I have no reminder of her but you, because as you may remember, you sent all of her possessions away without consulting me, just as you delayed reporting her death to me and deny me sight of Meteorology even now. But let us not be distracted by simple fact, Iris, when martyrdom is so good for your phallus."
"By now I'm glad that I never let you touch any of Natasha's goddamn possessions, even if I had my own reasons for sending them away."
"Yes, I am well aware by now that you believe no reason matters but the ones you use to justify your selfishness; you know the woman for barely three months and pretend precedence over the desires of her mentor. You carry nothing of her but her bacteria, and even that you selfishly rename: you pretend that you mourn her while you disrespect her spirit with your happiness. I have already admit the mistakes I played in her death, yet you still refuse to do so, even as there were mitigating circumstances for your part in it. All of your supposed idealization and grieving of her pauses before even the slightest wound to yourself is incurred."
Iris had responded by simply walking away and launching herself away when Viktoria continued, yet she still felt weak for doing so, and she had the sense that she would need to handle Viktoria in some way soon.
As she was walking back to Urasaria April 21st, she had suddenly the sensation of something slithering in her legs.
They were tendrils of slime. She tried to step forward and they sealed back her advance, shooting through her tibias and hollowing them out; they slammed her into the ground face-first and someone's kick smashed her legs with enough force that her bones shattered. She screamed and managed to pull her head up, green electricity purging the intrusive bodies from her legs: ahead she saw Viktoria reconstituting her body and walking away.
"BITCH! YOU FUCKING BITCH!"
Iris punched the sidewalk and chunks of concrete split out; a gust of wind blasted them at Viktoria, but her arms went slime and the projectiles landed in the goo, as Viktoria grew smaller in her sight. She punched the sidewalk again and covered her vicinity in green lightning.
Then she remembered Flickendecke's 15-minute time limit and sighed, using Kairos' wind to stand herself up enough that she didn't look vulnerable to enemy hosts. She managed to get over to a restaurant and lower her wincing enough to get a table, then checked in her pockets for her Flickendecke patches -- they were all torn to strips.
She suspected Viktoria had wanted to cut her down; that she was humiliating Iris for not accepting her. Natasha was likely involved in her thought process, somehow, and for a moment Iris resented Natasha's stupidity in having caused this bitch in her life.
She felt guilty afterwards, and she hated herself for having thought it. But we tend to ascribe life's negativities to the agency of the consciously-doing, and subsequently when beset upon by an irrational woman we try to find the source of her elsewhere.
Her phone had also been shattered, and her pride was wounded. She thought it weak to report this or even mention it to Olivia or Amelie; it was better that she grow strong enough to win and truly fuck over Viktoria otherwise.
Kairos repaired her phone and she called up the infirmary, gave her student number and asked for Emilia. "H-Hi Emilia, it's Iris. Can you let me revert Flickendecke for a-a minute? A few patches got broken."
"Yes, Iris. Are you in a fight?"
Iris reverted and the patches shifted back together. "Let's just say I-I was."
Emilia giggled. "Then I hope you bring me back their heart."
Any other time Iris would've continued this, but she left it uncommented upon. "Thanks. B-Bye."
She wondered what had caused Viktoria to be like this. Even at her own most violent state she had never been this much of a rat bastard; she had not once hurt a wholly innocent person. And she felt herself the rare sort of person who had grown: whose internal life had movement. But in every word that hovered over Viktoria and under breath, what perdured was that she had always been a selfish cipher; she could not have been more than that. What others felt or needed was of little concern to Viktoria, though at times, she would attempt displays of affection and care, though even this rarely altruistically. The empathy she had for Natasha and once Iris was a fiduciary sympathy that she expected to be repaid by a recompense of their self nearer to her own; and when it was not she would react as you have seen.