On April 30th, Mark Bellenger had decided to rob a convenience store around midnight, for which he was given the register's entire stock of $7.13. (One depressing fact of criminality is for how little money people are often killed.) He decided to kill the cashier with his Revenant to ensure there would be no witnesses, then left and was about halfway up the street when he heard a woman shout: "AVALANCHE!" behind him and a boulder shot towards him -
- but it was slowed, then frozen in midair; he turned to see her already 10ft away with her stone-arm extended to slam into his face -
- but her arm suddenly slowed and the feeling exited her arm as he shouted: "Sky High!"
- but the next scene was instant. The sidewalk slide like a moving walkway and distanced both of them 70ft apart from each other in a distance, Naomi grunting as she tried to shake her Avalanche arm back into working, senses numb, knowing it to be either a more lasting effect or a longer range Revenant. She was already bleeding from a score of wounds from a previous fight; she could not rest.
She grabbed her stone left with her flesh right and resummoned her arm again, her commands warming it to physical response as she shot another volley of stones towards him; he dodged right and a hole sizzled open in the wall of the store at his left & he was gone through there. She grunted as it began to drizzle outside, then received another call on her tablet: another robbery was occurring a few minutes away, and she needed both.
"Avalanche: Golem."
Avalanche's arm birthed Golem's pebble and it rolled down the sidewalk, collecting until it was at child-size; there was no time for puns as Naomi mentally commanded it to go to the address of the other Revenant and fight there, lending it a portion of Avalanche's abilities as it autonomously hovered off.
For a moment she considered how to follow her first foe, then shook her head ferally as she snapped her stone fingers and the store at her right collapsed into a rain of rubble, then swung itself into the store ahead of itself and collapsed it into a rain of rubble that swung itself into the store ahead of itself & itself & itself & itself & itself & itself & itself & itself & itself until the entire avenue fell like a cliched expression around her and her Golem had scavenged plenty from the remaining ruins.
She knew her foe to be contained within a slowed dome of falling concrete 75ft ahead & right of her, and she swept right onto the rubble and began rushing up this walkway of shattered stores, yet was suddenly sliced thrice down her back; she turned around in her forward stagger and saw that the falling rain had frozen into sharp ice -
- but a stone parasol popped out from Avalanche's arm and she spun it as the rest of the rain froze around her, deflecting off the next wave of hail and shattering the next in an pitwward spiral; yet the sensation went out from Avalanche's arm again and her stone-arm went limp, her parasol drooping as another wave of hail fell upon her -
- but a replacement arm with a flint thumb burst up from the ground and snapped out a tongue of fire that swallowed up the next wave; yet she needed a more permanent solution as the hail thickened, and shouted for Avalanche as an enormous hole opened up ahead of herself -
- but closed it as she felt the immense heat trapped within that burrow of death; she could not enter an enclosed space against this foe. An open-air hallway of granite raised ahead of her and she rushed through it, single pillars supporting it underneath the patter of rains outside, her foe still hiding within that concrete dome 60ft ahead. The storm thickened outside and she knew it not as opportunistic nature but host-made, and the rain itself curved inwards and shot towards her -
- but dissipated into steam that did nothing as stone hands wafted it away; she knew now it was two separate Revenants, one who controlled heat ahead and the other who controlled rain away. As she ran she gave her golem Avalanche's full strength every other second, optimizing its growth and knowing it to be the size of three men by now, a trick she had been taught by Yuruko (who was bizarrely obsessed with optimization).
The downpour outside weighed heavier & heavier upon her ceiling of granite; she was 40ft within range now and the rest of her open-air hall erected, and she grabbed at the ceiling like a zipline that she rode rapidly forward -
- until her Golem's mental anguish shattered her concentration for a moment; she winced as she transferred more of her half of Avalanche's strength into it; it was not holding well against the pressure of this storm and she fell to the ground 30ft from her target, seeing a dome of steam erupt outward from his concrete carapace, for he did not know the rain was a product of his potential ally and not foe.
The outside air warmed and buffeted against her, the humidity attempting to close her eyes as the heat of the rain grew in its thickening; she felt her heated foe attempting to sap away the heat from Avalanche's arm again and numb her, yet the intrusion of outside temperature disallowed it. Pressing herself up with great effort on her flesh hand, she arose like a bloodied woman from a deep surf as the outline of man was sketched in the outside mist; a single face opened from a floating body that she shot stone bullets into, yet the rain swallowed his flesh and her bullets with it, the ghast appearing directly over her now -
- and she rose out of it with an uppercut that blasted him into the ceiling & a web of grabbing granite hands that grabbed and tore at him, more rain rushing into her from outside and at her; but clay walls burst up and absorbed them; he was temporarily trapped above within many more shifting hands of clay & granite, his crushed body already leaking within these fingers but attempting to reconstitute, yet she felt the heat being sapped from her neck and attempting to paralyze her -
- but the next scene was instant.
The granite ceiling again moved and launched him out the entire distance into his created rain and a thrown building that smashed through him and sent him sailing perpendicular to his previous position, her golem the size of a building and rushing after what remained of him at terrifying pace; Naomi turned and her stone fingers lowered her heated foe's concrete done 30ft ahead, the rain dimming as he gradually stepped towards her and the heat from her spine dissipating -
- until a flint & stone hand burst from the ground and a tongue of fire swallowed Naomi; she burst into orange flames and pulled Avalanche's arm back, yanking the concrete beneath him & him into a stone-punch that slammed into his skull and spewed bone & cartilage & bits of pink matter into a thick spray out the back of his dead head, and she lowered her protective stone to extinguish herself under what little rain remained, until her golem finished the man of rain and denied even that from the universe.
She smiled as she crouched down to scan the first Revenant as her golem brought her the other.
[CATCH THE RAINBOW: Control over and sublimation into rain.]
[SKY HIGH: Control over localized temperature.]
BLANK SLATE (342)
TOXICITY (341)
It was 11:53pm, and Naomi saw no other calls. She had achieved presidency.
But as she began to think about her duties in solving student disputes, reading through investigations to partition them out to properly equipped students, as she had seen Kate do, she felt odd. Her presidency would only intensify the hatred some lesbians around campus had for her, and she would be under even deeper scrutiny & harassment than before. While she had no worry over representing her own identity well, the strange localized ecosystem of Urasaria had made her feel occasionally that she fit neither with host nor civilian.
She dreaded this change for ironically the same reason she had been drawn to it in the first place: spite at those who despised her.
She decided to share the news with her good friend, Julia Bates. In times of difficulty she had always sought Julia's advice, despite that Julia had no enviable life herself.
"I did it."
"Did what? Oh, presidency?"
"Yep."
"Oh, great. I-I thought we talked about this already, a few months ago. You know, you-you would have an easier time of it if you had done something a little less controversial like invading Jerusalem. You're going to, y'know, have hordes of act-activist girls coming after you using neologisms about fictional concepts l-like cultural appropriation and lesbian happiness."
"I know, but I had to take it. The other option was Viktoria. But it's an accomplishment, isn't it?"
"Well, yeah, it is. You've proven that a straight person can succeed in one of the most heterophobic countries on the planet: America. Now, I still wouldn't want you teaching my children, b-but y'know, I support you… you nasty little freak."
"Oh, stop it. I was actually calling you to ask for advice about dealing with that. Because you know not everyone who's going to make that joke actually means well like you do."
"People'll resent you for your success, Naomi. Pu-People -- they, by and large, s-suck, and they resent you for your excellence. They'll try hard to make you s-suck with them, buh-but in any endeavor, e-excellence begets resentment for the most arbitrary and insane of reasons."
"So you're saying their resentment proves their own lack."
"Yeah, t-that would tie everything together well."
Naomi nodded. She believed that Julia had again come up with a means for Naomi to deal with the tsoris that would come with this new presidency. Whenever she would think of Julia her voice would emanate from some far-off place, yet near to her; she could imagine easily her standing on the porch of her home in California, letting the firs billow their scents into her hairy nostrils, and leering sexually at the middle-aged mothers who passed by, who might later become an element of a story she would create.
But as the slivered wake of the moon smudged against the impingement of night, Naomi let her tired hands fell open, her palms a stage where light could play, and she wondered if such slim knowledge could help her demarcate out the distinct halves of her ken.