For now Iris focused on finding them Revenants to kill, her wind bringing them both to one and killing its host quickly. She crouched down to scan, then nodded to Suki. "Alright, Suki. What is it you said you needed to do?"
"Eat the heart." nodded Suki.
"…are you sure?"
"Yeah, dude. The doctor said I have to eat hearts to get stronger. She used the word 'consume'."
(Note: The intended method of Metamorphosis's consumption is using its tendrils to sap another Revenant's bacteria.)
As she grabbed up the heart and tried putting it to her mouth, she was hesitant. "...I don't know if I have to eat it when I'm transformed, or something."
Iris shrugged. "You might need to cook it, don't you?"
"Doesn't that kill the bacteria?"
"I'm sure it's durable, Suki. Let's bring it back and I'll cook it for you."
"You know how to cook hearts?"
"I know how to cook game meat, and that's probably close."
Suki shoved the heart in her pocket. It did not fit, so she sliced it in half and shoved one half in each pocket. They were still beating when they returned home, and Iris braised it for 2 seconds (6 hours). She spiced it up how she would venison, then served it to Suki.
Suki started eating.
"How's it taste?"
"Dude, I can't tell if this is my Revenant or not, but it tastes so fucking good." She offered it to Iris, who shuddered.
"Not for me."
"Your loss, dude." She chewed while speaking. "Ift's like a tough steak or something."
Iris smiled. "Think what we could do is gather up every heart we get in a week, and Sunday, I'll cook them up for you."
Suki nodded and continued eating her human heart, a meal that disgusted Iris (at least for the first several weeks). She supposed that the bio-availability of human protein might be useful for building muscle, however, and was thankfully diverted from this unholy train of thought by her tablet vibrating. It was Naomi, and they went up to her office.
"Hey, Iris." Naomi smiled; Iris noted that she had been much friendlier with Iris since she began dating Olivia. She made no pretense at objectivity with her favorite students. "So, no specific investigation yet, but there's been an uptick in Revenants over in Chicago. I'm putting you two there until further notice. Kill any host you find."
"Is Olivia free to come with us?" said Iris.
"If you handle her travel, yeah."
Iris smiled. There was still a residual of fear, but she believed that behavior could force itself through these emotions. She had been spending time with Olivia nightly; she would leave her tablet with Suki and wind herself over if she needed anything. With each night with Olivia there was a further embedding herself into Iris's patterns, where eventually she would forget that she once had been another way.
If part of Olivia's way of keeping Iris around was this overt sexuality, she did not realize it.
Olivia had mostly dated masculine women before, with most of their associated quirks, and she had always been an adept of empathy. It was why she so often stoked Iris's ego in sexual matters, telling her that she was the best she had ever fucked, for she knew that when a butch is told he is the best at sex, what he truly thinks is that he is the best at sex with anyone, ever, geospatial limitations or mere playability no barrier against the rammings of masculine ego. There was a desire for excess that dwelled in Iris, for women or Revenant or physical strength, that Olivia hoped might be settled into more romantic channels with herself.
As Iris waited in her truck for Suki, she glanced back at Urasaria's gates and saw her walking towards her, then kept her eyes forward. Truthfully it did not bother Iris, but Suki had always dressed in tight enough clothing that she might be accused of hunting a different sort of prey.
Suki came up and opened the passenger door. Iris always laughed at how Suki was too short to get in her truck, so she would transform one of her legs to Metamorph's as a boost.
"Shut up!"
Iris smirked and off she drove at a thousand miles per hour, and for a few minutes Suki felt again that disconnect from the world Kairos' driving brought. There was a similar lack of location to her life that she shared with Iris, though she did not know it, for Suki herself had slept on many couches as a teenager, a lack of centeredness in physical location that was replicated throughout the image of herself, itself always something that had seemed a dissipating sand in her grip. Creating herself in reaction to others had always seemed the simpler thing, yet these replies had rarely seeped down into a hardened self, and so she had desired in emotions & images rather than objective goals: strength and beauty and attention, if only definable by a lack of weakness and ugliness and loneliness.