Makoto was healed the next day and unresentful; she understood her own aggressive tendencies and that this occasionally required temporary measures of restraint. The students had not stopped to rest anywhere; they had driven in shifts, enough to where Lanara was one day of driving away, yet they now needed to eat.
They had placed an order through an app for a local restaurant in the city of Rickshank, and Marisa dropped Aimee & Makoto & Mia off there to pick it up while she drove around.
"Picking up for Aimee Sato?" said Aimee.
Rider's tendrils went taut in her pockets, as if expectant of purpose, and she winced; she had been feeling a disturbance within time itself ever since the pursuit by China's professionals began.
"Ummmm..." The woman fiddled with her POS register. "...oh no, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, we marked it as done when it wasn't. It'll just be a few more minutes."
Aimee was aghast. "You couldn't have just f- whatever. Never mind. Not looking to be rude, I-"
"Oh, that's alright, because I certainly am!" snapped Mia. "I hope delaying our orders was worth it when there's a thousand fucking electrical tendrils swarming this place in two minutes! God damnit, can nobody do their fucking job correctly?!"
"That shit's gonna be incoming in like 5 seconds, by the way." said Makoto. "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.12, uh..."
Mia groaned as she went over to one of the walls, already tearing it apart and checking for any wires within. "You'll excuse me if I'm a little on fucking edge from not sleeping well, I try to get some decent food, and these goddamn electric tendrils..." She sighed as one of Worldwide's scarabs began nibbling at her neck. "Oh, don't you start now, too." She smacked it.
Aimee went beside her, though she had learned there was not much she could do to quell Mia's anger; mostly the best strategy was to not make herself a target for it. She was on edge for the next few minutes, her scarabs drawn, her anger in a state of stasis; it was not an emotion Mia's thoughts easily eroded.
She had noticed it was often not the expression of anger Mia sought, but the purpose of emotion it brought; the poverty of her childhood had constructed about her a wall of life, and only now could she punch free of its limitations, if but she could prevent the drag of any other emotion.
Aimee wondered if it were flaws that drew couples together moreso than their better qualities.
Soon the woman called out to them again for their orders.
"Here's your soup." She handed Mia a container of soup, who then sighed as she went off with it, then dumped it down her throat all at once.
Glancing back, Aimee muttered under her breath and slipped the woman a $100 bill: "Sorry if my girlfriend scared you. She's got a bit of a temper."
"Hot girls usually do."
Aimee looked back at Mia dreamily and smiled.
In the next instant she heard the eruption of tendrils begin from all walls around, and before they could attack Aimee was at Mia's side; she dipped her tendrils in Mia's veins and shielded her with her body, until a second later she heard Makoto groan as her trumpet blasted the tendrils that were going for Makoto instead.
Aimee glanced up at Mia, who was more than a little flustered at Aimee protecting her; Mia kissed her with a hand on her back that suggested more later, then shouted to the crouching woman: "FUCKING TOLD YOU!"
"-thankfully they're not going for you-" groaned Makoto as she inhaled at her trumpet, then hit a note that tore through the restaurant's walls and destroyed all wiring; the tendrils wilted, but a bat screeched and blasted the entire opposite wall of the restaurant into the women; Rider's tendrils dipped into Mia's veins as a wall of scarabmetal erupted ahead of them and blocked it, more momentum coming from ahead and trying to push it back.
"T-Ten-Mile." winced Aimee, Mia grunting at her side and reinforcing her scarabmetal wall further. "Control over momentum."
Makoto was at their side now; she whistled a few times to blast small holes in the scarabmetal wall, muttering to Mia her suggestion; a geyser of molten scarabmetal spattered through the wall and shot through the holes, but the pressure on the other side was too high; they splattered back into the walls, Aimee pulling the two women back with her as they sliced their way out of the back wall of the restaurant, cutting into the alleyway outside, exits left and right and another small building ahead.
In an instant the scarabmetal wall collapsed and another wall was blasted into the women, but Mia formed a scarabmetal whip; slightly molten but pliable; and she pulled herself & Makoto & Aimee up onto the terrace of the building ahead with some effort as the wall behind crashed into the wall below, building shuddering but still standing below.
Rushing over to the edge facing the street, Aimee looked around; she did not see Marisa's car nor any sight of other hosts. Electrical tendrils burst from the wiring of the building below and went to grab her, then suddenly seized up, retreating wildly as if engaged elsewhere; an intrusion into time itself began and Aimee accelerated through it.
Below, the bat screeched again and a wave of momentum sliced through the building below, and the women began to fall as a tornado of rubble formed below; a geyser of water blasted the three up & skyhigh, but a Chinese man with a cyst upon his neck rushed into the swirling rubble below, and another screech of his bat blasted the ruins into the women - but the next scene was instant.
Rider's tendrils extended 5ft out and a perimeter of accelerated time formed; 10ft out a perimeter of slowed time formed that the rubble entered; Aimee clapped and her accelerated hands sent out a shockwave that blasted the troublesome rubble back down below, until time resumed space and another geyser of water blasted the women to the side, launching and sliding wildly about until they were standing in the city street some 100ft away from their foe ahead & right, sidewalks flanking, another alleyway at their right and cars parked along the road.
Mia gave Aimee an odd glance; she had never seen Rider used like this.
Makoto snickered. "Welcome to having a normal Revenant, bitch."
"Haven't had to use it normally in a while." sighed Aimee. "Figure this'll be good practice."
The bat screeched ahead and flung several cars towards them, but the women were away and running down the alleyway to their right before it could reach circling away to the back of the original half-collapsed restaurant. Their foe was ahead and slightly left, circling away from them until they were in the original alleyway and he the street ahead; the bat screeched with a wave of pressure that sent the women sailing away & back against the dead-end wall, trapping them there; scarabs beat against the current but were thrown back, Aimee's hand at her knife but tendrils twisting as he encroached closer.
He was within 40ft of them when a wall of scarabmetal erupted ahead; when another wave of momentum hit it, it slid first through the holes carefully carved into it and the hyperpressurized wind sliced through the wall behind, freeing the women but sending them scraping & rolling back further into the alleyway behind.
Electrical tendrils swarmed and coalesced above them overhead, but Aimee shoved her wrist to the wall; Rider's tendrils burrowed and created a section of accelerated time within the electrical wires, a bulge of voltage akin to that of a man who had ate too much too quickly; the rest of the circuit exploded in a shower of sparks as the man rushed up and ahead, still attempting to pressure them back through a wall of momentum.
Inch-by-inch, the pressure drove the three women further back, yet Aimee heard a familiar shout and saw a familiar storm of missiles flying behind him; he turned at the last moment and his bat screeched & blew away most of the first barrage, a single explosion blasting his ear off; Matoi & Samuel were within range behind him and a constant storm of missiles erupted towards him, no damage yet but forcing him to divert his outward pressure both ways.
Mia & Aimee & Makoto trudged forward, and the pincer of the five students gripped tighter at him; the wall of explosions began closing in on him, and a penultimate battery of missiles flew towards him; a shockwave behind them blasted them even further into his barrier, and ghastly blue hands grabbed them and drilled them clear into his skull in a sequence of explosions that blasted him into a crimson rain overhead, hundreds of pieces of gore that no civilian would be grateful for (except in New York).
The three women sighed as they walked unabated ahead. Samuel nodded as he unsummoned Outcast's armor; Matoi was behind him, but in the next instant, a straw hat landed behind her - a man popped out from it and grabbed her right arm, her limb beginning to disappear into the portal of another hat as he shoved her into it -
"-Samuel-!" she shouted as a missile blasted the katana at her back clear through her right arm, spurting a geyser of blood out into the man's eyes; ghastly hands tore the straw hat to shreds and prevented her translocation; in an instant she turned and swept back and he was gone through another hat that her missiles blasted to pieces, her gone-arm gushing blood in heavy spurts.
A flash of lasers cauterized her wound, and the heat of potential battle stifled any pain Matoi might have felt until a minute later; she turned with a wince to the others, and Mia could tell it had been tremendously painful for Matoi.
Makoto looked at Matoi's gone-stump. "Yeah I can't fix that shit."
"I a-am a-aware."
"Is that permanent?" winced Mia, and Matoi shook her head.
"N-No. Though it's rare for medical Revenants to heal amputations. My... two options will be seeing Hirogane, or Saya with someone else's limb to reattach and act as the vector for Blackburn. Unfortunately, I-I didn't obtain a souvenir." Matoi sighed as her wound burst open again; Makoto played her healed, at least to the level of a stump. "M-Marisa should find us shortly - she was outmaneuvering three hosts."
Aimee frowned as she looked over Matoi's gone-limb. Without the ability to truly create new flesh over it, the wound would be liable to reopen. She had never been certain if hosts truly were weaker where amputated or if this was simple Urasaria superstition, but she had been amputated a few times, seen many more, and had learned to respect them regardless.
She tried to reason out how she was going to phrase this to Matoi. As with all students under her purview, she had learned to phrase herself around their personalities. Matoi was stubborn yet highly respectful of Aimee; she was the highest ranked second-year, usually the first Aimee sought out for anything important; but she was still liable to strain herself dead if ordered to.
Matoi looked to Aimee. "I see it on your face. You're considering sending me home."
"I can still stay here." offered Samuel.
"No, you two should be..." Aimee shook her head. "Gotta take a plane back. They'll ambush you two on the flight, but they can't fully abandon us because they want Lanara. Sending you home still peels away one or two of them so that we can focus on the rest of the group."
Matoi nodded. "I suppose, though I don't enjoy leaving a contract unfinished."
"You've got the harder route than us. We've got four students and we're a drive away from two more. We have options on where to sleep tonight. You're injured and you've got one airport that they know you have to use tonight. Won't have the ability to short out the power grid, either. I don't envy that. But I need you and Samuel to do it."
This phrasing was amenable to Matoi, and she nodded.
As they made preparations to leave, Mia observed Matoi, who already seemed wholly oriented towards their night ahead. She did not speak but with Samuel regarding the Revenants they might face and counters, and she had expressed no sentiment when she left.
Mia had heard Matoi was often like this; she could not peel herself away from a task easily, and would become agitated were she forcibly interrupted from it; she had often been interpreted as rude merely because she was not prey to distraction. And yet part of Mia envied her for this, for it had seemingly allowed Matoi to construct an essence, a personality independent of her physical form; her voice in memory seemed always an emanation rather than speech, herself an ideal of a student that Mia wished to embody.
In Mia there had begun the dull unceasing grip of her consciousness upon Ryumi Egashira; she knew only of her through the conception Magnus had of her and what estimations of her that she could now make in herself; yet this made her not a woman nor host, but a construction of some changeling sand, a midnight shore which flowed with the rhythms of Mia's mood, from little consistency in one month to the next.
But, for now, this ends Matoi and Samuel's involvement in this arc, and the next, albeit both will appear frequently in the future; particularly Matoi, who Mia would entrust with something important this year.