56 Sashimi

Kekkonshiki's armor was attached to Matoi, though its veil was removed. She couldn't see Serena well, though she could when she leaned her head around to her: Serena was simply drawn too thinly from the side, and attached closely to Mia.

"I'm surprised you were able to kill Medusa so quickly." said Mia. "I'm sure every student thought you would be dead."

"Yeah." nodded Serena. "Absolutely no one believed in you. In fact, I bet they're all incredibly angry that you survived."

Matoi shrugged, gripping the hair of severed head she was carrying. "Everyone wants to be president, and few make the choices towards it." She saw her vice-president Aimee at the door, then gestured to the 3rd member of her squadron.

Mia nodded. "I'll wait until after you're finished. Come, Serena."

Serena oinked. They walked away, Worldwide's scarabs & Blackburn's fog following them. Matoi walked to Aimee and spoke with her, speaking on vague dream-related subjects for a few minutes.

"Lastly, I have two casualties to report." said Matoi. "One is a male student, and the other is a student's maleness."

"What was the cause?"

"536 missiles. Hirogane will require a microscope to assess the damage to the latter."

"Well, you reap what you sow. Who is that, anyway?" said Aimee, pointing to the head she was carrying. "Guessing that isn't Medusa."

"It isn't. I ran in to my father in Combanee."

"Everything has to be violent with you." Aimee laughed: somewhat in that too-quick dream pattern. "If you had kept playing tennis, Morita would be getting surgery to reattach her serving arm now."

Matoi glanced down to the head she was carrying, and it began to decay in to steel, then rust. The wind blew these flakes higher, but she turned her face to avoid tasting the metallic rot of forgotteness.

+++

Grant was walking back to Urasaria alone, when he noticed that his arms were flesh again, and that he was dreaming. This had happened several times before: Ferrous gave him an awareness of metal that, when unnoticed, frequently gave him lucidity. As he considered over any woman he had seen recently but hadn't had the chance to fuck, so he possibly could now, he heard a voice coming from a vent placed near the door.

He walked over to it, and this is what it said:

"You have people fighting there now who weren't even born on 9/11. I mean, they're not fighting for their own memory of it, they're just fighting for an image of it.

…that's right, I was deployed, umm… 2016 or 2017 or something. Maybe in December. See, the thing people don't know is that for every ten or so guys you have actually in combat, there's a hundred people behind them cleaning up everything, transporting and all of that type of stuff. I was pretty disappointed, since, you know, no one signs up and expects to mop up after other people. It was easy, and that's probably why I hated it. I hated being some loser who had to fend over other people's leftovers.

I kept in contact with Grant, though. Not that often, but you know, I'd get a letter, take some time to respond, maybe he'd send something back. He'd always fuck with me and send me pictures of gay guys. I didn't really think it was that funny, but, you know, I wasn't getting anything from parents. Not anything useful, anyway. They'd send stuff once in a while, but that was it, and I felt bad all I could do was send some stupid thank-you note back.

…no, I think the last letter he must've got was that Thanksgiving one. I was telling him about how Thanksgiving was coming soon and I'd get to come back to celebrate. But, I ended up plugging myself two weeks later. I didn't leave a note or anything, so all he got of it was probably my parents telling me that happened.

No, he's desensitized or whatever that word is. Death doesn't affect him much. It's always these small things that bring me back to him, though. There was this time when he was responding to a call, and, umm...actually, I don't think he realized that tall chick had gotten to it first, because when he came there the guy had his hands in the air. I'm guessing she electrocuted him or something, because he smelled good, but he was just frozen.

He looked like he had been running away from her and she hit him with a lightning bolt. Actually, now that I think about it, he must've been trying to move forward, since his chest was burnt. Some cleaner came by and asked Grant if it was his, but he just kinda mumbled and let the guy go to work. Seemed to pause when he was looking at it, though, since that corpse had the same feeling I did.

No, I still haven't dated anyone yet. He tried to set me up with this bisexual woman, but I'm not someone who…"

Grant leaned against the wall, inhaling from the vent that voice of Sylvia's & better living.

+++

Serena's hair was messier, her cheeks softer, and the bones of her jaw slightly shaved. As Matoi began talking next to her, a set of subtitles appeared ahead of Serena, and this is what they said: "KIRYUUIN SATSUKI: *She* did very well against Medusa. She is a woman in human clothing!"

"I agree." said Mia in English, her lips unsynced. "I'm very proud of *her*."

Serena smiled as they came to the gates. Yuruko was waiting there. Mia looked over her with some consternation. "Will you be alright by yourself with her?"

Serena nodded. Mia put her arms up and her hands rapidly spun, until she lifted off vertically from the ground and flew away.

"Man, her arms are gonna be tired." said Yuruko as they started walking.

"She just does that." said Serena. Her voice was higher. Blackburn was not summoned.

"Yeah, she really knows how to hover. Hey, how close are you to your $50,000?"

"I still need $10,000."

Yuruko seemed to glare at anyone who looked at Serena too long. "Do you really need the sex change, though? I mean, you're already fully female to me."

"It's for me. Mia looked it up and told me it's done by Revenant, too."

Yuruko nodded. "Coolio. Oh, that reminds me, they gave us a bonus for the last contract." She pulled a stack of $100 bills out.

Serena put it in to her wallet, pushing out some of the sand that had previously filled it, and walking over the leftover soil of her past.

+++

Serena was walking beside Mia and wearing her oversized jacket: enough that the sleeves dragged on the ground when she walked. Mia reached over to adjust it for her. "Is that better?"

"Yeah." said Serena, two feet shorter than Mia. "I'm gonna go play videogames with Yuruko for 900 hours and watch those Japanese cartoons you don't understand."

"Have fun."

Mia smiled as Serena walked away, Blackburn's fog following her. She thought Serena & Yuruko would make a good couple: a pair of videogame-loving little gremlins.

As she checked her phone to see a text from Aimee, mentioning she had cleaned their mansion, folded all of their clothes, and cut her nails, she noticed the statue of Matoi near the entrance. It hadn't been built out of memoriam, but simply that she was this, standing above others. It was a typically negative trait Mia had grown to like in her friend.

She had a habit in her dreams of examining objects, so she looked closer at it and saw rays of stone protruding from Matoi's gaze. As she walked past it, she noticed a woman near the gates she had not seen before, and she tried to recognize her face as she walked closer to her.

It constantly shifted, but Mia recognized some features that allowed her to identify her as Ryumi, as the the mind is skilled at subconsciously stitching gaps only focus reveals. Just as you likely did not notice the previous sentence's error. As Mia exerted some lucid control, Ryumi said nothing as her face was decided upon. Mia felt it was finally coherent, and was satisfied at knowing its permanence would stay even as she looked away to see Aimee.

+++

Serena's dream had hung on to her mind like a nettle in a fuzzy sweater, but after a late lunch, she went out with Mia to patrol for the rest of the night. They were about to head back when they heard a heavy amount of glass shattering, and with some caution, they followed the source a few streets over with an apartment complex.

They waited for a minute to see if it was indicative of a Revenant or domestic dispute, then eventually saw a woman muttering to herself as she walked out of the building. As Mia & Serena ran after her, Serena shouted for her to please wait, and received a fuck-off in reply before the woman turned, seemed surprised, and immediately apologized as they came up.

"I-I'm sorry, I thought you were, uh..."

"We were wondering if you heard a window shattering." said Mia.

"Yeah, um. Sorry if I scared you." said Serena.

"No, it's fine, I just..." The woman looked over their badges. "Are you, um, Urasaria students? Lesbians?"

"Yes." said the 6'0" lesbian. "Why?"

"Oh, um. I-I did see a window breaking, but... I'm sorry, can I - can we just sit down somewhere? I'm the one who broke it, but... I-I just need some advice." She wiped her eyes.

Mia looked to Serena, then nodded. They went off with her to a nearby bench and she sat between them. "…um. I guess you must've heard me and my girlfriend arguing, or something, since you're here."

"We heard something breaking. Are you two alright?"

"Yeah, we're… n-no, n-not really, not lately." She started tearing up. "I-I don't know, w-we moved in together a few months ago, a-and now we just keep having all s-sorts of problems, a-and it really hurts, you know? I-I dunno. This is how it was like t-the first time we broke up, too, and..."

"The first time?"

She nodded. "Yeah, s-since she was cheating on me. And I told her after she said she was sorry that I wanted to lay down some rules, and that we would just be friends this time, but she started visiting me more and more, and..."

"…and now you're having arguments again?"

The woman nodded. "Y-Yeah."

Mia awkwardly scratched her neck. "Are you sure you two should be together?"

"Why not?" The woman frowned and looked at her. "We're great together. We're just -- I mean, everyone goes through rough, um… rough patches or whatever. That doesn't m-mean anything."

There were times in Mia's life where she remembered she had matured faster than most other lesbians: this was one. "It's your choice, but, er… it doesn't sound very healthy. That's all I meant by it."

"Well, o-okay, but you don't know what that's really like until you're really in love."

Mia blinked, considered it, then reconsidered. "Was she the one who broke - was it a window?"

"Yeah, she accidentally, um… um, she accidentally threw something through it."

"She shouldn't be doing that." said Serena flatly. "Like, that's dangerous."

Mia nodded. "Right. She doesn't threaten or hit you, does she?"

"N-No, never, she's -- she's not an abuser or anything l-like that at all. She just gets angry, s-sometimes." She looked to the apartment. "I f-feel like I should get up and g-go talk to her t-to get it all back out."

"I don't think you should. Not if you're both still feeling raw."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"'What do I mean?'"

"You said something about raw? Like a fish or something?"

"…er, feeling raw? I meant you should take some time to think about it, before you talk to her."

"Oh. I guess so, maybe, yeah."

Serena felt this was all awkward, so she looked away and pretended she was watching out for someone as Mia consoled the woman.