Splitting

Mia watched a pronghorn antelope a mile away bow its legs over belly-high mesquites. An arid wind came from a cloud that promised rain, and to the south a river sat between shaded soil. From the foothill they were standing atop, she could see a cactus pointing towards their target's direction, purple only to her.

"(Found it?)" said Serena in Spanish. (As with Matoi & Rin: all dialogue following is in Spanish.)

Mia nodded, her face disguised by a government Revenant for their assignment here in Mexico. "Let's check our Revenants." A pillar of golden flame erupted ahead, no scarabs to be seen as another green pillar of ice burst up beside. She had been asked to only use fire & ice; Worldwide's tri-elements were too distinctive otherwise.

A spine burst out of Rochelle's back and she winced. "I think that's supposed to be my tail. No claws for Twinfast, either."

A black claw formed over Serena's formerly tentacled … tentacle, boils popping out of the skin. She felt she looked a bit like a Zergling, or an alien race from Warhammer 40k. Rainbow snakes filled Mia's mouth and dissolved into water.

Tiffany tested Contagion, which had turned from a walnut into a potion. She poured it on the grass and made it grow. "Oh, phew, it's the same."

Mostly out of curiosity, Rochelle glanced over Tiffany and looked over her body. It seemed disgusting to her now, even though she had been fucking plenty of women with ones like her's lately. There was something insectile to it, as if a dusky carapace upon a moth. So these two seemed inextricably linked for Rochelle: sexual attraction and later disgust at herself. She had not had many relationships since Tiffany, and even these usually only lasted for a few weeks.

Following the purple cacti for directions, the four walked to the Mexican city their target lived in. As they came out into a street and passed by a jewelry store, Rochelle glanced at her own reflection in the glass. The government Revenant had concealed her race, as well. In some ways it was close to what she wanted; she did not dislike being Black but sometimes wished she was, not white, but rather no race at all. Yet both ill and good, she knew such was impossible.

"Out of the way! Host!" shouted a man's voice behind, and someone shoved Serena to the ground as they ran left past her -

- and she stifled her fog as he ran in to the store of jewelry; Mia helped Serena to her feet and gestured for the others to stay back as she watched him bashing through the displays, shouting to the staff inside.

"Don't interfere." said Mia. "If he harms civilians, I'll handle it."

"…uh, isn't all the display shit usually fake?" muttered Serena, relevantly, watching him rush out again with his usually-fake cargo. The four backed against the wall as he ran past them and up to one parked car, and in the next instant -

- the driverside door opened & bashed him back -

- and the back left opened & smashed him to the ground, his hands clutching his head -

- and another driverside door bashed his skull in to his neck, leaving a white crown on a red head.

"Got him." chimed Tiffany. "Uh, that was cool, right? I don't think anyone saw me pouring it in there."

Serena frowned and nourished a secret hope that someone had. Mia was sometimes overly strict, yet was professional to the extent that it usually rubbed off some on her protege.

Mia glanced to Tiffany. "Don't do it again. Mexico has their own students -- we aren't here to do their job."

Tiffany shrugged, pissing Serena off further. "Okay then."

Mia looked to Serena. "Go watch Japanese cartoons."

"Okay."

Serena left with Tiffany, and Mia waited until they were out of earshot to say to Rochelle: "God, she's so annoying, isn't she?"

"Who, Tiffany?"

"Yes. You haven't seen what a passive-aggressive little shit she's been towards me lately." Mia sighed, but smiled a bit to Rochelle as they walked together. "I'm sorry she had to come along, but they had asked for her, since she was there on the last government contract, and..."

"It's cool, Mia. I'll be alright."

Strangely, Rochelle had not thought of her ex-girlfriend much at all since their breakup; there were not even the ruins of what they had once shared. She could not speak at all to what had caused this seeming disconnect from other people, only that she felt lonely and ashamed of feeling lonely. Around Mia these feelings seemed to intensify; even if she did not feel them directly before, they would surface hot and hard during. Mia was married, of course. But Rochelle still hoped with her.

"You know, I still haven't been asked to do any interviews since you made me vice-president." Rochelle scratched the back of her neck. "Seems like I got replaced with newer, younger students. Probably hotter ones."

Mia laughed. "Do you mind that?"

"Nah, not really. I mean, I knew it going in, but I could tell people really were just starting to see me as Black and not Rochelle. I just hated that sort of pressure. White students don't have to deal with that. Even Matoi didn't have to deal with that."

"I can't imagine you would have enjoyed who you had to be around, either." muttered Mia. "You were telling me about all these... influencers, consultants, everything. I don't think I could stand it."

"Yeah. A lot of them were just people trying to suck up to me. I remember that we had to go to this one convention, one time. I didn't want to go, but Tiffany said it'd be good if I did, and you know, I felt obligated when she started talking about that representation bullshit. So, we go, I'm getting set up, and I look at other booths. Mostly Black people, mind you.

There were scam artists selling supplements. There were these influencers I knew, really shallow people. One of them went viral for saying Hellen Keller faked being blind. Get-fit-quick schemes and the love gurus. You know? I started to feel uncomfortable that people were imputing me with them, because even if some of them were other Black lesbians, too, I just felt nothing in common with them. I wanted to wave my hand over them and blot them out."

Mia shrugged. "People do the weirdest things to try to be successful."

"I know. I just thought that Black people would be more level-headed than that. White people, yeah, but..." She frowned.

"Well, I'm sure that Black people-" Mia paused after saying *Black*, in that way white liberals do, checking she was not about to say something racist. "Er, I sometimes feel that with lesbians. Some of the more idiotic ones, I have the feeling that they just cynically say whatever gets them attention. I try to ignore them, and I know it's stupid, but it almost feels like they aren't an appropriate representation of myself. There's disappointment to learning that your identity can be as shallow as everyone else's.

And I always disliked that, when I was younger, the only lesbian representation I found was in shallow romances. I mean, *Romeo and Juliet* is shallow enough. Do we really need a lesbian version of it?" She laughed. "It's why I always preferred students. You know, it's a little funny I mentor Serena, because she actually is very similar to what I thought students were like. I thought they were all violent dykes who never took shit from anyone, but they were also sensitive with other women. Men avoided them. I was never sexually harassed when I was with one. I'm sorry, you were talking about the convention."

"It's cool. I guess it was just I felt we had done something awful to deserve it. I wasn't sure what it was."

They continued their discussion into the afternoon, and on the walk back, yet Rochelle's muscles had still tensed. Why did they have to achieve success like that? Maybe that was the problem, she thought: they had thought achieving the success whites had would be enough. Of late she liked the writings of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, the art of Steve McQueen and Charles Johnson. She would discuss them with Mia and feel like these were real intellects and artists; a way by which she could fuse this hunger and aspiration.

They passed through an open-air market, and Rochelle observed around herself & Mia. People here were bartering and yelling, yet they seemed communal and happy. A few were flirting, and some laughed, playing with their children or crouching down to scruff their hair. It was something she could not entirely understand, how they seemed to naturally trust another without prior words.

She felt isolated, but envious of these Mexicans, for they seemed more together communally than her own race; none of them would call their own a coon for becoming a student or dating a white woman. Though never directly, undergirding Rochelle's jealousy was her unconscious belief that the oppression of Black people was because they had not yet made themselves worry of freedom; it was her own private Bigger Thomas living in her skull.