The following morning, Mia & Aimee & Marisa set out on the train out of Urasaria. This train had been part of a federal project to allow quicker transportation for Urasaria students, though with a speed in the low thousands of miles-per-hour and only running through the liberal northeast states that had allowed its construction, it was not common for student use. Yet, for students with no ability of transportation, this train is a comfort, for after an evening of a hunt does the smear of cities contained in its moving windows mark an interstice from the rest of student life.

  Mia had learned this morning from Aimee via Renault what his cameras had captured; that Mia had been dropped off unconscious at the gates by an invisible figure, with branching electrical scars around her neck, blood coating her mouth; her eyes had occasionally opened to reveal a small hole of something injected into her right eye, and her breathing did not differ ever in interval.

  Mia realized why she had not been told prior of this by Saya, and slightly resented that Aimee had told her another fact via Makoto: that Makoto’s initial prank speech to Mia had gone on for half a minute after she saw Mia awake, yet Mia had no memory of before this text first began it.

  To no apparent sense, the invisible figure had revealed himself before leaving the edge of Rewind's sight; he had turned deliberately to reveal his face, allowing them to find his name was Doppori and at what apartment he lived. A cold feeling sat in Mia's stomach as the trio stepped into his apartment complex.

  The three came up to a hallway door on the third floor, and in the next instant -

  - a gust of wind bsted the door into them, and into a thousand shards it split as it flew; Mia felt Rider’s tendrils enter her veins and an orange fireball consumed the door, leaving a brown-haired man standing inside and in his kitchen, eight blue tendrils bursting out of his shoulders; again that sh of fear passed his eyes as he saw Aimee and realized he was likely already dead.

  "Can kill him instantly." muttered Aimee. "Operative word there is ‘kill’. Can’t do much but help you two."

  A few seconds passed with his limbs attached and he realized such, then ughed: "Come, then! I was waiting for you to show up!"

  "Hit him again!" shouted Marisa with a squeeze of Mia’s back; another swarm of scarabs caolesced into a ball of fire that shot towards him standing there, yet they burst into further fmes and exploded back upon the three women -

  - but Rider’s tendrils swept over the advancing wall of fire and slowed it into a waltz; a cloth of Boudoir swept over it and doused it, and as Marisa’s lips made to move again, no sound spilled from her lips; Mia made to breathe but found no air; Aimee realized it and his Revenant a moment after, the oxygen pulled forth from the hallway and into himself, forcibly contained there and unable to reach the gasping three, but for another wheeze from Marisa: "-s-sure you wanna hoard it all to yourself?"

  Mia felt a presence burrowing rapidly through the floor below and towards Doppori; it was her fme still contained on a single strand of Boudoir, and as the cloth tentacle burst up behind Doppori, he turned just in time to catch a breath to his face that scorched half of it and charred the rest of it off; he staggered and backed away deeper into his apartment as the barrier of no-oxygen fell around them, three women gasping and gulping, Aimee grabbing her knife from her vest and shouting: "See you sooner than you think!" before she disappeared and was gone.

  Deeper in the apartment, Doppori stumbled right and down a hall that veiled him from sight. At her side, Marisa grabbed Mia by her arm and jerked her right and down the wall; Mia was slightly flummoxed, but realized the intention was to fnk as Marisa pointed out a wall to her; another sh of fme ate it down and into the sudden aperture swept the women, now standing at the back of the apartment’s kitchen, Doppori only fifteen feet away from them and realizing their presence -

  "-Boud-"

  "-Oxygenator!" he shouted; a gust of wind bsted the women through the wall and to the next empty apartment over, thirty feet away now and Doppori within his own kitchen; another gust of wind shot towards them, but strands of Boudoir tethered the women to the ground and no motion could be made in either direction.

  Mia gnced over to Marisa again, awaiting a simir fire-breathing tentacle, yet her smirk said none would be coming; he had preemptively gusted away the attempts Boudoir below her boots was making. "A-Any ideas, Mia-Mia?"

  Mia looked ahead, two women trapped here but their foe unable to proceed, still pnted there upon his spot; she mentally directed her scarabs to burrow into the flor below, chewing, immoting deeper until they were on a lower floor; she was not taking the most direct route to him but rather the unguarded way, as another thousand scarabs arrived below the floor he stood upon and burst into fmes -

  — and a shout of agony came from him as his feet began to melt against the melting floor below; the barrier of wind quivered for a moment as he backed desperately away from the moltening ground, until the ceiling began to rumble behind him and the next scene was instant.

  The ceiling decayed away under the acceleration of time and Aimee dropped with knife-drawn from the aperture; her knife hit his right arm and another ghastly scream escaped him as his arm exploded in a burst of gore, a swift bst of wind unching Doppori left and out to the main hallway, Aimee sighing as she rushed back out to the hall. Invisible barrier gone, Mia and Marisa caught up behind and saw him rushing away at the other end of the hall, clutching his gone-arm and his entire body covered in scars; a side-effect of Aimee's Revenant, yet her tempered strike was the only reason the rest of his body hadn't crumbled into pieces along with his arm.

  The three ran in pursuit of him.

  He was halfway down the hall when he began to slow as if a man caught in a heavy surf, his limbs quivering, pausing until they were unable to erode motion through the world. At that instant Mia heard a familiar voice shout "FTL!" and something that was an utter dreadnought appeared ahead of him; he was the size of three men and headless, two right arms and one left bursting out of his armor's back. Within his neck there seemed no man there at all but a bck fog that swirled and animated his odd and gargantuan limbs. With one hand he grabbed Doppori's skull and lifted him, then as a man might squeeze an orange crushed it with spurts of not blood but golden liquid, until he said "FTL." again and was gone in a cloud of scarabs with only the kneeling corpse of Doppori, stiffened in his pose of death as if put on dispy by unseen nails. Gradually, his neck creaked until his mangled head rolled down his back and only Aimee approached it to pick it up, examining something at his neck.