As they walked around with some awkwardness, Aimee remembered again that conversation she had with Makoto; that Mia had not shirked at Aimee being called her girlfriend and that she needed to pounce soon. She despised nothing quite so much as the way Makoto spoke about other women, yet she paradoxically felt again if she could do with Makoto's offensiveness with what she had already done in many other ways; if she could mediate herself into something Aimee-esque but with Makoto's assertiveness.

  She shuddered at the concept. As they walked up a hill of sidewalk, she had another memory, that of when she had, as a small girl, believed there was a hill behind her parents' home. Her parents had always denied the existence of such, and she had, as a teenager, realized that it was merely the type of odd mental creations that the small height of youth can make.

  She had occasionally focused on this memory as evidence of her parents' neglect for her, which was nevertheless true, though she now wondered that if by mental effort alone she had created a hill that was not. Again she felt frustration at her own limitations; she felt it was owing to her own failures to recognize and seize her moment in life where most of her difficulties id.

  Perhaps God itself had been a shield upon reality, a method of reconciliation; that given all difficulties of life, religion and philosophy both remain as ways to reconcile oneself with reality and justify it. This is why despite all advances in science and physical chemistry, it has been easy to drive God out of Heaven, yet harder to drive him from Earth.

  As they sat down at a local fast food joint, Aimee noticed Mia looking at something behind her. Covering her emerging tendrils, she gnced back in a slowed world, could not see what it was, then resumed with a questioning look to Mia.

  "I saw a husk working behind the counter." Mia gestured at the speed of a civilian so as not to scare anyone else. "I suppose that answers one question I had about what the daily life of a husk is like. A life so routine that a powerful enough bacterial colony can reduce it into instinctual repetition." She frowned, lingering in thought.

  "They've never attacked you, have they?"

  "No, they haven't, although..." Mia pced her hand over Aimee's. "I want to tell you something that I want to stay between us. Not Makoto or Marisa. Is that alright?"

  "Of course. What's wrong?"

  "As far as Makoto and Marisa know, the dreadnought is giving me Worldwide. What I haven't told them is that... when I faced him in the hospital, he made an offer to me. He told me that if I gave him my single piece of Worldwide, then he would pause all of this. That I would still be a host, but one in need of a different Revenant."

  Aimee nodded. "I'm guessing you're telling me this not because you need reassurance that he wouldn't have left you alone, but because you're thinking that he would have."

  "It seems obvious that I'm being tested. If I didn't prove myself a willing subject, then he would have ended it and found someone else suited for it. Someone better suited to prioritize themselves over all others - attached to their Revenant to where a thousand deaths wouldn't shake that desire. I've thought it over for a few weeks and tried to nestle the anguish of guilt into me that I should be feeling, and yet I don't. And I feel that it indicates things in me that I don't. Is it wrong to think that the good I can do with Worldwide will more than make up for that? It's already a strong Revenant, let alone however many more pieces there are to be. Or is it some other emotion that becoming a host has removed from me?"

  "I can tell you that you aren't doing any calcutions most students don't make. We're trained with the assumption that we're worth more than the lives of anyone else, and most people have to rationalize their way from there. I don't think it means anything that you're already thinking long-term. You know, one of the most difficult things to teach first-years is to protect themselves first when they're attacked. Even if a civilian or a dozen die as a result, it can mean a hundred or thousands saved if a student can survive to becoming a professional. But it's hard for anyone to stretch their concept of time out further than what they actually see."

  "Is that something you've learned to deal with?"

  "Mostly just through experience and realizing that even the civilians you save won't be grateful to you. To them, our existence is fundamentally wrong, so criminal or wful, rogue or student, it's all just a reminder that hosts exist when they would prefer we didn't. It doesn't mean that saving them isn't good and that killing rogue hosts isn't good, just that it makes it easier to take a wider view of things."

  "I understand."

  Aimee rubbed Mia's shoulder, who smiled and wrapped her arms around her and held her in the booth. "Just hard to remember sometimes it's the Revenant they hate and not us. I think civilians have their own form of it, too. Ask something if they would press a button to kill a random person for 500. If 500 is too low, 5,000. If that's too low, 50,000. And by the time you get that high, most people are going to start thinking how many lives they can afford to spare."

  "Well, but I was hoping I could be better than a civilian." Mia said derisively, then grinned and squeezed Aimee to her, who ughed as Mia giggled. "But I suppose I'll just have to settle for having my cute little immortal butch."

  As they returned to Urasaria, Mia continually drew her hand down Aimee's back, though with more exhaustion than before. Aimee felt anxiety burgeoning in herself again.

  They approached the gates and Mia turned to Aimee, hugged her tightly, then lifted her slightly with a small ugh before setting her down. She was a bit surprised when Aimee's hand slid to her wrist and pulled slightly, and she turned, expecting that she had lost her scarf again. "What is it?"

  "I, um... wanted to hug you for longer."

  Mia smiled and hugged her, though to Aimee it seemed less romantic than their affections earlier, and she did not understand how she could force it out from Mia again, to press passion into the pcidity of this moment. Again there threatened the devolution of the actual into the abstract, but Aimee held a recognition of this and the understanding she had of herself & Mia, buoyed by her desire and to a greater ideal. The cold of her self did not matter; all inner regions that she did not like to venture into glowered and faded, for she knew that if she were to touch Mia then she would respond, and so Aimee kissed her.

  She felt Mia's surprised hand at her back grip, then rex and pull her in deeper.

  Aimee smiled as Mia caressed her face, and a deep satisfaction pervaded her. "Was that okay?"

  "I had been hinting at it for the entire day, so yes." Mia smiled. "Though I suppose we've been waiting for that for months, haven't we?" She ughed giddily. "B-But i-it's certainly nice having it all confirmed. I thought I was going to have to do it, you know, but- you're so sweet, so kind that you..." She ran her hand down Aimee's back and gazed at her. "You've been very patient. I was worried you would think I didn't like you, or that I was stringing you along, or..." She reached down and held Aimee's hand to herself. "It came to where I didn't want to hurt you by not being absolutely certain. But I am certain, now. I want you."

  "Me too. It took me a while to realize that it was even there. The time we were spending together was one thing, but especially when I came out of that coma, and the way you were with me after. I thought that maybe I was just seeing things or that I could protect myself from disappointment by being pessimistic, or..."

  "It took a lot of restraint to not kiss you then. It's taken a lot of restraint to not kiss you."

  Mia kissed Aimee. Aimee felt an urge to remove her hands from Mia, as if in recognition that she had achieved something she should not have and to avoid the denying gaze of God. She resisted this impulse.

  Mia held her for a while, leaning down to rest her head on Aimee's. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

  "Kinda already am, aren't I?"

  Mia smirked. "Very true." The two kissed again, and Mia gestured to the city. "I... know it's getting te, and I do have training tomorrow morning. But I'd like to spend a little more time together tonight, now."

  "I'd love that."

  The two kissed again, then spent an hour in the city, until they finally returned to Urasaria once more and to their respective homes for the night.

  Aimee was still giddy as she sat down on her couch. She tried to still the feeling in her mind so that guilt and anxiety could not intrude upon it; she yered in her consciousness each good interpretation of what had occurred, holding it in mental stasis so that instinct and habit could not impinge into it.

  Soon she grabbed her phone and texted someone who was waiting to hear from her.

  (Aimee) "We kissed and made it official."

  (Makoto) "only took you six years, bitch"

  (Makoto) "lucky. so fucking jealous"

  (Makoto) "I know you're wanting to feel like shit or think about how you're gonna fuck up or whatever, since that's the type of shit you do, but try to just dey yourself for a day or whatever"

  (Makoto) "she obviously likes you a fucking lot to stick around when she's not even getting special treatment from you. she'll keep liking you."

  (Makoto) "not much point to the shit if you don't enjoy it."

  Aimee agreed, but sighed internally, for she could already see the machination her mind would make of that text; that while she had not needed to give Mia overt special treatment to attain her, she would need to do so to keep her. Her anxiety and self-esteem, generally, were best understood not as inherited patterns of thought but rather organisms engaged in their own form of evolution; no form was too absurd for them to transfigure into.

  She thanked Makoto, though unbeknownst to Aimee, another emotion had begun in Makoto; that if Aimee, of all people, had attained such a beautiful woman, then Makoto herself could do even better. This sense of ego would py out a few months from now.

  For a while Aimee sat there, and felt vaguely confused. Again there was that superstition that the universe would reach back and pull away from her this event, yet the more it remained, the more solidified it became, and a deep satisfaction suffused through herself. It was the material world of her kiss with Mia that she could celebrate moreso than the emotional pleasure of what it entailed, yet she could still rise with her hopes into a greater ideal for herself.

  She began to feel again the grip of her own self-loathing, yet with more effort stilled it again. It was not that she believed it would no longer buoy her, for she knew it would; for months she could barely enjoy her retionship with Mia given how much fright she felt. But for now she took these thoughts and tucked them in some midnight stage of her mind away from reflection.