As Mia adjusted the rearview mirror, she noticed Lanara was on her phone, and her own phone vibrated. "Marisa, check it for me? I assume it's Aimee."
Marisa was on the passenger side and picked it up. "Aimee says she killed one of them." Another vibration. "Also, she sent a picture of herself covered in blood."
Mia glanced at it, and nearly veered their car off the road with how long she gazed at it. The facility was only a half-hour away, and she drove at the speed of a host; she had enough dexterity to avoid crashing (mostly).
Mia pulled the car to the side of the facility. It was in a desolate spot of the desert and built for Revenant removal and storage, surrounded by a tall wall covered in multiple security cameras; most fights would destroy enough of them to necessitate backups. The size of these facilities vary, but guarding them is the modal form of employment for professionals after graduating Urasaria Academy - not necessarily a desirable one.
As Lanara got out of the car, she still had one hand on her phone, and tripped and stumbled; her phone fell out of her hand, then onto a Boudoired patch of dirt that prevented any damage. Marisa smiled and picked it up for her, then handed it back. As Lanara got up, she noticed Mia look to her as if appraising a weakness.
The professional guarding the facility went by Auctioneer. She was a short blonde who typically worked the border between the United States and Mexico, but had been temporarily reassigned here after an incident between her and a legal immigrant in the previous month. In this sense host employment is akin to that of law enforcement or the Catholic Church; one can always be moved to another parish.
Marisa and Makoto would need to wait outside of the surgical room; the phantasmologist onsite had stated the details of these procedures were kept confidential. Mia waited outside of the facility itself alone, watching the road.
Her observant eye was pulled upward by a swarm of mechanical drones, around 30 of them, all moving in formation and with a straw hat affixed to the bottom of each. She eyed them warily as Worldwide's scarabmetal blade formed, and the drones leaned slightly back; a singular rocket burst out of one, then refracted and duplicated across all other hats; they would not harm a host, but as they came within range of the facility, Mia sent out a bolt of lightning that magnetized and pulled all projectiles into one; a globe of ice contained the explosions with only a slight crack.
The drones proceeded ahead and towards her, still far from the facility but would be above it soon. She swept her hand up and a remembrance twitched in her consciousness again as an obelisk of scarabmetal formed beside her, a second constructing atop until she could climb up its shifting handhold, steadying herself atop the pillar with a sway as she stayed at eye-level with the drones now 100ft ahead.
Recalling his attack upon Matoi, she melted a swarm of golden scarabs into a branch and rushed upon it towards the swarm of drones; she came within range quickly and slashed the first set of straw hats to bits, but his hand extended from another hat and sought to grab her ankle; in an instant she stabbed clear through his hand and left a molten gift within as his grip retreated; her bridge swaying, she stepped atop another drone and stabbed down and stepped atop and stabbed and stepped and stabbed, unable to stay midair for long but continuously moving as she slashed almost all to bits; she was about to cut apart the final hat when the man called Vortex fell out from one as if pushed, and she slashed apart the drone before at last falling to land 30ft away from him, her blade readied as he staggered away from her.
A cyst was upon his neck, and he glanced up in anger; his left arm was missing, a bud of flesh twitching upon the stump as if in realization of what it no longer was.
Mia laughed. "They should give a scholarship to whoever did that to you."
He pulled out his handgun and fired at her, but it did not harm; shooting a host with civilian weaponry is akin to that of throwing a marble at a tank. He threw a straw hat to the ground, but no portal awaited within; he realized Mei had cut apart the only hat leading out of this area; and at his realization, Mia slowed her walk to a creep, her eyes eager as she dragged her blade behind herself with the gait of a butcher.
A hat was thrown to her and she sliced it in half as she continued on, and saw him kneel, his head low in surrender. Mia made it quick; a whirl of scarabmetal went through him, and his body fell into several segments; she crouched over his falling segmented body and sheathed his Revenant from the cameras as she burnt it to ash. She pretended to search for it for a while, then sighed as she pretended to notate the ability in her phone.
For the next hours she guarded outside of the facility, anxious for if Mei Tsa would show, but she did not. Once Aimee returned, she spent time cuddling her in a scarab regulated chill, until Lanara was led outside by the other students. It was not long before a professional host from the federal government arrived in his own vehicle; his identity was verified by the curl of light that was Aimee's contact, and he would be entrusted with placing Lanara & her family into witness protection alongside their new identities.
Satisfaction pervaded the young female students, but for Mia. She was in a fugue as she resumed sat in the passenger seat of Aimee's vehicle, and she watched as Lanara & her parents were escorted into a vehicle much like it. Witness protection would render their previous selves beyond recovery, and Mia thought over things. They were mainly of the sort recounted in this chapter, but her sifting hands could not tell her the full texture of what they had swam out from, and this frustrated her mind's everpresent desire to know. She was at the precipice of realization and recognition, yet stranded at the gap between these words, until she noticed Lanara looking to her, whose telling eyes imparted much, but considered it a gift unopenable.
[END OF ARC: LANACCA STATE OF MIND]