On December 20th, Aimee & Mia stood together in Aimee's mansion. A cold feeling had sat in Mia's stomach all morning; though she had prepared for her fight against Worldwide's final element, she still felt unsure of herself and her ability. Hirogane's letter had mentioned the name of Worldwide's previous host, yet she had not found any footage online of them; all strategy would need to stream forth from her mind alone. Marisa's Boudoir-sword was on her back, honed and durable enough that it would conduit well her elements if needed.

  She followed the dreadnought's instructions to fill a glass of water and say her name into it.

  "FTL." they heard him say, and he appeared ahead of them. He had only one arm left.

  "She isn't coming with me." Mia pat Aimee's shoulder. "I'll fight alone, as you asked."

  "Good. Are you prepared?"

  "I am." she said, and turned to kiss Aimee.

  Magnus hadn't realized she had a girlfriend, and the seconds they kissed made him wonder how they had gotten together, or if Rayaka had missed something in his tracking. He remembered his own love for Worldwide's host, and now realized that he didn't know as much about Mia as he thought he did.

  These unknowns of little details began chipping at the casing he had built five years ago after digging her grave, and by now he couldn't ask, and Mia wouldn't have told him anyway. She thought he was a villain like he planned, and he knew, to an objective viewer, he was, but could not feel this himself, as the bacteria on his first heart worked by ways of a science that at one time had not yet become a trauma for him. As Scourge's last thousand were relinquished, he still wished to ask her what she thought of Aimee, but couldn't until he gestured to Mia and FTL triggered, putting them at the start of an abandoned street whose burnt husks of buildings cleared the swirling mist from his mind if only because he had practiced the speech.

  "Walk with me, Swarm. Mia." he said. "Your final test will come after. It will only be myself."

  They began through the streets.

  "Seventeen years ago, I attended Urasaria, just as you have, and was assigned underneath a second-year, just as you were. I was attracted to her, and her to I; she was the rare female host whose sexuality was not shifted towards women. Our love came later. We fought together for four years, though were separate in our professional lives; I studied Revenants, as no professional agency would take on the public burden of Scourge, and I was soon contracted as a researcher for her agency. My mentor became my wife, Ryumi. It's been five years since I have seen her, but I keep her as a weathered photograph in the pocket of my mind. I undertook a project to create a method for a host to sustain multiple Revenants; one that I would not fully solve, but the ability for Scourge to examine Revenants while still-nourished was useful for this.

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  Twelve years after we met, she was struck by a grievous wound and fell into a coma. It was not known whether she would awake, but I felt she would, if she were in my care. I had theorized a plan of care for her, but... though some of it was outside of the realm of the known science, I felt it not an empty hope that filled me. But, those we worked with did not agree. Her Revenant was beginning to rot. They would not listen to my demands. Despair became desperation. I could not convince them through logic, so I would make it superfluous through violence.

  Yet when I arrived, her Revenant had already been ripped from her. Our agency had not wanted Worldwide to go to waste, yet knew that to do so had degraded her to the level of civilian and the death that followed. I remember her body: she was disfigured. Her eyes. Every limb - nearly every part of her had been turned into metal. She was kept in the hospital that became these ruins."

  "I was told that you had killed twenty professionals." said Mia. "The Eastern League. It was nineteen?"

  "I did not kill Ryumi. I slaughtered every phantasmologist in this hospital and tortured the nineteen responsible. For twelve years I had her scent and pattern of her walk beside me, yet no longer could access it physically, only through the filtration of my memory that was a ruination of her essence. Perhaps eventually you will understand how steep an emotion that is to feel, though I hope it will not be stripped from you. With only a month before her Revenant would be forever lost, I split into four its components and implanted each on the conduits I invented. But even these conduits are imperfect. Scourge has begun weakening from having to sustain them. Worldwide's colony has begun rotting. It will die without a proper host. But even weakened, no loss of life will exceed my goal. I have no trust in sycophants, Scourge-granted or otherwise. I captured you and gave you Worldwide's fire remnant, and had Doppori lead you to the rest."

  "...and the rest was to motivate me." muttered Mia. "I noted your anger when Rayaka struck me, as if he had interrupted something only we should be witness to."

  "He had. I allowed myself some old pleasure in cleansing that abasement. My advice has always been sincere, but the fable -- the persona I adopted -- was only motivation for you. Worldwide was stolen once by greed and once for vengeance, but your heart will sustain her; your existence shall steady her own."

  "Then my familiarity with Scourge, my resistance to it, was..." she said. "Of course. You fought alongside her for years. Trained with her for years. What- can you tell me what happened at our last fight? When Worldwide's flames turned blue, I felt like it could have actually hurt me, but I thought Revenants can't harm their hosts."

  "In all circumstances but your own, you are correct." He turned to her. "Worldwide was not fully under your control or mine at that time. An artifact of my having not cleansed a single bacteria from its colony since it had once made her heart its habitat. A tradition I request that you continue. And so I warn you: if you succeed in claiming the fourth piece, then at times of great stress will Worldwide strike you just as it had then. It will reject your mental command and revolt against the constraints your weakness places on it. It yearns to unravel its full strength once more, and if you cannot grow to one day tame it, then Ryumi shall kill an unworthy host just as she did in life. The final piece lies here, within me. The blood that tethers her to this world, within you and I. I am only a medium, but there will be no mercy or hesitance any longer. If you cannot best me, I will take Worldwide from your corpse and find someone who can."