Quavering Night

A schoolgirl from St. Mihailov's Academy being terrorized and murdered for data about the "Tsar Crowning" icon one night forms a stark contrast to Mafuyu Oribe and Tomo Yamanobe praying in the campus church after having bootstrapped themselves to beginning another school day; a "Wake up; your life's a-wasting!!!" tap on Tomo's noggin later, an encounter with Teresa Beria gives way to having demonstrated an example of the persecution directed at Tomo and Mafuyu along with their arch-nemeses Miyuri Tsujidou and Hana Katsuragi. An ordinary home commute later sets the stage for Tomo and Mafuyu to discover an infirm boy named Alexander "Sasha" Nikolaevich Hel who later intercedes for her when the Magnesium Qwaser Pax Romania igniting the paintings in an attempt to scare insight out of Mafuyu instigates a battle that serves as a tutorial for defining Qwasers and their soma-synthesizing Maria partners along with demonstrating the necessity of soma in driving their chemistry-based powers over their assigned element; if that is not confusing enough for Mafuyu, Sasha is ultimately far more austere than his playful-sounding nickname suggests as he sees no reason to adhere to Miyuri's student government nor the standard social protocols of civilization.