[Can’t Opt Out]

Leaning back against the wall, in the place of safety Hyr had left her at, Emilia contemplated how strange it was to feel so safe there. From what she could tell, it wasn’t like the syn had done anything to protect the place. They hadn’t left behind more than a thin line of energy connecting them, whatever had been keeping Hyr from keeping them connected while they were physically disconnected having ceased to exist since she had been allowed to doze in their arms, back in the training rooms.

Hyr was always there, unless they were inside the Virtuosi System. They were there, and it was so strange and yet right, just like trusting their words when they told her she’d be safe in this spot felt right.

It was… strange. Emilia had no other word for it. It were as though a piece of herself had been slowly pressing into place upon meeting them—some bit of herself that had been missing since she was born. It wasn’t a secret something was missing—all adopted children felt some loss for their biological family, a complete unknown in her case—but she certainly hadn’t expected Hyr of all people to contain something capable of filling a small part of the void inside her.

Whatever it was with Hyr, it was a slow thing, not immediate in the way her attraction to Olivier had been despite how immediately they had clashed—when she’d offered to pay him with sex for help with her case, she’d only been half joking. It hadn’t been the gradual shift in her feeling for Rafe either, now perpetually stuck in an abyss between friendship and love, never quite able to move one way or another because the man was baffling. It wasn’t even like it had been with V, some odd moment of realizing hey, I like this person, and maybe we could be more? Nor was it like what she’d had with the triplets, that oddly comfortable, all-consuming love they had for each other—a love she was sure would still exist when she saw them again—even if they had all known she could never be more than an occasional visitor to their bed.

What she felt for Hyr… she wasn’t even sure how to describe it. It wasn’t just whatever unnamable emotion she felt for them, but the changes they had brought about in her. Sure, her time in the raid had been a slow creep towards believing that more existed within the aether than she’d previously let herself believe, even if she’d long been aware that it wasn’t the simple, inactive and impossibly powerful thing that most Baalphorians imagined it to be.

Before meeting Hyr, it had been easy to forget all the eccentricities she knew about the aethernet. She could forget her time inside it, the things she had seen there when she’d accidentally stepped within it while testing out the theories that would eventually become sparking.

Emilia… didn’t like thinking about that time, brutal and bloody as it had been, even compared to the war. Even the brief moments she had spent within it—within hopefully a simulated version of it—when she had faced Clarity’s god, the glimpses they had been given when she and Conrad ripped the universe open to gain access to the visitor’s system, useless as that had been in the end.

Well, not completely useless—it was how she had gotten Zach’s mother’s memories into this world, after all. That was yet another thing to do on her to-do list and oh, fuck.

“So, now you call me back?” V grumbled good-naturedly when their call connected.

“Sorry,” Emilia replied. A little part of her felt bad that she’d forgotten to call her friend back after having to hang up on him so abruptly to deal with Professor A, but another part knew it served the guy right. While her friend might not have intentionally left her worried for him for hours, he still deserved a little payback, and she hadn’t left him to his own devices for nearly as long.

Plus, if he had bothered to message her, she would have responded. Speaking of which…

“I… I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to message you,” V admitted quietly, and oof. There had been a few moments, of course, in their first call, where he had seemed unsure of whether their friendship would persist outside of the raid. Apparently, he needed more solid assurance.

“V. You can message me, anytime. I can’t say I’ll always respond right away, but I want to hear from you. Always. We’re friends. I missed you when we were separated during the raid, and I miss you now.”

V was silent for several long moments, but still there on the call as Emilia glanced through the various messages she had received from her friends. The raid Viola would be going off to soon was some sleepy world where everyone just went on quiet quests, doing things like foraging in the woods or farming. Largely, it seemed focused on finding resources in order to build a dream home, although making friends with other heroes seemed another big aspect of it—it was also one of the rare raid platforms entirely populated by heroes; no AIs to be found here, outside of various animals and the occasional monster.

As Viola hadn’t logged in quite yet, Emilia asked if she had photos of her home inside the raid. While she might not have messaged most of her friends over her decade gone, she had read their messages and been included in many of their group chats, so she knew this particular raid was one Viola spent a lot of time inside.

Her home was beautiful, sprawling and detailed. It reminded Emilia of Charles and James’ estate in Byshire, with its verdant hills and stone house that seemed so out of time and place even within the scope of Byshire’s old-fashioned feel.

[Em:its pretty]

[Em:you must have spent a lot of time getting it to this point]

[Viola:We all have our obsessions! You should know! You were always so obsessed with coding and learning during the—]

Emilia could just picture Viola swearing at herself for accidentally sending the message, rather than deleting it or altering her words.

“It’s fine,” she replied, trying to think of a way to describe her feeling on conversations about the war. “You can bring up the war, I don’t mind. It’s not my favourite topic, but it’s a part of all of us.”

“Okay,” her friend replied, even the message coming across as quiet despite no emotions flowing through with it, the text appearing identical to all their previous messages. “Do you still code and learn? I know some people thought you were a student at Astrapan?”

“Oh~ so people did start to figure that after my dumb ass accidentally ended up in the top heroes?” she teased, ignoring V’s comment about how only an idiot wouldn’t have guessed that was where she’d ended up after her top ten ranking.

Since she only had a few minutes to chat with Viola before the other woman had to go, she’d just given V access to her vision, both the content of her Censor and the bland walls of the raid visible to him, if he chose to look. He was looking, content to wait for their conversation to end while he read along with her, commenting that Viola’s house was insane and must have taken years in-game to get to that point.

Viola laughed, explaining that they had a special group chat for talking about their missing and less vocal members. “You, Seven, Ri, James. I think those are the people we talk about the most? Some of the Gru don’t come around often, but the ones who do let us know that they’re okay, so we just sometimes talk about missing them?”

Emilia snorted—she just couldn’t help it.

“Yeah, that’s my reaction as well,” V said as she pointed out to Viola that she regularly received pictures of James from Rafe, so the same policy of not discussing him like he wasn’t okay should apply to him as well. It wasn’t an overt calling out over the chat’s apparent disregard for the Gru members of their unit, but it was close enough.

Awkwardly, Viola brushed her comment aside before saying goodbye and vanishing, although not before promising to show up at the next unit reunion, just in case she decided to show.

“Is it weird, to suddenly be so friendly with Hyr, knowing that so many of your friends and former teammates won’t believe in their abilities?” V asked, having realized the same thing she did: that, most likely, the reason those Gru weren’t in contact with the majority of their unit anymore was because some of them had been quite vocal about their disbelief in the synat’s abilities.

“Weird? No. I think there’s a chance I might end up beating some people up, though,” Emilia admitted. While many of the members of their unit had just refused to elaborate on their beliefs on such things, a number had been vocal about how stupid they thought the northerners and Mitine Dyns were for believing in fortune-telling and the ability to see the future. Emilia didn’t blame the Gru for wanting nothing to do with them—even if only a few of them had been synat, those beliefs still ran through the lives of every northerner—but with Hyr in her life, with her newfound belief in their abilities, which, if she were being honest, wasn’t even truly a new belief…

Yeah, things might very well get messy.

“You believe,” she pointed out, not a question but a statement.

“I do. I met the syna Fivre a few years ago. Not in a raid, but during that echo attack out of Lu Ros.”

“Oh, fuck.”

The fact that V didn’t even have to tell her which echo attack in Lu Ros he was talking about said a lot about how bad one in particular had been. A small Free Colony that sat along the sea between Nur’tha and Baalphoria, Lu Ros hadn’t had much of a place in the war. No great soldiers came out of it, although a handful had joined the Alliance. No great friendships built between its soldiers and those from other places, nor between the Free Colony itself and other nations.

As a result, when it was attacked, there had been no one to help. When echoes occurred in many other places, veterans sparked in, intent to protect their homes, their friends and allies following, intent to help. That hadn’t happened in Lu Ros, and the fact that few citizens had continued using their Censors following the war meant they couldn’t even easily call for help.

It had also been one of the largest echo attacks, with nearly a dozen echoes appearing through the Free Colony almost simultaneously, a rare occurrence. A number had been taken out by Helix and Olivier, who had been alerted to the situation by an anonymous source—maybe not so anonymous if V had been there.

“Yeah, it was bad. Would have been worse if the syna Fivre hadn’t already been there. They were… Well, to say it was magical watching them read the aether? Seeing where attacks were coming long before they came? And they not only knew the echoes were coming, but also where to find me, where to send Helix and Olivier.”

Yeah, V was definitely the anonymous source. Although, was his identity anonymous to them as well? Or were they just covering for him, the way both were currently covering for her? Not that there was much reason to cover for her at this point, her anonymity falling apart with ever passing moment.

“Oh, I have a way to contact people without letting them know who I am,” V laughed when she asked about it, and wasn’t that impressive—usually Censors threw a fit when someone tried to send anonymous messages without a really good reason. “The syna Fivre was good about that, too? They knew I didn’t want to be found, and they led us around so we could take out echoes without ever letting either of them see me.”

“Do you still talk to them?”

“Sometimes they send me little messages—things they’ve seen. Nothing as bad as Lu Ros, but echo attacks in the middle of nowhere, weird things like ‘take the job’ or ‘enter that raid.’ It’s a little weird, but I guess something must have told them I was the sort of person who wouldn’t take much convincing?”

“Why not?”

“Why didn’t you take much convincing?” he asked, rather than answer her. That was fair, if complicated.

“That… would take a while to explain,” she said, unsurprised when V responded that his answer was long as well. “Something from before, during or after the war?”

“Before,” he said quietly, each of them leaving that and Emilia’s answering, “Mine was during,” to linger in the silence that stretched between them, each of them likely contemplating the things they knew and didn’t know about the other, despite how many decades they had known each other. Not that their lack of knowledge of one another was surprising; it wasn’t like they’d been friends, exactly, until coming across each other inside the raid.

“Mallie is looking into the situation with the heartcores,” she finally told him, knowing that if he found out something about it himself, he’d be able to let Malcolm know through his anonymous means.

“Good. I don’t know if he’ll be able to figure anything out, but at least he isn’t a wrecking ball who’ll make things worse.”

“Sammie is here on vacation with me,” Emilia admitted, laughing at the groan V let out.

“So, if the ship goes down, I’ll know whom to blame?”

“Well…”

“What do you mean, ‘Well…?’” V asked, so much nervous energy in his voice it was funny. Apparently, he was only reckless inside raids. Good to know.

“You never met Conrad, but he’s here as well.”

“The crazy Free Colonier who was stalking you?” V asked, aghast. “Emilia. You can’t be serious.”

“If it helps, Simeon met him and approved.” Or, at least, Simeon hadn’t said anything about the man other than that he was intense and liable to kill anyone who offended her—an unfounded belief, given how many people had offended her that day alone. Still, Emilia was not going to be telling V Simeon’s exact opinion of the man. “Plus, he took my ex out without hesitating. That raised everyone’s opinion of him.”

“Your… ex?” V asked, and was that some sort of excited anticipation in his voice? Maybe it was. Maybe Emilia was just imagining it.

“Yeah, I broke up with him this morning. It didn’t go well. Apparently, despite numerous jokes over our relationship about Olivier being the best lay ever, he did not appreciate me bringing up that the random sex I had the day before—yesterday, I guess—was with him—unnamed, of course.”

“Of course,” V agreed, muttering something about how he couldn’t imagine why that sort of comment in the middle of a breakup didn’t go well.

“I was annoyed, okay? The guy was acting all shocked that our relationship hadn’t magically closed itself.” Chapters fırst released on NoveI(F)ire.net

“And this was in front of Conrad? And your ex did something to piss him off?”

“Uh… no…” Emilia sighed, wondering if bringing this up had actually been a good idea or not. V probably wouldn’t go hunt down Elijah, right? Not that he currently could, given the Hyrat clones were still scaring the shit out of him—she’d received a few updates from the triplets, who had won the right to triple team him—but still…

Fortunately, Emilia received another message from Wyren, whining about the lack of messages, especially since he now knew Darrian was busy in a raid and couldn’t be taking all her time and attention, and actually, yeah. Darrian had vanished in the middle of their conversation. Presumably, it was a real-world raid, as he would have told her if he was logging into a virtual raid. Probably.

“Emilia—” V started to say, still having access to her vision and watching as she told Wyren she had more time to chat now, as she was just wrapping up a conversation with a very cute friend.“I am cute! And you are hiding something!”

“Yes. I am. Goodbye, V. Talk to you soon!”

V was in the middle of swearing—if also laughing—when she hung up on him. A few messages followed, the man promising he’d figure out what had happened with or without her help, and yeah, he probably would. As far as she knew, videos and talk of what had happened between her and Elijah hadn’t gone further than school message boards and the Piketown raiding group chat, so maybe he’d get distracted before managing to figure it all out? Maybe?