[Can’t Opt Out]

[Halen:We leav n 25, w or w/o u]

A chorus of responses from the other members of the increasingly large group message came through, varying from complaints that twenty-five minutes was too long—Emilia was in danger, and they needed to go now!—to concerns that that wouldn’t be enough time—apparently breaking into Doctor Vickers’ office was taking more time than expected. Halen didn’t care about either issue; they would be leaving in twenty-five minutes, and if people hadn’t made it to the meeting point by then, they’d be left behind—and if they insisted on finding their own way? Well, there was no way anyone was getting there before those who came with him would be—he hadn’t even distributed the skill they’d be using to his friends, few as they were, let along Emilia’s antsy ones. Fresh chapters posted on N0velFire.ɴet

Halen stuffed more things into his bag, cursing himself for never having bothered procuring one of the fancy—and astronomically expensive—bags from the Free Colonies that somehow connected to a pocket dimension. He had no idea how they worked, and he had intended to buy a few one-day so he could figure it out—make a skill that could access items stored in a pocket dimension. If a bag could be tied to a specific pocket dimension, surely an entire person could be? How cool would it be to just focus a skill on the aether that hovered over your skin and pluck a specific item out?

Unfortunately, with how busy he constantly was—too many interests; too many side projects—he hadn’t gotten around to even buying one for personal use. Now, he cursed himself continuously as he tried to figure out what to prioritize, sending off a quick message to Coral, who along with BJ was working on stealing them enough medical supplies that they wouldn’t be going into the situation completely unprepared for injuries. According to her response, BJ’s message requesting more than twenty-five minutes should be ignored; she would get what they needed.

Good, that meant he didn’t need to raid him family’s medical supplies and use up more space in his bag—Coral and BJ would gather what they needed and split it between several bags, in case their perhaps-too-big group split up.

Fucking Rafe, blasting out to all his friends—although Halen wasn’t convinced Rafe really liked anyone aside from Emilia, and maybe Simeon—that Emilia might be in trouble. While he knew all those kids were monsters, having so many people in their group was going to make things a little more complicated. Had it just been him and Rafe, he probably could have convinced Polianna to come with them and try to get them into Falmíer through the diplomatic entrance. It might not have worked—who knew if the city would lock down when it got out that they had a missing Baalphorian non-dev—but it would have at least been less messy than trying to get in other ways.

What those other ways were, Halen still wasn’t sure. Fortunately, he had a xphern. Over the years had managed to convince some of the Free Coloniers who called Emilia their friend to give him their contact information. Currently, both Lan’za and Yujao were searching through their nation’s libraries, looking for any information on where the entrance to the cave systems that existed above every subterranean Lüshan city might be, while the latter had sent Hurinren to ask the Blood Rain General if he knew anything. Due to strained relations between Dion and Lüshan, none of the men could assist in any other way without risking significant political fallout, while Lan’za’s had been designated their emergency contact. She would know where they were, and if Halen or Simeon—the only two of them who could use a xphern—failed to check in regularly, she would alert her mother of the situation.

The fact that Lan’za was going along with their admittedly terrible plan was not a good sign. Lan’za, who was always levelheaded and logical—who understood the intricacies of international affairs better than all the rest of them. Her specific knowledge of the politics of several nations might be shadowed by Emilia’s, but the Seerish girl understood the broader strokes that ran their world with the expertise of someone who would one day run her nation. Lan’za was going along with their intention to sneak into Falmíer because she also knew what would happen when the Lüshanian and Baalphorian governments started meddling with the situation in more than a we’ve sent Drinarna officers to investigate way: it would take forever for them to do anything, each side fighting for control of a situation that had—effectively—left two Baalphorian non-devs missing; alternatively, they would both refuse to do anything, not wanting to risk diplomatic relations due to missing civilians, no matter how valuable they were; or, worse, the Lüshanian government alone would refuse to deal with the situation, and the Baalphorian government would be forced to push, and push, and push.

No one wanted to see the Baalphorian government push; certainly, Emilia didn’t want to see their nations teetering into a war because she had run off looking for Olivier. Technically, she wasn’t missing—she was still responding to his occasional question of whether she wanted him to bring her anything, and certainly, the things she was asking for implied she was preparing for war and they should as well—but she had escaped Cameron’s babysitting and the Drinarna officer’s seeming attempts to arrest her. From that point of view, she may very well currently be a fugitive, and that wasn’t good.

Halen clipped his xphern to his pants. They’d all agreed to wear the uniforms that had been designed for their class’s more-or-less military level training, so they’d have some extra protection if they ran into trouble; the effect of wearing nearly identical uniforms in shades of black and deep purple would have made them look exceptionally suspicious, so they’d also pulled on civilian clothes overtop, although it was quickly getting rather hot. The last message on his xphern was from Yujao—a response to his query about whether Dion would go to war for Emilia, if Baalphoria abandoned her, or if Baalphoria went to war for her.

Yujao wasn’t sure. The most he was sure of was that he and Hurinren—the Blood Rain General as well—wouldn't been beholden to the Emperor Supreme’s opinion on this. If things got that bad, they would fall their power down on Lüshan—as would the Princess Supreme. That was another part of the reason they wanted to keep all this quiet: as long as the Emperor Supreme didn’t know about what was happening with Emilia, he couldn’t order them to not interfere. For as much as the man was apparently losing it a bit—as Yujao put it—he wasn’t quite so far gone that he wouldn’t immediately realize his daughter was liable to take off to help Emilia, and thereby force Dion into a war to keep his only child safe. Ergo, if he found out Emilia was potentially in trouble, he would put more guards on his daughter, so she couldn’t force his hand.

Nobody wanted war, but if they were going to war, they’d have a better chance with Dion behind them. Keeping everything as quiet as they could, it was, then—although, that might be slightly difficult as Halen’s plan to get them to Lüshan in slightly less than three hours depended on using the aetherstream that crossed the entirety of Dion, branching paths leading close to the Dionese-Lüshanian border. It was a potentially dangerous plan to begin with; it would be even more so if the Emperor Supreme ordered his soldiers to halt their progress along the aetherstream—after all, there was a chance that if Lüshan found out they’d travelled through Dion, they might hold the nation responsible for whatever they did trying to help Emilia.

Chances were that wouldn’t happen—Lüshan really didn’t want a war with Dion and its huge standing army—and even if they tried to blame Baalphoria or Seer’ik’tine—which they would be using to get from Baalphoria to Dion—for not monitoring their borders closely enough, neither nation was likely to either accept blame or force it onto their group. The reality was, even young as they were, the whole of them were already too valuable to Baalphoria’s security, while Seer’ik’tine had long refused to accept blame for any crime occurring on its soil in relation another nation—they’d even threatened to cease being used as a diplomatic haven, if the issue were pressed. While the diplomatic capital of their continent could be moved, it wasn’t something anyone wanted to push unless absolutely necessary.

This was the situation according to Lan’za, anyways. Halen thought some of it was wishful thinking on Lan’za part—this girl whose friend was in danger, who knew that none of their governments were likely to care enough to try to intervene more than The Black Knot currently was. Maybe it was also her trying to soothe everyone’s nerves, Halen relaying what each of his contacts told him as it came in, his eyes glued to his xphern once more as he exited his house, intent to go get Emilia the weird and highly dangerous willbrand she had requested from the workshop she and Simeon shared.

With his eyes down, his focus on the situation and Emilia and concern over what sort of monster willbrand she had created—even her normal one was already dangerous—he didn’t see Codeth standing on his doorstep. As a result, he walked straight into his friend.

“What are you doing?” Codeth, one of the few classmate Halen actually considered a friend and reasonable human being, asked. His light blue eyes, an almost icy white, shifted between Halen’s face and his xphern. “Who are you messaging with that?”

“Uh… people?” Halen asked—fucking asked, as though people weren’t already a terrible answer.

Codeth, who had always had an impressive bullshit metre even when the lies weren’t so obvious, crossed his arms and pulled himself up to his full height. While he wasn’t that much taller than Halen—and certainly not as tall as Zentaris like Darrian—there was a little bit of towering going on. Halen wasn’t afraid of Codeth, of course. The guy was his friend—perhaps his only real friend, save Coral. He was friendly enough with Coral’s girlfriend, Polianna—although, he was definitely afraid of that girl. Codeth was a good guy, though—the sort of person who went along with the prank war but had never hated anyone on the other side of their class the way some of their other friends did.

Seriously, there was even this stupid pact, from before Halen had transferred, where most of those friends had promised to never have sex with the enemy—the enemy being Emilia. It was ridiculous—and rude, given Codeth had revealed to Halen that it had been made nearly two years before Emilia had even had sex.

“It wasn’t like it was a pact not to have sex with anyone in Emmie’s friend group,” Codeth had told him, early in their friendship, the pair of them high on some spiked sweets Codeth had stolen from his uncle. “They were just assuming… something. Probably that Emmie would try to ruin our friend group with her cunt? Who the fuck knows. Jokes on them, though~” he had teased, smiling and laughing as he admitted that they all assumed he’d agreed to the stupid thing—he hadn’t. Instead, he almost immediately told Emilia about it, and several years later, the night before they’d had their Censors installed, Codeth and Emilia had lost their virginities to one another.

“In case it was terrible and awkward,” Codeth had explained. Neither of them had wanted to have some terrible, first experience burned into their memories under the power of their Censors. “It was actually really nice, is the thing.” Smiling, Codeth had admitted they’d fucked the next day as well, their Censors dutifully recording every glorious moment so they’d always remember that their first times had been so good they’d immediately wanted to do it again.

Codeth, who liked Emilia well enough—even if he often found her personality and energy to be too much—had never felt animosity towards her or her friends. More, he had been childhood friends with the other side of their class—the side Halen had inadvertently ended up on because he had been a grumpy, arrogant idiot those first few days at his new school. Through his own actions, he had earned Emilia’s ire and been outcast to the other side of the class. Codeth had been the only good thing on that side—although Halen had certainly tried at times to be a good influence on the rest of his friends, he hadn’t been very successful. In the same way, he thought he might have been the only good thing for Codeth as well.

Without him, Codeth might have crossed the lines of their class—found friendship with Emilia and her friends. Maybe, just like he himself wanted to shift his life—move from his animosity-filled prank war with Emilia into something kinder, if just as prank filled—Codeth wanted that too.

What better—or perhaps worse—time to cross the lines than when they were going into a situation that might be nothing and might be really fucking bad?