[Can’t Opt Out]

Moriana laughed. It was a laugh that, if asked, she would have described as a giggle. It was a sound of fun and freedom, of happiness and joy. From experience, however, she knew that most people considered it more a cackle. More than a few people had told her that, when she laughed like that, it was downright frightening. It didn’t even seem to matter if it were someone who knew her alter speaking—because in no world could she ever be frightening when she had the monster that was the Shadow of Jinkai living inside her. Her laugh was, apparently, a source of fear and apprehension.

Thankfully, most people she knew and loved just went along with it. Some of them would just shoot her dubious looks and run off, more in jest than actual concern. A few made a point of asking what was so funny. Her favourite reactions, however, were from those of her friends who would join her in her joy and laughter, some adding their own giggles to the mix, others playing it up to cackle alongside her.

Helix was one of those people who would add his own cackle to her giggle, purposefully pitching his voice higher, his head thrown back before he let his abilities run wild, the Shadow of Jinkai’s own abilities rising up to keep Moriana safe—not that Helix would ever hurt her! His abilities were just so dangerous, especially if Simeon wasn’t around—although, Moriana had seen a few other people stop Helix. The most dramatic had been during the war, when Ri had needed to knock Helix out with a chokehold. What a disaster that had been.

As it always did, Moriana’s heart clenched with thoughts of Ri. Out of all the members of their unit, Moriana was perhaps the only one who could try and see him—she and the Shadow of Jinkai, after all, weren’t the sort of beings who could be stopped by the technology that made sparking in Falrion impossible. They had, most rudely, been forbidden from doing so, however. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the reality that even if one of them managed to get into the nation, they would still need to find Ri, and what if something went wrong? The aethernet was disabled in Falrion, the xphern transmission network blocked in a way that even Meeho hadn’t figured out how to get through, and none of her friends were willing to send anyone in, seeking to find out if p.xl or any of their other alternative communication methods worked. So, if they and their alter were allowed to enter Falrion and then found themselves in need of extraction, no one would be able to spark in to get them, and really, the chances of anyone even knowing something had gone wrong was unlikely.

“Uhm… thank you?” a voice asked, unsure and nervous, and Moriana wasn’t sure if she and her cackling giggle or the invader was the cause of the woman’s uneven thanks.

Bouncing on her toes, Moriana examined the woman, as well as the man who had sparked in beside her a few seconds too late to have had any hope of saving her from the invader. “You shouldn’t spark if the call will be that close, Sterling. The amount of aether being used by the raid system interferes with the skill—it has to hook into the system and make sure nothing will interfere with the spark, so, there's a delay.”

Moriana was nearly positive the man was named Sterling, the Shadow of Jinkai having run into him a handful of times over the years. Truly, the man was almost as terrible as Emilia at wandering into situations where her alter might find itself, all bloody vengeance and righteous fury. Of course, Emilia could handle herself—or, she once had been able to. It was rather unclear whether she could do so anymore, as the last time they had met in such questionable circumstances, Emilia had definitely killed all the people in the room, yet, she had been unable to save their friend, unable to spark out of there once every life had been snuffed out. Instead, she had sat in all that blood and gore, waiting for someone to find her and the cooling body of someone they all loved and had been unable to save.

This man… Moriana couldn’t always get more than glimpses of what her alter said and did, but she had a feeling Sterling was somewhere in the middle of the pack when it came to his competency and ability to not accidentally get himself killed. Hence! Giving him a little advice! If he were on the more competent side of things, he would be able to adjust his fighting strategy quickly and not try to spark again!

Said man blinked at her, his soft grey eyes wild and confused. “Have we met?” and oh good, his name actually was Sterling! It would have been terribly embarrassing if she’d gotten it wrong.

“In a way, but you wouldn’t remember me,” Moriana replied, eyes darting to where Emilia’s embarrassment of an ex had stepped in beside his… siblings? She hadn’t seen it before, but there was a little bit of something there—some slight resemblance that, were they not standing side by side, each of them clearly upset by the woman nearly being taken out by the first invader who came across them, it wouldn’t have been obvious.

The three were standing side by side, however, Emilia’s ex reaching out towards the woman and asking if she was alright, so it really was quite obvious, especially when one knew he had several siblings. Interesting, this instinctual reach and accidental reveal of their familiarity with one another—a response to the stress of the moment? As she spent so much of her time in Norvel, Moriana ran into Emilia relatively often when she visited. Emilia spent most of her time visiting with a single person who was not Moriana, however. Emilia also visited Harlow, she supposed, even if her friend and alter both tried to keep that quiet. Moriana had seen Emilia slipping into the dungeons to visit Harlow too many times to count, though, the Shadow of Jinkai forcing her own mind so small all she knew was her alter sometimes slipped down with Emilia but that she wasn’t allowed, and really, only an idiot would think that the reasons behind their teammate’s imprisonment were a simple as many of their members seemed to think it was.

Still, Emilia primarily visited one person in Norvel, so none of them saw her in more than passing, but all of them who called Norvel home shared their stories with one another. From that sharing, Moriana knew that Emilia’s ex had never talked about his family with her. So many of the people who called Norvel home had little to no connection with their blood relatives; as a result, many were obsessed with knowing about other people’s families. Codeth had explained once that, even before the war, Baalphorians had often tried to live the first years of their adulthood outside of their family’s shadow, so not sharing details about relatives wasn’t exactly uncommon.

If anything, from all Moriana had heard, for children of affluent Baalphorians, sharing that they had connections to the rich and the powerful could be looked down upon by peers. It didn’t stop young Baalphorians from doing so, nor would it necessarily be a mark against them in and of itself; rather, it seemed more like… if the person weren't worthy of the power their family had, throwing the relation around could have a negative effect on how their peers viewed them?

It was all very complicated, from what she could tell. In some places, power structures were much more clear-cut. There might be a complete reliance on familial lines, or on the other end of the spectrum, every drop of power had to be earned through hard work. Baalphoria seemed to be some strange mix, and it just made everything messy.

Still, the thing that was nearly universal? That drama and scandal reverberated through families, and while Emilia’s ex had never spoken to her of his family or the politics his mother and sister were involved in, she had a still known who his family were. Gossip bubbled and Moriana knew it as well, as did every member of their unit… mostly because she had made sure to tell them. Olivier had confirmed for them that there were no laws forcing them to keep it secret—Emilia’s ex was well over thirty and while he could choose to keep his family private, he had no way of keeping other people from spreading it about.

Perhaps, if they hadn’t received a message from The Black Knot just before the raid fell with a warning that the man’s mother, Samantha Richmond, was trying to leverage her political power to have the triplets punished for bringing her son in, they might not have been so cruel as to tell the world about his connection to the woman.

Now, however, that woman was threatening their friends. Moriana had no doubt that bruise beginning to spread over Emilia’s ex’s jaw was the result of his visit with the triplets, but they had all seen the videos: the one of him yelling at Emilia for daring to make use of their open relationship; the one of him standing by as his roommate locked her in and then spoke to her like that; the one of him chasing Emilia down, begging to chat and claiming his roommate was just joking, before he was brought to his knees by a Free Colonier who looked oddly familiar and yet not; this pathetic boy, saying nothing when his roommate insulted Emilia’s friend; Elijah Richmond, panicking and swearing when The Black Knot swiped up the roommate.

This waste of space, claiming his roommate hadn’t meant any harm over, and over, and over again.

To the girl his roommate had tried to assault.

To the triplets.

To other clones.

To everyone—he had even claimed his and his friend’s innocence on the local raiding relays and MemoryBoards, after those first videos spread like fire, before he was dragged off to Emilia’s friend’s dorm room by his roommate’s parents. Thank the aether Samina had been there with them, an army of clones already lingering in her relays and ready to spark in whenever she needed them.

Moriana should check in with Samina—see how the beginning of their trip was going. They’d started a big group relay, once they’d found out what was happening. Currently, it was filled with demands for vacation photos, and while it had originally been aimed at Samina—and hopefully Emilia—it had since been extended to everyone who was on vacation… which, at this point, was almost all of them!

Well, that was a lie. Some of them were effectively always on vacation, while enough of them enjoyed their jobs enough that they viewed life as a perpetual vacation. Still, there were so many of them who were on more purposeful vacations that their vacation-photos-and-stories relay would soon be filled with so much stuff! Hopefully it would all be good stuff… which had awkwardly led to the decision to keep a few people out of it, in order to keep their negativity from seeping in.

Leerin, unsurprisingly, was at the top of the list the people who had organized the relay had chosen to exclude—and who even had arranged the relay? It didn’t really matter, but Moriana was curious as to how they’d decided to exclude others. Nettie, she could understand—any time Emilia came up in conversation, the other silverstrain was critical of her decisions, and of all the people whose voice could chase Emilia away yet again, Nettie was pretty high up there. Other people…

No, some of the other people, Moriana had no idea why they’d been excluded. So, thing for later: track down who had started the vacation relay and get answers!

For the moment, she was stuck in this raid—which thank the stars was turning into one of those raids, the total number of invaders rising higher and higher as the system attempted to account for the number of Division 30 members within the raid. It didn’t matter that several of them never raided—there was even a chance this was Meerik’za’s first raid! The system knew they were unstoppable.

Always unstoppable.

Through death and destruction, through love and hatred and picking up more and more problem children along the way than was reasonable—Moriana being one of those problem children—they were unstoppable.

Tilting her head, her red hair splaying over the ground, Moriana examined the three siblings, waiting until several other heroes were close enough to speak again, her smile more than a little deranged—one didn’t live a life such as hers without learning to lean into their insanity. “None of you look much like your parents, do you? A little bit around the eyes—and your sister’s hair, of course! That colour of brown is all Samantha Richmond, and none of her husband! Ah… what was his name?”

Annoyingly, the aethernet wouldn’t let her look it up, but it didn’t matter: her job was done. The colour drained from Emilia’s ex’s face—a little bit from his sister’s as well. Sterling seemed less effected—unsurprising, as from what her passing knowledge of the man suggested, he spent little time in Baalphoria.

“Wait… Eli, your mom is Samantha Richmond? Isn’t she, like, an up-and-coming politician?” someone asked, another confirming that there were rumours she might one day want to run for president, although President Daymark had held the position for decades and showed no sign of stepping away from politics anytime soon.

“Yeah, your eyes are a little like hers, aren’t they?” someone else asked Emilia’s ex, the man in question’s eyes all narrow slits as they bored into Moriana.

That was good. That was part of the plan because as much as they could stay in Piketown and make the rest of the RaidSeason chaos for residents of the city, eventually, there would be little keeping Emilia’s ex from leaving—from seeking out somewhere else to raid. So, they needed him to stay—needed to give him another reason to stay, and they all knew enough about Emilia’s original, antagonistic relationship with the man to know he wasn’t the sort to let grudges lie.

All of them were more than happy to make themselves a grudge or ten with the man.