[Can’t Opt Out]

“I can’t believe she sent you the message about Olivier being alive,” Baylor huffed, not for the first time, his eyes boring into Halen. His former classmate had taken to ignoring him—likely the better course of action, as Baylor had been pretty sure that, at one point in his attempts to annoy the other boy, Halen had been considering pushing him off the platform that they’d come out of the cave system at. Considering the ground was close to a kilometre below them, Baylor would definitely prefer to make the jump himself—put a little preparation into it, and all that. At this point, however, more and more things delaying their descent, he would take the pushing!

Unfortunately, Taylor had forbidden him from jumping by himself. Hence! He’d been left with annoying Halen into pushing him! Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked—or, it had perhaps worked too well, as Simeon had eventually sent him away. At the very least, he now had a video of Halen yelling at him to shut up, which he had dutifully sent off to Emilia, even if her relay was currently muted to emergency messages only. She would appreciate it, though—fuck knew she was always trying to snap Halen’s composure as well.

The fact that she was now cooperating with Halen was probably why it was annoying him so much. Halen was supposed to be the enemy, and yeah, sure, he was doing a lot to make sure they got to Emilia and Olivier quickly, but—

“Do you have permission to call him Olivier?” Halen asked, and maybe Baylor would push him off the platform? He wouldn’t die… probably. And if he did? Well, then the world would just be a better place and—

“You cannot push Halen off the ledge,” Taelor said into his head like his fucking conscious.

“How do you keep doing that!?” Baylor demanded, turning his glare away from Halen—who was now glaring right back, likely waiting for an answer to his question. He would be waiting a long time—possibly forever. Also, no. Baylor had not been given permission to call the lawyer anything so familiar, but personally, he was of the opinion that once you risked your life trying to save someone, you could call them whatever the fuck you wanted.

As a lawyer, if Olivier had a problem with this line of thought, he could argue his case that Baylor return to referring to him by his full name. Until then, Olivier it was—if he was bold, maybe he’d even shift it into a nickname. Fuck knew the guy was going to be pulled fully into Emilia’s orbit eventually, so maybe Baylor should preemptively give him an -ie nickname? Ollie was cute… although, was it too cutesy for the lawyer? The man was pretty—beautiful, even. Not as attractive as Halen—yes, Baylor had eyes and knew the guy was painfully beautiful, and—

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Halen asked, and behind the other boy, Baylor could see his older brother giving him a look that screamed, “I can tell what you’re thinking because you aren’t subtle,” and, well, no—no, Baylor generally wasn’t subtle. He could be! But, as a general rule, he was not subtle, and for that reason…

“I was thinking about how hot you are,” he stated blandly, giving Halen another slow look over. Really, even covered in dirt and grime, his hair looking floppier than usual—a couple of black curls were even astray!—the other boy was gorgeous. Those golden eyes, set against that dark skin that fucking glowed with golden undertones? Seriously, the guy had a fucking glimmer in the right lighting, and it wasn’t makeup or a skill; instead, his skin just had a fucking sheen hiding under the more obvious darkness. Then, there was the way Halen held himself just a little straighter than most Penns denizens, as though he had held on to this small bit of himself that had existed before he came into their lives. The slightly pouty lips that looked so fuckable—and fuck if Baylor wouldn’t fuck his face just to see tears fill the other boy’s eyes.

And fuck, fuck, fuck! When had he started imagining fucking Halen!?

That didn’t—

He didn’t—

Fuck!

“It’s unfortunate that your personality leaves so much to be desired,” he added hastily, turning in several highly suspicious circles—he could see basically everyone looking at him oddly now—and stomping off, leaving Halen behind, staring into his back. Part of him wanted to look at the stupid stalking function to see what Halen was feeling. The bigger part of him was mortified with just… everything!

[Emmie:are you okay?]

Baylor didn’t scream when Emilia’s message came through—he’d been way too much in his head and hadn’t been expecting their relay to pop up so abruptly—but it was a near thing. Who knew Emilia had set her own stalking function to alert her whenever anyone’s—or maybe just his?—vitals went off, and wasn’t it just lovely that everyone could see how flustered he was!? That just made it so much worse and Baylor wanted to die—curl up in a ball and never see Halen and his stupid Halen face ever again and—

And then, Darrian put a hand on his shoulder, seeking to see if he was okay, and well.

Okay, so, he may have yelped—but at least he didn’t scream! They were trying to be all stealthy, so not screaming was a good thing!

That was, unfortunately, where the good things ended as he may have, uh… accidentally pushed Darrian over the ledge.

It was an accident! Seriously! And really, his reflexes were fast enough that he was almost immediately able to dive after the other boy and grab hold of him! Fortunately, out of all the people he could have accidentally pushed into a kilometre long freefall that virtually none of them were technically certified to make, Darrian was one of the calmest. So, instead of flailing or panicking or attempting to control their landing himself, Darrian instead fully surrendered control of his Censor to Baylor.

Reflexes could be a bitch—as proven by the whole accidentally pushing Darrian over the ledge thing. While falling, however, the danger was that Darrian might know to leave him in charge of their landing, but his reflexes—or even his Censor itself—might decide that plan sucked, and actually, they wanted to try and control the landing.

So, there he—Baylor—would be, prepping skills and doing math to account for their landing. It would all be going great, right? Sure, until Darrian’s internal I don’t want to die instincts flipped, or his Censor decided Baylor wasn’t trustworthy. Then, boom! Darrian would be using a skill, and suddenly, their skills would be fighting for dominance over the aether.

Baylor was strong, and all the clones were trained for situations where they needed to push their aetherstores further in order to take over the aether. It wasn’t pretty, and had a whole slew of potential consequences that ranged from core cracking to burning out their Censors. Better avoided, where possible. Of course, there was also the reality that training could only do so much—once again, the fact that he had accidentally pushed Darrian over the ledge while having an internal crisis was proof of that.

All this amounted to, in the midst of a fall that they were neither certified to make and nor had properly set themselves up for, Baylor was just going to be disabling Darrian’s Censor. The fact that Darrian was easily acquiescing to this made it so much nicer, but he would have knocked the other boy out if he’d started to freak—it just would have been super inconvenient once they hit the ground and he had to figure out what to do with his passed out classmate, was all.

Several skills spiralled out of Baylor as they fell. Ones to control their fall. Ones to obscure them a little from anyone who happened to be looking their way. Ones to protect their bodies from random debris. At the base of his skull, his Censor burned as it worked through the calculations needed to make sure he activated the final few skills in time to stop them from slamming into the ground. It was one thing to slow their descent too soon—all that would lead to was him losing more aether than necessary—but to do it too late could mean broken legs or spines or just flat out death.

Baylor, personally, didn’t want to become a pancake, but he also didn’t want to accidentally find himself without enough aether within his aetherstores later on, simply because he hadn’t been able to stick the landing well enough.

Fuck that. He was going to land them perfectly, despite the messy, accidental jump.

If you asked the average Baalphorian, most would have no idea why skills like those that allowed for freefalling were so difficult to learn. The problem was: most people didn’t understand that while Censors appeared to do a lot of calculations by themselves, they actually needed their owner’s assistance for even the most basic of skills. When it came to freefalling, if Baylor didn’t have the spatial awareness he did, he wouldn’t be able to feed that awareness back into his Censor so it could determine where they were in the world, nor how they were from the various buildings that sprouted from the ground. If his Connection or Expansion Categories were too small, the map that his Censor made of the area with the help of the aether wouldn’t be accurate enough, or wouldn’t grow fast enough for him to activate the necessary skills with the proper timing.

All of this might be going on in the background, which his conscious awareness, but his Censor still needed the information his own body supplied it with, to say nothing of it leveraging his Load Levels to actually do the commutations fast enough and without his brain just giving out on him. Brain cells could only do so much before they ran out of juice, and while what brains could handle could, to some extent, be trained up—never underestimate the value of actually training the body or mind—higher Load Levels gave a person an extra edge.

The clones were the clones because they were monsters, so many little pieces of their genetics falling into place so they could have black knots and be whatever they needed to be—could master virtually any skill they needed to know. One day, Baylor and his brothers would go through proper training on freefalling. Usually, it was a few years into actually working for The Black Knot—it wasn’t like baby clones were generally put into dangerous situations so early in their careers—but after this experience, Baylor was going to be demanding they all be taught immediately because this was fucking terrifying!

It took a lot for a black knots to be afraid, especially when it came to their own self. Yet, when their feet landed, a little oof escaping both himself and Darrian because it was a tad too rough, Baylor felt the fear he had been forcing down for the seconds they had been falling—and really, at less than a kilometre, it really had only been about twenty seconds since Darrian first disappeared over the edge—surge through him.

If he had died…

If he had died, Emilia and his brothers would all be hurt—their hearts would break. Darrian as well—if he died, Emilia would be so sad.

Emilia, heartbroken, crying, sobbing, and it would have been his fault and would she ever be able to forgive him, if he got her friend killed because of something so stupid as panicking because he had a sexual thought about Halen of all things? If he or Darrian had been hurt because of that, Baylor didn’t think he would deserve her forgiveness, and that was a terrifying reality.

“Fuck,” he breathed out, pulling Darrian into a hug. “Sorry. Fuck. Are you okay?”

Against him, Darrian released a shaky breath, his arms wrapping tightly around Baylor in turn. “Yeah. Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you so bad you’d push me off the ledge,” the taller boy laughed, his nose burying into Baylor’s curls.

Baylor had heard from both Levi and Emilia that Darrian gave great hugs, and while he’d had the boy’s arms around him before in group hugs, this was the first time just the two of them had hugged for the sake of closeness and comfort, and he had to agree: Darrian was a peak hug giver. Ten out of ten, would hug again.

Darrian laughed when Baylor mumbled this into his chest, his arms tightening a little more as he told Darrian to reply to the panicked messages they were receiving from everyone while he released a recon skill—they couldn’t just stand there, trying to find some balance, forever, hoping no one would come along to bother them.

Their group relay was so panicked that it took three times for Darrian’s response that they were fine to actually be seen—not that the group above them wouldn’t clearly be able to see they were fine with {Starlit Eyes}, or anything. Still, there was a difference between seeing that they had survived and knowing they weren’t completely traumatized by the fall, especially given the whole hugging thing. Unless it was a group hug, Baylor hugged his brothers and Emilia and that was about it. As a result, he pulled back as his recon skill expanded and snapped a picture of himself snuggled into Darrian’s chest and sent it off to Emilia.

A breath of relief flowed out from her side of the relay, followed by a repeat of her question of if he was okay. As he was currently stuck waiting for his recon skill to fully expand—so far it had reported back no immediate threats, so there was no reason for them to take off or take a defensive stance or anything—he explained to Emilia that at first he had just been annoyed that she’d sent Halen the information about Olivier being alive, rather than put it into their group relay.

Immediately, she replied with what those above them were also saying about why those in the drop group wouldn’t be down for a few minutes: she had sent Halen a skill for trying to track Olivier along with the information about him being alive. Not wanted to wear on the aethernet, given it was already sketchy in the city, she’d sent it to Halen so he could check her code over for anything that might improve it. Currently, that was precisely what he was doing, and once he was done, he would give it to the rest of them—well, Taelor would give it to him and Darrian once they were back together. Better to use non-aethernet-based data transfer at the moment, especially as he needed to focus on making sure no one snuck up on them.

“Seriously, all that cause you were jealous?” Emilia asked, and for a moment, Baylor considered lying to her—claiming that yes, that was it, and he was an idiot. Lying to Emilia wasn’t something he enjoyed, however, and he eventually fessed up that he’d been considering how attractive Halen was and realized he was having a sexual fantasy about him and then freaked.

Unfortunately, Emilia vanished from their relay—something had actually happened that needed her attention—so his message went unread. Instead, as he and Darrian shuffled into the darkness of a building’s overhang, he was left to just stare at his message. It stared right back, taunting him.