[Can’t Opt Out]

Emilia had never been so happy to have attracted the attention of the Blood Rain General as she was at this moment—seriously, as a barrage of strange core abilities rained down on her, Emilia’s Censor was adding yet another thing to her Things to Do Once She Was Out of This Potentially Life-and-Death Scenario.

What was being added to that list? Namely, that she owed the old non-dev a lot and really should dedicate more time to making sure he knew that. It wasn’t that she thought herself as having come off as ungrateful in the past or anything, but really, the fact that all her training with the man was likely the only reason she was still alive at the moment… Yeah, she needed to make sure he was super-duper sure of her infinite gratitude and loyalty.

The man could ask her to burn Baalphoria to the ground, and for him, she would do it!

Dodging another of the strange blasts that kept coming for her—something that was quite difficult to do in the rather cramped stairwell she was currently working her way down, searching out this Arinesi—Emilia considered that perhaps that was why both the Baalphorian and Dionese governments had been somewhat wary of allowing her to train with the Blood Rain General. Too much potential for their loyalties to lie with one another, rather than their nations themselves. It had been a whole thing, with lots of promises made on both sides. Part of the issue—part of the reason why they’d been allowed to take one another as student and teacher—was that, quite honestly, both she and the Blood Rain General were spoiled brats.

It didn’t even matter that the Dionese non-dev was now in his early 300s; what the man wanted, the man got. This wasn’t even just a personality thing; rather, there were entire laws and customs within the Inner Court and Dion as a whole that set out to make sure that, no matter what the man asked for, he would get it. It was actually how he had acquired most of his students, including Hurinren. The man had seen a young Hurinren on the street, pegged him as having talent, and effectively kidnapped him. As her lotyung hadn’t much liked his birth family, this wasn’t much of an issue—and of the other children the Blood Rain General had effectively stolen away, the few who actually liked their families were allowed to see them regularly.

Still… if the man had said the children he claimed could never see their parents again, he would be within his rights to do so—the guy was just polite enough to not demand such things. Emilia had a feeling it had to do with his own relationship with his long-dead family. Not much was known about the Blood Rain General’s origins—partially because he was terrifying and didn’t enjoy being the subject of gossip that predated his arrival in the Inner Court, partially because everything spoken of him was half fact, half falsehood. From what she did know, however, he had grown up in the backrooms of a tavern where his older brother had worked. Somehow, his older brother had come to know someone within the Inner Court—there were varying stories as to who it was, ranging from a random servant to the man who would eventually adopt the young Kouren Ryogari to the future emperor himself. What was clear was that at some point the Blood Rain General’s brother had become mixed up in some sort of criminal dealings, and fearing for his and his younger brother’s lives, had begged whoever it was he had come to know to take his little brother away.

As far as Emilia knew, the Blood Rain General had never seen his older brother again. Presumably he was right to send little Kouren Ryogari off to become Kouren Shokran, adoptive child of famed General Shokran. Presumably, the brother had eventually been killed due to whatever criminal dealings he had become entangled with, but Emilia had a feeling no one really knew for sure. As a result of perhaps that and his own lack of children, the Blood Rain General neither seemed to have the inclination to force the children he brought into his care to interact with the family he had stolen them from—something that was quite against the norms of Dionese culture, where lineage meant more than nearly anything else—nor deny them the chance to remain in contact with family, if they so wished.

Honestly, Emilia wasn’t convinced the man didn’t pick up some of the children he did in order to get them away from their terrible families, after witnessing some incident or another as he wandered the streets—and really, some of her fellow students were so inept that people often wondered if he was just bad at picking children with potential out. That might have been a possibility, except that Hurinren had always been raised to be his heir; ergo, the man clearly had an eye for something.

Regardless of all that, aside from those first few years of his life, the Blood Rain General had spent the majority of his three hundred plus years getting everything he wanted. Emilia, then a preteen, had spent her years since being adopted getting virtually everything she asked for as well. The Blood Rain General wanted to teach her. Emilia wanted to be taught. Their governments had been wary, and the ease to which her mind would agree, apparently without caveats, to betray her country, if only her lo’lu were to ask…

Yeah, that might be a little concerning. Perhaps she should point this out to the Baalphorian government? Hope they took it as a mild threat that, if they didn’t drop her charges, she’d just fuck off to live in Dion? It wouldn’t be too bad, either—just as there were laws that effectively allowed the Blood Rain General to ask for whatever he wanted and receive it without question, those same laws applied to herself, Hurinren, and the Blood Rain General’s third-most-skilled student. The Dionese Emperor had apparently decided that four people who weren't related to the royal family and yet had unfettered power was enough—and now that she was thinking about it, did the emperor realize Yujao was effectively operating within the grasp of Hurinren’s power as well? Probably not. Maybe the Princess Supreme knew; maybe not. The late ryohua’taiyung had known, as had a number of his closest advisors. Would any of them tell whoever came to fill the position of Yujao’s power within the Inner Court, now that their commander was dead?

In comparison to the power the rest of them occasionally abused, her and Hurinren’s lo’oshun was far more contained in when he demanded things that no one outside their group could. Ryukan was actually the oldest of the three of them by several decades and already on his way to being a powerhouse within the Dionese military. He was nice, although Emilia hadn’t spent much time around him. Not as severe as Hurinren, nor as chaotic as she herself was. More… dignified, but also with enough petty energy to make him fun to be around. Back when they were younger, Hurinren—who had been quite used to the older man being more reserved and had expected him to want nothing to do with Emilia’s nonsense—had been rather horrified when she and Ryukan were introduced and had immediately begun teasing him. Poor little Hurinren had stomped off—although he had quickly been sent back by their lo’lu, who had set up the meeting between the three of them.

Now, of course, knowing that Hurinren was a gay-leaning bisexual… Well, Emilia looked back on the way he had interacted with Ryukan before falling in love with Yujao and wondered—his reaction to a little teasing had just seemed like a bit too much for the circumstances. Actually, his stomping off under that level of teasing reminded Emilia of the way he fake stomped off now when she teased him—an act, meant to fool people into thinking he hated her and could barely tolerate even the smallest slight against his person.

Really, after years of dealing with her, Hurinren had as thick a skin as one could get, and even back then…

No, the more Emilia thought about it as she swayed and dodged, letting a recon skill drip out of her slowly—any faster and it would snap into uselessness, especially given she wasn’t standing still—as she searched for the person attacking her, even the Hurinren from way back when they’d first met wouldn’t have reacted to such teasing by storming off if it had just been her doing the teasing. Well, now she was going to have to ask her lotyung if she was right in assuming that little version of him had been in love with their lo’oshun. Maybe she’d mention it to Yujao, who would mercilessly tease Hurinren with such information every time they ran into Ryukan for a long while.

“Are you even paying attention to the fight?” a scratchy voice hissed, and really… no. No, she hadn’t been paying much more attention than what it took to keep herself from being hit.

“No,” she admitted, hoping that by getting Arinesi talking, she would reveal more about her location—the more senses she could get involved in finding the woman, the better.

During her slow descent into the depths of this horror, Emilia had been avoiding overtly using any skills in order to hide the fact that she was Baalphorian from any possible attackers. Her skin tone definitely betrayed her as not being Lüshanian—she was way too white, compared to the darker browns and blacks found in virtually the entire nation’s population, save a few ethnic groups whose skin leaned into richer undertones, as opposed to the gold her tan brought out—but as long as she didn’t obviously use her Censor, there was no reason for anyone to assume she wasn’t from some other Free Colony. She could be here on vacation! Or live at one of the embassies! Or work for the few foreign companies that operated in the city! She could even be married to a Lüshanian… although, given everyone apparently assumed she was a teenager, perhaps not.

Regardless, while this entire situation had revealed their recon skills were absolute, inexcusable shit, both they and a Censor’s general ability to map out areas based on what their owner saw and heard were often far better compared to the average Free Colonier’s ability to monitor similarly sized areas. While people as well-trained as Hurinren or Ryukan could isolate sounds with their minds alone and trace it back to its origin based on their understanding of the physics of sound and various building materials, this was not a normal ability—it wasn’t normal in the least.

Seriously, there was a reason the Blood Rain General and his top students were given all but limitless power within Dion: they were so powerful that losing even a single one would be tantamount to a national tragedy.

All this amounted to the fact that if their attacker—Arinesi, assuming Jerrial and Rayleen weren’t wrong in their guess—didn’t know she was Baalphorian, there would be little reason for her to not continue talking to Emilia, worrying that the computer in her head might be able to track her down. Really, Emilia wasn’t sure how much this Arinesi would worry about it even if she did know—knowledge of other nation’s combat styles tended to be questionable in the general population. Did a criminal count as the general population? Emilia had no idea—certainly, Jerrial had a basic understanding of Censors, while Vern had possessed only the passing knowledge that she had a computer in her head, and they had both been rather surprised at how much she could glean when she’d first used a recon skill, back in the tunnels. Rayleen had seemed to know more about what her Censor was capable of, but at the same time, the few times Emilia had used skills… she wouldn’t say the woman was surprised, but there had definitely been something odd in her reactions—something that Emilia had eventually decided was similar to other weird feelings she’d gotten from the woman. Essentially, she was just going to assume Rayleen had seen something of her abilities in her apparent visions of the future, but that seeing within her mind was far different from seeing in person.

“I was thinking about how grateful I am to the person who trained me in combat—well, there have been a few people”—more than a few, really, but who was counting? “I was mostly thinking about one, though. He made us practice fighting in cramped spaces like this. I think you would have already killed me, if not for his training,” Emilia continued, not wanting to lose the opportunity to make the woman say more.

“Are you not worried, then?” Arinesi asked, her voice cascading up the stairs—was she simply lingering at the bottom of this set? Just far enough away that she couldn’t be seen or easily felt?

Unlike the stairwells that had populated the upper floors, which had sharp corners and long paths of straight steps, these ones were winding and haphazard. Given how her limited recon skill was reporting the stairs beneath her feet were only about a foot away from dirt and rock, Emilia was assuming whoever had built this place had fashioned the stairs around the natural formations of the earth. The result was a maze of darkness, only flickering lights casting shadows over the twisting passage that lead down, down, down.

Just how far down did this place go? They must be something like a hundred or more levels deep now, and Falmíer was already deep underground. All that dirt and rock, hanging high above them, just waiting to collapse and Emilia really needed to stop thinking about this.

“About you? No. Now, if you were to ask if I’m suddenly having visions of the ceiling of stalactites handing high above us suddenly crashing down and killing all of us—or just locking us down here to die—then my answer is yes: yes, I am suddenly worrying about that.”

The woman scoffed, Emilia’s ears pricking, feedback looping back to her Censor and—

And using {Hidey Hole} to fall through several metres of mystery rock wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done—the information her Censor and recon skill were giving her could, technically, be incorrect—but the woman was almost exactly beneath her!

It was just too good an opportunity to pass up!

Emilia dropped to her knees as she landed in front of the woman, her eyes glued on to her new maybe-enemy. “Hello,” she said, smiling and wondering what Arinesi would do now, giant brown eyes staring down at her in shock. Apparently, she would need a few seconds to compose herself. That was okay—Emilia could make sure of that shock.