[Can’t Opt Out]

One. Two. Five. Seven—seven seemed like a good number, Codeth thought as his Censor pulled up more and more defensive skills, lest whoever they were closing in on decide to attack them.

Vantril, needless to say, thought he was crazy for wanting to approach the pair of people travelling through the city, sneaking through alleyways, mostly. It was that fact, more than anything else, that made him think the pair were a group of escapees. The child Levi had found had been exceptionally helpful, sharing bits and pieces of what had happened and never shying away from answering any questions—any friends of the Emilia that Olivier de la Rue had spoken of was someone to be trusted, apparently.

That was helpful, if also potentially dangerous—Levi might be trustworthy, and would keep the kid save for Olivier, due to it having been pointed out that Emilia would not be happy if something happened to break Olivier’s heart, but that didn’t mean that anyone who claimed to be Emilia’s friend could be trusted. The kid was young, though, youth offering him a dollop more of trust, despite the terrible things that had happened to him.

All that was to say that they had no idea how the group they were closing in on would behave.

According to the kid, after the first splitting off of their escape group—in which those disinclined to either head to the Baalphorian embassy or be held back by their younger, older, and weaker escapees who had stuck with Olivier had left—their own group of escapees had been split into four, with the other three groups including two people. Of those groups, the one with the woman who could summon flames was by far the most dangerous, and while the man, Renton, could be dangerous, the kid had been clear that his father would be more level-headed and willing to listen to them explain who they were.

As for the other group…

Well, given the way the group was speeding up as he and Vantril sped up? Yeah, Codeth was willing to bet that this was the other group, which included a young woman who would feel thoughts, and thereby know someone was pursuing them. Apparently she couldn’t hear them, though?

Levi had said he really didn’t understand, especially as it seemed the kid himself had some sort of ability to read or affect minds? It was clear the young woman, Cheska, and the kid had different abilities, but the one thing the kid was quieter on was what exactly his abilities were. Gëon had told Levi to let the little mind eater have his secrets, and what a way to refer to the kid. At the very least, Levi said the boy was sweet, but mind eater? What sort of epithet was that?

Regardless, as he and Vantril moved through the twisting streets, the group they were chasing was attempting to get away, and Codeth wanted to help them, not scare the shit out of them!

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to catch them like this,” he commented, letting another burst of recon skills slide out of him, so he could figure out where the group had gone now.

The pair of probably escapees had zipped over to the other side of one of the main roads, and at this rate, their chase was liable to get all of them killed—the other group especially, as at least he and Vantril weren’t panicked, while he had defensive skills activated. The kid had been pretty certain that neither Izurial nor Cheska had more than basic, brute-force core abilities. While Codeth didn’t really want to be hit by a direct core attack, such things weren’t super useful in combat—they were much better for momentary distractions or killing people when they weren’t paying attention. Hence, if their running about ended in them being sighted by one of Fräthk’s people, neither were going to be able to defend themselves well.

“Should we… stop then? Leave them to get away?” Vantril asked, her voice a soft huff of effort, these roads too twisting and abrupt for him to microspark for more than brief moments of time, although…

“Would you be alright if we split up, briefly?” he asked, already summoning a paper version of his map for the Drinarna intern. It had their location marked on it, as well as the other group’s, several streets away and slowly getting further due to their rushing about, risking their safety as they bolted through streets without taking any time to make sure it was safe to traverse… he thought, as he prepared to do something equally—if not even more—stupid. “I’ll microspark down the main road, and cut them off. Hopefully, by the time you catch up, I’ll have explained who I am.”

“Uh, sure?” Vantril said with all the confidence of a subordinate who was used to agreeing to anything their superior told them. Codeth wasn’t the woman’s superior, but somehow or another, he seemed to have more experience than she did in situations like this, and fuck had all those combat classes done a number on them or what?

Hopefully, by leaving the Drinarna intern behind, he wouldn’t be dooming her to death—although, so far, no one else had shown up as lingering outside the buildings in the feedback he’d received from the occasional recon skill he ran.

Fast steps and his Censor buzzing within his mind took Codeth into the fabric of reality. Having listened to both Halen and Emilia babble about the aether and what it really was a million times, Codeth knew that microsparking was a strange skill. It slipped the user—and anyone they were microsparking with—into a strange space that seemed to exist between the aether and the real world. How this was possible… well, Codeth had heard all the theories—including the one that postulated that, were one able to slip into the aether itself, they might be capable of travelling near instantaneously.

For the moment, all they could do was microspark, and realistically, Baalphoria wasn’t ready for even that. That wouldn’t stop them from using it in a situation like this. It was one thing to not use it for silly things, to not release it to the public or publish research on it; it was a whole other thing to potentially let people die because they were too concerned with the reality that the OIC couldn’t track microsparking despite years of trying.

It took barely more than a handful of steps—a handful of seconds—for Codeth to reach the alleyway he was aiming for and swerve down it.

Now, he just needed to cut the group off and not get hit by a direct core attack before he could explain who he was. This, at least, was a situation where looking like a foreigner was going to work for him—the kid had told them that Olivier de la Rue had told them about Emilia and all her friends in the city. In theory, it shouldn’t be too difficult to convince them of who he was. In practice, Codeth bolted down the alley and turned to cut the pair off, and was nothing but a ball of nerves.

Hands already raised, he examined the pair of Lüshanians: a silverstrain and a blue-haired young woman—definitely Izurial and Cheska, then.

“Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Codeth said, wishing he’d spent more than a handful of seconds thinking about what he would say to the group once he could up with him. “You’re Izurial and Cheska, right?”

Despite how frail the silverstrain was—all skin and bones, his chest heaving with the effort it must have taken to run even that little bit—he stepped in front of the girl, his eyes never leaving Codeth. “What’s it to you?” the man asked. He didn’t attack, at least; so, there was that, at least.

There was also the fact that Codeth wasn’t about to move any time soon, unless something went really bad; hence, he set his Censor to activate each skill in the recon-like skill sequence Emilia had suggested. Not only did he want to check on Vantril’s progress, but he also wanted a better picture of the world and people around them, regardless of whether they were inside buildings or not.

“My name’s Codeth,” he said, feeling impressively strange for not using his full name—first names only was a Lüshanian thing and definitely not a Baalphorian one. “I’m a friend of Emmie’s—Emilia? I heard that Olivier talked about her? About how she was coming to get him, but they missed one another when you guys were escaping the holding cells and she was going down? Her note also said that she had friends coming to help her?” Lips twitching, Codeth added that while he hadn’t heard as much, he rather assumed that Emilia would have called them very stupid in her note. “Although, from what I’ve heard about Olivier, he might be too polite to have actually read that bit out loud.”

The silverstrain shifted. The young woman poked her head out from behind him.

“Why are you wearing a Drini uniform?” she asked, muttering that it looked way too high ranking for someone so young.

“I used a skill to create it. You can feel thoughts, right? The other person who’s catching up is a Drini intern we met up with after getting into the city. She suggested we use the underground tunnels to get over this way faster, and doing so meant going through a business, and then…” Codeth trailed off, crinkling his nose and risking a glance away from the pair and down at himself—their entire class knew well enough that looking away from someone was both a way to tempt their trust and an attack. “I had to change the rest of my physical appearance, briefly, to look… well, not Baalphorian for a bit, but in case I needed the uniform again, I didn’t bother taking it off.”

“Cool!” the young woman asked, trying to escape from behind Izurial before the man hissed at her to stay put.

Silver-flecked eyes glared into Codeth. Really, the guy was probably quite terrifying; unfortunately for him, Emilia’s glares were far more fear-inspiring—there was an entire section of forest behind the Mhrinas’ home that she’d decimated during the single incident where she had truly tried to kill Halen.

“Who told you all that?” the silverstrain asked, his eyes flicking back the way they’d come when Vantril, panting, rounded the corner. Almost immediately, she leaned against the closest wall and muttered some sort of thanks to… something—a god or perhaps a specific term for the aether? Fuck—the woman might have been thanking her favourite food, for all Codeth’s Censor could translate her words. He had no idea when the OIC’s Lüshanian language pack had last been updated, but clearly, it was missing a lot of slang and idioms.

“Our group got split up, like… a lot. One of my friend’s Censor started having issues before we found the entrance to the cave system, so he and a few others went to see if they could get into the city through the papers station—we didn’t really want to risk his Censor having more problems inside a random cave we knew nothing about. He’s in the city with someone else who met up with us, but with his Censor so messed up, I wanted to come meet him before his ability to message goes down, similar to how Olivier’s did,” Codeth said, adding more detail to his story because details made for truth… or oversharing to the point that it seemed like a story. There was a line, but mostly, he wanted the man to chill.

“We ran into trouble in the cave system, though, and got separated from three of our group members—one got kidnapped, one went to find her, and the other is just an idiot who ran off after the group who attacked us,” which… now that he was thinking about it, had Levi not seen Lux or Samina? Had any members of Gëon’s group been missing, who might have taken her?

Sending a message off in their giant group relay, asking Levi about it, Codeth continued telling the pair that his friend had eventually found the kid, Porsq, tucked into an alleyway.

“Olivier abandoned him?” the man said with what Codeth would deem an acceptable amount of ire—all of them had been horrified that Olivier de la Rue had needed to leave the kid behind, but knowing Emilia and the triplets’ opinions on him, they had all immediately thought it likely to have been a necessity. Olivier de la Rue had only known these people for a few hours, and it was understandable that they wouldn’t immediately assume he had no other choice but to leave the kid behind and hate himself for it.

“He was hidden, and Porsq himself says he imagines Olivier had no other choice: he was passed out until my friend found him, and we’re thinking they were being chased by someone—” Codeth cut off, not sure how much he should tell the pair about Olivier and the other little boy, Xavier, having been separated. At the moment, both Levi and Mikhail’s groups, as well as Byron Hyrat, were closing in on the likely location of Olivier de la Rue, so they’d have answers soon—answers from a hopefully still living Olivier de la Rue.

In the end, that was what he ended up telling the pair: that several of his allies, including Porsq himself, were likely to reach Olivier soon, at which point he’d be able to give them more information.

“He’s okay, though?” Cheska asked—and when had she gone down the alley to check on Vantril?

Izurial was also noticing this for the first time, it seemed, having assuming the young woman would remain close behind him. “Cheska!” he hissed at his companion, who resolutely ignored him while looking at Codeth with big eyes as she squatted beside a collapsed Vantril—how hard had she run?

“Yes,” Codeth replied, reading over a message from Levi—not one about Lux and their kidnapper’s identity, but one from Porsq, the boy having been informed that they had met up with Izurial and Cheska and were trying to join up with them. “The boy—Porsq—says… sorry, why did Levi translate his words into Baalphorian? Just send it in Lüshanian!? What if there’s some specific phrase in there that’s might as a secret code of trust and I’m gonna translate it wrong?”

At the very least, Levi was quick to send over the recording of Porsq speaking instead—a much more sensible thing to do—and Codeth was able to project the image onto a nearby wall for the two escapees to watch. Cheska smiled as she watched the boy tell them he was fine and to not blame Olivier—he was sure he had no other choice—and assuring them that Levi was trustworthy, and therefore, so were his friends.

Codeth had no idea what the kid’s abilities were, but as he added on an anecdote about a conversation he and Izurial had once had about a type of limited-edition sweet bun that they had both, by chance, been able to try a number of years ago, he could see the man relax. This little bit of proof that the recording wasn’t a fabrication allowing Izurial to trust the kid’s words—to trust that Levi and everyone he, and by extension Codeth, knew could be trusted.

Just what in the world were the kid’s abilities?

Also, Codeth knew Levi was oddly good with kids, but how had he managed to gain the kid’s trust that quickly!?