[Can’t Opt Out]

“Right building or left building?” someone asked—it was unknown exactly who, and to his Things to Do Once Back Near a Virtuosi Rig list, Halen’s Censor automatically added an item about fixing up his sign-language-to-text function to account for so many speakers in so many locations. Some of his group was in front of him, some behind. As they were scoping out each of the buildings, people were moving about, and while Halen could use his common sense to match the location of the speaker up with where their vitals were showing them as located in relation to him, Halen was much more focused on the xphern in his hand. Let everyone else argue about which way to go; he had other priorities.

At the same time… yeah, the lack of his vitals function and the sign-language-to-text function interfacing perfectly with one another was rather upsetting. Overall, his quickly mashed together functions were holding up pretty well. Considering both had largely been created through his channelling of stress and Emilia herself, the resulting functions were sustaining themselves primarily on hope, dreams, and vibes. Both needed a lot of work, especially the sign-language function. Assuming Emilia didn’t kill him for daring to do anything with her sign language, Halen had a whole list of things he wanted to do to the function to make it perfect.

With any luck, Emilia wouldn’t kill him, would instead help him make the function—and a dozen over skills and functions that were also on his list—better, and would let him fulfill the top item on his Things to Do Once Out of This Place and Near Emilia list: see if she’d let him take her out on a date.

Realistically, given they might very well run into each other before they were out of this place, Halen also had another list: Things to Do Once Near Emilia (assuming the next time we are near one another we are neither out of this place nor in so much danger that we can’t take a moment to stop).

It was a long name. Many of the lists Halen made had long names. It was good to be specific, logical—to account for the millions of little things that could and often would go wrong, rendering one list useless or in need of adaptation into a new list. When he’d been younger, he’d written out the lists on paper, acquired from a little shop in Kalink that sold paper products. Notebooks. Memo pads. Actual books, usually imported from the Free Colonies. Rarely, there had been books from the Grey Sands, each of which he had snapped up with quick fingers and his parents’ money—one of the few things they’d never thought a waste of money, even if it hadn’t been until years later, after they had allowed his spending habits to form, that they’d finally complained about how much he was spending on frivolous things.

Things from the Grey Sands—from the home they could never return to, that Halen wasn’t even sure he wanted to fully return to—were never a waste of time or money.

“Do you want to read it?” an Emilia of Halen’s memory asked. They’d been so young at the time—young enough that Warren was still around, lingering in the background, smiling at Emilia, and it had never seemed like a bad or conniving smile, but considering what had happened, maybe it had been. Maybe, young as they had been, Halen only ever having eyes for Emilia when she was around, he just hadn’t noticed something sinister in his once-friend’s eyes.

The Halen he had been at the time—a Halen who was still unsure of how to exist at this new school and trying on personalities of rude arrogance more often than not—had blinked into her beautiful, silver-shot eyes. It had been a heartbreaking thing to look away from those eyes, annoyed but not filled with the anger that had almost constantly suffused them since they’d first met and he’d immediately fucked everything up.

Back then… Halen still thought himself a little in love with the girl, even if he hadn’t accepted it yet. She was beautiful—that was undeniable—but he had largely been deluding himself, denying the pull he had felt towards her since their eyes had first met over the schoolyard on his first day. Accepting his feelings had come latter, before Warren had raped her, the fact that his friend, his function had allowed Warren to do that to the girl he loved a crack through him that he didn’t think would ever heal. Emilia wouldn’t blame him, he knew. So, he’d blame himself, just a bit, forever.

This had been one of those times, a year or so into their prank war—maybe a few months off from when he’d finally accepted that he liked the terrible, beautiful, infuriating girl—that he’d been reminded of how kind she was. It didn’t matter that she didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, didn’t want him around. Emilia had seen him eyeing up the book she’d returned from a weekend trip to the Grey Sands with; now, she was offering it to him because she understood the pain a lack of connection to one's birthplace gave birth to.

There were so many times like that. Emilia, offering him a bandage when she’d accidentally left a bleeding gouge across his arm during a scuffle. Emilia, asking if he could speak Grey Sander, shrugging and saying she’d have offered to teach him if he didn’t. Emilia, throwing him, Codeth, Mikhail, and Warren some of her group’s extra water bottles during a class trip, after the person who had been left responsible for their side of the class’s gear had lost most of it—they’d collaborated after that, creating a skill to summon emergency water bottles and water from the aether.

There was also Emilia, never leaving him to take the fall for the pranks that truly got out of control—they’d both leave the other to suffer the consequences for smaller pranks, that in itself part of the game: who will take the fall for this prank. It was always a glorious day when they could make the other suffer a punishment for their own pranks.

“Thanks,” Halen remembered saying to her, accepting the book. It had been so worn out, the spine broken in places, the Grey Sander within strange and archaic. His mom had known how to read it, but even she’d struggled, claiming the story within must have been a few hundred years old, at least.

“Strange, for Emilia Starrberg to be able to read something like this…” his mother had mused—she’d only started using Emilia’s first name alone after Alaric had come to live with them, the little boy always asking if Emmie could come babysit him. She had turned the book over in her hands, flipping open pages to examine the copyright details, the contents, the acknowledgements.

It had turned out to be a political thriller, following a professor with a possibly fictional irregular deviations as he is pulled into a government conspiracy due to his abilities.

“I think the irregular deviations’ name just isn’t something translatable into Baalphorian based on, like, vague understandings of how things are translated and vibes? Maybe that’s just a me thing—it’s not like I officially learned, just overheard and internalized—but it feels like Grey Sander translates that way more of the time: hope and faith that you ain’t fucking it up! The story was written right before Baalphoria took over the Grey Sands, though; so, I think that either a Baalphorian name overtook the irregular deviations’ old name, used within the book, or they’ve purposefully kept the name of the irregular deviation out of modern Grey Sander, in order to keep it secret?” Emilia had later babbled, so happy to be discussing anything of the book when Halen gave it back to her, only days later.

He’d gone over to her house to return it. She’d sent him off with another book.

Halen was never sure what to do with Emilia’s kindness in this one thing. Sometimes, she’d already have a book waiting at the door to exchange with him. Other times, she’d get his opinion on the book and then go retrieve another book she thought he’d like. Occasionally, she’d rush off with her loaned book, intent to get him a new one—he was never allowed past the threshold of her house, instead left to stand on the doorstep—and hit him with a prank. Once, Miles had wandered by, finding him standing there, fuming and covered with glittery hearts that kept creating bubbles that would rise off him and float away. Eventually, the bubbles would vanish into space—or the aether would explode them, more likely—or hit a cloud or bird. Then, whatever they hit would be glittery. The bubble-creating hearts had lasted nearly three days, by which point, the ceiling of his bedroom and classroom had been covered with glitter that had lasted weeks—not the birds, though. All the birds hit with the skill had been glittery for minutes at the most.

Miles, in typical Miles Starrberg fashion, had blinked at him several times before wandering of, wishing him luck. As this particular incident had occurred relatively recently and Halen somewhat suspected the man had already known he was in love with his mean-spirited daughter—really, Halen knew he had terrible taste in women—there was as much a chance Miles had been wishing him luck with wooing Emilia as there was that he was wishing him luck in not strangling her.

Really, Halen knew he was something of a fool. So often had he stood on that doorstep, waiting for Emilia and knowing there was as much a chance she’d hit him with a prank as there was that she would simply leave him a line of tension, all because she would return with a smile and a book—all because he could return in a few days and have a short, mostly civil conversation with her about the book. It would be mere minutes—a strike of pain through him because Halen knew that, had she actually liked him, Emilia would have talked about the book with him for hours, days, forever. Emilia didn’t like him, but she still gave him minutes of her time and memory.

Halen wanted more, and he couldn’t wait to be out of there because Emilia had been giving all the vibes that she was open to talking with him more, open to hugs and dates and maybe more. Currently, he could only message her short updates on his xphern. Currently, he was doing exactly that, summarizing the current state of the groups to her—well, most of the groups, the person who worked for, or had been forced to work for, Fräthk was keeping Emilia updated on their side of things personally.

Beside him, the rest of his group continued to argue about which building they should go into. Essentially, Miles had been able to figure out they were within the Secretarial Stand, and in part due to it being so entirely empty, they’d managed to follow his instructions to get out of it and headed in the general direction of the Department of Communication and Propaganda—it’s official name, oddly enough. There was something to be said for Lüshan being honest about using outright propaganda, he supposed? Weird to have it in the official name—and not just in the translation: the Lüshanian name was as overt in its agreement that it was engaging in propaganda as the Baalphorian translation was.

Regardless, in order to get to the building that housed the department in question, they had to go through one of the buildings they were standing in front of. Unlike the Secretarial Stand, both the Realm Stand and the Cooperative Stand had people within them. As they were both relatively large, Simeon had only been able to get a rough count on the number of people lingering on the closer side of each building, those numbers being about equivalent.

[Miles:The Realm Stand houses most of the head offices for the main branches of each department. In theory, the head of each department and their main staff remain in the Realm Stand, unless directly needed back in their department, but it isn’t uncommon for them to remain within their departments themselves, all in different buildings. Wander’s offices are also in there, but he is expected to primarily occupy it, rather than within his office in the Drinarna’s building.]

[Miles:The problem is that, with the situation as it is, the staff are most likely a mixture of within safe rooms and prepared for an attack. It is likely somewhat unsafe to attempt to get in there. They could easily attack anyone coming in, and considering you are clearly not Lüshanian, the chances of attacking before asking questions is significantly higher.]

[Miles:At the same time, the Cooperative Stand is more of a mix of staff from each department. For the most part, it operates as a set of conference rooms, with smaller office spaces attached. There are also larger, emergency office spaces for situations where a department might be displaced from its normal building.]

[Loren:One of the interns here says that the Department of Housing and Expansion recently had a flood. Someone… stuffed a bunch of tickets to some sort of show into a toilet? It flooded overnight, and the damage is being repaired. That might explain why there are so many people within the building?]

[Rafe:Is doing something like that normal for government workers in Lüshan?]

[Miles:Not particularly. Usually, they are quite well-behaved.]

[Loren:That is also the intern’s opinion. Given what Coral has been feeling about their attackers feeling slighted for not being able to move upwards, I poked around about what everyone knows about the department. Apparently, the tickets in question were some sort of bonus given out to the department’s staff. Also, the department has been pushing for the creation of more housing on the ceiling.]

[Miles:That could be a coincidence.]

[Polianna:Or it could be that this faction we are fighting has connections to the department and they specifically had themselves moved closer to the Realm Stand in order to position themselves better for a coup.]

[Loren:If that’s the case, it is unlikely they are within the Cooperative Stand’s safe rooms, unless they’ve panicked due to the situation getting increasingly out of control. It is difficult to say if they’ll know much about what’s happening within the city itself, though.]

Rafe had proceeded to forward a rather… telling video of what they could see of the city, smoke sliding upwards and pooling cross the ceiling in places. In the background, the decontamination systems were buzzing, working hard to remove toxic chemicals and fumes from the air. In other places, shudders of attacks could be seen relatively regularly.

To say the situation was easily spotted from the ceiling was an understatement, and unlike the Secretarial Stand, which was closed in by other buildings, little of the city visible from any of the windows save those on the bottom two floors, both the Cooperative Stand and the Realm Stand were relatively well-spaced from other buildings. Someone would have to be blind in order to not realize that the situation was spiralling out of control. Just in the time it had taken for them to make it through the Secretarial Stand, the visibility of the conflict below had gone from five or six easily visible conflicts to well over a dozen, plus the areas a few of their groups were currently fighting within.

Coral’s group was definitely leaving the biggest of marks at the moment, the sparks of multiple willbrands being used scattering over the area, while a district near where Olivier’s group of escapees had originally split off was… not on fire, but it was where the majority of the smoke was originating. Closer to the embassy, a huge fight had broken out—although, that one was purposeful on the part of their allies. Then, there was the smaller scuffle the drop group had been involved in, which had collapsed a building and thankfully not killed any locals hiding nearby, dust still suffusing the air around the area.

Halen… was not going to be sharing any of this information with Emilia. She had enough to worry about, and telling her that, by the time she escaped back into the city proper, a full-scale civil war might have broken out wouldn’t actually be helpful.

“Let’s go into the Cooperative. It might give us answers, at least, about who is still out and about, trying to move their agenda ahead, and who is panicking or hunkering down in the safe rooms,” Halen finally said, sliding his xphern away—Emilia was busy and likely wouldn’t respond for a bit, as he’d sent all the messages within their non-emergency message thread.

Later, she’d message him and he’d breathe a little easier. For now, they had a building to storm… or sneak through. Considering they were attacked by a random person within seconds of entering, Halen wasn’t thinking the sneaking was going to work.