[Can’t Opt Out]

Dozens of skills slipped through the world, gliding along the fine lines of the aether’s outer membrane before—

“That… didn’t seem to work?” Moriana noted, bouncing on her toes beside him—always bouncing, always moving.

It had been nearly three decades since Moriana had begun to show herself for more than flashes of time, the Shadow of Jinkai slipping into the background of their alter’s mind because the war had been too much. Even far away in the Ridge Rind at the time, Porsq had felt it that first time: his best friend slipping away because they were exhausted. He had panicked, thinking them perhaps dead. It had been quite bad, really. For the majority of the war, he and been left with the other kids, his adoptive father refusing to let him aide in the war in more than a support capacity—a very distant support capacity.

Porsq was allowed to help protect the other kids, although he had often spent more time in the Ridge Rind than in Crishar or Norvel because he was skilled with coding and hacking, Emilia and Halen often giving him skills to test and tweak using the research institute’s rigs and testing rooms. A few had been blown up, but it was fine—the Ridge Rind had all the funding they needed, first from the government and private citizens, then the Alliance and Division 30 directly. Eventually, Division 30 members began funding it directly, using their paydrops rather than funding direct from the military.

The unit wanted the Ridge Rind beholden to no one but them—not that they usually exerted much pressure for the research institute to do much, other than refuse to help the Baalphorian government with anything. The Ridge Rind was full up on topics to research. No time for whatever nonsense the government wanted them to bother with!

Regardless, that testing had been something Porsq, not barely twenty when the war began, had been allowed to help with. Sometimes, he had been allowed to sit with people who were injured and ease their pain for them—push the pain downwards until Doctor Vickers could do something for them. Usually, by the time Doctor Vickers asked that Porsq be allowed to help, there wasn’t much to be done for them, even the majenstra’s abilities reflected away by the damage some monsters of war were capable of. Their pain, by that point, was so terrible only a medically induced coma would help ease them into death. Sometimes, their doctor had wanted to try something, and Porsq would sit there, easing the pain through redirection, a monster to many of the patients because someone had spilled information about his existence in Baalphoria shortly before the war began.

He was the monster of people’s minds before the war. Somehow, it didn’t matter that he was a war hero, a Division 30 member—eventually, after he’d finally turned thirty and his adoptive father hadn’t been able to deny him any longer—someone known for still aiding Doctor Vickers in treating a handful of injuries and conditions. Decades after someone—a criminal, most likely, although no one had ever been able to figure out exactly who had revealed him to the world—had sowed the seeds of fear for him throughout the continent, Porsq could still see the fear in people’s eyes.

Worse, he could feel it, echoing out of everyone they came across.

The mind eater—it was only cute when the people he knew and trusted called him that, nearly all of them still tacking on the little, as though he weren’t edging into his mid-fifties. To so many of the people he loved—who loved him back—he would always be that little boy, too small for his age. It probably didn’t help that the mixture of childhood malnutrition and being a low-dev meant he looked barely thirty. Usually, it didn’t bother him; currently, as he shifted through the RaidZone and was forced to constantly endure the mixture of words and thoughts about how the mind eater was there and how he was younger than they thought he’d be, Porsq was a little annoyed.

At the very least, couldn’t people be a bit more diverse in their thoughts!? Everyone being wary of the mind eater was exceptionally tiresome!

Another cascade of skills shot out of Porsq, these ones also failing. While the skills themselves were approved for use in raids—obviously, if they weren’t, the skills wouldn’t have even activated… not without some massive tweaks, anyways—the way he was utilizing them wasn’t completely tested. Essentially, he was trying to use the skills—things with very little combat utility, as he was more trying to disrupt the attacks of both invaders and other heroes—in a way similar to sparking: by shifting the skill through to the space between the real world and the aether.

Technically, this wasn’t the official story on how sparking—and theoretically, this new style of skill, if he could ever get it to work—operated. Back when Halen and Emilia had been young, there had been numerous theories on the nature of the aether and how it existed within the context of the real world, core abilities, and skills. Oddly, depending on which theory a person was working on, the way a skill or core ability worked could change. It was something the pair had experimented with a bunch, before the war; then, the war had pushed that testing into the background, only a handful of skills making novel use of a few of those theories on any deep level.

Sparking was one of those exceptions, and many of them considered it to be an effective confirmation that one of those theories on the true nature of the aether was actually true, every other theory working off of a flawed understanding of what exactly was happening behind the mechanics of a skill or core ability.

Yet, knowledge was dangerous—it was power and fear.

Knowledge—the ability to pluck it from a mind, implant it, twist it into something grotesque—was one of the reasons Porsq himself was so feared, after all.

There was a reason why all of them had pulled knowledge of how the war ended from their minds, only a handful of them understanding more than the basics because someone had to remember… and because Mikhail quite literally couldn’t forget. Had his mind not been so obstinate about not forgetting, he also wouldn’t remember.

There were things no one was meant to know—things that would break hearts or minds. Emilia accidentally ending up inside the aether was one of those things, kept secret from the majority of their friends and unit members because no one needed to know what lay within the aether—what alternative reality lay pressed against their own. Porsq knew, of course—he’d known the basics since meeting Zavriel, the Crisharian man so disgusted by the prospect of eating something created from the universal mind, that is had been impossible to not realize something was off about the aether and what their skills and core abilities were doing to it.

Forty years later—well over ten-thousand years, thanks to all his training to catch up with his friends and then to continue pushing Emilia and Halen’s theories while the latter was gone and the former afraid to touch coding because Halen was gone and creating without him had always been a painful thing for her—Porsq still didn’t know what to think about the universe, the universal mind, the will of the aether. Something was missing, he often thought—and not just something that had been tugged away from his memory. They had missed some bit of information at some point—some crucial bit of fact escaping them until all the pieces lay before them and something still didn’t quite make sense.

They still didn’t know why the monsters of the war had attacked them, after all, nor exactly where they had come from.

“There were monsters inside the aether as well,” Emilia had said, after her accidental spark into the universe. A few of them had sat with her—dragged her off to shower so she could wash the remnants of the aether’s guts from her skin. He and Mikhail had sat outside the shower, steam filling the bathroom while Codeth worked on getting her clean, Emilia trying to crack a joke about the last time she’d covered his hands in so much blood.

These days, Codeth didn’t remember a lot of those secrets—he was too forward facing, being an international rock star. Sometimes he remembered the important things. This was too important, and most of the time, he remembered none of it, his mind instead left to remember a fabricated reality in which Mikhail and Porsq alone had dragged Emilia off.

“I don’t think they were meant to be there,” Emilia had continued, much later. By this point, she’d been bundled up into blankets, Mikhail and Codeth vanished to get snacks because none of them had been inclined to get anywhere near fabricated food. Oddly, despite not remembered the truth of what lay within the aether, Codeth still didn’t eat fabricated food. One of those things that dug inside him, Porsq supposed, reminded of something he had heard from numerous people who had the ability to erase and alter memories: just because a memory is gone does not mean echoes of it do not subsist.

When he’d been in his twenties, Porsq had asked about erasing his memories of being raped. It had been more clinical than anything—his adoptive father had been sure to make sure he got all the therapy he could ever want, while Emilia had always been happy to wrap him up in hugs and listen to him talk about it over and over again until the memory was there, but distant, dissected down to the bones because that was what he had found helped the most: looking at what was done to him with a cold, clinical eye.

There was no perfect or correct way to deal with trauma—Izurial had taught him that, and for that, Porsq would forever be grateful.

Porsq knew all the detail of Emilia’s rape as well—about the way she had chosen to deal with it, about Rafe breaking her heart and it was terrible that Rafe wasn’t an idiot; rather, Rafe had avoided meeting him until his Censor was installed, immediately pulled him into an instance of {A Private Moment}, and then told him the truth of why he had broken Emilia’s heart.

Fucker.

Porsq couldn’t really blame the guy for his decisions—not back then, anyways. When he’d been young—Rafe young as well, even if he’d been twice Porsq’s age at the time—Porsq had understood Rafe’s reasoning. Now, he thought it stupid and he really thought the man should get over his fear and just tell Emilia the truth.

Maybe one day he would. Porsq wasn’t holding his breath—people didn’t spend ten-thousand-fucking years doubling down on their decision just to suddenly change their mind. Someone else would have to force Rafe to admit the truth, and as far as Porsq knew, only he, Malcolm, and perhaps Coral had ever been told the truth. Ivirium might know as well, but with Rafe’s insomnia, who knew if they’d ever been asleep around one another long enough to the silverstrain’s abilities to work on the Laprise brother.

“I’ve only tested it at the Ridge Rind,” Porsq finally said after Moriana had made yet another comment about how his skill was failing.

“Why does it make a difference where you’re testing it?” she asked, and Porsq liked both Moriana and the Shadow of Jinkai, but the latter was his best friend and they would have already known all of this.

It was a difficult thing, to be best friends with someone who was one half of a whole, especially since they were fully aware that the Shadow of Jinkai was the alter who had come second—the one who shouldn’t exist. Moriana was the original, her soul crafting the Shadow of Jinkai to keep her safe. With every passing day, it felt as though she was more and more in control of her body than his friend was, and Porsq was never sure what to think of that.

In some ways, his friend was slowly being killed by peace—by Moriana finding happiness and safety through her own friendships and power. It was unlikely the day would come when the Shadow of Jinkai would slip entirely into the background of Moriana’s existence, but it was still something he couldn’t not worry about because he was greedy, and while he didn’t hate Moriana, she wasn’t his best friend—wasn’t the person he wanted to spend most of his time with and was barely given more than a few hours a week with these days.

The first time Porsq set foot on the front, he had run away from the Ridge Rind, having felt the Shadow of Jinkai vanish. Eventually, he’d found Mikhail, his friend horrified that Porsq had found his way to the front; then, he’d met Moriana, living within the exhausted body of his friend, who had always refused to be adopted because they’d already had someone who loved them like father and even if he wasn’t there for them, they didn’t want someone else. Moriana, Porsq had always thought, would have happily accepted new parents—would have accepted being dragged from the front and given a life where the Shadow of Jinkai would never need to emerge again. It was understandable, to want to be safe and happy and whole within your body. Porsq hated her a little bit for it—for this implication that, even though she and the Shadow of Jinkai had learned to coexist, if she could, she would take her body back and never blink.

Part of Porsq wished her alter could be as selfish—could force this girl downwards until all the remained was the Shadow of Jinkai of his youth, slipping through the world to come visit him, the pair of them smiling and stealing snacks and slipping into the beds of whatever safe adult was nearby, their big arms pulling them close without question because they were so very loved.

“It’s different. The testing rooms aren’t great at simulating raids—proprietary information, and all,” he said, pushing his anger at the situation down—it wasn’t Moriana’s fault, and if she hadn’t been slowly taking over his best friend’s body, Porsq was sure they would have been friends.

The world, however, wasn’t that easy, and for the barest moments, he could feel his friend rising a little higher within Moriana’s consciousness to brush their existence and love over him, before they were falling away and Porsq was left with the lingering horror that, one day, they might not come back.

One day, they may feel their best friend for the last time, and all they would be left with was hatred for the girl who had taken their place.