Arc F1.10 | Chapter 7: almost there // there

Her muscles burned.

Her mind shuddered with the sheer effort it was taking to force herself not to think about what might be happening to that little boy this very moment.

There would be no catastrophizing—she wasn’t Halen, after all. It was an odd thing to know about the boy, Emilia often thought, but over the years, she’d realized that part of the reason he was always so tediously particular about his skills and functions was that he couldn’t help but think of all the worst-case scenarios. It was nothing he’d ever spoken so clearly about, nor even some secret slipped to her on purpose or accident by one of his friends; instead, it was just a million little moments, adding up into the reality that Halen overthought things, a lot.

Honestly, Emilia couldn’t imagine living inside his head. Did she overthink things sometimes? Sure; at the same time, she generally tried not to obsess over them. This may have resulted in her accidentally training her mind to wander away from her current problems and overthink other things—such as Halen’s penchant for overthinking, rather than the horrific things that might currently be happening to Xavier—but that did generally seem better than the way Halen’s mind was always making up horrible situations.

Even when he’d been tasked with getting snacks for a few class activities, the guy overthought things.

What if so-and-so doesn’t want their specific item?

What if this other person suddenly doesn’t like their favourite cookies?

What if this or that or this other thing happened?

In the end, Halen would show up with a veritable grocery store’s worth of food. It had often annoyed her. It had especially annoyed her because everything he got was perfect. This may have resulted in her and Baylor often ranting to one another about stupid Halen and his stupid, perfect planning skills. Now, knowing that he had liked her all of those times? That the reason she always felt like her favourites were overrepresented in whatever he got the class—not to mention his treats were always primarily vegetarian and never fabricated—was all because he wanted her to be happy, above even his own friends?

Well, to say she felt a little bad for generally focusing on getting things Halen hated and would never eat when it was her job to procure snacks… no, it wasn’t something so simply as feeling bad. Emilia neither felt bad, nor did she feel good.

Part of her wanted to feel bad, of course—this boy had liked her, a lot, and she’d been nothing but mean to him. A few times of her being nice popped up in her mind, but they were so few and far between and Emilia… the only thing she could think was that it was so impossibly sweet that despite all of that, Halen still liked her.

Truly, the guy had terrible tastes, and a small part of Emilia wondered if he would still like her, were she fully herself with him. Another part—yes, there were a million parts of her, all flying off in different directions—thought it impossible that she could ever truly be nice to him.

The thing was, Emilia knew herself—knew she was a little shit and would always want to poke at people and see what it got her. Hopefully, whatever was rising between her and Halen, what he had said the day before would remain true: he missed their prank war as much as she did. A softer, sillier prank war wouldn’t be too bad. Halen pining her against a wall, each of them panting and laughing after having fought and thrown a million tiny skills at one another, definitely wouldn’t be bad.

It seemed like a nice way to end up, before they inevitably grabbed for one another and tumbled together in search of mutual satisfaction.

Emilia skidded to a stop and tugged out her xphern, intent to send one last message to Halen about her position before putting the thing away, silenced, and heading into the passage that would, hopefully, take her to Prex’s hideout.

According to Vtraní, no one was quite sure where the guy lived. As much as he was one of Fräthk’s most loyal, there were a lot of Fräthk’s loyal who didn’t have much tolerance for hurting children—that was how the woman who was liable to meet up with her soon, Sireth, had gotten away with killing another of Fräthk’s loyal, after he’d killed yet another child: no one really cared too much that a serial child killer was vanished.

As a man who made a habit of molesting and murdering kids, Prex had really only been protected by his irregular deviation and his vigilance when out and about. When he wasn’t working or hunting for new children, he stayed sequestered in his home, located somewhere. Vtraní didn’t doubt the man was effectively homeless, likely making homes across the city. Considering that Emilia was going to need to head into the sewers in order to get closer to the dot of Xavier’s existence, this seemed possible—as far as she knew, most of the homeless in the city tended to avoid living in the sewers, if they could. Living like Jerrial and Vern, within an abandoned building, was more common, as was living in back alleys, but for someone like Prex…

Well, muting sounds with a Censor was moderately easy. Doing so with a core ability, not so much; generally, it required so much attention as to be unusable while the user was doing something else.

Holding a child down and enjoying it and keeping the sound of their struggles from escaping a building with broken windows and busted doors? That much multitasking could be done by a low-dev, but it wouldn’t be particularly fun. Hence, it was unsurprising to find Xavier’s dot lingering low under the district she’d ended up in—a relatively prosperous one, up until this specific corner of it, from what she had seen during her brief bolt through the streets after finally making it out of the sewer line she’d previously been travelling through.

While the buildings directly surrounding her now were all run down, the other buildings she’d run by had all glistened and towered high above her, floors and floors of closed blinds. Occasionally, a light had been on, while a few curtains had been thrown open, someone far above watching the battles happening far off across the city. Every so often, if she listened closely, Emilia had been able to hear an explosion going off—which, great that they could be heard this far off when most of the fighting was occurring kilometres away, thousands of buildings obscuring the sound. At the same time, Emilia wasn’t entirely sure that, had she not known absolutely that fighting was happening throughout much of the city, she would have noticed to occasional boom.

A few of the people far above her noticed, she thought, and as she slipped into the sewers, pulling her everything as far into herself as possible—Vtraní had warned her Prex had Perfect Awareness and some sort of Awareness-based irregular deviation, resulting in him being extremely difficult to sneak up on, even when he was otherwise occupied—it was difficult not to wonder what they and everyone else in the city were thinking. Given the way the city never slept, it was likely a lot of residents were sleeping away, unaware that anything strange was happening, while the xphern transmission network being down would make information exchange effectively impossible. Some people knew what was happening, however, either due to their high vantage points or their presence within a district that was currently experiencing violence or belonging to some group that had xpherns unaffected by the network being down for locals.

Had she been home, a fight occurring far across the Penns and no clones letting her know what was happening…

Yeah, there was no fooling herself: Emilia knew she would have slipped out of her house to go investigate. A handful of her friends would have come with her—some of her friends would always come with her. It was impossible to imagine herself or those friends staying hidden away when war potentially broke out, only kilometres away.

All that said, Emilia knew they were strange and had connections to law enforcement. If they showed up in the middle of a terrorist attack, the clones would roll their eyes, yell a bit, then add them to their group relays so they could help. Here in Lüshan… Emilia didn’t think the Drinarna would appreciate civilians interfering in their work much. Hence, she couldn’t decide what to think of the reality that even those people who could see something was happening in their city had tucked themselves away. It was both understandable and entirely not what she would do herself.

It was also completely irrelevant: she had things to do, places to be, little boys to find and save.

Emilia moved quickly through the sewers, Vtraní’s warnings about Prex flittering through her mind.

While the man’s irregular deviation would make fighting him difficult, it was the sneaking up on him that was the hardest part. Someone like him… it was difficult to say what he would do, were he to feel her coming. At this point, everyone on Fräthk’s side who was part of that massive group relays Curtisal had helped them decipher knew that Prex had the boy. Everyone also knew that Fräthk would want the boy back—and really, Emilia didn’t understand the obsession with non-devs. There were so many people with monstrous irregular deviations within the city; while it was useful to their situation that Prex needed to at least try to keep Xavier safe, it seemed so strange for Fräthk to care that much.

It wasn’t a secret that some people considered non-dev’s a motivating factor, something within their obsession with learning and growing motivating everyone within their sphere to do the same. They were also some of the only people who could generally fight off most irregular deviations, with the right training, their Prefect Categories giving the potential to counter almost anything thrown at them. It was just that, though: potential.

So, maybe Fräthk wanted as many non-devs as they could get their hands on in order to motivate their captives to do this or that; Xavier could just as easily become some factor that would motivate those captives to rise up and kill Fräthk, however. The other option? Perhaps, that Fräthk was hoping to use a non-dev to protect themself from some terrifying irregular deviation?

It was odd, especially when Vtraní was someone capable of cancelling out most aether- and energy-based attacks—that was part of why Fräthk was so obsessed with keeping Vtraní around, apparently. They also had other bodyguards, however, everyone having been briefed on the main trio and told to avoid them at all costs.

“All of those who surround Fräthk are entirely loyal to them. Part of the reason I am generally only called in if there is an obvious threat is because I am not,” Vtraní had explained, making it clear that all of Fräthk’s bodyguards would die for their boss, one of them possessing a suicide-trigger ability, which great, awesome.

Emilia was pretty sure she’d prefer to fight with them over Prex, not only because of the guy’s irregular deviation, but because of the reality that Prex might very well decide to kill Xavier, should he realize she was coming.

Fräthk wanting the kid alive or not, Prex could claim she killed Xavier by accident when it had actually been him, either during an attempt to get her to stay back, or simply to unladen himself from the small child as he fled from her.

Soooo not ideal, and Emilia pulled herself smaller still.

This was where both her training with The Black Knot and the Blood Rain General came in handy. The clones were often required to infiltrate places with serious security systems, based in both computers and cameras, and with people and their abilities and skills. So, The Black Knot had skills to pull their everything smaller, lighter.

Emilia’s heart rate slowed. It wasn’t something she could do long term without risking her health, but as she drew closer and closer to Xavier’s still-unmoving dot, Emilia’s heart slowed, slowed, slowed. A dozen smaller functions raced out of her Censor, snapping onto parts of her brain. Hormones ebbed and flowed in different configurations that they normally would. Her sweat glands stopped producing anything because, as insane as it was, some people monitored their surroundings for the smallest shifts in moisture in the air, and sweat shivering off a body could trigger their awareness that something had changed.

Her Censor took over controlling her every breath and blink, minimizing them to perfection, and sometimes, Emilia thought it would be nice to live like this: as a doll, her Censor doing all these small things for her in automatic perfection. They weren’t really actions that took a toll on her mind in day-to-day life, but the perfection of this state? The ease of it? It was strange and off-putting and perfect, all at once.

Her lo’lu’s training came in as smoothly as it had for almost two decades. It was training she often used during their prank war, slipping her steps into the quiet of the universe to sneak up on Halen. It was training she always used within the Inner Court—although, not always to quiet her steps.

Life in the Inner Court was a dance, and Emilia played it perfectly. Every errant step within the Inner Court was as much a result of the Blood Rain General’s training as those quiet, slinking steps she took when slipping through the shadows unseen—as the steps she took now.

Using skills to tuck her sounds away was liable to alert Prex she was there, especially given he was likely aware that someone might come to try and retrieve the boy. So, it was all physical skill and grace and functions as Emilia made her way closer and closer to Xavier, the echo of words slowly reaching towards her, and she wished she could unhear it all.

All the hatred—the anger and frustration.

The things the man was threatening Xavier with… it was horrific.

Emilia couldn’t wait to slit his throat. At the very least, given what she heard from the man, it didn’t sound like he had hurt the boy yet. That was good, even if she was sure just hearing all these threats was going to leave the kid with enough trauma to last him decades of therapy.

Better words than physical reminders—inescapable echoes—f everything that had happened to him, though. With any luck, she’d be able to get Xavier out of there before Prex dared try to touch him again. There was no way he would do more than lay a single hand on the boy, now that she was there, but preferably not even that would be allowed.

Preferably, Xavier would never have to feel that man’s hands on him ever again.