The Free Colonier was vicious, that was the only way Darrian could describe the man. Lithe and quick and fearless, his moves so brutal that, despite the lack of true danger inside the raid, a shutter of fear still wound its way through Darrian. This man had killed before, he was sure of it. Not just a veteran from the Free Colonies, but one who had sliced through humans and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again. One who had a hacker skilled enough to create core-ability-based skills for them.
Emilia.
It could just be a coincidence, but the more he fought with the vicious—if also extremely adorable man—the more Darrian didn’t think it was.
Unfortunately, the man was so dangerous that unless he wanted to be killshotted, he needed to pay attention. He had given the man leeway to speak—to smile and joke and learn about Baalphoria—and then been attacked for his trouble. Not that he was particularly surprised the man had continued their fight without warning—the Free Colonier screamed of chaos and unpredictability, each of his attacks seemingly at random, chosen in the moment and yet landing near perfectly despite his admittance that they weren’t tuned particularly well.
Would he stop and chat with the man again, if the opportunity arose? Yes, he would. Just like that first time, however, he wouldn’t be completely letting his guard down. Certainly, as he swerved around skills being tossed his way at random, he had to focus—had to force his thoughts away from the fact that his childhood friend might very well be somewhere on this level.
This man and their fight came first. He couldn’t message Emilia again and ask. He couldn’t tell Leerin that Emilia might be part of the group she and their cousins were seeking out.
Perhaps more importantly, he couldn’t warn anyone about the syn who had been part of the trio either… not that he thought anyone in their family was liable to believe any of the stories about the synat. Leerin had certainly never made it a secret that she thought their future telling abilities were a load of crap—superstitious nonsense. Alex had believed, oddly enough, and many of their Free Colony members had taken a middle ground of just saying there were some things out there that no one could explain. Emilia had never really said one way or the other, nor had many more of their Baalphorian members, each of them intent to not argue over beliefs that were unlikely to bend.
There were some things it was just easier to not talk about, seeking to avoid conflict and religious tension. Although… was the synat a religious group? Honestly, he’d never been able to figure even that out, largely because unlike their Mitine Dyn members, who had been explicit in their worship of the Sever and Glorious Trio, if also secretive about what their religion actually entailed, the synat members of their unit had been quiet and strange, often not even really interacting with other northerners, save Hetexia.
If Emilia really was a part of this trio… did that mean she believed the synat, or at least the syn on their team, could see something? If that were the case—
Darrian’s thoughts splintered off—seriously, he needed to focus on the fight—as he dodged out of range of a skill he didn’t recognize, his Censor helpfully telling him it was a new private skill, which had only been approved for use about half an hour earlier, just before the group had entered the raid.
Another alarm bell went off in his head, a giant red arrow pointing to Rafe—that man had the pull to get skills approved all but immediately and rarely said no to Emilia—before he was forced to dodge again, again, so many individual activations of {Hunter’s Prey} going off in a row that he couldn’t help but be impressed. Not only was the man vicious, but he was powerful as well.
A trail of arrows surged after him, each shattering into a constellation of smaller arrows that danced after him. Darrian dodged, the arrows dodged with him or slammed into another wall, their shards creating more weapons to chase him.
Fuck.
Not only had the man activated {Hunter’s Prey} nearly a hundred times—seriously, how much control did the man have to run this many iterations simultaneously?—but each individual arrow seemed capable of splitting into—Darrian let his Censor do the math for him—another hundred, smaller arrows?
That was some chaining and fuck Emilia and her terrible, beautiful skills. The only people he even knew of capable of creating skills this terrifying were Emilia, Helix and Halen—even Rafe, for all that he created new skills constantly and updated many of Emilia’s year by year, couldn’t do something like this. Then again, there probably wasn’t much of a point in anyone programming something like this skill! Chances were this Free Colonier had perfect or excess control levels—anyone else would burn their control out long before there were even a few hundred arrows chasing their prey!
As for getting away from the skill? Well, eventually, after the arrows had split apart too many times, they would shatter, but—
Darrian coughed as he breathed in the dust the fully shattered {Hunter’s Prey} arrows had created, the Free Colonier grinning as he summoned up a gust of wind to work the particles into a frenzy.
“I quite like this skill,” he mused as Darrian activated {Lungful Breath}—as much as no skill would be approved if it could actually hurt him, that didn’t mean he wanted to inhale whatever was now suffusing the air. It could very well interfere with his own skills, if temporarily. “It was created just for me, although the little syn has a copy as well. I doubt they’ll be able to use it quite this well, though~”
The man smiled, and yeah, he definitely had something going on in his D-Levels that was giving him an edge. Darrian’s own D-Levels were nothing to scoff at—a respectable 11D, which put him right in the middle of his childhood friends and on the lower side of their unit’s members—but this man… he was terrifying, the energy around him screaming of confidence that Darrian had only ever seen in people under 5D.
It was the energy of a person who knew they were practically untouchable by all but the most brutal and well-versed enemies. It didn’t matter that he’d grown up alongside low- and non-devs, fighting and training with them, urged on by their passion and confidence; this man was a monster, and there was no way he’d be able to beat him.
Not that he wasn’t going to try. Growing up around people you could never hope to best did one of two things to a person. In his cousin’s case, she had accepted that she would never match half their friends and been content to pull up the rear and let them have their fun. Darrian, on the other hand, had constantly embarrassed himself, trying his best to keep up. Sometimes their monstrous friends had slowed down, intent to let everyone keep up; other times, especially during the war, they had hurried on, leaving everyone to their failed attempts at catching up.
Darrian wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d ever catch up—there was only so fast someone like him could run, falling behind with every step—but he had never stopped running, never stopped pushing, hoping to be someone his friends could rely on. Even nigh untouchable monsters needed friends and allies and people to give them a good fight.
The Free Colonier hadn’t been expecting him to spark up in front of him—in fact, he’d assumed Darrian would come in behind him again. As a result, Darrian caught him turning prematurely, a skill already shrieking through the aether as the man prepared to let it shatter through the hallway.
If he had popped up behind the man—or if the Free Colonier had anticipated that Darrian had purposefully dragged out his spark’s timing, intending to give the man a few extra milliseconds to guess where he’d show up, so the man would be caught mid-movement, mid-activation—the skill, {Rupturing Walls}, would have killshotted him. As it was, the man didn’t bother cancelling it—a good decision, one that only those with both huge aetherstores and battle experience would make—and instead microsparked into Darrian’s space, his fist flying as the aether that had covered the walls behind him collapsed inward, intent to bring down anyone caught under it.
Darrian was thankful he hadn’t been caught in that—it would have hurt more than he liked—not that getting hit by the Free Colonier’s fist wouldn’t hurt, if he let his attention wander, a hit connecting while he was distracted.
Ironically, while far too many people thought of all real-world raids as a purely skill-based battle, they weren’t. Physical attacks—as well as skills requiring a physical connection, which had been used to take out a large portion of his cousins in their battles with the trio—were generally allowed, and were in reality the main way heroes found themselves seriously injured in raids.
While he wasn’t going to comment on the stupidity of all the heroes who assumed invaders in regular raids were the only ones who could hit their opponents—seriously, the number of heroes he’d seen
not
hit an invader back was astounding—the belief was more understandable in PVP raids. Most notably, most heroes simply didn’t know how to fist fight without a virtual raid system helping to choreograph their movements, so why would they ever resort to using their fists? Not all virtual raids had such systems, but enough of the big ones did—purportedly to give every hero an equal shot at winning fist fights with someone of a similar skill level, regardless of their actual knowledge in hand-to-hand combat—that few people bothered to learn in real life.
Darrian—as well as most of his childhood friends—knew how to defend himself in a fist fight because The Black Knot knew, and Emilia had convinced Loren to allow every one of her friends to attend the Hyrat clone’s classes on numerous things, including hand-to-hand combat.
The other main reason most heroes didn’t realize that fist fighting was allowed in most PVP raids was simply that almost everyone who could was polite enough to not punch someone they didn’t think knew how to hit back. Seriously harming someone with a punch or kick was just as against the rules as doing so with a skill was, so most people wouldn’t risk it. Plus, serious injuries were harder to control for when fists were involved, especially if someone threw a physical augmentation skill into the mix as the little brat he was fighting was.
Darrian caught the man’s fist as he twisted, his own physical augmentation skill activating to match the Free Colonier’s. The man grinned up at him as Darrian pulled his fist, attempting to catch him off balance. It didn’t work. The man was too light, too flexible and wily. One moment both of his feet were on the ground—perfectly placed in a Norvellian stance, Darrian’s mind absently noted—the next, he was spinning, his back foot gone from the ground and colliding with Darrian’s shoulder.
Probably, the Free Colonier had expected the grip on his hand to let up as Darrian cursed and was sent toppling. Not so much. Unfortunately for the vicious little man, Darrian had been fighting with little shits like Samina since he was little. Even losing her legs hadn’t stopped her from training, with and without her prosthetic willbrand activated. When you fight with sociopathic agents of chaos, you quickly learn that if you want to have a hope of winning, you’re going to have to be just as creative and chaotic as they are.
Darrian toppled, the Free Colonier came with him, an adorable squeak leaving him because he definitely hadn’t been expecting to be taken down by a much larger man’s iron grip on his wrist.
{Not a Bed for Sex} activated before they hit the ground, Darrian's mind absently cursing Emilia when it shouted out,
“This is not a bed for sex! It can be used to catch canoodling couples in a pinch, but please find a proper bed!”
before the cushion of air deflated and safely set them on the ground.
The Free Colonier seemed even smaller in his arms, awkwardly sprawled over him, one of his legs pulled up much too far due to the kick, while his arm was trapped between them. “Did your skill just heckle us?” he laughed, pushing himself up to gaze down at Darrian. The wild smile that had been pulled over his face for the majority of their fight had once again been replaced by something softer, sweeter. Darrian wouldn’t go as far as to say it was
a sweet smile
—something told him there was very little
sweet
about this man—but on him, it was probably the closest it ever got. Teasing, lighthearted, beautiful.
“No sex! This is a… raid?”
the skill continued. Emilia had designed it when they were teenagers, and it had been updated over the years—during the war, she’d completely removed the random things it said, knowing they were inappropriate for a battlefield—but the raid version had been updated by Rafe, and not only had he added the inappropriate commentary back in, but he’d never quite been able to get it to understand what raids were. Helix was convinced Rafe was messing with them. Darrian wasn’t so sure.
“Public sex is inappropriate!”
The Free Colonier raised an eyebrow. “Do all your skills tell you not to engage in public fornication?”
Darrian wished he could say this was the only skill that said such things, unfortunately, it wasn’t. Several of the skills Emilia had coded when they were teenagers and young adults said things, and more than one told the users not to engage in public sex, but only if the user was contemplating such things.
That perhaps was the worst part: Darrian would quite gladly flip this beautiful man over and fuck into him, if given the option. Fuck the camera and the fact that they would both be removed from the raid—probably kicked off the entire ship and directed to SecOps.
“Seriously~ You’ll get in trouble. I should know~”
“Fucking hackers,” Darrian grumbled, cursing whoever had come up with the bright idea of all of them practicing activating a collection of skills so much that doing so became all but muscle memory. Did they come in handy often, keeping them from smashing their heads on the ground and experiencing embarrassing clinic visits? Yes, but this was also embarrassing!
“Nah~ You lo~ve me~”
the skilled cooed, finally shuddering out of existence while the Free Colonier buried himself into Darrian’s chest and shook with laughter. The man was so cute, his laughter so wholehearted and infectious, that Darrian couldn’t even bring himself to be more than a little annoyed with Emilia. If her silly skills would lead him to such a beautiful sound, he couldn’t possibly be mad.
Arc 7 | Chapter 261: From Missing to Hating to Loving
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