“I can’t believe they just left us here~” Emilia whined, flopping against Hyr as she sent off a message into their team’s group chat about how rude it was to abandon her and Hyr while they chatted. They hadn’t even been gone that long!
[
Conrad:
Yeah, sure. Cause all you two were doing was “chatting.”
]
Emilia glared at the message for a moment before changing Conrad’s name to
Con
within her messaging function. Hyr had refused to put her down, content to carry her through the level as they slowly caught up with the others—seriously, if their so-called friends were gonna abandon them, they could deal with whoever was blocking the entrance to the next level alone!—so she also took a moment to check in with Sorvell and Wyren, who she’d disconnected from after being hauled off Leerin by Hyr.
Good thing she had, too—the last thing she needed was the pair of them teasing her about hooking up with someone less than half her age. Plus, Wyren would feel obligated to tell Hetexia and the rest of the Gru about if he found out something more solid was happening with her and Hyr, and, well… Hetexia was scary, okay! Even within the raid, the hy’s anger over their accidental separation from Hyr had been palpable, and yes, considering the situation with the heartcores, that was probably deserved, but also! It hadn’t been her fault! How dare Hetexia blame her—kidnap victim—for losing Hyr—failed kidnap victim!? So rude.
Regardless, the longer she could put off Hetexia finding out about anything happening between Hyr and her, the better… although, now that she was thinking about it, she had no idea why it even mattered? It wasn’t like Hyr was a Gru. Yes, Hyr and Hetexia had been together inside the raid, but that had allegedly been more because of Zyrex. That said, Hetexia had easily let the younger hy and Hyr come along with her, probably because the syn had seen something about them needing to stick together, so clearly she respected Hyr enough to follow their sight?
That entire situation was strange, now that she was putting more than a single, sleep-deprived and stressed out brain cell to work thinking about it. Of course, she was still functioning on only a few sleep-deprived, if slightly less stressed, brain cells. Also, dirty brain cells—she’d never managed to find time to shower, too content to stay curled into Hyr’s lap a few too many times. Now, she regretted that, every part of her—even said brain cells—feeling dirty. How could brain cells even feel dirty? She had no idea, but they certainly felt just as disgusting as the rest of her.
Wyren and Sorvell had apparently stayed behind with Darrian to chat about the situation a bit more, but had gotten little out of him other than what she’d already assumed: he knew full well that the majority of their unit would view Leerin’s decision to put up with their family’s purist views for the sake of her privacy as wrong, and as a result, he hadn’t known how to deal with the situation.
At the very least, they had managed to confirm the other part of her assumption: Darrian himself didn’t care about being outed as a member of their unit. If anything, he seemed anxious to finally be free of that particular secret.
“I’ve raided with them a few times,”
Sorvell noted, being another non-public Division 30 member—although that was more because it had never been necessary for him to out himself, rather than a desire to keep his membership a secret. He also made a habit of raiding with other public and non-public members alike—not that their public members were generally fans of real-world raids. Too many Division 30 fans and haters trying to sidle up to them.
“Darrian and Leerin have made it pretty clear they were in the same unit together,”
he continued, an air of annoyance and stress accompanying his message,
“I guess at the time they didn’t really think through what would happen if one of them was outed? I can’t imagine Leerin’s thought about the entire situation with our unit much at all—I mean, enough of us raid together off and on that if enough of us are outed…”
Sorvell didn’t finish his thought—didn’t say that if enough members of their unit were outed, either of their own volition or by some accident of fate or a too-large echo attack, that the majority of their unit’s identities would follow. Maybe not in solid facts and admittance of membership, but certainly assumptions that none of them would be able to escape.
Even Emilia thought about it occasionally. Previously, it hadn’t really been in regard to herself. She knew the risks of her identity being revealed, but given her fake name and avoidance of nearly everyone, even if everyone else was publicly named, it would have taken an extra push—an extra leak of information—to connect her with the unit; not that she would have left everyone else to face their identities being publicized, only herself left non-public. There was no way she’d ever leave her friends—her family, in many ways—to face that alone.
Now, though? With every step into her old life, every renewed connection, and real-world meetup, the risk to her rose.
If she were to pop up in Olivier’s court cases, join her various friends in raids, return home to The Penns occasionally, or be seen with any of the clones? On their own, those things wouldn’t out her, but none of them were stupid—they knew that there were people out there who wanted to out each and every one of them, people who stalked their public members, searching for connections, just waiting for that bit of information that would connect a thousand dots.
Honestly, they were all just waiting for the day when someone would connect those dots, especially those of them who were from The Penns, where their identities were an open secret that no one spoke of. Partially, it was due to an already existing culture of privacy within The Penns—it wasn’t like the Baxter family, with their need of secret identities, could live anywhere where privacy wasn’t highly valued. Partially, it was simply because—despite the chaos they had often left in the wake—they were so collectively well-loved in their home that their neighbours, former classmates and teachers kept their secrets. Partially, it was that both they and their parents were terrifying. No one wanted to piss them off or deal with being forcibly removed from Penns society due to their big mouth.
Yet, it was just a matter of time before someone messed up. Eventually, someone would say the wrong thing, reveal some bit of knowledge they weren’t meant to have. Helix would be mentioned by someone from The Penns as having visited during the war, when it was well-known Free Colony members of their unit had constantly accompanied their Penns members home for R&R. Someone would finally realize that only someone as skilled at willbrandsmithing as Simeon could be behind CierSuits. Someone would realize when
the silverstrain member of Division 30
was mentioned, it wasn’t always Nettie they were referring to.
Eventually, something would happen, and their privacy would break. The fact that Leerin was seemingly denying that reality
and
passively contributing to purists while doing so…
Seriously, what were they supposed to do with that?
[
Sorvell:
Em.
]
Well, that was ominous.
[
Em:
sorvell
]
[
Em:
what
]
[
Sorvell:
Did your I-really-fucking-hope ex-boyfriend lock you in his room earlier today?
]
Well, fuck.
[
Wyren:
What??
]
Emilia shut down the message thread after Sorvell forwarded her video of the incident, only confirming for her friends that yes, she had broken up with Elijah, before doing so. Really, she didn’t need to be told yet again that she had terrible taste in men. She especially didn’t need to deal with either of them praising her ex while bashing Elijah… her ex.
There was a
small
chance she was going to need to stop referring to
her ex
as that, given she now had two exes. Annoying—Emilia really didn’t want to think of
that man
as anything other than
her ex.
Part of it was simply that he was still venerated in the news occasionally, his name popping up in conversations about his contributions to the early years of the war. Separating
her ex
from his name just made dealing with that easier, especially since a handful of the things he was lauded for had actually been the achievements of herself and other members of
her side
of the unit.
Perhaps, the fact that those things were considered his achievements not through mistaken facts or journalistic errors, but rather his own claiming of them, should have been her first sign that he was hiding darkness within himself. Unfortunately, back then, she hadn’t wanted fame, nor had many other members of their unit—there was a reason they were still all so private about their service, after all—and hadn’t much cared about letting him take credit. At the time, it had felt like
someone
had to, and that someone had generally been him.
Now… well, it wasn’t like she wanted credit—not exactly, anyways. Yet, every time she saw his face, saw articles being once again written about him and how he had been pivotal to Division 30’s achievements—even those that occurred after his death—it hurt, a little. She understood why he was such a focus, of course. Halen was as well. So were the other, public members of their unit, living and dead—and virtually all of their dead were publicly named, save a few who had relatives in the unit who had chosen to stay non-public.
Division 30 was an enigma, and that stirred the embers of obsession. People wanted to know more about them, and if they couldn’t learn about the non-public members, they would obsess over the public ones. It just sucked that they had faulty information and correcting it was… complicated.
Sorvell and Wyren had apparently clued in that she’d abandoned their chat, the former instead messaging her directly to ask if she would be okay with them making Elijah’s life a little miserable.
“How?”
she asked, throwing in the fact that he was still being tormented by the Hyrat triplets. Honestly, after spending the last few hours with those three… it didn’t much matter
why
Elijah would assume he had been brought in by them. The triplets wouldn’t outright tell him they were childhood friends of hers, so he might just assume Samina had set them on him; if Elijah had any sense of self-preservation, he wouldn’t be fucking with her again, lest
Samina
send the triplets to chat with him once more.
Realistically, he and his shitty roommates—possibly some of his friends as well—would probably be watched by the clones for the foreseeable future. If any of them tried anything with her or hers, they would quickly regret it.
“Nothing too serious…”
Sorvell responded, an echo of something malevolent slithering through the message.
The man always had been a little dark—it was part of the reason why, despite his refusal to play Jo Rong, he was actually pretty good at it. Where a normal person might flinch at using underhanded tactics to win, even in a silly—if often quite serious—game, Sorvell didn’t give a shit. He would send his troops in to commit war crimes, if he thought it useful for his game.
During the war, some of them had often joked that if the war had been against humans, Sorvell would have either been a war criminal or their greatest leader, depending on the mood of the war. Certainly, he had a creative mind for terrible things.
[
Em:
will he survive?
]
[
Sorvell:
What? Obviously. I’m not going to kill him or his shitbag friends!
]
[
Sorvell:
I’m just going to ruin their last week of the season… and maybe the entirety of the next, depending on how much they annoy me.
]
Admittedly… it wasn’t a bad idea. Elijah loved raiding, and this coming season would likely be his last school break before he graduated—or, at least, those were the vibes she’d been getting from him the last few months. He’d never spoken of it, but she had the feeling his parents were pushing him to get his shit together and graduate soon, the severity he had adopted recently a significant factor in their breakup. Chances were, he’d want to make the most of this break—raid as much as he could before he was once again buried in schoolwork, and then just plain old work.
Forwarding this information along to Sorvell, she thought that would be the end of it. Sorvell would descend into Piketown—as far as Emilia knew, Elijah was planning to stay there for the school break, rather than return to his parents’ home, a little outside of Roasalia—and ruin Elijah’s season. Given how much Sorvell raided when he wasn’t working, there was a chance every resident of the city would suffer from a ruined season, if he stuck mostly to raiding within Piketown.
Unfortunately, she was stupid.
A moment later, she had been included in a new, absolutely massive group chat, titled
Make Em’s Ex and His Shitbag Friends Suffer.
Great.
Awesome.
The first message Sorvell sent was that stupid video. No explanation, just the fucking video. Clearly, the aether was working overtime, making sure she entered her friends’ lives again in the most embarrassing way possible. First, there had been that stupid message about not telling anyone from Mitine Dyn about Hyr. Now, this.
This was worse. So, so much worse.
“It will be okay,” Hyr assured her, patting her back like she was a child as they finally caught up to the rest of their group.
“Will it?” Emilia asked, watching as the group chat filled up with her friends freaking out on her behalf, a flurry of
what the fucks!?
and questions about how they were going to go about making Elijah and his roommates—as well as anyone who continued to associate with any of them after watching this video—suffer.
“It will,” Hyr repeated, gently letting her fall to the ground. “They love you.”
Blinking up at them, Emilia wondered how she’d gone from feeling like she had ruined every one of her relationships that morning, when barely anyone had responded to her message about raid rewards, to knowing that Hyr was right.
She was loved, the myriad of messages and plans to meet up in Piketown to ruin Elijah’s seasons proving that. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been the one to message them—although a few people did ask if she would be okay with them invading her home, given she hadn’t actually said she wanted to see most of them anytime soon and the plans she had with the few who had asked to meet up were vague at best. All of her friends were there for her—ready to jump to her defence even when she clearly didn’t need it—just because they wanted to.
“I know,” she whispered, pressing her forehead to Hyr’s chest as she sent off two messages into the group chat, one about how it was fine if they invaded her home, another saying she was off to raid again and would be muting the chaotic chat for the moment, before awkwardly turning to face the rest of their group.
There were more important things than her shitbag ex to deal with at the moment. At least making Elijah’s life miserable would be enjoyable. Dealing with Leerin most certainly wouldn’t be, especially considering that that potential effect of that group chat and their plans.
So many non-public Division 30 members meeting up with public ones in Piketown? Yeah, that was exactly the sort of thing that was liable to out every single one of them.
Arc 7 | Chapter 272: Kicking the Tower Down (for a good cause)
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