So far, Emilia’s attempts to convince her friends
not
to come to Lüshan—to instead turn back and then hand over their test data to Halen because whatever skill he was using was like fucking magic and needed to be perfected ASAP—was not working. Perhaps, had she been paying more attention to their conversations regarding the trip earlier and realized how quickly they were going to be travelling across half the fucking continent, she would have tried to talk them down before they got so far.
It was just… she was supposed to have eight hours! How was she supposed to know that of the many skills and functions Halen was currently programming—during their school days, they’d both usually had a few dozen in development, another hundred simmering in the back of their minds—fast travel for not just slidelines but also aetherstreams was on the list!? He hadn’t told her—not until it had been mentioned in their
Rescue Emilia(?)
group relay, and she’d been more concerned with searching for any sign of Olivier to bother reading all that.
Now, she realized that she was an idiot. She should have at least had her Censor summarize it all for her, if only so she could have talked them out of bringing certain people with them. Then, she would have known their timeline earlier. Unfortunately, given the whole… appearing dead thing, they likely would have panicked and started heading her way even if she had managed to talk them out of coming earlier. Unfortunately, there was no way to talk them out of it now, even the more sensible members of the group brushing her off.
Seriously. How was it that even Coral couldn’t be talked out of coming!? Sure, Coral probably knew that Emilia’s attempts to convince Halen to turn back had ended as a long trail of: her telling him to turn back, him saying no; her telling him it was dangerous, him saying no; her telling him she would be fine, him saying no; her telling him he should at least leave a few people behind in Dion—let someone there babysit them—and him saying no. Some of his no’s didn’t even make sense! Yet, now their conversation was filled with her saying increasingly deranged things—she may have devolved into lying that she had pissed herself when facing that scary man—and him still just saying
no.
At this point, she wasn’t even convinced he was actually reading her messages. Did that make a little part of her ache to continue telling him deranged things? Definitely. Was she going to be messaging him those things? Also yes, but only while his group was still waiting for everyone’s aetherstores to recover—unsurprisingly, his fast travel skill was aetherstore intensive, and while the vitals she would soon be receiving from everyone, and was currently receiving summaries of from Halen, showed that the low-devs of the group could probably make it all the way to the Dionese-Lüshan border without stopping, those above 15D were struggling.
Oh yeah, that was a thing now as well: all of them having access to each other’s vitals. Halen, as part of his attempts to figure out her stalking function, had programmed himself a simpler version of it—something that was
only
a stalking function. Unlike her version, which only gave her Olivier’s vitals, Halen’s version went both ways—an opening up of each person to their friends and teammates. It could also be turned off, and while he had plans to remove some of the creepier parts of her original, blanket stalking function—things like being able to tell when someone was sexually frustrated, for instance, being inadvertently caught by her function—he hadn’t gotten to that yet.
Emilia really hoped no one would be getting sexually frustrated while using the function. Even if they did, she supposed they could turn it off… if they remembered, or cared enough to turn it off. Considering so much of their group was sex positive and had either had sex with at least one person in their group or had a black knot… there was a good chance only a few of them would care.
Before she’d shown up as dead, Halen hadn’t bothered sending her the function—she had bigger things to worry about. Then, as she’d been moving through the buildings and streets of Falmíer’s lower end, searching for any sign of Olivier, Halen had insisted she take a moment to let it download so she could install it.
“The same way you don’t assume Olivier is dead because there was nothing weird in his vitals before his presence vanished, we’ll be better able to guess what happened to you if you have the function installed,”
Halen had explained to her while she looked for a place with the best connection to the aethernet.
Due to their good relations, Lüshan had aethernet hubs in most of the cities, allowing the aethernet to be more accessible in the Free Colony than it was in some of the nation’s further west. The aethernet was Baalphoria’s information network, and while it ran through the lines of the aether, its broadcasts were only so strong. Eventually, without an aethernet hub nearby, the connection to it fizzled out. Censors still worked, to some extent, but they could only access information they already had downloaded, while messages would only reach people nearby, using a non-aethernet-based method. Falmíer had virtually no areas without aethernet access—that was why that room back at the bakery had been so odd—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t exceptionally weak in many places. Hence, having to look for a good, stable place to download the function!
The lack of aethernet access was actually one of the biggest reasons so few Baalphorians wouldn’t visit a lot of Free Colonies. Sure, there was purism and a general misunderstanding of Free Coloniers as well, but the lack of access was also a big concern—after all, even as children, almost all Baalphorians had tablets with them, allowing them quick access to age appropriate information, as well as an easy way to call an adult they trusted for assistance. To have that taken away? Loss of connection was even a risk in Seer’ik’tine, where aethernet hub
should
have covered the whole nation, as there were still a few places where the aethernet wasn’t accessible—or just extremely weak—due to interference with other, Free Colony technology.
Yeah, most Baalphorians wouldn’t risk it—not when it was to visit Free Colonies they had grown up hearing horror stories about. Still… it would be nice to extend the aethernet a bit further—make it a bit stronger this far from Baalphoria, as she was currently having to scale a building to get a good enough connection. Even with the better connection, she’d still be spending a good half hour waiting for the function to download. It wasn't even that big!
Logically, Emilia knew there were already issues with the aethernet being more accessible in Free Colonies—notably, Jinkai was already complaining that the aethernet was potentially accessible if someone got up close and personal with about two kilometres of their border with Dion, a hub in the latter extending a bit too far for their liking. Jinkai could go fuck itself, terrible little dictatorship that it was. Still, access to the aethernet would likely create issues in other nations as well, eventually. Currently, few civilians bothered procuring the often expensive technology that would allow them to connect to the Baalphorian aethernet without a Censor or childhood tablet, but it might happen one day.
When that happened… Emilia didn’t know what would happen then. Baalphoria’s information network was one of the most extensive in the continent, was the thing, and information was so easy to weaponize. Emilia had seen it in riots the continent over, this ability for skewed and manipulated information to pull simmering angry in one direction or another. Some people wouldn’t believe what they read about sensitive topics on the aethernet—they would claim Baalphoria’s information was wrong, but it wouldn’t matter if they were wrong or not; there would always be cases where reality and lies met up over topics where one or both sides refused to bend, that refusal ending in clashes that only occurred because of opinions and facts reaching
the other side.
Take Dion and Baalphoria, for instance. Somewhere along the line, the current Emperor Supreme and a previous Baalphorian president had agreed that the previous Emperor Supreme had been primarily responsible for the last Colonial War. There had definitely been other factors, but both sides knew that it was largely the power hungry, mentally degrading previous Emperor Supreme who had caused the war. Most of the public also agreed with this, and while there was certainly animosity between their respective citizens at times, mostly from the remaining veterans and their descendants who had grown up hearing how terrible the other side was, it was generally rather contained. No one wanted to start another war because a grudge against a random soldier was extending over every person of the same nationality.
Yet, if Dion hadn’t accepted that their previous Emperor Supreme had been the primary cause of the war, while Baalphoria claimed he was? That was where problems popped up. That was where citizens wouldn’t let go of grudges; rather, that was where wars rose up simply because
the other nation is lying
or
the other nation isn’t accepting responsibility for their part in the war!
So yeah, that was an issue for the future because even without looking up specific examples of Baalphorians having strong opinions on things related to various Free Colonies, Emilia could think of a dozen examples that could potentially cause problems—these sticking points that would tighten tensions between their nation and others.
These were the things Emilia thought about as she sat on the ledge she had created for herself, waiting for Halen’s cannibalism of her own function to download and install… then it had to download all the data from her friends… and a few people who weren’t her friends. Plus Mikhail, who was something else entirely—part friend, part annoying and baffling classmate, and part… client? It was complicated, but also, why was he coming again? Oh yeah, something vague and mysterious—Halen had conveniently given her a non-
no
, but also non-answer on that question, then run off to get set up to leave again.
Emilia may have sent him an annotated section of one of Olivier’s cousin’s smut pieces as punishment for him clearly blowing off her question. The particular section had involved girl-hacker-Halen pegging boy-hacker-Emilia with some sort of fancy dildo with ridges. It was apparently quite pleasant—pleasant enough that Emilia was now contemplating both procuring someone similar for herself and whether Olivier’s cousin had personally used one before. Emilia had sent Halen some analysis of where the ridges seemed to be located, and some contemplations of whether piercings in several of the locations would be better or worse—mostly, she had landed on having no idea.
[
Emmie:
i guess i’ll have to get one of the dildos
]
[
Emmie:
to test
]
[
Emmie:
thoroughly
]
[
Emmie:
then
]
[
Emmie:
i’ll have to find someone with piercings to test with
]
[
Emmie:
wonder where i can find someone like that…
]
Was she flirting with Halen? Honestly, Emilia was trying not to think about that. Halen was… Halen. Halen was complicated. Halen was… something—many things, in fact. He was also coming for her, pushing himself and their friends hard so they could get to her faster. Emilia wasn’t sure what to do with that because Halen wasn’t supposed to be her friend, yet they had been pushing the bounds of friendship just the day before. Whatever fresh thing was blooming between them, though, it was exactly that: fresh. Fresh friends didn’t risk themselves for one another—at least, not usually. Emilia knew that she had often risked herself for new and potential friends shortly after meeting them, but that was her, not Halen!
Halen was supposed to be logical—sensible. Halen broke the rules for Coral, occasionally for Codeth, for Alaric and sometimes Cyan because Alaric would die if something happened to his best friend. Halen wasn’t supposed to break rules for her, but hadn’t he probably done that before, when he’d likely told Rafe that Warren might have been the one who hurt her?
Who fucking knew what Halen was or wasn’t to her anymore. Certainly, when she sent off her last message before Halen loaded everyone back onto the aetherstream, his vitals had fluctuated and…
And yeah, there was definitely something
sexually frustrated
in those readings. Well, fuck. What was she supposed to do with that, other than perhaps assume that her memories of the Krill’ok’gry were accurate? Presume that it really had been Halen between her legs, his bright golden eyes boring into hers as he lapped over her like she was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted.
Fuck. Emilia really didn’t need confirmation that Halen of all people had given her one of the best orgasms of her life.
Fuck.
.
!
Arc 9 | Chapter 388: Halen was… Halen.
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