Rayleen was… nice. Quiet, but nice. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe.
Honestly, Emilia wasn’t sure what to think of the woman because she wasn’t sure what to think of her claims that she received messages from the aether. After a brief conversation with her as they made their way towards Fräthk's holding cells, flowing so seamlessly through streets and buildings as they went that Emilia couldn’t deny that the woman was so good at avoiding problems that they should probably follow her lead, Emilia had learned that the woman held a deep belief in the will of the aether. Rayleen also didn’t seem willing to accept that maybe there was some irregular deviation lingering within her genes that was causing her to perceive the world a little differently from most people, and thereby allowing her to guess at the way destiny was currently moving.
“I have been tested,”
she said mildly, not at all offended by Emilia’s probing questions—she hadn’t been trying to correct her assumption that she could hear something from the aether itself, just wondering if she’d ever considered a genetic aspect to whatever she experienced—even as Vern hissed at her to shut up.
Jerrial, for his part, had been mostly quiet since they’d begun following Rayleen—not that Emilia could blame him. Rayleen had effectively told him that whatever he wanted to get from the holding cells wasn’t her priority. If she was able to help get it without endangering Emilia’s missions to get Olivier, she would. If leaving him behind was the better option in her estimation, he and Vern would be left behind.
Emilia wasn’t sure what to do with that. While she definitely understood the need to sometimes leave allies behind, it was cold to put it so plainly.
There were times to prioritize a mission, times to keep yourself safe at the cost of another’s life. Emilia hoped this wouldn’t become a situation like that, and for the moment, she couldn’t see herself prioritizing herself or Olivier over Jerrial and Vern. Maybe if it turned out they were searching for some terrible weapon of mass destruction in the holding cells! In that case, unless they were trying to rid the world of it, Emilia might just have to kill them herself!
Somehow, despite Jerrial having said virtually nothing about what it was he was looking to swipe up from Fräthk, Emilia didn’t think it would be something bad—didn’t think it would be something worth abandoning the pair of men over as she tried to get herself and Olivier to safety.
That said, she had friends currently trying to get into the city. From their group relay, Emilia got the sense they weren’t having much success in finding the entrance, fortunately, but if they did…
If they did, Emilia wasn’t sure what she would do. It was one thing to endanger herself for random people she had only met hours before. It was one thing to potentially put Olivier in a little more danger—he was already kidnapped, after all! What was a little extra danger on the way to being rescued! Her friends, however, didn’t really deserve to be dragged into someone else’s mess because of her, even if they had chosen the stupid option of coming for her.
At the same time, Emilia’s friends knew her. It wasn’t a secret that she had a soft heart and was constantly getting mixed up in drama because she couldn’t say no to people—not even terrible people, more often than not. While Mikhail wasn’t
terrible
—mostly, he was just tiresome in a way that made her even more aware of her own tiresome personality traits than she already was—the fact that she continued helping him keep his Censor semi-functional was a good example of that.
Mikhail wasn’t her friend, yet, she still helped him because she was soft and nice and also a little petty, although she wasn’t sure that Mikhail realized she occasionally left little pranks inside his Censor when she was the one dealing with it. Halen did some of the work as well, and usually, he removed the pranks. He would then leave his own behind. It was nothing mean! Just things like turning his interface a weird colour or overlaying everything in flowers. Silly things that Mikhail didn’t even seem to realize were pranks, considering he’d shown up a few times asking for some prank that his Censor and brain had finally given up communicating over be fixed. The last time she’d reset his Censor so it would work a bit better, a few months previous, he had asked that she return it to the bright pink interface she’d set it to several years previous. It giggled when certain functions were activated. It was kinda cute that Mikhail, big and beefy as he was, liked it enough to request it be reinstalled.
Ironically, when actually useful functions and skills stopped working, Mikhail rarely let them know. As a result, she and Halen had mutually decided to install a tracking function inside their now-former classmate’s Censor, which let them know when it and his brain randomly decided that nope! They didn’t like that specific bit of programming anymore! Time to just stop communicating with it!
Technically, she and Halen had never really discussed Mikhail’s issues. Emilia had just been dealing with it for the few months between when all their Censors were installed and when Halen transferred to their school. Then, Halen had ended up on the
other side
of their class, which Mikhail stuck to because… Emilia wasn’t even sure why. Because
reasons
.
Anyways, at that point, their prank war had started and Halen had quickly realized that Mikhail couldn’t take part because every skill he used needed to not only be customized to him, but also needed to be updated every few months—sometimes a little longer, if he rarely used it—because his brain effectively hated his Censor and the feeling was mutual. So, Halen had partially taken over the duty of keeping Mikhail’s Censor working as well as it could, which admittedly, wasn’t well.
Mikhail, innocent child that he was, hadn’t ever seemed to
get
that their two sides of the class were separate, and even a decade and a half on, Emilia was convinced he’d only ever viewed their prank war as fun and games. So, he had basically just gone to whoever was physically closest when he actually wanted something fixed. Eventually, they’d managed to get him to go to the original programmer when it came to anything related to their prank war, but it had taken a while and ended in some rather amusing reversals of their pranks onto one another. Neither she nor Halen would ever manipulate Mikhail to swipe up the other’s skills, but when he’d come to one of them specifically requesting help with one of those prank skills?
Yeah, at those times, they’d both understood that their fuck-up—their inability to properly tweak their skills for Mikhail’s Censor—made it open game for them, and yes, it was a
they
issue. Mikhail viewing the prank war as all fun and games made him a wonderful double agent at times, everyone accepting that he couldn’t be trusted not to flip any moment and suddenly be an ally to their side, and enemy to his so-called friends.
With anyone else, everyone would have been pissed. With Mikhail, he was just being himself: innocent, sweet, and empty-headed. It was cute, even if it would be really helpful if they could design a function to help him hold in some of his thoughts, if only so he could properly think whatever it was through before spewing it into the world and pissing someone off with his bluntness. They couldn’t. They’d tried. Most functions she and Halen could get working
a little
, but whatever disconnect was happening inside Mikhail’s head made using functions that interfaced with his brain like that nearly impossible. Even the function that Simeon used to render himself mostly deaf didn’t work on Mikhail’s brain. Maybe they were missing something—didn’t realize some bit of Mikhail’s brain was twisted into the wrong configuration. Maybe if they figured out what was up, they’d be able to create something that could help him manage his brain-to-mouth filter. Emilia had a feeling it would never work; something in Mikhail didn’t like Censors, and it would likely always be that way.
It was weird to know that she would spend the rest of her life fixing up Mikhail’s Censor for him, but she would, and all because she was an idiot who couldn’t say no, couldn’t leave people to die, couldn’t put herself above other people.
She was also the idiot who hadn’t seen a very particular problem coming. Then again, neither had Halen.
“That’s a problem,”
Emilia said to Halen, sending an audio message because she was too lazy to attempt reading his terrible messages at the moment. Besides, it wasn’t like she currently had anything better to do than complain to him about how stupid they both were.
After Rayleen had told them she’d had genetic testing and nothing was amiss, she had explained that Fräthk had been the one to test her, back when she first
came under his care.
Aside from having doubts that someone who collected people with powerful irregular deviations for their criminal empire would actually tell the truth about whether someone, you know, had a powerful or rare irregular deviations, Rayleen’s word choice had left everyone a little tense.
Rayleen was helping her—not
them
, but
her
. Rayleen also seemed to not exactly hate Fräthk, despite all the harm he caused; rather, she thought back on their years together as being
under his care.
Vern had pointed this out, a bite in his voice as he motioned at Jerrial and said most of Fräthk’s
little bugs
very much didn’t want to be
under his care.
Rayleen had said something about perspective and autonomy. Vern had said something about enabling evil people. Rayleen had replied that some evil was necessary to
bring together the future.
Vern had huffed and growled and then been pulled back by Jerrial. No one had said anything since.
Jerrial was still using some sort of core ability to monitor the area—Emilia thought it might be related to his Lowdouran abilities, her Censor picking up the gentlest of vibrations echoing through the aether every time he let the ability go—and while Emilia had set her Censor to smack her if she accidentally ignored him again—no more wandering into women today, thanks—there wasn’t much for her to do.
She could ask Rayleen more questions. It felt like if she dared, Vern would snap.
Hence! Messaging Halen about their problem!
“Yes,”
he grumbled in reply.
“I just updated his Censor a week ago, too. I didn’t think it would start rejecting anything so soon.”
Emilia glared at the notification that had popped up a few minutes before, letting her know that the test function Mikhail’s Censor regularly ran, checking to see if any skills or functions were no longer loading up, had come back with two skill failures. According to the information there, Halen had run the testing function before agreeing to let Mikhail come. Just a few ago, everything had been at least loading up—they could still fail after loading, but it wasn’t like they could have the guy activate every skill he knew daily. Rather, that’s what the more extensive updates she and Halen did every few months were for: making him use everything so they could see what would fail mid-use.
A few hours, and now two skills weren’t loading. That was bad enough, but for everything to have been properly tested a week previous? That was… weird.
“What do we do?”
she asked, mind already rolling through options.
If Mikhail’s Censor started having more issues, it would potentially put him at risk, especially if something like microsparking stopped working. For the moment, the two skills that he could no longer use weren’t exactly ones they’d likely need, but something else? If his defensive skills started to fail? If his relays went down—and, unfortunately, Mikhail’s relays went down often enough that Emilia had considered getting him a xphern. Their class had learned sign language for Simeon, so everyone would have probably learned to his a xphern for Mikhail… maybe. Some of the kids on the
other side
of the class had purist parents, some of their own beliefs leaning a bit too purist for most of the class’s taste. Nothing so much that they hadn’t been willing to befriend Halen, with his Grey Sander heritage, but enough that they had sometimes sneered at the rare Free Colonier who visited her.
Not wanting to ostracize Mikhail, Emilia had never suggested a xphern. Now, she knew she probably should have at least suggested he learn to use one, in case he needed to be able to have an emergency way of contacting
someone.
Fuck.
“I could leave him here? Or send him back up the aetherstream to Dion?”
Halen suggested, like an idiot.
There was no way Mikhail wouldn’t wander off or take a wrong turn, and while Halen had quickly converted his version of her stalking function into a Mikhail-friendly version, if it stopped working, they’d never find him.
What a way to tell her father about all the kids who had ended up in Lüshan illegally!
“Hey, daddy? I lost Mikhail in the Free Colonies! His Censor stopped working, so everyone had to leave him behind. Then, he didn’t stay put. You might what to send out a search party… or twenty!”
Inevitably, her father would bring up the last time Mikhail had somehow ended up in the Free Colonies. They weren’t even sure
how
he’d gotten there. Presumably, he’d fallen off the slideline on the Seer’ik’tine side of The Bridge, where he had been having lunch. Then, presumably, he’d somehow ended up on Dion’s aetherstream and just been pulled along. Luckily, he’d been found by Dionese law enforcement, and Dion didn’t want a war over killing a random, somewhat clueless, twenty-something-year-old Baalphorian who had loose ties to her. So, they’d just sent him back, and then Baalphoria had needed to let various other nations’ law enforcement know that they had a citizen who was known to accidentally wander the continent and not know how he had even gotten where he did—
Oh.
Oh.
Well, that might not actually be the worst plan in the world. That said, when Emilia told her plan to Halen, he seemed to think that now she was the idiot, not him.
“I’m already going to be in deep shit for heading this whole thing,”
he noted as he went to go find Mikhail.
“So, let’s go with your plan. Even out the reprimands we’re gonna get a bit.”
Emilia thought Halen stupid—there was no way she wouldn’t be getting the majority of the shit for all this, regardless of how much he was also encouraging this disaster.
.
!
Arc 9 | Chapter 406: Encouraging This Disaster Along
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