Busy as his mind was that evening—mostly, he was contemplating what would come when the night’s episode of Above the Cloud aired in a few hours, and the inevitable explosion of change that would break over a handful of their unit’s members—Codeth had been ignoring all the messages screaming through his various group relays. He had, at the very least, accepted Sorvell’s invitation to the new one, which was organizing some sort of revenge on Emilia’s now-ex, although other than knowing his friends and teammates were gathering in Piketown, he’d done little more than accept the invitation and mute notifications. Still, it hadn’t surprised him when he had sparked, aimless in his contemplations of what the world would be like tomorrow, and found his feet in Piketown.
Eventually, he would look through the group relay and figure out what was happening—it was as inevitable as knowing that he would let himself be dragged into whatever nonsense was brewing. It would be a good nonsense, he thought—something fun and silly and a little mean, an energy so much of their lives had been filled with, even as war and death snuffed out little bits of their light. Apparently, however, he should have just opened the relay and met up with his friends, rather than wander around the city, familiarizing himself with it, his hood drawn up tight in an attempt to avoid attention.
Unfortunately, in his attempts to skirt a few young women who were giving him
that look,
he had wandered directly into a RaidZone, just as the raid fell.
Oops.
Ending up in a raid definitely hadn’t been on his plan for the evening. They were something he… didn’t hate—not the way many veterans did—but neither were they his favourite thing in the world. Part of it was the simple reality that the war had truly been a terrible experience, and while raids weren’t
exactly
like the war, they were similar enough that it was nearly inevitable that they would dredge up memories in any veteran who stepped within them.
The splash of blood over the ground—or worse, over allies. There were never enough supports or medics to save everyone touched by the toxic substances of war, always
more important
,
more valuable
people to save instead.
The scream of people and metal and monsters through the world, meeting up in a cacophony that had left the members of their unit who had grown up alongside Simeon cursing themselves for not muting their own hearing more often and learning how to get on in the world without one of their senses—granted, Simeon had his connection to the aether help him get on. Still, at the time, it had seemed like a lapse in planning for anything the world might throw at them, even if they had been ridiculous teenagers, playing at war with one another, at the time.
They were the best, and therefore, they should have been pushing themselves harder.
Harder.
Harder.
Harder.
Harder.
Always fucking harder.
So often, in interviews that verged into the war and his time with Division 30, Codeth found himself unsure what to tell people when they asked
how
so many of their members had immediately found themselves being proclaimed war heroes. Personally, with how many drops of coincidence and connection so many of them had left in their wake, Codeth thought it ridiculous that there were so few whispers about how,
obviously
, many of them must have known each other before the war began—how,
obviously
, they had already been heroes, simply ones without a war to press the word into their souls and uniforms.
Some of it, he thought, was just a wilful ignorance—this refusal by anyone more than blackaether sleuths and nosy researchers to push too forcefully into their pasts. It didn’t take a genius to connect so many of them back to the group of Baalphorians who had once accidentally helped take down one of Lüshan’s most powerful criminal organizations—a gross oversimplification, as they had only been part of breaking the group enough that Wander Fulbrun had subsequently been able to fully crush it. There were two Baalphorian non-devs involved, for stars sake! One, a silverstrain who had suspected connection to the coren'taz that
became
Division 30!
Neither did it take a genius to connect them back to a collection of incidents in Seer’ik’tine or Crishar or Norvel—and it really was ridiculous that no one had managed to connect Emilia back to the crazed and influential silverstrain who haunted Dion’s Inner Court. There were so many stories of her, seeping out through cracks in the ryohua's control of the Inner Court, and while Codeth could admit that some of those stories were so insane that someone would have to be deranged to actually believe them, there were enough that connecting them back to Emilia and their unit
should
have been easy!
Ironically, most of the stories from the Inner Court that Codeth had ever bothered confirming with someone who would actually know the truth did, in fact, turn out to be accurate, which… what? Seriously, what need did Emilia have for hundreds of thousands of pounds of some sort of coveted fruit? Why had she put so much effort into setting up some sort of illegal smuggling of the fruit out of Dion? And more importantly, what had she done with all the fruit!?
The most baffling thing, Codeth thought, was that when a member of the Inner Court had managed to shut down Emilia’s fruit smuggling ring, after it had been noticed during the war—someone had finally noticed some oddities in accounting, according to Hurinren, who was regularly forced to sit through financial meetings, often receiving sexual messages from Emilia and Yujao during them, apparently—she had simply moved her operation to a different section of the palace.
It was more than a little concerning that Emilia could simply move her fruit smuggling operation to a different area of the same overall location. While the girl had, to a large extent, grown up within the Inner Court, surely their security couldn’t be
that
bad? Also, she had a reputation!? How was no one keeping better track of the nonsense she was instigating!?
Unless… maybe someone was in on it? As far as Codeth knew, her weird fruit smuggling was still going on, despite her rarely being sighted the last decade. Of course, Codeth crossed paths with her often in Norvel. The one time he’d bothered asking about the fruit, she’d just smiled and told him she was working towards world domination, then vanished into the baths.
Half an hour later, Julian had exploded from the baths naked, Emilia having stolen his clothes, all the towels, as well as his xphern—Julian rarely bothered with his temporary Censor. Once, she had almost died in the Dread Coliseum due to stealing a much younger Prince Ju’s clothing while he was skinny-dipping. Evidently, this was not enough to stop her continuing to swipe the man’s clothing, leaving him to stride through his palace naked—Codeth wasn’t convinced the now-Emperor hadn’t worked on chiselling himself such an outrageous body simply so he wouldn’t have to worry about people judging his physique—hoping to catch and kill her.
Having once happened upon Rafe and Emilia fucking in the woods after the former had caught the latter in some sort of sex game, Codeth had found himself wondering whether Julian would fuck or kill Emilia when he caught her. To his knowledge, Emilia had already been sparked back to Baalphoria by the time Julian noticed his missing clothing. As she was still alive, he definitely hadn’t killed her whenever they’d next met. Now, Codeth lived with the knowledge that Emilia
might
be trying to take over the world with a fruit—which, how?—as well as the looming threat that Julian might be just bidding his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to get her back—there was no way Julian had forgiven her, and with the way rumours burned through the Norvellian court, there was no way they’d played some sort of prey and predator game without anyone at least whispering about it. Hence, Julian definitely hadn’t had his revenge yet.
Really, all the ridiculousness with Julian and Emilia proved was that were so many stories that could easily be tracked back to non-public members of Division 30 in both their past
and
present, and yet! Somehow! No one ever connected the dots! Codeth knew The Black Knot, as well as Helix and another, anonymous hacker—one who Helix insisted he knew the identity of, but refused to share—had a hand in keeping people who figured too much out quiet. Still, it was just…
Codeth knew people could be stupid, okay!? He’d grown up around Levi, who, while having eventually shown himself to have been at least partially faking his empty-headed persona, could be exceptionally skilled at not having a single thought in his head. Then, there were people like Mikhail, struggling to make some connections while snapping up mundane details to find connections the rest of them missed. There were also people like Simeon and Meeho, who struggled with
normal
human things, but were impossibly smart when it came to their passions.
People could be stupid. This just seemed
too
stupid, was the thing.
A bigger part of it, he knew, was Halen’s shadow, looming over them in an unending break of power and inspiration.
Of course
the people who knew Halen before the war would be monsters, for wasn’t the man who inspired Baalphoria’s Censor revolution a monster?
Of course
the people he would deign to surround himself with must be monsters, for that sort of brilliance could only exist within the grasp of yet more brilliance, even if
no one
would ever match the great Halen Mhrina’s greatness. Why should anyone else have any stories lingering in their past, when Halen’s presence was an inescapable echo, willing the void whenever Division 30 was mentioned?
It all annoyed Codeth, and sometimes he just wanted to yell and scream that the
Halen Mhrina
that existed inside the public’s imagination was, in more ways than not, nothing like the boy he had loved for so many years of their lives. Was Halen many of the things they called him? Inspirational? Motivated? Monstrous? Yes—yes he was; yet, he was also a person, and he had people behind him, cheering him on, helping him push forward, breaking him apart.
Those
weren’t the sorts of things anyone wanted to hear about Halen, however. The public and the disgusting
thing
that Hail had become under Zara Brinn had made Halen Mhrina into something idealized—something that could not be sullied by the reality that he was just a man, flawed and wonderful and
theirs.
Halen—the real Halen—was exactly that:
theirs.
In the end, that was where most of his complicated feelings on raids came from. They were a game of war, pulled from their childhood and compulsory school years and given a horrific form. They were a squeezing hug from one of his best friends—from someone he missed every day, his feet constantly finding ground in Norvel so he could reminisce with all the people Halen had loved most. Coral was gone, her life snuffed out because she had caught the wrong person’s attention, but Polianna was there, nose crinkling as she shared memories of her wife and Halen and the love they had shared from the moment their paths crossed. Julian was there, offering up stories he would happily tell a thousand times over, as long as the right person was asking—and she was always asking—eyes tearing up as he shared the stories he would tell Halen one day, when their souls met in death.
None of the rest of them believed such things, of course, but they were nice to hear—all these little stories that the only one among them who had never allowed the clones or the majenstra to touch his memories would tell to their friend. It was nice to listen—to maybe even let himself believe, just a little, that maybe part of Halen continued to live on out there, buried deep within the aether he had loved so much.
As though the raid and the ghost of Halen that so many of them swore
must
exist, at least a little, within the raid system could hear his thoughts, a bubble of affection popped into him—this soft, undying love that wasn’t real, and yet, for a moment, as the invaders began to form throughout the RaidZone, Codeth just let himself believe.
Here is Halen.
Here is this little piece of him, born from his passion and creativity.
It had been mutilated by Hail, but it was still there, living on, gifting all of them laughter and smiles and ridiculously convoluted raids that harkened back to summers in the Penns—both the summers of their childhood and the ones that spread through their gap decade.
Smiles and laughter, circling over the waves as they ran. Splashes of glittering aether that nothing but the natural decay of time could remove. Silly skills; silly setups to games of war. It had been mean war, in their childhood, then something softer in the years between Lüshan and the war. There had been broken skin and bones in their youth, laughter and friendship before the war, Halen and Emilia pressing their heads close to discuss this or that idea for yet another skill or function. Some would be pushed through to the public by Hail, others left for just their group to test and love and contemplate the reality of—the reality of what the pair of them were capable of, with nothing but passion pushing them forward.
“I wish you could see it,” Codeth whispered to a phantom memory of Halen’s fingers brushing through Emilia’s hair before he was running, Emilia slowly realizing he’d activated some sort of skill over her hair, sending the silver strands into a sparkle of starlight that hadn’t dissipated for weeks because there were also those skills, born of affection and teasing: the ones Halen made for them alone, a mark of his love that each of them held close—precious as the last remaining embers of their friends. Emilia had returned those skills to each of them after the Flaming, making sure they would never lose this part of Halen, no matter how much the war took from all of them.
Now, of course, there was Hail, forcing Halen’s memory into something they could control—could use—as though Halen were just a myth for them to shape and deform as they needed.
It was terrible, and Codeth was already in a bit of a mood.
“So… what do you say?” he whispered to the dark abyss of the raid, something in it lingering around him. “Do you want to make a mess of things, my friend?”
Arc X.1 | Chapter 420: Interlude | Project Piketown Infiltration 13
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