[Can’t Opt Out]

The thing screamed as it skidded past Payton, the impact from her blow just enough to force its trajectory to change. Good, she would have felt pretty bad if her classmate had been bowled over by it.

Still.

“Payton!” she yelled, her eyes never leaving the form of the monster. It pushed itself up, scales shimmering sharp in the quiet moonlight that was able to find its way through the windows. The building next to them was so close, though. So close, only the barest reflection of light was managing to make it inside.

She considered, for the briefest of moments, activating an illumination skill, before rejecting it wholeheartedly. Yes, they’d be able to see the echo better, but these things were creatures of nightmares and blood. Of gore and hearts torn from the bodies of people she had known. She had no desire to ever see one again, no desire to stir up those memories when they already haunted her dreams.

The thing sparked, the aether cracking and contracting as it appeared directly in front of her. Black teeth dripped over her, foul and nauseating, as it prepared to make a meal of her.

[Skill: {Star Shoot} Activated]

Technically, {Star Shoot} was an illumination technique, points within the aethernet converging to create a constellation of laser attacks. It was so fast, however, that if she ignored the image her Censor tried to send her of what it had seen during that moment, she could pretend she had seen nothing more of the creature trying to eat her than she had in the darkness.

It screamed as shots of light ruptured through it, deformed hands groping over its body as it tried to find the tiny holes her attack had left behind. She bolted backwards. Too weak. Once, that skill would have been able to bring an enemy to its knees. Now, it seemed to have annoyed it more than anything, and when its eyes met hers again, they seemed more psychotic than before. Great.

It bolted towards her, its existence warping the aether and making her stomach turn. She lifted her sword, purple and gold blade glinting with blood and aether and—

[Skill: {Warp Cloud} Activated]

The warping worsened, and the monster crashed through it—through the form of the universe itself—and exploded out of it behind her and straight into the wall of windows. They creaked from the impact, but didn’t even have the decency to crack.

Emilia darted back to Payton. “Thanks,” she mumbled, taking the chance to down one of the boosters she’d gotten earlier.

[Booster: {Structural Aura} Consumed]

[Strength++]

[Control+++]

[Concentration+]

“You should take mine as well,” Payton tried to insist, but Emilia was already gone, feet losing the ground as she sparked.

Her sword slid through the monster again, and she slammed into a wall. “Fuck,” she muttered as she pushed herself back from it. She couldn’t fight the echo in such a contained space without sparking—there wasn’t enough room to roll around it here. At the same time, she didn’t have the control to spark consistently enough to fight like this, and when she tried again, her sword swiped through nothing, despite the thing having barely moved as it shook off its own collision with the windows.

Its tail flicked, slamming against the glass as though it wished it had shattered with the impact. She’d seen echos less powerful than this one fall from the stars and pop up like nothing had happened. It really was a testament to aetherproof glass that it could do so much damage to the creature.

Drip.

Clack.

She hated those sounds. Fighting these things outdoors had always been easier. Planes overhead, screeching through the air and crashing to the earth as monsters that could fly and fling themselves through the aether ripped them out of the sky. Explosions of skills across the world, tearing the aethernet apart as they fought to try and survive. Giant vibrating barriers that were quickly killing the people holding them up, rattling your brain and control.

“Don’t let the line break!”

“There’s no one left to fill the line!”

“Fuck! If the barrier falls—”

“I’ll hold it.” The tiniest little voice, tinkling and innocent. They had barely been a teenager. Their Censor had probably been installed only a year or two earlier. Children shouldn’t be soldiers, but their entire family—everyone they knew and loved—was going to die if they didn’t become one. If the adults who were supposed to be fighting the war didn’t let that child tear their soul apart trying to earn the frontline another few minutes they were all going to die.

They had had their minutes more. They had won that battle, and then they’d stood at that tiny, brave child’s funeral.

Drip.

Clack.

Her willbrand vibrated, and the shield Payton had wrapped around her—a smaller version of the one that had protected that city—vibrated with it. Every moment this shield was up was a moment of his life he was sacrificing for her. This small, it wouldn’t be much. Days, maybe years, by the time Olivier arrived.

It was still too much.

She ran, not sparked—sparking was too unpredictable, even if her speed running was nothing compared to how fast the monster could spark. It snarled, head ripping and drool splattering over where she had just been.

Did Payton know not to let it touch him? That it could burn holes straight through you, if it wanted.

Always only if it wanted. Monsters that manipulated the aethernet with the ease of creatures born of it—not that that had ever been proven.

She dropped, sliding under the thing, Payton’s shield protecting her from drool and blood and the daggers it had for claws. Her sword slid into its stomach, slicing through scales that so few weapons could hope to even scratch with ease.

Roll. Get out of the way.

Entrails and organs spilled out of it, and it howled because these things were the hardest fucking things in the universe to kill.

Her back slammed against the wall, picture frames rattling with the force and Payton was pulling her away, some skill she hadn’t even noticed him activating dragging her back towards him. His hands landed on her shoulders, burning away the injuries she’d received. A slit across her thigh. A drop of blood burning through her wrist.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he healed her. “My barrier wasn’t good enough.”

“It was good enough,” she said, dumbfounded. She’d had plenty of supports during the war. Most hadn’t been half as skilled as Payton, and they’d been trained for active combat support. She’d almost always needed three or four protecting her from her own stupidity. Someone to form a barrier. Someone to heal her. Someone to keep her supports from getting eaten.

More than a few of them had been eaten. War was like that.

Her wrist burned, the hole the drop of blood had formed in it deep enough that she would need a proper visit to a clinic to heal it. She pushed the pain away and watched the echo rise back up.

Splat.

Drip.

Clack.

Great, now its insides were splatting across the floor.

Emilia swung her feet back under her, eyeing it up. It might not be dead, but its movements were slower than before. These things might be able to keep themselves alive and snarling even when they should have been dead, but that didn’t mean they didn’t feel it. This was messier, though. This was more blood and drool and guts to avoid. They had had special suits in the war, designed to augment barriers and resist the corrosive effects of their enemies.

Emilia had a formerly pretty dress. She had scuffed knees and elbows and a cracked rib because she had knotted herself up too much—wanted to be too normal. Now she and Payton were going to pay the price for her selfishness.

“It’s easier, to be stupid.”

“You are not stupid.”

The other girl had given her a look, the same look she’d been giving Emilia since they were toddlers. “Yes, I am, and I’m okay with that.” She had laughed, the sound warm and lovely, just as it always had been, even in the darkest moments of their lives. There was freedom in innocence. Freedom in not knowing how to see anything but the beauty of life. “I’m okay with being nothing, compared to you. I see you, how much pressure you are under. How much you hate the life that is expected for you.”

“I don’t hate life.”

“You hate the life people want you to lead.”

Emilia hadn’t been able to argue with it then, just months after her D-Levels had been tested. Officially tested. She’d already known the results for years, had been living on borrowed time. She had revelled in normalcy that had a timer.

Decades later, when the war had been over, she hadn’t been able to argue with those words either, spoken by that same girl she loved with all her heart, still as innocent as she’d always been—almost.

“Go.”

“But—”

“Go. We will be fine. We know you’ll come back.”

“I can’t just leave!”

“You can. Go. Be normal. Live the life you want to. We will be here, when you are ready to come back.”

“But—”

“Emi.” Her voice had been so firm, so unlike its usual soft, naive tone. “You have sacrificed so much for us—for the entire world—already. Take something for yourself, even if it is just a few decades of freedom.”

They—the two people she loved more than anything else in the world—had looked at her, urging her to run, to disappear.

One last hug.

One last goodbye, more permanent than all the goodbyes they had whispered and signed during the war.

“I will come back,” she had whispered as she pulled away. Then, she was gone. One last spark across the world. She hadn’t known where she was going, all she had known was she needed to go.

And that she would be back.

She still knew that—that she would be back. She would not die here. She had people who loved her enough to let her go, waiting for her.

She would not regret being selfish.

[Skill: {Blood Rain} Selected]

“I highly suggest,” she said, forcing Payton’s barrier to shatter through pure force of will, “that you protect yourself. I doubt I can control this well.”

She couldn’t see Payton, but her Censor helpfully informed her that he had a “hilariously shocked look on his face.” Why was it that her Censor always seemed to grow a sense of humour at times like these.

[Em: i hope you’re nowhere near the 19th floor]

[Olivier: 12th. Why?]

Emilia smiled, sending her old friend a map of the building and an explanation of how he was on the wrong side. He swore, and {Blood Rain} broke free.

The world vibrated, a million drops of blood and death vibrating free of the confines of a single plane of existence. They shuddered and the creature roared. Its eyes widened—a moment of realization for what was about to happen. She had always found that fascinating. These things barely seemed to care about anything. She had seen them rip each other apart, trying to eat the most powerful person in the area in order to turn their power into their own.

Yet, when confronted with death by human hands, there was always a moment where they seemed ready to flee. None ever did, and more than a few people had told her she was crazy for thinking they ever had anything in their minds except destruction. She still saw it—even a decade later. She saw that moment of terror, that moment of mortality.

[Skill: {Blood Rain} Activated]

{Blood Rain} ripped through the world, more powerful and uncontrolled than she had ever seen it. Even the first time she had used it, stupid and naive like any teenager who has found something they were not supposed to have, she had had better control of it than she did now. Now, drops of blood split through the air, shattering everything they came into contact with—even the damn aether proof glass. The glass cracked and strained, the aethernet trying to keep it together before it shattered, and a million pieces were crashing to the ground below.

“Fuck!” she spit out. She couldn’t move—she wasn’t powerful enough to move {Blood Rain}’s safe zone. If anyone were standing on the ground below, they were going to die. They were going to be sliced apart, and it would be all her fault.

All her fault.

All her fault.

All—

Payton’s barrier crackled out of existence, and for a moment, she thought that he had passed out, or {Blood Rain} had broken through it. It might have been aimed at the echo, but smatterings of blood were still erratically pulling through the world behind them. When her head whipped around, prepared to see that her attempts to save them had instead led to her classmate’s death, she gasped.

Not broken.

Not attacked.

Payton had let the barrier down himself. His eyes were blank, focused on the world far below them, and then—

[Skill: {Exit Line} Activated]

The aether below them screamed, and Emilia could feel Payton’s skill activating, forcibly moving the few people standing below the shower of glass out of the way. It wasn’t pretty. There weren’t many people on the street, but someone had sensed something happening inside the building and a small crowd had gathered. They flew through the air, their backs slamming into the building on the opposite side of the street. People swore. Heads cracked against each other. A couple people wobbled uneasily before sliding to the ground.

They were alive, though.

Payton had—

Payton fell forward and Emilia lurched for him, a shard of hot blood slicing through her thigh as she caught her classmate. He’d used too much energy. She gasped as her newly injured leg gave out under his weight, and they fell to the floor.

Too much energy. They’d both used too much.

She glanced back towards the monster. The last embers of {Blood Rain} were converging on it, its body hacked into a dozen twitching pieces, and she sighed. The building rumbled slightly and she frowned downwards. Olivier, she assumed, her lips quirking slightly. Too bad for him, he’d missed the show. Her eyes flicked back to the dying echo, more and more of its body parts were disappearing now—returning to the aether? Returning to wherever they came from? No one really knew. It was a welcome sight, however, and Emilia let out a long sigh.

She looked out the broken window, her eyes catching on the reflection in the windows of the building opposite her. She twisted, Censor trying to activate something—anything—as the second echo lunged.