[Can’t Opt Out]

The rules of this world, as her nameless teacher—because he still refused to answer that particular question—explained to her, were relatively simple. Nonetheless, Emilia had already managed to break just about all of the big ones, but she wasn’t about to volunteer that information, not when they only knew about her breaking the one.

Rule 1: Do not enter the outer streets without protective gear.

“What’s out there?” Emilia asked, trying to ignore the odd wording of outer streets. The man was already answering so few of his questions, and she didn’t think questioning whether there were inner streets would be appreciated.

She was once again seated at her room’s table, rested and fed… kinda. The food she’d been sent had been pretty disgusting, okay? She’d managed to force a healthy portion of it down. She hoped they had other options.

Her sense of time was still nonexistent, and she hadn’t gotten the chance to ask how many days had passed since the first heroes had arrived—not when her teacher had launched straight into lecture mode the moment he arrived, his metallic voice ringing through the room. He had, at least, sat down as well this time, although she couldn’t say he looked particularly comfortable, sitting ramrod straight in his black armour. She was a little short for her chair, her legs swinging absently under her. Every time she bonked the table with one, the man’s expression tensed, his words cut out. She may have been purposefully knocking it, just to see if he would eventually tell her to sit still. No go, so far.

⸄Toxic gas.⸅

“Great. Am I going to die?” Emilia kinda thought he wanted her yes, but he told her she wasn’t—that the toxin was slow acting.

“Then why keep people like me out of it?”

⸄It takes several weeks to become fatal. The death is unpleasant.⸅

“So~ basically, you’re just protecting us from horrible deaths? Did nobody ever tell you we just go home, if we die?”

⸄Yes,⸅ he said, not looking particularly convinced, which, fair. Even if they had heroes dropping into their world relatively often, the chances of someone coming in twice and meeting the same people was probably pretty low. ⸄Treatment is also expensive.⸅

“You bother trying to heal us?” she asked, incredulously.

He ignored her, moving on as though she hadn’t spoken. Rude.

Rule 2: Do not kill, unless your life is threatened first.

“’Threatened,’ can be pretty damn vague,” she pointed out, thinking back to her own experience killing someone who had been threatening her and her friend. According to the law, he hadn’t been threatening them enough, even with a willbrand pointed at them, his skills vibrating through the air, pressing at her own defensive ones and trying to decapitate her.

⸄It can,⸅ he agreed. He seemed to have more to say about the vagueness, but unfortunately kept it to himself. The man was so private, it was rather annoying. ⸄It is more a rule for our collective safety. Try not to kill anyone.⸅

Emilia frowned. “Collective safety?”

Rule 3: Do not bleed without cause.

⸄Blood is magic and power here,⸅ the man said, his voice and expression grim and Emilia was so fucking glad no one had searched her when she arrived. She had the huge fucking feeling that, had they discovered her {Blood Dagger}, she would have been in trouble. Locked in a room until the raid ended, kinda trouble.

“Is that why everything is so dull?” she asked, trying to seem curious and observant, which was infinitely better than the innocent look her teacher didn’t seem to believe.

⸄Yes.⸅

“Injuries must happen sometimes, though?” she asked, thinking back to her busted eardrum. Then again, everything here was normally so quiet—save that siren outside. That earsplitting noise could have been an anomaly caused by their visiting this world. She had yet to come across anything made of the same material that had made the noise in the first place, after all. Realistically, the building she had spawned it was probably a more purposeful construct of the system or the platform designers, meant to allow heroes to make themselves a weapon, if they managed to figure out how.

Still. There were nose bleeds, serious falls that sent bones splintering out of your body. Not to mention the whole women have periods thing! And what about births!? Those were notoriously messy and—

Wait.

“What about surgery?”

⸄Surgery?⸅ the man asked, looking truly confused for the first time.

“Like… cutting someone open to fix something that’s wrong inside them?”

Her teacher looked thoroughly horrified at the thought. It was an amusing look on him, the wide eyes and gaping mouth totally didn’t suit his generally stoic face. ⸄There is no such thing here.⸅

“What about births, and stuff related to that?”

The man's nose crinkled. ⸄There are… places, where women go for that. People who deal with dispelling the blood and keeping the world safe.⸅

Safe, as in the weapon she had tucked away under her pillow was considered potentially world altering. Awesome. Fun times.

The man’s aethervoice rippled, a question on his mind that he couldn’t quite voice. Then the blush started, hot and furious and bursting across his cheeks. Interesting, to see blood inside a body when you were discussing how it couldn’t exist outside it.

⸄Are you… close?⸅ he practically choked out, face burning impossibly brighter.

Emilia raised an eyebrow at him. “To my… bleeding time?” she asked, laughing when he nodded. He was going to pass out, if the blood kept going to his face. “Usually, we don’t get those in places like this. When we’re… visiting? Women don’t visit often?” He’d already mentioned that her being a woman was something of an anomaly, but hadn’t really offered any specifics.

⸄Not often. Sometimes, there are one or two among the visitors. Other times, none. I believe you are currently the only one. I assume female members of the guard inquired whether they were… close.⸅ The blood that had begun to dissipate from her teacher’s face rushed back with a fiery vengeance. Apparently, this was not something men—maybe even people in general—talked about here.

Emilia leaned lazily back in her seat, staring up into the weird, lightless ceiling. It had been bright since she’d arrived. More than one sun lit up the sky, she knew that now, but there was also an ethereal light to this world that seemed to exist in the air itself. It had made sleeping difficult and broken. During the war, she’d gotten good at sleeping under any condition. She couldn’t do that anymore. It was rather annoying—not that she could complain about, you know, not having had reason to survive on drips of sleep for the last decade. It was a good skill to lose, overall.

“No women, eh…” she mumbled to herself. She knew men were more inclined to play these kinds of extreme raids, but for there to have been none? That seemed odd. More likely, they had changed their gender. Men and women might be treated equal in Baalphoria, but enough Free Colonies treated women as second class citizens that everyone knew it was a thing—knew that when they entered an unknown raid platform, there was always the possibility of ending up somewhere similar. Somewhere where the world was cruel and brutal to its women. Being a man inside unknown platforms was usually the safer option.

Of course, the opposite was also true, and Emilia smirked up at the ceiling, thinking of the time Elijah and his friends had ended up in a world where women ruled over men with an iron fist. It had been like this one, with a set timeline and little ability to log out. Annoyingly, her boyfriend and his friends had been very tight-lipped about what exactly had happened inside that raid. This had been before they were dating—before they were even hate fucking each other, actually—and Emilia had spent nearly two weeks torturing her annoying classmate. Sneaking up on him and making him shriek. He’d run away from her a few times, even. Whatever had happened to them had been bad, although they seemed to have eventually gotten over it, more or less—Elijah’s asshole friend had become an even bigger asshole after that, an impressive feat, given he was already one of the biggest jerks she’d ever met.

“So… what happens if someone bleeds?”

Tension exploded through the room, so powerful that Emilia froze her fidgeting. Everything burned, ice and fire colliding around them, and then it was gone, and she was left blinking into space and wondering what the fuck that was—if it had even been real.

⸄Nothing good,⸅ was all the man said, his eyes boring into her. ⸄It is none of your concern.⸅

Emilia collapsed back into her chair, lazy and slouching. She wasn’t quite used to her smaller, weaker body yet, its muscles not used to rigid posture or doing anything for too long—stars, her back had even hurt when she got out of bed! How did you strain yourself in bed!? “You know, generally people are more inclined to behave if you give them a reason to.”

The man looked like he wanted to scoff—maybe he was in his head, or through whatever communication network the residents of this platform used. ⸄Or, they will seek out trouble.⸅

Emilia hummed, not quite in agreement with him. She’d seen the way people behaved when they thought important information was being withheld from them—had actively fought against such censorship during the war, when people were dying because of secrets the higher ups insisted needed to be kept. Rules and regulations might keep some people in line—maybe keep these people in line, if they were raised to obey—but they could never hold everyone.

Could never hold her.

The people of Baalphoria weren’t known to behave or keep silent. Not in the real world, certainly not inside a raid. Had the previous batches of heroes really been that inclined to obey the rules? To not figure out a way to bleed and see what happened? Then again, the fact that this platform was being recycled meant either the goal had changed or no one had ever succeeded—you didn’t want someone who already knew how the system worked participating in a raid designed to be mysterious.

That alone, that potential lack of knowledge—lack of anyone being able to figure out how this world worked—was problematic. The most serious heroes memorized information about past raids. Recycling the platform meant things could get messy, if she ran into anyone who already knew the details of this world, or troublesome, if it was that difficult a world to master.

“Alright,” she said, instead of telling him any of that. No need to give him any reason to suspect she was interested in the whole blood magic thing. “That’s three rules. Any more?”

Her teacher rambled off a few more rules, nothing nearly as important.

Don’t be naked in public—apparently that had been a problem in some of the past groups of visitors. Emilia could definitely see that. Some raid platforms straight up disallowed any nudity outside of a person’s own private rooms. There were some seriously perverted people out there and some pretty hefty ass fines for being one of them.

Do not do bad things to locals or other visitors—her teacher didn’t actually say bad things, but that about summed it up. Just be a nice fucking person. Emilia could do that… maybe… Like! She was totally a nice person! Kinda to a fault sometimes, even. Take the current situation as a nice example of that. What kind of dumbass joins a raid platform—which they ostensibly hate to begin with—just to track down some random dude distributing knotters to purist bartenders? Dumbasses who don’t know how to leave well enough alone, that’s who!

On the other hand, she was a brat, and could be pretty mean spirited and petty. Hopefully, those didn’t count as bad things? Her teacher hadn’t specifically mentioned them, focusing on truly heinous things like rape, murder, torture, outright bullying, etc, etc, but… maybe she should try to rein in her personality a bit? Or, at least try to?

Thankfully, locals were also forbidden from doing harm to visitors—apparently there had also been issues with that in the past, but when she’d asked for specifics, her teacher had grown stiff and quiet. Something bad then.

Report people who break the rules to the Risen Guard—the name of the group he was part of.

“What kind of group is it?” she asked, poking at the food that had been delivered to them. It looked just as bad as the food she’d been forced to eat before her pathetic attempt at sleep. Weird and bloody, although she knew that wasn’t the case—the people here didn’t eat meat. Neither did she, but her normal vegetarian food didn’t look like this—like it was leaking blood.

Her teacher ate his own food quietly, taking slow, delicate bites of his food while seemingly trying to ignore her. She wasn’t exactly sure if he couldn’t speak while eating or was just choosing not to. It seemed an odd thing, to not be able to speak with through the aether with your mouth full, but what did she know. It was considered rude to chat through your Censors while eating—although she knew more than her share of people who ignored that social expectation. It could be the same here.

⸄We protect the city from threats.⸅

“Is this the only city?”

⸄There are others, but we are the biggest.⸅

“We?”

The man’s eyebrows pulled together. ⸄Yes. We.⸅

The man had a spectacular skill at making her feel like an idiot. “Cities have names where I’m from.”

⸄Strange,⸅ the man said, taking another delicate bite of whatever the fuck their meal was. ⸄Our cities do not. We simply exist.⸅

“What do you call each other when you have to communicate? You can’t just all be ‘we’.”

The man frowned, looking at her like she was the crazy one. Fair. Getting to know a different culture made everyone involved seem crazy. When she’d been younger, visiting some of the more civil Free Colonies with her father, or later on, meeting soldiers from them during the war, getting to know the other’s culture—getting a feel for each other’s customs and social order—had always been weird and uncomfortable, if also fascinating.

⸄We are we. They are they. We all know who is who.⸅

Emilia let the conversation drop, continuing to poke at her food. She needed to eat it, no matter how spongy and leaky it was. No matter the strange way it had bounced in her mouth the night before. No matter how the taste had been… not what she would ever willingly put in her—

Emilia barely caught the tug of a smile across her teacher’s mouth. There and gone as fast as it had appeared. She gaped up at him. “You’re enjoying this!” she gasped, pointing an accusing finger at him. “You’re enjoying watching me poke at this food and psyche myself up into eating it!”

The man’s lips twitched again. He returned to eating, quiet and calm and ignoring Emilia as she ranted about horrible men who enjoy picking on poor little girls who have been dropped unceremoniously into strange, bloodless worlds.

He didn’t say anything, even as she ran out of words and her stomach willed her to swallow down the food. Nor did he say anything as he gathered up her plate, ignoring her pouting at the table. She was good at pouting—good at throwing her shame out the window and crossing her arms petulantly and sticking her lower lip out. He barely acknowledged her pouting, only glancing at her and raising an eyebrow before continuing cleaning up.

It was infuriating.

It was fun.

It was the kind of game she liked playing.

“So,” she asked, giving up on her apparently quite useless pouting routine as he returned the dishes to the bag they had arrived in, “how do I get permission to leave the building?”

He glanced up at her, eyes sharp and critical. She had the urge to straighten up, to be the good student—the good solider—but no. She was not that here—she hadn’t been either of those in a long time, and she hoped to the stars above she would never have to be again.

⸄You already have.⸅

Emilia blinked at him. “Seriously? That’s it?” She had been expecting something long and drawn out, especially since, when she’d asked if the other visitors were still being held by the Risen Guard, he had confirmed that yes, almost all of them were still being kept by various units. Not quite all of them, however, meaning at least a few had a head start searching for the system access.

This, though? Her freedom returned to her after just a few hours of study? That seemed too easy.