[Can’t Opt Out]

“So, why are you helping me?” Emilia asked as they headed out of the training rooms and back up to the shop. She’d been tempted to ask earlier, but there was a good chance he either didn’t know and drawing attention to that fact would change his mind, or she didn’t want to know the answer. If someone wanted you to owe them in the future, for instance, it was easier to refuse after you already had what you wanted. It wasn’t your fault they didn’t ask for an IOU before giving!

⸂My father was an extremely kind man, according to my mother. I was born long after he left this world, but she told me as many stories as she could about him.⸃

“It must have been hard, for him to disappear once the visit was over,” Emilia mused quietly, one hand dragging along the rough walls of the hallway upwards while the other held her new “Notebook of Magical Facts” to her chest. It was a strange item—for this world, anyways—being a more normal type of paper. She’d even given herself a paper cut on it, more out of curiosity than anything else, and accidentally burnt a hole in one of the tables.

Zach had not been impressed, and she’d behaved—more or less—from then on.

⸂He died before the… what was the word you used for your visit?⸃

“Raid, although some people would just call it a game. Your dad died before the raid ended?”

Zach nodded, the movement slight in the near darkness. ⸂He was killed trying to access the system. He wanted to help the people of this world.⸃ He hesitated a moment, the tension palpable through the air, before he asked whether his father was still alive.

“Probably,” Emilia told him, explaining that at most a decade would have passed in her world between the last batch of visitors and this one—most raid platforms had only been created after the war—but it was likely far less. “It could have even been a few hours our time, actually.” It wasn’t unusual for platform maintainers to speed though time between raids, so the platform’s environment would be substantially different for the next group. It kept people from cheating too badly, especially in events like these. It wouldn’t exactly be fair if Zach’s father came back, already having an ally, for instance.

That said, the whole “anything goes” thing implied that platform maintainers would consider that fair, even if other heroes wouldn’t.

⸂Do you think he could have come back? That he could be inside this raid?⸃ Zach asked, voice barely more than a whisper.

Emilia deflated slightly. “That’s a hard question to answer. If the last raid was only a few hours ago, probably not. Our brains can’t take that amount of stress so close together, plus… there was no indication what platform—what world—this raid was. Even if he could come back…”

⸂He wouldn’t have known this was the world he left a family behind in,⸃ Zach finished. He sounded as though he had already expected that answer, maybe from his mother. If you were in love with a visitor, of course you would try to learn if they could ever return. Still, it broke Emilia’s heart a little, to think of this man, never having met his father—of that father, never being able to return to his loved ones. Perhaps he had even tried to return, but been unable to find this raid—or worse, had found it, but been unable to join.

Parents were important, even if she was currently avoiding hers. That wasn’t because they didn’t love each other, though. If anything, it was because they loved each other too much—because Emilia deserved to be treated like a naughty child who had run off during a tantrum. Instead, they were more likely to smother her in affection and cookies, and her guilt would swell until she burst apart.

She wouldn’t be surprised if only a mass of blood and muscle was all that remained of her after her parent’s love destroyed her. Better to just avoid them.

“Do you know his name?” she asked as they reached the top of the stairs, Zach pushing the heavy hidden door open for them and ushering her through.

⸂Why?⸃ he asked, suspicion suddenly tight in his voice.

Emilia rolled her eyes as she made her way back to the front of the store. “Because, if I know his name, I might be able to find him in my world. It won’t let you meet him, but maybe he’d like to know that he had a kid and a granddaughter.” She smiled, adding that if she managed to win this thing, she could also brag that his son had helped save the world.

⸂You will have to gain access to the system before you can save the world,⸃ Zach said, although when his eyes met hers, there was something soft and yearning hidden in them.

“True~” Emilia sighed, long and hard. That was just for dramatic effect, of course, in case anyone had gotten through Zach’s security barrier—which were notoriously unreliable, especially against the Enclave and the Risen Guard, according to him—and was listening. They’d already discussed the problem of how to access the system below, with Zach giving her all the information he knew about what the last batch of visitors had tried, in their own attempts to access it.

The list had been extensive and horrific—some visitors, under the guidance of their Enclave sponsors, had bled out both locals and other visitors, in an attempt to see if more blood was the key. It was not, and instead they’d just left a trail of bodies and trauma behind them.

When she heard stories like that, Emilia hasn’t completely sure the Enclave wasn’t just as bad as the Risen Guard. They could be even worse now, if this is what they had been willing to do nearly a century earlier. In Emilia’s experience, people and organizations didn’t generally get better with age, they rotted until someone came along to hurl them into a trash pile.

Emilia was quite willing to do that, at least with people like the Stringer Matriarch—the jury was still out on the other members she’d met. They seemed nice enough, but anyone who grew up in that kind of society, where such terrible beliefs were normalized? She had seen Beth struggle with the beliefs growing up in sub-50 culture had drilled into her. Her friend might have left for her safety and sanity—not to mention that whole happiness thing—but Emilia still saw phantom traces of those beliefs from time to time, toxic and terrifying.

Seven had been even worse off. For all she had ever been able to tell about the quiet young man, forced to join the war effort by parents seeking more power and influence, he hadn’t exactly believed in the rules that governed the lives of most sub-50s, but he knew his place in a way Beth hadn’t. They might have both been new gen sub-30s—their families way out of the sub-50s and into the sub-30 Penns—but they had treated it so differently. Where Beth had run, Seven had dulled himself, becoming the sad shell of a boy she had fought alongside.

She had seen moments of his brightness, his humour and kindness, but the shadows of obligations and cruelty had always followed him. Then the war had latched onto him, and like herself and James, he had vanished in the chaos of the days after the war ended. His parents were still looking for him, as far as she knew, their golden child gone from their control.

Even she and Rafe had been unable to find him, for all the access to the OIC System they had between them and their connections. Seven didn’t want to be found, and the OIC System wasn’t about to give him up, only ever telling them that he was safe, and he was working on being happy, something it had taken to doing once a year, as though it knew they cared—knew they worried for the soft, kind little boy they had once known.

The OIC System, if you thought about it too much, was a little creepy. Kind, but creepy and somewhat overbearing.

⸂Emilia?⸃ Zach called, dragging her attention back to the current moment.

“Ah… sorry. Got lost in thought.”

The look Zach gave her was the same one he had been giving her all day—one that said, ⸂Again?⸃

“So?” Emilia asked, bouncing on her heels in the dusty store. “Name? No name?”

The man’s fingers brushed over an item, less dusty than the rest, but even in the dim light Emilia could make out dust stuck in the crevices of the intricate designs covering it—although, oddly, she couldn’t make out what the item itself was.

⸂Remy. He never gave a last name.⸃

“Remy, eh… Don’t know anyone by that name.” Not directly, anyways.

She knew there was a Remy who regularly ranked in the Top Ten, although he operated almost exclusively out of the Penns. Personally, she didn’t care, but she’d heard Elijah and his friends bitching about the young hero quite often, claiming it was unfair that people could use custom willbrands within raids as though they themselves didn’t have custom willbrands. Granted, their willbrands were most certainly far cheaper than whatever someone from the Penns was using, but they were still custom and far better than the shit the government gave out.

“I’ll see if I can find him,” she told Zach after she had relayed information about her potential lead to him, although she omitted the fact that she was pretty sure the Remy she knew of was still a child, in the eyes of her world, being in his early 20s, if that. “I doubt he would be able to meet you, but maybe he could arrange to meet your daughter. Sometimes the platform maintainers will let heroes—visitors—return outside of events for things like this.” It was rare, but it happened. Having children within raids was itself rare, most systems sterilizing heroes in order to avoid such things. There had been… issues, in the past. If not for Zach’s eyes, she might have assumed his mother had lied about his parentage.

⸂Thank you,⸃ Zach said after a long moment, his fingers still dragging over the unidentifiable item, before he flipped the top off it using a series of complicated motions. He pulled out a small greyish stone that glowed faintly. He wrapped one of his large hands around it, the glow growing until it was so bright that his hand glowed.

The aether shuddered. Once, twice, before it surged in towards Zach’s hand, so powerful it briefly became visible. Then, everything was silent. The glow was gone and when the man opened his hand, the stone had turned a matte black.

⸂For you, in case of emergency,⸃ he said, handing her the stone.

It was heavy in her hand—even heavier than the much larger {Blood Orb}, which she had rather forcibly taken back possession of from the Stringer siblings, along with her {Blood Dagger}. They hadn’t exactly wanted to give them to her, concerned that she would take her dangerous magical items and disappear into the wind, which, she supposed, was precisely what she had done. She was planning to meet back up with them, though! So she’d only temporarily absconded with them! And even if she did take off and never look back, they were hers! She had a right to be in possession of them, thanks.

⸂I have poured the majority of my magic into that,⸃ Zach continued, his voice and breathing laboured as the effects of his decision to drain himself of magic caught up with him. ⸂It is effectively a bomb. Slip a bit of her core energy into it, and get as far away from it as possible.⸃

“How long will I have?” she asked, giving a dramatic sigh when Zach told her somewhere between 10 seconds and 3 minutes.

⸂Take this as well,⸃ he said, pulling a ring he had grabbed from the training rooms below from his pocket. ⸂It was a gift from my father to my mother—one of the blood weapons he created. It requires physical contact with its target, and will be… messy. Several of the other blood weapons he created were a result of using this in battle.⸃

“Lots of blood then, awesome.” They might have determined that bleeding someone out wouldn’t get her access to the system, but it did seem that there were no limits on the number of blood weapons visitors could make, and the more blood, the more powerful the victim’s magic, the stronger the weapon. Not that bleeding anyone out was on her to-do list, but it was good information to have!

Any information about what hadn’t worked to gain access to the system was useful, and she had several pages in her book dedicated solely to noting all the things Zach knew had been tried by the previous batch of visitors. There was also a shorter list of ideas Zach had come up with over the years, all to be attempted before she resorted to the one they mutually agreed was the most likely. As likely as it was to grant her system access, it was also, unfortunately, the most dangerous. Not just to Emilia—or anyone else who attempted it—but potentially to the platform itself. Therefore, last to try. Definitely.

Zach had also informed her of yet another tidbit of information, during his crash course on magic, that the Stringer family had not: the Risen Guard had ways of tracking visitors via aether use.

⸂My mother believed that they were capable of tracking visitors based on their use of the aether. My father was only found after he used direct aether magic in an emergency. I would not be surprised if they have developed ways for tracking the use of more magically inclined blood weapons as well.⸃

Emilia had drawn a tiny man with black exploding out of him. Zach was not a fan of her doodles. She’d taken actual notes, of course, her rarely used handwriting sloppy and only half-legible over the pages of her notebook. She’d learned a lot from him, though, even if it was premature.

⸂I can teach you, so when you gain access to the system, you will be better prepared.⸃

His confidence that she would gain access was both encouraging and terrifying, especially as he gave her more tips about his world, their magic and the system. Previously, it had felt like if she failed, she’d just be annoyed. She’d have to pay for tickets to Ship’o Stars or plan to go another time, after she won tickets in a less intense raid. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

Now, she had not just his hopes and decades of research resting on her, but the hope and safety of the people of this world, forced to live in fear and oppression because the system had decided to fuck with them.

⸂This as well,⸃ the older man said, holding out another, smaller stone to her, the kind he had said could be used to hold magic sequences. He’d already given her a whole collection, now safely tucked away in the satchel Harmony had begrudgingly given her that morning in order to hold her weapons.

She hastily stuffed the apparently very dangerous black stone inside the bag, along with her notebook—vaguely wondering why she hadn’t put it in there earlier—before accepting the small stone. Unlike the other magic stones Zach had given her, this one was completely round with no engravings over its smooth, cool outer layer. She held it up to the sparse light, catching sight of what appeared to be engravings inside it.

⸂A message, for… for my father,⸃ Zach said quietly. He was looking away from her, his dark skin sweaty from the exertion of creating the black stone for her. He looked like he needed to go lie down—soon, before he passed out on the floor.

“From you?”

The man shook his head, staring off into the back of his shop. Something scuffed across the floor, and then his daughter was peeking around the door frame, her wide red eyes watching them anxiously. ⸂From my mother.⸃

Emilia swallowed, looking back down at the precious stone.

⸂When you can access the system, you may be able to find a way to take her words with you. If not, you may listen to it—try to relay the message to my father, if you find him.⸃ Something in his voice told Emilia that, for one, he would prefer she didn’t have to listen to it, and two, he wasn’t completely convinced she would find his father—maybe wasn’t even convinced that she would follow through and try.

“I will find a way to access the system,” Emilia promised him. He had faith in her—blind faith, but faith nonetheless—so she would have faith in herself as well. “I will find a way to get her message to him.”

Zach nodded, taking a shaky step towards his daughter. ⸂Little one, could you dissipate my barrier, so our guest can leave?⸃ he asked as he reached her, his hand landing heavy against the door frame.

The little girl nodded vigorously, eyes clamping shut. Her mouth moved slightly, reciting an optional summoning spell, meant to help her concentrate, then the barrier was gone, fading back into the aether.

“Thank you,” Emilia said to them, her hand wrapping so tightly around the stone that her nails dug into her palm. She needed to find a safe place to put it—safer than her bag, definitely. She smiled at the little girl. “Can you get your father to bed?”

The little girl straightened, looking offended that Emilia had even asked. ⸂Of course!⸃

“Good,” she replied, hesitating a moment before turning to leave the store. There was no good way to say goodbye to these people, no comforting words to give. She wouldn’t be back—couldn’t even if she wanted to, each visit a risk to their safety, a chance that the Risen Guard would visit them as well.

The door rattled open, and she stepped outside into the busy, late afternoon street.

“Alright,” she thought to herself, pulling the door softly closed behind her, “time to find that library.”