[Can’t Opt Out]

Emilia had just finished tugging a strap of her makeshift outfit taut, trying to get the more important bits covered—although she was sure that nearly everyone would consider her outfit far too revealing—when the aether rippled. At first, she thought that it was yet another monster coming for her, or perhaps the aethernet itself about to attack her—she had no idea where the thing that had stolen Rin the first time had come from, after all. Then, she felt the aether within her straps vibrate—specifically, the aether around the blood that still marred her clothes.

She’d thought it odd, when she’d been ripping the fabric into bandages in order to better cover herself, that blood had remained on them. As far as she’d been able to tell, however, the blood had been relatively inactive. It hadn’t swirled or melted or burned or done anything else that she’d come to expect from blood in the moments before it transformed into a weapon.

That was why, when her clothing shuddered around her, tightening until she gasped in pain, the idea that her clothes may finally be transforming into a blood weapon—or armour perhaps—didn’t cross her mind.

Instead, she panicked. Her clothes kept growing tighter, tighter—so tight that she quickly lost the ability to move her arms, her attempts to pull the straps stalled as she was trapped. Her breathing stuttered, her panic spiking, the straps pulling tight enough that they began to draw blood. Red seeped out of her, dying the already dark fabric nearly black.

Emilia wobbled, her body collapsing to the ground as whatever was happening bled her dry. Nothing left to give—she had nothing left to give. It only took a few minutes for someone to bleed to death—Emilia had seen that first hand on the front, had held the hands of friends as their life drained out of them.

It had been more than minutes.

The world was so cold.

Too cold.

Where had Rin gone?

Was she okay?

Maybe she had decided Emilia was too much work, left her here to die.

That was fair.

That was also incredibly unkind.

The least she could have done was say goodbye.

When was the last time she’d been left on the battlefield to die? Even Halen hadn’t been that cruel. In all his arrogance, he had still stayed. He had almost died protecting her—had died defending Alliance Ridge, even when he was far enough out that he could have left.

He hadn’t had to return, but he had.

The world blurred. Emilia’s eyes flittered shut, and she dreamed of the girl she had only known for a day—the girl she thought she had been becoming friends with. She dreamed of the boy she had spent three decades hating, who she still didn’t particularly miss. She still wished that rude, crass boy was with her now, though. Right in this moment, she missed him.

“Dumbass. Of course I’d stay to protect you!?” Halen had glared at her, his perpetually smug smile disappearing into anger and severity. It was so rare to see him take anything seriously. The only good things he’d ever brought to their unit were money and frivolity. War was too serious. Halen couldn’t be serious to save his life—or, he could. She’d heard that in the moments before he died. Halen taking the attack serious, for once.

It had been a terrible sign, of how horrible things were back at base, that even Halen was taking it seriously.

“We might not like each other, but you’re my teammate. I’ll fucking die for you, even if I think you’re a stuck up little princess.”

“Do not call me princess.”

“Why not? Your big shot lawyer does.”

“Because only he is allowed to call me that.” It was true. Even decades on, Emilia wouldn’t let anyone else call her that. She was a princess to herself and Olivier, and no one else.

“You know it’s weird that someone who isn’t your boyfriend calls you that, right?” Halen had mused as they walked, their aether so depleted they didn’t dare slide—this had been in the days before sparking had become a usable skill—lest they run into something they had to fight. “I mean, I could understand if he said it like he hated you, but that guy definitely doesn’t hate you.”

“He used to,” Emilia had replied, limping along on a makeshift crutch, her left leg broken in at least three places.

Halen hadn’t said anything about how Olivier used to hate her. Instead, they’d bantered and teased, as though he were a wholly different person in that moment. Perhaps it had been the reality that death might be coming for them when no one had any idea where they were. It had been almost pleasant.

Then they’d fought a monster, the aether spike drawing in their allies. They’d been returned to base, and Halen had become the same unpleasant little shit he’d always been.

Emilia didn’t mourn Halen, but she did mourn the person he had been in those moments—the man he had been when he tried to save the rest of their team, even if his attempts had failed.

“Halen,” Emilia muttered into the dark abyss coming for her. “If you’re out there, listening through the aether, know that I’m proud of you. It might not have worked out the way you wanted, but you tried…”

✮ ✮ ✮

“Emilia.”

Emilia blinked into the darkness, liquid life breathing around her, clear and depthless. “Halen?” she called. It had been so long since she had heard his voice. No, that was a lie. Hadn’t she heard a fragment of it in her dreams? Was she still dreaming? And earlier that night—the real-world night—too? When she’d been with Pria, dragging her towards the clinic. Explosions had been rupturing around her, and Halen’s voice had been there, in those memories her Censor tried its hardest to keep from haunting her waking life.

Halen stepped out of the abyss for her, wearing that signature smirk of his. One corner pulled up, his dark, sharp cut features just as beautiful as always. She’d thought his attractive when they’d first met, back when they were teenagers. It really was too bad his personality was shit.

“Hey there, pretty girl,” he said.

She’d forgotten he used to call her that. When had she forgotten? It was astonishing the things our brains remember, the things they forget.

“You know, I used to call my boyfriend pretty boy, back when I just thought he was a jock head.” Emilia glanced away from Halen’s infuriating smile. “I think I was channelling you. Not on purpose, but…”

“But you hated him just as much as I hated your prissy ass?”

“Yup!”

Halen laughed, not the laugh of the man he had been most of their life, but the one he had been for those few brief hours when it had just been the two of them, dying in the wilderness.

“What are you doing here, Halen?”

“You called for me.”

“Did I?”

“Fuck yeah, you did!” Halen peeked up at her, suddenly so close she could smell the expensive cologne he wore. Subtle. Some of the boys she’d grown up with were terrible for dousing themselves in the stuff. Halen never had. “Anything I can help you with?”

Emilia shrugged, looking away from his knowing eyes. He’d always been too good at seeing through her—too good at coming up with the most biting things to say to her. He’d been cruel to nearly everyone, more often than not, even to his friends. They’d stayed his friends, of course. Even within their ridiculously wealthy community, Halen’s family has loaded, and their only child had thrown that money around without a care in the world.

Money bought him friends, and Emilia remembered thinking about them at Halen’s funeral. Those so-called friends had been there, trying to make her feel bad for not being at base when the attack came. She’d already blamed herself so much for not being there—everyone who had been away from base had felt that overwhelming guilt for years afterwards—and she had been prepared for his parents to hate her as well. They hadn’t. Instead, they’d taken a moment to yell at their dead child’s money hungry friends before kicking them out.

“Your parents miss you,” Emilia told Halen suddenly, blushing at the abruptness of it.

He snorted. “Sure.”

Emilia shook her head, looking back at her old teammate and finding him turned away from her now, staring off into the distance, smile disappeared into the moment. “They do. I know you never felt like you lived up to their expectations, but you did.”

“Yeah, when I died.”

“Maybe,” Emilia agreed. It hadn’t been a secret how much Halen’s parents had thought him an entitled brat. Their parenting—or lack thereof—had been the cause of it, of course, so there was little comfort anyone could give him. Plus, for all his faults, Halen had been skilled in business—so skilled, that even if his parents had cut him off, he would have been just fine. “I know you would have made them proud eventually, if that’s what you wanted.”

Halen raised an eyebrow at her, golden brown eyes shining against his dark skin—not quite as black as Pria’s, but pretty damn close. “Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked, tone biting, even as a genuine smile tugged at his lips.

Emilia smirked back at him. “Seven fucked off.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Halen laughed, clear through the abyss of aether around them. “Well, fuck me. I never thought that little guy would find his balls. Don’t look at me like that! I know you thought that kid was a weirdo and needed to grow a pair!”

Emilia rolled her eyes, but didn’t deny Halen’s words. Seven had been odd, and definitely had needed to learn to stand up for himself. She hoped the OIC System wasn’t lying to her and Rafe, when it told them he was out there, slowly becoming as happy as he deserved to be. “I miss you.”

Halen snorted. “Yeah, right, and I’m fucking alive out there somewhere.”

“Okay, I miss you in moments like this, where I need a teammate who’s actually reliable.”

“Someone fuck off and leave you?”

“Looks like it.” She shrugged, eyes shifting uneasily around the area as something rippled through it. “She vanished, and I’m probably bleeding to death.”

“Awesome! Was it gory?”

“My clothes attacked me.”

“What?”

“I’m in a raid? Ah… it’s like a video game? They’re based on those training simulators we designed.”

“I didn’t think you liked that shit.”

“I don’t…” Emilia sighed, core trying to reach out, searching for whatever had attracted her attention. “I want the prize for winning.”

“Not something you can just buy? If people are using our software for shit like this, you must be fucking rolling in cash.”

She frowned at Halen. “No?”

Halen frowned back at her. “What do you mean, ‘No?’ That shit belonged to all of us.”

“I thought you ran it through your company? Your second-in-command took it over after you died and monetized it for the company.” She’d only heard about it after she’d left, and as much as she hated raids, the idea of entering into a long legal battle to try and claim some control over the software had been daunting to her trauma ridden brain.

Halen looked… comically shocked. “Sure… but it’s under all our names! Fucking nebulae, Em! Did you think I just ran it through my company and was going to screw the rest of you over? I know I can be fucking selfish, but—”

He cut off, growling and running a hand through his hair, messing up the picture-perfect style. He tried to activate a skill to fix it, frowning when it didn’t work. “What—”

“The raid. It isn’t based on our real-world skills.”

Halen did not look impressed. “Fuck. How much has changed in… how long has it even been?”

“About a decade and a half since you died. A decade since the war ended and all this started,” Emilia told him, her energy reaching back into her and reporting that it hadn’t really found anything—or, what it had found hadn’t exactly been dangerous but was also a big question mark as to what it even was. “These raids have become so popular now, I bet it's been a few times longer than that for most people now.”

“Fucking Virtuosi System.”

Emilia laughed at the vitriol lacing through his voice. They’d only added the Virtuosi System’s time skew into their training simulator to save time. Halen in particular had never liked the system, but she wasn’t sure why. Even when they’d been cooperating, trying to create the simulator, he’d been tight-lipped on that.

“Em.”

“Hm?”

“Why didn’t your non-dev lawyer sue to get rights to the system? He was one scary fucker. There’s no way he finds out you lost out on control of something that could do all this and doesn’t sue.”

She opened her mouth to say something—to explain that she had run away and Olivier likely hadn’t seen the point in suing Halen’s company over something like this, especially not as he was recovering from his own injuries—when the world shook.

“Ah… looks like our time is up,” Halen sighed, giving her an almost kind, melancholic smile. “It was good talking to you again, Em. I mean, there’s a lot of people I’d rather talk to, but at least you are what you are, and won’t lie to me or some shit.”

“Halen…”

“Goodbye, Emilia,” her former teammate said, stepping backwards and disappearing into the abyss. “I’ll see you again.”

Emilia stared into the spot he had just been, gone as though he had never existed in the first place. “Bye…” she whispered, wondering over his words—wondering if he really had set things up so they would all control their creation. Wondering if some part of her had known that and this was how her brain had decided to tell her, or if it was their software itself, using the avatar of one of its parents to tell her the truth.

Unfortunately, even if they did sue, their software was already out there. She doubted any court would order the government to cease using it, just because one or two of its creators popped out, a decade later, screaming about how they hadn’t given anyone permission to use their creation for real world or virtual, war simulations.

And they’d never stop the corporation sponsored or blackaether raids.

The world shook again, and Emilia gazed up into the sky. How different would the world be, had Halen lived? Had his second-in-command respected his wish that all of them control the fate of that software they had created in desperation.

⸂Emilia!⸃

Emilia smiled, breathing in the pure existence of the abyss. So clear and empty, and her mind floated away—floated back to her body, a smile still echoing through her eyes as they opened and found Key frowning down at her. “Hello, Key. Glad someone came back for me.”