Arc 7 | Chapter 260: Were I Not Myself

Were they a different person, someone incapable of reading the flow of the universe, tasting the intricate lines of fate, woven through the aether, Hyr might have found themself baffled by this turn of events. They were themself, however, and the world flowed, their mind falling with it.

Hyr had heard stories from the elders—from the various synat Bur and the syna of other tribes—of prejudice from the Nur'sa. Before arriving at Emilia’s school, they had never experienced such feelings themself, save perhaps from Eruzia, who they actively avoided when they could. For the most part, those few kryfa’Nur’sa who had married into the tribes since the beginning of the war—as well as the occasional person from before—were expected to be accepting of their ways, of their abilities.

So this, coming across a collection of people who seemed profoundly upset that the synat could see some amount of the future—or, in the words of one member of the group, that

the northern barbarians claim to know the future

—was an interesting experience, as was the way the woman stepped in front of the group, intent to protect them from… what? Did she expect them to attack her companions—relatives, most likely, at least some of them—for their words?

Yes, that seemed to be the case. Interesting. Hyr wouldn’t attack them—what business was it of theirs whether these Baalphorians believed their sight were real or not?—but the fact that this woman assumed they would was interesting, as was the fact that even though she appeared ready to defend them, she was still telling the rest of the group to be more polite.

She didn’t believe, yet she wanted her relatives to not say what she herself likely felt.

She wanted them to be

polite

—to keep their opinions to themselves—yet she would defend them against Hyr’s retribution and anger for their disregard of who they were, of what they were capable of.

Hyr didn’t much care about anyone’s opinion of them—as previously noted, they knew perfectly well that most kyrfa’Nur’sa did not believe unless directly affected by their seeing, as Emilia had been—but the hypocrisy of this woman…

No, Hyr didn’t particularly care for that hypocrisy, especially since one of the Gru contacts they had been given by the hy Gru—Nyren pyr Gru, a former support of Emilia’s unit—had gotten back to them in regards to the woman’s comment about how making synat fight during the war had been difficult.

According to the pyr, the woman—who Nyren confirmed was Leerin Zentari, another member of their unit, some bubble of destiny having brought her to this place at the same time as Emilia—had never really liked many of the northern members of their unit.

“It is difficult for me to say why,”

Nyren had explained in her long, winding message filled with broken Baalphorian and Brylish and the occasional word from some other language Hyr did not recognize—communicating with pyr through anything other than voice, cores or the aether itself was always difficult, but while the most powerful pyr could communicate of long distances, Ship’o Stars was outside of even Nyren’s reach.

“My guess is it was our other leader, Colonel McIntyre. That man always hated us, and those who leaned his way followed. Rexanti may never have explained their sight to anyone, but they would never move us into danger for simple peace and destruction. Rexanti—or Hetexia—would argue with the Colonel and refuse to move. As he did not believe, that man came to view synat as difficult, when Rexanti simply refused to let us move to our deaths so needlessly.”

That was what Nyren said, probably. Hyr had needed to read between the lines a few times—and admittedly, their own ability to read Baalphorian needed work, while they had no idea what many of the other foreign words Nyren said meant, instead relying on their Censor’s translation function for each individual word, as it was just as baffled by Nyren’s code-switching—but that seemed… accurate. During the war, the synat had collectively decided to keep their seeing from the Alliance, although several specific sights had been shared with various Free Colonies over the decades of war, and several of the hy had become known for their ability to correctly guess where enemies would appear, courtesy of synat giving their hy their sights.

Baalphoria, as well as numerous Free Colonies, did not believe in their abilities. A number of the most powerful ones did, but prejudice was so powerful that they had all collectively decided to keep their sights contained to those who would believe. Dion, Falrion, Mitine Dyn—although that strange place had largely kept to itself and been excluded from their discussions on how to work around prejudice while keeping as many people safe as possible—and a handful of smaller Free Colonies.

If someone—Rexanti, the late syna Gru, perhaps—had bothered to share some of their sight with Emilia, would she have believed back then? Would she have been able to twist the views of her peers—both within and without her unit—and make them believe as well?

A sight shattered through Hyr, so powerful their breath caught, pulling the woman—Leerin’s—attention back to them. It wasn’t a new sight to them, nor one of the future. Rather, it was an alternative past, one where the war had been lost, the monsters left to ruin this world—a sight Hyr had been experiencing, much to their general upset, since they were a child.

Blinking off the sight—they had no intention of being lost to that nightmare while still in their waking mind—Hyr stepped forward, letting the fall that the aether had been urging them towards take them.

Leerin might believe their abilities were fake—some excuse to not fight, if Hyr was reading between the broken lines of her and Nyren’s words correctly—but Hyr had no intention of letting her continue to look at them like that: like they were nothing but a nuisance. Her denial of their abilities was one thing, but their disregard for their person, was another.

“Fuck,” the woman cursed as Hyr was suddenly there, reaching for her, sending her shooting unevenly backwards and fumbling into one of the people in the group she didn’t seem to be related to—not unless they had a much shorter, dark-skinned relative, anyways. “You said you were going to wait until I was ready!” she hissed, blue eyes glaring into them.

Tilting their head, Hyr assessed her. The waves of aether within her shifted, her core pulsed with the weak vibration of a good Baalphorian who had never dared touch it. “You have been ready for some time.” The woman had been prepared to launch an attack at them since even before questions regarding the synat’s abilities arose.

Leerin’s glower darkened. “Do not read me syn,” she spit out, straightening as she erected a barrier behind her, locking the rest of the group out of their fight—none in the group were powerful or skilled enough to break that barrier. Regardless of her beliefs on the synat, the woman was clearly a skilled support.

“Hey!”

“What the fuck!?”

“Leerin! You bitch!”

“Let us out!”

“No! You can’t have him!”

The last comment dragged a groan from Leerin. “Seriously? You know your parents will kill you if you try to get with a Free Colonier?”

“Get with?”

Hyr thought, reading through a notification from their Censor about the meaning behind the words. Needless to say, they had no intention of

getting with

this random young woman. Would she be disappointed? Given the way she was raging at Leerin—as well as several other relatives who had piped up to tell her she

could do better than a lynie anyways

—perhaps she would be?

Hyr was unsure, but it wasn’t exactly their problem. Rather, they were mostly just losing their patience—an impressive feat, considering virtually all synat were known for their patience once they reached a certain point in their training. While they didn’t particularly care much whether these people believed in their abilities or not—although someone who Emilia may very well consider a friend being so adamantly disbelieving was likely to cause problems—the group throwing around derogatory words was unacceptable.

They

might not be affected by such words, but other Free Coloniers would be, and while Hyr had been content to humour the group and let them sort out their situation while they bought time for Conrad and Emilia, now, they were just annoyed.

Walking away would have been the best option, but Hyr’s friends needed more time. So, Hyr would have to stay, and show them exactly how powerful—how untouchable—a synat utilizing their full abilities could be.

“This is a skill I’m adapting for you,”

Emilia had explained about {Shattering Glass}.

“During the war, most Free Coloniers would just use their abilities and not bother to interface them with their Censor. There were a few exceptions to that, including {Shattering Glass}, which we coded because the ability was so useful we wanted other Free Coloniers to be able to use it. Training core abilities, especially with the intention of using them during war, takes far longer than training a skill.”

“Not to jump in where I’m not needed~”

Conrad had teased around a mouthful of food—Hyr still found it odd that both Emilia and Conrad liked to eat in the virtual world, despite the food only reaching their taste buds, and possibly energy levels, in Emilia’s case—

“but the skills she’s talking about also made it easier to tamp down on power output from core abilities that hadn’t been properly trained. Personally, I like using my core directly more, but I have excess control levels. One or two rounds with an ability, and I can output it from max to min. For most people, it takes far more.”

The man’s eyes had flickered over Hyr, reassessing them yet again. Ever since everyone had realized how powerful their core was, how big their aetherstores, Hyr had caught their friends eyeing them up numerous times, searching for… something. Hyr wasn’t really sure what, but it was noticeable.

“I do not require many times to master my control,”

they had admitted, staring Conrad down—looking away from a predator like him would do them no good.

“However, I do require more than once or twice.”

“I’m going to give you a few core-based skills for that reason, assuming you know nothing similar already. Within a raid, though… the control aspect will make them safer. A few of the skills are definitely things that if used directly by your core in the middle of a raid could trigger the system to think you were acting dangerously.”

Emilia had rolled her eyes, muttering about how it was insane and definitely based in purist ideas that, even after a decade, the raid systems would still label certain things as

dangerous to other heroes

simply because the person was only using their core.

{Shattered Glass} was similar to one core ability Hyr had, and while they itched to just use their core, they instead kept Emilia’s words in mind. It would not do for them to be ejected from the raid simply because they were annoyed with the woman and her family.

As though sensing their thoughts, Leerin finally turned back towards Hyr. Her gaze was sharp, unrelenting, judging. Judging what? That they had attacked her without warning—Hyr would argue once more that they had warned her they would attack when she was prepared, and she certainly had been. Besides, the group the woman was associating herself with had been attacking their trio without warning for over half the turn of an hour.

More hypocrisy.

Hopefully, she was not a good friend of Emilia’s. There were few things Hyr could not particularly tolerate in the people they surrounded themself with, and the noxious air of someone who could not make up their mind about their values and morals was one.

Everyone had that air, of course, at least to some extent—even Emilia, despite how strong and outspoken she so often was, had it, especially when she had been killing Clarity members. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about it, but Hyr imagined Emilia knew killing them was necessary, but hated it—hated being in the raid itself, perhaps; perhaps even hated that she’d ended up there due to her own need to end up here, on this ship.

A feeling of refusing to think about it

surrounded her, Hyr supposed. Perhaps some amount of fear that if she confronted her feelings on raids and the AIs who inhabited them too hard, she would come to look at the people who enjoyed raiding and killing as monsters.

Hyr understood that—they too looked at raids with a strange feeling of

wrongness

, which had only intensified over their time in the raid. They had saved that world, which would not exist without heroes willing to desecrate and mutilate it, but was the cost worth it? They didn’t know, and they didn’t think Emilia did either.

On the complete other side, Conrad, for all that he held darkness inside him, was actually one of the least bending people Hyr had ever met. They had spoken about it, during their time training in the virtual world. Oddly, Conrad was not a good person—something he willingly admitted, laughed about—and instead let his love for his older brother, for Emilia, perhaps a little bit for Hyr as well, now, lead his morals. It wove a strange energy around him—an acceptance that he knew he would never be good, that he may never truly agree with half the beliefs he was told to hold and follow, but he would anyways, trusting that the people he loved would keep his soul safe from corruption.

That was how they’d ended up here, wasn’t it? Emilia encouraging Conrad to let a little of his darkness out, searching for the trio who had spoken so badly about her, about them, looking for connections to the purist terrorist.

Hyr didn’t have much darkness inside them, but for their friends—for the people who wouldn’t be capable of standing up to people like this group before them; not all of them, some amount of the group, including the girl who wanted to

get with

them, looked exceptionally uncomfortable with the sudden topic of

lynies

and

genetic superiority

, and were either arguing or leaving the group behind—they would pull what little there was out.

{Shattered Glass} ripped past Leerin, the skill purposefully given more physical form than necessary inside raids in order to

scare the shit out of other heroes

, according to Conrad, and collided with her barrier. It exploded into a constellation of lights and fragmented aether, leaving a line of sharp glass across the ground.

“Fuck,” the woman hissed, bolting towards them too slow.

She was no longer Hyr’s priority.