Arc 7 | Chapter 264: Another Pause, If You Will?

{Lopsided Shot} slammed into the wall, just inches from Darrian’s head, and suddenly the Free Colonier was right there, pressed up against him, grinning. Darrian couldn’t be sure, but he got the sense, not for the first time, that the man was trying to make him uncomfortable. It wasn’t exactly uncommon in PVP or virtual raids to use sex as a weapon, but the idea of this man rubbing himself up against just anyone, smiling up at them with that vicious, playful grin left his stomach swirling.

The man’s efforts were also wasted. Oh, Darrian knew the sort of energy he put out: straight and repressed, someone who fucked vanilla and wouldn’t dip even a toe over the line into kink. It sucked for both him—he was both kinky as fuck and swung any way his interest took him—and for the Free Colonier harassing him, wasting time and effort on a lost cause—Darrian would gladly take whatever the man was offering.

“Well… aren’t you just all muscle under all this fabric?” the man teased. Yeah, the guy was definitely trying to make him uncomfortable, his fingers sneaking under the hem of his

ratty

sweater—it wasn’t ratty, it was supposed to have all the rips and holes, thank you very much Leerin. “I bet you’re a sight naked… fucking into some man’s little hole…”

Darrian knew plenty of men who would be put out by such comments about themself—it really was a good strategy on someone who actually was straight, especially with how close their bodies were, with how the Free Colonier clearly wasn’t afraid for his own safety, knowing that any anger turning his way could be easily brushed off. Unfortunately, such talk was just making him horny—horny, and imaginative, the hypothetical man he was fucking definitely taking on the form of the Free Colonier.

It wasn’t really something he put much thought into, letting his CierSuit flutter into existence. Simeon had recently offered to modify everyone’s to include another, more subtle version. Only a few of them had taken him up on it so far—mostly the ones who faced echoes regularly—although he was sure they’ll all get to it eventually. It was just such a good defensive willbrand, even if it was only a matter of time before people started putting together that the strange defensive willbrands seen on Olivier, Boyd or Nettie—a result of their overzealous fans, able to spot even the subtle lines of the new version—were actually a new version of their CierSuits.

Once that got out, anyone who had ever been seen in one would become associated with Division 30. Helix was on that list, he knew, the man having been seen in his new CierSuit during an oddly large echo attack several months earlier. Now, himself as well—not that he thought this man would be tattling on him, but who knew.

What he did know, was he wanted to push back at the bratty man, and given the myriad of skills he had under him—include who knew how many core-ability-based ones—there was no way he’d be able to do so without risking a killshot. So, CierSuit it was—a little extra layer of protection. He also knew that there was a moment of strange recollection and realization on the man’s face as the subtle lines of his CierSuit slotted into place over his neck, a little crack in his confidence as his purple eyes—fake? real? it was impossible to tell, even this close, their faces just inches from each other—that Darrian took full advantage of.

One moment he was being pressed into the wall by the Free Colonier’s smaller body, the next, he had switched them, lifting the man up by his thighs—and fuck, were those thighs small—and slamming him to the wall.

“Are you offering?” Darrian asked, leaning in to breathe over the man’s ear, relishing the way the Free Colonier shuddered, his thighs flexing and twitching in his hands. Oh, the way the man must writhe in bed.

He was just about to say something else, the man momentarily quiet from shock—probably not from his words, but perhaps from the way he had switched their positions so easily; the man didn’t seem the type to be taken off guard often—when multiple messages from his cousins flooded into his mind. Several minutes previous—although, according to his Censor, it had actually been over ten—he’d received two messages from Leerin, but hadn’t been able to acknowledge them. Then, she’d gone silent. Now, with so many of his cousins were bombarding both his direct messages and pinging him in their team chat that something must have been wrong.

“You know,” he hedged, pulling back to watch the Free Colonier, to try and read what was going on in his head, “I’m quite enjoying our fight. I’d quite like to continue, but my annoying cousins are yelling in the chat. Do you mind if we pause for a moment, while I make sure none of them have actually died?”

The man blinked at him, his pretty lashes fanning over high cheek bones. This close, Darrian could see a smattering of freckles over his nose. Strange; they were lighter than his deep brown skin and should have been more noticeable, yet his unnatural eyes and oddly light hair made them less obvious from afar.

“Wouldn’t the raid let us know if someone actually died?” he asked, startling a soft laugh out of Darrian.

“Yes, but my cousins are so annoying I wouldn’t put it past the system to just let them die without calling aid,” he half joked—only half, because he wasn’t completely convinced the raid systems didn’t both favour and actively stymie certain heroes.

Anyone from Division 30 or The Black Knot… Well, it was more noticeable in virtual raids, but it could be seen with rewards for real-world raids as well: they were favoured, given bigger and better things. Intentional or not, Halen, Emilia and everyone else who had worked on the original system had left their love and hatred within it; the raid system also seemed to always be fucking with anyone their former classmates hadn’t cared for, much to everyone else’s amusement.

Halen’s younger cousin probably had it the worst. To Halen, he’d been an annoying kid, barely six when he’d graduated and always trying to tag along and generally making a nuisance of himself. To Emilia, being friendly with the kid had been an amusing way to annoy Halen, and then he’d been a member of their unit, long after his cousin had died at Alliance Ridge. Now, Halen’s cousin constantly found himself being both fucked over and exalted by Hail’s various raid systems, often at the same time. The raid system was very creative when it came to dealing with the kid who, despite technically now being a man, would always be a kid in the minds of many of the people who had known him when he was young, much to his annoyance.

The raid system was so strange. To Darrian, it seemed as though it had some sort of… personality—some amalgamation of Halen, Emilia and Simeon in particular. Finicky, petty, self-righteous and a bit vindictive, all while able to find fun in practically anything. If that personality clashed with a hero’s… it kinda fucked with them. While Darrian didn’t know of any cases where the raid systems had actual let someone die within it, it had definitely failed to report injuries properly if the hero was an asshole—especially if they had been a purist ass within the raid.

“It serves them right,”

Helix had laughed, nearly half a decade earlier, when he’d discovered this strange quirk of the system, finding the whole thing hilarious.

“The people who deal with the more nitty-gritty details of the raid system keep trying to figure out why it’s just not logging injuries for some people properly. They’re just looking at the code and errors though, not the people causing those errors, complaining there’s no rhyme or reason—no pattern to the system just not cooperating with them. If you look at the people, the pattern is pretty fucking obvious.”

“Are you going to tell your boss?”

Wyren had asked, his sister snickering as Olivier, his rarely seen twin cousins, Clovis and Axelle, and Rafe politely averted their attention, lest they hear something they’d feel obligated to inform some authority or another about. They were still listening, of course, but plausible deniability. Definitely helped that the Hyrat clones would never force anything out of them, so they could pretend they were innocent and knew nothing of interest to Hail or the government all they wanted.

Darrian couldn’t recall exactly what Helix had said to that—something about how Hail’s CEO would have been able to figure it out as well, if she actually bothered working, he thought—but nothing had ever changed. The system still refused to log injuries sometimes. Hail just updated their terms to include an obligation for heroes to report their own injuries, lest the system miss something. A few people complained. A few lawsuits were filed and lost. Life went on, and again, he doubted the system would actually let anyone die… probably. If it did, it would be over something far more worthy than annoying children.

“Oh… my cousins are fighting your syn teammate.”

“And they’re freaking out?”

“Uh… it’s hard to tell?” Darrian skimmed through more of the messages, trying to figure out why his cousins were freaking out so much. “I think one of the annoying younger ones offended the syn, so my oldest cousin stepped up to defend them?”

Darrian could tell by the look on the Free Colonier’s face even before he spoke that he was skeptical. “There’s no way they managed to offend the little syn. I mean, maybe if our other teammate was with them—we’re both really protective of our little silverstrain—but she’s nowhere near the syn.”

Given what else his cousins were saying—and a much more helpful message from one of the other heroes who had joined their group—several of his younger cousins had said some pretty disparaging things about the synat and their beliefs being utter shit.

Snorting, the Free Colonier—who seemed perfectly happy to remain suspended in the air as they paused their fight—repeated his belief that there was no way they syn would be offended by that. “That kid is a sweetheart. They don’t even correct people who misgender them. Are you sure your cousin didn’t just assume they were going to be upset and attacked, thinking to hit our little syn before they had a chance to strike first?”

The Free Colonier laughed—the sound light and airy, especially compared to the near-manic laughter of their fight—reading in Darrian’s expression that that may very well be the case. Leerin was hotheaded—not exactly something ideal for a support—and tended to jump to conclusions.

“Oh…” Darrian breathed out as he finally managed to figure out why his cousins were losing their collective shit. “Seems they didn’t start the fight until some of my cousins started throwing around purist language?”

Scoffing, the Free Colonier muttered that yeah, that probably was something their

little syn

would fight over. “They’re definitely the sort of fight to protect other people, more than themself. Those words wouldn’t bother them, but they’d feel obligated to fight for people who would be bothered.” The man’s eyes narrowed as he asked if Darrian held similar views about Free Coloniers or the synat.

“Fuck no. I have plenty of Free Colonier friends. My family is just… complicated, and frustrating. I can’t believe Leerin is even defending the little shits—I would have beaten them up. Not sure what to think about the synat, but it's not like their beliefs affect me?” That was actually a little strange, considering there had been synat in their unit. They’d always kept to themselves, though, probably because more than a few members of their unit had been asses to them, especially before Alliance Ridge.

The man’s eyes searched his, looking for truth or lies in his words, perhaps. Whatever he was looking for, it didn’t lead to an end in their conversation or him being killed. Instead, the man prompted him to continue explaining what had led to his cousins’ freak out.

“So, I think some of my other cousins went to help Leerin—that’s my older cousin—after the syn attacked her. There was a bunch of fighting, some of the random heroes they’d picked up left, and then a few more joined your group—a few of my cousins and some of the random heroes. More fighting, then, just before everyone started to panic, the syn just sort of… cancelled out all their skills?”

There had been several flickers of the power while he and the Free Colonier had been fighting, and he’d kinda assumed both were the result of the mob chasing the other two members of the trio activating too many skills at once. It was, rather unfortunately, not an uncommon occurrence in real-world raids, especially ones where people’s emotions were fraying… which the trio had definitely caused in his cousins’ group. Apparently, the last one had actually been the syn’s doing, purposefully blowing out the skills of everyone but themself and their allies.

That was… terrifying, and Darrian increasingly found himself hoping that Emilia was the silverstrain member of their group. If someone else was out there, giving Free Coloniers this sort of power…

“Oh! So it worked? We only got to test it once inside the training system.”

Once? They’d tested it once, and only inside the training system? That was… Forget about how skilled the hacker behind the skill had to have been, but for the syn to have used it

once

and be confident enough to use it in battle? For someone at D-Tect to have approved it as a private skill—one of the random heroes who had remained in the group but left the battle had sent him specs on the skills the syn was using when he asked, his annoying cousins alternating between amazed silence and annoying babbling about the fight—when it had never been testing in the real world?

“The silverstrain with you—” Darrian started to ask, only to be cut off by the Free Colonier.

“Is your former teammate?”

Startled, Darrian’s hands tightened around the man’s thighs. “You… knew?”

The man shrugged. “Guessed, when you brought this out,” he admitted, fingering the edge of Darrian’s jaw, where his CierSuit ended, before flicking his wrist and the bracelet wrapped around it—a willbrand, he assumed, despite the matte black finish. “We have our own,” he added, shifting into a slightly mangled version of Emilia’s sign language to explain that Simeon had made them all one. “I don’t think that was right,” he noted, trying to make one of the worst signs again.

Without really thinking, Darrian readjusted his grip, slipping one hand under the man’s ass so he could free the other and make the correct sign. The Free Colonier repeated the movement a few times before laughing, his eyes tilting into happy little lines.

“Hyr said I’d have fun this way. Little shit. I can’t imagine they didn’t know you were connected to Emilia. Well, I suppose they have their reasons for not sharing.” The Free Colonier’s smile fell away as they leaned in closer, their faces almost touching, the complacent man shifting back into the vicious creature he seemed to be as a norm. “Do not tell your cousins who we are. If the little syn wants them to know, they’ll tell. Got it?”

“Got it,” Darrian replied, already wondering how to bring the sweet, smiling version of the man back. Relying on chance and the commentary of Emilia’s teenage skills didn’t seem like the best plan. “I’m Darrian—Darrie—by the way.”

It took a long moment for the man to lean back again, sliding into something between his two personalities—someone less dangerous but still just as chaotic. “Conrad. You can call me Con, if you want.”

Yes—Yes, Darrian definitely wanted.