Arc X.1 | Chapter 300: Interlude | Project Piketown Infiltration 1

“Oh, come on, Sorvell~ tell us what happened~”

Sorvell didn’t bother looking at Moriana. He had already told the Junkaiden he would not talk about what was happening on Ship’o Stars—twice. He would not tell the girl a third time. It wasn’t that he blamed everyone for being curious not just about what Emilia was doing there—not that he had much more information than anyone else, other than that there was a second, terrifying little Free Colonier from stars knew where with her in addition to the syn—but about what was happening with the Zentaris.

Neither of those things were his to talk about, especially not to anyone from the Free Colonies. As much as he had spent the majority of the last decade splitting his time between Byshire and the eastern Dionese border, where his exchange program’s main offices were located, talking about things having to do with purism was difficult; a touchy subject, even in their increasingly tolerant world—theoretically tolerant, anyways.

It didn’t take a genius to read between the lines of some media to see the nationalist sentiments that some production companies and writers were attempting to spread. It was usually subtle, but there, this difficult to quantify quality in the way cultures were spoken of, in the way foreigners were treated. Nothing as overt as was seen in pre-war media, that fact alone enough to let those small aggressions against other nations and their beliefs go ignored or brushed aside as

not that bad

, as though impressionable teenagers and young adults weren’t still internalizing the things they saw their favourite actors doing and saying through the bodies of the characters they brought to life, and fuck!

He was starting to sound like his father—or worse, his older brother. Sorvell, always a bit of a rebel and so totally unsure what to do with his life, had never managed to make it through secondary education, while his father had been the Dean of Yurndale University for over thirty years, only leaving when the war began. For nearly a decade he had worked to research the monsters of war, using his academic background to help establish the program that, through its analysis of each species and their behaviour, had saved more soldiers’ lives than they would ever know—more lives than his father, his accomplishments forever held in the background of other

war heroes

, would ever receive credit for saving.

Then, his father had died at Alliance Ridge, his last words to Sorvell ones wishing him a good day climbing The Strats, and a soft warning not to mention to his brother—the revered

Doctor Vickers

because he wasn’t even

just

a war medic but a fucking doctor who went to school for decades to earn himself the title—that he was

blowing off work

to go climb.

Joke was on his dad: anytime his brother gave him shit for blowing off work now, all Sorvell had to do was bring up the fact that taking a day off had literally saved his life.

Asshole.

Perhaps it didn’t help their sibling relationship that he had long ago accepted that he would never please the older man. Now, he was constantly sending his brother taunting messages—no, he had no idea why the brother he’d hardly seen since their father died hadn’t just blocked him—as he did now.

[

Sorvell:

Blowing off work to fuck with Emmie’s shit ex. You’re free to join~

]

There was no way his brother would join, even if he actually seemed to like Emilia… maybe? Sorvell was pretty sure they’d had some sort of kinky sex in his clinic at least once—yes, he had been horrified to learn his brother had fucked not only his patient but one who was nearly a century younger than him

and

that it had probably been some weird medical kink shit—and he was almost positive his brother was one of the few people to not at least suspect she was enrolled at Astrapan. Why? Apparently she was due for a physical, and everyone had collectively decided he was such an asshole he’d probably show up at her dorm room in order to kidnap her for it, should he ever find out where she was.

So, no information about where Emilia was for him. Although…

“Uh… can I take a message back?” Sorvell asked, despite already knowing the answer was no.

Axelle—who had surprised everyone by actually showing up to their impromptu gathering in Piketown in order to set themselves up for an extended stay, all with the goal of making Emilia’s ex and his friends pay—glared at him, her dark grey eyes nearly hidden under the hair she had recently dyed a similar shade of grey, the bangs hanging shaggy over her forehead. “No.”

Well, someone was in a mood. Admittedly, Axelle had taken Emilia’s vanishing act harder than most of them—everyone from The Penns had just sort of accepted that Emilia was a free spirit and would come back whenever whatever was happening with her was sorted out, while all her contacts from her days travelling with Miles were used to not hearing from one another for long periods of time.

Axelle, on the other hand, had once been a longtime fan of Emilia’s anonymous hacking persona, and when she managed to meet her idol? When she’d finally managed to count Emilia among her friends? Sorvell was sure that was the best day of Axelle’s life, each little bit that Emilia taught her, each second they spent together, a moment of such pure happiness for Olivier’s cousin that it was contagious. Where normal Axelle was serious—stern in a way that had led her to become friendly with people like Hurinren and his own stupidly serious brother—Axelle with Emilia had been sunshine enough to match the brilliance of Emilia and Helix.

That Axelle was long gone, nothing remaining but a hard, cold young woman who was known for brutally destroying anyone stupid enough to go up against her in court or in the raids she loved so much. If a number of them suspected she loved raids simply because they were a far removed connection to Emilia and Halen, none of them were stupid enough to bring it up.

Axelle was fucking terrifying when she was mad.

“Why do you want to take a message back?” Wyren asked, having sparked down from Nur’tha with his sister—although where Nyren had gotten to, Sorvell had no idea—in order to partake in their plan as well.

For the moment, their plan was just to set themselves up as friends of Olivier who had come to support and visit him while he was in Piketown, working on the Alver Slums Case. On top of Olivier’s cousins—some of whom had been part of their unit, like Axelle, some who were just here working on the case, and others who were close enough to Emilia or the unit to be trusted with details of the situation—a collection of their Free Colony members would be coming as well, many of whom had never bothered denying their membership in Division 30.

It was well known that every Gru who had joined the war had been a member, while a number of Emilia’s contacts from her years gallivanting around as the spoiled child of the nation’s top diplomat had outed themselves early in the war, using their parents’ power to leverage support at a time when only Baalphoria and a few of the eastern and southern Free Colonies were experiencing attacks.

Most of their Baalphorian members had never been publicly named, but those who had would be stopping in. Some of them would be staying in the building they were currently moving into, which had been up for sale and quickly secured for their use—there were a lot of them, and buying the building had seemed the most cost-effective. An army of Hyrat clones were currently helping them outfit it with everything they could possibly need for the few months they planned to be there for, and a number were moving themselves in due to security concerns. Those concerns were, unfortunately, growing every moment; that was a problem for the clones, though.

The rest of them had other concerns, namely how they would be spending the new few months: shifting between supporting Olivier in court, just hanging out, and ruining Emilia’s shitty ex’s seasons—there was still a week left to make the end of this season suck.

Other public members, like Nettie, would be visiting often, something just about all of them were thankful for. Nettie and Simeon might have gone off and popped out a few kids, but the rest of them were staunchly child free!

Yes, Sorvell realized it was weird that he wasn’t exactly fond of kids despite teenagers and young adults being the main clientele of his exchange programs, but still! He was on vacation, and he didn’t want crying, whining, sticky fingered children around!

“Because I accidentally told my brother what we’re doing,” he told Wyren, after the qur had turned back from his conversation with a clone about securing seats that were more appropriately sized for the bigger frames of northerners. “If he wants to figure out where Emilia is, it won’t be hard.”

Wyren leaned in towards him, the sudden shift in his weight sparing him from an elbow to the head when Meerik’za awkwardly sparked in behind him, already muttering about how he

didn’t use his temporary Censor enough for this shit

and tugging the metal band off. Forget about ruining Emilia’s ex’s seasons just on the basis that no one could survive an army of the continent’s most powerful soldiers coming after them, just having so many people who had only raided once or twice and rarely ever wore their Censors was going to cause utter chaos.

“I think,” Wyren whispered, his hand even coming up to cup his mouth, as though the entire table and every clone wandering through the otherwise empty dining room carrying furniture, weren’t listening to his every word, “Emilia might have to accept that we all know where she lives.”

“Plus, she probably needs that physical~” Yujao laughed, having allegedly come in Hurinren’s place. Something in his eyes when h’d said it, however, had implied they shouldn’t be surprised if the Blood Rain General’s heir—or worse, the Blood Rain General himself—suddenly popped in to show them all how much they would never stand up to the pinochle of Dionese soldiers. “I remember her being chased through the Summer Palace by the court doctors when we were teenagers. She had to be forced by Jiaonai Lo Shintai

and

Hurinren to sit and let them look at her! There was a giant gnash on her leg and she was bleeding everywhere! It was all green and gooey! You could even see bone! Pretty sure she’s lucky she didn’t lose the leg.”

Meerik’za, who had been stealing food from one of the many Hyrat clones lingering about and making use of the expensive fabricators Yujao had stolen from the Dionese Embassy—normal fabricators just couldn’t make foreign dishes the way the embassy ones could—gagged on his food, one of his partners—and when had so many of the Seer’s partners popped in?—stepping forward to gently pat his back.

“It was pretty gross,” one of the clones said before stuffing another bite into his mouth.

“Emmie sent photos,”

he added, a moment before everyone who hadn’t removed their Censor—Meerik'za really lucked out there—had a photo of a teenage Emilia’s horrific wound forced into their minds.

“Yeah! That’s the one,” Yujao sighed, dreamy like the strange little thing he was. The man waved one graceful hand through the air, as though brushing aside the image with physical movement, rather than his brain. The aether sparkled in his hand’s wake, flower petals falling off his robes before exploding back into the universe. Like many of the robes that members of the Dionese Inner Court wore, his extravagant robes had designs capable of affecting the aether woven into the fine fabric, this particular set a light green with what must be at least six gauzy pink layers building up a scene of summer flowers blossoming over it.

It was beautiful, and Sorvell ached to reach out and run his fingers over the designs. He might have, if he didn't think the little monster didn’t have deadly designs covering him as well. Yujao might look like a child, with his small frame and feminine features, even his voice high due to castration when he was still young, but he was one of the few people Sorvell had ever met who could kill without skills, without core abilities, without even his willbrand. It wouldn’t even matter if his target used skills or core abilities in return—most people didn’t have the sort of defences capable of stopping Yujao.

Sorvell would have to be fucking stupid—or very drunk—to try touching the Dionese man without explicit permission.

Still, he kinda wanted to tempt fate, just a bit.

“Since when is your stomach so weak?” Axelle was asking Meerik’za over his coughing and his partner’s soft coos.

Which partner even was that? Someone new? Or someone Sorvell had forgotten? While his company worked closely alongside the Seers—Seer’ik’tine was still one of the safest places for Baalphorians to visit, and it was often where he started most of his programs, if only because his contacts there were excellent at scaring the shit into the kids, ensuring they were on their best behaviour for the rest of their programs—he rarely had a chance to visit himself. Although, from what he understood, Meerik’za had been spending a significant amount of time in Zironia since the war anyways.

Most higher cast Seers had a tendency to keep or join harems. Not always, but often enough, and Meerik’za had been collecting partners since well before the war began. How many was he up to now? It was hard to tell, so many having died during the war, or left once it ended—no one was ever under any obligation to stay, not with Meerik’za, anyways.

This particular man, though… Nope, Sorvell had no idea who he was. At least a few of the people fawning over Meerik’za he knew, although there were far more than he had been expecting…

“And here you said buying the entire building was overkill,” he muttered at Olivier, sitting quietly at his side while he worked through the very rushed documents that had been needed to buy the building so quickly. “We’re gonna need an entire floor just for Meerik’za… and possibly a floor between him and anyone else. You know how loud they can get.”

Olivier peeked a pale blue eye open at him. “Yes. I suppose I do unfortunately know. I still do not see why this couldn’t wait until morning.”

“Momentum~” Sorvell teased, bumping shoulders with the man who had once hated his father so much for letting Emilia into his classroom he had threatened to quit, spitting curses at their entire family line—although, not to his father’s face, not that that had stopped his father from hearing about it through rumours that he had teased Olivier with until his death—and telling his father that he was insane if he thought Emilia was doing anything other than torturing him because she had somehow settled on him as her last chance at beating the manslaughter charges.

Did Olivier know his father, who had brushed the lawyer’s concerns aside, had been perfectly aware of just how much of a nuisance Emilia could be? Much like Emilia—like all of them, really—his father had known that Olivier really was her last chance, and letting her remain in that class despite her behaviour had been what he had surely considered to be the last kindness he could give her, before she was inevitably found guilty.

The fact that Olivier had eventually agreed to take the case? That he had won and changed hundreds of years of shitty precedent, and then gone on to break more unreasonable laws for the next decade, then gone right back to doing it once the war was over and his wounds had healed?

Yeah… that was yet another thing he father would never get credit for, this roundabout way in which his actions had protected the lives of so many vulnerable people. Maybe Olivier would have found himself on this path anyways, maybe not; it was impossible to deny, though, that his father had played a small part in it, every action Olivier took a small memento of a man who had died sending as much information as he could off into the aether, hoping someone could use it to stop a second Alliance Ridge.

They had stopped it, all because of him, a man whose accomplishments would never be acknowledged because no one cared about the people who supported the war behind the scenes, only those who became heroes on the front.

Yet, Sorvell knew his father would never have taken credit anyways. It was the same for him, for his brother, for Emilia and so many of their other teammates. They didn’t need to be famous, and they certainly didn’t need their fame to drown out the heroics of all the people who went so ignored by their world, always so obsessed with Division 30 and their secrets, their power.

So, no, Sorvell would never seek to take credit for his part in the war, but neither would he run from it the way Leerin was. While his father’s connection to Olivier gave him some leeway for why he was visiting the man and getting together with both him and his Division 30 friends, this might very well be the thing that finally outed him.

Sorvell was okay with that.

Emilia was worth it—every one of his friends and former teammates was.