Arc 9 | Chapter 392: Consequences are a Future Problem

“Yeah… that won’t be happening, like, ever,”

Emilia told the woman, pressing more aether into the skill she was using to keep her pinned against the wall. Even if the woman would eventually figure out how to get at least minimal attacks through the junk skills, Emilia wasn’t letting her get free. Unfortunately, most skills weren’t meant for such sustained release. Instead, they were activated and generally stayed in their activated form for a set period of time or slowly dwindled out of existence—that was why the clones were so valuable in Baalphoria, as they could easily deactivate a person’s Censor, so less aether-intensive skills could be used to move them if they resisted arrest.

Currently, Emilia was using a skill that would eventually drain her aetherstore as it continued holding the woman to the wall. While Emilia had enough aether within even the smallest of her quite frankly too large aetherstores to sustain the skill for a few hours, with how chaotic things were at the moment and the time required to refill aetherstores, she didn’t exactly want to put too much into this situation. The alternatives, however, sucked: either letting the woman go, so Emilia could attempt to grab her using another skill—something that pulled physical substance around her, to keep her still until she broke out, by which time they’d hopefully be far, far away—or kill her. Emilia wasn’t exactly against killing the woman—she’d basically demanded she be allowed to kidnap the little lavender code, after all, and was clearly a criminal—but neither did she want to do so too hastily.

At the same time, there was Olivier to think of, and yup, never mind. It was time to pull out the parts of her soul that had been twisted by the clones and all the other black knots she knew, by the Blood Rain General and Wander as well—people who had seen the brutal realities that too much empathy could create. Empathy was great, until someone you let live broke back into their old ways and slaughtered children, destroyed cities, burned nations to ash. Emilia could leave this woman to escape—hope that they’d never meet again. Most likely, she’d just go find other lavender codes to kidnap.

Behind her, the sick person pulled the wide-eyed child closer to their chest, looking like they fully intended to die before letting the child go with the woman. They had volunteered to return with the woman, if only she left the rest of them alone. For how fearful they seemed of what would happen to the child if they were taken as well… just how horrible was this woman and whatever organization she worked for—unless she was acting the minion at the moment, there was no way this woman had the personality or power to run any sort of criminal enterprise, even if she was benefiting from nepotism or something. Plus, if she were the leader, why would she come to retrieve this person personally?

The man from before, with his arrogant swagger and well fitting clothes, with his lazy and yet impossible crisp drawl of casual Lüshanian, flashed through her mind. Coldly amused green eyes peeked at her, only visible through the eyes of her Censor’s awareness because she had refused to take her own eyes off the Drinarna officer. That man… he had been powerful—powerful enough that he probably could run some criminal empire. Yet, something hadn’t seemed right, and Emilia didn’t think he was the leader of whatever group he belonged to. High up, yes, but something… something in the idea of him being right at the top didn’t fit.

That was all neither here nor there, however.

“Can I kill her?”

she asked, refusing to look away from the woman as she cut off her rambling about how

there was no escape

and

they’d catch all their little runaway bugs eventually.

Honestly, the woman’s voice was grating, and filled with so much slang and context-based language that Emilia was struggling to understand more than the basics. The people behind her clearly understood what she was saying, so maybe if this all worked out, she’d ask them what was up… assuming they were down to travel with her for a bit. They could stay here, or go off on their own, of course, but now that she’d found them and was offering to kill for them, she felt rather responsible for them!

“What!? You? Kill me!?”

the woman screeched, although Emilia had set her Censor to just translate her words into text while muting her. The woman’s struggles to get free intensified; Emilia intensified her various skills in turn, Censor warning her that she was better off releasing the containment skill and reactivating it. Annoying, and impossible—the moment she let that shit go, the woman would be flying towards her.

Behind her, the man and sick person exchanged a glance while the child grew increasingly restless in their arms. It was while her Censor watched the child move, their tiny hands tugging too nimbly at the drawstring of the sick person’s sweater, that she realized the child was older than she’d originally assumed. Instead of being the toddler she had assumed, they were just small, their body seeming more that of an emancipated toddler, rather than a five or six-year-old losing their baby fat… and probably malnourished as well. If it was possible, they seemed even smaller than she and her siblings had been at that age, their body seeming both short and skin and bones, and Emilia’s heart ached for them, for this horrible life they and so many children were perpetually given.

“You… can,”

the sick person rasped, their eyes boring into her back,

“but her boss won’t like it. If they find out it was you, they’ll chase you down. Make you pay.”

“Do they have any reach in Baalphoria?”

she asked. While she visited other places, she wasn’t too worried about any reach they had in Dion—few foreign criminals had much of a foothold there, while the Inner Court had issues with other, more insidious forms of internal violence completely unrelated to the

mundane crimes of the regular population.

As for other places… Well, if the group found out she was behind killing the woman, she’d deal with the ramifications to her ability to visit other nations then. Worst case, she’d have to destroy the entire criminal organization! Annoying, but potentially doable, especially with how many crazy friends she was turning out to have!

Hesitating, the person replied that they didn’t think so—that the organization’s reach was contained more to the nearby and western nations. The woman just laughed and said they had reach everywhere. Emilia didn’t think she was a very trustworthy source of information.

“Will the organization’s wrath come back on you?”

she continued, already knowing the answer was likely yes and that she was going to be left convincing these three to at least go find a clone or the Baalphorian embassy so they could get them out of Lüshan. Hopefully, whatever was happening with the Drinarna’s corruption was neither related to whatever was happening here, nor would it blow back so badly that they’d be left attempting to smuggle anyone out. Hopefully everything would settle and Wander would tell her to take the group—tell her to try and give them a better life somewhere else, even if life as a Free Colonier in Baalphoria would suck. Maybe they’d be better off somewhere like Seer’ik’tine? She’d offer Dion, but given their history with Lüshan… Then again, from what she’d seen and heard, their animosity tended to be rather one-sided—Lüshan had been the one constantly being taken over by Dion, after all—but most of her allies lived within the Inner Court, and getting anyone new in there was difficult.

Baalphoria or Seer’ik’tine, then, assuming she could get them to cooperate with her on the whole trusting her and leaving Lüshan thing.

Shrugging, the person muttered that it probably would be thought responsible for the woman’s death.

“Someone will know where she is. They might not know she found me, but—”

They broke off into a fit of coughing, their companion trying to scoop the child from their arms as they leaned over, tugging the mask from their face in case they threw up. Unfortunately, with the angle, the child managed to wiggle free, their little legs bursting across the ground until they were colliding with Emilia’s leg.

“You’re like me,”

they whispered, gazing up at her, the hood of their sweater falling from their head. A tuft of short silver hair lodged itself in both Emilia’s Censor and her heart.

Not just a lavender code, but a silverstrain. If she could look down—look away from the woman she had pinned to the wall and her struggles to break free—would she be able to see silver specks in the child’s eyes? Usually, the purple eyes of a silverstrain were slightly lighter than those of a lavender code. The main difference, however, was the silver specks that scattered through their eyes—this small detail that differentiated their eyes. Would it be there in this child? Depending on the order of the genetic spasms that had made them what they were, or the way in which their parents’ irregular deviations had collided together in utero, they might not.

Either way, to be both…

“Even better,”

the woman hissed, her own eyes glued to the hair that had previously been hidden under that hood, probably pulled up to keep Emilia from seeing it because people were terrible—because in Chinsata silverstrains of all ages were valuable for sex and slavery and every other horrible thing normal people didn’t dare imagine.

“You’ll fetch a—”

No, they weren’t doing that—weren’t subjecting a child who had likely already spent their short life listening to people say terrible, disgusting things about them to more talk about selling them. One second the woman was talking, the next Emilia was pulling the child in front of her, shielding their eyes, and the woman’s neck was snapping. After a second of thought, Emilia destroyed the corpse as well, burning it away and funnelling the fumes and toxic chemicals into a glass bottle she pulled together from the aether. Mildly, her Censor revolted against the onslaught of so many resource intense skills without rest. Her brain buzzed in an accidental high from momentary overuse as well, before it settled, and she was finally able to glance down at the child tucked into her thighs.

“Hello,”

she said, letting her grip on the back of their head loosen so they could peer back up at her.

The smallest of silver marks shot through their irises, so soft that if they dyed their hair, Emilia had no doubt few would guess they were also a silverstrain.

“H-hello!”

they said, stumbling over the more formal greeting she had given them, their deep brown cheeks darkening slightly. Cute—they were cute, and she was so fucked.

Humming, Emilia squatted down, her Censor still keeping track of the two adults behind her. They didn’t seem like a threat at the moment, but when a child was involved, things could turn any moment—although… did this child belong to either of them? Attempts to find even the smallest of remembrances between the child and the adults failed. Were they just a child the adults had found on the street, then? The child of someone else who lived there? Someone they knew? Someone who had died?

That was all sad. Emilia’s own background was sad, but this child… No. Fuck.

The more Emilia looked, the more she could see certain markers in their little face that told her it was unlikely they’d suffered some genetic spasm that had left them not looking anything like their biological parents, as sometimes happened. Instead, even young as they were, she could see the cut of features more common in a collection of interconnected Drinarna families layered through them. If she had to guess, given the child’s age and all the rumours she’d heard when she’d visited six years ago, she might even be able to guess who the child

should

have been loved by—an officer who likely couldn’t bring themself to love a child whose power could never be covered the way they themself dyed their hair and pressed coloured contacts to their eyes; yet, that officer also hadn’t been able to bring themself to kill their child either. Had they just left the child on the street? Emilia really hoped not—she really didn’t need more people on her hit list, thanks.