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Arc F1.8 | Chapter 37: Tumbling Down

One of Sorvell’s skill latched around Darrian and Westrial, hauling them out of the line of fire—a good thing, given there was no way the defensive skill Darrian had activated would have stopped that attack, and if Baylor hadn’t already been terrified, that would have done it.The reality that his friends might have been taken out by the lavender code…

Here was where the fury fully took over. In the background, Baylor was aware that both his brothers and Halen were messaging him—and fuck Halen for having the ability to peer into his vitals and be able to tell that there were now about his mental state.

Fuck Halen.

Fuck everyone.

Fuck Olivier for getting kidnapped.

Fuck Emilia for being a bleeding heart who would go after him.

Fuck this entire fucking city—he would burn the whole bloody, corrupt place to the ground.

“Baylor!” Taelor yelled—some failed attempt to pull him back to reality as the fury overtook him.

It had been a concern, when he was younger, that one day he would snap. Up until this moment, he had never snapped. It seemed like a good time to snap, honestly. A war was breaking out around them, every message that come through from Halen’s group—and fuck his brain for thinking of it like that when it could just as easily be Simeon or Rafe’s group—filled with more descriptions of the chaos they could see popping up throughout the city.

Smoke rose. Abilities sent the aether warbling. The crash of willbrands erupting into weapon forms shuddered through the air, leaving behind lines of brilliant colour.

Baylor’s own willbrand shuddered in anticipation, the lavender code having pulled themself back into a building. Behind him, Taelor was still trying to get him to come back, but the fact that Darrian and Westrial were saying nothing, each of them blinking into the distance as BJ knelt beside them? Sorvell had done a good job, tugging them out of the way so quickly, but it had been a rush job—something brutal and violent that would definitely be leaving its mark over both.

Darrian’s vitals screamed of nausea and bruises forming over his skin. BJ was poking at Westrial’s ribs, and Darrian would be next. Halen’s implementation of Emilia’s stalking skill was impressive for something that had been done in so short a time; it wasn’t tested enough to be trustworthy—it wasn’t tested enough to be trusted with Darrian’s health.

If Darrian had been able to say something—to call him back—Baylor might have listened. Taelor’s calls weren’t enough, while Valor was being ordered within their triplets-only relay to keep to the plan: pretend to be the weak brother, the unassuming one.

Taelor was the one in charge, always, but Baylor had never been the sort to be under his brother’s control at all times. Oh, he enjoyed being there, make no mistake. Baylor enjoyed pushing at his older brother until he was snapping and tugging him over his lap. Down would come his pants. Down would come a hand, leaving sharp smacks over his ass until he was rutting against the leg under him and coming.

It was something Emilia liked to, and it really was too bad Taelor only had one lap—this wasn’t the sort of thing Valor was into. Although their baby brother wouldn’t leave the room if he or Emilia—or occasionally both of them—got into being naughty little brats for Taelor, neither would he come seek them out while they worked Taelor up into a tizzy either.

The difference between their personalities was often such a visceral thing, Baylor thought. He pushed. Taelor demanded and punished with brutality. Valor was just mean, using slow fucks and ropes to drive them mad.

Had Taelor been the one to have found himself rolling out of the way of another attack by the lavender code, Baylor knew he would have bolted back to the rest of them. The three of them would have remained while they sent the others off. Had it been Valor, wearing this current mask of trepidation, they would have run—hauled Westrial and Bireth over their shoulders and microsparked as best they could to safety.

They weren’t out there, was the thing. Rationality had never found a home within Baylor’s brain, and instead, he pressed forward.

The calls of his brothers fell away—not Baylor pushing awareness of them out of his mind, but the two tucking their concerns in tight. They wouldn’t demand he return now that the smallest distraction might get him killed.

A collection of skills slotted their way into his mind—gifts from Halen. It had taken the other boy forever to figure out how Emilia’s glitter bomb skill worked. The of it lasting weeks was something that was locked away within all of their brains, as it wasn’t something meant for anyone else to see—wasn’t knowledge that anyone but their friend group, plus Halen and possibly his more reasonable friends, were allowed to know even the basics of.

Eventually, Halen had figured it out, he and Emilia exchanging those long-lasting skills through their brutal use on one another. Occasionally, but not always, those skills would be reverse engineering. So, despite the ability to leave skills a horribly persistent thing originating with Emilia, Halen had many such skills as well, and they all knew from Olivier’s bodyguards ranting about Emilia’s glitter bombs that even a coding lavender code couldn’t disrupt them—who knew? Not them! They didn’t have any lavender codes to test the skills with—although, maybe the little baby silverstrain-lavender code would help them test some of their skills one day? Assuming Nivel could get them back to the embassy—assuming they wouldn’t be caught in a lockdown there.

Problems for later.

Another item from Halen slotted itself into him as well, this one a mode for their war simulation function that would add the skills Halen had just sent him into its knowledge base as well as calibrate its recommendations for fighting a lavender code. Had the other boy already had such a thing prepared? It had been mentioned by Olivier’s group a little bit ago that Fräthk had a lavender code—and , his brain reminded him—but that seemed like too little time for even Halen to have designed something like this.

Bolting towards the building, dodging this way and that as he worked to avoid the attacks coming at him from the lavender code—attacks that were far too controlled, given what he knew of coding lavender codes—Baylor sent a message to Halen, unable to resist asking about it.

If he were going to die, he wasn’t about to die not knowing how Halen had come up with a lavender-code-fighting mode so quickly. It was stupid, but Baylor was fine being a little stupid, especially since he was purposefully taking a bit longer to get to his attacker—mostly, he wanted to gauge the lavender code’s abilities, wear them out a bit, and give the others a chance to retreat. None of them were too happy about fucking off, but too bad for them—just him dying in this fight would be bad enough, they didn’t need more casualties.

Halen said, and yeah, Emilia had. The question, Baylor supposed, was whether this was the same lavender code that Emilia had felt, as well as whether it was the one Levi’s group had discussed.

Demanding that Halen make himself useful and ask around, in order to determine if Fräthk had more than one lavender code working for him, Baylor surged forward, unsurprised to find a lavender code who coding attacking their group. That would make killing them easier, but it was strange—strange enough that Baylor continued on as though he were fighting a coding lavender code. The last thing he wanted was for the bitch—a tall woman with limbs that seemed too long for her body and a short, blunt cut of tight curls—to start coding and cancel out some attack or another.

No… much better to just go along with Halen’s stupid suggestions of how to deal with a coding lavender code—and it was soooo fucking annoying that it was a good plan. The audacity of Halen to actually be good at battle strategies! Had Baylor already known the other boy was good at strategy, after nearly fifteen years of facing off against him in prank wars, combat classes, and the occasional recreational game? Yes, but sometimes skills in such things didn’t extend into the real world. It really fucking sucked that, in Halen’s case, it did extend into real, life-and-death situations.

Fuck him for being so perfect.

Stupid Halen and his stupid Halen face and stupid Halen perfection.

Baylor’s willbrand slammed into a barrier created by the lavender code; immediately, he microsparked to the side, shifting himself into the building as the place he had just been standing collapsed into a cosmic glare of pure aether. While he had never fought a lavender code before, Baylor knew well enough that his various Perfect Levels would grant him protection against attacks by the woman. That didn’t mean he wanted to push his luck.

Fortunately, while even a lavender code who wasn’t coding had overwhelming Control Levels—Levels that far exceeded even those of a Dyad with Excess Control—their Expansion Levels tended to be on the lower side. The result? Under circumstances, only someone with Perfect Control Connection Levels could affect the area within their Expansion Zone; and when they were coding? Then, it was virtually impossible for skill or core ability to penetrate or find purchase within their Expansion Zone.

Outside of that space, however, skills and core abilities would still work. Hence, as long as Baylor didn’t linger within the woman’s Expansion Zone, he could slap down a collection of the skills Halen had given him, along with some of Emilia’s. Normally, timed-release skill would warble or outright collapse once touched by a lavender code’s Control—there wasn’t enough room in the aether for both a lavender code and anyone else, especially for timed-release skills. Skills that utilized Emilia’s perpetuity—although, outside of Coral’s old school, all of her and Halen’s skills didn’t sustain that perpetuity into a true forever, instead limiting their scope to under a month—however weren’t , and would instead continue to exist even if a lavender code exerted all of their Control directly onto the skill.

Baylor, sending bullets of pure aether at the lavender code through his willbrand—which while primarily utilized as a blade was also a gun—pressed skill after skill into the building. None of his attacks would reach the woman fully—while physical willbrands could hurt lavender codes, the shots of aether could only penetrate their Control slightly more effectively than a skill or core ability would. Still, even his haphazard attacks were clearly annoying the woman—good, considering that was the whole point.

Smacking another skill onto the wall, Baylor sent a surge of annoyance down his connection with Halen. How dare the other boy talk directly into his mind without his consent!? Was he in no way about to open up his relays in order to read anything the other boy said? Yes! Regardless! Consent mattered!

Baylor asked, more skills slamming out of him, creating a cascade of what would become the death of the lavender code. For as powerful and confident as the woman was, coldly chasing after him, trying to bring him back into her Expansion Zone, she clearly had the Deficient Awareness Levels that were common, although by no means ubiquitous, amongst lavender codes as well; in other words, combined with her likely having little experience with Baalphorian skills, the woman had no idea he was leaving skills in his wake, which, to be fair! Even clones who hadn’t grown up alongside them had needed to have specific training, in order to feel out some of Emilia and Halen’s creations, as beautifully seamless as so many of them were.

The point was, had she noticed them, the woman might have had the sense to get out of there before he lit the match and set each skill raging. As it was, she raced past them unawares.

Halen replied, telling him that regardless of Bireth being a baby Drinarna, he had still be able to evacuate the few people in the nearby building with barely any effort.

Apparently, for as corrupt as half the Drinarna in the city were turning out to be, they were still respected by regular people. That was good—Baylor didn’t think Emilia or Darrian would like it much if his takedown of the lavender code killed a few locals; he didn’t know Westrial well enough to know what she thought of any of this.

Baylor asked, sliding the map of the building Taelor and Valor had been making into his mind and letting Halen’s stupid war simulator function create an ideal escape route for him. As expected, it was perfect and led him to a doorway that would lead him into the now-evacuated building next door. If his attack on the lavender code didn’t succeed, he’d now have another chance to take her out over there.

There was a beat of hesitation before Halen admitted that yes, he was. he muttered, and that was weird?

Why would Halen care if Emilia would be sad if he died? Maybe Rafe had threatened him? Or Simeon? As that incident back in the cave system had proven, Simeon could be a terrifying bitch! Yeah, clearly that was it: the combined risk of Rafe and Simeon’s ire if he died and Emilia was hurt had led Halen to care about him. Self-interest at its finest, clearly.

If Baylor didn’t entirely believe this line of thinking, that was between him and his brain, and he was not going to be reassessing his logic at this time: he had a building to blow up.

The moment he was out of the building, Baylor let his skills rip. They cascaded into activation—dozens of skills, designed for their prank war, for destroying Coral’s shitty school, for blowing shit up during fuck-knew-what activity. Everything collided into the perfect breakdown of the structural integrity of the building. Had Baylor tried to do this with normal skills, he would have needed to stand still and let a recon skill map out the beams holding the thing up, the layout of the foundation and load-bearing walls. Then, he would have needed to hit dozens of specific places with perfectly placed and perfectly powered skills in order to collapse the thing.

It would have worked. It would have been a lot of set up.

In the end, there was a reason why demolition crews still existed: blowing up a building’s supports with physical explosives was significantly easier and safer than doing so with skills was.

Emilia and Halen’s skills, though?

They did the job beautifully. What little Baylor was able to see as he turned back, sending a volley of aether shots from his willbrand at the lavender code—who wasn’t coding, and that was weird, right?—was glorious. The walls cracked, like the earth itself splitting under the force of an earthquake. Between Halen’s finicky, future proofing of all his skills, and the pure brutality of what Emilia’s mind could inflict upon the aether and all that existed within it, the building never stood a chance.

A grin split across Baylor’s face when he was graced with the moment the lavender code realized she was about to find herself entombed in a collapsed building. The look of horror—that brief moment of her realizing that, for whatever reason, she hadn’t been taking him seriously when she should have been.

The problem with lavender codes, Baylor had heard from dozens of clones, was that they were so powerful they became overly confident.

an older clone, who had been tasked with teaching the three of them and all their friends about lavender codes had explained, back when they were teenagers.

This lavender code tried to code, in the last seconds of her life. She was too slow. One second, the aether was trying to bubble with her power, the next, the building was tumbling down upon her.