[Can't Opt Out]

Arc F1.9 | Chapter 14: Not Quite Willing to Give Up Just Yet

The worst thing about the teenager’s abilities? They weren’t really meant for attack or defence.In some ways, the teenager could manipulate things so that things could become her attacks or defence, but it wasn’t something so simple as just or or Cravena was a useful partner because she could be directed, her flames becoming the teenager’s power. Currently, Cravena was busy fighting off someone who have been one of Fräthk’s people?

It was exceptionally unclear. Neither the teenager nor Cravena had recognized the other woman, but that didn’t mean a lot—Fräthk had a lot of people, after all. A freakishly large number of people, if they were being honest. For someone as crazed and inconsistent as Fräthk was, the teenager had no idea how they managed to recruit more people into their employment. Did working for a criminal organization count as employment? Somehow, it both did and didn’t feel as though it counted.

The teenager rolled, tucking herself behind the least flammable object in the area as Cravena’s flames surged. While the woman was occasionally trying to keep the teenager safe from her flames… well, it wasn’t exactly going well. The woman who had attacked them was a wily thing, surging through the world with wild and unpredictable movements. Cravena, also somewhat unpredictable and possessing a battle sense that lent her an innate ability to fight with brutality, also wasn’t used to having to worry too much about not burning the people with her to ashes.

was probably why she and Cravena had never been teamed up: the woman seemed to lose herself in the fight, and while she remembered the teenager was there…

Yeah, the teenager needed to get out of there. Currently, her hiding place was keeping her safe. She doubted it would work for long.

Unfortunately, without Cravena, she would have ability to defend herself. Even using her core for brute-force attacks hadn’t been something she’d ever needed to do, so while the teenager understood the basic concept of to use her core to blow up another person, it was possible that, were she forced to use her core to do so, she would fail spectacularly.

Even more unfortunately, going back to Fräthk—or being captured by another criminal group—was a better option than dying in Cravena’s flames. Her life with Fräthk had never been , but the teenager also hadn’t been so set in her obstinate refusal to cooperate with them that life had been terrible either. Did she want to work for that freak? Absolutely not. She’d join Gëon’s group, if she had to choose, but she also wouldn’t die in some failed attempt at freedom. At the same time, the teenager thought that for all Cravena seemed a hard-hearted woman, she would actually be a little traumatized if she realized she’d burned the teenager to death when the battle was over.

In other words: time to crawl, crawl away~

Within the teenager’s mind, a map stretched out. The area she had just run through slotted itself into place, alongside every other place in the city the girl had ever been, right down to the hospital she had been born in. She remembered her birth—remembered the warmth of her mother’s stomach as well. That early on, she couldn’t see, of course, but she had possessed other senses.

Sound had been a blur through amniotic fluid, but she could remember her parents’ voices. They had cooed to her—promised her a good life, promised they would always love There had been warmth, love, light shining down through eyes that wouldn’t be able to see the faces of anyone as more than blurry blobs for weeks.

The world that she remembered, in those first moments of life, had been a blur—a bump of movement through the world, her abilities latching on to every sensation, reaching so far through the aether that she had spent years distressed. Her parents hadn’t known what to do.

There had been so many visits back to that same hospital, her parents trying to find a way to help her deal with an irregular deviation they had no idea she had. So, the map laid out inside her mind contained that hospital, several blocks away—the teenager had been trying to keep their group from getting too close to it, as she didn’t want to cause problems for the staff and patients—and every place they had ever stopped on their way to and from the hospital. Her home—her parents’ home, no longer a place where she was welcome—was there as well, tucked away within her mental map of the city, a short run away.

It wasn’t the sort of place she could run back to; instead, it had become the place she ran away from.

So much for always loving her. In the end, her parents really had meant they would only ever always love

Annoying places she could never forget or not—memories she could never remove from her mind as well—the teenager was able to use what she knew. As she hadn’t been in this specific area for a while—and they really had run quite a ways from the holding cells at this point—it was likely her map wasn’t perfect.

It would have to be good enough.

When she’d been young, the girl had often switched between wanting everything to be and wanting everything to be . It had depended on her mood—and the specific way the aether and her awareness were tugging on her brain that day. One of the easiest ways to soothe the itch for the familiar had been to demand her parents take her to the hospital via the same route—not always, but sometimes. The teenager could remember seeing people slipping in and out of a few strange doors, their eyes shifting over the world and catching on hers.

Some had winked. Others had pressed fingers to their lips, giving her a small conspiratorial smile.

Now, the teenager knew those doors—those cracks in the organization of the city—led into the tunnels, or perhaps the sewers.

Either way, she was willing to bet those entrances, at the very least, were still there. Such things were rarely closed; rather, she had learned that, if the city wanted more control of an entrance, they had some new business or home built around it. Then, somehow, they forgot about it half the time—surrendered it to the new owner of the building to deal with. That was how the criminals of the city came to control parts of the tunnel system.

It was a terrible way to manage the tunnels, and really, the teenager had come to conclude at some point that adults were idiots who didn’t know what they were doing.

As she moved, crawling down alleyways, keeping herself as low to the ground as possible as blood dribbled from her nose—in no world did she want to be caught by another attacker when she had little ability to protect herself—the girl’s mind floated back to Olivier. The guy… he had both seemed to know what he was doing and been impossibly accepting of the fact that he had no idea what he was doing. It had been refreshing, to have this beautiful, confident man easily admit that while he was doing his best, he really wasn’t the best suited for this sort of thing.

Even better? The man had easily admitted that he was using things created by other people to figure out what to do.

he had admitted at one point, shortly after they had escaped the holding cells, back when they’d been together. The man’s fingers had brushed over the aether splattered across his chest, the teenager’s eyes constantly drawn to it because it was…

The teenager didn’t know how to explain it. That aether had been perfect and obscene, all at once. She could still feel it, a gentle tug on her senses through the aether, despite how far off it how was. It was just so unique that the girl didn’t think she would ever forget the feel of it—didn’t think she would ever forget the feel of Olivier’s silverstrain friend’s aether either. It was the heart of that aether mark, pulled into perfection—so beautiful as to be breathtaking.

The teenager wanted to meet that girl— according to Olivier. Surviving this terrible place and situation for herself was important, but there was something to be said for surviving just so she could meet Olivier’s silverstrain friend as well. Brilliant and so bright that the teenager could feel her as well, moving too quickly for it to be .

What had she done? What secret passage under the city grid had this found that would allow her to move like that, and was she travelling through whatever that strange method was for Olivier? Or perhaps Xavier?

The girl hadn’t mentioned it to Cravena, but she had felt it, the moment those two had been split apart, that beautiful aether—a skill, Olivier had called it—shuddering apart in what felt like a sundering of perfection.

had gone wrong—someone had broken those two apart in a way that they shouldn't have been. —something the teenager couldn’t explain, didn’t know the meaning or cause of—seemed to have grown between Olivier and Xavier in that moment of them being splattered with aether meant for Olivier alone. The little boy had already been quite attached to the Baalphorian man before that moment, but after?

Shaking herself—there was no point in letting her thoughts linger on the connection that she had seen blossom between Olivier and Xavier at the moment—the teenager scooted down the final alleyway, searching out the door that would lead her into the tunnels… or the sewers. She would take either, at the moment, the world an increasingly searing place, smoke suffusing the air. Annoyingly, she hadn’t been able to catch Cravena’s attention before taking off. Hopefully the woman wouldn’t assume she was had accidentally been burned to death?

Without any way to leave a message for the woman—Cravena’s awareness, both in the genetic and general sense, was notoriously lacking, and she probably wouldn’t find even the most obvious of signs that she had run off—the teenager hesitated for a breath before leaning all her weight on the board that was blocking the doorway into the depths of the city. Garbage, she thought. Some sort of construction material, by the looks of it, taken out back to be picked up, come garbage day.

Considering the general state of disarray they had created in the district—not to mention the warring criminals and whatever was happening with the Drinarna and the government—the girl wished them luck.

The board was heavy, but pressing their weight into it at the right angle, the girl was able to shift it enough to get to the door. Her hand hesitated on the handle. This was it: the moment of change and no return.

The door could be locked and she’d have to find somewhere else to go. Cravena might panic to find her gone. She might never see anyone ever again, all of them becoming question marks within the others’ heads, left to forever linger.

In her case, they wouldn’t even have a name to attach onto her.

If she died, she wouldn’t even have a name to attach on to herself, her soul fading nameless back into the aether. What a way to go. Hopefully next time, she’d be born in a body that matched her soul. If the girl had known for sure that she would be happier—more complete—next go around, she might have stuck around and risked letting Cravena’s flames and the aether take her. The girl wasn’t so sure, and she certainly wasn’t ready to leave this world, hard and cold as it so often was.

This—this liminal moment of holding herself between the depths and the flames—was also her last chance to give her family one final chance. The city was descending into madness, and a small part of her did want to go and warn them. They could try to get out of the city, maybe. A little piece of love for the parents who had cared for her, back when she’d still let them believe their son anything but an error within the fabric of existence, lived within her heart—probably always would, regardless of the cruel words they had thrown at her.

Sireth had told her, thirty-seven days ago, after having gotten permission to take her shopping for new clothes. The woman was one of the few members of Fräthk’s loyal, being loyal to their captor because she had a daughter who needed protecting from Fräthk. That protection came at the cost of Sireth’s cooperation with whatever their captor wanted.

Some people, in the end, were worth all the effort—were worth every drop of life from one’s bones.

Her parents weren’t worth it—chances were they wouldn’t believe her, would deadname, misgender, spew vitriol at her, if she dared show her face at their door—and the teenager turned to latch, the door to the depths swinging open just wide enough for her to slip into the darkness. As she slipped through, the teenager’s eyes caught on the words slathered over the board that was still partially blocking the door—the name of a café her mother used to take her to, their backdoor backing up to this alleyway.

Every time she’d seen someone slipping through this doorway, the girl had held a pastry in her hands, delicious and messy and dripping over clothes she hated.

her mother would laugh, unable to reprimand her child because that child had been sick and unable to manage an unknown irregular deviation well, unable to articulate neither what she felt of the world nor what she felt inside.

Despite so many of her memories of childhood being terrible, layered over with an unhappiness she had both intrinsically known and been unable to figure out, the girl did have good memories.

Memories of the bakery were one of them, and the teenager slipped into the depths of the city, memories of sugar on her tongue.