Conrad’s new CierSuit slid over him like a second skin and if he hadn’t used one in the past, Emilia would… well, she wasn’t sure what she would do, but it would be big.

  CierSuits had been one of the things Division 30 had been best known for, using the full body willbrand armour for a significant portion of the second decade of war. Their black, red, purple and occasionally white suits—the colour had largely been based on personal preference—marked everyone who came across them as members of their unit. They were the demons of the front, sparking in in suits that offered cooling over their Censors, enhanced computing features and armour that all but the most powerful monsters had difficulties breaking into by the CierSuit’s final form, created just days before that final strike.

  CierSuits had come into use shortly before The Flaming, which was part of why their identities had accidentally ended up so unknown. While occasionally Emilia—and she was sure other members of their unit as well—could feel other veterans looking at her, perhaps wondering if she was the same person they’d met earlier in the war, most people outside of the brass only remembered them with their faces perpetually covered. The Flaming had wiped out most people’s records of their life before it; therefore, images of them without their CierSuits on had been all but wiped out among the general populace… most of whom didn’t want to either piss them off nor out another veteran—it was pretty accepted that you never talked about another person’s military service without their consent.

  That little twist of fate might be largely what allowed her and the other, anonymous members of their unit to live their lives more normally, but it also left a strange taste in Emilia’s mouth because while CierSuits had been perhaps the most reliable defence during the war’s latter years, they were also, unfortunately, obnoxiously expensive, an additional ore called mytrite—found only near the Moonlit City—needed for its production. Just getting enough mytrite for their unit to upgrade their CierSuits as needed had been difficult, and had only happened due to a join effort by several hy and Norvel and The Atrium—all of whom were all but perpetually locked in some sort of military alliance with the Moonlit City, as far as she knew.

  The point was that only two other units had ever received CierSuits, all of which had been created by herself, Simeon and Master Shaw—they hadn’t wanted to risk anyone in the military deciding that invading the Moonlit City was worth it, so had withheld the design from them, something they still continued to do.

  A few high-ranking officers had also received CierSuits, but Emilia knew all of them. She also knew all The Black Knot members who had received one, which only left the mysterious organization that pretty much no one knew anything about. They had handled their own resonance code calibration, so Emilia had never met any.

  Until now, probably.

  Technically, Conrad could just be that skilled with willbrands, but even the most run-of-the-mill willbrands required a bit of getting used to—that’s why they’d scheduled a bit of time for practicing within the training system, accurate willbrand representation and use being on one the things Simeon had been responsible for programming into it, decades earlier, although a little real-world practice was needed for the initial connection to a new willbrand.

  Conrad and Hyr were supposed to activate their willbrands in the real world, then their information would be scanned into the training system and in they’d go to train.

  Except, Conrad clearly didn’t need training. Rather, his movements in his new CierSuit—which Simeon had redesigned since the war to have two forms, the original, full-body version, and one that was much more subtle and meant to fit under the owner’s clothing—were flawless. Yeah, there was no way the man had never used one before, his CierSuit even shifting between the two versions with only a ripple of a pause while he acclimated to the new form.

  Emilia glared at the man, and when his eyes flicked to her, all he did was smile, all knowing teeth and slanting eyes.

  “Seriously?” she asked, glaring harder when he shrugged.

  “You have your secrets, I have mine.”

  “Emilia’s secrets are not secrets from any of us,” Hyr noted from several feet away, where Simeon was attempting to help them activate their willbrand. As willbrands used aetherstores to activate, rather than cores, it always took Free Coloniers who came from places that exclusively used cores a bit to figure it out. Luckily, once they were activated, they interfaced with the person’s Censor, so they tended to be easier to use. Just challenging to initially activate for a bit. Getting a few drops of aether out of the syn to bond the willbrands—one still secret, hopefully—to them had also been a massive nuisance, but they’d eventually managed it.

  “Yeah! That’s right!” Emilia pouted. It really was rather unfair that the pair of them knew all about her being in Division 30—something she suspected Conrad had already guessed at, even when they were in the raid, and had definitely figured out after Samina’s comment and then all the pictures on Simeon’s walls, which featured too many publicly known members for it to be a coincidence.

  As for Hyr… well, they had known from the moment she introduced herself as the general of Hetexia’s unit, but she also had the feeling they knew more than that, and not because Hetexia had spilled her secrets. Perhaps it was their connection to their aether, but Emilia had a feeling the syn knew exactly what role she’d played in ending the war.

  …

  …

  …

  Unfortunately, she had to admit that Conrad might have realized that as well—how, she had no idea, but especially now, with the way he was watching her, knowingly. Arrogantly.

  Asshole.

  “Fine,” he said, perhaps anticipating that she was about to launch herself at him and beat the truth out of him, as he let his CierSuit return to default form: a thin, black chain bracelet he had chosen during its initial utilization. Like most willbrands, it could be changed into different forms with a little help from the owner’s Censor, but without active thought, this was what his CierSuit would return to, much like her own willbrand returned to necklace form by default. “You’re right. I admit it.”

  “Does your group have a name?” Simeon asked, taking a step back as Hyr once again tried to activate their general combat willbrand and… nope. No luck.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Come here,” Emilia said, motioning the syn over as Conrad explained that their unit probably had an official designation, but they’d actually never referred to themselves as anything other than the unit. Hyr wasn’t quite frustrated yet, but she could see it bubbling under the surface. “You can feel my core, right? Do you think you could feel my aetherstores?”

  Tilting their head, Hyr considered her before nodding. “Most likely. The synat largely teaches by showing and feeling. Feeling you may help.”

  Unlike cores, which were always located in the lower abdomen, aetherstores were located in several areas of the body, and in each person, the distribution and strength of each storage space varied, as did the person’s connection and ability to utilize each. Most Baalphorians tended to focus on the stores that were near their Censors, tucked into either side of the base of their skull, while Free Coloniers often pulled from the ones that surrounded their cores.

  There had been some attempts during the war to make them use other ones. Not only did pulling from the stores near their core sometimes cause issues—pulling from the core when they’d meant to pull from their aetherstores and vice versa —but they’d eventually discovered that those aetherstores offered extra protection to cores. They were a cushioning, of sorts. As a result, emptying intestinal aetherstores had made core cracking and outright destruction more likely.

  Getting anyone to use different aetherstores was difficult, however, even Baalphorians who had larger or more powerful stores elsewhere in their body often defaulting back to their skull aetherstores, especially when panicked or fighting on instinct.

  Hence, it was important to start students off on the right foot, and classes covering aetherstores often started their lessons by attempting to force new Censor owners to use different aetherstores. It… was not super successful, unfortunately. Using a different aetherstores than felt normal was the equivalent of trying to force someone to write with their non-dominant hand. It could be done! It also took a lot of practice, which largely involved a lot of meditation—not exactly a known favourite of Baalphorians.

  So… how to make sure Hyr wasn’t putting themself at risk by overusing the aetherstores around their core, preferably in a way that wouldn’t take months of practice.

  “Wait here, just for a sec,” she cheered, microsparking to Simeon’s Virtuosi Rigs and plopping down. They weren’t quite as cutting edge as Sil’s, but were still ridiculously good, and it took only a few real-world seconds for her to pop back up, a new skill programmed into her.

  {Body Scan ver. TTBK.astore} was her expansion of a skill that was used by both medics, as {Body Scan}, and The Black Knot, as {Body Scan ver. TTBK}. Technically, the TT also stood for some edit that was used by someone, but she had no idea who. Helix had also created another version of it recently, for the crew of the ship he was on for his silly reality show. That version would stop working at the end of the season because the skill was, quite frankly, invasive.

  It could see so much of a person. Every ache and injury. Their mind spinning out of control from one emotion or another, each listing off, so medics could treat the emotions while The Black Knot could exploit them—although, her Censor informed her that Helix had semi-censored some of the information from the crew, and further censored more from production. Apparently, it had only been used a few times throughout the season, so far. Once, when the chef was pretending to be asleep—what?—another time when a guest was seriously injured—oof—and… no, that couldn’t be right.

  [It is right.]

  Emilia had caught bits and pieces of Helix’s show over the last few weeks, thinking it would be both stupid—she’d been the stupid, entitled Penns bitch on several vacations, and seen more than a few of her friends and classmates be it as well, and knew how obnoxious they could be—and difficult to watch because, well, it was Helix. Sweet, kind Helix, who had apparently done so much more for the ship than his contract entailed.

  Yeah, she was probably going to end up binge-watching it during her downtime over the next few days. Maybe some of her friends would join her, silly as it was. Then again, Samina was liable to fuck up and say something about knowing Helix, and he was definitely not out about his service in D30. So… maybe not her. Everyone else could watch.

  Regardless, Emilia’s alteration of {Body Scan ver. TTBK} included the ability to check out a person’s aetherstores and core. Having only used it on herself within the Virtuosi System, she wasn’t entirely sure how accurate it would be, but in theory, it would at least give her the location of each of Hyr’s aetherstores and a general size. The question was more how accurate the sizes would be, and whether it would miss any aetherstores, rather than whether it would work at all.

  Worst case, she hopped back in for a few seconds. No biggie.

  Bonus: Conrad and Simeon were around to test on, each of whom had official scans of their aetherstores, which required a fancy machine, and knew the exact location of their cores.

  It took a little tweaking—and a short moment of gaping at Conrad when they realized how powerful his core was, not to mention his huge aetherstores—before it was working well enough for Emilia to get an accurate reading of Hyr, who—

  “It’s really unfair how powerful both of you are,” she pouted.

  Neither Simeon’s scans nor her own were anything to scoff as, but seriously! Most Free Coloniers—especially those who didn’t even use their aetherstores for their normal abilities—had relatively small ones. While it wasn’t intentional anymore, there had been periods in Baalphorian history where marriages had been arranged in hopes that children with bigger aetherstores would be born. It was the same in most Free Colonies: at one point or another, children with more powerful cores had been purposefully bred.

  While some Free Colonies still arranged such things, usually it was only at the highest reaches of society—occasionally, rebel factions, as well. The Empress of Dion, for instance, was expected to eventually marry for power, just as her parents had. With power came responsibility, and while the Empress could technically disregard tradition, if the children she bore couldn’t defend their throne from the terrors of the Dion Court… well, things would be bloody, most likely, and a new regime would rise.

  As far as Emilia knew, Nur’tha had done nothing similar in generations, and while she knew numerous Free Colonies were pushing for marriages between those who had both powerful cores and large aetherstores, in case another war came along, Hyr was too young for even that!

  Hyr having both a powerful core and excessively large aetherstores was just unfair! People shouldn’t be this blessed at such a young age! Seriously, both grew in strength as a person used them. Emilia didn’t even want to think about how powerful the syn would become, were they to actively train.

  Emilia glared at them, only slightly cursing herself for not attempting to add in a way to test D-Levels to the skill—that would have been bad form, even if she was really curious about Hyr’s D-Levels now. There were only a few people she knew of who had as much power as Conrad—Ri, Hanalea and Olivier came to mind—but as for Hyr…

  Fucking stars. Hyr was, somehow, in a class of their own, especially since they weren’t a coding lavender code, the only people Emilia knew of who were capable of outputting so much power, and at great consequence to their mental state.

  Unless Hyr was hiding a hereditary lavender code, they could probably put out just as much power as one. That was… terrifying.

  Beside her, Simeon was quiet. Well, he was always quiet, but something in his silence was ominous.

  Conrad, expectedly, just laughed and clapped Hyr on the back. “Looks like you’ve got so much potential you struck them speechless—or signless.” Laughing, he wandered back to the Virtuosi Rigs and plopped down, intent to train or continue learning sign language or just fuck around, Emilia had no idea.

  Smiling, she stepped back towards a nervous looking Hyr. “Okay. So… I think we’re gonna make you a few more skills, once you can get your willbrand working. With power like that… yeah, there isn’t much you won’t be able to do, if you train up a bit.”

  The syn’s cheeks darkened slightly as they nodded, stepping forward and placing their hands to Emilia’s solar plexus, where {Body Scan ver. TTBK.astore} had determined the syn’s largest and most stable aetherstore was.

  Locking eyes, Emilia began to show them what it felt like to use this particular aetherstore.