I shared a look with Okeria while I watched him go through a wide range of emotions. He started off reluctant at the prospect of finding his friend, as if he couldn’t let himself be swayed by his own desires, then shifted to quiet contemplation. Thorn was obviously important–not just as Okeria’s friend, but as additional firepower that we so desperately needed. And once Okeria was done with his contemplation, he was completely certain in his choice.

That lasted for all of five seconds. He went right back to uncertainty right after that, but this time it didn’t feel like it was about Thorn himself. He broke my gaze to glance over in the direction of Scalovera’s office, which had once been his own office, and simply stared off into the distance as his hands twitched with anticipation.

“I don’t know if it’s the right time.” Okeria quietly admitted. “Danday might be missin’ in action, but that don’t mean the others that were hired with him ain’t waitin’ for us ta march right in there. Drown me, this woman right here could be leadin’ us into a trap. And I can’t justify riskin’ either one of us on a maybe when we’re this close ta gettin’ a sure thing.”

Okeria said one thing, but his body said another. Tension welled up in him like a garage door spring, and from what I knew was the truth, Okeria would be unimaginably deadly if he let all that energy explode forth. And the only things stopping him from doing exactly that were Keratily and the possibility that Endra could suddenly appear in Rainbow Basin.

“If you’re asking my opinion, we should go. You’ve got the tech and the functions to get us out of there if things go wrong. Unless they’ve got someone who can fizzle your functions, which I would definitely do if I were them.” I frowned and shook my head. “Damn. Now I’m not sure.”

“Oh, I can’t be fizzled if I go at full power. But ya know there’s a reason why I can’t do that. What we can do, though, is try ta get Thorn a little somethin’ I whipped up after I found out that Scalovera’d been hijacking’ our communications.” Okera gestured at my arm, where his communicator had perfectly concealed itself. “It’s the same tech I made those new communicators out of, which is why ya don’t gotta worry about anyone hackin’ in ta them.”

“That still doesn’t mean it’s safe to go in there.” I pointed out. “And… wait, why am I arguing the opposite side now? If you can make something hack-proof, however the hell you do that, can’t you make it fizzle-proof too? Or does that take a lot more battery?”

Okeria stepped past me and gently tapped the woman who’d stayed silent through all of this on her forehead. “It takes a good amount more, and if I’m just gettin’ us out of there, I should have enough left in the tanks if Endra or Keratily decide ta show up unannounced. Question is, do I have enough in me for the transportation of three? Or just two?”

The woman audibly gulped and leaned back slightly. “I can make myself really small, if that helps.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “You can shift sizes? What about the fire?”

“That?” The woman waved one hand and chuckled nervously. “That’s just a function I got after I killed some monster in a some hazard. My core function lets me make anything bigger or smaller, up to a limit.”

“Is it permanent? Or can you make it permanent?” I stepped back slightly to give the illusion that I was giving her more room to breathe. “What about the mass? Does that stay the same, or does it scale up or down with the size?”

She stared at me silently for a moment, then seemed to gather her thoughts. “When I use it on myself, I can choose what happens with my mass, but when I do it to others it all scales normally if I don’t add any extra battery. And if I want to make something permanently bigger or smaller, it takes just about my entire battery and takes a really long time.”

Her function wasn’t exactly the most original, and Jun could reproduce a chunk of it with her inscriptions, but I had to admit that it would be really fucking useful. If she could shrink us down, or shrink Thorn down, then maybe we had a better chance of saving him than Okeria thought. Of course that still relied on Scalovera leaving Thorn relatively unguarded, and Okeria being able to teleport all of us out when we needed to…

Actually, maybe it was better to stick to the ‘get Thorn a new communicator’ plan.

“That makes it a whole lot easier to sneak something in for Thorn.” I said, looking to Okeria for confirmation. “If you want to do this, I say we go right now. Put her in some kind of a prison collar so she won’t betray us, bust in and make it look like we’re there to free Thorn, and teleport out after giving him his communicator after we make a big show of there being too many people to fight. While we take a hostage to make it seem like we have other plans going on in the background.”

Okeria considered my plan for a moment, then nodded. “Sounds good ta me. Now, little missy, what’s your name?” He asked the woman who’d risen to her knees and looked like she was one-hundred percent ready to go along with anything we said. “I’ve gotta check your profile before I commit ta lettin’ ya outta my sight. Just in case ya got a bad case of ‘stab people in the back’.”

“...Okay. I guess that’s fair.” She said reluctantly. “You can call me Viri Sootroot. I don’t think I’ve got anything in the system that would make you want to kill me. Unless you’re a Prayheart?”

“Not a Prayheart, thank the gods for that.” Okeria chuckled as he pulled up his interface. I saw rows and rows of names fly by as he put in the name Viri had just given, and eventually settled on a picture of a bald woman with four deep green eyes and extremely pale red skin. “Take off your helmet so I can make sure it’s actually ya.”

Viri nodded slowly and reached up to pull off her helmet to reveal a face that almost perfectly matched the one on Okeria’s interface. I noted that she didn’t use her system to do it for her, which either spoke of nerves or incompetency. From the way the Staura treated their people who’d been born on the all-world, she could’ve just been coddled or taught improperly.

I paused at that thought. The Staura I’d met at Rainbow Basin, and to a lesser degree Walkalong, seemed to belong to a very obvious split. Those who’d come over from Sotrien, who used their armor freely and seemed to be at least a little competent with it, and those who wanted nothing to do with their armor at all. I’d barely even seen them use their system aside from as a convenient way to move things from point a to point b.

“When Nia fought in that war, did anyone from the all-world fight in it?”

Okeria glanced up at me as Viri put her helmet back on. “You’ll have ta be a little more specific.”

The thoughts and ideas were there plain as day, but they weren’t quite as easy to put into words as I thought they’d be. Not without making a few generalizations that could’ve been seen as more than a little insensitive. I rearranged my thoughts with the help of a centering breath, gestured for Okeria to lead the way, and tapped into my communicator. He nodded and nudged Viri in the direction of where we thought Thorn was being kept, and then his voice crackled over the communicator before I got a chance.

{What brought this on, Seb? Ya finally realize where the big divide in Staura society splits us?}

So I was right. Didn’t feel good about it, though. {So the new recruits are treated like soldiers, and everyone else gets to live like normal people? Do you have enough new recruits to sustain that lifestyle?}

{When people can live for hundreds of years, yeah. It’s sustainable.} Okeria said grimly. {It’s been this way for centuries at least, and that’s just the recorded history. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a whole lot worse than the rulers of that time said, but it also said there was a point that kinda divide didn’t exist. When the world still wasn’t mostly civilized, and people had a chance ta run out and make their fortune through their own power.}

{So everyone powerful came from Sotrien. That’s… hard to imagine.}

Okeria waggled a finger and clicked his tongue. {Hard ta imagine ‘cause it ain’t true. One outta twenty people born in the all-world make the most of their armor, and the opposite holds true for everyone that comes over from Sotrien. It’s why I don’t want my kids comin’ through; they ain’t hard enough for this world. And if I want ‘em ta be able ta live softly, I’ve got a whole lotta work ta do.}

{Work that we don’t have a lot of time to do.} I finished with a nod. {Gotcha. So will people treat your kids differently just because they’re from Sotrien?}

Okeria held up a hand for me to stop and looked over his shoulder. I blinked as I processed what was wrong, then felt a chill run down my spine as I noted what was missing. Viri. She’d started off in front of Okeria, but now she was just… gone. And we didn’t put a tracker on her.

“Shit.” I hissed. “Okeria, did you put a drone–”

“Not that kinda stop.” Okeria said with amusement. “Turn around and see for yourself just how much you’ve surpassed your peers.”

I frowned and did as he asked, then scrunched up my face even further as I caught Viri’s silhouette struggling to leap from roof to roof as Okeria and I had. They were barely ten foot gaps, and she had to get a run-up for each and every one. Then she stumbled when her feet touched the ground, paused to catch her balance, and repeated that process until she was only a half-dozen rooves behind us.

“That’s kind of pathetic.” I said without thinking.

Okeria laughed out loud and leaned on me. “If ya think that’s pathetic, you’d love visitin’ one of our real big cities. They’ve got sports stars with armor that couldn’t cast a shadow on Juniper’s from back before her core went and changed itself somehow, and they’re treated as close ta gods as they’ll risk. The kinda strength ya wield, and the kinda strength the chosen wield, it ain’t the norm on this world.”

Okeria’s tone suddenly fell to a deep disappointment as Viri landed one roof away from us. “Not even close, blue. Makes things a whole lot harder when someone decides it’s not proper ta wear your armor around, or tells all the grieving and hurt veterans that they’re not needed anymore. I tried ta make Rainbow Basin better than that, but I let Keratily skulk completely undetected for years. And then Scalovera–who I thought I’d gone and dealt with–he rose up and made this place just like it was before.”

Viri reluctantly stepped up to us with body language much smaller than before. She skittishly avoided both my and Okeria’s gazes, then stepped around me and took a running leap at the next roof.

“I see why we can’t just find more firepower.” I said sarcastically.

Okeria agreed with a grunt. “It’s why I ran with such a small crew. Also why we need ta save Thorn and eventually get Acasiana outta her self-imposed exile.”