"That's unexpected," Blake said when Egrer finished his story.
Prosperity gathered on the very same day the Puppeteer's illusionist gave herself away. And this time they were conferring in the union's club room, rather than the first empty classroom they came across.
Blake and the real Weiss concluded that they had most likely been eavesdropped on when they were coming up with the code phrases. So they urgently needed a place where such events would be reduced to the absolute minimum. And the Enversion club room was simply perfectly suited for this purpose. Soundproofing, a thick door, and thick curtains—it had everything for secret meetings.
But there were downsides in the form of the other union members; Nora and Magenta, in particular, caused a lot of trouble. They were curious about what kind of secrets the four of them were discussing behind closed doors, but for the first time, Egrer came up with the excuse that Blake and Sun were simply in an interview. They had to thoroughly vet those who wanted to join their righteous cause, right?
When Egrer offered Blake to join Enversion, she gave him such a terrifying look that he involuntarily wondered if he was even fighting on the right side. However, they had no worthy alternatives, so she had to shove all her dislike for the union as far away as possible and agree. Sun came as a package deal.
Only for Ren to point out that foreign students couldn't join clubs of other schools. Egrer couldn't find an answer and just blurted out that lifting this stupid restriction was from now on one of the points of Enversion's platform.
It was a bit of a pity that the number of fictitious union members was only growing and growing. In essence, nobody needed this union except him.
Ren and Magenta were here purely for the checkmark; they were just asked to join out of friendship.
Weiss fundamentally wasn't interested in leftist ideas or the return of the music club. So if it weren't for the relocation of Prosperity's headquarters to the club room, she would have left soon, since Egrer couldn't offer anything commensurate with preparing for the ball anymore.
Nora is Nora—as long as there's action, she's up for anything.
The only one not with them was Jaune. After the ball, he cooled off towards Weiss, and nothing held him in the union anymore. Egrer let him go in peace, since there were enough members in Enversion to keep the club from being disbanded.
Most of the club members perceived this room as a place where they could just gather and chat after a hard day of classes. For the most part, this whole organization lived exactly because after lessons almost everyone came to this room and relaxed for an hour or two.
You can't get anything done with such minions. To bring back the music club, Egrer needed an army of crazy fanatics who would follow his every order. But those matters could wait a bit.
"I doubt this is just a coincidence," Blake said quietly. "Does the Puppeteer guess that the medical exam is a trap?"
She felt uncomfortable in an unfamiliar place and refused to sit down with the others, instead leaning against the wall near a curtained window. Even though Egrer had even offered her his armchair at the head of the table, as he recognized her right as the leader at such meetings.
"Are we gonna do anything?" he asked.
Blake thoughtfully stroked her chin.
"We'll be careful and wait for the Atlesians to make their move. They'll arrest the suspect tomorrow. After their failure, we'll think further. But for now, we shouldn't make any unnecessary moves."
"I am certain Atlas will not fail," Weiss assured coldly.
"Be certain of whatever you want, but we'll prepare for the worst." Blake simply waved her off, showing she had absolutely no desire to argue.
Which was very good, because if she did have that desire, their discussion in raised voices could have lasted until evening. Even though the two of them had made up and could even be called friends to some extent, a certain invisible tension between them still continued to linger in the air. A slight distance was still preserved.
"In any case, this photo will help us figure out the Puppeteer's team," Blake said. "If we sum up everything we know, it consists of at least three girls: one about my height with dark hair, a second dark-skinned one, and a third who is short and mute. I doubt there are too many teams like that. We'll find them in a couple of days if they don't purposefully hide from us."
"Eg, are you sure you managed to outsmart the illusionist?" Sun asked. "Because she fooled me easily."
Weiss stuck her nose up. She was clearly very proud of the fact that Egrer had been able to distinguish her from such an artificial fake. Egrer was proud of himself, too.
"It's just that you're you, and Eg is Eg."
"Exactly." He chimed in, smugly crossing his arms over his chest. "Although, she prepared well. The fake was perfect, but it didn't save her from failing."
"Naturally, because some fake could never compare to me."
"The illusionist could have pretended you managed to fool her." Blake ruined their buzz with a single sentence. "So don't let your guard down. Both of you."
Overall, she was right, but how sweet the taste of victory was! Even a small one like this. After all, a big victory consists of a series of smaller ones. Before this, it was the Puppeteer who twisted them however She wanted, and for the first time, everything turned out the other way around.
"Back to the main point," Blake said. "Since they know about our codes, it means they realized that we realized there's a risk of espionage. So most likely they know that we know about their illusionist. But if they know that we know, then why send her to Egrer? If the Puppeteer thinks we don't know that She knows that we know, then that was reckless. Either that, or She has some kind of plan."
Weiss nodded approvingly, as if she had come to the same thoughts herself. Egrer, meanwhile, blinked in surprise and tilted his head slightly to the side. Sun scratched the back of his head and dazedly rolled his eyes under furrowed brows. In short, they both adopted a thoughtful but clearly foolish look. With surprising synchronicity, they simultaneously asked:
"Can you say that again? And simpler?"
Blake closed her eyes and slowly counted to ten. Lately, she had been doing that way too often. Weiss was closest to her and perfectly heard her angry whisper directed at her stupid partners.
"I already explained it accessibly," Blake replied. However, looking at their uncertain glances, she decided to take pity. "In short - the Puppeteer is one step ahead again, and we are once again finding out about it too late."
"Ah," Egrer said, "well, you should've just said so from the start."
"Maybe that night one of us actually was the illusionist?" Sun asked. The gazes of everyone present immediately crossed on him. "Why is it that the moment something happens, I'm the fall guy?! I'm not a spy! A spy wouldn't say something like that."
"That's exactly what a spy would say," Egrer mused, looking at the panicking Sun with a squint.
"Stop your jokes," Blake rolled her eyes. Egrer still couldn't hold back a chuckle and smiled. Sun started puffing offensively. "We don't suspect you, Sun. You just said something stupid. If that night one of us had been replaced by the illusionist, we would've quickly found out exactly which one of us was swapped. It's too important an event. Unless the Puppeteer has been keeping Egrer in a basement somewhere since that night, and his role is being played by the illusionist twenty-four hours a day."
"Which is definitely not the case," Weiss importantly raised a finger. "If Eg could tell a fake from me, I can certainly handle it."
Egrer involuntarily rolled his eyes. Couldn't she have said that in a way that didn't diminish his own merit? He had an Ego too, by the way, and that Ego was very fragile.
"By the way, Sun," Weiss continued her thought, "has Blake approached you recently?"
"Why am I always the fall guy?!" He bristled. "She hasn't approached me. I approached her."
"Stalker," Blake commented. "And since we're on the subject - stop following me."
"I wouldn't be a man if I wasn't persistent."
As if to confirm his words, Sun began to flex his muscles, throwing open his already unbuttoned shirt even wider. However, he only managed to impress Egrer, who desperately wanted an equally cool set of abs. But not enough to seriously get into shape. His current ones suited him just fine; not an eight-pack like Sun's, and not even a six-pack like Yort's, but still not bad.
"In that case, Jaune is the most masculine acquaintance out of all the humans and Faunus I know," Blake replied dryly. "Although no, there is someone else even more stubborn, but you don't know him."
"I'm terrified to imagine who that is," Weiss shuddered.
"Let's get back to what we started this conversation with. We can't say for sure if Eg managed to trick the illusionist, but we now know for certain that her Semblance affects the mind. Now we need to somehow figure out the limits and boundaries of her illusions... Eg, how did you distinguish the fake from the original?"
He actually had an interesting idea. Or rather, not even an idea, just an observation. He wasn't sure about it himself, but he simply couldn't keep quiet.
"It seems to me that I have some strange Semblance. Empathy or something like that. When fake-Weiss approached me, I didn't feel anything from her, although I can usually easily understand her emotions."
"Empathy towards those you know well?" Blake asked thoughtfully.
"Probably," Egrer shrugged uncertainly. "I always thought that over time I just start to understand those I communicate with better. And the more I communicate... actually no, the stronger our bond, the better I feel the emotions. I've known Illmond for over two years, but I still feel Weiss better."
There's an opinion that everyone has a Semblance from the moment their Aura is unlocked, but not everyone can figure out what it does. For many, it takes years of trial and error to figure themselves out and ultimately just take a shot in the dark. If that was the case, then Egrer had lived his whole life with this trait, firmly believing that his own skills were what helped him understand others from half a word. Before this, it hadn't occurred to him to ask those around him if it was normal to understand others so well.
"What about me?" Sun asked with curiosity. "Can you feel my emotions?"
"I generally doubt that I have a Semblance like that, it's just an assumption," Egrer shook his head. "Besides, I don't know you that well. Like, I can already see you're happy, but I can't tell if it's the Semblance telling me or just my personal observations."
"How is that even possible?" Sun protested. "We secretly snuck into a White Fang rally together, fought a giant robot, slept in the same airport! We're true bros!"
"Apparently, that's not enough for my Semblance. Or maybe I don't have it at all, and I just imagined all this."
"Perhaps you are simply capable of understanding emotions through tiny changes in facial expressions?" Weiss suggested. "In that case, it's no wonder the illusionist couldn't fool you. She can mimic my gestures and speak with my voice, but forging the tiniest facial movements is much harder."
"Maybe. I dunno."
"How do you feel other people's emotions?" Blake asked. "Explain what you feel and how you distinguish one emotion from another."
It's hard to describe something you've never paid attention to before and always took for granted. To make the task easier, Egrer focused on Weiss, purposefully trying to understand what she was feeling right now. Her face didn't express any particular emotions, but he distinctly realized that right now she was curious and experiencing relief, a bit of hope, and... anticipation?
Now all he had to do was understand how exactly he had realized all this. He closed his eyes, trying to find the right words.
"It's... it's like a lake," he said a minute later. "And I'm swimming in it. I don't feel the exact same emotions as you do, I don't become the lake. But I feel... how should I put it... the temperature and humidity around me, I can gauge the degree of salinity and everything else. Something like that. But sometimes, my Semblance is like a taut string. Back when Weiss was still a racist, and I told her I was a Faunus... well, not that we had a fight, but there was definitely tension between us. And instead of her emotions, I felt exactly that tension. Like just a little bit more and the connection between us would snap. That only happened three times: with my father after I ran away, with Yort, and with Weiss. But with Roman... the string snapped after all. And even when we met, I felt almost nothing from him."
"As I said," Weiss began, "it's possible you're just capable of reading the facial expressions of those you know well. A useful ability, but not a fact that it's precisely a Semblance. Let's conduct an experiment. Turn away from me and do not turn back. I will try to make myself angry or make myself laugh, recalling different situations from life, and I won't tell you when I change emotions. Your task is to say what exactly I am feeling right now."
Egrer turned away and even closed his eyes. He tried to somehow tune into Weiss's "frequency," but doing it without seeing her was difficult. Surely his Semblance, if he had one, required some kind of additional actions. Because a vague "Focus" didn't help much in this matter.
However, his efforts were not in vain; trying to focus on Weiss, her image easily surfaced right before his eyes.
Perfectly straight posture, calibrated by long training in Atlas. A slightly cold and indifferent gaze, behind which nevertheless hid embers of warmth. The scar on her eye, received in an unequal battle for her future and hidden by makeup. Thin lips of a pale pinkish hue, curved in a small, meaningful smile. Long white hair gathered in a ponytail on the right side, which smelled faintly of blackberries. And the dress she wore to the ball: a simple white dress with light blue inserts.
And then he began to feel something. As if he were looking right at the real her, and not her image in his head.
"M-m-m..." Egrer hummed a second later. "A mess. Too much of everything, I can't figure out what you're thinking about. Try to focus better."
He also tried to fully immerse himself in his thoughts and sensations. This was new to him.
Egrer was swimming in the Lake, large and deep. The shores couldn't be seen, and the bottom, despite the crystal-clear water, was impossible to make out. It was so far away that he could swim to it for a whole eternity, and even after eons of years, he wouldn't reach its limit. The Lake was restless. Waves rose and fell, warm currents interspersed with cold ones, sometimes funnels and even whirlpools appeared.
Despite the apparent chaos, Egrer understood everything this Lake was telling him. Every emotion. However, the experiment required him to name one single thing - what Weiss was thinking about right now.
Over time, the chaos calmed down. One by one the emotions began to dissolve, until the perfectly flat water surface began to be covered with frost. However, the ice didn't stop Egrer from swimming further along the Lake: it parted in his path, only to become whole again later.
Cold. Dry. The sun went out - it got dark. The wind carried sharp snowflakes.
Egrer understood - Weiss was angry. Truly angry. The kind of anger where she is driven only by cold calculation, ruthless efficiency, and determination. Not a drop of wrath, not a drop of warmth, not a drop of other emotions. Only cold.
"You're angry. Thinking about your dad?"
Weiss didn't answer. She focused on the next memory.
The Lake began to change. The frozen water thawed, the sun ignited again. Limitless clouds raced across the sky, forming human faces so blurry that it was pointless to examine them. The waves swayed slightly: up and down, up and down. There was almost no wind, just pleasant, refreshing air.
Warm. Bright. Calm. Peaceful.
Weiss is glad. She's thinking about something good.
"You're... at peace. I can't find a better word. You're probably thinking about Beacon. About friends."
The Lake began to churn anxiously. The water grew colder, but not like last time. That cold burned; this one - drowned you in itself, pulled you to the bottom. The sky was covered with dark clouds, the wind howled mournfully. The water became heavy, dark, and bitter. The Lake seemed to split into two parts: one striving for movement, and the other binding it. One screamed, the other soothed.
Weiss is grieving. Over a loss. Over an unfulfilled dream. Over a lost past that can no longer be changed. Empty dreams of how things could have been.
"You're sad. Thinking about your family."
The Lake began to change again...
"That's enough," Egrer requested, turning to Weiss. Her face didn't express a single emotion, and he was sure she had stood like that the whole time. "This is... wrong. You shouldn't pry into other people's feelings. It's too personal."
"Which is exactly why your Semblance doesn't let you look into the soul of everyone you meet," Weiss said. "You see my emotions because I trust you, and you trust me. And the stronger this trust is, the wider another's soul is open to you. Do not forget that a Semblance is a reflection of your principles, desires, and life experience. A reflection of you."
"It's still somehow unfair. It's like using my smile when I lie. Same thing here. I'll see your true emotions even if you don't want me to."
"I have occasionally used your weak spot rather roughly, so it's only fair that you also have your own leverage over me," Weiss shrugged. "In any case, I congratulate you, Eg, you've unlocked your Semblance. You weren't wrong once, neither when naming my emotions, nor when guessing what exactly I was thinking about. Perhaps, if the bond is strong enough, your Semblance will become something like mind reading."
"Thanks a lot, that's really reassuring," Egrer grumbled.
"You two can coo later," Blake said. "Can you feel Sun and me?"
"Very vaguely, but generally yes. I'll most likely be able to tell you apart from the illusionist. But I see Weiss very well, it's like I have a bunch of sensors and detectors at hand. Especially now that I know where to look. But when I try to... um... get into your lakes," Sun started giggling, "I can't get past the shore."
"So you've got an all-access pass to Weiss's 'Lake'?" Sun asked, wiggling his eyebrows.
An all-encompassing silence fell, so profound that you could hear the crickets outside, even though it was daytime. Weiss buried her face in her hands and exhaled tiredly. Egrer put a hand to his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Blake slapped her forehead. Every one of them felt a sense of shame for being in the same room with this blonde goofball.
"Sun," Blake said with a sigh. "They get enough dirty jokes from Yang, so just don't."
"Come on, it's his own fault for choosing that phrasing. And besides, it's funny!"
"Not funny," they said in unison. Seeing such unanimity, Sun even felt a bit awkward.
"And as for the phrasing," Egrer began, "you try describing a completely new color that only you can see. You'll instantly realize how limited your vocabulary is."
Suddenly, the bell rang in the club building. The big break was over, which meant it was time for classes.
"Grimm, we're going to be late for Combat Training!" Weiss jumped up. "Goodwitch will kill us!"
Sun barely suppressed a chuckle. He didn't have to go anywhere, attendance for foreign students was strictly voluntary. But their panicked looks amused him quite a bit.
***
Egrer realized that eating with a sore jaw was very uncomfortable. His muscles ached and barely moved; his teeth felt like they were loose; and food kept trying to fall out of his mouth back onto the plate. However, he endured these inconveniences, because lunch shouldn't go to waste.
A large heart was distinctly imprinted on his swollen cheek, causing almost the entire cafeteria to secretly laugh at him. Nora's hammer is truly heavy, as is her strike. Perhaps if he hadn't overdone it with teasing her about her feelings for Ren, he would have lost less painfully. On the other hand, he would have been beaten up by Yort, who had clearly stated that if Egrer ran in circles around the arena again and disgraced their team, he'd be in for a world of hurt.
But he actually even won, because Nora broke the rules and was disqualified. This was the second time Egrer had driven his opponent to a breakdown, trying to make them waste their strength on hitting nothing but air, and the second time something went wrong, and he ended up getting hit after all.
Egrer involuntarily turned his head toward the JNPR table and met Nora's gaze. She pointed to her eyes, then to him, and finally ran a finger across her throat. Egrer just smiled apologetically.
His Semblance was hard to control. Most likely he doesn't even have a switch, and it works constantly, and the so-called "Unlocking" simply amplified the sensitivity. He easily understood exactly which words irritated Nora the most and shamelessly used that. And although Egrer saw her emotions rather vaguely, flashes of rage felt like underwater mines exploding.
He hadn't thought the eternally positive Nora could be like that. He needed to handle his Semblance carefully and not use it to cause pain to another. Especially since such a Semblance wasn't designed for that at all, although even the most harmless ability, with enough ingenuity and bloodlust, can be used as a weapon.
A Semblance doesn't reflect your preferred combat style, so even a berserker like Yort could end up with something non-combative. After all, by nature he's a very suspicious and distrustful person, and exactly these character traits, paramount in his life, provided him with such a Semblance. Predicting the future, past, and present—albeit in a truncated form—helps Yort better prepare for the surprises others have in store for him.
So you can tell a lot about a person just from their Semblance alone. Weiss was right, it's a reflection of principles, character, and life experience; a reflection of the inner Self.
Her Semblance is hereditary - because there is nothing more important to her than family. As she said, her family was raised this way by Nicholas Schnee, who founded the SDC. Back then, the name Schnee wasn't associated with greedy businessmen, but with warriors and pioneers who assembled huge expeditions into the Dark Lands for new Dust deposits. And this is exactly the reputation Weiss wants to restore. To break all agreements with shady partners, to stop the racial segregation of workers, to destroy corruption schemes, and much, much more.
But what does Egrer's Semblance say about Egrer? Does it show his passion for friendship? Or his intrusiveness, since it's impossible to close oneself off from the influence of his Semblance? Or maybe something else? To understand the answer to this question, he needs to remember his childhood before his Aura was unlocked. But that was a whole seven years ago... he only remembered the brightest events of his life.
One of those events - how, at six years old, he found a barely working radio receiver tuned to some music broadcast. Egrer had never seen such a strange device before, but since sounds came from it, he considered it a very, very old version of a Scroll. And every time he turned it on, he sincerely thought that the musicians on the other side were playing music just for him.
If the radio worked properly, little Egrer would probably have understood everything, but every time it turned on, all you could hear for the first five to ten minutes was static. Egrer thought that during this time the musicians were preparing their instruments for the performance, and waited patiently.
Which is exactly why he never turned on the radio during lunchtime, at night, or on weekends, because he thought the musicians also needed to eat, sleep, and rest. Otherwise, what would that mean? Were they supposed to drop everything they were doing the moment Egrer flicked the switch? That's just impolite.
He also never listened to music for longer than an hour at a time, because he didn't want them to overexert themselves too much.
But one day the music stopped playing. The radio emitted white noise and nothing more. That day Egrer sat in front of it for almost twenty-four hours, still waiting for the musicians to gather and play for him.
'They must be on vacation,' he thought by evening. 'Maybe they'll be back in a couple of weeks.'
But they didn't return in a week, or a month. Every time he turned on the radio, all he could hear was static. Egrer was very upset, but by nature he was an optimist, so he decided to learn to play himself, so that one day he could play for someone through this old Scroll too.
However, finding a good guitar in the favela was a difficult task; almost every one was out of tune or broken. It was exactly because of music that Egrer first started dabbling in theft and small errands for gangs, to earn money and buy a good guitar at a store. For this, he even had to temporarily leave the favela, where normally guys like him had nothing good waiting for them.
But thanks to his hidden Faunus heritage, he managed to avoid many problems. That's where he bought Baby. One of the cheapest guitars, but it cost him every last Lien he had earned.
It was one of Egrer's happiest memories. Involuntarily, he smiled, amazed himself at how, with such a background, he ended up without a musical Semblance. Because seemingly, everything needed for that was there. Apparently, he didn't want to play music as much as he wanted to find an attentive listener.
And that was exactly what Egrer had big problems with at the orphanage. There, few were interested in high culture; the oldest were already helping gangs and cartels for a long time, or even leaving to join them. The younger ones, on the other hand, were interested in the guitar itself, not the guitarist. They just wanted to play it, and there was even one bully who wanted to take Baby for himself.
Egrer had never fought so desperately. Neither before nor since.
Besides, without a teacher, his attempts were simply ridiculous. He vainly tried to replicate the sounds the guitarists on the radio made, but to no avail. Just trying to pull off the same thing, he only marveled at how difficult it turned out to be. No one was interested in his choppy strumming and humming under his breath.
And even when, a couple of years later, through trial and error, he finally started playing and singing somewhat decently, no one had the desire to listen to him.
The caregivers were always busy. They were adults, and they didn't have time to waste on one child when they had to keep an eye on a couple hundred. Tired, they merely forced smiles and asked him to play with the other kids instead. They, more than anyone else, clearly saw what kind of life awaited their children - either the White Fang, crime, or a pathetic existence on a penny salary, which they themselves led. A favela native would not become a musician.
If they only knew how wrong they were. When Egrer became rich, he would definitely donate a large sum to his orphanage and send a thank-you letter to the caregivers for raising him. Maybe Mr. Nevernight always grumbled and doled out slaps to the back of the head when he was in a bad mood, and Mrs. Fleur often yelled at him... but they were never evil. They just lived in an evil world.
It was probably because no one listened to him that Egrer wanted to achieve fame so badly. So that he would be talked about everywhere, so that everyone would be familiar with his newest songs. He wanted to compensate for that emptiness. He forgot that originally he wanted to play for others, just like they once played for him. And if it weren't for Weiss, he would never have remembered that.
His obsession with friendship was merely a derivative of the desire to play for a worthy listener. And his Semblance is meant to help find this very listener, understand them, and befriend them.
"It's all some kind of nonsense," Egrer sighed heavily, looking right through his plate. He still couldn't understand why he didn't have a musical Semblance... apparently, the answer had to be sought even deeper, but there was nowhere deeper to go. He couldn't take a bathyscaphe and dive into the depths of his Lake.
Perhaps he simply wasn't destined to understand himself as well as he understood others. Maybe this was one of the hidden effects of his Semblance, or the price of using it.
"What're you thinking about?" Magenta asked.
She was playing with slices of fried pork, imagining them to be ships boarding a chicken breast. She ate all the losers. The winners too.
"Just stuff," he replied. "Nothing."
"When you think about nothing, you usually eat." Magenta poked her fork into a piece of meat from Egrer's untouched portion and immediately started playing with it. "Aaaaah! The aliens from planet Egland are attacking!"
Egrer himself, however, fell into even deeper thought, but this time for a completely different reason.
Would he really have to hide even his Semblance from them? Blake had asked him not to tell anyone about it for now, since his capacity for empathy could come in very handy for them. She was still on edge, and the closer "X-Day" - tomorrow - came, the more she worried.
Egrer was used to sharing everything that happened to him with his team. But after the events at the port, a wall appeared between them for the first time. And the deeper he sank into this swamp, the more he had to hide. A very unpleasant feeling. Now that he had unlocked his Semblance, he realized that he was single-handedly weakening the bond between them.
Fortunately, all this would end soon, and he would tell them everything without holding back. Surely they would be mad at him, Magenta for sure, but the main thing was that all this time they were as far away from the Puppeteer and Her intrigues as possible. He was ready to accept that.
But even so, Egrer couldn't help but ask their opinion. He was simply curious.
"What do you think, if I suddenly unlocked my Semblance, what would it be?"
"Super-clinginess," Yort answered immediately, chewing on a fried potato. "You latch onto someone like a tick, and then there's no hauling you off."
"It'll probably be something musical," Magenta guessed thoughtfully, twirling her multi-colored hair around her finger. "You love music so much! It's just a pity that lately we rarely play anything together."
"Been busy..." Egrer said vaguely, lowering his gaze to his plate. "But we'll definitely get together sometime. Ill, what do you think?"
"Huh?" he tore himself away from his Scroll. "What? Oh! Probably something musical."
He returned to his Scroll. Only he was moving his fingers not as if he was drawing something, but as if he was typing.
"Wait, are you texting someone?"
Illmond froze instantly.
"No. Drawing."
"Ill, I've known you for over a year and I've lived with you for months, so I know perfectly well what sounds you make when you draw."
"Is he jerking off in the process or what?" Yort asked in surprise. He even slightly pulled away from Illmond, although there was already half a table between them.
"No!" the misunderstood by the world (and Yort) artist shouted.
Magenta froze like a statue, processing a word previously unknown to her. But since she was used to practically every new expression coming from Yort's mouth being something foul or indecent, she immediately started pulling him by the ear for disciplinary purposes.
Egrer hurried to clear up the misunderstanding, because by sounds he meant dirty giggling and all sorts of barely decipherable comments, like "And you're gonna wear polka-dot lingerie for me."
"Well, maybe I am texting," Illmond gave up. "What's it to you?"
"Who is it? Those shut-ins I introduced you to at the ball?"
"You..." he looked surprised, "how did you? Yort, did you make a prediction for him?"
"Prediction?" the exiled prince of the Vacuo mafia replied ironically. "He asked me a long time ago what your chance of finding friends was. You know what the answer was? Zero, comma, five more zeros, and a three. A three in a million chance!"
And despite such a small probability, it still happened. Who knows, maybe it was thanks to Egrer's efforts, as he tried with all his might to socialize their antisocial wannabe-artist. The first steps toward society had been made.
"Weren't we talking about Eg's hypothetical Semblance?" Illmond hurried to change the subject. "I think it'll reflect your mania for friendship. Maybe some kind of mystical aura that makes people like you, or empathy."
It was no surprise that he turned out to be the closest to the truth.
"Do you think you unlocked your Semblance?" Yort asked.
Egrer opened his mouth to deny it, but immediately closed it. This lie would be obvious to everyone, so he had to wriggle out of it.
"I was curious to hear your guesses." He didn't tell a single lie. "Yort, how did you unlock your Semblance?"
"Yeah, I remember asking myself once, 'Is that dude tryna scam me?' and then it hit me so hard my eyes almost popped out of their sockets. That was almost immediately after my Aura was unlocked. Pretty fast."
"Interesting..."
"If you suddenly unlock your Semblance, first thing you gotta do is find out its limits, especially if it's a tricky one," Yort advised. "Otherwise you'll end up a dumbass like me - showing up at a casino all hyped up. I figured since I was a badass oracle, I'd make bank in a day, but it kinda didn't work out."
"Is that where your intense dislike for casinos comes from?"
"I hate the fucking casino. Especially the Vacuo ones - they're the most unpredictable. The Semblance shows one thing, and the outcome is completely fucking different!"
"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind."
After lunch, Egrer hurried to follow Yort's advice, but since his Semblance had to remain a secret, only members of Prosperity could participate in the experiments. There were still fifteen minutes until the end of the big break, so they didn't have much time. No one wanted to be late for their second class of the day.
There was something amusing about the fact that they were fighting a terrible criminal, but were still worried about mundane things like academic performance. Even Blake "I won't close my eyes until the Puppeteer is behind bars" Belladonna herself tried not to sleep in class, unless it was Port's lectures. Otherwise, she devoted herself entirely to their cause, and it was hard for him to say when he had last seen her relaxing.
Egrer stood by the cliff from which he and the other first-years were thrown straight into the Emerald Forest during Initiation. But after Magenta and her Rainbow Flash, the forest still hadn't recovered. Young green leaves could be seen in places, but for the most part, black and gray tones still prevailed. Almost all the trees had simply died in the fire and had no intention of regenerating.
Egrer took out his Scroll and texted Weiss: "Starting." Even without particularly tuning in to her, he was able to feel her emotions almost immediately, even on the other side of Beacon.
The more he used his Semblance, the better he managed it. It's like having eyes but always keeping them closed, not realizing you're seeing darkness, and then opening them and seeing the world. You might be used to living as before, resorting to all sorts of tricks to avoid falling, but living with sight becomes much easier, more comfortable, and better; you just need to get used to it a little. And then you wonder, "How could I have even lived all this time with my eyes closed?".
A minute later, Egrer called Weiss, exactly the time they had agreed upon.
"Well?" Her face appeared on the screen. Blake sat to her left, and Sun to her right; they were also curious to learn more about his Semblance.
"Joy, anger, joy, and... a mix of anticipation and some kind of sadistic pleasure. I couldn't figure out what you were thinking about."
"That's right, and I was thinking about how we'll manipulate the illusionist. Mostly empty fantasies, but the main thing is you caught the emotion."
"Were there any changes?" Blake asked businesslikely.
"None. The relative clarity remained the same, most likely distance is no obstacle for my Semblance. Or the difference is so small it would only become noticeable on another continent."
"I was thinking, by the way," Weiss said quietly. "Could the connection be two-way?"
"You mean, can you feel my emotions too?"
"Exactly. Friendship works both ways, right? At least ours definitely does. Just like... other feelings." Weiss only stumbled slightly, but otherwise gave no outward sign of her emotions.
However, Egrer easily felt how the Lake of her soul sharply rippled with embarrassment, even though he wasn't even trying to peek. Sun giggled, earning stern looks from Blake and Weiss. The latter even stomped on either his tail or his foot, and only after that turned her head back to the Scroll.
"Let's try conducting the same experiments, but this time I will be the test subject. Give me a couple of tips?"
"Well... first I needed to see you, then just an image in my head was enough, and now just a thought is sufficient."
"And that is it? Just seeing?" Egrer nodded. "Alright, I'll try."
Weiss squinted, looking at his face. Egrer began to recall the happiest memory of his life, buying his Ba~
"No, this won't work," she shook her head. "You barely control your facial muscles, I can already roughly tell what you're experiencing anyway. Better to try with a photo. I will not hang up, keep the connection open."
While Weiss stared intently at her screen, having opened a photo of him in her gallery, Egrer plunged back into his memories. He tried to push all unnecessary thoughts out of his head, leaving only the good things.
He plunged back into his childhood, when he hid behind a fence from other children and tried to play something. He remembered his delight when, by pure chance, he stumbled upon a harmonious combination of plucked strings. And how he then spent another half hour trying to repeat it and memorize it.
"I think..." Weiss's voice came through, "I think I feel something like that... I need more data. Try changing the emotion."
Egrer remembered how Roman had been skeptical of his hobby. Constantly saying that listening to this strumming was too painful and he'd be better off doing something useful. If it wasn't for mom...
Egrer threw out of his head how she stood up for him and was ready to listen to his music-making. Now he needed to get angry, so he imagined how an unrestrained Roman one day simply takes and smashes Baby right before his eyes. Egrer knew Roman wouldn't do that, but right now he wanted to wind himself up as much as possible. The brighter the emotion, the easier it would be for Weiss to see it.
"I think I understand..."
"Did you also feel like you were swimming in a lake?"
Sun barely suppressed a chuckle. Only Egrer noticed this.
"No, I was rather standing on a high mountain or a tower. And... there was a large telescope that I was looking through." Weiss furrowed her brows, trying to find the right words. "The stars were constantly darting across the sky, but occasionally they stopped in a certain way. I looked at them and then compared them with the celestial atlases on the table. Different constellations were depicted there, and there was an inscription saying exactly what emotion it was. The harder you focused on a specific emotion, the more accurately the stars aligned in the right places, and the easier it was for me to find the right atlas and draw a conclusion."
"You have a more scientific approach," Egrer said thoughtfully. "A telescope, a bunch of papers, comparisons."
"Apparently, everyone has their own perception of this connection," Blake concluded. "You always worked more with your head, hence the difference."
"It's even romantic, huh?" Sun suddenly smiled. "No matter where you are, you'll always feel each other. Awesome."
"There really is something to that," Egrer replied, while Sun began writhing in pain again and lamenting something about his tail.
Further experiments had to be cut short due to a lack of time.
***
Egrer was almost late for his doctor's appointment. He somehow hadn't calculated that Oobleck's classroom, who temporarily let him out of his lesson, was painfully far from the hospital wing. He had to run a bit. So when he arrived at the doctor's office, Blake was already walking out of the infirmary. Alive, well, and seemingly in one piece. At least outwardly, but who knows, Mungelier might have cut something out of her or, conversely, sewn something on.
"I had a feeling someone was watching me," she muttered, walking past. Well, apparently she only got away with a slight scare.
Egrer folded his hands in a prayer gesture and offered a plea to the Twin Gods that he would be just as lucky. After all, this was the lair of the chief vivisector of all Beacon - Joseph Mungelier. It would be a miracle if he came out of here in one piece, or at least in his right mind. Not a single meeting with the Beacon doctor had ever gone without a ruthless struggle for his own life, so Egrer was mentally preparing for a fight.
With feigned bravery, he entered the medical office, and the first thing he noticed was the complete absence of surgical tools. No pile of knives on the table, no IV drip, no couch with restraints; everything was like a normal doctor's office.
Judging by Mungelier's sad face, some powerful circumstances had prevented him from using his patient for experiments. Perhaps it was because he still needed to examine several dozen more students like this, and he simply didn't have time for his torture. In that case, Egrer sincerely felt sorry for the last one in line, that's exactly who their crazy doc would take it out on.
"Mishter Pelenii," he said sadly. "Shit down on ze chair. Ve vill be taking blood."
Surprisingly, nothing extraordinary or terrible happened. Egrer was listened to with a stethoscope, had tests taken, was measured for weight and height, and had a couple of hairs stealthily plucked out. The latter was quite hard to feel, but since he was on edge, he could have felt even the slightest touch.
"You are free to go."
It was hard to believe such luck, but Egrer had no intention of tempting fate and immediately ran away. Once the infirmary was left behind, Egrer exhaled. He leaned his back against the door and spent some time trying to catch his breath. He had spent almost the entire examination holding his breath.
Sitting on the windowsill was a surprisingly pale Yang, who was next in line. If anyone had dared to ask her if she felt fear, they would have immediately gotten punched in the face. Because yes - she did. However, overcoming the trembling in her body, Yang jumped to the ground and walked quickly toward the doctor's office.
Egrer had to peel himself off the door and take a step aside, otherwise he would have been swept away by her unshakeable resolve to survive these ten minutes and return to her family and team.
Right up until curfew, Egrer felt calm, knowing that the Puppeteer would be caught tomorrow.
However, Blake was not wrong in her pessimism. Because the very next day, the Atlas soldiers arrested her.