“Who.. are you?” I ask feebly, my voice barely making it out of my throat.

“Don’t listen to him, mother, he’s a parasite! A tool of the old hag to corrupt you!” Screams Flauros, as he embraces me tightly, so tight i think he’ll actually crush me because i’m starting to feel pain.

The old man looks at me, and scoffs.

“You are in dire need of training, princess, if this broken offspring is able to pressure you on your own domain”

“Wh— domain?” I mumble. The pain is starting to get worse.

“I’ll help you this time, but it’ll be some time before we meet again then… you need to get stronger, if we are to...” The old man sighs as he deliberately leaves his sentence unfinished, and then, the whole room starts to shine.

I feel Flauros beside me start to panic.

“NO! NO! I’VE WAITED YEARS FOR THIS! YOU CAN’T DENY MY—” Before he could finish screaming, he was engulfed by the shining of the lights coming from every corner of the room.

The last thing I see before i get blinded is the old man that Flauros called ‘Von Brugge’ smiling at me; unlike the other one, his actually felt real, and it somehow calmed the turbulence in my heart.

…

[Registering Mind radiance on the known skills list]

Ah, the familiar voice of Hallie. I’m back.

And i’m eerily calm right now.

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I remember Flauros mentioned something by the name of ‘emotional suppressors’, and even though he didn’t make much sense at the end, i think he knows a lot more than me about myself. The thought of my own thoughts being suppressed is infuriating, but I manage to keep that righteous fury in check for the time being, as i see that the shadow that was embracing me before that little mind game is now clutching it’s head while rolling on the floor.

“Commander!” I hear a shout from behind me, and when I turn back I see Dzhabrailov, Novak and Santángel getting up from inside the gate of the ramp. They look alarmed and scared, even the usually chill Novak. Considering how much time passed on the white room, and how these guys are barely getting up now, it seems that almost no time transcurred, at most a couple of seconds.

The shadow of Flauros is still rolling in pain on the floor, so I try to make a sprint towards the top of the ramp, but at the first step I fall face first to the ground. My whole body is tensed up and completely solid, as if I'm petrified. The first one to reach me is Dzhabrailov, that grabs me by my right arm and pulls me up, and then Santángel comes; he snatched me from Dzhabrailov, carries me with one arm and throws me over his shoulder as he starts to run towards the gate of the ramp as well as the rest.

I’m too shocked to be angry right now, to be treated as a sack of potatoes by my right hand man, but he looks genuinely worried, so I'll let it pass.

[Mental fatigue is at dangerous levels, suggesting torpor state for recovery]

You know what Hallie, I completely agree, but at least let me know if we’ll actually pull this off.

When we arrive at the gate, the ramp retracts quickly and the gate closes. Santángel then, without letting me down, sprints towards the flight deck. There, we encounter Lai, Rovers and Yvonne, the latter running towards us as soon as she sees us. Santángel lets me on the floor with care one might have trouble picturing such a big guy having.

“Commander, can you hear me?” She asks.

I try to answer with words but none come, as if even the muscles of my throat feel too tired to move. I just nod with my head.

“Alright, then—”

She does a routine check up, and I ignore almost all of what she said, as I'm focused on the screen on the flight deck, as Rovers is maneuvering us to get the hell out of the pirate carrier before reinforcements come.

Describing it wouldn’t make it justice, as what i see is a display of extreme quality driving. How the hell is this kid navigating through a literal mountain of ships and scraps, and actually getting some distance from the carrier. After an arduous couple of minutes, we are from a safe distance, and the crew gets ready to detonate the explosive hidden in Deschamps’ ship.

When Santángel goes to press the button on the screen of a pad, Novak prevents him from doing so by taking it from his hands. The latter looks confused, but Novak just smiles and points at me. Perhaps my facial expression was not tired enough to make it obvious that I wanted to be the one to press it down.

Novak came close and then helf the pad, with a big flashing red button, close to my left arm, and with some difficulty to even raise a hand, I pressed it with my index finger. Immediately, we saw in the distance an explosion in the cargo bay zone of the carrier. Then, a series of explosions started occurring in different parts of the carrier.

I glanced at them, with my eyelids trembling, ready to close down for today, but I managed to say something coherent before that.

“For Ihmad and everyone else, you bastards”