Chapter 55 – Time Gone By

Rain walks down the relatively empty hallway of the Academy, his footsteps echoing softly around him. It's now evening, and classes are finished for the day, so he's on his way to his daily sparring session with Nik. It's been several weeks since his movie outing with Tess, and there's only a couple of weeks left until he's thrown into the Crucible. That time has passed slowly, without anything dramatic, but that's not to say that major changes haven't accumulated. 

In that time, Rain feels that his sword skills have improved tremendously. He's no Legacy, obviously, but he's managed to outright land several solid blows on Nik, his 'honor' intact. He's developed enough, in fact, that Nik has changed his training strategy. Now, the young Legacy goes all out in a nonstop onslaught against him, with the goal being for Rain to withstand an overwhelming force as long as he can. It's supposed to prepare him for inevitably having to survive against stronger Fel...or Champions. 

On a personal level, Rain and Nik have actually gotten much closer. Nik has started inviting him to personal gatherings, and the two have legitimately bonded. Petty envy for the Legacy's good looks aside, Rain finds he quite likes his company. On several occasions, they've actually played videogames alone in Nik's room, and Nik has let Rain borrow some comic recommendations. There were tons of books at the orphanage, and Rain loved reading, but they were all classics. So, both videogames and comics were new, welcome experiences for him. 

In the last few weeks, Rain's and Bright's report on the connection between Falling and Nether has begun circulating. They published it as 'by Anonymous and Unknown'...Rain's childish idea, of course. It's a short report, detailing a redacted version of the Ego's Brace runic descriptions, to protect the identity of Chaos as the patron of the item. Essentially, it posits that Nether has been inaccessible due to a realm-wide, novel type of soul attack called Falling, which turns people into Fel. It urges people to begin scouring existing Relics for protection against Falling, and to not venture into Nether without it.

The report has made quite the splash in academic circles, from what Bright has told him, and sparked plenty of discussion. Not everyone thinks its claims are legitimate, since it was published with so much secrecy, but many do. The most prevalent theory among people who are taking it seriously is that someone has finally emerged with a Death Lineage, and rightfully fears the attention it would bring to them. Regardless, every academic seems to know about the report and is trying to figure out who's responsible. Fortunately, Bright assured him that there's no way for it to be traced back to her, much less him. 

Bright has also continued visiting Rain once every week or so on his off days to study the Chaos Altar, though she hasn't made significant progress in understanding the altar's fundamental purpose. She has, however, teased Rain about his movie outing with Tess, and questioned him about their relationship and how much he's told Tess. Rain, of course, was quick to point out that him and Tess are just friends, so Bright shouldn't get married without him in the next two years. Naturally, she just rolled her eyes and recognized the comment for the deflection it was. 

Truthfully, Rain's been a little confused about Tess ever since that evening in her room, after the movie. He normally has no problem separating someone's looks from his feelings for them. Bright is a case and point. He finds her insanely attractive, and he's honestly not entirely joking about being willing to marry her in a couple years.

However, while he very much enjoys stealing glances at Bright when she visits, like he'd admire anything so beautiful, his dynamic with her still feels very platonic. He's not really confused or distracted while they talk, and her looks don't really influence how he feels about their friendship. Also, except when his hands are actively pressed against her chest, he doesn't have any strong urge to make a genuine pass at her. 

Tess, though...

That night...seeing her, feeling her against him...more importantly, the way she looked at him while they were so close, her eyes so full of affection...

That obliterated most of the separation in his mind between her looks and their relationship dynamics. It's as if feeling that strong, physical attraction for her at the same time they were in the middle of such an affectionate exchange irrevocably associated the two in his mind. Now, when she says or does something sweet, he thinks about how nice it would be to be close to her again. And when he catches glimpses of her figure, like during water exercises in their class, it evokes feelings of warmth and appreciation for her. 

'Gods...how do people live like this...none of these things have anything to do with one another.'

Rain exhales slowly through gritted teeth, trying to reign in his internal turmoil. 

'Fuck me...this is officially becoming a problem...'

All the time they've spent together in the past few weeks, that experience has been coloring his thoughts and decisions. He's managed to slowly help her form tenuous alliances with non-Legacy students during lunch, but he's noticed that a lot of those male students make him uncomfortable for some reason. Similarly, they'll train against one another, spear versus sword, and he'll get distracted watching the way that her body moves – that's led to several unexpected blows landing on him. 

Truthfully, sparring with her has been otherwise incredible – it's a large part of the reason for his rapid growth lately. For one, they mix physical blows in with weapon attacks, and Rain has even been utilizing Ideal Protection – practicing with moving it across different parts of his body to deflect strikes and deliver physical blows. Tess has also been freely using Ichor enhancement, and it turns out that's a good match for his baseline strength. 

He's learned from Nik that the ranked impact scores, which he thought were baseline Champion strength, were actually Ichor-reinforced punches. In retrospect, it makes sense. Why would the students use Talents but not use basic Ichor reinforcement in a ranking system? After some testing on the machine, he found that his own Ichor-infused strikes scored in the mid 140s, in the domain of those with physical enhancer Talents, while his regular punches put him at the peak of normal Champions using Ichor-strengthening. 

He has held back using all that with Nik because he's learning sword fundamentals, and because he doesn't want to show too many cards, but he's not afraid to share any of that with Tess. His actual, unrestricted combat proficiency has soared as a result. 

Another reason their sparring has been so beneficial is...Tess is way more skilled and ruthless than he could have predicted. He's passively learned a lot of new ways to use his sword as a result of her different fighting style and weapon. Honestly, seeing her so fierce and lethal in their sparring sessions has made his admiration for her skyrocket, and thanks to his new living hell of not being able to separate the two, his physical attraction to her has soared with it. 

That has put Unhinged on the cusp of screwing him several times. Sometimes, while they're resting between or after sparring, Tess may sit next to him or even lean against him, which he tolerates just fine for the most part. However, on a few occasions, she's looked over at him with that damn affectionate smile of hers while their faces were so close together, and he'd have intrusive thoughts about her lips. One time, the urge to kiss her got so close to Unhinged's threshold that Rain threw water on his face and suddenly leapt away to suppress it. 

'That was such a pain in my ass to explain to her...'

Fortunately, this new inability of his to separate attraction and feelings seems to be limited to Tess. On one of Bright's visits, he got lost in a thought exercise of studying her fantastic body and seeing if it produced the urge to be close to her or touch her, or evoked feelings of affection. It did not. Instead, Bright just asked him if she had runes on her ass. 

He's also spent almost an hour with Ronin every day for tea parties, from sunset until his meeting time with Tess, and his conclusions have been the same as with Bright. The more he's seen her in more casual clothes at night, the more he's realized that she's actually...well, very hot. He's also learned a lot about her likes and interests, the way she thinks – they've become friends, of sorts – and he relates to her a lot more than Bright. The point being, he's as much a fan of her body as he is her personality, but their dynamic is still just platonic to him. 

That's not to say that things with Ronin haven't been weird. He's noticed something strange about her behavior at their tea parties...she always touches him. He thought it was a coincidence at first. She'd ask him to pass the tea pot and barely graze his hand while taking it, or offer him her hand to stand up or vice versa, or unnecessarily guide him out the door with her hand. 

So, he's performed some little tests to see if it was intentional. Basically, he just avoids all those little opportunities and sees if something increasingly less subtle happens that forces their skin to touch briefly. Sure enough, it did. He has to give her credit...she can be creative. One time, she acted like she got a splinter on her bed frame and asked him to inspect her finger. Another time, she pretended to fumble something near him, causing him to reach towards where her hands were instinctively.

The most telling time, though, was when he managed to avoid all those kinds of maneuvers until he was actively walking out the door. Her face was a little frantic as he said his goodbyes, and right as he left she called out for him to come back. He'd been expecting her to explain herself at last, but she just...hugged him. HUGGED him! She claimed that she just felt like thanking him for the great company, but Ronin...is not a hugger...not by a long shot. She looked more uncomfortable than him during it. 

Now, Rain's all but certain what's happening. While Ronin may have implied that his presence is enough to suppress her Quirk, she actually needs to touch him directly. In retrospect, it's incredibly obvious that would be the case. First, because his Nature is not some blanket suppressor...it just makes him mostly immune to Fate and Desire abilities.

Second, and the most obvious, is how she reacted that first night she came to his room. He barely grazed her skin, and she nearly killed him over it...she was enraged by it. Then, only a day or two later, she came to him wanting an alliance for these Quirk-suppressive tea parties. During which, she does the exact thing that she almost killed him over before. 

So, it's clear to him that some kind of debilitating Quirk of hers is triggered by touching people, which may be why she was weaving through crowds in the cafeteria with her foresight Talent. But after he accidentally touched her the first time, she must have realized that her Quirk's effects can be...overwritten...by touching him. He's thought it over, and he's decided to just come clean about what he knows the next time he sees her – tonight. He doesn't see any harm in it, and it will make the arrangement much faster for him, and less stressful for her. 

Rain sighs regretfully. 

'Why are the people in my life so goddamn complicated lately? Well, not Nik I guess. He just beats the shit out of me with a wooden sword and then treats me to snacks and videogames on our off days. Ahh, gods bless healthy relationships...'

With that sentiment consoling him, Rain finishes his walk to the training room, where his friend is waiting patiently to batter his body.