[b]Four Years Ago[/b] "Do you want to talk about it, Em?" Emily's father asked. Emily blanched. Of course he knew, he always knew. Her father's one great gift in life, she sometimes thought, was how well he could read her. Maybe a close second was the way he looked at her now, expression neutral, eyebrows close together. She knew he meant to project patience, to make sure she knew he was listening. Mostly, though, she just felt like she was being inspected. She was standing in the doorway between their kitchen and living room. The house was old, and the rooms on the lower floor had no doors, just arches with steps up and down. They'd eaten dinner together in mostly silence, and Emily had spent most of the time trying to muscle up the courage to say something. He had acted forcibly nonchalant, and hadn't even tried to make her help him clean up. What was she afraid of? She wasn't a fearful person, that much she knew. Her formless dreams had long ago helped her overcome the traditional, waking anxieties. But what she felt now, trying to discuss her future with her dad, wasn't fear in the same way as you feared falling, or the dark, or even divorce. Emily wasn't afraid for herself, she was afraid for her dad. For how he might take the decision she'd made. For how he would feel, knowing she'd made it without him. "Yeah, um," she said. "Yeah. I do. I mean, you know I didn't..." She trailed off. Her father didn't seem to notice. He kept on drying plates and stacking them by the sink. Emily forced herself to step back into the room and fall into a chair. "Yeah?" he said. "I didn't mean for you to just find it like that." Emily said. It had stupidly, uncharacteristically forgetful of her, leaving the acceptance letter out like that. Maybe it had been intentional - some kind of mental slip, to cope with the fact she'd been hiding things from her father. He'd recognized it right away, of course: The Academy seal was right on the cover. She'd peered down over the top of the stairs and seen him reading it, and vanished into her room before he could start asking questions. She hadn't needed his permission to apply - after all, you didn't get accepted until you were legally an adult - but they had been talking about her future and what she was going to do after graduation, so it was a deception nonetheless. Her father folded his arms over his chest and looked at her. "I know you didn't." he said. She didn't say anything. "What do you want me to tell you?" He asked. "That I'm against it? Of course I'm going to be against it. You knew that, or you would have told me, right?" She nodded. "So what should I say? That it's a bad idea? I mean, I don't know, Emily - I love you. But I'm not you, I don't--" "It's not that," she said, interrupting him. "It's, more, I didn't-- I thought you'd see it as a rebellion thing. As an, I don't know, I'm gonna get out of the house and fuck you, Dad, I'm gonna do the one thing you wouldn't want me to. The one thing that'd scare you, after Mom--" "Is that why you want to go?" "I-- no," Emily said. "It's really, really not." "It would scare me," he said. "But what scares me more is that you wouldn't want to tell me." Emily looked away from him. "We don't have to talk about it any more tonight," he said. She nodded. He put the last of the dishes away and left the kitchen, brushing past her. His arm lingered on her shoulder for a moment, but he didn't turn back. Emily sat there in silence for a few minutes. When she finally left and climbed the stairs, his door was closed. She wasn't looking forward to the dream-void that night. She knew, all alone in the darkness, she'd be unable to stop thinking about how he must have felt. --- [b]The Anatolian Wilderness - Battle[/b] Emily and the... thing... stared each other down. Its enormous, gelatinous single eye blinked at her. She caught a glimpse of the scaly flesh that covered it, and felt the scar on her chest seize and writhe. It felt like her body was kicking into ultra-high gear, an adrenaline rush and then some. Everything felt perfectly clear and crisp, and all the unnecessary stimuli - her thoughts from moments before, the sounds of her friends preparing to fight in the background, even the cold and her own heartbeat - dropped away. She wasn't a passenger, thankfully, she was in control, but it felt like parts of her mind were being gently shuffled out of existence. She swung her staff out behind her and charged at the thing, eyes still locked with its. As she reached it, she lept into the air over it, sweeping downwards with the staff and pushing it roughly to the side. More of the things - different shapes and sizes, but equally disgusting - slithered towards her, but she reached out with her hand and warped the ground beneath them, sending them ricocheting downwards and out of sight. There were far, far too many to take one one by one, and more coalescing from behind rocks or outcroppings with every passing moment. Where were they coming from? A hulking shape burst past her; she felt heat sear her back. Emily spun around. "What--?" Another enormous creature, something she'd never seen before, was barreling through the oncoming xenos wave. As it squashed and thrust aside the smaller ones, Emily could see the larger creatures towards the center. They had to be the source - she didn't know why that made sense to her focused, fighting mind, but it did. It was like the information was coming from elsewhere, from the scar-- no. She wasn't going to think about that possibility now. Not while they were all in danger. There had to be more of them; one of these things could never spawn so many tiny ones. She sprinted towards the area where the fire-beast was fighting now; whatever it was, it was at least temporarily an ally. She felt the tide of creatures around her, and willed the space within them to warp, boiling their blood, sucking the life from their disgusting, cyclopic eyes. The small ones popped like bubbles, splattering the ground, and a larger one rushed towards her, oozing from wounds her eldritch powers had inflicted. [hider=Summary - Non-Combat] A flashback to Emily's time living at home with her father, before the Academy, reveals that she concealed her intent to enroll from her dad until she'd already applied. It's unclear how this affected their relationship, but probably not for the better.[/hider] [hider=Summary - Combat] On a hunch (possibly provided by her scar), Emily follows Kim into battle, destroying many of the smaller blobs but only wounding one of the larger ones. It's attacking her back.[/hider]