"Welcome to Aurora!" A short, dark-skinned woman adorned in a lot of expensive jewelry, scantily clad, and adorned in an oval shaped, wooden mask that was completely painted blue said as the group arrived past Aurora's gates, "I hope you enjoy the festivities!"
The group had reached Aurora fairly late at night, yet the village was brighter and more vibrant than Nova had ever been. As far as the eye could see, the people were all wearing different colored mask: Red, yellow, orange, green, purple, blue, it was pretty easy to guess what they meant.
"We made it in time for Borealis!" Damien exclaimed. "Come on, let's go get masks!"
Music rang out throughout the city. Somber, exciting, playful, whatever tune there could be, blended together in a sort of distorted but harmonic way. It was neither pleasant nor repulsive, but it had a sort of draw that would make someone want to join in the festivities.
The group approached a street vendor with a display of blank white masks behind him. On his own face, he wore one that was painted half green and half orange, "Looking for a visage, well you came to the right place. Each one cost 3 sapphire chips, how many?"
"12 please," Dante responded as he handed him four ruby chips. "Go ahead and keep the change."
The old man looked pleased as he pocketed the chips, "Thank you for your generosity, kind sir." A small green aura surrounded his body as he placed a finger on the masks, a small ocean like insignia appearing on each of them, "They're ready for activation, just give them a bit of your wattiez."
Beside him, Damien saw Amelia and Dmitri do as he said, their mask lighting up orange and yellow respectively, followed by Phive and Shix who both got orange, then Jikan and Cleo with purple and green, and finally Matilda with orange.
Left behind were Dante, Damien, Krista, and Raven who all had their same white mask, "Guess it doesn't work for people like us," Dante commented as he looked towards Raven, "Still gonna wear the mask though. Darius, why haven't you activated your visage yet?"
" People like us, is he untethered?" Damien thought as he completely blanked on what Dante said, leaving Krista to save for him.
"There weren't a lot of celebrations like this back home, so he's never used a visage before," Krista explained, "The only reason Amelia, Matilda, and I know about them is because we're from New Dawn."
Damien quickly snapped back to reality, "Yeah, sorry about that. Guess my country boy tendencies got the better of me."
In reality, Damien didn't want to put his wattiez into the mask. Based on what he'd seen, if he put his wattiez into it, then his affinity would be revealed. Caught out as a liar, the Shining Twilight members might suspect that he was lying about other things.
"Well, isn't it a good thing that I decided to start teaching you symbiosis," whispered Matilda from behind his ear.
Damien felt a chill run up his spine as she did that, but Matilda was right. If he could manage to only feed the mask the wattiez from his augmentation, elemental, and life affinity, then he'd still be in the clear. Not that he'd done it correctly yet. Better during a life-or-death situation than never, he'd say.
Damien weakly smiled and looked back towards Dante, "Sorry about that, let me just…"
Damien closed his eyes and focused. His little knife throwing trick from before hadn't helped when it came to symbiosis, and he was beginning to believe it was because he let his mind wander to much. No, this time he'd focused on something more concrete, focused on Dante, focused on how much he wanted to crush his skull, focused on how much he wanted to force smoke down his lungs, focused on how much he wanted to feel his heart slowly stop beating until he opened his eyes again. Once he did, Damien noticed that his mask was evenly split between a red, yellow, and green color.
Matilda jumped on his back once more, "Now if you could only do that regularly."
Damien could only glare because, once again, she was right. Before he could even blow her off, a couple of kids ran to his side, "Rainbow! Hurry, there are blanks to be defeated!"
Damien looked in confusion at the two children sporting a purple and yellow mask respectively. From behind their mask, They looked up to him awaiting his response, a boy and a girl, both holding toy swords that they pointed towards Dante, Raven, and Krista. He didn't know what being a Rainbow meant, so Damien looked towards the vendor for help.
"Don't look at me, I have no idea what the kids are saying, but it's Borealis," he exclaimed, "You're in Theatre City, it's a bit of a tradition, you've got to play along with them."
Damien sighed but he took the dagger given to him by Krista and spoke with gravitas, "But of course, Rainbow at your service! Those evil blanks won't get away while I'm aro- Wait, blanks?" Damien wasn't thinking about it before, but these kids were targeting those three because they were blanks, or in other words, untethered.
"Yeah," the boy said, "We've already defeated two tonight, but there's three more next to you."
"Mom and Dad said that we shouldn't play with the blanks because they're dangerous. Since it's Borealis, and can run around without our parents, we decided to beat all the dangerous blanks."
Damien sighed, even the kids had were like this, but it was different from the adults, different from the way Emmy acted back in Horizon. Maybe he could help change their attitudes.
Damien bent down to their level and spoke with them face to face, "See those blanks over there, well, the woman there is my best friend."
"What?" They said together, "But you're a Rainbow, and they're blanks."
"Why is being a blank so bad?" asked Damien.
"Because Mom and Dad said they were," the boy responded.
"Your visage is supposed to change color, so if it doesn't, that means you're bad?" The girl spoke as if she was asking a question, unsure if what she was actually saying was actually true.
"Well, you didn't listen to your parents when you said that the blanks were dangerous," Krista said as she focused on the boy, "and you don't actually think what you're saying is true."
The siblings stood there and pouted as they really didn't have a response, but their faces showed that neither really felt they were in the wrong. It was a good moment before the boy continued, "But blanks… even out tutor said we shouldn't play with them because they're too fragile."
"I thought they were too dangerous," said Damien catching the inconsistencies in what the boy had said.
"No, well…" he stuttered, "the untethered are dangerous or no, the blanks…" he began shaking his head in frustration.
"Listen kid, it's not being a blank, not being untethered that that's makes you one way or another because I can tell you, this girl here is anything but fragile," Damien commented but noticed that he was only confusing the kids further, "Okay, let's make things easy."
Damien gestured towards Dante to come closer, "Me? Need my help?" asked Dante.
Damien really wanted to slug him one but held back due to the way Raven looked at his closed fist. Dante did comply though, walking over the Damien, Krista, and the kids.
"That man there is a blank he's super evil, a real villain like your parents warned you about," said Damien.
Dante bent down and smiled evilly, "Yep, a real bad one, if you aren't careful I might get ya." As he slowly stepped closer the two kids weakly backed away still wary, maybe even more so of blanks until Krista stepped in front of them.
"Then there's this blank, one of the most courageous, reliable, and trustworthy person I know," Damien said as he held onto the two kids' shoulders, "There's probably dozens if not 100's of others just like them, good and evil, but there's also many more that sit in between, good people that do bad things, and bad that do good. It's not possible to simply say if you're a blank then you're bad, right?"
The boy slowly nodded his head as he begun to understand Damien's point, but the girl had one more question, "How will we know what type of person a blank is then?"
"The same way you make any friend," Damien said as he pushed the two besides Krista, "You interact with them."
"Hello, Ms. Blank," the kids said gingerly.
"Krisha," she said before pausing, "or better yet call me Super Blank, resident hero ready to defeat the villain!"
"Y-Yeah!" the kids shouted together, "Let's get him!"
"You stand again Dark Blank?" Dante asked fiendishly playing his part perfectly, "Puny weaklings, you three think you have what it takes to defeat me? Don't think I'll let you off easy!"
The kids took another half step back, even with Krista by their side they were still wary of him. Maybe he was doing too well of a job, "Don't forget me, Rainbow, at your service!"