Shadow Slave

Both Sunny and Effie stared at him in surprise. After a while, the former huntress asked:

"Challenge the Nightmare with us? Don't you have a great position in Bastion, safe behind its walls? Have Sunny infected you with his madness?"

Kai frowned, then looked away. After a while, he said:

"Yes, I do. But… do you guys remember Aiko? She had a gambling den in the Bright Castle. Well, anyway, Aiko has a real talent for managing various things, so the agency hired her as my manager. One evening, we ended up talking about the Dark City."

A sad smile appeared on his face.

"Both of you only lived in the outer settlement, which had its own share of challenges, of course. Much more dire than what we who paid tribute faced in the Castle. But… but life wasn't that bright there, too."

He remained silent for a bit, then continued:

"Aiko had it way worse than I, though. Especially after one of the Pathfinders made a point of making her life a living hell… Andel, whose head Lady Nephis eventually took off his shoulders. We all knew it, but no one really helped."

A heavy sigh escaped from Kai's lips.

"Because what could anyone of us really do against one of the Pathfinders? But there was a lot of these compromises, of little lies we told ourselves as we closed our eyes to every dark, dirty thing that went on around us."

He looked at Effie, and said:

"People were starving in the outer settlement while we had our bellies full? Well, it wasn't our fault, because the Castle couldn't feed everyone. Surely, if there was more food, we would have shared. The Guards decided to harass someone? Well, that wasn't our fault either, because Tessai was too powerful, and we were too weak to resist him. And so on, endlessly. Everyone went as far as they needed to keep thinking of themself as one of the good guys."

Kai grew silent, then said quietly:

we were all weak. When I spoke to Aiko, I finally realized that in this world, being weak is a sin, too. At least for

at them,

to prepare. Plus, don't you need someone who can fly? Or are you going to simply jump into that

Sunny coughed.

Kai had a point…

put it like

***

that. Kai shared his experience of winning twelve consecutive weeks of the Avatar Singer and having to lose on purpose in the end, and the furor

publicist because of a strange scandal he had gotten somehow involved in on the network, causing Sunny to look away

all the fried chicken wings she had eaten and all the sorts of beer she had drunk, as well as what types of Nightmare Creatures she had hunted… and fried, and ate. She also joked about all the propaganda events the government wanted her to participate in, and the various ways with which she had managed

feel. He almost got sentimental thinking about his beautiful armored doors that Effie had smashed through,

had to return to his schedule. Before they parted, though, he hesitated, then took out two colorful pieces of synthetic paper from his pocket with a very embarrassed expression on his

anything, he handed the brochures

stared at it with a confused

some sort. On it was an image of two people standing back to

face. The girl was thin and languid, with a slim figure that bordered on being gaunter than Sunny had been in his outskirts days. She had a doll's face

impractical armor, a regal

the hell

top of

Song of Light

below it, in

nights. Passion blossoms hotter in the cold heart

stared at the piece of paper in

friend… what did you