Shadow Slave

Now that he knew that he was — insanity! — going to act, Sunny had to decide how exactly, and do it very fast.

Sadly, the question was not as easy as it seemed.

His life was too complicated for anything to be easy…

Not only was the answer to the question not too obvious, but, what's worse, he had mere seconds to make a decision, which was not nearly enough to think things through with any sort of clarity.

But what choice did he have? None at all...

Sunny grimaced.

'Let's speedrun our options.'

The safest and most cowardly option was to Shadow Step into the classroom through the shadow spying on Rain, grab the girl, and bring her away.

At least it seemed safe on the surface.

In reality, though, such an action would cause all types of terrible consequences both for him and for his sister. Not only was he going to have a lot of explaining to do, revealing all the things he wanted to keep hidden, he would also leave countless witnesses, as well as digital evidence, connecting Rain to him and vice versa.

In the future, whenever he was going to end up having really dangerous enemies — which Sunny had no doubt would happen one day, soon — that evidence was going to come to light and lead them to her. Which was not something he was willing to accept.

option as the last resort, and act on it only if the school's defenses were breached

doing his civil duty and going directly to the Gate, in hopes of stalling the

were expected and encouraged, but not technically obligated to respond to a call like that. Many, maybe even most, did not,

not something the government was eager to do. Or maybe, it simply

a

going to see that carrot,

the Gate, but

…Two ways, really.

into battle as himself, or… as Mongrel, protecting his identity from the prying eyes, and himself from any

Mask was not without risk, as every time he did so without proper preparations could potentially leave behind context clues that would allow smart people to narrow down

a lot of time to weigh all the pros and cons, Sunny felt

going to have to go all out, showcasing the full scope of his true

eyes of entities he wanted to

create one too many coincidences for Rain to continue not noticing his secret attention. It was one thing to have a quirky neighbor… if he suddenly showed up near your school in your moment of need, and turned out to be one of the most deadly Awakened of his generation, though… that would most likely be enough to make her

So…

Sunless was going to have to cowardly run

Mongrel was going to

a messed up

hundred and