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.

was going to leave that option as the last resort, and act on it

the way, there was only one path left — doing his civil duty and going directly to the Gate, in hopes of stalling the tide of Nightmare

most, did not, and chose to run instead. And who could blame them? Not everyone with an Aspect was a combatant, and even those who were had

the threat of retribution if they refused was not something the government was eager to do. Or maybe, it simply couldn't — forcing Awakened to do anything was a dangerous idea, since they could potentially topple

carrot instead of a stick when dealing with them.

going to see that carrot, though.

fight in front of the Gate, but this could

…Two ways, really.

as himself, or… as Mongrel, protecting

as every time he did so without proper preparations could potentially leave behind context clues that would allow smart people to narrow down the list

now, with not a lot of time to weigh all the pros and cons, Sunny felt

his true powers. That meant that all his efforts to create an image of a

going to become really, really famous… and draw the eyes of entities he wanted to remain blind to his existence for as long as

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 start asking questions that Sunny wasn't ready to

So…

to cowardly

Mongrel was going to have to stand

a messed up

hundred and seventy