Holding an unconscious and bleeding Korean woman over his shoulder, Brock knocked softly on the roller door to Ari’s warehouse, savouring the chilled bite of the midnight breeze. White stars sparkled upon the dark blanket of night in the sky, and he noted that since the System had arrived, the nights seemed to have gotten darker. Although with his enhanced stats, it didn’t really matter.

Harry loitered off to the side, looking on as Brock waited awkwardly. In the eerie silence of the night, their captive coughed up a mouthful of blood and it splattered down onto the back of Brock’s thongs, painting his heels in red.

Oh, fuck me.

Nothing happened for a few minutes within, the handful of auras present remaining rooted in place, and Brock knocked again. This time, the one closest to him rapidly scrambled around inside before approaching the most domineering aura in there. They too quickly began to move, and those around rose to apparent wakefulness as well.

A dozen seconds later, the roller door began to whir and rise, once again welcoming the duo inside. Ari was right there, her luscious brown hair frizzled and her face bleary. She was wearing something which looked like a mix between pyjamas and combat fatigues, and cutely enough, a pair of Ugg boots.

She settled her somewhat unfocused gaze onto Brock, or more specifically, the woman he held captive. Slowly, her eyes began to widen in disbelief.

“You… you’re back!? Already?!” Ari scrambled for words, the shock evident by the creases of her face. What had taken her and her soldiers’ months to so much as make the barest of progress toward had been done overnight by two strangers and their penchant for idiocy.

Brock shrugged nonchalantly, and following the woman’s beckoning gesture, came inside, Harry in tow. The place was dimly lit by scented candles, vanilla for some, caramel for others. The half-asleep faces of the soldiers from earlier were illuminated darkly by their flickering orange glow. The man had to admit, the place had quite the vibe of relaxation to it. He could see why Ari liked the place.

It’s… nice. He wouldn’t mind a place like this for himself someday.

At her command, the armed guards flicked on the lights and immediately dismissed the tranquil aura of the warehouse. Brock winced slightly from the sudden upsurge of brightness but otherwise focused his eyes on Ari Ahnjong, the head of Adelaide. She seemed to be somewhat dumbstruck by the rapid turn of events, but befitting of her status, she quickly regained her bearings and motioned for them to sit once more.

Together, the boys obliged.

The woman opposite them steepled her fingers and leaned forward, “I didn’t expect you to be back so early. Is that the leader there?”

Brock snorted. He knew it was a question for the sake of formality; she clearly already knew the answer. He nodded, and shrugged his captive off his shoulders, delicately placing her on the floor. Her chest was somewhat caved in, and blood had evidently poured freely from her mouth, but these days, a wound like that was nothing a little Vitality couldn’t fix.

In fact, he had sensed she’d been conscious for a while now. At least that’s what her aura had been portraying to him.

He scratched his growing stubble, “Uh, yeah sorry about her condition. It was an accident.”

“Mostly.” He added quickly, looking away.

Ari straightened her lips into a line, apparently unimpressed, although she didn’t voice any concerns about it. Clicking her tongue, she nodded respectfully to Brock, and then settled her brown eyes onto the captive, clearly as aware of her wakefulness as the man himself was. Whoever this woman was, she was not at all good at hiding the emotions in her aura.

She sighed, “We’re not imbeciles, you know?”

Silence followed her words for about three seconds afterwards, and just as Brock was beginning to think they were wrong, the woman’s eyes shot open, and she lurched forward, away from the table where they were seated.

“Shadow Cloak!” Realising a bit too late that her cover was blown, the woman’s aura began to deplete in strength and size as a shroud of rippling invisibility rapidly overtook her, forming itself from the shadows cascading around her. Brock snorted and reached out his hand.

“Ethereal Shackles.”

Appearing more fed up than anything else, Ari moved to stand and stop her, but the abrupt appearance of several spectral black chains stopped her dead in her tracks. The binds shot up out of the escapee’s shadow and wrapped themselves around her arms, legs, and torso. Instantly, the drug kingpin’s camouflage dispelled, and the necrotic fetters sizzled at her flesh while they dragged her down to the floor.

The woman screamed in pain, and Brock disabled the Technique a few seconds later.

All the people in the room, save for Harry, looked to Brock with a mix between shock and horror at the clear power and speed his Technique possessed. His captive didn’t dare move afterwards, only groan in pain, and as the soldiers moved in to restrain her, he caught Ari eying the sizzling marks of melted flesh with no small amount of fear.

“That’s… quite the Technique you have there…” she spoke quietly, almost as if she was saying it to alleviate herself from the terror of the truth.

Brock chuckled without humour in response and nodded, “To answer your earlier question properly. Yeah, the chick’s the leader you were looking for.”

He didn’t choose to comment further on his Technique, and Ari noticed and decided it was probably best if she didn’t try to venture on it. Nodding sharply, she motioned for the guards to make the other woman stand, and she turned back to Brock and Harry.

“Thank you for this. You two… are more powerful than I thought. I’ll make a call to the ritualist as soon as morning comes, otherwise, feel free to make yourselves at home.”

Brock gave her a singular thumbs-up, and the female powerhouse stood, walking over to the now meek captive she held. For a second, silence reigned, then Brock recoiled in shock as the dignified and strangely relatable Ari savagely slapped the other woman across the face, jerking her head to the side. The leader of Adelaide gritted her teeth angrily.

With a rapidly reddening welt on her cheek, the other woman looked at her captor speechlessly as she began to yell to her face, “Ha-Eun, what would mother and father think of what you were doing?! Are you insane!?”

Idly, Brock watched on and whistled quietly. This relation between the two hadn’t exactly come as a surprise as he could kind of predict where this had been going. It was obvious once he saw the way Ari looked at the woman on his shoulder; with deeply hidden worry. And relief. Still though, it was undisputably an interesting turn of events.

Brock felt Harry nudge him in his side and he glanced over as the boy pointed to himself triumphantly. The teenager had indeed predicted this happening earlier in the night and seemed oddly proud that it had come to fruition. Brock slapped him over the back of the head lightly.

Not the time mate.

The person he assumed to be Ari’s younger sister finally managed to regain her ability to speak, and she cried out in outrage, nursing the mark on her face, “Mother and father are dead! Why do you even care about what I do anywa-”

While the younger woman seemed to share many of her older sister’s features, her face was slightly longer, and her cheekbones higher. She wasn’t prettier perse, but she was definitely her sister’s sister. Then, abruptly, her other untouched pale cheek earned itself another hand-shaped welt and the girl was cut off.

“Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean they still don’t want what’s best for you! And I feel the same as they do,” Brock could see Ari was getting a bit heated now, her own pale cheeks almost as red as the wounded ones of her sister, “You’re my sister, and I refuse to let you devolve to crime. Not while I’m around.”

Feeling slightly awkward just sitting here in the middle of it all, Brock grabbed Harry and together they slipped out the main entrance unnoticed. He decided they’d return a bit later when things had cooled off, the two took a leisurely stroll down the shoreline, savouring the feel of sand underfoot and even punting a quadrupedal shark monster back into the ocean soon after it had appeared.

All in all, it was a rather enjoyable experience.

An hour or two later, as the argent moon hung high in the sky and prepared to begin its descent to obscurity, Brock and Harry made their way back to the secluded warehouse hideout. When they finally entered back in, they were met by the sight of Ari by her lonesome, the guards and her ‘rebellious’ sister nowhere to be seen.

She was sitting on her bed by herself, looking down at a framed picture she held within her supple fingers. Based on the context, Brock assumed it was either of her sister, or their deceased parents, or both. Quietly, the office worker leaned down to his younger companion.

“If you ever have a rebellious phase, I’m leaving you on the side of the road in a cardboard box.” He whispered in the boy’s ear as he continued onward toward the beautiful woman, his voice almost visibly oozing satire.

Harry paused in his gait, and recoiled as he considered what his friend said, “Wait… what?”

Brock didn’t deign to reply to the kid and plopped down beside Ari, remaining silent until she felt ready to speak to him, if at all. Out of privacy, he deliberately avoided glancing at the photo and instead looked inward and set aside the moment to inspect the intricacies of his Augments.

He wasn’t able to glean anything at all in the time he was given before Ari finally spoke out, regarding the two of them without tearing her gaze away from the picture. Harry had no qualms about snooping, however, and Brock could see in the reflection of the boy’s eyes that it was a photo of the woman and her family, albeit a few years in the past.

He had no idea how she managed to bring it here, especially since he was almost certain she was originally from Korea, but he didn’t comment on it.

“I detained her in a cell if you were wondering. She can spend a week thinking about what she’s done.” To Brock, the woman seemed oddly tender, trying her very best to do, well, her best. Immediately afterwards, she favoured him with a forced smile, “hopefully, I got through to her.”

While that was what she said, Brock could tell that she didn’t truly believe her own words.

“You did your best. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters. The rest is up to her, not you.” Brock couldn’t do anything but console the lady in her time of vulnerability. She stewed on his words for a few seconds, before nodding imperceptibly and meeting him with a small smile, this one genuine.

“Thank yo-”

“You got any chocolate?” Harry piped up out of nowhere. Sighing, Brock pinched the bridge of his nose.

Unfortunately for him, Adelaide’s most powerful protector did not.

**

In the end, after speaking with Ari a little further, they decided it was best to depart. It was clear that the woman needed some time alone, and she had already imparted them the location of where to go to see the scryer. She had mentioned once again that she’d call the lady in the morning and said that they’d be good to pay her a visit around twelve in the afternoon.

Apparently, she’d need time to prepare the right materials for her ritual to work on two individuals as powerful as themselves.

With it being close to four in the morning and the duo having nothing to do, the two of the technically homeless warriors took refuge in an old hotel, the building being abandoned just like the many others around them. They did hear… noises from one of the rooms they passed, but they were less than kid-friendly, and neither of the two wanted to intrude.

Of course, Ari had offered them to stay the rest of the night at her place, something which Brock certainly wouldn’t have said ‘no’ to under normal circumstances. But as was mentioned before, he knew she needed time, and had declined.

They eventually settled for two separate rooms on the second floor and instantly slipped themselves into bed. If Brock remembered correctly, the last time he’d actually taken the time to sleep had been three days ago, and he was beginning to feel his brain become sluggish and foggy. Fortunately, the beds copped far from the worst of the effects of the decays of time and were only slightly discoloured.

Well, Brock hoped the discolouration was due to time. He shuddered at the thought of otherwise.

It had only taken him less than ten minutes before he drifted into the soft embrace of unconsciousness. Sure, these days people were all mostly superhuman, and while that simple factor somewhat nullified the need for sleep, it didn’t erase it entirely. The body still required at least a small amount of it to effectively function.

Plus, the man actually enjoyed the act of sleeping and the blissful ignorance it brought with it. In fact, it was his second favourite pass time. Not dying was his solid first.

He awoke the next day with a prolonged yawn, his enhanced body stretching out as he did so and filling him with the satisfying sensation of his popping bones. Wearily, he looked over at the clock on the bedside. The plastic outside was a bit crusted and browned, but blessedly it seemed to be battery powered and displayed the time perfectly.

Brock couldn’t see it through his watery eyes, however, and just opted to snuggle back into bed.

The power situation of the city was somewhat under strict control as of current. There was only a limited amount of the stuff left, and while Ari also had access to solar panels, as evident by those that he had briefly noticed on the roof of her warehouse, there was obviously nowhere near enough to power an entire city.

Most places were entirely cut off from the main power grid, and he assumed that the majority of the population were forced to live in a modern dark ages. Yawning once more, Brock wiped at his eyes and glanced at the clock again.

3:32 PM

It was the afternoon. Sniffling, Brock turned over and went back to slee-

Oh FUCK!

With a furious gust of his Augment of Skies, the blanket was quite literally torn off of him, floating around in pieces as Brock rolled out of bed and rammed through his door and into the hallway. In a frantic few seconds, he spotted Harry’s room a little way down the hall, and he swat kicked the wooden barricade barring him access off its hinges.

It landed inside as a splintered mess, and Harry was startled awake, looking at Brock with a mix of shock and confusion. The man rushed over and snatched the boy by his arm, dragging him out of bed as he nodded to the clock on the bedside table.

“We’re so late!”

Harry didn’t even give himself the time to curse as he frantically chased Brock down the stairs and onto the bottom floor. Together, they charged through the bustling afternoon streets of Adelaide, earning both enraged shouts and the cusses of city goers alike, following the specific directions Ari had implanted in Brock’s mind beforehand.

Ten minutes later, they arrived upon a nondescript side store on a deserted street. As he slowed himself and walked up to the front of the shop, he wondered idly if he had somehow managed to go to the wrong place. He was sure he’d followed the directions exactly to the thought though. Clicking his tongue, he pushed the door open experimentally, and instantly he was met with the sweet smell of incense.

A single voice rang out from deep within. She sounded grumpy.

“You are very late, boy.”