Shadow waved her goodbyes to her student as soon as she was certain they weren't being followed. As much as she wished to stick around and insist more heavily upon the matter of his training, she had a rather important task to attend to.

Elder Summer had called for her.

It had not been an urgent request for her presence, but she did not know the elder well enough to risk being any later than absolutely necessary.

Using the ever-present darkness in the lower-levels of the second district, Shadow pushed herself with bursts of energy, jumping from one spot to the next and moving towards the upper areas. She received a confirmation ping from the elder's AV that was waiting for her at the top of the second wall, and Shadow pushed harder.

She barely paid any mind to the drone swarms patrolling through every vent, street, and alleyway in search of a monster that they would never find. The meguca hastily sent a priority notification to the city's CYPHER nodes that she'd confirmed the threat had been "dealt with".

The response was immediate. A quick bounty payment, and a notification that if she didn't produce video-evidence of the kill within the next hour, then her profile's confidence-score would receive a demerit. Shadow grimaced- not only would it take her months of proactive monster hunting to be able to regain the loss… but elder Fulton would no doubt receive the notification and know she was somehow tied to today's events.

She made a mental note to prepare a full report after the meeting.

Hopefully the trust she'd earned from her student would be worth the price.

Something looked at her, and all too suddenly her speed was halved. Shadow recognized that an elder's attention was upon her. Nothing else in the city could see through her so thoroughly that it could remove her speed in such a violent fashion.

Now forced to move at a slower pace, and all too aware she was being watched from somewhere overhead, Shadow took to one of the cargo-shafts and hitched a ride atop an elevator, sending a quick notification to the system to prioritize her and hurry up. It wasn't subtle and she could feel her uncertainty growing weaker with every digital tracker in the district locking on to her location, but there wasn't a quicker option available anymore.

Her power of uncertainty hissed and wriggled, demanding that she do her best to hide her presence, but the meguca knew that not only would it be potentially futile, it would definitely be rude. As a student of elder Fulton, she could not allow her teacher's name to be tarnished merely due to her discomfort.

That did not mean she could not try to figure out how exactly the observer was sensing her. If this were elder Fulton, then the sensation of entrapment would focus on her feet, the foreign awareness coming from the very metal she was standing on. If it were elder Hecate, or Axel, then it would come from deep within her chest, from her very core, and tug directly towards the one watching her. This was different, however, skin-tight and fighting to reach down her throat, as if she were trapped inside a plastic bag that had all the air sucked out.

It only got worse the further up she went.

The elevator came to a stop short of the destination, low enough for her to step through the doors and into a sea of far more observers. Cameras, microphones, and people, so many people. They pretended not to look, not to pay attention, but Shadow could feel their eyes like pin pricks against her skin. The very same automated system meant to warn them to stay out of Shadow's way had also made her into the center of attention.

This was the exact reason why she hated placing requests on the city's networks.

Keeping her head held high and pretending not to notice, Shadow marched on towards the nearest open plaza, where a verdant green AV was waiting for her.

As soon as the doors opened, Shadow confirmed her suspicions of who'd been watching her from half-way across the district.

"Come, sit."

Elder Summer gestured at the seat opposite to her. Despite being the oldest meguca in New Francisco, with long golden hair tied into a loose ponytail, pale yet lightly freckled skin, and a flowing silk blue sundress, the woman looked no older than thirty.

"Thank you, elder Summer," she said with a bow. This close to the elder, the 'bag' around her body tightened and Shadow knew that there was not a single cell in her body that the elder was not paying attention to. Never before had her power of uncertainty shrivelled up to such a minuscule speck that there was not a drop of power to be drawn from it. The meguca felt as if she just might vanish along with it if she wasn't careful. "How may I be of use?" she asked, wishing so much for the end of the suffocating scrutiny that she didn't even notice the AV taking off.

"Despite knowing of your spoils for quite some time, I've never had the pleasure of meeting you in the flesh before, little shade. Rarer still to do so without that full metal b-" Elder Summer coughed. "Sorry, elder Fulton, hovering over your shoulder." She sighed, looking out the window as they kept moving upwards. "Is it because she actually cares, I wonder?"

"I… do not understand what you mean, elder Summer," Shadow replied.

"No, I guess you wouldn't." Her shoulders slumped as she turned away from the window, reaching for a compartment on her armrest and pulling out a bottle. "Water?"

"Thank you, elder Summer."

"You can drop the title while we're alone. I won't tell Fulton." She waved the younger meguca off, tossing a second bottle her way.

"I will attempt to keep that in mind, elder Summer." Taking small sips, Shadow waited for the elder to proceed, content on how the attention had shifted elsewhere, freeing her from the nanometer-level scrutiny. The near-suffocation still lingered, but at a level she was more accustomed to in the presence of an elder.

It would not be until the AV had broken into a low cloud that the elder spoke again. "Do you remember the day we found you?" She didn't wait for an answer before proceeding. "I suppose it would be hard, you were barely larger than my forearm."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Elder Fulton was very clear on my origins," she said, shifting uncomfortably on the seat. "I do not understand how that might be relevant to my current situation."

"I was only being reminiscent. Fulton was not quite so uppity back then." Elder Summer let out an exasperated sigh, gaze lingering on Shadow before crumpling her empty water bottle. "With all the preparations for the A-class's possible approach underway, I've found myself thinking of the past. But unfortunately that is a luxury even I can ill afford." She turned her focus back to the window. "What do you think of your student?"

"His potential-"

"We can wait on that assessment for now." She waved off. "What I am more interested in is who he is, as a person."

"Ah." What to tell? Though sharing the whole truth was preferable, elder Fulton's position was not the best right now amongst the other elders. Would there be any way to help alleviate that? Shadow hesitated. For all her experience out in the field taking care of the worst kind of humans around, she lacked that sort of social finesse that would be very convenient right about now. "From what I've been able to gather, the reports we acquired from his city of origin aren't false. Though my testing has by no means been thorough, I am fairly certain that Axel Garcia is someone who had a good corporate education."

"Do you believe he'd stick to his roots?"

Though she'd asked the question casually, Shadow could feel the restrictions of the meguca's attention tightening around her. She lowered her head slightly. "I do not know, elder Summer. If you wish for me to-"

"I was not implying you should attempt to coerce or convince him to pick a side." The elder waved off the younger meguca's concerns, yet Shadow felt like the words were meant to be empty platitudes. "Merely that you keep an eye out, it is a detail I believe might be important in the future."

Shadow's brows knitted ever so slightly. "In the future?"

"Merely speculation on my part. I take it you haven't put a CYPHER profile request?"

CYPHER profile requests were petitions for the AI to sift through every scrap of available data pertaining to an individual to create a thorough dossier on them. It was incredibly resource intensive, and it was also a necessary step for any meguca to be able to register in the database as one. The dossier would be then used to implement useful quality-of-life protocols that would be distributed and installed in many automatic systems throughout a city.

For example, automatic warning systems telling citizens to keep their distance from Shadow whenever she chose to make her presence known. Or, in a more useful case: algorithms that would detect and erase content regarding the meguca that were not posted by white-listed accounts.

"Elder Fulton mentioned she was handling it. However, there might be delays due to the A-class demanding all available resources."

"I'll be sure to put some pressure on that. It wouldn't do if we declared him a meguca, but then stalled on providing him with the proper privileges and protections." Her words were hard, and though she was staring out of the AV's window, Shadow knew the elder's attention was still firmly on her.

She didn't answer, but inwardly seethed. The implications of what elder Summer was saying were unfathomable. Elder Fulton's teachings had ingrained into her the importance of holding an unbreakable set of principles, especially for someone in Shadow's position. "A meguca's duty to protect humanity could only be possible if they held themselves to the highest standards," she said, not meeting the elder's gaze.

The older meguca snorted. "You just came back from helping someone in a heist."

"To recover something of equivalent monetary value as that which had been taken from them in the first place," Shadow promptly rejected. "I'd made sure to verify the claim as well, the Banker's operations are tied to swindling and scam networks. And in this instance, Axel already was in possession of sufficient evidence for me to finish verifying on my own."

"And yet, rather than bring this to the NFPD and exert some influence as a meguca, you did… this." Elder Summer's eyes twinkled in bemusement. "Or you could've just given him the money directly, it's not like you're short on that."

"That would've been counterproductive to both building trust as well as teaching him on how to handle his powers while in the presence of humans."

The elder huffed. "Booooring," she proclaimed, shifting her attention towards the door as the AV came to a stop.

A gust of chilly wind was followed by a deep, flowery sweet scent. Shadow's eyes widened as she followed the elder out of the vehicle, stepping into the glass penthouse that stood at the very peak of the city. "This…" She'd seen the place from a distance, usually from within other buildings, a hundred or so floors made out of nothing but hyperglass, and filled to the brim with the deepest of greens.

A greenhouse the size of a mega-building occupying the pinnacle of the largest building in New Francisco. "Is my office," the elder introduced, sending the approaching drones away with but a wave.

They walked across the balcony landing-pad and past the climate-controlled doors, the aromas becoming impossibly richer the further they went in. Plants and trees she had never seen stretched out in every direction, the greenhouse devoid of any alternate paths save a central wooden walkway.

"You… have no security systems here," Shadow whispered under her breath.

"If you try to steal something, you'll find I don't need one," the elder replied with a mischievous chuckle.

Shadow would've normally assumed egotism, but she could feel the elder's attention upon her body, from every angle, from the air she touched and breathed, and even from within herself. There was nothing in this world that could hide from elder Summer, especially not within this greenhouse.

"If it is not too impertinent of me to ask, why did you bring me here?" She wondered, suppressing the shiver that ran up and down her spine.

"Because it can't always be an email." The elder laughed lightly, leading the way through the greenhouse, the wooden path they followed shifting under its own will as they proceeded. The trees bent at their passing, branches reaching down to caress the elder's golden hair as she'd return the affection as if a mother to her child. "But that does not mean-ah."

Her gaze shifted away from Shadow, the wood under their feet moving like a conveyor belt and nudging them forward towards one of the glass walls. The windows shuttered open, revealing the infinite blue sky overhead.

"Just one moment." The elder made a gesture, and more windows opened, the forest around them shuddering as the trees leaned towards the open holes.

THWIP

Something massive and fast shot out from one of the trunks, escaping the greenhouse with a whisper that accelerated with a shrill whistling sound not too unlike a rocket. Shadow could barely track the wooden projectile as it continued to accelerate, the sound of its passing vanishing into nothing.

Until, that is, a bright green flash lit up over the horizon.

Though the blast was too far to feel physically, the fact that Shadow could sense a mild speck of energy from an explosion over a hundred miles away… It was frightening to consider.

"Was that-"

"Just a little C-class pest that didn't know any better," the elder proclaimed as the greenhouse began to close up once more. "Now, to really answer your earlier question, I have a small job for you. Nothing violent, of course, I just need you to deliver a package."

"A… package?"

Elder Summer reached out towards the nearest tree, her touch against its bark causing it to shiver in delight. The wood flowed through her fingers like wet clay, molding itself in accordance to her every gesture. At the same time, the tree's branches reached down, scooping up soil and offering it to her, filling up the container that was being created.

"Yes, I would like you to deliver this to your student."

Shadow stared at the potted plant, frowning when she felt a vague sense of familiarity from it. Reaching out to hold it in her fingers, something stirred within her, a wordless question, but one she couldn't fully grasp.

As if she'd seen another pot just like it.

Long ago.

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