Sleep. The blissful ignorance of nothingness. The acceptance of its null embrace. It was dark all around him, yet Brock had never felt so calm in his life. He could feel that it was time for him to awake soon, the distant sensation of chilled air and worn fabric brushing against his skin as his consciousness slowly slipped back into his body.

So calm, so tranquil. There truly was nothing else like slee-

“Oi. Wake up.”

“FUCK!” Brock shot up and out of bed, rolling off to the side of the stone slab he called his mattress and slapping directly onto the floor. Frantically, as he glanced up and caught the sight of a pair of midnight combat boots, a noise resounded again.

Only this time, it wasn’t words, but a humorous snort.

Gritting his teeth, Brock stood and glared at the cross-armed form of Mio, her black braid brushing against her shoulders as she looked around his ‘room’. He could see in her gaze that she didn’t approve of the… humbleness of his abode. He didn’t really either, but it still annoyed him that she looked down on his terrible living conditions.

“What the fuck, man?” Brock gestured at the woman with exasperation, “I was sleeping. Sleep-ing.”

A small smile crossed Mio’s face, “Yes. You were.”

Brock groaned.

“Jane’s awake,” the woman said after a brief silence, “that’s why I’m here.”

Despite the fact that he really didn’t want it to, Brock felt his sour mood quickly evaporate. It was incredible news to hear that his sister was finally awake, and it brought him no small amount of relief. He had worried that she might never wake up, even with the newfound survivability brought by the System.

It was foolish considering the power of the great machine god that governed over them all, but it was still a fear of his regardless.

Without waiting for him to respond, Mio wandered out of his hovel and into the shadows of the street. The town was still somewhat dim, but the morning sun was steadily brightening the place with its radiance. As he followed her out, he noticed the way the light cast dozens of the shadows in every direction.

Perfect for her shadow jumping.

“So how’s she doing?” He asked, his voice a bit too eager.

Mio’s voice came from above on a rooftop, and as he looked up, he wondered when she had gotten there, “She’s mostly fine. A bit confused and disorientated, and her memory’s patchy, but she’ll recover. She’s also having troubling believing that you were the one who saved her.”

Brock sighed once more, “Because she thinks I’m dead?”

The woman hummed in affirmation.

“Oh,” she piped up for a brief moment, before neutrality once again took hold in her voice, “and the blacksmith wishes to speak with you.”

Brock barely restrained himself from rubbing his hands together in delight. Then he realised he actually couldn’t regardless, so the self-restraint was entirely worthless. Not only had his sister come back to consciousness, but his weapon was also ready, it seemed. It was looking like he had quite the day ahead of him.

That aside for the time being, he found himself becoming increasingly distracted by the faded aura illuminating Mio. His wounds from yesterday were still rather sore, although they had scabbed up and long begun to heal, and his practice with aura was still fresh in his mind. He stared at Mio for several seconds as he studied the unique way her aura flowed, until she cocked a brow.

“If you’re trying to see under my clothes,” Mio brandished a trio of needles, “I’ll kill you.”

Her aura surged in places, perhaps acting out the effects of her anger, and Brock stepped back, waving his hands placatingly. Inwardly, he was… immensely intrigued, “I wasn’t, I wasn’t! I was just checking your aura.”

The needles vanished from between her knuckles as soon as they’d appeared, and Mio crossed her arms. Noticing that her pale flesh was free to the air, Brock finally realised that she wasn’t wearing her usual, bulky combat armour, but casual clothes. Nothing more than jeans and a button up shirt, but he found it… fitting for her.

He glanced at her face. A deep frown marred it, but she seemed to accept his explanation.

Her aura once more became calm, superimposing itself over her frame once again. Now it was his turn to frown. So far, even as he glanced to the people passing by through the street, he had always seen the aura in the rough shape of the body it dwelled in. In all cases, bits and pieces of it occasionally poked out, even with Harry and Fon. No one’s containment of it was ever perfect.

But with Mio, it was different. It was perfect, or at least scarily close to it. Her aura matched the outline of her body flawlessly, and not a single strand of the ethereal energy flickered out of line. Noticing he was staring again, she growled, “You don’t need your eyes to sense aura, Brock.”

Entirely ignoring the fact that this was the first time she had ever used his name, Brock met her eyes, “How’re you doing that? With your aura?”

“You… are actually looking at my aura?” she seemed a little disbelieving, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead. It led the man to believe that seeing aura wasn’t at all common like he’d hoped. If it was, learning about it would be far easier.

Brock snorted, “Yeah, I can see it. So, how’re you keeping it so… perfect?”

As Mio’s mouth opened to respond, Brock froze. A trio of auras suddenly blared directly behind him in his senses. Reflexively, Brock whipped his arm around despite the clear lack of a blade adorning it, and a second later, his appendage was caught by a firm hand. His attack was stopped dead.

The force reverberated up his arm painfully, and he winced. In his peripheral vision, violet wisps of aura drifted along the breeze before dissipating.

Someone chuckled with clear mockery, and a woman’s voice resounded, “So you’re Brock Carter?”

The man in question tore his only arm free and hopped away to Mio’s side. As he arrived at her side, she whispered to him that they were shadow scouts as well, though she didn’t mention why or how they were here. His eyes settled on the person that had caught his arm. A woman, tall, with fiery red curls that hung down to her waist and a sneer that could make a puppy cry. Or Harry.

“I have to say I’m disappointed.” He glanced up and met her eyes. He couldn’t help but feel that her gaze looked… old. Outwardly, she looked to be in her early thirties.

If not for the fact that her level was hitting the seventies, Brock might have just gone and quipped back something overly offensive to the woman. As he was now, however, he genuinely had no idea if he could take this person in a fight. He could detect an Augment in her aura, the aura too being perfectly wrapped up to her frame.

The Augment clearly felt underdeveloped, and his stats probably outdid her own by a fair margin, but still, he’d rather not risk it. His eyes naturally focused on the arm that had caught his attack, the palm red from the impact. Around it, violet aura twisted in a unique pattern. It’s… empowering her…?

“Brock,” Mio spoke next, though her voice came out strained and slow. Obviously, she didn’t like this person either, “this is Minerva, head of the shadow scouts. Behind her are Kai and Daniel.”

She spat every word with an edge of venom.

“Thank you, Minnow, for the introductions.” Minerva chuckled to herself, and Brock saw Mio clench her jaw at the nickname. Brock kind of wanted to chuckle too, if he was honest, “As for why we’re here – I know you’re wondering it - we’re establishing jump points in this town.”

“…Jump points?” Brock asked, brows furrowed. Minerva clicked her tongue as though his question had an answer so obvious it hurt her physically. He wanted to bitch slap the shit out of her with Oppressive Might. Thankfully, he held himself back.

“Locations we can shadow jump to? Our power can only teleport us to places we’ve been before, and thanks to Minnow here teleporting us, we’ve now been here before too.” The woman waved her hand dismissively, and Brock felt his middle finger itching to rear its majestic head. It hadn’t seen some action in a long while.

Instead, he nodded slowly, “Right. So you can leave then, yeah?”

Minerva raised her brow, as did the woman and man behind her, and she frowned, “Excuse me?”

The two locked eyes, and as the time passed by, he could see Minerva’s aura twitching slightly out of the bounds of her tight control. She wasn’t afraid per se, he she was certainly feeling unnerved. Cautious. Eventually, she clicked her tongue and broke eye contact first. He could see the indignance in the action but didn’t choose to antagonise her further.

A second later, the shadows wrapped her up and she disappeared. Her two followers looked confused for a moment before they did the same soon after, staring daggers at him as the darkness consumed them.

“Good job,” Brock turned around to see Mio nodding at him with begrudging respect, “she one hundred percent hates you now.”

“Who even was that asshole?” he asked her.

She sighed, an act which Brock found oddly unbefitting of her personality, “the leader of the shadow scouts, like I said. Just some bitch who was lucky enough to get a legendary Ascendancy and some easy levels. Plus, she was close to the Patriarch before the System. She isn’t shit.”

“…right…” He was fairly certain that if she and Mio fought, the latter would get herself flogged. He found it rather funny that somehow, she ‘wasn’t shit’, “anyway, I was asking about your aura before?”

“I’ll explain it while we get your friends.”

Brock was excited as they began to stroll through town proper and to the cafeteria where he could detect both Harry and Fon’s aura. If both Mio and that woman could do it, it was probably some secret ninja technique or some such. The other two also had relatively tight auras, but it wasn’t as perfect as Mio’s or Minerva’s.

It seemed immensely useful, however. He’d noticed that the less fluctuations an aura made, the less likely one was to detect it with their senses. It was probably how Mio was so good at sneaking up on him. She was visible to his aura senses, just… hard to find. In other words, he just really needed to focus to locate her signature.

Unfortunately, however, he found that the more Mio talked, the more his enthusiasm curbed. It was like the woman was speaking a whole other language. All the intricacies and details of the processes she used to contain it so flawlessly were lost on him, and honestly, he learned very little.

He could have asked her to explain it again, but better, though he was fairly certain Mio wouldn’t care to explain it a second time. She didn’t seem like she had the patience nor compassion for that.

Which meant he’d probably have to ask Jane when she was better, as strangely enough, Mio had mentioned that she had been the one responsible for the technique’s inception. So she’d know more about it than anyone.

That aside, he did understand the basic premise of it all; fold it. That… that was it. Mio folded her aura onto itself, creating a condensed core of aura. Sort of. It made her aura stiffer, harder to mobilise quickly, and dulled her aura senses according to her, but she could always unravel the core she’d created.

Brock tried to follow her instructions and do the same as he walked, but it was literally like trying to break a boulder with a log of fresh dog shit. It was a fucking mess.

His aura, oddly enough, appeared to be like a gas, and he therefore found that folding was simply impossible. What was worse was the fact that Mio had described her own aura consistency as something akin to putty or sludge. Something she could easily grip onto with her aura control.

To add insult to injury, when they’d finally met with Harry and Fon, they too had described their auras as something similar to Mio’s when asked. For some reason, his aura was vastly different from everyone else’s, and it was different in all the wrong ways. It’s just ‘fuck you’ after ‘fuck you’ with me isn’t it, Windows Vista? Yeah, that’s right. You’ve been downgraded.

No wonder he couldn’t put his Augments into his aura. If he compared the energy of an Augment to water, then putty would be able to just soak it up. But if it was a gas, then fuck all would happen. In the end, he forcefully dispelled his thoughts on the matter for another time and asked Mio to teleport them back.

She had just barely enough aura for it, at least according to what she’d told him beforehand. Quietly, Brock considered finding Minerva before they left, as he could detect her somewhere in town – her frustration left her visible in his senses - and asking about the nickname ‘Minnow’, but he discarded the idea.

He could ask Mio herself, but that was a good way to get assassinated. Plus, he also wanted her to teleport them.

As always, the act of shadow teleportation was immensely disorientating. In fact, it was both Harry’s and Fon’s first time, and both vomited onto the floor of the place they appeared. Unfortunately, it was the hospital where Jane was being cared for. Their puke slapped noisily onto the ground and the idle chatter within went quiet.

Brock glanced at them, before immediately noticing that Mio had disappeared, probably because she already knew that this exactly was going to happen. He huffed a breath out of his nostrils. Fuck you.

“So,” from behind the admission desk, an older woman spoke. She looked wholly unimpressed, “which one of you is cleaning that up?”

**

As the only one who wasn’t currently disorientated and nauseated, Brock drew the short straw and was forced to mop up the pair of vomit puddles. What was worse was the fact that they had only had breakfast a short while ago, leading to far more chunks than Brock felt himself comfortable dealing with.

In the end, both of his companions took seats in the waiting room with their own vomit bags and Brock strolled up to the desk scratching the back of his head awkwardly, “Uh… sorry about before…”

The lady chuckled with sauchenfraude, “I wasn’t the one who had to clean it up.”

“…I guess. Anyway, I’m here to see Jane Carter. I’m her brother, Brock.”

A silence fell between them as the woman’s eyes slowly widened to saucers, and for a moment, she looked like she was reconsidering every life choice she had ever made. Brock furrowed his brows and waved a hand in front of her, and she came back, although reluctantly. She appeared significantly meeker now, probably due to the fact that she had just made the city’s future leader’s brother mop up someone’s vomit.

“Um… yeah… sure. Go ahead, please. Do… do whatever you need to.” She stuttered several times, and looked like she was about to pass out, but she got the words out. Brock’s lips straightened into a line.

Feeling a tad bit uncomfortable with the reverence of the situation, he nodded to her awkwardly and headed toward the door leading off to the hospital rooms. He hadn’t spoken to his sister in several months, and he had to admit, he was rather nervous.

Especially since they had fought the last time they’d seen each other.