Meshach rose quickly to follow Cat, tossing away the core of the apple behind him to land on the sidewalk. Yet another reason she was rapidly gaining respect to him- it was quite clear that she went by her own pace and seemed to only partially care about if people were going by that same pace in a beneficial sense. That was smart of her to do, sometimes trying hard to help people who just couldn't be helped or couldn't catch up was more of a hindrance than it was worth. Meshach believed that most lives are valuable, or at least have the potential for great value, but he was no cultivator and didn't care much. He also wasn't that much of a follower, but yet he still followed, taking long strides to catch up with her more quickly but otherwise not changing the pace of his footsteps. He didn't know exactly why.

Mostly, he knew, it was the fact that usually at the end of the rainbow there was some big scaly thing next to the metaphorical pot of gold that would fetch him a good price and teach the new Hunters coming in who exactly is the more experienced member of the team. However, it didn't help him more than momentarily, although cashing in anything useful from the corpse did stuff his pockets with well needed Cells. After all, some experienced hunters sometimes went out on expeditions beyond the normal scope of Hunter activities, by unshakable decree of the ever-meticulous and eternally malicious Council of Sector Three. And many of them never came back, including Hunters he had appreciated before and very shortly after his tenure as a slave. Although, a part of it was that he rarely met people who understood the kill or be killed world, even though the fact that their home [i]itself[/i] is trying to kill everyone should have been an indication of it. This young woman did. He didn't expect nor care to hang around other people that long, but the few people he did find himself admiring and respecting he did try to stick with. After all, the very next day they could have gotten themselves eaten or flayed alive. The City is not a place to cultivate friendships, only grudges. 

Though something kept nagging at him, even as they walked, mostly in silence, outside the boundary of the Sector closest to the newly-formed Cache. Something she said stuck in his mind, and the way she spoke, reacted to his response, walked in a careful, sharp, defensive manner, eyeing the surroundings as if every window was hiding an unnatural beast, and, to be fair, she was likely right more often than paranoid, although in a literal living Hell like the City paranoia and acceptable levels of caution are one and the same thing. Finally, when he picked up on what it was that irked him, he debated whether or not to even bring it up. In all honesty, it was an acceptable risk this close to their home Sector, but conversations simply lead to attachment, and attachments lead to mistakes. Meshach weighed the two options, then seeing no point in trying to suppress his curiosity, spoke up suddenly.

[b]"Do you mind if I just say something? Something you said has been bothering me, though I didn't pick it up until now. How do you know about Hunting setups and organization as well as you do, being a Retriever? And I can't chalk it up to simply basic knowledge, because Retrieval worked the exact same way as Hunters until a little over five, six years ago, when the so-called 'Traitor' Connelly fled the Sector and a bunch of his teammates loyally followed him out and you did not even allude to it in any way, shape or form."[/b] Meshach allowed himself to shrug and raise his hands casually, the Colt Service Revolver firmly gripped in his left hand. He didn't know why exactly he was doing it. He usually was silent, only speaking through simple sentences that rarely exceeded four words as a maximum, except when discussing strategy or reprimanding idiots for not following said strategy. He tried not to be verbose on a general rule, and this deviation surprised him, even as it was coming out of his mouth. [b]"I could be wrong. But something tells me I'm not. Now, I understand if you don't want to bring it up, Hunting's honestly a pain a good deal of the time, and I wouldn't want to bring up anything about myself either. I just wanted to say that I just thought it was-"[/b] Meshach fell silent quickly. Out of the corner of his eye on the red brick wall of a building only a block ahead to the right of an intersection, he noticed a flicker of movement. Anywhere else it would be merely a change in lighting, a quick casting of darkness over the wall followed by light. But the way it moved was unmistakable. Just to make sure, although it was more out of curiosity than precaution- he was already setting himself in a defensive shooter's stance from the waist up while still walking, revolver held up and arms steady to aim and fire at anything that came close- he looked at the street light directly across from the City block. Sometimes the lights occasionally crackle with what could possibly be electricity or maybe something else. The street light was dead, and it had been. Meshach looked up and to the left in the fifth story window of a tall, looming steel structure. In the panes of glass he could see at least five, six dark silhouettes against the glass, arms bent above their heads as if pressing themselves to the wall, peering outward. He saw the faintest glint of what might be rationalized as a white dust mote travelling in their field of view, but he knew that wasn't the case. Shadow Graphers were everywhere. The more places he looked the more places he saw them looming against the walls in dark spaces and around corners. It was a fairly small number of them in total, about a dozen or so, but if that was how many Shadow Graphers there were on the outer perimeter entire blocks away from the Cache at the epicenter, then there were far, far more nearer to the Cache itself. A lot of Shadow Graphers can create some large and nasty, if easily killable, creatures. And a Cache was never guarded by just a small platoon of weaksauce living shadows.

[b]"Hold that thought, you might want to get ready for company..."[/b] Meshach muttered.

---

[color=green]The City had expected Katerina to take action and dice the Shoggoth into pieces. It was a strange surprise that the young ex-Servant dispatched the Shoggoth in the way she did. The Shoggoth strained around the mutt Lazarus as it tried forcing its way deeper into the shadowy flesh of the creature. It did try to strain to keep the dog inside of itself, and it stopped its sharp shadowy tendrils in their tracks as soon as the dog was so far in that it would suffocate in a more excruciating death than its razor sharp tentacles could provide. Instead, the girl ran at an astounding speed, then leapt at and into the Shoggoth, backpack first, not before entering within quick slicing range of a few of the tendrils, which lashed out at her with speed that meant that it was highly unlikely she would dodge them all, especially if she was otherwise trying to destroy it. A lot of the Shoggoth's attention was otherwise- many of the Shadow Graphers consisting its paper-light mass were seeping out of the creature, extending and filling like a liquid into the dozens of small holes that extended from right below itself through tunnels and out elsewhere at various places in the street. When Katerina landed on the Shoggoth bag-first, it did not completely destroy the Shoggoth however. Instead it merely bust its top half like a ripe tomato. The lower tendrils erected to their fullest length and twitched there for a few seconds, as if the Shoggoth was stiffened in agony. Then the tendrils lashed. The shadowy flesh around Lazarus parted as the Shoggoth creature relaxed its grip to pay full attention to trying to mend itself and work at attacking the girl who burst the creature in half. Many gobs of shadow splattered over the edifices and facades of the surrounding buildings and street, giving everything dark, oily splotches. But that was one part of the fun surprise. The City expected the Shoggoth to burst apart fully, but this was going surprisingly better than conventionally expected of any mortal denizen within itself, even a skilled Servant such as her. The fact that the Shoggoth did not completely explode, only the top half, meant that Kat was soon to face an attack in three simultaneous stages. First, Kat and the newly freed Lazarus would have to dodge the now frantically swung tendrils of the remains of the Shoggoth, which now that they had their full attention back to fighting the creature, they likely would. But that was simply the first piece of the attack. At the same time, the gobs of oily shadow on the walls and ground elongated and formed thin, cylindrical tubes, at least nine inches long and with sharp, pointed ends- or as sharp and pointed as a corporeal shadow can be- which then hurtled themselves quickly through the air trying to hit Kat or Lazarus. Its third stage was preparing itself shortly, and once it was prepared not even a Servant of the Adderess herself could forsee it.[/color]