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Umbri ran through a ghost town. The streets of the market that had been bustling with people were dead and absent of noise and movement. Only the distant, repeating announcement, [i]"Any sign of suspicious activity, Gangers, or unknown powers are to be reported to the nearest authorities available. This is not a drill."[/i] echoed under the dome. Shieldtown was big. It was too big and there were too many shadows to find the one skulking around in them... so she looked for the other one.

[i]Boom.[/i] There he was, ripping through the sky so fast it was like he parted the air, and it rushed back in with a crack. Umbri stuck to the wall as a glowing cannonball smashed into the rooftop across from her, sending sprays of plaster crumbling over the side. In a blink he'd passed her. She swallowed and gave chase - he was already far out of sight.

Alex pinballed between each building, tearing through his settlement and surveying everything below. The momentum barely kept him upright, and he fell to all-fours, always still pushing forwards, catapulting himself to the next platform. Everyone could hear the crashes on the rooftops marking his hunt. He'd find his target soon. [i]Nobody escaped the thunderdome.[/i]

As if predicted by the citizens huddled in their abodes, awaiting their defender's inevitable victory - Alex caught sight of flapping fabric. For a split second, while launching himself over the road. Before there was even the chance for his brain and eyes to collaborate any further on what he was seeing, if it belonged to the guy - two pillars of shadow whipped up and YANKED him down. He crashed flat to the ground, an Alex-shaped crater cracking the stone beneath him. 

Whatever he thought he saw, it was gone.

[hr]
Umbri had just managed to locate him, catching glimpses of the blue bullet hurtling over the skyline. She was trying to keep up in the same direction some blocks away when [i]something [/i]pulled him down. She leaned to the left and changed her path. The new leather armour was clunky and shifted unpleasantly against her skin when she sweated. She knocked the left side of her chest, and her legs melted away, moving her like rushing liquid.

Then something big threw itself at her. Umbri shouted as something - something she'd [i]perceived[/i] as just a passing shadow overhead - hit her [b]solid.[/b] It let out a remarkably similar, much louder, yowl of surprise. Umbri fell over and rolled to a kneel, and the something that collided with her skidded and made a scramble to keep planted before collapsing. She looked up.

Glowing, slitted eyes looked back over a gory, nearly detached jaw. A jet black puma with radioactive spikes bursting from its scales was hunched down just meters away. Umbri gasped, frozen with fear. The Thresher's pupils shrank and its ears flattened to its scalp. A low warning growl started in the back of its throat, as they both crouched there, watching, waiting. Umbri's gaze trailed down to its clawless paws, matted in blood. She shifted her axe. The Thresher smacked its barbed tail on the ground in a threat then snaked it high over its head and puffed its fur out. Its glowing spots began to pulse. Umbri stared right back into those dilating eyes. She dragged her axe across the ground, and started to stand.

The Thresher backed up hissing and tripping over its maimed feet. It fell towards the shadow cast by a building, and as it touched it, dissolved into a black mist. It shot towards the ground and weaved away from Umbri towards a manhole, where it seeped in with no trace.

Umbri's pulse was left uneven after that encounter. The blade of her axe was shuddering from an unsteady hand. She had a hundred questions about it being free, and what she'd just seen it do, but the most stomach-turning thought that gripped her was... she recognized fear in it. But that was a stupid thought.

She stood over the manhole it had drawn her attention to. Alex had the skies and the streets. Looks like there were other paths this Ripper could lurk in to avoid the sentinel.

She hauled the manhole aside and slipped in, to search for the Ripper, and... maybe, in the back of her mind, the scared monster, too.

[hr]
Umbri stepped out from a spotlight of blue. It was yellow down here, yellow with a green tinge, from all the slimy moss coating the walls. There was a path down here beside the water trickling through, and lights. So people used this road... no. Not people. Rats. Exhibited by the dozen of scrawls on the wall, [i]'Rat waz here' 'No, Rat waz here!' 'RAT WAZ HERE FURST' 'Fred waz here!' '<- LIAR!'[/i] Umbri readied her axe. Who knew if all Rats had been infected by that zombie virus since she'd left the train.

She delved deeper, cautiously. There wasn't much to get lost in, until she came across a fork in the road. She was paralyzed by the choice for a moment, between a shadowy corridor - that made sense, places to hide, both for Ripper and Thresher - and another that just felt... odd. Almost surreal, but she could not put a finger on how or why. The latter won. She crept in. Everything was yellow and flat. She had a little bit of trouble determining the distance and depth of things away from her. It felt like she was in a dream, and she could not tell why, until she checked over her shoulder and saw...

No shadow following her. There wasn't even a shadow cast [i]beneath[/i] her. Despite all the lights, there wasn't a [i]single shadow[/i] in the hall. [i]So where could they all be...[/i]

At the end of this road, before it split into a T, in a perfect circle cast on the wall. She stopped before it. The axe dropped by Umbri's side with her arm, dangling. The circle stretched a good two feet over her head. An impossible absence of light that none of the gas lanterns could penetrate. She swore she saw her own shadow in there, flicking its arm towards her.

[color=#A4303F][b]"Holy shit,"[/b][/color] she mustered. Her eyes could not make sense of it. ...Behind her back, just out of her sight, something flickered into being, white hot and burning, unclear... but [i]unfurling[/i] from her as she tried. Tried to make sense of it.

Then something thudded down behind her. She whipped around to face it, and the ghost on her back evaporated.