Affinity:Chaos

"The bounty hunters said they were sent here by Aries, your Faction Leader's student." The man said, he looked at the shadow and said, "Do you by any chance know how she got wind of my strength? All my puppets are gone."

The shadow was shocked when he heard this, he knew Aries was not in the Faction, but he didn't know where she went. Grey's presence in the Faction had taken most of his time. All he heard was that Aries left with Grey's friends.

'Could she have sent his friends here?' The shadow thought.

"Aries has been out of the Faction for some time now, I don't know her whereabouts. But no one has accepted that mission which means it's still active." The shadow didn't voice out his concerns, only telling the man what he knew.

"What about the people, did you kill them?" The shadow asked.

"No. I handled the matter, but I couldn't kill them. They're too powerful. But they're seriously injured, I don't think they will be coming out anytime soon." The man replied.

"A shame." The shadow shook its head before looking at the man, "What about my goods, are they safe?"

"I don't use your puppets, they're still in the safe." The man snorted.

The shadow heaved a sigh of relief. He had expended a lot of energy to get those people to come out and be killed by this man. They usually share the people in half. He had sent a good amount of people over to the man and the man had killed all of them. He picked his puppets and preserved the others for the shadow. The shadow hadn't been able to take some of the recent batches, so he had quite a good number of people present.

"So what now?" The shadow asked.

"I need to know if she will still come after me or not. Those people are alive and know that they would need a little more help and they can kill me. If they send a Pseudo-Sovereign my way, I'm doomed." The man said.

"Why didn't you leave this place then?" The shadow asked.

"The best hiding place is in plain sight. Who would believe that instead of me leaving this place after it was compromised, I still chose to stay here?" The man shrugged.

The shadow thought about it and nodded. Indeed, everyone would think the man was no longer present here, especially given how boisterous the town has been recently, it was easy to assume that the man had been gotten rid of.

"I'll take my goods and then head back to make inquiries about Aries' whereabouts." The shadow said, he paused and said, "If the people are the ones who left the Faction with her, then they are trouble. There's an even stronger one still in the Faction."

The eyes of the man widened, "I better leave then. I need to find a better hiding place. Do well to make sure I'm able to travel through without any hitch."

The shadow nodded and turned around, he seemed to have seen something and paused, "Since when did you have a cat?"

"A cat?" The man asked with a questioning look.

"There's a small cat there. It's not yours?" The shadow pointed at the small black cat that was resting by the side.

"It must be a random cat from one of the townspeople. There's no need to worry about it." The man waved it off.

….

In the town.

Grey and the others saw the shadow when it was moving around.

Klaus was about to step out when Grey stopped him.

"That's not his real body."

"What do you mean it's not his real body?" Klaus was taken aback.

"He's very cautious. He's afraid of being captured. Luckily, there's no way he will be able to control that thing without being close." Grey said, he called for Void and Void appeared on his shoulder, "Head over and tell him to stall this guy. I'll use him to track the original body."

Void appeared lazily on his shoulder, looked around and disappeared.

"Alright, let's get to work." Grey sat down and closed his eyes, he quickly picked out the link from the shadow and started to track it.

He was very careful so as not to alert the original body of the shadow.

The others watched Grey, waiting for him to move.

Grey opened his eyes after three minutes or so, "There are three tracks."

The facial expressions of everyone changed.

"What does this mean?" Alice asked.

"Either there are three people, or this guy purposely spread out the link just to be safe." Grey explained.

"I'll give you guys the location to the other two links, I'll go after the last one." Grey took their location plaques from them and after a few seconds, they saw another glowing light dot.

"You're such a freak." Klaus was left speechless when he saw how quickly Grey dealt with this situation.

The fact that he was able to easily place the exact location on the tracking device so easily was astounding.

Aries looked at the items in the hands of the people present, shocked.

"Alright, let's go, we don't have all day." Grey was the first to leave, heading in another direction.

The others split into groups of two just like when they went to fight Barbarians and rushed toward the light dot.

The group left the town, all heading toward different places outside the town.

….

The shadow looked at Void, not moving his eyes away from him.

"I know this cat." The shadow murmured.

"What?" The man didn't hear the shadow's words and questioned.

"I know this cat. It belongs to Grey Dawson." The shadow panicked.

"This cat belongs to Grey Dawson?" The man pointed at Void, "You mean the Grey Dawson the Gnomes want dead?"

"Yes. They're close, we need to leave, now!" The shadow hurried.

"What about me, you're leaving me here to die?"

"Think of your own way to survive, I can't die because of you."