Silhouette chapter 146 : Shadow and stalker (Patreon)

Walking through the streets of Zalcien in an oh-so-wonderfully casual outfit and humanoid shape, James thought back to the encounter he had just had. There had been no surprise in his meeting with the Merries, Marie's husband was as human and impossibly mundane as his wife, and just as friendly to boot. With the final details of his apartment worked with Froko just before seeing the friendly couple who offered to help him with his paperwork, there had been no issue in finalizing the documents to have the ratlings start school soon and be registered as his adopted children.

The couple did frown somewhat when they saw the address of his new home, understandably so given the fact James had specifically looked for people with little regard for the law so they wouldn't ask too many questions so long as money came in, but did not comment on it. And that was it. No pyramid scheme, no scam, no attempt at extortion, no threat to his life, or anything of the sort. For once in his new life, things had gone smoothly, with no urgency or problem dropping on his lap.

Which is the exact why he was tenser than ever before, and on the lookout for anything that could go wrong. He wouldn't have called himself a pessimist in his past life, but here? In Zalcien? James had seen his fair share of trouble arrive unprompted and without warning, and though some of it could be blamed on the location where his new existence began being infamously chaotic and violent, he wasn't dumb enough to drop his guard after a good thing happened in a world of superheroes. That was just an invitation to the universe to do its worst.

And James was not surprised to be proven correct when he began to feel a presence following some time after the sun went down, deep in the dark of night. The Merries had offered to escort him back home before nightfall but he had refused, estimating that risking an encounter with an optimistic mugger or a bizarre critter was better than letting them get any closer to his Silhouette life. The couple was charming, and he hoped they'd grow enough to be considered friends, but he wanted to set a firm distinction between James, the regular guy with a weird shadow body, and Silhouette, the eerie monster born from darkness.

James' clothing did little to dampen his unique senses, yet he found no trace of his mysterious stalker. Part of him was worried at the danger something he couldn't sense posed, while a much more logical part realized that it was less skilled than Valker, and he had purposefully had the man train Solvent to detect an invisible threat so he could peek at it, letting the former Runarian Knight believe he had failed to escape James' senses.

Still, there was also the possibility the mystery entity following him was less capable of erasing its presence but a much more competent fighter. The Shadow Commando had taken down Valker, and frankly, a single member would likely have been enough to handle him without his ability to vanish from sight. Hopefully, that training to deal with unperceivable enemies would pay off, if the stalker chose to attack that is.

Minutes dragged on and the presence continued to follow, but made no further move. Was it simply trailing James? Waiting for a more opportune moment, perhaps for him to leave the empty yet still illuminated streets? Or was this entity perhaps a Vigilante of sorts, simply making sure James wasn't up to no good or perhaps even watching out for anyone trying to attack him? It couldn't be a Hero for sure, one of those would have made themselves known by now, but those who chose to spread justice without the backing of a law often had to stay out of sight, even if they weren't the murderous sort.

James wasn't inclined to let this stalker follow him back home. He chose to turn to head into a dark alleyway away from the streetlights, hoping the secluded environment would draw it out for a confrontation or at the very least offer James an opportunity to run away, he would no longer need to keep to a humanoid form if he was sure to away from curious eyes after all.

Thankfully for him, the bizarre urban architecture of the slums continued even in the civilized Zalcien, offering quite a few strange turns and isolated corners so long as one knew where to look. It was a waste of space and possible housing area, but more than welcome for those in need of a hiding spot. Perhaps it was in fact their intended use, designed either to let civilians get to cover away from rampaging Villains or with a bribe to let the unethical elements have an easy way out of police chases and ambush spots. Zalcien was less turbulent than its slums, but the city still housed quite a number of criminal elements. Its citizens weren't fearing for their lives daily, but it was undeniable the Heroes and the police would never run out of work in these parts.

At last, James found what he was looking for, and after a series of labyrinthine turns he found himself at a dead-end, with even the path back to the more open street he had come from being hidden from view by one of the tall buildings that composed this urban maze he had wandered in. It'd be no trouble to backtrack, but it ensured privacy.

As his steps came to a stop, James pushed his senses to the limit to catch any hint of that presence and its reaction. He stood there silently for a moment, doing exaggerated movements to show his confusion and appear lost, scratching his bald while looking from side to side. He had gotten used to acting the part of a vaudeville character when the kids played pretend, a wonderful opportunity for them to have fun while putting their skills to the test outside of a regular training setting. Plus, the tomfoolery aided James when it came to his more serious role of Silhouette. At least he hoped so.

Finally, after what must have been close to a minute of senseless actions in silence, the stalker took the bait. The rapid movement of something fending the air, like a bird of prey diving down to catch a clueless critter, pushed James to shapeshift out of the way, blending in with the ambient darkness on the ground to ensure no part of him stuck out in a physical space to be caught. Something he was quite thankful for when he realized a thin part of him that had yet to flatten suddenly ceased to exist, right as he felt the displaced air in the thing's wake brush against him.

The realization a part of him had just been annihilated with no notice was terrifying but pushed to the side as he discovered the creature that had attacked him, glimpses of it being revealed in its downward charge before its back was fully exposed as it returned to the sky.

The thing reminded him of a ray, in an alien kind of way. One without a tail, or maybe a jellyfish with no tentacles. The circular thing was a pale turquoise on the parts he could perceive, smooth skin with a strange luster not unlike an amphibian's, large enough to cover a car yet paradoxically thin, rivaling paper. The only reliably solid thing on the stalker's body was the group of small purple gem-like objects encrusted in what appeared to be a line across the body, each of the golf-ball size translucent violet pebbles reflecting the moonlight as the creature moved.

From the way the floaty living veil moved in the air, James assumed the gemstones followed its equivalent of a spine, letting him know this thing did have some sort of bilateral symmetry going on. On the one hand, it was reassuring to realize that common sense when it came to dealing with most creatures wouldn't be completely useless on the monster, but on the other hand, knowing it followed some logic didn't help in any way to know how to better fight it off.

There was one last trick to the creature though, one that led James to guess what those gems were for in the alien's biology. All of the features that marked the entity as a living being of some kind were on the same side, what James considered to be its back or top, for its underside was nothing else but the celestial pattern of the night sky. It wasn't an allegory or poetic way of describing a pretty spotted pattern, but a quite literal observation. The belly of the beast wasn't a mere copy of the stars in the void, but instead a window, showing directly what lay behind the creature.

James' wandering thoughts recalled his time watching animal documentaries and likened the creature to both a species of lizard who had developed a rudimentary third eye beneath their scales to notice the shifting shadows from the sky caused by birds and to cuttlefish and how they modified their bodies to better blend in with their environment, not only their pigmentation but also their texture.

Most of James' mind however was focused on the floating gelatin that had just apparently eaten a piece of him and unleashed a flurry of shadow projectiles to blast it into oblivion. Whether it was smart enough to talk or not didn't matter, it had just tried to eat him by surprise, and he had little goodwill left for it.

What happened next was both surprising and not. When the bolts James had cast began to rain down the creature's visible body, it began to screech as it was violently pushed against the nearest wall and pelted by simple spells, and though its body kept its pale turquoise hue, it failed to escape the stream of attacks and kept on letting out this high-pitched migraine-inducing screech that sounded on the verge of his auditory perception. For the first time since he had begun to dabble in magic, James had found something immune to his transformative properties yet still harmed by his attacks. So far the two conditions had come hand in hand, and he wasn't certain as to how to react to the bizarre situation.

He continued his flurry of black projectiles until the thing stopped moving, and even then he let out a few bigger ones, just to be safe. The entity fell down from its spot on the wall, and James noted how it appeared damaged where the creature had been pressed, only to find when he ran a tentacle on it that the wall wasn't simply broken but instead had been partially deleted, the destruction smoother than anything he'd ever seen. Even smoother than something like an egg. What happened here and to the bite of him the thing had taken reminded him not only of the Destruction Aspect, one of the primordial forces of this world, but also painted a certain picture when matched with the creature's choice for a nocturnal attack on an isolated individual.

James may have been relatively new to this world, but he still followed the news. He was well aware of the other new mysterious element in town, one that had developed the habit of leaving missing persons in its wake, the Nightsnatcher. He couldn't be certain, no official sighting of the creature existed, but that fact combined with the remarkable camouflage his stalker had displayed only reinforced his suspicion.

He studied the creature as he pondered the best course of action. He was uncertain whether it was dead or simply unconscious, but even now its underside continued to display whatever was on the other end of it. There wasn't much else to see, the beast was as featureless as it first appeared. At least its paper-thin body made transporting much easier, he only had to roll it while making sure not to touch its dangerous part. He could even move it around as James without looking too suspicious, at this point, it only looked like a strange carpet.

He was unsure as to what to do with the Nightsnatcher now that it was in his grasp. The best course of action was probably to bring it to the police or the Hero Union, but that would bring unwanted attention. Not to mention, there was a risk a Villain could steal the thing and use it to create a weapon of sorts, a weapon that could then one day be used against him. It would leave the investigation into the creature and its list of victims at a dead end though, and there might have been some way of studying it that could reveal who he had eaten.

Well, nothing stopped James from having people look into the creature and only then anonymously send it to the proper authorities. Maybe they'd figure out something useful, something they could then use for his products or his personal use. He wouldn't say no to a nice gadget that would leave even people like Abrakaboom stumped. Besides, he had to make a living somehow.

James picked up his phone and scrolled through his contact list. Thankfully, the first person he wanted to call didn't need to sleep either.

"Hello, Doctor Decanov?"