Matt was right about the big mansion looking like an villain’s lair. It was all white bricks with columns and arches. It stood at five stories, but the ground floor was two stories tall. The top floor had a huge balcony where a cliché evil leader could stand and survey their empire. The driveway went straight down the middle of the front yard and looped around a prohibitively expensive looking marble fountain.

They moved along the edge of the front yard, hidden in Matt's shadows and sticking close to the hedges and trees. Even though it was late at night, there were so many lights inside and outside the mansion, they could count the bricks on the front wall.

"This is where the orders come from" Matt whispered. "They never use phones to communicate, only runners. I tailed a few of them and they always ended up back here."

"How do we get in?" Jack noticed that there were armed guards standing in front of the main entrance and others walking the grounds. They wore black suits and ties and stood with their backs perfectly straight. In their hands were small, automatic looking guns. Matt shrugged.

"If it was just me? I would walk in the front door disguised as one of their shadows" he answered. "But with you two big glowsticks along for the ride? I guess we have to find another way."

They stayed hidden, watching and waiting for an opportunity to infiltrate the mansion. Eventually, they decided that the balcony was their best bet. They assumed the criminals wouldn't be expecting anyone to sneak past their armed guards and scale the face of the building without anyone noticing. They let Matt take the lead since he was the one obscuring them and the most proficient with sneaking.

He led them to the right side of the house where they started scaling the bricks. Jack never would have been able to climb even one foot off the ground before his introduction to qi. There was barely any room for the very tips of their fingers to squeeze in between the bricks.

Luckily, Jack had never been afraid of heights. In fact, he was actually having fun if he was honest with himself. The fact that a four story drop was no longer enough to cripple or kill him did take a little bit of the thrill out of the experience, but his stomach still did a small flip every time he looked down.

Soon, they were pulling themselves over the railing. Matt led them from shadow to shadow. Jack wondered what they actually looked like from the other side. He had never been able to see through Matt's illusions when they sparred. Matt would just appear to step out of a shadow, but the shadow never looked any different before he came out of it.

The big balcony sat on top of the expensive looking columns rising from the first floor. It stretched across almost the entire front of the mansion. There were elegant tables and chairs set out in the corners and Matt led them to crouch in the shadows cast by the furniture.

Unfortunately, there were two guards stationed on the balcony. They stood in front of the two sets of double doors on either side of the house. Jack and his friends were crouching on the outer corner about 25 feet from the right side doors.

Apparently, the guards were unable to see them as they had yet to react to their presence. Jack thought it would be a bad idea to test that by trying to break in right in front of them, however.

"They have to switch shifts eventually" he said quietly. "We need to distract them the next time those doors open." Jack and Arthur both stared at Matt and he looked back at them questioningly.

"Do I have to do everything?" he asked bemusedly.

Jack nodded and replied sardonically. "Well, a lightning bolt to the face would definitely get their attention, but it would be a bit of a giveaway don't you think?"

Matt sighed and looked resigned. They waited in the shadows for what seemed like forever, bored out of their minds. Matt was busy with something. He was crouched away from them working on something that Jack and Arthur couldn't see. Eventually, he stopped moving and stared at the doors behind the guard on their side of the house.

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Finally, after an agonizing wait, the double doors swung out on both sides of the balcony and a new guard stepped out of each pair to replace the ones on watch.

Matt crept along the edge of the railing and Jack and Arthur followed. They reached the end of the railing and hugged the wall until they were right next to the open doors.

Matt looked up and scrunched his face in focus. The guards were getting ready to switch positions and shut the doors behind them, when there was a loud thump from the middle of the stone railing.

All four of their heads shot up at the same time to find a black peacock looking back at them. Matt used this opportunity to dash inside the doors and Jack and Arthur followed. The peacock jumped over the railing and spread its wings to fly away. The guards had raised their weapons for a moment, but they quickly lowered them and looked at each other questioningly as if to say 'You saw that too right?'

Matt hurried to find the nearest shadow in the brightly lit white hallway. They slipped into the first empty room that they could find and all three of them sat down with their back’s to the wall. Jack looked at Matt incredulously.

"A god damn peacock? Really?" he whispered.

Matt shrugged sheepishly. "It got their attention didn't it?" he defended.

"Peacocks don't fly." Jack was trying to keep his voice down.

"They fly a little" Arthur mediated.

Jack took a moment to laugh to himself and then moved on like nothing happened. "Let's just go find a place where we can wait for one of the runners to lead us to the boss" he said with a sigh.

Matt rewrapped them in his shadows, and they filed out of the door. Jack was the last one out and as he crossed the threshold, his eyes widened when he did not see the back of Matt or Arthur.

Instead, he found himself standing in not in the hallway that they had just reentered, but a large empty room with white marble floors and columns rising to the ceiling. Jack spun around and found himself alone. There wasn't even a doorway behind him. His first thought was that Zachias was invading his mind again, but Jack could feel his presence and it seemed just as wary as he was. He put up his guard and prepared for fight or flight.

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As Jack was getting his bearings in another location, Matt and Arthur walked out of the room and made it all the way down to the first floor before they even realized that he was missing. Standing in the corner of a giant gaudy entrance hallway, Matt turned around and was shocked to find only Arthur. On seeing the surprise on Matt's face, Arthur spun around.

"What happened to-" Arthur started to whisper, until he was shoved unceremoniously from behind.

Matt jumped onto Arthur's back and flipped into the air, shoving Arthur hard and throwing him out of the cover of his shadows and towards the middle of the brightly lit, white room. A very confused Arthur hit the ground and flinched when he heard an extremely loud crash from where he was just standing.

Arthur rolled to his feet and saw that there was an old fashioned looking wooden arrow sticking out of the white marble floor in the middle of a small cracked indentation as if the arrow had landed with the force of a meteor. Matt had put his feet on the wall about ten feet up and front flipped back to the ground looking up towards the staircase next to him. Arthur turned and beheld the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen.

She had pale, flawless skin, high cheekbones and a heart shaped face. Her hair was brown and curly and she had a headpiece that sat just above her forehead with what looked like an upward facing, crescent moon shaped tiara rising from her hair. She wore a sky blue, loose fitting dress that came down to just above her knees. In her left hand, she was holding a simple wooden bow, and over her right shoulder, sat a quiver of arrows that she was even now reaching for with her right hand.

Arthur froze as he took her in. Her amber eyes seemed to swallow his senses. She smiled when she saw this and didn't hesitate to notch another arrow and draw it back, pointing it directly at Arthur's chest.

Matt tackled him out of the way and the arrow landed on the bottom of a white column that seemed to explode with the impact. Matt rolled to his feet and slapped Arthur in the face to wake him up.

"Ouch" Arthur said but he seemed rather grateful.

"That's twice I just saved your life big guy" Matt pointed out.

He reached behind his back and pulled out his katana that was currently the length of a dagger before he willed it to extend to about four feet. He manifested his shadow qi and used some of it to obscure his black blade. Matt was taken aback by the lack of surprise on her face when she watched a sword blade grow longer as if by magic.

Unfortunately, Arthur did not have his glass sword with him. Unlike Matt's katana, his sword could not shrink and they hadn't expected to have to use it yet. He was wearing his Void Greaves, however, so he would be extremely mobile. Even more so than usual since he wasn't carrying a huge blade.

"My name is Diana" she said in a voice that was as smooth as velvet and as sweet as honey. "You can be proud that you died to a true warrior."