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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 2914897" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 326Shadow’s senses all returned to the same thing...a dizzying blur. Even her mind was swirling and, at the moment at least, she couldn’t even figure out what was going on. No...there was something...something...for some odd reason, she was surprised that she was still alive. And on top of that, none of her was even arguing with that little voice telling her she should, in fact, be dead. Why...?    At first, she made the mistake of trying to focus on all of her senses at once to get things to make sense, but that only made her head hurt more. A lot more. Okay. Stop. Focus. Focus. One thing at a time.    Her eyes blinked once or twice, but still she saw nothing but a black and grey blur. Alright, try something else. There were more important things than vision, anyway. Shadow quickly changed her focus to her thoughts, trying to put everything in line and make sense of things...most specifically, why she was convinced that she shouldn’t currently be alive.    Darkwing.    The word sent a jolt through her body but made everything(well, in her mind at least) fall right into place. She’d hit her head...hard, from the feel of it. Thrown...but she should be dead! Darkwing’s didn’t hesitate to kill their prey when it was down!! She reached out with the Force to find the same(or at least, a similar) overbearing Darkness around her.    It couldn’t be dead...not from just one blow like that...    Eyes. Now you need eyes!    Shadow closed her eyes for a long time before trying to shake off the dizziness. When she was relatively sure she wasn’t going to get sick on the deck, Shadow attempted opening her eyes again. Slowly, shades began to appear through the blurred colours. The medical room looked exactly like it had been before she’d...hit her head and, most likely, been knocked out.    And there was the Darkwing. It stood relatively close to its spot before, and because of this and the fact that it was just turning towards her, Shadow figured that she could have only been out for a few seconds at most. But that still might have been too long...the Darkwing was already diving straight at her, claws extended and ready to tear her to pieces, and she was still there laying on her side with a hand on her head!    Instinct took over where rational thought tried to slow her. Nearly anyone else would have been dead in that situation, but Shadow’s body(well, Marix’s) was used to acting without giving her time to think about anything. It was a survival instinct that too much of the galaxy lacked...a fact that would probably always be of continual annoyance to Shadow, as long as she continued at least.    But when the massive form of the Darkwing arrived at her position, Shadow was no longer there. Thanks to the Force and Alraxian reflexes, she was able to go from lying down to leaping up and over the Darkwing in a matter of half-seconds. She came down behind the creature’s powerful tail, took a moment to get her footing and push through he sudden dizziness that tried to return thanks to the acrobatic move. But there wasn’t exactly much time for her to reorient herself, as the tail of the Darkwing was swinging straight at her torso.    It was one of those times where it was good to move, and so, Shadow dropped back to the deck. She hit the floor face first before kicking herself back up and getting her balance again. There wasn’t really anything she could actually think to do to hurt the damned thing! There were openings all over the place, large creatures like that always had that, no matter how fast they moved, but Shadow knew all too well that she would just be leaving scars...and without her blade, she couldn’t even leave permanent ones.    Quietly, she cursed Jyren for not explaining to her just how he had...stopped her as a Darkwing. He had to know what he’d done! Oh, she was going to kill him the second she had the chance...which, of course, meant dealing with this Darkwing on her own, first. Part of her wanted to morph to a larger, stronger form, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the Darkwing and being small right now was a large part of the reason she was still alive...not to mention that the medical room wasn’t exactly huge.    As she sidestepped and then flipped over another pair of claw swipes from the monstrous black creature, Shadow noticed that it was actually a bit easier to avoid losing half of her body to the Darkwing’s strikes...it was slower. Slower. Her eyes widened slightly just before she ducked under another strike and then rolled away from the snapping jaws. It was actually slower than before!    Maybe she’d actually managed to hit something...important with the knife! There had to be some kind of brain or central nervous system in there somewhere! And then an idea came to her mind...one that had her immediately kicking herself for not thinking of. She knew Jyren hated it, especially having to feel it through the link, but at this point, she didn’t have a choice.    Shadow turned and took a couple steps away from the viciously attacking Darkwing before jumping up into the lobby of the medical room with the completely destroyed desk. It gave her just a couple seconds before the Darkwing came at her...and that was, at least she hoped, all that she needed. Right away, she focused, naturally closing her eyes to force away the distraction of the rapidly approaching monster.    There was a reason that Jyren hated morphing. It was a mix of the completely alien feelings that it brought up, and the way it actually looked. There was something completely and utterly wrong about watching one thing become something else...even quickly. Especially when watching Shadow...or, for that matter, anyone he knew. Maybe it was just a quirk of not being born Alraxian, but it was something Shadow hadn’t actually noticed in anyone else but him. But, for some reason, the shift that her body made from organic to a strange metallic substance was the one that always got him the most. Maybe it was how it affected her...    Droids didn’t feel. They couldn’t. And while, technically, she wasn’t a droid in that form...it was the damned closest thing that either of them could think to compare it to. But her mind(or whatever it became in the morph) had a way of reverting to...older ways of thinking for her. As a Tam’Day’U, Marix had been stripped of her emotions and turned into nothing more than a weapon of the Empire. Once Marix was exiled and slowly returned to a normal existence...she was captured by the Galactic Empire and once again turned into a weapon...and that was where this metal morph had originated, as far as she knew. Some kind of genetic tampering with the clones, and something that was not Marix, but wholly Shadow. And when Shadow was back in control, the mindless weapon came with her...it was what she was. A child and a weapon...and, sadly, nothing more.    But right now, that was the only way she had to survive...and suddenly, the Darkwing could see its own reflection in the shining, metallic Alraxian that it was diving at to tear to shreds.</blockquote>

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