Hunting Shadows
By
Fade
Chapter 1
Silk was incredibly bored. If there was one thing that the slender elven mage had learned about the illegal life of a shadowrunner, it was that one could expect tons of boredom. The fact that one’s life was in danger usually wasn’t even enough to really get rid of the boredom. It just meant that for brief moments you suffered from way too much excitement before going back to being bored. Even more than the disreputable, often ugly types of people that she now routinely dealt with, the beautiful blond hated being bored.
Silk was currently trying to keep an eye out for the aforementioned suspicious characters, without looking like she was keeping an eye out. In a place full of suspicious looking people, half of whom were very obviously leering at her. These are very much not the kind of men that my mother hoped I’d have drooling over me.
Luckily, Silk wasn’t alone, and her companion was big enough to intimidate all of the bar’s current patrons. Considering the fact that the she was in an incredibly seedy bar, filled with men of the tattooed, pierced, armor wearing, weapon wielding, gang color sporting variety, Shadow’s ability to intimidate everyone was actually nothing short of amazing. Looking over to her friend, the mage saw that he was still lost in thought. Or at least as lost in thought as someone who was obsessively scanning the room around himself, while emitting an air of imminent violence, could be. Truth be told, the mage could only think of one person she knew who was more intimidating than the heavily-muscled Chinese man sitting across the table from her, and the other individual won solely because Silk had never been able to completely a small suspicion that he would kill her without the slightest regret if circumstances warranted it. Thinking about the other elf, Silk felt a chill creep up her spine. For all that I know deep down that isn’t a fair assessment of Shiver, there is no way that I would want to spend hour after hour with him. Shadow hasn’t been the best company tonight, but at least I can usually make a guess as to what is going on inside his head. That elf would have spoken all of four words during the entire night, and his total lack of facial expressions would have had me on edge inside of half an hour.
As Shadow did another visual scan of the dimly-lit, smoke-filled room, Silk pulled out a nail file, looked at the filthy table that she would need to rest her hands on, and changed her mind. There is no way I’m touching that table without a full chem suit on.
At that moment, Shadow chose to come out of his shell. “I’ve got to make a visit to the restroom. Please stay out of trouble until I get back.”
Silk couldn’t decide what bothered her more, the thought of using the bathrooms in a place as filthy as this, or the thought of being alone for the next few minutes. “Can’t you hold it? Hammer should be calling any time now.”
Shadow raised his eyebrow. “I’ve been holding it for the last couple of hours, we are on a loose time table. If Hammer calls tell him we’ll be out in a few minutes.”
The use of such a human expression by the normally impassive shape shifter threw Silk for a loop. I saw you practicing that eyebrow raise in the mirror yesterday, you’ve probably been waiting to use it all day. Although the smug thought helped Silk feel better about her imminent abandonment, it cost her a precious few seconds, during which Shadow stood up and headed towards the back of the bar.
Realizing that she hadn’t gotten the last word in, and still haunted by the picture of what the bathrooms must look like, Silk hissed out an order for the weir-tiger to remember to wash his hands. Shifting around to Shadow’s side of the table so that her back was to the wall, the mage concentrated on presenting a tough front. After about half of a minute Silk realized that a group of teenage gangers three tables over had decided she was very much an easy target.
Resigning herself to the fact that she was going to have to deal with whatever happened in the next few minutes by herself, Silk felt the nervousness evaporate. Reaching out with her mind, the mage began gathering the mana in preparation for a spell. A couple of stun spells should make these punks back down.
The apparent leader of the teens, a skinny norm with several prominently displayed knives walked over to Silk. Resting a hand on the filthy table, the youth leaned in close enough that she could read the manufacturer’s logo on his maroon cybereyes “Hoi hot stuff, you wanna party with sum real men?”
Registering a slight slur in the ganger’s speech, and the fact that his eyes seemed to be tracking funny, the mage realized that the other was almost certainly hopped up on something. The elf tried not to panic, instead bringing her hand out from under the table, she let some of the energies she had gathered bleed into the visible spectrum. “No thanks, I’m with a friend.”
Realizing that a stun spell could very easily have no effect on the ganger if he was on the right narcotic, Silk decided to go with an alternate spell, and quickly reformed the energies into the ram spell she had just recently finished designing.
Looking lazily at the mage’s glowing hand, the youth smiled. “Null persp der sista, yous don’t wanta waste your mojo on Dizzy. I’ll just go back to my table, and things will stay frosty between us.” As the youth turned to walk back to his table, Silk felt herself start to relax.
The next thing the mage knew, Dizzy had spun back around, and knocked her hand aside. Silk had let her ram spell manifest as the ganger spun, but he was so fast that her hand was directed away from him when it went off.
As the ram spell tore through the wall, opening a hole into the alley outside, Dizzy pulled Silk out of the booth, and spun her around pressing a knife to her throat. “Bad idea keeb slitch. Now you’ll party with my friends and I.”
Looking around to the other patrons, Silk realized that she could expect no help from that quarter. About half of the patrons were very obviously ignoring what was happening, while the other half seemed to be taking bets on how badly she was going to be hurt.
Silk started running through her spells mentally, looking for something that would let her get out alive, but couldn’t think of anything. In desperation she commanded one of her fire elementals to manifest, but Dizzy seemed to know the score, and the knife dug a little deeper. “Send it back,” commanded the ganger, drawing blood with the point of his shiv.
Her hard won composure starting to crack, the mage complied. As Silk realized that she was totally in the ganger’s power, Dizzy released her, and slumped to the floor. Silk turned to find Shadow starring at the rest of the gang.
“He killed Dizzy,” screamed one of the gang girls. “The fragger stabbed him in the back.”
Weapons started appearing in the teens' hands as they spread out to surround the mage, and the shape shifter. Before Silk could even finish opening her wrist com and speed dialing Hammer, the gangers moved. To Silk, who lacked the shape shifter’s incredible reflexes, and training, all eight gang members probably seemed to explode into action simultaneously. To Shadow, who was the product of years of training, and magically enhanced reflexes, the events were slow, and separate.
A skinny Aztlander with a switchblade struck first, stabbing at Shadow’s kidney from the left side. The girl with the maroon mohawk threw a beer bottle at the shape shifter from the right side, while the other female picked up a chair and swung it at Silk. A young ork, who at 18 was already bigger than the 110 kilo, 2 meter tall shape shifter, had produced a baseball bat from under his maroon duster, and now swung it at Shadow’s knees.
A pair of elves with cheap, strap-on spurs struck with the intention of shredding the shape shifter’s left arm, and chest, while the remaining two knife-wielding gangers tried to come in behind the chair being swung towards Silk’s head.
Once Shadow could see exactly what all his opponents were going to do, he started moving. The Aztlander had moved first, and was actually pretty fast for an unaugmented human, so the shape shifter decided to deal with him first.
As the Aztlander stepped in, Shadow slid slightly towards him, and intercepted the hand that the knife was in. Applying a classic Aikido wristlock, the shape shifter easily gained control of the other’s center of gravity, and momentum. A small step backwards was enough for Shadow to increase the ganger’s forward momentum, while simultaneously avoiding the beer bottle that the female had just hurled. Within a matter or microseconds, the extra velocity that Shadow had given the ganger had done the trick, and the maroon-tattooed Aztlander was falling towards the bat wielding ork to Shadow’s right. Releasing the ganger’s wrist as soon as he was sure that the other was headed into the path of the baseball bat, Shadow turned to the next threat.
Deciding that the chair the second female was swinging at Silk was getting a little too close for comfort, Shadow kicked the closest chair towards a point just left of Silk’s head. Sparing a fraction of a second to make sure that both slowly moving chairs were headed to the same spot, Shadow finished a turn which allowed him to deal with the two elves.
The first elf was marginally faster than his companion, providing Shadow with an opening. Stepping inside the arc of the first elf’s swing, the shape shifter trapped his oponent’s hand, and then tugged gently down and to the outside, causing the elf to fall into the path of his friend’s strike. The strap-on spurs of second elf sliced into his comrade just before the first elf crashed into him, dropping both of them in a bloody heap.
Spinning back towards the last two gangers, Shadow realized that he had made a big mistake. The last two gangers were now moving much faster than they had been a split second before. Not as fast as Shadow still, but much faster than the shape shifter would have expect from low-level gangers. They suspected that I would be faster than them, and consequently, decided to try and get me to commit to a course of action before revealing how fast they were, realized Shadow. I didn’t expect to run into anyone with mods, and consequently underestimated these two.
As the realization of what had happened flashed through his mind, Shadow was already moving towards Silk. Unfortunately, as fast as Shadow was, he still had to obey most of the same laws of physics that everyone else used. By the time Shadow had realized what happened, the first knife was only about 30 centimeters away from Silk’s stomach. Shadow however was a full 2 meters away from the mage and her attackers. The first knife was moving at 160 kph, while Shadow started from the next best thing to motionlessness.
Shadow’s powerful legs allowed him to accelerate with a speed that would have been impossible in the years before magic came back, and technology allowed people to gain abilities that severely outclassed elite athletes. Unfortunately, there was no way that the shape shifter was going to make it to Silk before the knife did.
Silk had watched everything develop with a kind of raw terror. Yet again, she was in an extremely dangerous situation, and her best efforts were useless. The ganger with the chair had been Silk’s first target, but before the mage could get her ram spell off, Shadow had used a chair to deflect the chair directed at the mage’s head, and Silk had decide to look for another target.
The next second or two were a complete blur. The speed with which everyone was moving, combined completely overwhelmed Silk’s ability to determine what was going on. Several people hit the floor, over the next couple of instants, allowing Silk to finally get a handle on what was happening. Unfortunately, it was too late. By the time that Silk realized that two of the punks were bent on using their knives to open up big holes in her skin, it was already too late to avoid being hurt. In desperation Silk threw herself backwards as she finally managed to get a spell off.
Shadow knew he wouldn’t be able to make it to Silk in time, so as Silk fell backwards, the shape shifter drew a throwing knife from beneath his duster, and flipped it towards the closest ganger a split second before Silk’s spell went off with spectacular, if useless results.
Silk had put plenty of power into the spell, but throwing herself backwards had caused it to miss it’s target and instead of taking down the pair of toughs, the ram spell only clipped the first ganger before it tore through the bar, crushing and splintering tables and chairs.
The knife that Shadow had just hurled went end over end towards the exactly point that the shape shifter had wanted to hit, but the point no longer corresponded to the closest attacker’s throat. Instead the punk had been knocked slightly to the side by Silk’s spell, and the knife buried itself to the hilt in his shoulder.
Shadow wasn’t surprised to see that being winged by a spell, and hit by a knife wasn’t enough to stop the ganger, who finally connected with his knife. The armor plates in Silk’s duster managed to partially deflect the slash, but the way the mage slumped while grabbing her stomach made it obvious that she had been injured.
As Silk finally hit the ground, still seeming to move in slow motion to the deadly weir-tiger, the two kids turned to deal with Shadow. The knife wielders obviously hoped to be able to wait until the rest of the gang members were back in the fight, but Shadow wasn’t going to give them that option.
The two gangers tried to back away and give themselves more room, but as fast as they were moving, Shadow was significantly faster. In a flash, the shape shifter had closed with both teens and begun his attack. The first ganger tried to stab Shadow in the stomach, but the enraged weir-tiger side stepped the thrust in a blur of motion as he captured the other’s wrist. A sharp tug, started the youth moving towards Shadow a fraction of a second before the physical adept used an open-handed blow to destroy the other’s elbow. As the ganger screamed in pain, Shadow launched a side thrust kick blowing out his opponent’s right knee, and dropping the dazed teen onto the filthy hardwood floor.
The second knife-wielding attacker was still trying to complete the slash he had started at the same time as his friend. As the knife, moving in extreme slow motion to Shadow, finally neared the shape shifter, he ducked slightly to avoid being hurt. A split second after the knife passed over his head, Shadow delivered an uppercut to his opponent’s jaw. The blow had originated from just below the shape shifter’s knee, and consequently was traveling even faster than normal when it exploded on it’s target. The ganger was knocked unconscious, possibly with a broken neck, as he flipped over backwards onto a shabby table.
A bewildered and bleeding Silk was trying to get to her feet as Shadow turned to deal with the remaining gangers some of whom were now ready for round two. On some level, the shape shifter was still thinking, and using techniques he had learned during his years among the warrior monks, but after Silk was injured Shadow had largely surrendered to a savage rage, a fact that became obvious as he attacked the rest of the gang.
The tiny Aztlander was down after his encounter with his friend’s bat, as was the elf who had gotten tangled up in the other ganger’s spurs. In a testament to their stupidity, the other three members of the gang was still looking for a fight, even after they had an idea of what Shadow was capable of.
The elf happened to be the closest to Shadow, so he was the first to fall. Shadow hardly even paused as he reached the elf, simply grabbing a nearby wooden chair, and breaking it across the other’s head. The orc tried to swing at Shadow while the shape shifter was dealing with the elf, but the physical adept was too fast. By the time the ganger had started his swing, Shadow had already dealt with the elf, and had plenty of time to step inside the arc of his opponent’s swing.
Shadow followed a pair of quick, rib-breaking uppercuts with a powerful hook that knocked his latest opponent unconscious. Looking for the beer bottle-throwing female, Shadow turned only to see her go down when hit from behind by someone else also wielding a bottle.
Whether because they did, or didn’t like the gang to which the teens belonged, were just looking for a good fight, or any number of other possible reasons, the patrons of the bar had joined the fray. The bouncers, a pair of extremely large trolls were doing their best to contain the violence, but they had waited too long, and now were forced to throw people out of the building one at a time.
As the bottle-wielding ganger hit the floor, Shadow found himself facing a couple of young, grotesquely-muscled street samurai. From the twitchy, rough way the two moved, it was obvious that they had low quality wires, the kind that you could get for a few thousand dollars from the kind of street doctors who weren’t too particular about whether the parts they used were new, or already had some bullet damage from their late owner.
The two runner wannabes had long been looking for a way to break into the shadows, and figured that taking down someone of Shadow’s abilities was sure to earn them a decent rep. Unfortunately, they had all the naivety of youth in high abundance. Although the wannabe razors understood that the shape shifter woefully outclassed them, they still believed that the universe would give them some kind of break, thus confirming just how special they were.
Most real runners however are firm believers in the fact that the universe doesn’t really care. In the end it all comes down to skill, planning, and determination mixed with a miniscule amount of chance. The pair facing Shadow were very short on everything but determination, a fact which quickly became apparent as they attacked the shape shifter.
The smaller of the two razors pulled out two escrima sticks, while his shirtless friend extended some fairly worn spurs while flexing slabs of vat grown muscle. The pair attacked at very nearly the same time, but again Shadow’s superior speed allowed him to pre-empt the attacks. While the vat job was still flexing his muscles, the shape shifter casually drifted in closer to his foe. When the other finally got down to the business of fighting, Shadow was already close enough that a quick kick launched the razor backwards into a table.
As the table broke, alarms went off in Shadow’s head and he found himself diving and rolling to his right. Dizzy had finally recovered from the nerve strike that the physad had used on him. Sadly enough, lying motionless for three minutes while his body’s energy channels tried to sort themselves back out hadn’t convinced the ganger to leave the shape shifter alone. Instead, Dizzy had managed to convince himself that there was only one reason he was on the floor and Shadow wasn’t. The shape shifter had hit him from behind when he wasn’t ready.
The rest of the gang hadn’t fared well against the shape shifter, despite the fact that they hadn’t been taken by surprise, and had enjoyed a considerable numerical advantage. Nevertheless, as Dizzy finally regained the ability to move, he resolved to lung from the filthy floor and stab Shadow, thus proving that his initial defeat had been mere chance and foul play.
Unfortunately for Dizzy, the physad had developed the power known as combat sense. In some manner that Shadow had never managed to explain to Silk’s satisfaction, he was able to sense when someone was about to attack him. Stating that he was more aware of the input coming from his senses came close to explaining the ability, but wasn’t quite accurate. As far as Silk could tell, the shape shifter had actually developed some kind of additional sense. There was no other way to explain how someone in a sensory deprivation chamber could tell when a gun was being aimed at them.
Although Silk remained frustrated and mystified by the fact that she couldn’t analyze and dissect Shadow’s combat sense, the were tiger remained much more causal about everything. How something worked wasn’t as important as whether or not it worked. If there was one thing that time had shown Shadow, it was that his strange ability did in fact work. It wasn’t infallible, and it wouldn’t save his life if he chose to be stupid, but when the hair on the back of his neck all of a sudden stood on end, and his skin started crawling, the shape shifter knew he needed to move because someone was about to try and hurt him.
Shadow’s reflexes were such that he no longer even had to think about what to do when his combat sense started going off. Instead, the shape shifter would just find that he had moved in such a way as to dodge whatever attack had been launched at him. This was again the case, as Dizzy lunged towards where Shadow had been, the shape shifter completed his roll and sprung back to his feet, narrowly dodging a pair of attacks launched by the smaller razor.
Silk had finally regained enough presence of mind to realize that she needed to cast a healing spell on herself. As the mage looked up from her quickly healing wounds, she saw Shadow blur into motion again, somehow knocking the stick-wielding gillette into a wall, before taking Dizzy’s knife from him, and holding it to the ganger’s throat.
Dizzy tried to get away, tried struggling, but it was to no avail. Shadow’s iron grip kept up a constant pressure on the arm lock that had the ganger in extreme pain. In movements so slow that even Silk could see them, the shape shifter brought the knife closer and closer to the ganger’s throat.
Silk stood in shock, unable to speak for a second. Shadow had always had a savage side, but this kind of cold-blooded execution was unexpected from the normally honorable shape shifter. “Stop,” screamed the mage as the knife started to draw blood.
Shadow looked up, and Silk saw something in his expression that she had never seen before. The shape shifter’s eyes were hidden by the smart glasses he was wearing, but the wrath on his face was enough to make the mage’s blood run cold. The knife stopped, and slowly the cold, furious expression faded away.
Shadow released the ganger, and let the knife drop, before walking back to Silk. The shape shifter didn’t even look at Dizzy, who was curled up on the floor shaking. The very fact that Shadow had just left the ganger there without making sure that he couldn’t attack him indicated that the shape shifter wasn’t ok, and made the elf worry more even than how close he had come to loosing control seconds before. Silk didn’t want to risk the possibility that Shadow wouldn’t do anything to defend himself if the other decided to attack, and so she sent a tendril of magic whipping over to send Dizzy into unconsciousness..
Shadow reached Silk without any further trouble from Dizzy or the rest of the patrons, most of whom had finally been cowed by the two bruised and bleeding bouncers. Silk looked up to see that both men were reluctantly closing in on her and the shape shifter. Holding up a hand to ward the bouncers off, Silk grabbed Shadow’s arm and pulled him towards the hole in the wall that her ram spell had created just seconds previously.
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