Here is the newest chapter, I wanted to make this a slightly longer chapter, but only made it 3000 words or so. So let me know how I did with this. Personally I think it could have been much better. But I want to know your thoughts.
Chapter 7
Lizzy was certainly not happy. Sure it was cool having the ability to change into a Zerg at will and shred through trees like paper with her claws and lifting said felled tree up with one hand. But the training that Zeratul was putting her through was near torturous.
So far she had felled trees twice her width and more than a hundred feet high in as few slices as possible. Then he told her to do it again on a different tree and to do it in less cuts. If she failed, he thwacked her on the head… and the Protoss hit hard, they didn't believe in pulling punches. Tassadar was on hand for the mental training. He had concentrate her psionic powers into her hand as a ball. She was still failing at getting the amount of energy he wanted, but she was improving... Supposedly.
"That's all. Just climb this tree." She asked dubious, these tests were never this straight forward.
"That is all. Get to the top and ring the bell I placed there. Only using as few jumps as possible." Zeratul said pointing to a small silver bell handing from a branch at least eighty meters in the air.
So with the simple instruction, Lizzy focused into changing into her Zerg form, mainly her arms, hands and legs. With that complete she spotted a low hanging but think branch, her target in her sights she leaped into the air a good ten meters and dug her claws into the bark. She easily threw one hand over the other and scaled the tree coming to a large branch she pulled herself up.
Preparing to leap again to the next branch, she judged that she would need to push herself off the nearby cliff wall to gain enough height to reach it. Executing the jump and pushing herself higher off the rock wall something caught the corner of her eye, she was attacked mid-air by a Dark Templar. He seemed to come out of nowhere and, sword glowing, sliced at her and gave her a deep cut on her arm.
The attack threw off her momentum and she fell at least twenty meters straight to the grou3nd landing on her back. She must have broken quite a few bones, but her Zerg DNA was already healing her. Picking herself up Lizzy turned to Zeratul.
"What the fuck was that!? Do you want to kill me?" To say she was pissed would have been a grievous understatement.
"You need to be prepared for anything. Use your senses." Was all he said.
She had to sit on the ground because her broken ribs were making it hard to breath. "I take it this is some kind of Dark Templar training, but taking swings at me is too much. You don't know if I'll heal from that, nor do you know if that guy will take my head off!"
"He won't. Not only is he under explicit instructions not to cut too deep or in vital places, he is a fully trained and has much experience." Zeratul explained as if it was meant to be reassuring.
After a few minutes Lizzy was able to stand again and breathe much easier, the Zerg healing having done most of the work already.
"Am I expecting any more of these guys to start swinging at me?" Lizzy asked.
Zeratul said nothing and gave no hidden signals.
Lizzy sighed and readied herself to begin again.
When she got to the first branch she wasted no time and leaped toward the wall, braced herself and jumped off it to the higher branch. This time she was ready for the Dark Templar and spun herself in mid-air so that she could bounce off his back to the second tree branch.
The Templar fell to the forest floor with a cartoon 'whack' at the end.
Continuing her trek up the tree, Lizzy leaped again for another branch. She dug her claws in the bark near her target and as she was scaling, another Dark Templar appeared. This one was waiting on the branch and jumped off it swinging downwards trying to force her to let go of the tree. With quick thinking, Lizzy leaped to the side then anchoring her claws again as the Templar, missing his target completely, fell to the ground with his brethren.
Lizzy was only two branches away from the bell. She was more than half way up the tree and wasn't sure how many more Templar she should be worried about.
Gripping a thin branch above her head she swung around it like a gymnast on a bar. Letting go at the apex, Lizzy let the power of the swing propel her body upwards to the next branch.
She was getting pretty tired at this point, this exercise was starting to take its toll. She dared anyone to try scale a hundred meter tree and not feel tired. Unfortunately the next branch was on the other side of the tree, the edge of it was just barely visible at the side of the bark.
'How am I going to get to the other side of this?' Lizzy thought to herself. Then a crazy idea came into her head.
She would run across.
So she bent her knees, balanced on the balls of her feet and jumped. Her claw anchored her to the tree as she ran along it, leaving deep groves in behind. When she felt her speed dropping and her feet not griping anymore she did a leap of faith and somehow landed on the branch.
But relief was not to last, a Templar formed from the shadows of the tree and, blade glowing, buried it into the tree next to her hands. Arya was both tired and annoyed, so she reached up, gripped his cloak and pulled him off the branch.
After she had pulled herself up onto the branch she could almost reach the small silver bell dangling just out of reach, swaying with the breeze dinging very softly. A short leap and she would have completed the exercise.
Before she could lower her guard and claim victory, another, final, Dark Templar materialised on her blind side. Seeing no other option, Lizzy jumped and reached her hand out to the bell, the Templar's blade reached to her hand, daring her to flinch and call it back. She didn't and kept reaching for the bell.
Her hand batted it and it rang loudly, she had won. But the Dark Templar's blade sliced her hand clean off.
Lizzy screamed in shock and pain. This caused her to lose her footing and sent her falling to the ground below. People say that the world slows down when you have a near death experience, Lizzy disagreed. Her heart was pumping so much adrenalin through her body that her mind was working in overtime and she was possessing things much quicker. So the world wasn't slower, she was faster.
But her mind was still in shock and still processing the fact that her hand was cut off, she was unable to think straight as the ground came closer and closer. Lizzy instinctively let out her wing blades, but there was a strange click when she pulled them out. Her body was wrenched upwards as her body slowed its descent. A thin membrane had appeared in between the blades of her wings. They were no longer just for attack as Kerrigan's were.
She could Fly.
Unfortunately, she had no practice and was still in shock, so she hit the ground face first at a slower, less deadly speed. Though she still tumbled end over end hitting many tree roots and rocks.
When she had crashed and come to a stop, all the Protoss had ran over to her. Zeratul was the first to approach. But Lizzy, in the state she was in, lashed out at him with her wing's pushing him back to the ground.
Picking himself up, he reached out to her again. This time she didn't attack. He took her injured arm and examined it. The heart of the blade had cauterized the wound meaning that she was not bleeding. Miraculously the wound was already healing. Lizzy could feel that her hand would be fully regrown in a few hours.
"We will try again tomorrow." Zeratul said to her.
"What!" Lizzy could not believe what she was hearing. "But I rung the Bell! I did what you wanted!" She commented in a quiet voice.
He sighed, if that was possible for a Protoss, "The point of the exercise was not to get to the top and ring the bell. That was the objective, yes. But the point, was to make you aware of the potential dangers that you will find in battle, and to hone your reflexes against them.
"Life is not straight forward. And not every obstacle or enemy is seen out in the open. You must be aware of this and be prepared to deal with attacks that my come in the dark." He ended his speech and walked off.
Lizzy was angry that he just left her with one less hand and no help save a speech. But it would serve as a reminder that she was not human anymore and was a potential danger. If she let her Zerg instincts or the Overmind get inside her head again then she would just be another cog in the Zerg hive mind. She was not going to let that happen was her own person and nobody's puppet!
And Lizzy was not going to let this failure define her. The next time she did this test she was going to pass with all her limbs intact.
She took some time to examine her new wings. They were softer than she thought they were going to be and more durable too. She half expected her fingers to break it like paper. But it was smooth and leathery. Her wings were not strong enough to let her fly yet, she would have to build up both the skill and strength. She would have been lying if the prospect of flying wasn't appealing.
When Jim had found her, her hand was neatly regrown. Lizzy had returned to her human form and wandered about the forest before awkwardly climbing a tree and sitting, staring out at the landscape. Jim had rode up in his Vulture, no helmet and no safety gear. But the machine was loud enough to wake every animal within a tree planet vicinity.
He stopped at the base of the tree and called up to her "Zeratul told me what happened. How you holdin' up?"
She didn't answer, instead she looked down at him with a blank expression.
"Conversations work better face to face." He yelled again.
Sighing, Lizzy leaped down from the tree and landed with ease on the ground in front of Jim. "If he told you everything Jimmy, did he tell you my hand was cut off?" She asked with a bit of anger in her voice. She knew that he wasn't to blame but she needed to vent some anger.
"Yeah, he did. That's why I came over, to see how you were doing." He calmly answered, knowing that getting angry at her was not going to help the situation.
"Why would you care? All you have done since I got here was experiment on me and make me duel some asshole where I nearly went insane and killed said asshole!" She hissed at him, getting angrier at anything and everything.
"Why wouldn't I care? Do you forget that I went to Char just to get you? If I didn't care then I wouldn't be here seeing how you are nor would I have brought you to this planet in the first place. Just use your head and breath, kid."
It seemed to work, Lizzy was slowly calming down and she felt a presence in her mind, the Overmind no doubt, trying to entice her to turn on both the Protoss and Terrans and return to the Zerg Hive. Everything was tinted red when she was angry, she was completely at the mercy of the Overmind and the things he whispered in her mind, the promises he makes. But she was not going to bend to his will, well not easily. She would fight as hard as she could to not become like Kerrigan, a heartless killing machine.
When she was calm again she looked to Jim "Thanks Jimmy, I needed that. I was just so angry, at myself, at failing. And Zeratul for not telling me that I was going to be attacked during the training."
He chuckled a little. "Well that's the Protoss for you. Always cryptic. Well you finished half the training."
Lizzy looked at him questionably.
"You got to the top and rung the bell. Next time getting to the top won't be as changing and you will have less to worry about."
He put a comforting hand on her shoulder, akin to an older brother, and they walked back to the Terran camp. Lizzy decided that it would be better to hide her still healing hand until it was fully back, she feared that the other marines would see her as more a Zerg then human.
After all, Humans didn't regrow body parts.
That was the first night that Lizzy slept well with no nightmares in a long time.
Lizzy got up early that morning, she was not particularly happy when she remembered what she had to do. Another training session with Zeratul.
Deciding to get on with her day, she got dressed and left the tent heading down to the same gathering of giant trees that she was training at the last day. Her hand had completely regrown and she was ready for more training with Zeratul. She was surprised to see Tassadar standing there instead, gleaming in his golden armour.
"What happened to Zeratul? I thought I was training with him today?" Lizzy enquired, tilting her head slightly.
"He thought it best to give you a respite from physical training for a short period." He told her with some kind of strange 'tone' in his voice. He seemed annoyed that Zeratul had put the training on him. "Shall we begin?"
Lizzy nodded and followed him to a gathering of logs, newly cut.
"We have been training you to call upon your Psionic powers, and now that you can use them with relative ease we shall put it to a test." He stopped in front of the logs. They were lined up, horizontally in a semi-circle with more piled high to the side. "Today I want you to gather your psionic power in your hands and break the logs with it."
She gulped a little. But if Tassadar of all people had faith in her then she would at least try.
Doing as instructed she focused her psi energy into her hands. Once she had gathered enough energy and condensed it, she was holding a ball about the size of a large tennis ball between her hands. The effort had completely drained her energy.
But it seemed that Tassadar was not through yet.
"Now I want you to spin it in multiple directions at the same time. As fast as you can while keeping it compact." He instructed, but as her attention was lost trying to listen to him the ball of energy exploded with substantial force, throwing Lizzy onto the ground panting from exhaustion.
Tassadar sighed and shook his head. "More focus."
So Lizzy tried again. This time with slightly better result's. She made the ball spin and used her palms and rolled the ball to get more traction and spin it in as many directions as she could.
When she had enough speed, she held the ball in one hand and hit the log with it.
It retained its shape and began to tear through the log, shredding it where the Psi Ball was in contact with it. But once again she lost her focus and the ball dissipated, leaving a large spiral etch carved into the wood.
"Better." Tassadar complimented "If you force the energy into the log next time, you will see it react similar to the explosion earlier."
That caused Lizzy's interest to be raised. That kind of explosive power was tempting.
So well into the day as the sunset began staining the sky a ruby red, Lizzy was still training. She was totally exhausted, sweat beading on her forehead and her breaths coming in laboured. And with every new attempt at gathering up her energy into a Psi Ball, it got smaller and weaker.
But she continued on until she had no energy at all and collapsed onto the ground.
"How'd I do…?" She asked Tassadar struggling to get back up but somehow making it to her knees.
"For a novice, not overly horrid." He told her "With more practice you will find it much easier to bring the power to your fingertips, and you will find yourself using less energy."
As she smiled at herself, and the slight comment she received from Tassadar she didn't notice Jim running toward them as if the hounds of hell were chasing him.
"We've got a serious problem!" He told them, panting from his run. "The Zerg have found us, and Kerrigan's leading the charge. We have to get back to the ship and get off this planet."
(END)
I am very sorry for how long this chapter took to get out, I have been working on another project that I hope to get out soon. And I want to thank Yoshtar for all his help on said project and to everyone for all their support on this story. When I began I thought 'This will never be read' and you haven't stop reading since, for which I am eternally great full :3
Let me know what you think on this chapter and if there are any ways this can be improved I felt the part with Zeratul and his training could have gone a LOT better.
