Hehe! My quickest update ever! Hope you guys like it.
Jaynesdingleberries presents: something that does not belong to me!
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Tius was shocked. It showed on his face, in the way his mouth hung open and limp, in the way his brown eyes bugged out. As he stared at the rod in his hand pointing at Shade, his finger still depressing the charge button. A faint buzz sound came from the rod, indicating that it was fully functional.
"Y-your chip.." he stuttered, his voice the only sound.
Shade whipped his head around from looking at River, and turned to meet Tius' eye from his position between her and Jayne. For the third time in his life he allowed a smile to turn on his lips and reveal his sharp teeth.
"Dog you have called me, and killing machine. My chip inhibited this dog's ability to be a great killer, free of tether; so I had a mechanic remove it."
Agent Johnson, standing in front of Mal and Inara with his back to the hallway door, wasted no time in whipping a pistol from the shoulder holster under his dark blue suit-jacket and fired at Shade's head. All of the agents had come prepared with silver tipped hollow-point bullets, incase something happened, a rod broke or lost.
The flash from the gun muzzle was almost blinding and the rapport of it was deafening but the sound of a heavy frying pan smashing at the back of Johnson's skull made a nice ringing compliment to the gun. The result of the frying pan striking him resulted in three things: first, the arm aiming the pistol jerked up at the last instant, sending the bullet high into the rafters of Serenity's hull and ricocheting down into the wooden stack of crates on the floor. Secondly, the man's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell flat on his face unconscious, with a large bloody indentation in the back of his skull.
The third thing was everybody noticing the person holding the frying pan; it was a heavy-breathing Kaylee, eyes wide and half-terrified with the marks of tears and blood splatters on her cheeks. She had been ducked down at the hallway door; se had followed Shade out from the kitchen and waited there in the shadows for her chance, blood dripping from her hands to run down the handle of the heavy frying pan. Her arms looked as if she had bathed them in crimson up to the elbows.
She jumped forward quickly and hit the man again, just to make sure that he wasn't gonna get up. Her stomach was queasy from the violence, from all the blood she had seen in the last hour, none of it hers.
"Kaylee!" Simon shouted, unbelieving, his chest crushed around a feeling he could not describe…Alive …his beautiful sunshiny Kaylee was ALIVE!
"Gorram hell! Kaylee!" came the cry from Mal, Inara, and Jayne, who was shrugging off his chains like a huge bear emerging from hibernation.
Simon wanted to run forward and hold her to him, to feel if she were truly so, that this was not a desperate dream his mind had conjured up. He wanted, no he needed, needed more than anything in his life to know that she was okay. But his arms were bound, and all he could do was look up at her, at once his mouth forming words that weren't nearly what he was feeling.
"You have blood on your nose!"
She looked at him, eyes wide and offered a half-hearted smile. That was her bao bei.
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Shade delivered a harsh lick to the lock and shackles that bound River to her post, his werewolf strength causing the metal to warp and shatter under the force and the pole itself to creak and shift, no longer straight. Then knowing that she had a way of getting out of her entanglement he turned his attention back towards Tius; his face blank and the very edges of his black eyes lightening to an eerie yellow gold.
He was on the hunt and the beast in him, the utterly maddened monster of force and anger coming to the fore of his mind and for once he didn't fight it down; he let it rip its way forward and burst into his mind with the slathering hunger and deadly intent of the ultimate predator. He began to advance upon Tius, the sound of Jayne discarding the last of his chains came from behind him, and the sound of River's voice came to his ears, she was saying something to him frantically, but the beast ignored her and continued on its warpath to the man that had caged it, had hurt it for so long.
"No!" Tius cried, his face twisted with terror and he lurched backwards away from Shade, his feet tripping over themselves as he backed into Zoe. He nearly fell, his arms wind-milling and the rods fell next to Zoe's legs with faint thuds; but with years of hard training his muscles snapped his frame erect and he quickly dodged behind Zoe's pole and brought out the only other thing that could do damage to bear.
The silver knife lay ghostly pale on Zoe's bronzed skin, its razor-sharp edge digging gently into the flesh under her jaw and blood welling up in a small bead where it had pierced the skin.
"Come no closer or she and her baby will die!"
But the words he spoke did not register with the beast raging inside Shade now; and he advanced even swifter, not hearing Tius' warning, nor River's, nor even the panic-stricken yell of the yellow-haired ghost crouched next to his wife and son.
Zoe stared him in the eye, her own desperate for her child's life; if it had been Shade who's eye she met, perhaps that would have stopped him. But at that moment even the Moon-Goddess herself had no hold over the abused animal caged for twenty two years in this man's harsh care, and even the gift of Derrial, which lay unused in Shade's hands lay forgotten and dormant as the bloodlust consumed him.
Seeing Shade, his eyes now changed in color to a pure and blinding shade of gold, his white hair still soaking in crimson blood, his lips pulled back to reveal the flash of his long fangs, Tius knew he would die.
So he took a deep breath, smiled, and drew the blade sharply across her neck. The blade, made of silver so that it could wound Shade if necessary, was sharpened to a fine and beautiful edge.
It separated her flesh as if it were made of finest silk, and the air before them was graced with a wide and violent spray of scarlet.