I get one day off every two weeks. Or I steal one… *grins* And it's been awhile…

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Kiley waited until after she heard Knives start climbing the spire to move her hand from the wound. She grimaced at the blood on her hand, and at the slow ooze that stained the front of her shirt, but what she worried over was the blood she could feel dripping down her back. Already the rear of her jeans was soaked with it, sticking to her back and pulling on her flesh with every shallow breath. Her mouth was dry with a mixture of fear and blood loss, and she lifted her shirt to look at the entrance wound.

Her mouth twisted at what she saw. The bullet had just missed glancing off a rib, passing just under her ribcage and out her back. The hole looked a little messy on the front, and her fingers lightly probed the exit wound. Her breath hissed through her teeth as she touched the edges of the raw area; a chunk of flesh larger than a quarter was completely missing from her back.

Her eyes unfocused as she made a quick evaluation of what was hit inside. The bullet had managed to nick her small intestine, and it also tore part of her diaphragm and ripped the hell out of her abs and back muscles, but the majority of her organs seemed to be all right.

She blinked, recalling herself to the present. Her eyes struggled to focus as she looked around the oasis. Vash was carefully taking stock of any and all injuries a very shaken Meryl might have received. Her face was pale, and the offending gun had been placed as far off to her side as she could get it without throwing it somewhere. Kiley would have grinned at the tableau, had she the energy. She wouldn't have minded having someone hover over her like that, but she got to have the brother who decided that a concussion was the proper sort of greeting.

Vash caught her watching them. His expression was very serious as he looked at her, and she closed her eyes, not ready to deal with him at the moment. She dropped into the deepest level of trance she could, needing to free her mind from distractions so she could heal the damage before it killed her.

She coaxed stem cells out of the various places they hid over her body, cultivating them as they traveled through her bloodstream and changing them into whatever tissue she needed to suit her purpose as they arrived at the scene of damage. Her next task was to repair the main severed parts of her circulation system before she bled to death on the sand.

As she tried to coax some semblance of heath back into her body, she couldn't help but overhear the reactions of Vash and Meryl to Ace's arrival. The gasps of shock let her know that the girl didn't look very good, but Kiley refused to worry. She was strong; she should pull through.

Voices drifted through her mind, phrases imprinting themselves on her memory without her being able to react.

"Will she be ok? What were you teaching her?"

Kid picks up things she's not supposed to.

"Ace. Come on girl. What were you thinking? She isn't worth this."

Not… worth? Her heart dropped at that, but she kept working on healing herself.

"That freak deserved being shot."

Oh. Thanks for the concern Meryl.

She tried to push the voices away, tried to ignore them. They were ruining her concentration. It was times like these that she really wished she could drop into a full trance, to be able to shut out the rest of the world and concentrate totally on one thing. It never happened, but she could always wish for such nice things. Tiredly, she cursed her stepfather one more time.

She went back to repairing the hole in her intestine, carefully lifting any matter and bacteria that might have spilled out to the surface of her skin so she could brush it away when she was done. Next came the careful restructuring of the damaged soft tissues. It wouldn't do to leave a hole and have her insides shift later when she bent over or something.

Next she began to pull any and all unattached and barely attached protein fibers and pulled them to her diaphragm. She worked them into the hole, carefully layering them and fixing the tear. Her breathing eased as she could take deeper breaths and actually pull air into her left lung again. She used the remaining fibers to begin to repair the hole in her back muscles, then culled some more from other parts of her body until the muscles were repaired. She found some more stem cells and grafted them on to the skin that was present. With a small exhausted smile she sagged, then allowed herself to follow up on something that had been bothering her.

Her cells weren't reacting in their normal manner. Everything felt very close to the way she remembered being, but something was different, and she just couldn't put her finger on what it was. She looked at them more closely, picking a stem cell just because they held the ability to become anything she needed. Peering at it, dissecting it with her mind, she found some irregularities that showed up throughout the rest of her cells.

She wondered just what the heck was going on here. Just when she thought she was getting a handle of the way things worked on this planet she gets to find something new and scary. She made a quick scan of Meryl's cell structure, looking for these irregularities but finding nothing. Then she looked at Ace, and her stomach dropped.

Every single one of the differences she found were present. With a heavy heart, she checked them against Knives and Vash as well.

Present. Every one.

Her heart stopped beating as she pondered the evidence. When Dream Dancer stuck her here, she knew that she had gained a new body. She just hadn't realized it wasn't a human one.

With that thought she found herself pulled into a full trance.

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Hmmm… think I might stop here… *evil laugh*

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