Jane thrashed, kicking and punching and screaming as Shadow carried her down the road, Shadow however, was rather bored at the fact that she was still resisting. After several minutes he decided to say something about it, not that what he said was very nice, but then he had just kidnapped her from the house and carried her over his shoulder like a package down the road - the few cars that passed ignored him, which he was grateful for - and that was not very nice, so he was not going to start being nice now.

"Please stop them butterfly farts you call punches, it's getting slightly annoying now" He said, huffing at the effort it required to kidnap one girl. Not that it was a very tactful kidnapping, but then he was not a very tactful person. As he walked down the pavement - Jane did not give up her punches despite how ineffective they were - he saw someone, stood in the middle of the pavement, clearly waiting for Shadow. The most peculiar thing was that he had a sword in his hand, but from this distance he could not make much of the sword's details out. Nor anything about the person, which he did not really like the idea of. He huffed again, wondering who this person was. The man appeared serious however, so he dropped Jane - she let out a short scream before she hit the pavement and was knocked breathless - and dropped down next to her.

"Don't move, I got to deal with this" he said, clipping on some pitch black handcuffs , the same colour as his coat, around her wrists. Jane didn't see where they had come from, but then he could have an entire utility vest under his coat for all she could see. Shadow then stood up and faced the man, who was closer now and walking towards him slowly. From this distance Shadow could make out the blade was sheathed, the man had not drawn it yet, which was odd. With a sigh this time rather than a huff, he drew his own sword, its blade so black it stole light from the surroundings and it made his coat seem a much lighter colour in comparison.

The man had significant muscles and his stance showed that he was obviously experienced with the blade despite not drawing it yet, so Shadow's form shuddered softly and changed, the tattered overcoat he wore grew darker, till it matched his sword in contrast and the frayed edges of it turned into a pristine, fully buttoned version of itself. His face changed as well, the area where his eye was scared and shut turned skeletal, which made his calm look all the more menacing.

"Such hassle" he muttered to himself, striding towards the man who was completely unfazed by the sudden change and - from what he could see - was wearing a fox mask.

Beth punched the floor in anger, Nehvna was trying to take care of Avrion and had diagnosed that Shadow had broken ribs with his punch.

"That bastard! Where does he get off just,breaking into here like that?!" She growled, slapping Silverfang to get him to wake up, a method a lot less refined than what Nehvna would have done, but then Beth was a lot less refined than Nehvna when it came to medical stuff. Silverfang woke up with a groan and stood up, stumbling for the door.

"Got….to save…Jane" he said, opening the door and stumbling out of it, despite Nehvna's protests - and Beth's, but less enthusiastically - which caused Beth to simply sigh and move on, slapping Eliot now rather than Silverfang.

Silverfang stumbled down the road, clutching his side from the pain, his jaw also hurt, but he would have looked rather stupid clutching his jaw and Silver didn't want to look any more stupid. He already did that enough as it was. Silver stumbled down the road, holding onto a garden wall at one point and taking a breather for several seconds, he hadn't been in this much pain for a while, that Shadow really packed a punch, he saw now what Jane meant when she said he couldn't get past her father's thug.

After several minutes of stumbling and leaning on wall to keep himself standing he reached Jane, who was lying in the middle of the road, he quickened his pace from amble to quick stumble, gritting his teeth at the increase in pain. He arrived and got down on his knees next to her. She was shivering from the cold and so he took off his jacket and wrapped around her, hoping to warm her up slightly. With that done, he scouted the surrounding area and found a few, rather interesting things. Half an immensely black blade - so black it made darkness seem light - was laying on the ground, scrap marks leading up to it showed that it had landed at an angle and at some speed as well. Oddly, there was no blood around, but then Jane's whole body shivered quite violently and Silverfang was beginning to feel the bite of the cold as well, so he put the questions to the back of his mind and picked Jane up, immediately putting her down again as his side roared in pain.

He had ignored it before but it had now come back with a vengeance. He clutched it and cursed a few times, then looked down at Jane again. There were some shards scattered around Jane, black as the blade shard but in many, finer pieces. However, Jane herself was more important at the moment. She must have been frozen, the clothing she was wearing was thin enough, made for comfort not warmth and even with Silver's coat it was cold enough out to cut through that with little effort, making Silverfang worried about Jane's health.

He growled in vexation and he was so fixated on Jane and her predicament that he did not notice the man with the Fox mask approach until the man spoke.

"Do you need a hand?" He asked, causing Silverfang to jump, let out a strangled yelp of surprise and then take a sharp intake of breath as pain ran throughhis body again. The Fox-mask hid the man's features and his emotions, and but that didn't stop Silverfang glaring suspiciously. Masked people didn't simply appear next to a strange man standing in front of an unconscious girl and offer to help without so much as a question of the situation.

Things like that just did not happen; the man's sudden arrival was too precise to be happenstance, or even coincidence. It had to be planned. The man must have read Silverfang's wariness as he offered an explanation.

"I came here at the request of his Sister, it was quite a rush, but I managed to get here on time, however, I could not see to the girl as I had to make sure Shadow was properly gone and not just hiding somewhere close by" He explained, his voice sounded odd, as if the mask had a voice-box in it that changed the tone of his voice. However odd that was and the phrase 'his sister' was also rather odd, but Silverfang was more interested with the fact that the fox-mask man had fought Shadow.

"You fought Shadow? How, he is like, seriously strong" Silver said in disbelief, trying to save his own ego.

"Yes, he is quite a monster in strength, but there is always a bigger fish" the Fox masked man told Silver and though the voice-box distorted it slightly, the tone sounded as casual as when Shadow had broken into the house. "Now, we should see to that side of yours" he said, pulling his scabbard out of its resting place in his belt. For some reason, Silverfang knew he wasn't going to try anything with the sword and so didn't move to stop him. The man then tapped the handle against Silver's side and he suddenly felt an indescribable feeling. After a few seconds he was left with a mild case of pins-and-needles but his side did not feel as if had Shadow caused a large amount of pain there barely half an hour previously, his jaw felt a lot better as well.

"Err, thank…" Silver started, but the fox-masked man was no longer there; Silver frowned but then realized that Jane was shivering and so picked her up and headed back to the house at a much greater speed than he had headed out at.

For the second time in so many hours Jane found herself resting in bed, the key difference this time was that everyone was in the room rather than just Silverfang and everyone looked worried. Also, Beth's beautiful, perfectly curvy-bodied partner - adamantly stated it was not her girlfriend, but they where always together, and always close - Satyr was also there, looking on with a slightly worried look. Avrion looked as if she was a bit doped and so when she opened her eyes the first thing she asked was if Avrion was feeling alright.

"I’m fine, Shadow broke a few ribs, but Satyr managed to fix me up" Avrion replied rather slowly, but her smile never faded. Jane nodded and then turned to Silverfang, who seemed the most relieved that she had woken up.

"Thank you for finding me Silver" Jane said, blushing slightly as she looked at him. His fur had retracted and his face - and the rest of his body - was now smooth. "I'm sure your all curious as to what happened, so gather round and I will recite it the best I can" Jane said, everyone then moved around, sitting on the bed at different angles so they were in a semi-circle around Jane, who cleared her throat and began.

"As Shadow was carrying me down the road, a guy stood in the way, he was an odd sort of guy, with a strange, fox mask on" She told them before Silverfang piped up.

"I met him, he used a voice box to hide his real voice for some reason and his sword thing was really odd. He tapped my side with the handle and the pain just vanished, I tried to thank him but he had vanished as quickly as the pain did" Silverfang told everyone, before nodding towards Jane, signalling her to continue.

"He was definitely an odd guy. He even made Shadow go into his strange, Other Form just by standing there with this sheathed sword. Anyway, Shadow dropped me from his shoulder - which really hurt by the way - and then clipped these things on my wrists and as soon as they locked, my arms went dead. All the feeling vanished in that moment and they flopped uselessly. I think I'll call them the Arm-Deadeners" Jane mused, going off on a tangent before Beth coughed, causing Jane to snap back, if slightly slowly.

"What? Ohh yes, Shadow. Anyway, after those Arm-Deadeners got clipped on, Shadow moved towards the Fox-mask guy. I was interested in what was going to happen, so I tried to pull myself into a better position to see. However, it was awkward, and by the time I had, Shadow's sword had been severed and he had a narrow, but long - and clearly deep, from what I could see - opening caused by a sword on his coat. The odd thing was that despite the wound underneath the coat there was no blood and the fox guy's sword was still sheathed.

Shadow then backed up and fell into the shadow he was casting on the ground - which was amazing by the way, I never knew he could do that - and as he did that the Arm-Deadeners crumbled into tiny shards, which I was grateful for. But, as I moved to get up, I suddenly felt a bit off balance. It was like getting out of a swimming pool after being in there for a good while.

Then, a couple of seconds later I closed my eyes, to see if it would help abate the odd feeling, then I must have fallen unconscious because the next thing I remember was waking up on this bed" Jane finished. Beth - and pretty much anyone who wasn't Satyr - appeared rather enthralled by the story, as if they were getting into it.

Satyr, however, was thinking - as usual, she was always the smartest person of the group and always the thinker - about the story.

"To be able to stand toe to toe with Shadow you would need to be powerful, but from Jane's story the man didn't seem all that strong, he just had a sword that remained sheathed for the parts Jane saw. And the time-frame for drawing his sword, severing Shadow's and delivering a blow to his chest, then replacing the sword is not long, only a few seconds at most. Combine that with what seems like a blood-drinking sword and I can think of only one person that would do that. Sean Woodhouse" Satyr said, speaking her thoughts to the group.

"But why the hell would he be around here? Isn't he busy being rich and famous?" Silverfang asked. The town they were in was far away from any kind of famous place so it was not like he was simply going slightly out of his way.

"Why don't we ask him?" Jane said to everyone, smiling at them as if she had not just woken up from being dragged down the road by a far-to-calm man for what he was doing then saved by one of the most famous people on the planet, a man with a name no one would not immediately recognize. However, with the looks she was getting Jane quickly continued. "I mean, he has to still be in the area right? So we could contact him" She tried to explain, but Satyr shook her head.

"No, there are only a few Teleporting tricks, known to a few, but most of them have quite a long range. Shadow's shadow trick, commonly called Shifting is known as one of the shorter ones and even that has a very long maximum range" Satyr told Jane. Silverfang snapped his fingers as if he had just remembered something.

"The Fox-mask man said that he had come at the request of 'his sister' not 'my sister' which means it was someone else's sister that had called him here, to this exactly spot, at this exact time to rescue Jane" Silverfang told everyone.

"Going off the assumption that the man is Sean Woodhouse - "Satyr started, but Silverfang stopped her.

"No, I don't think it is Sean. For one, he has a reputation for completely lacking any amount of seriousness despite the situation and an obsession with making as many people know that it is him doing the thing in question and not someone else. I don't think Sean would have worn a mask, or kept such a level head. You know, I would not be surprised if the fox-masked man was Balance. From what I hear, he certainly has the skill for it, and the temprement" Silverfang told Satyr, putting his point across. Satyr looked vexed at being interrupted but took a breath to start again; however before she even got anything out Eliot spoke out.

"Still does not explain why he is here, he is meant to be somewhere else, doing famous things" this caused Satyr to look really rather annoyed. Jane picked up on this mood and moved to get out of the bed.

"Well while you are doing the smart stuff I am hungry" She announced. Silverfang, also picking up on Satyr's vexation and decided that - being one of the reasons - he would remove himself as well.

"There is some meat left in the kitchen" he said, helping Jane out of the bed and following her downstairs.

When they reached the kitchen Silverfang reached out to the microwave and opened it, a plate of meat was sat in the middle and so he took it out and handing it to Jane, who pouted.

"I can take food out of the microwave you know" she snapped, putting her fists on her hips. Silverfang hated it when girls did that, it made them seem scary.

"I was just trying to help" he told Jane with a half cheeky, half loving smile, holding the plate of meat out for her. Jane laughed and took the plate.

"I know, but I'm stressed, with good reason. Sorry I snapped" She apologized.

"Don't worry about it, if I was in your shoes I'd be stressed as well. And my snapping hurts a lot more, sharp teeth and all" Silver said, gnashing his teeth softly and doing what he did best; making a joke to ease the tension that was building up. His ploy worked and he was rewarded by the soft giggle from Jane.

She and Silverfang stood in the kitchen for the next minute, eat meat and complaining about how it was going to give them bad wind the next day. Then Beth and Satyr came down the stairs and headed straight for the coat rack, pulling on their shoes and coats rather quickly and heading for the door.

"We are going out, we won't be long, just need to pick something up" She said before exiting the house without another word.

"Err, I feel like I missed something" Jane said, Silverfang - who had taken a piece of meat from Jane's plate and was now chewing it - nodded in agreement. Fortunately, Eliot and the two remaining girls came down the stairs at a slower rate. They saw the bemused looks on Silverfang and Jane's faces and decided to explain.

"Satyr and Beth started to talk about a book when you left; we quickly got left in the dust. I have no idea where they are going, only that they won't be long" Eliot explained as best he could, not that it was much of an explanation. But then, not many people could explain the winding, Labyrinth-like train of thought that Beth and Satyr followed nearly every day. Jane simply shrugged and returned to get plate of meat.

"Well, if they are not going to be long then maybe we should do what we were planning on doing in the first place" Silverfang suggested, but Avrion yawned, quickly followed by Nehvna, then everyone else caught up in the infectious wave that yawning always brought. It was odd how one yawn could make a whole room yawn, but then - Jane thought abstractly - it was like a smile, if you smiled then chances where someone else would start smiling and that would make another person smile. She liked to share her smile with as many people as she could when her father let her out, which was not often and nearly all the situations that he dragged her to where no places for smiles, most where a place for the complete opposite of smiling, which crashed Jane's happy train of thought. Avrion brought Jane back to reality by speaking to the group, which was a nice distraction.

"I'm tired, I'm going to catch some Zs while they are out, I'll come back down later" She told everyone, Nehvna nodded and sleepily followed her friend up the stairs.

"Fair enough, just don't break anything" Eliot told them with a playful smile.