"What the Fuck!?" She heard him exclaim.

     She opened her eyes cautiously, to see what was going on, and saw the teen's balled up fist stopped mere inches away from her face. She sent a wave of relief and gratefulness to Shadow through their shared link, thanking him for the last minute save. Shadow, in turn, sent to her his acknowledgment of the praise while keeping his attention on their attacker and his friends.

     Meanwhile, Marlene's captor was quickly losing interest in two girls as he struggled against Shadow's invisible grip. She took this as a chance to quietly slip from his grasp without him noticing and go to her friend on the ground. She helped Gracie to her feet and pulled her away from them, so she wouldn't be in way of what she knew was coming next.

     "What the Hell is going on here!?" yelled the senior as he continued to struggle against Shadow's hold on him.

    He soon got an answer to his question when Shadow began to materialize next to him. He stopped struggling to stare in confusion as a thick black mist surrounded his captured arm and condensed into a very solid, very large, narrow black hand. The hand's long slender fingers were tipped with equally large, sharp, and shiny curved black claws. The boy's eyes lingered on them for a moment before following the mist as it stretched away from him. It shaped an arm in its wake before spreading out to create a large black mass next to him. Shortly after forming, the mass also condensed and solidified to form a towering, dark and mostly black humanoid figure standing next to him.

     It was Shadow, and his height left the teen staring at the lower part of his chest. The boy had to crane his head backwards just to look him in the eye. He immediately regretted his decision to do so as Shadow was glaring down at him with glowing red eyes. Aside from the eyes, there were a pair of slit like nostrils where his nose should be, the only other feature in his otherwise featureless face. Long straight locks of pure white hair flowed down from his head and continued past his shoulders before coming to an end on the long, wide, white stripe crossing the upper part of Shadow's chest.

     The stripe was shaped like a flattened-out V with its upper points disappearing over his shoulders to connect to an identical V stripe unseen by the teen on his back. This was all that could be seen at the time as the rest of the details of Shadow's current form were ominously obscured by the lingering remains of the black mist. It took a moment after Shadow fully manifested himself for the teen's alcohol fogged brain to register exactly what had grabbed him. When it did, he began to swear.

     "Holy Fucking Shit!" he screamed before returning to struggling, now frantic to free himself from Shadow's iron strong grip.