Chapter 2 - Deep shadows

'All I knew was death.' Shadow stood towering over the bodies of the ones he defeated. They weren't his enemies, not really, the only enemy he had was those of the government he once swore to destroy by the will of his masters, but they didn't exist here, so he was a hollow and purposeless existence.

The memories of the past were somewhat fuzzy, but he could remember doing something impossible.

Hesitating.

He wasn't built to do so, but one day it happened, and it was on that very same day that he somehow got here, carrying a younger body that still had all of the augmentations he previously had.

And as such, despite being back to a very young body that was less than seven years old, his strength mostly surpassed that of an adult human.

This wasn't a surprise though, Genesens like him didn't grow stronger with age or training, they were strong from the beginning, and that was it. There was one exception though, the few Dark Stars, but they were the weapons among weapons and didn't even have free will as they did.

Shadow wasn't sure about certain things though, this body of his felt completely organic, unlike his original one. Breathing wasn't really the most vital of the things his body was capable of, but it was there and it shouldn't be, hunger was another, and he couldn't feel the photovoltaic cellular tissues that his body had once been made of.

Overall, there were many differences and many similarities.

What was he? Was he natural or was he again a machine deliberately built by someone with their own interests?

He wasn't naive. Shadow knew not to believe in childish notions of fate. Nothing in the universe happens by random chance. At least the humans knew it didn't after the first iteration and that extremely advanced civilization from the first cycle built the Akashic Records.

Many things were happening purposefully to stimulate the technological growth of sentient civilizations, all in the hopes of achieving freedom of the state. More specifically, freedom of the state of information. Imagine giving life to pure information, freeing oneself from being a record written on paper, in the memory of an individual, or a mere collection of strings and numbers in a database where you stored all of your memories and the core of what you are.

All civilizations wanted that, even Earth. But as always, sentient species greed would always reign above their common goals.

"We can find the solution to this problem, sure, but you don't have to be here when it happens."

Those were the words of a city-estate leader before he shot a president from another place in the head. The words said by one of his masters.

They were all greedy. But Shadow didn't care because he felt like they deserved to be greedy.

'Look at them.' He would say to his squadmates mid-task when they had to interact with common humans on Earth while their counterparts built for space colonization were somewhere amid stars. 'So useless, they don't even know how much of their lives is possible only thanks to our masters.'

And it was true, many things were only possible because of their direct interference. Wars that didn't break out, weapons that malfunctioned, researches that disappeared... Whenever something certain to threaten life on Earth appeared they would intervene.

Can't be the supreme ruler of Earth if the stupid beings on it kill themselves, after all.

But here? In this alien landscape? He was truly a shadow of his past self.

And what a shadow can do if not simply live?

Jack's eyes pierced through the crowd and fell on the bulletin board with rewards for the capture of criminals in Jubi Space Hub, either dead or alive.

"So be it. Until my purpose is clear, I shall do what I was built to... Complete missions."

...

Obi-Wan stared in mild confusion and suspicion. It wasn't possible as far as he knew.

What in the Galaxy could give birth to such a monster? And it was even connected to the Force...

After going through the scene in his mind many times, he started wondering if that person wasn't someone from Yoda's race... They were all small as far as he knew so that could explain why he was so strong, agile, and had supernatural reflex like a Jedi.

But what of the martial arts? Where do they come from? He wasn't aware of such a beautiful fighting style in the Jedi order. So, was he from one of those force-sensitive organizations outside of the Jedi? If yes was the answer, then from which one of them? If not, from what hole did he come from?

Anakin wasn't so thoughtful as his master, hasty and irresponsible, he jumped from the rails and fell down on the plaza, shocking everyone that saw a kid falling from hundreds of meters above.

"You fight well." Anakin smiled as he walked around while looking at the bodies.

Most were somewhat burned around the chest and stomach, and only one had to taste the might of his limbs.

Shadow didn't answer. It wasn't like he didn't want to though, it was just that he didn't know how to speak his language.

The language he learned was the one mostly used in the Jubi Space Hub, the Hapan language.

Tilting his head in confusion, Shadow just looked at him eerily, feeling threatened by reasons he couldn't quite put his finger at.

Anakin sensed the confusion with the Force and knew immediately that there was a language barrier.

Trained in many arts, he narrowed his eyes slightly, a connection formed between the two naturally, and in a few moments, though with a weird accent, Anakin spoke in Hapan.

"Do you understand me?"

Shadow was stunned and nodded in reflex.

"Good." Anakin's accent was still a little bit off but it was almost like a second language to him already.

Obi-Wan dropped from the balcony above as well and stood next to his Padawan. Unlike Anakin, though he had learned the Hapan language before and didn't have problems communicating once he noticed that Shadow only knew that language.

"I'm sorry for my apprentice rudeness for not greeting you first. We are Jedi from Coruscant, and we came here to talk to you."

Shadow lowered his head slightly as he looked at them from the corner of the eyes that were hidden under the black rags he scrapped together in the form of a cloak.

"What do you want?"

Shadow's voice was cold, devoid of emotion, and had a hostile vibe.

Anakin and Obi-Wan felt that and knew not to rush things, especially because if that voice indicated anything, was the one beneath the cloak was probably very young and maybe just a very capable but traumatized kid.

"We are not here to hurt, of that I assure you." Obi-Wan gestured with his hand trying to make himself look a little bit more friendly.

Shadow didn't answer though, he looked down to his right hand and pulled the sleeve back slightly, revealing a communicator strapped to his arm. Tapping a few buttons he sat down on a small pillar with a flattened top and watched slowly the hub's horizon where countless hover vehicles would come and go and a few spaceships made their way to the docks.

"What is he doing?" Anakin asked without a clue about the situation.

"He called the Law Enforcing department, I have come here a few times so I know their ID number. I think he is some sort of bounty hunter in the hub."

"Bounty hunter?" Anakin frowned, already feeling that the person beneath the cloak was worse than he had thought. He couldn't help it, he just didn't like people in this line of work.

Not long after, a few hovercrafts stopped above the plaza, the anti-gravity engine buzzed slightly as a few armored alien soldiers dropped down carrying guns, they closed the area around with holographic ropes that had 'LE BUSINESS, STEP BACK' written on it and checked the bodies.

"They are alive." A female alien in armor spoke. Her hands were holding a small device that she used to scan each individual.

One of the soldiers nodded, he approached Shadow, took out a datapad, tapped something on it, and before you knew it, three thousand credits per head had been credited to Shadow's private account.

Anakin and Obi-Wan watched the transaction happen naturally, the way it was conducted made them deduce that it wasn't the first time it happened. Such naturality would only be born from recurring meetings and that's quite rare considering how many people work for the Law Enforcement. The chances of you meeting the same LE team in a year was very low, after all.

Shadow turned around and was leaving, he had no desire to speak with the strangers nor any interest in them, his only purpose at the moment was to complete tasks and nothing else.

Curiosity was quite the alien concept for him, so was 'interest' in anything but completing his goals.

"Wait! won't you even talk to us?" Anakin ran to him and grabbed Shadow's shoulder with a shout. "Stop!"

Obi-Wan was surprised by that and rushed to their side to stop Shadow as he thought that a fight would happen but to his astonishment. Shadow just stopped there. When Anakin gave him the orders it was like he had to obey them no matter what. That couldn't be further from the truth but it wasn't totally wrong.

A machine was a machine, after all, only if obstructions to complete his goal appeared would he then react, and since he had to wait for new tasks to be published in the NET, there was no reason not to complete the tasks given by strangers such as those as simples as 'stop.'

Other parameters affected such things as well, like the innate objective of gathering intel, while it wasn't always active, sometimes an opportunity presented itself and he would complete his goal of collecting information.

Besides this, Shadow also had his free will, to accept a non-priority mission or not was well within his boundaries, and since the individuals claiming to want to talk to him were the fabled Jedi from many stories, he decided that they were worthy of his time, or more specifically, worthy of going through his evaluation of possible threats or risk assessment as his masters liked to call it.