"Crap!" There was a small thud as a frankly frustrated girl threw her controller to the floor, the image on the television screen falling into the same endless abyss for, what seemed like, the hundredth time. She slapped her forehead with a smack and rubbed her temples for a moment as she watched the game reset, the hero of the video game appearing standing and ready to go. The mental headache subsiding, the young woman reached again for the controller.
"Oh come on!" Said an equally annoyed female voice. "You have been doing this same part for, like, an hour!" And she was not stretching the fact. Truthfully, she had been playing for more then an hour, although when one was so submersed time seemed irrelevant. The watch on her wrist would have betrayed the truth of the time to her but she didn't bother to check. The two friends had been playing Jak II all weekend without stopping except to eat and sleep. For two girls who couldn't be more than 19 and with nothing else to do, that was their idea of a good weekend.
"Just gimme a few more tries, Rika." Said the first girl as she tossed her black hair from her face and started again, before her friend could reply. Rika sighed as her friend was, again, totally connected to the game. She turned from her seated friend and watched the progress of the video game hero. After a minute of the sound of frantic clicking of the controller buttons, the same irritated sigh came from the seated girl. It had been a predictable cycle particularly for the last few hours. Even though the pair had played the game many times before, and the hard parts became easier, there were times when the hardest parts still seemed very difficult.
"Kaida, you are taking this way to seriously." said Rika, tossing her shorter blonde hair out of her face. But her words fell on ears, already occupied with the sounds of buzzing lasers and destruction. Kaida only nodded slightly as she began the game again, this time, her eyes hazel never leaving the screen. Despite her constant failure, she seemed to be a glutton for punishment, as she continued without a break. Rika knew the feeling but she couldn't help laughing at the girl sometimes, and occasionally shaking her head at the repetitive antics of the girl. How she ever got tan with this habit of staying in front of the television astounded her.
"Well, you might me satisfied feeding off the radiation from that Play Station, but I am hungry." Rika got to her feet after watching her for another moment and wandered out of the game room. "I'm going to get something to eat." Again Kaida just nodded, missing the chance for workless food. Rika sighed and went to the kitchen to make some ramen, muttering about her friend's one track mind. Even though this might be Kaida's apartment, she knew all to well where everything was. Soon the sound of boiling water could be heard and the smell of seasoned ramen fluttered through the house.
Kaida continued playing, unaware of her friend leaving. When ever this happened about 5 minutes she would look up and ask 'Where are you going?' and after a long pause her brain would catch up to everything that had happened. She moaned again as Jak fell off the edge into the abyss but this time did not throw her controller to the ground. She continued to stare at the screen, intent on making it past this level. She was determined, and when she put her stubborn mind to something, she rarely gave up.
She checked her watch out of habit when a clock in the other room chimed the hour. After a long moment of waiting and internal prep for the next try, she noticed something strange, Jak had disappeared off the screen, but the picture still showed the abyss. She blinked at the, mostly, black screen. She wondered if the game had frozen. It was rare, but sometimes it would happen. Kaida watched as all motion on the screen stopped, and the sounds too became silent. Kaida squinted at the screen unsure if the long time playing had finally killed her brain. The picture suddenly seemed to be on fast rewind through the story of the game. She watched the game flash back to the beginning as Jak, Daxter, Keira and Samos were getting into the rift rider, and there the rewind stopped. She put down the controller and tried to figure out what was happening as the story began to play again, though still silent.
"Hey! What is the deal!"Shouted Kaida. She knocked the controller as she stalked up to the tv. She bent down so that she was level with the screen, sure now that it must be real, as nothing else seemed to be a hallucination. As Jak and company fell into the warp stream they disappeared and the tv screen seemed to freeze again as it continued to just show the warp stream. Kaida gasped, anger forgotten, as the screen began to get bigger, not the entire tv, just the glass part of the screen. She backed up a step as the screen expanded until it was a circle about 4' across, and had become circular. She was about to scream when she suddenly felt the pull of the screen, almost like a magnet, and was pulled off her feet and sucked in. Thought Kaida couldn't see it, once she was sucked in, the tv returned to normal, and the screen flashed 'One year later'. As the words vanished from the screen, there was a moment of fuzz and the scene returned to show Jak standing ready by the edge of the abyss.
Kaida closed her eyes as the warp stream flashed by her. The light was blinding and the feeling of falling was making her sick to her stomach. She attempted to open her eyes and look around. All that she could see was the flow of lights and energy, blue and white and painfully bright. She looked straight ahead as a blinding light began to grow directly in front of her. She shut her eyes painfully and put her arms out in front of her self to try and block out the light. WHAM! She hit hard ground and with a groan, her arms not saving her from rolling over a few times and scraping her self up good. She slowly sat up holding her head as her stopped ringing.
"What happened?" she groaned to herself, "god that hurt." Her forearms smarted and she felt her chin heating up as a bruise formed. Her bare knees were bruised and cut too. As she looked at herself she realized that she was sitting on pavement, like a street. When she looked up her jaw slacked slightly. She stood up, all her previous pain forgotten, and spun around with wide eyes. She was standing in a strange city, a few passers by looking at her strangely, but none of them stopping. The warm ground that she stood on was littered with trash and gravel. She was bruised, not broken, but she honestly couldn't even feel it and she was sure her head was fine, even though she thought she must be dreaming when it sank in that all the people passing by had ears that were long and stretched back about 5-7or 8 inches from their base. Some of the people even had strange pets on their shoulders or leashes that she had never seen before.
After a long time of staring and wandering slowly, her brain began to work again and slowly the recognition dawned. She knew this place, it looked like a city she had seen before but only on the television. 'I am in Haven City!' she thought at last, 'But how did I get here?' Looking up she saw vehicles flying over head, some slower than others. It had to be Haven City, even if it was just a video game, her brain couldn't make any other sense of the situation. It was all too real to dismiss as a dream. Unfortunately as she turned around again, she didn't have time to wonder and more, as a group had, in fact, taken notice of her. A group of red suits that she quickly identified as Haven City's infamous Krimzon Guards walked up to her, weapons ready. One of them stepped forward, his red hair and lack of a helmet instantly set him apart from the rest, he was the same one that had captured Jak. If this really was Haven she was in trouble, and she knew it.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" he stalked towards Kaida and she took a step back. "I heard there was a strange disturbance in this area, looks like it was better than I thought. Look at you." his cold eyes went up and down her body. "Your not from around here, I am not even sure what you are. With ears like that I bet you would make a fun new test animal for the Baron." Kaida didn't like the characteristic cold smile that was creeping on to this man's face. "He can always use something to kill for fun anyway. You are coming with me." The man she knew to be Erol gave her no time to argue. Kaida didn't say anything, she knew where they were going to take her, and she sure as hell didn't want to go. She had no idea what she would do to escape but she knew she sure as hell couldn't stay here. She was about to run when she felt the butt of a gun connect with her head, and everything went black.
When Kaida woke up she was being dragged down a long hallway, her bare feet being worn a little raw by the concrete and steel floors. She blinked a few times waiting for her vision to clear, though in the dim light there wasn't a whole lot to see. If this was Haven, she had a good idea where she was. The cold plain gray color of the massive open space gave it away. Floor upon floor of blinking cell door lights more intimidating now than when she had first seen this place. She had escaped from here in the game with ease. But... this wasn't a game, she knew. It wouldn't just work like that.
The guards roughly threw her into a small cell and she collapsed on the floor. It had a grate in the door and a grate to ether side, probably opening to other cells. Kaida sat up and leaned against the side of the cell, waiting for her head to stop throbbing, or to wake up from this nightmare. A nightmare was the only thing that would make sense in her mind but everything told her this was more than that. The pain was telling her this was something she couldn't just wake up from. She heard the heavy footsteps of the guards coming closer again. She curled up, hoping that they weren't going to come for her before her vision had a chance to clear, or ever. But the guards turned and went to the cell next to her's. She heard something thud heavily to the floor in the cell, and the guards snickered as a small moan came from whatever it was. Kaida couldn't help but feel a surge of anger at their laughter.
'Its another prisoner the Baron is torturing.' she thought. The sound of footsteps went away again, and she saw some of the lights that had been on earlier go off. She shut her eyes and stretched out on the floor until the world stopped tilting. She forced the nausea from her stomach and fought with her eyes closed to make everything feel the right way up. When she felt a little better she sat up and looked around. She glanced at her watch, which was surprisingly intact.
It had been about half an hour since she had last checked the time, which was only a few minutes before being sucked up by her television and spit out onto some impossible pavement. She sat up slowly, so that she didn't restart her headache, and then, carefully stood up. She put her hands on the top of her head as she felt the brain splitting sensation of her headache exploding again. She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, waiting for the feeling to subside.
'Standing might not have been the best idea, but now that I am up, I may as well take a look around.' she thought, trying to justify the self induced headache. She looked through the grate on the left side of her stall and into the next cell. There was no one in that stall and she hoped there never had been. She looked out of her door and saw the huge room that she had also seen in the game. She could make out rows of prison cells to ether side of her, and on the other side of the room. It looked exactly like the game did. She could see the pit in the center of the stacked tower and the stack of boxes that would have lead to her escape. Unfortunately she could also make out the most frighteningly real part of this nightmarish place, the table. Its leather and steel bindings reflecting some light in the dimness.
The table was the single thing that feared in the whole place. In the game it had been were Jak had been experimented on with dark eco. And here she was sure that more than a few souls had died on that metal slab. She then turned to the window on her right and looked through. She gasped slightly and her heart skipped in surprise as she made out the shape of a figure on the floor. It was Jak laying on the floor of the cell.
'But,' she thought, 'I thought that he escaped from prison in the beginning of the game!?' She noticed that he was still wearing the clothes he had on before Daxter had given him new ones. He was unconscious but his face was dirty and still held a pained expression. She could clearly tell that he had been having dark eco treatments for some time, huge bruises and needle track marks gave that away. But he didn't look exactly like he had when he escaped in the game. He still had that slightly fearful childish look to him, plus his hair was only starting to be long enough to fall down his neck.
She looked around her cell quickly and found a dish of slightly dirty water. She tore a sleeve off her t-shirt and dipped it in the water and then climbed to the window and held the cloth through the bars so that some drops of water landed on Jak's face. His face flinched for a moment before his eyes opened slowly. To him, the dim light was horribly bright and he blinked and squinted before he could see anything. He turned his head and looked up at her, peeking through the bars. She watched him to see if Jak was ok, hardly believing it was him, and almost hoping it wasn't. As soon as he was sure he could move, he pushed himself into a corner, and leaned on the wall. He made a small moan noise as he leaned against a particularly bad bruise and shifted a little. He had moved out of her range of vision, so Kaida walked away from the window and sat with her back against the wall of her own small cell.
She felt herself nod off, out of pure mental exhaustion. A little later she was awoken as she heard the sounds, again, of Krimzon guard boots coming closer to the cells, but this time it sounded like there was only two. She heard them opening and shutting a few cell doors, and dropping something into them. When they got to Jak's stall she heard them talking. "Well, the silent one, looks like he is sleeping." said one guard, his deep voice not sounding cruel at first.
"Yeah, and we wouldn't want to wake him up, so why don't we just skip him for today and let him get his rest?" said the other. She heard them both laugh as they shut the door. She could hear a small whimper from his stall and she knew full well that they were laughing simply at the fact that they had known that he was awake. When they came to her door they jerked it open, and she could see one guard holding a dish of something, and the other had a gun pointed at her.
"Looks like the new subject is awake. We should feed her, since tomorrow will be a full day for her." he laughed sadistically and threw the dish into her cell. It was obvious they thought of her only as an animal, and by the sounds of it, all the prisoners were animals to them. Kaida supposed that was the Krimson Guard mentality. When she heard their boots grow dimmer, she crawled up to the dish. There were several pieces of old bruised fruit, a small sliver of meat, and some thick gravy slop. She picked up one of the fruits wondering what they were. She had never seen theses fruits before. Her stomach growled and she knew she should have taken Rika up on her food offer. She was hungry, but she wasn't sure if she wanted the strange fruit ether. She split one of the fruits open on her knee. It spit like a cantaloupe and smelled almost like one too, although it was the size of a grapefruit.
"Its not dangerous." said a soft, slightly hoarse voice.
Kaida looked up in surprise to see Jak looking into her cell through her window, she had not even heard him move. She turned around to face him and looked up at him. She looked down at the two halves of fruit she was holding and stood up. As she walked towards the window Jak took a few steps back, his clear blue eyes were uncertain. She held the half through the bars and offered it to him. It was strange to see him like this. He seemed so afraid.
"I know that they didn't give you anything, so you can have some of mine." she said simply and softly. He looked from the fruit in her hand to her face and back again. She stretched her arm a little more in a more blunt 'take-it' gesture. He reached up, betting on the hope she was not just teasing him, and took the fruit from her. He looked briefly at Kaida again and bit into the little fruit hungrily. Kaida watched him eat for a moment and then turned to her own fruit. She carefully bit into a soft pink and yellow fruit. It was actually pretty good, and she had a feeling it would be even better if it hadn't been so old and beaten up. She didn't even realize it until she was suddenly looking at her empty hands, but she had begun eating like a starving dog. She picked up the next piece of fruit and looked it over. She bit into this one, and her face suddenly twisted in disgust. The greenish fruit was too sour, too sweet, too bitter, too tangy all at the same time. She wiped her mouth and turned to Jak and offered him the fruit.
He took it quickly and ate it equally quickly. She watched him noting that he seem like a starving dog himself. She began to wonder how often they fed their prisoners. All the questions she had never wondered before came to mind. Would she be able to talk to other prisoners? Did they ever go outside, and what were they in for? She had a feeling that although many other were criminals, some of them might just be in here for saying the wrong thing.
'The probably feed them enough to keep them alive.' she thought bitterly, not caring to wonder about the more morbid things. In the game all she had known was that Jak was alive and could do all of the moved required to escape, she had never paused to think about how often he had been fed. She suddenly felt bad, though she had no idea why. She stuck one finger in the gravy/mush stuff that she had also been given. It had a bland flavor of something you were expected to eat while watching someone else eat a very rich chocolate cake. She lifted the dish with the remaining fruit and the 'mush' and rested the edge of the dish in the small sill of the barred window.
"You look hungry, help yourself. This stuff seems like the stuff I would eat only if I was very hungry." she said in the same tone as she had before. "And I am not quite that hungry." He looked at her and took another piece of fruit. Kaida couldn't help but watch him. It was so strange to see him like this, with her own eyes. Questions welled up in her mind. There was silence for a moment, save the sounds of eating, then she had to ask.
"How often do we get to eat?" she asked while picking up the last of the fruit to eat. Jak looked at her and held up one finger. He obviously was still a man of few words, though not mute by any means. It only took her a moment to understand what he had meant by the gesture.
"They only feed up once a day?" she asked slightly louder. Jak nodded, and Kaida looked at the fruit in her hand. She wasn't really surprised, it seemed unlikely that the prisoners would be fed a nice wholesome meal 3 times a day. She was just about as likely to get some silk pillows and sheets to sleep on.
"I think I should save this then."she said then she put the fruit into one of the large pockets of her shorts. She stuck her fingers into the 'mush', since she didn't have any utensils, and ate a couple of mouthfuls. She licked her fingers and then wiped them on her jeans.
"Would you like the rest of this? I don't want anymore." she asked Jak, who had finished his fruit. She gave him a slight smile as he began eating the 'mush' through the bars, all the time looking like a starving animal. When he had finished she put the dish down and Jak moved out of her view. Kaida could hear the sound of Jak sitting down, or laying down, she wasn't sure which. She sighed deeply, her headache still swimming at the back of her mind.
"Since we are probably going to be stuck here for a long while I think that it would be good to know each other's names; my name is Kaida." She spoke through the window. Though she didn't really expect a response since she already knew his name. Even if he was still awake, she figured he wouldn't want to get to know someone who, for all he knew, would die the next day. And even if he did trust her, it wouldn't really mean anything to Kaida. With any luck, the storyline of the game was still the same and he was going to escape sometime in the future, and she would be alone again.
"Jak." a quiet hoarse voice said simply. She smiled, though it wasn't really a happy smile. She had always wanted to be in the game, but not like this. The adventure was what she had wanted but with all the safety of being able to restart, or even if it was just like a vacation. She moved to the back wall of her cell and rested her back against it, massaging a sore shoulder. She shut her eyes, still hoping that she would wake up and find that she had passed out on her couch. She felt herself slipping into a dreamless sleep. She hated dreamless sleep, time passed much to quickly, and nights like that were boring. That would be the last night that she would ever think that.
Edited just a little after a long long time