Author's Note: Superfast update, because I'm feeling gloomy and I know you awesome reviewer-type folks will make it all better.
I'm going to stop talking about chapter length or I'll just keep saying "this is the longest chapter so far" in every update. (But this one is ten pages.) Anyway, I present for your reading pleasure a fight between Jak and Erol, a more pronounced understanding of Dark Jak, Calm!Erol, Pwned!Erol, and mention of Daxter if you squint and tilt your head sideways.
Also, there is now a fanvid entitled What's Worth Fighting For up on my YouTube account—youtube(dot)com, search for member Nashidesei—based off this fic. Enjoy.
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Eight: Facets of Being
Although externally Jak was taunting, laughing and pushing Erol's buttons in all the ways he hadn't dared in months, he was extremely confused. He had come to think of the whisperings in his head as a separate entity, a creature formed from the coupling of Praxis' experiments and the dark eco inside him—now he realized it was quite the opposite. The whisperings in his head were just like all the other renegade thoughts he had heard in his lifetime, strange mental images that seemingly sprung from nowhere but were certainly his in every way, shape and form.
He understood now that the monster under his skin was not, in fact, something alien and new, but rather a part of himself he had never put much stock in before. The part that turned angry when Keira teased Daxter a little too much, that got annoyed when Samos seemed to be pushing him a little too hard in his training and explaining why in too few words, that he listened to only when entirely necessary. He had thought the whispers and taunts, the jeers and scathing warnings were from somewhere else, something that had been transplanted into his head through Praxis' and Erol's experiments.
He was wrong.
It hurt, it made him sick to his stomach and made his head hurt as though it were going to burst, but he understood. This creature, this monster under his skin, was him. Just as much as the hero that had channeled light eco to defeat Gol and Maia Acheron and their twisted robot, just as much as the boy that took advantage of the view when Keira bent down over her toolbox and enjoyed every minute of it, this thing was him. Not a separate entity, not something that possessed him like a ghost in one of Daxter's fireside stories, just another facet of his being.
It was as frightening as it was exhilarating.
Erol, for his right, seemed just as interested in the bizarre changes occurring to the youth as Jak himself was. As Jak lifted his hands to look at the claw-tipped fingers and followed the bizarre ash-hued patterns running up and down his arms with his gaze, Erol didn't move to attack, instead watching the boy move with a fair measure of curiosity.
"Interesting," the Captain said, voice a hiss in the still air.
Jak tilted his head from side to side, loosening the muscles in his neck and shoulders, and shook both hands in preparation. He felt he should have said something, given some hint that he was ready to fight and ready to hurt, ready to feel Erol's body break under his hands—No, Praxis has to die first.—and ready to watch the life drain from his eyes—Erol's just the lackey, the second level, the surface.—but he couldn't bring himself to make a sound.
What am I doing?
This monster might have been a part of him, but it was a part over which he had very little control—or rather, a part that kept him from controlling himself. He understood that Erol wasn't the main threat, that doing this was foolish as well as pointless, but he wanted to hurt something right now, make someone pay for making him a monster, and Erol was the only person in sight.
So he fought. He kicked Erol's legs out from under him and grinned when his head cracked against the floor, kicked him in the stomach and almost laughed when he curled up to avoid another such hit. His bones burned, eco burning him from the inside out, and Jak ground his teeth. He reached down and grabbed Erol by his hair, pulling him back to his feet even as his claws tore deep gashes in the man's scalp, even scraping bone under the skin in some places.
It was Praxis' orders that had made him this, but it was Erol's hands. Surely that warranted some form of recompense, allowed Jak a small measure of vengeance. Surely it was all right to hurt them back, after realizing that they had hurt him enough to make him a monster.
He took hold of Erol's arm with his free hand, twisted it until the muscles were stiff and bone grating, and them gave the lightest push. The bones snapped under his hand, halves scraping against each other with such noise it made Jak's ears ring. They had made him this, they deserved to pay. They wanted a monster, and they were going to get it.
Erol almost screamed.
The memory of Samos sharpened the ache in his head as teachings from the days before they activated the Rift Gate—that was what the great and terrible creature had called it, if Jak recalled correctly—resurfaced. The old man had spoken in warning, told the boy of what truly made a man a monster, spoken in tones that made Jak wonder just what the man expected him to become. "Gol could have filled himself to the brim with dark eco," the sage had said, "and never have been a monster, if only he had remembered the worth of life."
Every life was precious, from the tiniest insect to the largest whale—from the brightest hero to the darkest villain. So long as one remembered that they would never truly be a monster, regardless of what they looked like. Erol was a monster because he treated people like playthings, because he had forgotten—or never learned—what it meant to take life.
Jak was becoming a monster not by suffering through his ministrations and torture, but by following Erol's footsteps.
He let go with a start, able to pull back just in time to avoid a kick from the Captain as he recovered at last from that blinding pain in his arm. Jak met the kick by blocking with his left arm and throwing a punch with his right. It was hard to keep his hands in fists with those killing claws, but Jak was determined not to use them again. He would not become the monster Erol and Praxis wanted him to be.
Erol pulled back, just barely dizzied from the hit, and smirked as he reached up with his good arm to wipe away the blood trailing out the corner of his mouth. "Not bad," he grunted, features deepened with pain. "You're very fast."
Jak took a steadying breath, his entire body flaring with pain at the sudden stillness. "I'm not doing this, Erol," he said evenly. He knelt, hands braced on the floor.
The Captain jerked, just barely, and Jak realized it was the first time he had called him by name. He wondered if it had the same affect on the yellow-eyed madman as it had on him.
Erol took a breath and gestured about with his right arm. "What, have you run out of steam already?" He cocked his head to one side, askew helmet tilting slightly to shadow his expression—just enough to mask the little bit of pain that fought its way through the man's schooled features. "Don't tell me you're giving up? When you're so close to finally taking me down?"
Jak blinked, and a swift rush of heat ran through his eyes. He didn't see it, but felt the change from black back to blue. "I'm going to take you down all right," he replied. Claws receded again, like a cat that no longer sensed a threat. "But I'm not going to do it like this, with Praxis watching and you just waiting for me to go over the edge." Slowly the blue-grey patches on his skin faded back to the deep tan—a bit pale from mistreatment—he had been born with. "I won't be what you want me to be."
Erol's eyes narrowed and he ground his teeth, good arm slipping behind him. "We'll see about that." He lunged forward, clutching something that shone like glass and metal and liquid all at once—moving so fast that the only reason Jak noticed it was because the dark eco inside him was still moving too fast, keeping him too alert not to notice—and stabbed the bizarre object straight into the boy's arm.
Jak realized, too late, that the thing was a needle and syringe, the kind they used to tranquilize him before treatments that would make him particularly unstable. He had only ever seen such a thing twice since his capture, but at least he understood why a fog settled over his vision within a heartbeat.
"It's time for phase three now, Jak," Erol said, looming over him. "Let's see how you handle the next week." Something lit in his eyes, kindling a devilish grin. "Oh, I almost forgot—happy anniversary."
Jak closed his eyes and, for the first time, didn't fight the unnatural sleep that came up all around him.
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Jak decided within two hours of waking that phase three was by far the worst portion of this assessment. The first indication of what this final—according to Erol—segment of tests was delivered by the Captain himself, in the form of a small envelope made of the smoothest, whitest parchment Jak had ever seen.
"A gift from the Baron," Erol said with a smile. He laughed at Jak's suspicious glance in his direction and waved his right hand—his left bound in a sling—in dismissal. "Don't worry, it's nothing that's going to hurt you." He turned to leave, pausing with his hand on the door. "Well, nothing that will hurt you physically."
And then he was gone, leaving Jak with a bizarre object that he couldn't chance opening, but at the same time couldn't keep sealed. Whatever was inside that envelope was something Praxis wanted him to see, something he wouldn't be able to avoid much longer. He figured if he was going to be played with he might as well have it done in his own cell, without Erol in the room to watch.
He gave a glance at the monitor set into the wall, checking his eco levels before he dared to do something of Praxis' suggestion, and opened the envelope.
There were pictures inside; perfectly clear, paper even and undistorted. These weren't paintings, though Jak couldn't think what else they could be. There were so many things about this world he didn't understand, so many things he didn't dare ask.
Erol had lied—the pictures did hurt. They made his eyes sting and his stomach lurch, made his heartbeat quicken until he feared it would burst. He ground his teeth as his mouth went dry, hands shaking.
They were pictures of the people he had killed, the people whose blood had so completely stained his clothing that apparently even Erol couldn't stand it and had the youth's clothing changed while he was unconscious.
Had he really done this? How could he possibly have caused such mutilation, torn limbs from their sockets and ripped faces open so roughly that bone was visible beneath the blood? The bodies were splayed out like dolls carelessly tossed aside in favor of a new toy, ripped and shredded and still screaming in his head—
Jak clenched his eyes shut and flung the pictures as far away as he could, heard them hit the wall with a slap, fall to the ground with such volume he knew he was on the verge of losing control again. He ground his teeth harder, feeling them sharpen and extend even as he tried to force them back. His hands, clenched into fists, were pierced as one by one his fingernails lengthened into ebony claws.
I won't be what they want me to be, he asserted. I won't—I can't! People are counting on me, people need me. Praxis has to fall and Erol has to fall with him. I have to keep fighting.
Slowly—slower than before—he shifted back to normal. It hurt this time, as though his body was reluctant to let go of the changes it had worked so hard to instill, but Jak swallowed the pain. He would not be a monster; he had come too close already, those pictures proved as much. He would never allow himself to come that close again. Not now, not ever.
"I won't do this," he ground out, opening his eyes and taking a deep, shaky breath. "I won't be this monster for you, Erol!"
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Just outside the door, leaning against the wall, Erol's eyes narrowed and he bit back an oath. The Captain pushed himself up and started off down the hall—he had other subjects to check, people that were more easily battered and already broken a thousand times over.
None of them could equal this youth, though. None of them held half the potential of Jak, and none of them were worth half as much time. He would be back, and just maybe dear little Jak's resolve would waver as phase three of his assessment continued.
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A half hour later found the fiery-haired man at his desk on the top level of the prison, swimming in paperwork. He tapped his chin with the end of his pen as he tried to decide what it was that had finally finished off number six, the young woman two cells down from Jak, and finally settled on a heart attack. There had been more, certainly—the overdose of dark eco, hysteria that pushed her to throwing herself at the wall randomly and the wounds sustained when she refused to behave.
She had been loud, and Erol hadn't liked it at all. He could handle a certain amount of screaming—even enjoy it to a degree, depending on the subject—but she had shrieked almost nonstop for the entire two days after phase two of Jak's assessment, babbling incoherencies all about a young man that glowed white and blue and little creatures that made universes. Complete madness.
"A heart attack, then," he muttered, scribbling it down in his crude, scratchy penmanship. "That's the default, after all…" He surveyed the sheet when he finished, not signing the line at the bottom until he read it over once or twice. His penmanship really was terrible, he admitted with a quick bite of his bottom lip. His brother had once told him that the way he wrote made it appear as though a tiny Metalhead had stomped across his paper with ink-soaked claws, and he had to give a nod now in admission that the older man had been right.
"Well, not quite." Narrowing his eyes slightly his good hand flitted to brush over his chest. It still stung when he breathed—hence why he had opted once again not to wear his armor today—and served as a silent reminder of what a good set of claws could really do. The wounds left by his favorite Dark Warrior had been deep and laced with the eco the youth so readily absorbed. It took seven hours with a green eco drip running in the infirmary to seal the gashes, and even now they weren't completely healed.
Jak's penmanship, cut into his chest, was much cleaner than his. The wounds would scar, but were so precise and fine that Erol doubted they would do much to mar the tattoos running down his chest.
A high series of beeps rang out and the man sighed, putting his pen back to paper and signing to confirm that it had been cardiac arrest that killed Dark Warrior number seven. "Come in," he said, voice barely below a shout.
The door slid open and a single guard stepped in, helmet in his hands. He almost looked familiar, and Erol looked him up and down to find an insignia denoting rank. He blinked in confusion when he realized that the man was just a grunt, and wondered how he had possibly lived long enough to be familiar to the Krimzon Guard's commander.
"Commander Erol," he said with a nod. The man in question waved his hand for the man to get one with whatever he had come for, and the guard swallowed thickly. "Well, sir, there has been a rise in the number of complaints submitted lately, and I thought I would bring it up with you to decide to best course of action."
So that was where he recognized him from—this man, in spite of his armor, was a desk worker. He had a short beat just outside the prison that he ran for thirty minutes every day, and the rest of his time was spent reading and remedying the numerous complaints filed by the rest of the Guard.
"What kind of complaints?" If they complained about the screaming during the night shift one more time Erol was going to commit genocide.
Lucky for the Krimzon Guard at large, that was not the problem. Apparently several of the guards had noticed scurrying, scraping noises sounding in the walls of late, and when the help desk grunt finally reached this point Erol rolled his eyes, looking up from his desk with a sigh. "Well if it's bothering you so much why don't you hire an exterminator?"
"Because, sir, we believe that it might be insects that are related to the Metalheads. Cousins, if you like." The man crossed his hands behind his back. "And the only exterminator willing to go up against such creatures has a less-than-savory reputation."
Erol blinked. Just once, and very slowly. Then he held a hand to his head and tried to stifle an exasperated sigh. As if the Krimzon guard had a decent reputation… "Just hire them!"
The man started, saluted and left. Erol took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, reaching out to pick his pen back up and fiddle with it. Metalheads in the prison? Who ever heard of such a thing? Still, if the creatures spooking the graveyard shift were in fact relatives of Haven City's greatest adversaries, then they had to be eliminated. He couldn't have monsters playing with his warriors, particularly when there was a handful—still alive—that were close to monsters themselves.
None came as close as Jak, though. None did as well, and none were as stubborn. If they could break him completely with this final phase then the Krimzon Guard would have an unstoppable weapon, a creature that not even the massive beasts guarding the Nest could defeat.
"At least I have something to look forward to," he sighed, going back to his paperwork.
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The next entry in Jak's third assessment wasn't even concealed, and so assaulted Jak's vision when he woke up the next day. At least the pictures had been tucked carefully into that envelope—which, along with the terrible images, had been removed from his floor sometime during the night. This most recent mess was completely uncovered and left just inside the door in a heap.
Twenty-seven ID cuffs, some gashed and ripped, twisted and even halfway melted, still dark with dried blood and sticky in some places where skin had come up with the bone-colored metal. No names, just numbers and three letters to designate the wearer's place in the prison—mostly REG, though he did pick out two or three marked with the same DWP as his own cuff—but that didn't keep Jak from remembering that these had been attached to people not long ago, and that they would still be safely on some two-dozen wrists if it weren't for him.
He picked each cuff up in turn, heart aching, a stabbing pain focused on two places on the top of his head, and one by one arranged them on the floor. He noticed that the ones marked the same initials as his cuff were in far worse repair than the others, and wondered why. What was so special about these people that the terrible killing machine inside him felt the need to leave tooth-marks, to crush them to parchment-thin strips and soak them in the eco that had taken residence in his blood?
The door slid open and Jak lifted his head from the seventeenth cuff in his arrangement, marked only one digit higher than his own designation. Erol grinned down at him and stepped in—alone—only one step before stopping to look down at the youth.
"Interesting, aren't they?" He inquired amicably. "The things you did to some of them…that one in particular was fairly gruesome." He came forward, moved around Jak to take a seat on the cot. He leaned back on his arms, and it was then that Jak realized the Captain no longer had his arm in a sling. "Would you like me to describe it to you, or do you remember?"
"What happened to your arm?" he asked. The twin pains in his head dulled as he dropped the torn cuff to the ground, the sound of metal on metal almost musical in its rattling.
Erol arched one eyebrow, sitting straight again to allow his arm to move. "Oh, so you do remember."
"You had a sling on yesterday, you don't today," Jak answered. In actuality he did remember what he had done, Erol knew he remembered, but the youth preferred to keep the Captain dancing around the subject for as long as possible.
The older man flexed his elbow, curled his fingers in and out, and then gave an unmistakably nasty look to his captive. "You really did a number on me, you know. They had to hammer needles directly into the bones," he tapped his elbow, then his wrist, "here and here and pump in more green eco than I've used in the last year. It worked well, though." He curled his hand into a fist. "It doesn't even hurt."
"Is that so?" The boy replied.
Erol leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Yes, it is. But enough about me; how are you feeling today?"
Jak's eyes narrowed and he reached down to pick up a cuff from the floor. "Was this your idea too? Like my fighting you?"
Erol reached out, brushing his gloved fingers over the gashed metal, and shook his head. "No, this was a…joint effort. It took Praxis and I almost an entire day to decide what to save for use in your assessment. Lucky for us you were unconscious."
"And what else did you save?" His voice had deepened, turning gravelly and dark, and he caught the flicker of fear that lit in Erol's eyes at the shift. "What else do you have to show me that I did something—something terrible that I already know I did?" When Erol didn't reply, instead averting his eyes and starting to whistle tunelessly, heat flared in Jak's chest. He pulled back his arm and threw the metal band at Erol with all his might. It might have been a childish move, but it was effective enough; Erol flinched when the object struck him in the head, glancing off his helmet—which, Jak noted, still bore a series of slashes across its lower end—and ricocheting to land on the other side of the room with a clang.
Jak was on his feet now, and so was Erol. The pains in his head had returned with full force, intensifying with each word as his eyes began to sting. "What else did you do to desecrate all those people you—you and Praxis—" He grit his teeth, clenching his hands into fists. "—all those people you made me kill!"
Erol's glare morphed into a smirk and he clicked his tongue. "Ah, my dear boy, you misunderstand. We never told you to kill them, never even insinuated that you were supposed to." He took a step forward, kicking several bracelets from his path and looking down at the smaller man with amusement. "You did that all on your own."
The youth's blood went cold. He had killed of his own volition? Not led even a little into doing those awful things? No, Praxis must have said something, something that was meant to make him hurt beyond repair, something that made him a monster…
"Outside this door, there are people."
The words were clear in his memory now, unmistakable in spite of the splitting pain in his head.
"I want you to fight them."
"Fight them…" he murmured under his breath, looking down at the twisted circles of metal all around him. "Fight them."
Erol gave a single laugh, a chuckle amid the perfect and horrible clarity of Jak's thoughts, and the youth's head snapped to stare. "Now you understand."
"But I…I wouldn't…"
The Captain placed a hand on Jak's neck, pushing his fingers through the tangled emerald-gold hair, and leaned in close. So close Jak could smell him, taste his breath in the air, sense the faintest hints of fear in his voice. "But you did, Jak."
The pain in Jak's head reached a peak, so strong now that he felt as though twin daggers were being ground not into but out of his skull. He reached up, dizzy from the pain, to grip his head, and froze in place when his touch brushed over something smooth and warm, wet and stiff like blood over bone.
Erol had stepped back, eyes wide, and when Jak lifted his head, an expression of pleading confusion in his gaze, the older man pushed past and left the room. Jak almost called out after him, almost asked what was happening, but all that emerged was a high-pitched, raspy croak.
He reached up again, working claws—where had those come from—around the bizarre thing on his head, giving a light tug that almost made him scream. Light flashed behind his eyes, so bright he went blind, and the perfect clarity of thought that had settled over him explained in that instant of white-hot hurt exactly what was happening. He recalled the barest beginnings of horns on Gol, how hints of bone peeked through rips in dark blue-grey flesh when the fallen sage moved his head, and understood.
Jak's hands trailed down from the sharp black horns cloven through the thick green roots of his hair to cover his face. He slumped to the ground in a crouch, shivering and sobbing and praying that this was all a dream, just another nightmare, that he would wake up any second in his hut back in Sandover, that this was all some horrible vision caused by the vestiges of terror the Acherons left behind.
But when he pulled his hands away—still a pale tan, not the bizarre blue-white that had twisted over his flesh when he fought Erol—there were still black claws, his head still ached in ways it never should have, and twenty-seven mangled bracelets stared up at him in accusation.
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