Characters (c) Naughty Dog.
Afeenaninganing, for a moment, neither I had an actual idea. –exdee-
Meowen, please forgive me, I didn't know you can submit a review from one specific chapter… Or something. I'm such a whizkid… -exdee sequel- Good that you liked Suvan! I only just realised her name actually has both SUV and 'a van'… Oh dear… Really it is hindi and means 'the sun'. Wheeh…
jaklover123, Light and Dark (who has given his counterpart a 'nice' nickname) took the control while Jak was catching z's… But yeah, things will become clearer.
LunarSquirrel, well it took a while for me to continue, but now it's here!
Thank you all for the reviews! I cherish them!
Da: "Why do you carry one of my floodlights around with you?"
Sipuli: "It's a too long story."
Da: "Tell me! I watch The Cut for an episode and you three have already written a chapter and… done something else as I can guess from that flood."
Sipuli: "Well, it was just a little bet."
Da: "You gamble?"
Sipuli: "Not anymore."
Da: "Tell me more, vege, keep on!"
Sipuli: "Ok, platinum, well, I made a bet with Lucius, that could he surprise maestro with doing something… well, serious. Not his typical oopsie-boobsie –stylee."
Da: "Oh."
Sipuli: "And I lost."
Da: "Oh, then… But why the photoflood?"
Sipuli: "Sigh… Well, you see, it's tied to my back isn't it?"
Da: "Yeah."
Sipuli: "Now, use your imagination. A floodlight tied to my back."
Da: "Hmm… Imagination… Oh, now I know!"
Sipuli: "Great, I knew you have some gray brain cells left even after all that hydrogen peroxide."
Da: "I'll use that for my next collection! Yeah! Clothes with lights, that will make reflectors history!"
Sipuli: "NO! Not your new collection, you idiot, a FLASHBACK!"
11. Sections 7, 8 & 9
CLANG.
The steel door made a loud noise that resounded from the walls of Section 7. A faery in a yellow-blue leather costume walked past the metal bars and ignored the commotion on his right side. Section 7 was for arrogant, fatal and irremediable prisoners, everyone of them that's wrong! had already spent time in almost every section before, until being locked up to the 'seventh heaven'.
"Erol, fuck you, Erol!" a blaring roar came from cell one. Erol knew without looking that a tall man his hair just as orange like his was trying to break the thick, locked door with his voice, outrageously pushing his face against the small barred hole which serves as a window. Just like always, Pontus was such predictable…
"Go lick your Baron's hairy ass more!"
"Yeah!"
"Stick yourself real deep!" The cells closest to the main doors shouted at him.
Erol sneered. They never got bored of those same insults. Somewhere under the angry voices, causeless roars and screams and sobs there were the same old pub song, something about a turquoise yakow. The commander didn't like pubs, in his opinion inebriants tasted like yakow pee (not that he had ever tasted though) and he hated the blurry feeling. He had only once been drunken, and that how-do-you-do had cost him his work of months – and a friend although the ginger didn't want to admit it.
Always remain in control. The rule number two.
Another steel door closed behind him, almost completely muffling the sounds from Section 7. Erol opened another one, and it damped the noise completely. Still another door waited to be opened.
Erol didn't like Section 8. Section 7's noises were familiar, desperate, pitiful… In every way from-this-world. But Section 8 was saved for faeries who weren't in this world at all! He got to know all the data from all the arrests and he enjoyed reading them - and although he had only worked as the commander for a little over a year now he had rummaged through the fortress library. And every year, more and more that kind of people were brought to Section 8. What was the strangest thing was that that kind of people were killed as immatures and still the found grownup ones, more and more. Whenever a child was noticed to have lost a nut or a few, KG's took care about it – a child was no granted the same laws as adults, they were considered more like animals. Erol didn't like those 'gigs', thank Mar he had got rid of those as that's not right, Erol, not right he advanced on his career, too much of yelling, too aggressive dads and hysteric mums… And killing kids. In the steel-hard mind of his, Erol didn't want to face the fact that blowing the brain out of an infant had not been a nice job to do.
Whatever Baron wants me to do, I will do it. The rule number one. That's the building block of my training. Of my career.
Erol swiftly passed the main doors to Section 8, trying to ignore the silence filled with whispers and whimpers, the irrational screams, muttering and the sound of a squeezing faery in an overpopulated cell. More and more of those… Baron would soon have to give up trying to squeeze twenty faeries into a one-person cell!
The next steel door had been painted blazing orange. Erol showed his key card.
"The skin resemblance?" said a cold female computer voice and a metal pipe appeared from behind a steel plate. Erol pressed his trigger finger against the pipe's mouth.
"The password?" the computer continued. By this time it became clear that the hardware was made in Krais: no-one in Heaven pronounced password with a phonetic script a.
"Onomatopoetry", said the commander. He'd need to change the password every day. Most of the officers would have just used words like 'yakow', 'Haven', 'city'. 'Baron', 'eco', 'Hell Cat' or 'wumpa' – and only because the minimum requirement was two syllables - but Erol had always enjoyed word games, crossword puzzles and literature, and he was actually having fun do not, please, you know you don't want to inventing whole new words for the computer. He was especially proud of this tilting one; it combined the both onomatopoeia, usage of words symbolizing sounds, and poetry, and it was a word easy to believe to exist. After all there were already onomatopoet, so why not –poetry?
"Access granted", the computer said emotionlessly, and the orange doors slid open.
The next two doors were the ordinary chrome gray. Erol opened them both and walked into Section 9. None other could pass the orange door except for the Baron, and the commander didn't expect his employer to pay a visit. In the end Praxis seldom visited the jails, it was Erol's job to keep the plan running. The commander had noticed, that the cells angered and maybe even frightened the Baron. But in Section 9, there was nothing to fear. The ginger man stood quietly letting his eyes wonder in the grotesque jail. The jails continued to eternity downwards, and there that's illegal! in the middle of nowhere, was almost like floating in the midair a bed. And above that were all kind of drills, spikes, vessels, cords and tubes. That was, as Praxis called it, the Havenic Eco Bed, HEB, but if people had got a chance to look at it they'd probably had called it a torturing device. Of course the nescient masses wouldn't ready for the guilt trip? understand that the apparatus only helped to evolve a faery to a higher level, well, in the case it survived alive, which didn't happen too often. The guinea pigs for Dark Warrior Project were risen above all the others. Everyone shall venerate those. Noble faeries chosen to become the keys in the battle against those atrocious creatures, Metal Heads.
It was pro-peace. It was a bang-up thing, a gorgeous plan, not a felony.
It was wrong.
Erol took another key card, cold-shouldering the thought. He had tightened his breathing without noticing, and took a deep breath, listening to the silence. He pushed the door open and the quiet was broken with a loud screech.
The commander walked to cell twelve, the only used one of the hundred-and-six. He glanced in from the small hole in the door and met sapphire blue eyes staring back.
"Hello", he said in a light tone but didn't gain an answer. Another key card and another opened door later the redheaded faery was standing in the same cell, his hair almost touching the iron ceiling. The owner of the blue eyes just sat on the bunk, still like a cadaver, staring at the hazel ones. The cell was rather ascetic, but hey it was a cell. A bunk and a toilet bowl and unused chains. Some pipes crossing the ceiling, Erol knew that's wrong that's wrong that's wrong! the prisoner used them for exercising. Only other items in the room were a spoon, a bowl, a toilet roll and a pillow. The last mentioned didn't seem to fit the scene at all, mainly because it didn't continue the crude cell style. It was a soft, big pillow. Something you could expect to find from a Havenic family over the subsistence level.
"You've liked it?" Erol had had his idea of what he wanted to do, but now he had lost it. But nonetheless, the situation thrilled him.
The prisoner didn't answer.
"A 'thank you' would be welcome."
The prisoner, a boy with semi-long green hair, on the step between the child- and manhood, looked away.
"I said 'a thank you would be welcome'", the grownup faery strode to him and pushed him against the wall from his chest.
The horrified boy stared at the man and muttered something.
"What!"
"Thank you!" the faery shrieked.
"Nice, you learn", Erol let go and stroke the boy's hair, "even if the DWP failed, I'm glad to have been able to teach something to you – in case you don't die of course. Unfortunately the Baron does not value your education that high, so you'd better proceed, if you know what I mean… But I must confess that even he is amazed of you; all the others have passed away after a vaccine or two. You're capable of coping with the real treatment."
"No more", the boy stared at a wall, "no more."
"No more of what?" the ginger faery played stupid.
"The eco crap."
"Crap, did you say? Crap?" again the commander came close, this time inches from Jak's face, standing tall in front of him, "Baron – in my opinion – wastes the precious dark eco on a scumbag like you, and you dare calling that crap! Shame on you!"
Suddenly the prisoner knee-kicked the commander at his groin and dashed from the door. The surprised faery hardly squeaked or paid attention to the ache and immediately scudded after the runaway but slowed down when he noticed that he was at the main doors, banging the bars desperately.
"You think I would be that stupid?" Erol asked and laid his hand on the faery's shoulder, "you seriously underestimate me. Oh well, and I had thought you had learned…"
"Let me go", the prisoner hished from between his teeth, "let me go."
"Even if I could…" the commander left the sentence floating in the air.
"Let me go!" the gangly boy cried out and banged his fists against the bars, this time tears emerging from his eyes, "please, c-commander!"
One part of Erol wanted to comfort the boy, somehow, maybe even open all the doors and let him escape, although he had been arrested immediately and the commander probably shot. The redhead raised his hand and stroke the wet cheek of the boy, who stared at the opposite wall behind the bars like he could reappear there by using only strength of mind.
"Say that again."
The tone of Erol's made creeps run up and down the prisoner's spine.
"The p-p-please?"
"No."
The boy looked at the man frozen by dread, wanting to turn away from the eerie shine in his eyes, the shine he had seen too many times before, but finding it impossible because of too hands pressed on the sides of his head.
"Now go ahed. Say it!"
His voice was just a fair whisper: "no."
"Wrong answer!" the redhead shoved the prisoner backwards. The section echoed of the sound of the falling faery. Erol walked towards and again stand tall – this time – on the boy. "Now, say it!" he slammed his palm at the green-haired head.
"C-c-commander!" the boy screamed lest he'd be beaten again.
"That's my boy!" the outrageous tone of redhead's voice changed in an eye blink, yet even so it remained psychopathic. The commander kneeled on the boy locking him to the floor, "and you shall be rewarded, do you?"
Sipuli: "That's it!"
Da: "That'ssick."
Sipuli: "Eftersom! That was Lucius. But he could write serious stuff… Damn this floodlight is uncomfortable…"