A/N: Okay, guys :D This is an interesting ficlet.
First of all, IT'S SICK. YAY. It's supposed to be sick!
Only reason I'm posting it: I NEED TO. Otherwise there'd be no setup for the two 'sequels'. And Demz HEARTS the two sequels, as they are brimming with RAZER! How can anyone resist?
Plus we need more JakX stuff. That doesn't suck.
Language: BAD. Just…. BADBADBAD. Horrid!
Pairings: If any, RazerxJak. POSSIBLE JakxDax and later, hinted MizoxRazer.
Warnings: EUPHIMISMS DON'T EXIST HERE. Although the graphic physical stuff has been cut with a surgical knife (nice and clean cuts!), anybody with two brain-cells to rub together WILL KINDA GET WHAT HAPPENS.
So if Jak!Abuse makes you sad, plz leave k. (You have no idea how sad it makes me, in reality o.o And yet if it's Razer-centered, GOD WILL I SERVE.) But Jak will also get his, in time.
SPOILERS OUT THE WAZOO LATER ON. My advice? No reading until JakX is finished.
And please, if you don't like the first chapter? Easily upset over icky innuendos? Skim it and go to the others. PLZPLZPLZ. They're not (sexually) bad, and I like them bunches!
-.-.-.-.-
Winner
-.-.-.-.-
He'd heard them coming.
They'd closed in, dropping into the narrow street one at a time and tailing him- quick and efficient. Purposeful. That kind of intense purpose didn't radiate from regular people walking the streets. That's what always tips a target off that they're being followed. That explains the fear.
He hadn't sped up, hadn't tried to escape. He had the greater advantage in a fight, not a chase.
He monitored them- and like a quick cloth over his nose, he knew when they were going to act. He knew the second beforehand, and stopped moving. His instincts were thrumming anxiously, straining to pick out every black detail behind him; connecting every scrape in the unearthly silence to a knife, teased out of its sheathe. They weren't attempting to hide anything, now. The sounds were intended to carry.
It was a black, cramped alleyway. The hum and whirr and muted, fizzling lights of the city seemed far away, blocked off by the high walls. Quiet, secluded. It was the perfect place for a dirty job.
One arrived, a little late. He scuffled into the street and froze. The rest creaked comfortably in their worn leather, the silence menacing. Jak could nearly see their meaty fists clenching, trading wide, gap-toothed grins. Awaiting a signal, whether his own or a leader's.
Jak had been waiting for something like this since arriving to Kras City- the death-threats had piled up, increasingly graphic as the races wore on and he increasingly emerged the victor.
He was only surprised, in a grim way, that it hadn't happened sooner.
Listening to the silence, Jak spared a grateful thought that Daxter had decided to head out early. The idea of him traveling these streets alone had caused Jak a moment of pause, but right now waiting at the Bloody Hook was the safest place his best friend could be. He wanted Dax out of the way, and not a possible bargaining chip if these thugs managed to shake him off his perch.
The knife scraped again, this time with thinly veiled impatience. They were ready, and he didn't seem to be rising to the bait. Jak had been jumped in too many Haven alleys by pathetic 'undercover Guards' for the cat-and-mouse game to have any effect, but it had been a tough day- he hoped he could get this over with quickly. All he wanted to do was wind down with Dax.
This would be a lesson to any thuggish racers who had similar ideas about knocking out the new competition, on or off the track.
Closing his eyes for a steadying moment, Jak turned around and met with three men, blocky forms entrenched in shadow-rich corners. Oily lamplight from a street over, smudging the precise lines of the roofs and dribbling into the alley, glinted off the casually held weapons. Jak took silent stock, weighing the situation.
Three didn't seem too much to handle, even if he was exhausted.
He ran forward, feeling the dredges of dark eco stir sleepily, then leap up to crackle along his skin. The thugs' boots snapped as they darted out from their corners.
Five brutal minutes into the following fray, he seriously considered reforming his prior opinion.
He was getting the shit beaten out of him. Metal Head tactics were erratic but still recognizable- these men assailed him from three sides, trading blows in an ordered, precise pattern that gave the impression he was being volleyed back and forth between fists. His orientation fractured, irritation surging, he threw heavy, vicious punches only to realize his momentum had dragged him into a completely clear field of vision. No target.
He wobbled, and tensed for a blow from the back; it always came, blunt boot hacking into his side. He whirled, ready to fight back, and the cycle repeated.
Before expecting some kind of advantage, Jak was now simply struggling to stay on his feet.
A knee caught him low in the gut, lights bursting behind his eyes. He panted, staggering to one knee, and as he doggedly forced himself back to his feet, someone quickly boxed him across his ear. It was a glancing blow, mostly knuckles, but enough to snap his concentration and send him pitching drunkenly forward.
He rocketed back to his senses just as he was being stuffed down against the ground, body stiff and refusing, knees creaking as two pairs of hands dug into his back. Being quickly packaged off into a cramped kneeling position.
The fact he hadn't seen his attackers was actually more alarming than the helpless position he was in. All of the eco seemed to have been sloughed from his skin, flaking away and leaving him colder, stiffer than before. He cursed, feeling cramps dagger into his legs.
The poison had been at work on him for three weeks. Three long weeks. It was whittling his control away- his stamina, his focus. Without his head together or a nearby source, what little eco he had was dead weight. Fighting was the only option.
His wrists twisted up brutally against his back, Jak wrestled from the waist up, shoulders rolling against the hard hands. Deep voices muttered mutinous above him as he struggled. He growled, jerking and bucking upwards, and was rewarded with a prickling wet face, cheek forced down onto the concrete and dragged across it, dagger-like shards of gravel catching into the soft flesh of his face.
He bit back a grunt. His bare skin throbbed but it didn't quite feel right; the basic pain was like a red snake recoiling from the cold, adrenaline-laced awareness his mind exuded.
Sudden silence fell, his captors' scuffle quieting as someone approached them, footsteps deliberate and soft.
"My, my. You're impressive, Jak. I'll give you that."
Jak stilled under his abusers' hands, anger condensing. At least now he knew who'd hired this job out.
Finely polished boots slipped into his up-ended vision as if testing the grungy concrete with a pointed toe, naming the speaker as easily as a title. His smell, acidic pine and pungent cologne, seemed too sharp in the grey alley. If that wasn't enough, most recognizable was the tailored, accent-heavy drawl, punctuated by the muted huff of a cigarette being sucked on. Delicately.
A hand swung down by his side, the glowing white stick clamped neatly between toxic yellow fingers.
"Given your talent, tomorrow you could easily humiliate any of the half-wits all too eager to play Mizo's little game." He murmured graciously, almost to himself. His voice was never devoid of that slight, humorous emphasis. "But I know Mizo's rules- he prizes me for several reasons, including my prowess in all things fashionable… and I am no half-wit."
He carried on jauntily, laughingly- a conversational tone was his forte.
"I will win, Jak." The racer smirked, not unkindly.
He always carried on with thinly veiled friendliness, interjecting a catty comment and just as suddenly dipping to threatening depths. A conniving racer with cutthroat connections. Still, Razer was not one to fear.
Jak had faced far worse than whatever he could come to at the hands of this man.
Edje and Cutter let Jak up as he spoke, eagerly shoving him back down if he tensed for a struggle. He trembled with the effort of staying still while infuriatingly led into a sitting position, and soon he was perched on his knees in front of Razer, glaring up from under furious brows. The older man waited until he had been 'settled', looking on with an indulgent eye, then clicked his tongue.
"Yes, I will win, and you will be shamed. But in what way?" He mused, smiling. Razer looked him over without leaving the cold blue eyes, which never flinched as the foreigner's glove clenched the back of his head, short blonde bristles peeking out of the toxic yellow. His neck creaked as Razer pulled his chin up, smiling fondly.
"It's never too early to start, you know. Cheating, hiring men out, tampering with a rival's… equipment- all done the night before. Intimidation, most of all." He said mysteriously, smile widening. "It's a tradition among our kind."
His easy free hand moved from his side, the other sliding from Jak's hair. Edje gave a guttural chuckle. With every little jerk driven down into submission, Jak stayed rigidly attentive as Razer's hand seemed to tuck against his jacket, toying below his belt in slow, lazy strokes.
Nothing happened.
There was thrumming expectation among the spectators. Brute eagerness. Jak nervously probed for the source, and, after finding no belying hint in Razer's lazy green eyes, glared straight in front of him. Waiting.
It was a bare second more before he realized the tent in the man's blood-red jacket, fat under Razer's fingers and fully level with his mouth.
"If you would… render me a service?" He asked softly.
Jak's blood ran cold, but he remained motionless. Unresponsive.
Razer's elegantly arched brows, dark and thin as if drawn there with loose flicks of an artist's pencil, furrowed then loosened, as if graced with a revelation. His gloved hand came up, pressing against his temple as an airy smile toyed with his thin mouth.
"Ah, but I suppose I have to put it in your vulgar, city words for you to understand…" He sighed dismissively, and his hand flipped at the air, fingers splayed prettily.
He looked down, suddenly intense and feral.
"(Que something incredibly crude to unnerve Jak. Yes, I'm keeping it just this clean.)" He whispered, forming the words carefully.
Jak threw all of his weight backwards, jarring the two racers' hold on him and furiously clawing past them. They caught him instantly, wrestling him back to his knees- he lashed out, driving his elbow into whatever it could reach, but they gripped his hair by the roots, Shiv ramming a cold gun to his temple. The pressure sent stars coughing into his vision. He fell back on his haunches, eyes refocusing in pain.
Razer watched it all, one finger pressed primly to his chin. Not fazed in the least.
He recovered fitfully, but was soon clear-eyed and brimming with dangerous fury. Trapped.
Razer seemed not to notice, easily undoing his belt and shucking it to the side, opening the front flap of his jacket. His intention was already crystal clear, but the careful preparations were a deliberate taunt.
The zipper opened as if it were greased.
-.-.-.-.-
And now for some inane!banter-y censoring skillz!
Because we all know what happens.
-.-.-.-.-
Edje: …. Duuuuude. That's sick. D:
Cutter: DUDE I KNOW.
Shiv: Oh yeah! I mean… wow, that must be humiliating! I MEAN WOW DUDE SICK.
Cutter: Uhhuh.
Edje: Yep.
Shiv: … Wow. SICK. Way to stick it to the competition, right fellas?
Cutter: Uhhuh.
Edje: Yep.
Shiv: Wow. Just… wow. … he's good at that.
Edje: … Holy SHIT man, ARE YOU HARD:O
Shiv: vndoifhdomgomgNOWAI.
:uncomfortable silence:
Cutter: Dude. You're hard. Officially cutting all relations with you.
Shiv: DAMN IT ALL. :sulk:
AAAAAND THEY'RE DONE. (Nice pun, Cutter :D)
-.-.-.-.-
"Ah, ah. It's impolite to spit."
Quick and ordered, as if trained to disassemble a machine piece by precise piece, Edje and Cutter took the gun away from his head, wrenched up his hands to a vulnerable height on his back as he began to struggle, and brutally forced his head down to the ground. Jak writhed once more, sucking in air through his slippery lips and filled with a new, bristling rage.
Eyes wild, beyond words, he glared up as Razer surveyed him, green eyes lazy, before delicately flipping a white square of cloth out of his pocket and tossing it. The handkerchief fluttered serenely, settling in front of Jak's nose.
"Good luck in the races tomorrow, Jak."
He turned and began strolling away, hands clasped behind his back. A quiet, prim smile.
"I believe you have something on your chin."
A second's pause, and all the pressure was removed from Jak's back and arms.
He spat viciously, forcing himself up from his knees- an instant, ringing blow from a metal-plated knee slammed into his temple, pain bursting outward with a solid crack. Jak swerved sideways and dropped heavily into the cold concrete, metal notches on his jacket scraping, the sound thin and musical. He gagged, bitterness coating his throat. His consciousness wavered.
A blunt kick in the back of his neck wrenched his body into an impassioned, anguished arch, and the light of awareness flickered out of his eyes.
He passed out.
-.-.-.-
It had been an hour. The rat had started out fine, chitchatting with other racers, wheedling his way into their conversations like the vermin he was. Swinging his legs, every outward sign of ease present. But as the minutes crawled into quarter hours and half hours, he slowly stiffened, began looking more and more eagerly at the door whenever it opened, face falling more and more anxiously each time.
It had been an hour, and such a time found him on Razer's table, tapping his foot.
"Awright fruitloop, here's the deal."
Edje and Shiv traded looks behind him, but he remained politely attentive. The rat stretched gluttonously, eyes flickering about. Stalling.
While he was witless enough to sleep in the lion's den, he was just bright enough not to make his pillow in the beast's mouth.
"It's a nice night. I'm feelin' good, you're feelin' good… and the whole of my animal instinct are screamin' at me not to take two steps nearer t'you than it takes to get a face full of your HIDEOUS cologne… but hey. That'd land me at the back of the room, so as you can see I've gotten over it a bit. I'm just wonderin', sabertooth soulpatch… you seen Jak?"
He threw up his arms before they could interject, rolling his eyes.
"I know, I KNOW, you all had hard times on the track with Jak and me BEATIN' you and all, but I gotta ask- 'cos while his punctuality ain't somethin' to brag about, an hour with no baby-blues kinda gets me antsy. I mean c'mon, we're all friends and bloodthirsty rivals here! …Plus you watch him like a hawk. A creepy, kinda obsessive hawk."
Apparently his face looked blank. The rat sighed, flipping out a paw.
"Run this by you one more time: you seen Jak?"
Razer sucked absently at his cigarette, thin and clean against his teeth. Wondered briefly how Jak would feel, forced between his lips, if they were ever on the terms to return tonight's favor.
No. The hero wouldn't play dirty like that. Razer was almost disappointed. Clean men and their pompous morals.
He looked up at the rat, smiling.
"Yes. We've seen him."
Relief and annoyance clashed, the latter ruffling itself into a veritable orange explosion as seconds ticked by with no forthcoming explanation.
"… What is this, a game-show? Well hello, Vana, I'd like to buy a street or a bar, THANKYOU!" He barked, tiny furred fists balling at his sides.
The nervousness. He was painfully transparent- wary of the death-threats, though insistent that they did not matter. The stakes were getting increasingly higher, and an hour without his miserable yet pretty racer was an hour of possibilities. Grim possibilities.
Razer wondered idly how the rat thought any dangerous situation would be different if he, in all his diminutive size, were there. He was skilled at biting ankles, perhaps. He flicked a piece of ash off his cigarette.
"I'm afraid he's in a bit of trouble."
The little orange face dropped in horror. All the rat's fears had been confirmed. Razer played on them, quiet and withholding. Casual.
"I'd go and find him, if I were concerned in the least. Which I don't happen to be."
Daxter's speed betrayed him. He jumped off the table, running on all fours to the door before he turned back, eyes wide and searching and suspicious.
"Third district. Hurry, little rat."
He weighed the information, eyeing Razer in some fashion of distrustful panic, then barreled out the door, tail whipping about the doorframe. He disappeared in an incoming group, weaving through pant-legs and pat-pattering softly on the cold concrete.
Edje, Shiv and Cutter guffawed gracelessly behind him. Razer smiled quietly into his drink, lips parting delicately to take a sip.
Fun night, all in all.
-.-.-.-.-
"Jak? Jak, s'that you?"
Water pattered softly, the sound of cars swerving vibrated in the distance- but the groan definitely belonged to his Jak.
Why he'd be trashed in an alleyway was only Daxter's guess, but he crossed every digit he had as he trotted further into the musky darkness. Praying for no blood and a semi-conscious Jak, maybe?
He cleared his throat, prepping for the alternative.
"Honestly, y'think you could be a little more INCREDIBLY LATE? After all, I mean JEEZ, s'not like I wasted an hour or two waitin' back there for your sorry behind!"
Jak was flat on the floor, splayed out like he'd been flung down and left to sleep it off. Didn't look good, but how ELSE would he look like on the floor? Splayed vs. fetal position aren't always the best odds. Daxter tried to buoy his voice, scampering up. Being extra loud, just to let Jak know.
"Here I come to save ya, and you're noddin' off in some alley. You could'a just piped up if you were hankerin' for a nap. Don't be a priss— heroes need 'em too, y'know. I'd rather have you alive and shut-eyed than dead and wide-eyed, any day."
His voice suddenly dipped, softer. Seeing the absolute lack of response, Daxter toned it down.
Those aforementioned eyes didn't seem to want to open. Jak blinked, focusing fitfully. Didn't even mouth Daxter's name, which was a usual mandatory if the Ottsel found him abused, bleeding and in any kind of ditch.
And while there wasn't any blood, but the guy reeked 'abused'. Nervous as hell, Daxter gave the whole 'gentle best friend' thing a shivering shot.
"The fine wine snot said you were in a bad way."
Giving in to near-invisible coaxing from little orange paws, Jak dragged himself limply into a sitting position, still tilting awkwardly to one side. Daxter reached up and touched the side of Jak's face, fishing for a reaction, good or bad— something to give him a grip on the situation. Jak looked at him, blue eyes blank.
"Hey? Buddy? Ugly Kras sewer ditch to Jak? Talk to me. Y'know, WORDS. Y'get roughed up or somethin'? You sure look the part…"
Jak didn't answer, just turned his head to the side. The strange half-light caught his profile, alerting Daxter to some kind of cloudy, filmy-looking substance on Jak's chin.
"I think you… got somethin' on your face."
Jak glared at him instinctively, hearing the echo. Daxter half-jumped, holding up his paws meekly.
"Ain't a 'fugly' joke, swear it."
He palmed his lips after a moment, smearing them dry and flicking the sticky clump onto the floor.
"Jak?" That rare bit of raw concern. The light touch of paws on his jacket.
The sour, dry taste coated his tongue. He spat again, the air seeming to spread the taste further down his throat.
Daxter was looking up at him, blue eyes bright and skeptical, but not without that hint of fear.
Jak met his best friend's eyes, a sudden anxiety stoked by the look. Talking was out of the question, but Dax was waiting for a reason.
They sat for a long, slow moment, Jak's face sluggishly recovering its natural coloring. The poison made it harder and harder to stand back up after being knocked down.
He thought of the race. He thought of the odds of losing, of the lawless city, and of the racers. One racer, in particular.
"Help me kill Razer tomorrow." Jak said quietly.
"Oh, and I needed a formal invitation?" Daxter drawled, almost instantly. He was forcibly relieved at a common ground.
He took Jak's vaguely proffered arm and heaved himself up, the light pressure of his paws scuttling up Jak's battered and aching frame lending some comfort.
The familiar weight on his shoulder soothed him. Daxter promised him just what he needed to hear- it was something of a chummy whisper, but bracing and comforting all the same.
"We'll smear him across the track, sweetheart. There won't be enough left to stuff a thimble."
Jak walked uncertainly out of the alleyway, petting his best friend across the belly. Daxter did his best to purr jauntily, even though he wasn't the best at it.
Oh well. It got the lug to smile after a few streets.
After all, Daxter knew they weren't going anywhere special for the rest of the night, and he was fine with that.
He was just surprised, in a grim way, that this hadn't happened sooner.