Part Two

The Colonel

I was putting food in Ein's bowl when Spike came into the living room with a large vase. Jet strode in, empty-handed.

"What'd you find?" I asked Spike.

"A vase that's perfect for me." he replied, setting the thing down.

"Uh... okay. How about you?" I asked Jet.

"I love old Westerns." he said.

I shook my head.

Ed jumped into the vase. It shook as she played around inside of it.

"She's like a trained seal." Spike said. "We should sell her to the Martian circus."

Ed poked her head out of the vase.

"Edward found something!" she said, holding up a small, blue marble.

"Huh." Jet said. He grabbed the marble from her hand, and looked at it.

Ed took the marble back, hopped out of the vase, and ran off.

"Well, that's... odd." I said. "Successes across the board, huh?"

Ed had stuck the marble in a machine connected to her computer. She was busy doing something, but I didn't know exactly what.

Faye ran into the room.

"Hey, has anyone seen a ragged hat?" she asked.

"Welcome home, babe." I said. "No, I actually broke from tradition and didn't go through your clothing today."

She smiled. "Come on, seriously! It belongs to the nerd!"

"We don't know, Faye." Jet said. "Just look around. It has to be somewhere."

"Ed found something else!" Ed yelled.

We crowded around her screen.

"The marble contains a lymph-lymph-lympho-cyto-cyto-lymphocyte." she said.

"Uh... what?" Spike asked.

"A lymphocyte." I said. "They're in our blood streams."

"Right!" Ed said. She brought up two images on the screen. Both were lymphocytes. "One of these is real. The other is a twisted sister!"

"The one from the marble is the, uh, 'twisted' one?" I asked.

"Ding! Zap it in the microwave!" Ed replied. That usually meant yes. "Now, watch when we apply pressure!"

The real lymphocyte was affected; the marble one wasn't.

"It's fake." I said.

"Correctamundo!" Ed replied.

"Ed, find me a local research lab working on artificial lymphocytes." I said.

"I've already got a pharmaceutical company for you to check out." Jet said. "Cherious Industries. Bob let me know they were involved somehow."

I grabbed my trenchcoat and communicator, and headed out.

"You two keep digging. Let me know if you find anything." I said, walking to the hangar.

I stood outside the gates of Cherious Industries.

A few cleaning trucks pulled into the complex. I waited for the last one, and jumped on.

When the truck pulled into its parking spot, I knocked out the driver and brought him into a side room. In there, I put my clothes in a bag and changed into his blue jumpsuit and hat.

I snooped around for a little bit, but there wasn't much to see. There weren't any archives at this place, so I decided to head up to the administration and see what I could find.

I felt a guard come my way, so I started washing the walls with a broom I had grabbed.

Just as I had felt the guard's presence, I felt a pistol pressed into my chest.

"What are you doing here?" asked a very familiar voice.

I saw a Titan tattoo on the guard's arm. I turned around to face the guard.

"Electra." I breathed.

She was still beautiful. Electra's short red hair still hung casually in her face, and her sharp eyes' focus, while negative, made me happy to have seen her again.

"Captain Jack Jacobs." Electra said.

"Colonel Electra Ovirowa." I said. "Goddammit, Electra. Do you have any idea what-"

"Don't you lecture me!" she interrupted, harshly. "You let the superiors take Vincent and use him as a common plaything! And don't act like you didn't know what they were going to do!"

"Dammit, Electra! I don't know what they did to me!" I shouted. "I was taken from my home and played with until they put me in charge of eight lives! Do you think I don't know what happened!"

"Why Vincent?" Electra asked. "It was because you were jealous, wasn't it!"

"Electra, it was you or him!" I yelled. Her expression weakened a bit. "Damn you, Electra, I loved you! The superiors told me that I had to choose either you or Vincent to go into their damned 'special training', and I knew I couldn't pick you!"

Electra's grip on her pistol weakened some. "I... I didn't..."

"Why did you leave me?"

She put her gun away.

"Jack, I'm going to find you. We're going to talk about this. But right now- right now, I'm an agent of this company. And you can't be here." Electra said. "I'll give you thirty seconds to escape before I call the guards. I know you, you can be out of here before time's out."

I started running. I came to the end of the hall, and turned around.

"Electra, I... I still love you."

She looked down at the ground. I saw Electra shed a single tear.

I kept running.

A/N:

Hey, everybody. How's the adventure going? Like it so far?

In case you were wondering (or noticed), Jack and Electra's reunion is a moment I put a lot of thought into. I tested out a few different options for it, and I realized that out of the possible emotions they'd express, anger would be the quickest to come out. Electra blames Jack for Vincent's "death" (and other things, but we'll get to that later), and Jack is actually very, very sad- but sadness is only anger without energy, and he certainly has energy.

Another fun fact: I realize now, when I read it, that the reunion is based heavily off of the reunion of Carth and Dustil Onasi, from Knights of the Old Republic. When I imagine voice acting, I hear Carth's voice reading Jack's lines (only these, though- I imagine a different voice for the rest of his dialogue). And I still hear Jennifer Hale performing Electra's lines, but she was in Knights of the Old Republic, too.

And a small side note: I'm experiencing a glitch where some question marks are becoming exclamation marks. It looks really terrible (remember All Your Base?). If I don't catch all of 'em, I'm sorry.