Valentine only had that fraction of a heartbeat to slide down the heavy chair she had landed in before Erol slammed his fist where her abdomen had been. Any slower and she would have been killed. She twisted her legs in an attempt to get on her feet. She was thwarted when Erol kicked her in the small of her back, sending her flying forward.
Before she had gotten up he grabbed her ponytail, hoisting her up without allowing her to find some support on the ground. She had to grit her teeth to stop from crying out in frustration. Not pain, at least not yet.
"You know, I really thought I'd be getting my hands on Jak first. You always were the one to hide away in the shadows after all." Erol's moist breath wafted against her cheek. If he started to pull any harder something might snap.
"Not that I'm complaining. Despite your problems you've always been easier on the eyes than him. Still, I can't keep you alive and go after him. I'm sure you understand."
Valentine gripped for his hand, focusing. He was more than half a robot now and she had her own defenses against anything that was powered by Eco. Her captor cried out in pain when she manipulated the energy powering his hand in short bursts. As she fell to the ground she kicked his feet from underneath him. He was too heavy, instead only staggering back a few steps. The fact that his new legs now bended backwards didn't exactly put her at ease either.
"I'd hate to disappoint." She growled back, panting in an attempt to catch her breath. Her mind was still reeling from her fall down the chute, something which Erol popping up didn't exactly improve.
His grin was sly, showing too many teeth for her liking. "Oh, you'll never disappoint. Tell you what, surrender now and I'll kill you last."
Valentine huffed, a desperate attempt to get more oxygen in her body before bout two started. She hadn't expected to run into Erol on her own, without even having the tactical advantage of being able to manipulate the factory to her wishes. "Who is it, Erol? Who's big enough a fool to accept you as a crony?"
"I made some new friends in the past few months. They were the ones who had me restored, and they want to share their powers with me." he lunged after her with his metal arm once more. In a reflex she grabbed onto it, surprising him. What she wanted was to stop his heart but she had to be content with sending waves of pain through the prosthetic before he slammed her against the iron railing. Only then did she notice they were above a circular room that looked eerily like an Arena. Bits and pieces of robot were scattered about, some of them still emitting sparks.
"I'll be the one to decide the fate of the planet soon. They don't want much, just everybody dead and an end to all Light Eco."
Erol was starting to learn it wasn't so easy to put his hands on her as he originally had thought. He looked at her more warily, trying to calculate how he could put an end to her. Valentine flexed her hands as she did the same, measuring him up and trying to assess weak spots. Obviously his metal parts were weak when it came to her, but that didn't mean he couldn't use his good hand to strangle her. The thought seemed to rise in his mind too since he tried to grab her with his good hand next.
She ducked before slamming her elbow into his stomach. Erol doubled over, gears grinding as he did so. Before he managed to raise himself up Valentine brought down her foot onto his back. Sadly for her Erol had had that part refurbished into armored steel, sending a shock through her leg. As he rose up she opted for an elbow to his nose, which was blocked by his real hand closing around it before she could make contact.
"Little girl knows how to fight now." He commented, raising her arm up to an uncomfortable level. His iron fist slammed into her stomach, retracting before she managed to manipulate the Eco. He brought his face closer to her, looking her dead in the eyes.
She butted him in the head, aiming straight between the eyes. It took him by surprise, though she had once again underestimated the amount of metal in his body. A trickle of blood started to drip in her left eye. She brought up a hand, finding a cut above her eyebrow. "I'm not a kid anymore."
It was her turn to advance, attempting to grab him by any part that seemed artificial. If she could get close to his heart she would be able to stop him dead in his tracks. During one of their turns in the small space Erol pushed a button in the wall. A piston shot out of the wall, knocking her off balance. She slammed against the wall, Erol's hand closing around her throat.
"If things had been different you would have been standing at my side, little girl."
Valentine tried to spit at him, the action impeded by his thumb pressing down on her throat. "Never." She managed to say, the word costing her precious oxygen.
"The day we killed your parents the Baron had to choose; stick you in the program or raise you as a KG. He preferred the latter until I pointed out we hadn't had a woman in the program that could channel Eco yet. We knew your mother could, so he decided to take a chance. Turns out my hunch had been right." Valentine's heart clenched at his words, even though those actions were in the past now. Nothing could be changed about it. Blinking ferociously she tried to keep a level head as her wound continued to drip blood in her eyes.
"Like bitch, like daughter."
With an icy look she brought her knee up, slamming him between the legs. The grip around her throat loosened at once and she repeated the action, this time connecting her knee with Erol's nose. Something cracked, which made her feel almost better. The palm of her right hand connected to his ear, sending Erol sprawled to the side.
"You talk too much."
The floor underneath her feet suddenly collapsed on itself, sending her tumbling down towards the arena construct. She cursed, landing on her knees with a metallic thud. Wiping a hand across her eyes Valentine looked up at Erol, whose nose was releasing a steady stream of blood.
He seemed to have heard her last comment because he wasted no more time on words, slamming his fist on a button in front of him. Doors around her grated, revolving open to reveal Death Bots. Just what she had freaking needed. She really needed to look into carrying a gun instead of relying on Jak in that department.
"I'd like to say I'll miss you… but I hate you too much to lie to you." Erol told her, pinching his nose in an attempt to stop the flood of blood.
Valentine was spared the trouble of thinking up a response when the first bot started to fire at her. She ran to the sides, taking incidental cover behind one of the other robots. There were five in total she noted, too many to take on without thinking. "If you're a good girl and surrender now, I'll give you to my new friends. I'm sure they'd love a new test subject and you already have experience in that job."
The bot in front of her started to malfunction in one of his legs, but not before turning around, slamming a gun against her sides. Valentine was thrown against the wall, her head banging against unyielding metal. For a moment her vision blurred, but the thought of being a toy for those so-called Dark Makers made her grit her teeth. She would never be an experiment again. She pretended to sink in a stupor, leading Erol in making elated whooping sounds.
There it was, the Eco running through the room. It was close to the surface here, leading her to check for security guns. No such luck however, though she was able of disabling the vents that could allow more bots. But that was it. The machines that built the bots were too far away for her to manipulate and the whole factory was built to accommodate the bots. For good measure she unlocked every single door she could find to give Jak a chance.
She rose to her legs again, only slightly wobbling. She was going to be sore in the morning, if she survived at least. Right now her chances were probably dwindling into single digits. "Erol, you are hereby cordially invited to go to fucking hell!"
The five robots took aim at her, making her doubt for a second how she was going to handle this. She blinked, and in that exact second the robot closest to her literally lost its head. Two more followed before she had been able to draw a full breath and a familiar voice was the next thing she heard.
"The door was unlocked, so we thought to pop in and say hi." Jak said, taking care of bot number four as he walked into the room. Valentine thought her heart was about to burst from relief as she laid eyes upon him. Swooning might have not been very hero-like of her but damn if she hadn't feared getting killed just a few seconds ago.
"You have no idea how glad I am to see you!" She managed to say as the fifth robot found its head dislocated by a bullet, following the others in their fate.
Jak grinned, lowering his gun for a second. "You had me worried for a few minutes there. Don't disappear like that again?"
"JAK! Look up there!" Daxter shouted, grabbing Jak's head and forcing him to look up at the balcony.
"Erol!" Jak shouted, taking a few steps closer to Valentine as he did so.
She put a hand on his shoulder, her heartbeat slowing down from its alarmed pace when she could feel warm skin underneath her hand. "He's working with the Dark Makers."
Erol grinned at them in a 'what are you going to do about it' way, pressing the button to unleash more bots on them. When it didn't work he pushed again, and again.
Jak looked at her and despite not knowing what the button was supposed to do he had a pretty good guess who had been the one that disabled it. "Someone's been busy."
She shrugged in response, reminding herself that now really wasn't the time to be flirting. Well, maybe a little bit wouldn't hurt. "What can I say, I get bored so easily without my hero around."
The banter was interrupted when Erol launched a few grenades at them. Jak pushed her out of the way, pushing Daxter in her hands for safekeeping. Truth be told, Valentine hadn't counted on there being actual grenades indoors. Torn had always been rather nit picky about things like grenades on the table for some reason. "Twat waffle!" Valentine shouted after Erol's form when the cyborg decided to make a quick escape.
With a huff she swiped away some loose strands of hair from her face, suddenly feeling flushed after having fought the new Erol. Honestly she felt a little piqued that Erol thought fighting her was no biggie, but that he preferred to hightail it out of there as soon as Jak made his appearance. The latter placed a hand on her shoulder when she looked as if she was prepared to climb up the balcony after their opponent. "He's probably long gone. We saw a really dark portal on our way here. Wouldn't surprise me if he went through there."
Valentine let out an emphasized 'argh', shaking her fist in the direction Erol had run off to. "I had him on the ropes too, you know. Bastard just pressed a button to drop me down here because he couldn't handle me."
Jak ran a thumb under the cut above her eye, surprising her. "You got hurt."
"Just a scratch." She muttered, reaching for the cut herself.
He stopped her, taking her other hand in his. He quickly scanned her all over to check for more injuries. His eyes landed on a few rips where Erol had pierced her clothes, though she didn't feel any pain at the moment. "I should have been there to protect you."
Suddenly Valentine was pressed against Jak, his arms closed around her. The action, though unexpected, made her feel secure. "Don't scare me like that again."
"Jak…" she buried her face in his neck, taking a few deep breaths to steady herself. Only now the adrenaline was fading from her body, leaving her shaky. He pressed her even closer, needing to feel her to reassure himself nothing irreparable had happened to her.
Daxter interrupted the moment, making his discontentment about being trapped between the two of them very clear. "Helloooo, Daxter to lovebirds? How about we focus on the mission at hand for a moment? Like, I don't know, blowing up the damn factory."
"Oh, right, right." Valentine replied as Jak let go of her. Funny how something like hugging Jak made her forget all about being in a factory filled to the brim with murderous robots. Love did make people stupid after all it seemed.
Daxter rolled his eyes, releasing himself from her grip. "Okay sister, you're the one with the computer brains. What are we supposed to do?"
Valentine pointed up to where Erol had been only minutes before. "Well, Erol was there when I dropped in on him - and you can take that literally. Maybe there'll be a door to the main room."
And if there wasn't she'd just follow the stream of Eco until they reached it.
"What, you didn't see?" Daxter asked as he climbed back to perch on Jak's shoulder, who was busy giving Valentine a boost up.
She rubbed a hand over her now sore throat before helping Jak make his way up. "It's kind of hard to check out the architecture when someone is trying to kill you."
This had both of the men scowling. Valentine swore to herself that if either dared to say something along the lines of 'you can never go somewhere alone from now on' she'd have the offender take an inside tour of the factory before she blew it up. True, she had nearly gotten killed but she had also kicked Erol's ass. A feat which none of them should be ignoring.
They must have picked up on that fact because neither said something about it. And lo and behold, there was indeed a door that she had missed simply because it seemed to blend in to the background. It being closed made no difference to Jak, who kicked it open in one go.
They entered a room with two more doors, ignoring the one they had just come through. Valentine let out a whistle when she saw the hardware. "Damn, we hit the mother load. Check out this baby."
She ran her hands softly across the keyboard in front of a large screen. The Dark Makers might have been evil but at least they knew their way around tech. After a pointed cough from Jak - what, she couldn't profess her love for inanimate objects anymore? - she first drew up a map to check for an escape route. That it was saved under 'favorites' indicated Erol hadn't been that at home in the factory himself.
Once they had memorized the route and given a call to Jinx so they'd have a ride back down Valentine got working on shutting the factory down. Though there was no self-destruct sequence available she did find the next best thing.
"Uhm, Valentine? I think you're supposed to set the number of robots to be made to zero. You're working with the good guys, remember?" Daxter informed her as he and Jak peered over her shoulder to see what she was doing.
Valentine hushed him, setting all the systems to maximum. Somewhere deeper in the factory strained noises could be heard as too much strain was being put on the systems. "Best way to overload a computer, make it do a bunch of stuff it was never meant to do. I sure hope Erol likes the flower designs on the latest line of bulk-produced, extra weak bots."
Jak shook his head at her bravado, urging her towards the exit. The way the factory had started to sound they got outside not a second too soon. Jinx didn't look that happy being near it either, taking off before Jak had even sat down.
"I've got to take you kids to the Spargus transport. Seems like the big poof over there wants to see you lot back there ASAPPY."
"ASAPPY?" Jak inquired.
"As Soon As Possible, Preferably Yesterday." Jinx clarified, locating a fresh cigar as the factory blew up in pieces, the biggest part of it falling on the Metal district.
"Ashelin's got a transport waiting for you near HQ. You're supposed to board it without delay, in case Damos starts to get a little too itchy about his adopted princess being late. Sure didn't have to tell me about that promotion, sweet thing."
Valentine ignored the last comment, dread sinking into her stomach. Suddenly the idea of another round in the factory started the sound mighty appealing. "Damos is going to kill us. Me first, probably, but you two won't be too far behind."
Immediately she imagined trying to explain the situation to her King. But how was she going to find the words to do so properly? The man thought his only son was dead. He probably wouldn't appreciate what he would see as a crude joke.
Jak draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. "Relax. Everything is going to be fine."
My special thanks to Sage for the usage of 'twat waffle'. I have to remember that one, it's good for a chuckle. We're so close to the end, I can almost feel it. Close in this case being around 10 more chapters or so, kind of hard to estimate. Certainly no more than 15. We're in the final stretch!
Oblique Strategies : It's always hard finding a balance between an OC and the original main character, because you want your own character to be awesome but it sucks if they start stealing the original hero's thunder. I hope I managed to find the middle ground in this chapter because I don't want Val to be constantly rescued but she can't replace Jak either. Thanks for the support though ^^ You're still awesome ^^
Dear Guest : Titles can be hard tho. Sometimes I curse myself for naming the chapters, but I think it makes reading a bit easier?