Jake was left alone for several hours, which thus far had been the most painful he's ever endured. More-so even than anything else they had yet done to him. Eventually though, Star did return, looking him over. He was breathing hard through gritted teeth, his eyes clenched shut as he fought to remain motionless despite the massive amount of pain he was in. Star gave a faint, cruel smile. "What's wrong, Jake? I thought you enjoyed the pain I gave you..."

He ignored her, still fighting to remain as still as he could. She walked over to the side of the table and picked up the empty jar, again opening it and setting it down beside him. Reaching down, she gently gripped the tip of one of the needles in his abdomen, and slowly pulled it out. He hissed loudly as this sent new waves of pain surging through his body.

She worked very slowly, and it took well over an hour for her to fully remove them all, each one causing a new wave of pain through the tom. The last one to be removed was the one in his finger, the last one that had been put in. When she pulled it out, Jake gave a long slow breath as he relaxed. He still hurt from being stretched out and with several dislocated joints, but at least that wasn't as bad as the needles had been.

Star smirked, looking him over for a moment, then went back over to the shelf on the wall to put the jar back up. Afterward she went back over the spoke, and turned it a half crank in the opposite direction, loosening the ropes. This relieved much of the pressure on Jake's limbs, but by doing so it also caused him to now feel the pain of his several dislocated joints even more.

One of those joints was his left shoulder. Star gripped down on his left shoulder with both hands, gently at first, but then dug in her claws to strengthen her grip. Jake clenched his teeth against the pain that he knew was coming. She jerked hard, forcing the joint back into it's socket, the tom hissing loudly, determined not to cry out and damage his raw throat even further. She then walked around to his right shoulder, and did the same there, forcing the dislocated joint had back into place. Afterward she moved down to his legs. Each time she relocated a joint, she did so with enough force that he could feel the bones scraping against each other, causing even more pain, followed by a dull numbness.

Once she had finished forcing all of his dislocated joints back into place, she then turned to walk out. However, she paused in the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder at him. "Get some rest, Jake. You'll need it for tomorrow."

That was perhaps the only thing that he did want to do. His body felt heavy from the numbness that slowly creeped over his limbs. He closed his eyes, and let himself drift slowly into a deep sleep. But even in his sleep, the torture continued. He would have preferred it to be dreamless, but instead he was plagued with nightmares.

.

Within his dreams, he saw everything replayed from the time he had first met Star. He saw all of the struggles that they had both endured. The bloody battles with the demons, the fierce fight in the temple with her father where Jake had thought she had died, and the tortures that they had both suffered while trapped in Malfeas.

The dream then shifted, and he saw what was to come. He saw himself tied down on an altar in some sort of temple made of red and black stone, with the demon Lord and several other demons there, including Star and Breaker. A strong wind picked up, swirling within the room, and he could see a set of stone doors begin to open, Hellish red light coming from the portal behind them. As the portal began to open, the black-furred wolf demon pulled out a wicked-looking knife with a serrated blade that curved off in three different directions, the entire thing made of some sort of black metal.

In the dream, Jake closed his eyes, not wanting to see the final blow as the demon brought the blade down hard into his chest. He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound was muted out as his blood spilled down onto the floor. He watched as his blood pooled on the floor below him, and then began to flow, as if it had a will of it's own, toward the portal.

The blood then split, flowing in both directions along the floor, covering the full length of the door. It then flowed up it, coating the stone a deep crimson. As it did, the door continued to open wider, until the red glow filled the entire chamber so brightly that everything else faded away within it.

The red glow then darkened into blackness. When the darkness lifted, he saw Megakat City, but it was not the way he had left it. Everything was dark, the sun blotted from the sky, and the city itself was in ruins. Winged lesser demons flew through the skies like carrion birds, feasting on the corpses of kats that lay scattered throughout the wreckage. Various different types of demons were everywhere, and the few kats that had survived the carnage were in chains, slaves to the powerful Demon Lord. Jake could see among the ruins several Enforcer choppers and patrol cars, but of the Enforcers themselves, there were only dead bodies.

And then he saw what he had feared the most. The black jet was crashed in the street partially against a building. Thin black smoke plumes still rose from the wreckage in several places, and he could see blood on the cracked canopy. Jake didn't want to see it, but the dream gave him no choice as his view moved in closer, until he could see what was left of his partner and best friend. Jake tossed in his sleep from the sight of T-Bone's bloody, lifeless body within the shattered cockpit of the jet that they had built. And it was his fault. Everything, all of this death and destruction, was his fault.

Looking past the wreckage of the jet, Jake could see another body not too far away. Looking closer, he saw that it wasn't a kat. At first he thought it was a demon, but then realized that the large lupine figure didn't have the long claws or curved horns. It was a werewolf, with chocolate-brown fur and a black mane of hair. It took him a moment to realize just what, or rather who, he was looking at. It was Elena, her body broken and bloody.

.

Jake woke up slowly from the dream, his breaths coming in ragged gasps and his face wet with tears. For so long he had fought to protect Megakat City from the many threats it faced, but now he was the very reason for it's destruction, and for the deaths of all those that he had cared for.

The tom lay there for several more hours. He wished that he could simply die, that he could just close his eyes and slip away then and there. He should have already been dead many days ago, but something in this Hellish place was keeping him alive, and for the very reason that he feared the most.

At length the door opened again. He flicked his ears slightly at the sound, but didn't react other than that. He just didn't care. He heard Star's voice, but didn't even open his eyes. "It's almost time. But we still have one more day."

"Whatever..."

She tilted her head curiously. "What? No quick remarks this time?"

"I don't care. Nothing you can do to me could possibly hurt anymore than what's already been done."

"Are you so sure about that?"

He ignored her. He knew that she was about to come up with some even more painful torture than she had done the previous day. But even so, nothing could compare to the dream, and the realization of how he was the downfall of his entire city, and perhaps even the entire world.

Star pulled out a small blade resembling a scalpel, and slowly walked around the table, trailing a claw on her free hand across his chest as she did so. "You know, this was actually father's idea, though he felt it better if I was the one to do it. Apparently he's quite upset that I actually allowed myself to fall in love with a mortal."

Jake just watched her with a detached expression as she walked around him, stopping down by his hips. She then traced the flat end of the blade slowly down his abdomen, and lower toward his groin as she gave a dark smile. Jake's eyes went wide as he suddenly realized what she was intending, and he started to weakly struggle again now that the chains were looser. Star chuckled darkly. "What's wrong, Jake? You're going to die anyway. And you said that nothing I could do could hurt you any worse..."

He realized that she was right, and stopped feeble struggling. There was nothing that he could so anyway, and tomorrow it would be over for him. Nothing seemed to matter any more. There was no point in adding to his own pain.

She placed her free hand on him just above his sheath and pressed down with incredible strength, holding him firmly down as she lowered the blade. He clenched his eyes shut and gritted his teeth against what he knew was about to come. Jake hissed strongly as Star made the incision in his sac, determined not to scream out. Despite the total lack of sedatives, his body was still partially numb from everything that had been done to him previously.

The female cut slowly straight down the middle of his ballsac, then pushed the loose skin back to expose the pair of pale organs. She worked gently as she lifted one with her clawtips, Jake gritting his teeth hard against the feel of his exposed testes in the grip of her sharp claws. Star then placed the blade under the cord, and with a quick jerk, the razor-sharp knife severed it easily. After repeating the process with the other one, she then just tossed both of the bloody organs onto the stone floor.

With a dark, cruel smile, Star licked the blood off of her hands and the scalpel blade, somehow without slicing her own tounge in the process. With a flick of her white-tipped tail, she then turned and walked out of the room again. Jake groaned and closed his eyes, wishing with everything that he had left never to wake up again.