[s]Seven[/s] Twelve Days Later

[Ash]

Jakob Volkov.

He was… Someone?

His mind was muddy. To the point of barely registering who he was. In the shadows of death, like a mosquito net wrapped around him, he could see the endless and flawless white. He could tell you that this was the Nexus, and this bug net-like thing was the death shroud he had cast away a dozen times already. In fact, his mind had never seemed more clear than when he was in the death shroud. He almost had all the answers.

Almost.

Jakob couldn’t rightfully tell you who he was or what he was while in the shroud.

When it came to individualizing himself, anything at all it was difficult, but especially now. Voices echoed around him, and he couldn’t tell you if they were the ghosts of his past or the secondaries that tended to mill about in the Nexus. Did they wait about for Primes to spawn or re-spawn because they were hoping their own Primes would appear?

Did he have a secondary waiting for him?

On second thought, that was rather impossible. He didn’t know himself, but he managed to know that he knew no one outside of himself. For anyone to wait patiently or impatiently for him to rise from the ashes was fantasy and pointless hope. He wasn’t even sure he was capable of hope anymore. Did he desire someone to wait for him? No… This was a mere passing thought that he imagined most Primes had when respawning.

He should try to remember this stuff…

It would be highly suspicious if someone was waiting for him at the fountain. Especially after a death like the one he experienced. What was that hole? He feels like he’s seen it before. Whatever it was, it felt like a shotgun to the gut. Somehow better, and in some ways worse. It felt a great deal like 6 bullets from a handgun. If only because they were individual shots. And he could feel each one split through the muscle of his body and pierce his flesh. Clear his mind…

Maybe he just needed to get a gun in order to remember this stuff?

-

After it felt like he had been laying there for five more days than normal, Jakob decided it was best to cast the shroud aside like a comfortable quilt and embrace the new round with his usual approach.

Jakob Volkov laid across an unusually nice couch. It had three back cushions and three removable bottom cushions. Instinctively he knew there was a bed folded up under him. If he took the time to pull out each cushion he’d find a bar in the center if he gave that a hardy tug two-thirds of a bed would instantly be exposed. After that, it would be a matter of lowering the last third and making the bed. Or, that would be the last step for any sensible person. This was Jakob after all.

The couch was a dark brownish-maroon with small detailing across it. Bead-like knobs lined the front of the armrests and the lower frame of the couch. In short, it was simple. However, to the slightly soberer than he desired Prime, it tasted like familiarity. It cradled him like a crib; As if he’d slept on the couch for nearly two years while someone else slept in the bed. Only to be nudged awake by someone in the early hours in a generous gesture to get him to move to the bed.

Almost instantly after that, Jakob felt the pain in his leg flare up and he instinctively reached into the pockets of his pants and pulled out his last dose of Bliss. Even as he jabbed the pen-like injector carelessly into the half existing leg he knew he needed more. Somewhere in his mind, he knew he could just make more, but like his leg pain, the thought faded away almost instantly. Jakob sighed heavily with relief. 

The next moment he glanced over at his right shoulder, only to find his arm was gone. Again.

He deflated by sinking deeper into the leather cushions.

Where had it gone now?

“Ishchete eto?” A blonde woman said from the edge of his space, perfect dialect. She also held his red robotic arm by the shoulder connection, but he admittedly wasn’t looking at that. It was obvious to anyone else she was using it as a way to talk to him.

“Da.” He said, robotically himself.

“Da?” She repeated, trying to hold back a giggle.

“Da.” He repeated. “Dat is my arm. I need it for arm things.” He said, twisting on the couch so he is sitting on it properly, looking up at her. Not stareing, yet, but she was pretty attractive. He was more mesmerized that she was even talking to him.

“Oh?”

“Da.”

The blond woman cracked a smile and shook her head. “As I recall, it's really difficult to do it by yourself. Let me at least help.”

“Okay,” Jakob said without hesitation. Anyone else would have stopped to wonder how she ‘recalled’ anything. Or even question if she knew how to properly reconnect the complex machinery back onto its owner.

But none of this crossed the drug-filled mind of his. Bliss has always numbed the reflexes and the reaction to things, and it would seem that using it over the years has left Jakob with a permanent lapse in judgment. His words were always slow. He’s gotten away with it in English, but his Russian never had any urgency in it either. Which was contradictory to most of his comrades. It was an angry language, but Jakob managed to slow and calm it.

Correction. Bliss had managed it. Through Jakob.

She sat down beside him on a couch that only existed in a studio apartment with a slight rise on one part of it to define the kitchen more, a couch that Jakob had been headed for before it happened. Now Jakob knew neither the couch nor himself. “Screwdriver?” She asked. Instinctively he reached into one of the cushions and pulled one out. She thanked him and went to work.

The Russian watched with only the barest hints of curiosity and concern as she began the process of attaching his prosthetic. She was about a third through when he realized she wasn’t fumbling with it like most - including himself - did. She barely needed to look at the pieces to question their connectivity, and if she did it was semi-instant when she went straight back into it. In a matter of a minute at most he had his arm back.

Jakob flexed the ruby metallic colored limb and turned the wrist over. It reacted to his every thought like it was supposed to. He was very happy to have it back, smiled even. But then he turned to her, still smiling, and said. “Dat was fast, are you a Pretty Lady doctor, too?” Jakob asked, an image of a woman coming to his slow reacting mind, and realization crossed his face. For a moment there was hope. “Like Anja!?”

[Kaleigh Dactomb Nox]

Claire reattached Jakob’s arm with all the practiced grace of a real master, but the truth was she just had a whole lot of practice with this one arm in particular. Enough, at least, that even her time in the Omniverse hadn’t made her forget. It was similar to cooking the same dish enough that you could make it flawlessly without a recipe, but you still burn anything else.

“Not a doctor, no,” Claire responded to his question, taking it as a bit of teasing, “But I did prescribe that bullet into your chest.”

“I do not have a bullet in my chest.” Jakob pointed out the obvious, lifting his shirt and checking just to be sure. He tapped his chest, “See?”

Claire responded by grabbing his chin firmly in her palm and pulling his head towards hers, staring into his eyes for a few moments.

“No, but you’ve got some bliss in your veins again, I see.” she pointed out, her voice playful despite its accusatory message. She tapped his nose with her free hand before continuing, “Are we back to that again, or does our promise just not count in the Omniverse?”

Jakob was already in the middle of uttering the words he was famous for when she mentioned something else. He liked to pretend to be confused a lot, even he knew that. However, these words truly confused him.

“What promise?” He said simply.

Claire had expected his usual line; ‘What drugs’ was something he said so often that it was a joke to anyone who knew him. Instead, she got something similar, but notably different. Her persona broke a few seconds later, not at his words so much as the face he made along with it. The one that said he truly had no idea what she was talking about.

Her hands slipped from his chin, letting him go, and she slid back away from him as she processed what this meant.

“Do you remember me at all…?” she asked warily, almost afraid of the answer.

Jakob made a motion of agreement at first, only to fall back into the truth. He shook his head regretfully. “Should I?”

Claire didn’t respond right away, still processing everything that had just happened. She lifted herself off the couch and slowly took a few steps away, each step a struggle despite there not being anything physically in her way. She hesitated when she finally stopped, then she turned and began to summon something in front of him. A few minutes later, the summoning finished and she held an envelope in her hand.

”You should. Because I know the truth about your sister,” she finally said, waving the letter in her hand. “And it’s in here.”

[Ash]

Jakob watched the woman in front of him begin to summon something. On his face was the same neutrality he wore wherever he went. No one would ever to tell you how old he was by his face as it would wear no wrinkles if this continued.

There was no awe in his face, no child-like wonder as the rainbow colored lights played in her hands. Primes were a plenty around these parts, especially in the Nexus. Jakob was no longer phased by any of the special effects and remained where he sat on the couch and waited with inhuman patience for her to finish.

When Claire held up the mysterious envelope he merely glanced at it. Not at all sure what significance it held. Then she declared she knew the truth about his sister.

A pain beyond him gripped him by the heart and flooded his senses. Ivone Volkov had become a distant memory in a drug-induced fog permanently hanging in Jakob’s mind, but having her ripped and dangled in front of him like a rag doll had a surprisingly sobering effect on the young Russian.

After fighting down the drowning pain of a broken heart created after remembering the only person you ever loved was dead, Jakob’s normally jovial face turned serious. His dark grey eyes clear with a renewed focus, and his muscles tensed up with purpose until he stood before her. His shoulders were still relaxed but his neck and jaw were tight. The French woman knew this stance, she had his attention.

“My sister. She is dead. V kakom biznese vy bespokoite yeye prakh?(What business do you have to disturb her ashes?)” He asked, but was still reaching for the sealed envelope.

Claire tugged it out of his lazy grasp, “It’s been my business for a while, Jakob, don’t worry about that. Although I believe you are using the wrong word. For Ivone isn’t just a pile of ash in the wind like you think.”

“YA trebuyu, chtoby vy ob"yasnili sami!(I demand that you explain yourself!)” Jakob reverted back to his native language.

With a snap of her fingers, the blonde-haired beauty’s handgun was brandished and aimed straight at the man’s head. “Demand all you want, sweetheart,” She shoved the gun in his face, the metal less than an inch away from his nose. “But I won’t tell you a thing unless you remember what we promised each other.” Her voice surprisingly cheerful for someone who waved a gun around. “I guess you could always kill me and take it for yourself.” She finished with an almost sing-songy tone.

With that, the seeds of challenge were planted and before her eyes, she watched her garden bear fruit.

Jakob twisted around, forced both hands down between the couch cushions, one on either side of the center seat. His metal hand ripped through the layers of bedding until it found purchase around the metal bar of the folded bed. His other hand stopped short of the first layer of resistance but still touched metal.

With a solid heave, the entire couch was raised up into the air and balanced above his head. All three cushions fell free of the couch and crashed to the blank ground below him anti-climatically. The back three would have done the same if they were not stitched in. He turned to her and hesitated as if giving her one final chance to reconsider what she has brought down on herself, before just shoving the heavy mass onto her.

Maybe it was the bliss coursing through his body that made this seem like a good idea - maybe, in fact, it had been a good move but her speed left his grand scheme empty - whatever it was it was terribly uncoordinated and Claire pulled away unscathed. As wood broke and metal bent under his rageful toss, the woman slide back with a small bit of surprise on her face. Not because she didn’t believe he’d try to hurt her, but because she didn’t think he could lift something like that while high.

Jakob seemed unfazed that his sneak attack didn’t work, and even as the couch and mattress fluff snowed down on them he was already trying to climb over the rubble to get to her, tossing a familiar weapon from fleshy hand to robotic.

Instead of just waiting there though, she squeezed the trigger and shot him.

Again.

And again.

Two bullets were enough to slow him down, but not give up. The first one blazed through the right side of his gut, a spray of crimson fanned out behind him, knocking him back but not off balance. The second one landed in his left calf forcing him to crumble against the debris that was the only thing left of his happy memories. Just as she calculated.

What she did not account for was the hook of his crowbar digging into her outstretched arm as he went down. In his normal hand, or in anyone else’s, this would leave her with an inconvenient scrapping of her flesh. Just above a rug burn. In the chromatic red arm of Jakob, this was not the case.

She knew he did it on purpose because it broke either the Ulna or Radius, possibly even both, causing Claire an undesirably great deal of pain as the bone snapped. So much that she almost dropped her gun. She saw more than felt the hook of the crowbar drag what was left of the broken bone out of her gored forearm out of its socket as his hand followed through with the swing. 

The pain was unimaginable. 

The image was gruesome and real. 

The level of brutality consistent with his character.

The situation as a whole left her realizing how unlucky it was to be on this side of Jakob's crowbar.

[Kaleigh Dactomb Nox]

Claire was well aware how much damage Jacob’s crowbar could do, but she had been fortunate enough to never be on the receiving end of a blow from it. At least, until now. Her arm fell useless at her side, her hand somehow clinging to her pistol. Besides the excruciating pain, she wasn’t sure if she still had feeling in her hand or if the gun was just stuck, but either way she was essentially defenseless for the moment.

She hopped back, putting some space between them as she quickly pocketed the envelope she had teased him with, hiding it away now that she was sure the image of it was burned into Jakob’s mind. Then she grabbed the pistol with her still functioning left hand, positioning herself into a one-handed shooter's stance, aimed and ready for him to come over the couch at her.

He didn’t.

Seconds passed as she waited, the Nexus so quiet she swore she could still hear the echo of her gunshots bouncing off the gates in the far distance. Still nothing. Then, just as she was ready to move forward, she heard something like a laugh coming from the other side of the couch. Then she remembered that he was high.

With a sigh of relief, she lowered the gun and stood up straight. She was confident Jakob wasn’t going to let the memory of the letter slip away from him, even if his memory was currently taking a trip through fantasy land. Her mission was accomplished, he would almost certainly be hunting her down soon.

“See you in the big city, lover boy,” she said out loud, turning and making her way back towards Coruscant.

After today, she needed a rest. Maybe another week to heal up...

[Ash]

Out of all the strange things that surrounded Primes as a whole, Sophia has seen little as interesting as a couch in the middle of the Nexus. Much less a broken one which has been flipped over on hits front side and the frame snapping under the weight so that it looked just barely like the original furniture to be recognizable. The other thing that was interestingly uncommon in the Nexus was a body that laid across the busted up couch. Crimson puddles formed under the heap of this... Conversation piece in the center of the table.

Sophia, being the secondary as she was, was created with a keen eye for taste. Whoever managed this this had divine taste, in her opinion. It was so brutal and blunt, it excited her. Her face flushed as she wondered what this man had died for. She also wanted deeply to know the reasoning behind the couch. Why was it even a thing? What was the purpose of using a crudely cheap couch with a folded bed inside of it as a weapon?

That was when Jakob's head lifted from the ruined cotton of the inner couch, or was it the mattress this fluff came from, to scream out in frustrated pain. Sophia was so surprised by the sudden movement from someone she thought had bit the dust already.


Jakob rolled over and off the beaten piece of furniture, hitting his shoulder on the Nexus floor and right into puddle of his own blood. The bullet would through his leg had long been healed over the course of his nap. Where the bullet was now he couldn’t tell you, but until it sealed off the flesh he’d been heavily wounded. “Fuck!” He cried out, suddenly a bit sober.

The woman he’d seen shrink back gasps at his harsh language, only to fall back and away. He didn’t notice at any length of her flushed face. But she did call him a cretin before sweeping her full blooming dress across the crisp clean floor and off to another verse. He wasn’t sure if she meant to call him that because of the misinterpretation of the word, or if she meant its literal definition because of the ruby red robotic arm that lifted him.

He rolled over onto the arm, his weight lifted higher and his stomach stretching. He felt a pain in his side from where he’d been shot by Mikeal-

“Vait.. Dat is not right.” He decided. No. It was that blonde haired bombshell. Her image was burned into his mind now, her golden long hair, her fierce eyes. The sweetness in her voice, the softness of her touch. The accuracy of her shots! He growled to himself, rolling onto his knees and standing up. He limped a few feet away before coming to a unsure stop just a few ways. His black shirt was sticky and wet with his own blood, it stained the back of his shoulder like a tattoo.

He considered what he should do. She had called him by name, spoke to him in Russian. She’d spoken Ivone’s name. The woman from before didn’t just lift up a pebble from his past. No, she ripped off his 5 year old scab and scrubbed the insides with salt. She disturbed him on levels no one else has been able to.

She would never be safe again.

Now where did she go?

With very little effort, Jakob glanced about and found her blood trail. He could discern it to be her’s because it continued beyond his. After that, it was just a matter of a ride, and some upgrades to his Rigger Control Console…