[s]Seven[/s] Twelve Days Later

[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.