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The day I raise my hand
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Author:  Mie [ Fri Dec 07, 2012 1:37 am ]
Post subject:  The day I raise my hand
READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED wrote:
WARNING: This is a graphic, violent, vulgar, dark, and disturbing insult to literature, born entirely of my own questionably mature catharsis. I started planning this a couple of months ago; if you know anything about the incidents surrounding the group's closure, then it might make a little more sense to you. I must stress that what follows isn't necessary in any scope of the story; this is purely something I did to salve my wounds, and fix my "head canon," if that makes sense.

If you're at all bothered by extreme violence or rape, please don't read this.


Rock cameo by Matt.













The early morning sun's rays crept languidly across the darkened dunes of Yellow Desert, chasing away the things that went bump in the night...

*CLANG!*

Well. Most things.

Jam had in fact been making all sorts of racket all night long, cooped up in the hangar where she now practically lived. Accompanying the noisy clatter of objects hurled at walls, were frustrated growls, frequent cussing, and ranting of continually increasing belligerence and decreasing sense. Thus, the morning found her both negligibly further in progress, and now sleep-deprived and ill-tempered to boot; really, it was no wonder she was mostly left alone these days.

She sat hunchbacked, with each fist clutching a handful of hair on either side of her head, atop a tall metal stool in front of a cluttered workbench. Onionskin papers with all sorts of complicated looking diagrams covered the surface of the desk, and wallpapered the pegboard behind it. An empty water cooler sat not too far away, surrounded by crumpled paper cups, with a couple of filled five gallon bottles sitting uselessly next to it. Oil-covered rags and miscellaneous tools lay scattered everywhere, but in the highest concentration around the large, rusty-but-still-red rolling tool chest parked next to a small fighter jet that looked not a great deal unlike the one she'd flown into the Typhaon some lifetime or two ago...

Additionally, there were parts all over the place, some of them readily identifiable in purpose, and others so vague and ambiguous, it might have been why they were presently being used as paperweights. A large, empty fuel reserve tank lay on the stained, concrete floor next to the fighter, wedged into immobility from both sides, and yet more papers with schematics lay scattered next to it, these with scrawled, hand-written notes, crossed out and rewritten over and over, with progressively less legibility and larger hoards of angry question marks with each revision.

Growling again, the monkey shoved at her work table, hopping off her stool to go get the screwdriver she'd just pitched across the room. She dropped to a crouch as she reached it, but didn't yet pick it up; instead, she glared at it in bitter silence for a good while longer than it should take anyone to regard a tool. Eventually, she snatched the thing up as if the ground was on fire, rose, and rubbed tiredly at her forehead.

"This'd be so stupidly easy for him," she told her hand in a mumble.

"Heh."

A quiet, dry chuckle came from the hangar's side door, where someone was sitting crouched on the floor, forearms on his knees, hands dangling between them. He was dingy mustard yellow, with a tattered red T, and a very worn green jacket tied around his waist. How long had Ace been there? His dull eyes looked tired in their own way.

"Wadn't everything for him, though?" he grunted as he rose slowly to his feet with a subtle stretch and squint, and meandered forward.

Jam tensed, but didn't start; her eyes tightened, and her jaw set.

"He is good at figuring out whatever needs figuring out, sure," she answered, with unusual emphasis, and perhaps a bit more terseness than was really warranted for so innocuous a comment.

The simian girl straightened, drawing herself up to her full height, her arms folded tightly across her chest, as she turned a mildly chilly gaze onto the cat, exuding all the approachability of a stone wall... but hardly the patience of one.

"Caz send you to check up on me?" One would have to be deaf to miss the accusative edge to her tone.

He winced with tight lips, raised brows, and squinted eyes at the emphasis she put on tense, as if realizing his own misstep. He did not quickly repeat it, glazing over the error to respond to her question as he leaned against the toolchest. It began to roll when he put his weight on it, but he caught himself before he made another awkward move.

"No. Not this time," he replied pretty flatly. "I came all by myself. 'Cause I was worried about a friend."

Though lower than the volume she'd been employing, Jam didn't seem to put too much effort into stifling the almost bitterly-laughed, "That's presumptuous," that Ace's reply elicited.

Ace shook his head with a silent "geez" written all over his face, as she turned on her heel, and marched back towards her work bench.

"I don't need concern," she bit dismissively, beginning to rifle through the piles of thin, crinkly papers atop the desk.

"I need a metric ass-ton of fuel, an aeronautical engineer, and a means to actually find La-- Rock." She paused for a short half-beat to glare seethingly at something that probably didn't deserve it.

"To find him in that godforsaken sea of space rubble up there."

With that, she drew herself straight again, physically shaking her head clear, before turning her frigid gaze back on her visitor.

"So, yeah. Unless you have any of that, I've heard it said I'm not the most personable of company right now."

"'Ey, look, don't get me wrong here," he started back in very cautiously, unfolding his arms and standing straighter, "I know this's a big deal an' all. It's just... it's been months. And I know if anybody can survive three or four months in space, it's gonna be Rock. But if he can manage that, then I figure you takin' a break won't hurt anything."

He had wandered nearby in the course of the suggestion.

"You've worked so hard," he continued, setting a hand on each of her shoulders, his fingers kneading, as his eyes meandered down her back.

"Might actually help you focus better and get done faster."

If the cat was at all wary of Jam's body language, he'd realize quickly that he'd made another mistake, if not several; she instantaneously tensed like a mousetrap somewhere in the middle of his diatribe, breaking eye-contact, and grinding her fingertips into her palms as her fists clenched rigidly atop her work surface. Perhaps it was the sudden rush of adrenaline, or her malnourishment, or exhaustion or stress, or some combination of all of the above, but her head was abruptly so hazy with rage, she couldn't even identify where Ace had started to go wrong in his attempts to pacify her... However, that sudden, unexpected contact was certainly, immediately, and definitively where it'd end.

"Hey!"

The mousetrap snapped shut; she wrenched away from his grasp with no shortage of haste, the recoil of which was so great, she actually stumbled backwards into her stool, only barely catching herself on it.

"I guess you haven't noticed this," she began, venomously quiet as she righted herself. She rounded on the serval with an indignant swiftness, her advance full of threat, as her voice gradually rose. "But we're not friends, okay? I don't trust you -- I don't even like you, so I don't need you checking up on me, or consoling me, and least of all, talking to me about Rock. The best thing you can do for me is get the f**k out."

Her eyes narrowed contemptuously, as she sneered, "I'm busy."

His eyes meanwhile opened their lids wide, but did not raise their brows, in the way one does when incredulous, affronted, or perhaps even incredulously affronted. He seemed to have done the best to notice it, but almost immediately his blood boiled and his mind roiled, his fist clenched tight, and his stomach quaked someplace deep within.

He blinked once, twice, then turned away with a disbelieving shake of his head, his grinding teeth ensuring his verbal silence. He didn't walk yet; he stood there just a moment, eyes darting where she could not see. Then, in a blink, the cat wheeled to face her with a growling, out-of-control haymaker of a swat from his fist.

It hadn't even occurred to Jam that she'd not done a sufficient job of running off her unwanted company. Immediately upon her last word, she'd jerked back toward her desk in a huff, and set to work soothing her seething temper with complicated, mind-numbing diagrams. It hurt her severely to have so underestimated Ace's nerve. She never saw that fist coming.

It was like the lights went out all at once. But she was awake -- or at least, she thought she was. Her eyes were probably open, or at least blinking either quickly or slowly, but she saw nothing, though the blackness blurred and throbbed with her suddenly pounding temple, seared and ached and screamed all at once. Sound was all one big indiscernible rush; like a vast, unruly, shouting crowd. Adding to the din was the crash and clatter of the tool chest she'd blindly slammed into, knocking it over, sending its contents askew, and her footing with it. She was vaguely aware of a sudden sharp pain in her knees and shoulders, suggesting she'd maybe fallen on them, but as far as she was concerned up and down were at least in practice, completely arbitrary values.

Slowly and uncoordinatedly, her lips moved as if to speak, but her reeling cognizance would have none of it; all that slurred forth were quiet, disjointed syllables, loosely connected with leaden groans.

A buzzing head distorted the passage of time; what felt like a few seconds stretched and curled vaguely into a minute. The first thing to become clear was that she was face down on the cold cement, and her hands were stuck together at the wrists behind her back by something uncomfortable and sticky. It was electrical tape; perhaps he thought the choice clever or ironic.

"... been a bitch to me since I met you, and y'know what, that's s**t," he ranted in a low tone. "You and Rock always gave me s**t. You don't think I've earned my f***in' place yet?"

She soon found herself rolled onto her back, hands pinned uncomfortably underneath her. Ace loomed over her face, backlit to an ugly, pointed silhouette by the mercury vapor lamps hanging from the hangar ceiling.

"Yeah, who has with Rock, huh? F***er thought he was the best thing that ever happened. You were right there, right there kissin' his ass no matter what heinous s**t he did." His voice shook. "Heh," he feigned to laugh bitterly, but it came out weak, fake, nervous, "F**k that. You was always defendin' him. Lay-lee. Pissin' on everybody else for that... psycho... asshole. But not just me. I'm not the only one."

His breath was audible, and foul like too many cigarettes, but all it did was add to her disorientation. Her senses -- sound, vision, and awareness, mostly -- swirled together vaguely, indistinct and distant, weaving intermittently into and out of clarity... It was only as she felt her shirt yanked up, and replaced with a pair of invasively intrepid hands that everything suddenly rushed through a funnel of consciousness to a razor-sharp acuity. Her eyes flashed open wide, but unfocused, as she heaved away from the floor in a wild, frantic lunge accompanied by a furious grunt.

She bumped into him without much effect, then was thrust back against the hard floor by a rigid hand against her neck. It was absolutely no contest against his strength and weight.

"I tried to be nice! I toldja to take a break and relax," he laughed cruelly but nervously. "An' I betchu wish you could get those hands on me and fry me. Like you did before, but kill me this time, wouldn't ya? Ugly attitude you got. Everything else looks pretty good, though."

"I will kill you."

Her response came without pause, but was barely aspirated, and came out as more of a breathless creak than actual words. Her eyes tightened with effort as she struggled; her boots scraped and scuffed against the floor, while her arms wrestled unyieldingly with their bonds.

The threat, however sincere, seemed to fall on deaf ears, or was simply ignored, as his free hand ran back down, albeit taking its time damnably, then started fiddling with her belt with sudden haste. It seemed he tried to just rip it off outright, but the sturdy, nylon military belt didn't give a fraction of an inch; he'd sooner be throwing her off the floor than damaging it. Working the clasp, or buckle, or whatever it was turned out to be clumsy work one-handed, with a struggling target. His fumbling hand didn't seem to agree with him, either, perhaps on account of her struggling, or else just his faltering intestinal fortitude, but he must have known he'd already gone too far to stop there, anyway. That was his way, after all: do something wrong, then keep going because he just might as well.

He actually huffed a breath of despicable triumph upon finally displacing her belt, after which the button and zipper of her shorts seemed to succumb with relative ease. Somewhat unstably, he pushed his weight forward onto her throat, and settled his knees onto her thighs, impeding her thrashing enough to get at his own belt and jeans.

The rushing blood to her head hurriedly gave way to panic and adrenaline. Her eyes were alert, now, focused, but not looking at her attacker. Instead they flitted in all directions, trying vainly to get a look at her surroundings to little avail, scarcely able to move her head at all. Her capacitor knife sat uselessly on her worktable, and she growled frustratedly at her lack of foresight, as her thrashing grew more desperate. It was at that moment, her tail happened blindly upon something long and modestly pointy -- a phillips head, it felt like. It seized the tool with no shortage of celerity, but hesitated on the strike, as the pressure to make it count momentarily mollified her flailing...

What was it he said...?


"If you're comin' from behind and the guy doesn't see you, a stab in the kidney's a great icebreaker," said Rock one bored evening outside Rick's, gesturing some stroke with a combat knife on an imaginary target and spooking would-be patrons. "You stick somebody there and it's like this huge shock—they can hardly get a breath out, can't even really scream proper for a couple'a seconds. Gives you a good opportunity to do somethin' more lethal. But, you gotta be careful. Too low and the blade jams up on the hipbone; too high and you get all tangled up in ribs."


The screwdriver slammed business-end into Ace's back with pinpoint accuracy and precisely as much electric current as she could muster. Though he jerked bolt upright in pain, it didn't seem to break the skin. The second came without pause, restraint, or mercy, however; before he could do much more than twist to look behind him, the second blow stabbed the screwdriver well into his back, and set him convulsing with electricity. Needless to say, he let go, and without a blink's hesitation, the simian girl wriggled her legs up between her and her assailant-turned-prey, and shoved with a grunt that was half effort, and half furious roar. The double-barreled kick that sent Ace sprawling segued into a neat roll that popped Jam succinctly upright; she lunged for her knife, and had its grip in her tail inside of a second.

"HnANNNGH."

The screwdriver handle audibly clacked as he landed backward on it, accidentally driving it further into his kidney with his own weight. He writhed there, boot soles scraping against the floor, arms reaching futilely behind him as his back arched and his face, alternatively between gasps, scrunched narrow in pain and flashed open in wide-eyed horror.

In Jam's haste to saw through the tape, meanwhile, she shaved the top layers of skin off a few knuckles and her left wrist bone, not to mention all the fur she cut off and ripped out in the process. If she cared or even noticed at all, she didn't show it. She rounded on Ace, tugging her shirt back down, but still a disheveled mess, her features distorted in vindictive malice. The capacitor knife sparked and spat in her hand as she stalked toward him.

He was in immense pain, but not such that he failed to be aware of her approach. The tool sticking out of his back hurt, but he had to have known his life was in peril right then and there. He had two kidneys; one would just plain have to suffice if he was going to get out of there alive. It was therefore with an unexpected second wind and a rush of raw willpower that he sprang to unstably to his feet, flinging a sudden shotgun-blast barrage of glowing cards from both hands.

Her shield ignited around her as though of its own accord, and the volley of cards collided with it like insects to a bug zapper. The resultant explosion of strobing light and metallic buzzing lasted only a half second before abruptly fading to nothing but clopping footsteps and lingering tinnitus as Ace barreled forward with another wild and wide haymaker of a punch, this time born of some strange mix of urgency and rage.

The crackling sphere shrank back, condensing to electrified gauntlets around the monkey's arms as she lithely wove under the swing, and rammed the blade into the serval's gut with savage force. He hunched over the blow, at a loss for breath as he stopped in his tracks, his already-red shirt darkening quickly. Jam's hand seized hold of his shoulder, gripping it like a vice as he fell forward at the waist. There was a sickeningly wet gurgle as she whipped the knife from its bloody temporary sheath, and jabbed it randomly back in. Once, twice.

Blood went everywhere, all over Jam's knife-wielding hand and arm. Seizing and jerking, Ace lashed defensively between shocks with one arm while the other clutched his perforated abdomen. Her grasp was swatted away, if only momentarily, and he staggered backward as if to flee, all the while too shocked and disoriented to get any bearing other than "away." The floor reddened beneath him in spatters and small pools, as did every inch of clothing beneath the wounds.

Despite the unprecedented carnage she'd wrought, Jam's rage was not yet sated, and as Ace stumbled back and away, she surged forward, lunging the blade straight at the cat's throat. Her reach fell short of his flight, but not so short that she came away totally empty-handed. It was only the first centimeter or so of the knife made its mark—still enough to send him back to the floor again, clutching his throat. Ace tried to scream because of the embedded screwdriver he once again landed upon, but failed to make any noise through his punctured throat; as he struggled there, she didn't even ready another strike, but instead simply watched the blood soak through the serval's clothing, spreading across the floor. Her eyes were dark, and her face, even without all the spatters, looked ghastly, and far older than it should have.

She set one slick, wet boot sole onto his chest; he coughed wetly, expelling blood. She gradually increased the pressure as she leaned forward, resting her arms atop her knee, wrists dangling limply on either side of it, and the knife, still dripping, from her right hand. She regarded him like that blankly for a moment, then sniffed indifferently.

"D'you know why I like to use these?" she asked, wriggling her fingers indicatively. She raised her eyebrows loftily, and smirked vindictively, as she settled more weight onto her forward foot. He just stared back with blank, widened eyes.

"I can push current through pretty much any part of me -- I guess you know that now -- so why my hands? Hm? It's about nerve endings, see. More nerve endings means more voltage, and the number of 'em in here:" Uncomfortably close to his face, a palm suddenly lit up with a shower of sparks, as if to illustrate . "Pretty ridiculous. But I'll tell you a secret: This is not the highest concentration on me..."

The allusion was left to percolate a moment as the simian chewed her lower lip, before, with a distant gaze, she added,

"Even Rock can't take me on bad days."

The haughty grin that had crept across her face vanished instantaneously, replaced with an ugly scowl, as she suddenly lunged forward with a heavy stomp. The voiceless serval wheezed unintelligibly, but the primate's words came out low and fast, seethed in a furious rush.

"If not for the fact that the thought of you touching me makes me want to flay myself with acid, I'd almost have loved to see how far you got before I reduced it to a shriveled" Stomp. "F**king" Stomp. "Scab."


A chorus of simultaneous cracks sounded, accompanied by a pitiful half-moan, half-gasp, as Jam shattered several of the cat's ribs in a final vengeful strike of her heel. With a loathing glare, and a deep, steadying breath in through her nostrils, she pushed off what remained of his ribcage, and rose to a standing position.

"Trust me," she said more levelly, examining the edge on her blade in apparent idleness. "This is much kinder than what you picked."

Without warning she threw all of her weight and as much added force as she could manage downward, as she dropped, knife-first, sparking, snarling point-down onto the cat's throat.

There was no last quip or second wind, or third, or fourth, or whatever it would have been by that point. He tried to move himself out of the way, but his boots merely scuffed and smeared weakly in the spreading pool of his own blood, and his body went nowhere. Just like that, his throat was gouged through, the tip of the blade struck concrete with a dulling clank, and he was left to shake in a faint convulsion as electricity coursed through his already depleted body. He fell agape and still before the shock even stopped; he had lost too much blood, and he had already been electrocuted such that there just wasn't any energy left in his muscles to even contract.

Thus died Ace—pointlessly, just as he had lived.

The hangar was silent.

After what seemed like a long time, Jam clambered upright again; she looked nothing short of haggard. Setting her clothing back in order, the monkey shuffled back toward her worktable, and there snatched up a convenient rag, numbly mopping at the blood on her face. She looked emptily around the room as if lost, but eventually, began to shamble languorously back toward the ship, stopping on the way to set the overturned tool chest back on its casters with a weary grunt. Seizing both sides of the ladder parked next to the cockpit, she lunged up the first few steps, and flew the rest of the way up with surprising speed. But her brows furrowed as she paused half-way through swinging a leg over the side, suddenly casting irritable glances around the room. Leaping off the top of the ladder, the primate landed with a heavy clop of her boots that carried her back to Ace's body. Without regard, she rolled him over with a kick onto his stomach, and, with no effort to make it clean, yanked the screwdriver from his back, loosing a tepid spray of blood. To little apparent effect, she wiped the shaft "clean" with a corner of the serval's copiously stained jacket, before rising, turning, and trudging tiredly back to work.
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