Fanfiction: Jack comicverse: Locked Away: A Conversation Inside
Fanfiction: Locked Away: A Conversation Inside
Universe: Jack webcomic www.pholph.com
Genre: General
Characters involved: Jack and Drip
Rating: R for language. Drip does not get to do what Drip normally does.
Summary: My take on what might be happening inside Jack.
There were few things Drip hated more than being alone. Solitude was powerlessness, and Drip hated not having power over anyone. There was no measure of time in this infinite blackness… he could have been stuck inside this limbo for minutes, hours, or even millennia. Sure felt like a helluva long time. The only thing Drip could see was himself, his blue fur and misshapen body streaks of azure against the backdrop of utter blackness. Silence reigned in this void, only the sounds of his own voice falling flat on his ears, nothing to echo against, eaten up by nothingness. The only thing that felt solid was the pressure against his feet, an arbitrary surface pressing against his paws.
SHUT UP; I’M TRYIN' TA READ!
Drip looked about him, startled at the juvenile voice that had cut through the void. "No way… There's no way he would have swallowed someone else… is there?" A voice meant another presence, and another presence meant that he would not have to be alone and helpless much longer. Someone to dominate, someone to hurt, someone--
"Look, I said shut up, all right? I can't read with you thinkin' so loud."
Turning to look behind him, Drip found himself face-to-face with an irritated teenager. A green, irritated, teenage rabbit, to be precise.
"Jack?"
The rabbit pulled his head back in puzzlement. "You're not part of the test group I'm in. The hell happened to your jaw?" He walked around the azure rat, sizing him up with clinical detachment.
Anger welled up inside the Sin, and he dove for the pinpoint-pupilled rabbit. Yes, time to strangle your soul from the inside out, you cocksucking little bastard. Killing you is gonna be so swee--HEY! Instead of his fingers locking about that young, verdant neck, his lunge carried him to fall right through and end up on his nose on what passed for a floor in the sucking dark. Drip rolled to his backside, digitigrade legs in an awkward position as he rubbed at his sore nose.
"Umm, you can't hurt me, mister. I'm dead. You think too loud," Jack noised, tipping his head to examine the seated Sin. "Doesn't it ever get too noisy in your head?"
"Right before I'm about to kill, yes. Killing shuts them up, ends their screaming, makes them stop. You know this, you're a killer, too." Drip glared at the young fur, powerless once again.
"Uh, yeah, if you count video games. I never killed nobody for real."
"LIAR! You killed countless, and countless more. You're a murderer, just like me. We kill because they drive us to it. You know that. God hates liars, Jack."
"God doesn't exist."
That brought Drip up short, and in his puzzlement, he accepted Jack's hand-up. They seemed to be the same age--hands the same size as he stood, and those hands flew up to his face, feeling it exactly as it had been before he had become a Sin. "Of course God exists. We wouldn't be in Hell otherwise."
"No, see, think about it," Jack spoke up at Drip's confused look. "God's supposed to like all the good things, but there's too much bad for that to work. If this all-powerful guy is supposed to like good, then why wouldn't God try to make things better? Since it never gets better, it proves God doesn't exist. Everyone at the lab's always talking about playing God, how God's going to help them through this or that, changing what God intended. If God was so powerful, he'd have a hand in more stuff and make it the way he wanted it."
Drip felt colder than he ever had before, even when he slogged through the mud and the rain to get milk for his grandmother. Here was the power behind Sin Wrath. Drip had killed many in the name of satisfying his lust. He believed in God, and always had. When it became clear that he would never make God happy, he had decided to make himself happy instead. That was the source of his power. Jack simply did not believe.
The green rabbit snorted. "Besides, if God let people like you run around… what kind of a god is he?" He turned, and a lab room coalesced around them, machines humming and people wandering about outside a glass partition. Jack stepped over to a table where a book rested open, and he set a marker inside it and closed it.
"Where are we?" Nobody was taking notice of him, and Drip found it disconcerting, caged like a zoo animal while the monkeys outside walked freely. A cage within a cage, and still no control. He tried to settle in a chair, and after a few moments of uncomfortable wriggling, he stood up again.
"Huh? Oh, here, trade with me. You have a proper tail, and this chair has a space at the back." Jack got up and moved over to the chair Drip had left, settling in. "This is home. The wonderful laboratory in the tenth level of hell." Jack's pinpoints rolled along with his exasperated tone, and he shook his head. "You never did tell me, are you from a new test group? Metamorphs, maybe? Your jaw isn't so messed up anymore."
"I'm not from any test group. I was born like this."
"We were all born like this. They fixed us up before they let us out of the tubes." Jack turned to look at some of the people passing by, and then back at Drip. "I know you from somewhere, though. D.. Drip? You have to be part of some group, but if you got into the ductwork, that's fine. Doesn't bother me any." He shrugged.
Drip's eyes had been taking in the sterile conditions. "You really lived like this? They didn't let you out? What a shitty existence, kept like a pet."
"I dunno, it's better than running away all the time." He looked out again and began pointing people out. "That's Pratt. He's had just about every female intern in the lab and a few of the men. They can't touch him because he's the director's cousin." Over to a pair leaning over a console "And Buffy and Bert, they're always nibbling on stuff at their workstation." Jack shook his head and then indicated an intern with far too much makeup on. "Wanda, there, is so scared of losing her youth that she's chasing it away. She wants to be in the next test group because she thinks nobody'll see her wrinkles if she has fur. It's all such total bullshit. They all play and dabble, and think that they have fire under control enough not to hurt them. One day it's just all going to bust out one day and consume them into cinders."
It finally dawned on the Sin just why the beings, which he first took for clothed chimpanzees, looked so frighteningly familiar. "Kane. Shit, these people look like Kane. They're not normal!"
"Oh, Dr. Kane? I've heard some of the people talking about him, but I've never met him." Jack got really quiet as two people entered the laboratory. "Don't look out of the glass. Don't do it. Dr. Ackerson has a temper on him a mile wide. Just last week he nearly beat Ms. Agel to a pulp, and he's the only one that's ever been able to silence Pratt, even for a little bit. I suppose if there were anything close to a god here, it'd be him."
"You said nothing could hurt you," Drip grumbled, unsure why he was following along. For that matter, he couldn't understand why he was sitting in Jack's own personal hell, sitting on an uncomfortable, egg-shaped, plastic chair and talking to the former self of the Incarnation of Wrath.
"Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I can't die again," he hissed. "Who knows, next time it might be worse than this. You can't hurt me, but you don't belong here. They do. That's different."
"Says who?" Drip challenged.
"Those are the rules," Jack insisted.
"Made up by whom?" He watched uncertainty cross Jack's face and realised that he'd found the Sin's weak spot. A slow smile spread over his face. "Made up by God?"
"There is no God. There are only the rules we make for ourselves."
"Then make some new rules." Drip blinked, and he was no longer in a laboratory, but in an auditorium, watching a much older Jack glower at the audience.
"…kill everyone in this room."
Oh, shit… He didn't have much time to think as the pain tore through him. Opening his eyes, he caught one last look of Jack casting a haughty glance about before walking away, green tail bouncing at his back. Making our own rules… is what condemned us both, he realised. Twice. Then there was no more thought, just pain.
Universe: Jack webcomic www.pholph.com
Genre: General
Characters involved: Jack and Drip
Rating: R for language. Drip does not get to do what Drip normally does.
Summary: My take on what might be happening inside Jack.
There were few things Drip hated more than being alone. Solitude was powerlessness, and Drip hated not having power over anyone. There was no measure of time in this infinite blackness… he could have been stuck inside this limbo for minutes, hours, or even millennia. Sure felt like a helluva long time. The only thing Drip could see was himself, his blue fur and misshapen body streaks of azure against the backdrop of utter blackness. Silence reigned in this void, only the sounds of his own voice falling flat on his ears, nothing to echo against, eaten up by nothingness. The only thing that felt solid was the pressure against his feet, an arbitrary surface pressing against his paws.
SHUT UP; I’M TRYIN' TA READ!
Drip looked about him, startled at the juvenile voice that had cut through the void. "No way… There's no way he would have swallowed someone else… is there?" A voice meant another presence, and another presence meant that he would not have to be alone and helpless much longer. Someone to dominate, someone to hurt, someone--
"Look, I said shut up, all right? I can't read with you thinkin' so loud."
Turning to look behind him, Drip found himself face-to-face with an irritated teenager. A green, irritated, teenage rabbit, to be precise.
"Jack?"
The rabbit pulled his head back in puzzlement. "You're not part of the test group I'm in. The hell happened to your jaw?" He walked around the azure rat, sizing him up with clinical detachment.
Anger welled up inside the Sin, and he dove for the pinpoint-pupilled rabbit. Yes, time to strangle your soul from the inside out, you cocksucking little bastard. Killing you is gonna be so swee--HEY! Instead of his fingers locking about that young, verdant neck, his lunge carried him to fall right through and end up on his nose on what passed for a floor in the sucking dark. Drip rolled to his backside, digitigrade legs in an awkward position as he rubbed at his sore nose.
"Umm, you can't hurt me, mister. I'm dead. You think too loud," Jack noised, tipping his head to examine the seated Sin. "Doesn't it ever get too noisy in your head?"
"Right before I'm about to kill, yes. Killing shuts them up, ends their screaming, makes them stop. You know this, you're a killer, too." Drip glared at the young fur, powerless once again.
"Uh, yeah, if you count video games. I never killed nobody for real."
"LIAR! You killed countless, and countless more. You're a murderer, just like me. We kill because they drive us to it. You know that. God hates liars, Jack."
"God doesn't exist."
That brought Drip up short, and in his puzzlement, he accepted Jack's hand-up. They seemed to be the same age--hands the same size as he stood, and those hands flew up to his face, feeling it exactly as it had been before he had become a Sin. "Of course God exists. We wouldn't be in Hell otherwise."
"No, see, think about it," Jack spoke up at Drip's confused look. "God's supposed to like all the good things, but there's too much bad for that to work. If this all-powerful guy is supposed to like good, then why wouldn't God try to make things better? Since it never gets better, it proves God doesn't exist. Everyone at the lab's always talking about playing God, how God's going to help them through this or that, changing what God intended. If God was so powerful, he'd have a hand in more stuff and make it the way he wanted it."
Drip felt colder than he ever had before, even when he slogged through the mud and the rain to get milk for his grandmother. Here was the power behind Sin Wrath. Drip had killed many in the name of satisfying his lust. He believed in God, and always had. When it became clear that he would never make God happy, he had decided to make himself happy instead. That was the source of his power. Jack simply did not believe.
The green rabbit snorted. "Besides, if God let people like you run around… what kind of a god is he?" He turned, and a lab room coalesced around them, machines humming and people wandering about outside a glass partition. Jack stepped over to a table where a book rested open, and he set a marker inside it and closed it.
"Where are we?" Nobody was taking notice of him, and Drip found it disconcerting, caged like a zoo animal while the monkeys outside walked freely. A cage within a cage, and still no control. He tried to settle in a chair, and after a few moments of uncomfortable wriggling, he stood up again.
"Huh? Oh, here, trade with me. You have a proper tail, and this chair has a space at the back." Jack got up and moved over to the chair Drip had left, settling in. "This is home. The wonderful laboratory in the tenth level of hell." Jack's pinpoints rolled along with his exasperated tone, and he shook his head. "You never did tell me, are you from a new test group? Metamorphs, maybe? Your jaw isn't so messed up anymore."
"I'm not from any test group. I was born like this."
"We were all born like this. They fixed us up before they let us out of the tubes." Jack turned to look at some of the people passing by, and then back at Drip. "I know you from somewhere, though. D.. Drip? You have to be part of some group, but if you got into the ductwork, that's fine. Doesn't bother me any." He shrugged.
Drip's eyes had been taking in the sterile conditions. "You really lived like this? They didn't let you out? What a shitty existence, kept like a pet."
"I dunno, it's better than running away all the time." He looked out again and began pointing people out. "That's Pratt. He's had just about every female intern in the lab and a few of the men. They can't touch him because he's the director's cousin." Over to a pair leaning over a console "And Buffy and Bert, they're always nibbling on stuff at their workstation." Jack shook his head and then indicated an intern with far too much makeup on. "Wanda, there, is so scared of losing her youth that she's chasing it away. She wants to be in the next test group because she thinks nobody'll see her wrinkles if she has fur. It's all such total bullshit. They all play and dabble, and think that they have fire under control enough not to hurt them. One day it's just all going to bust out one day and consume them into cinders."
It finally dawned on the Sin just why the beings, which he first took for clothed chimpanzees, looked so frighteningly familiar. "Kane. Shit, these people look like Kane. They're not normal!"
"Oh, Dr. Kane? I've heard some of the people talking about him, but I've never met him." Jack got really quiet as two people entered the laboratory. "Don't look out of the glass. Don't do it. Dr. Ackerson has a temper on him a mile wide. Just last week he nearly beat Ms. Agel to a pulp, and he's the only one that's ever been able to silence Pratt, even for a little bit. I suppose if there were anything close to a god here, it'd be him."
"You said nothing could hurt you," Drip grumbled, unsure why he was following along. For that matter, he couldn't understand why he was sitting in Jack's own personal hell, sitting on an uncomfortable, egg-shaped, plastic chair and talking to the former self of the Incarnation of Wrath.
"Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I can't die again," he hissed. "Who knows, next time it might be worse than this. You can't hurt me, but you don't belong here. They do. That's different."
"Says who?" Drip challenged.
"Those are the rules," Jack insisted.
"Made up by whom?" He watched uncertainty cross Jack's face and realised that he'd found the Sin's weak spot. A slow smile spread over his face. "Made up by God?"
"There is no God. There are only the rules we make for ourselves."
"Then make some new rules." Drip blinked, and he was no longer in a laboratory, but in an auditorium, watching a much older Jack glower at the audience.
"…kill everyone in this room."
Oh, shit… He didn't have much time to think as the pain tore through him. Opening his eyes, he caught one last look of Jack casting a haughty glance about before walking away, green tail bouncing at his back. Making our own rules… is what condemned us both, he realised. Twice. Then there was no more thought, just pain.