LEGAL INFO: I, Lauren Chalupnik, also known as LoorTheDarkElf, do not own Jak and Daxter, Jak II, or any other trademarks.

I, Lauren Chalupnik, DO own the characters Loor/Lauren Randolph, Lyra, Ryan, Mikey, Morgan, Artimus, and Teek. Do not use without permission.

Fury/Chelsea Paulson, Alex Argot, and Damian Matthews all belong to their respective creators and were used with permission.

The story 'Vacation or War' is my intellectual property. Please ask before using specific concepts such as the IV branch of the Dark Warrior Program unless you are NDI. I am not gaining any sort of monetary profit, though if the sale of this work became legal I would make an attempt. At date of publication, however, everything is for entertainment purposes only. As such I obviously cannot pursue any monetary losses in the case that I am stolen from; I request these things of your own integrity and honesty. If you want to use my ideas, please ask me.

Vacation Or War
Chapter One- Our Lives

"Um... Lauren, you there?"

Lauren Randolph suddenly snapped out of her own head, having been typing away at her computer and forgetting the fact that she'd been on the phone. "Oh, hello! Sorry, getting lost in my brain." The apology came with a touch of humor that left a smirk on her face, pushing her keyboard from its current residence on her lap, back to its home on her desk. Her position was mostly prone, laying upon her queen sized bed which she'd pushed up against her desk- ensuring that work and sleep were never separated by more than a few inches of rolling over.

"That's okay, it's a big place to get lost in. You working on that thingy?"

"It's not a 'thingy,' it's an energy conversion device." Lauren shook her head at the friend she had on the phone; Chelsea.

"You gonna bring it over tomorrow?" Chelsea asked with enough energy that Lauren could easily imagine her bouncing around like a ball. "You've been talking about it for so long, I can't wait to see it in action!"

"It all depends if everything checks out..." Lauren put one arm under her head as she stretched her body. It was a long, satisfying thing that started in her spine and extended down through her fanned out toes. "I was just setting up my computer to monitor a test... though I'm yet to have a successful one..."

"Could you... explain it to me again? I know you have before, but..."

"But what?"

"Loor, when you're doing the science thing, you leave me behind."

Lauren felt the urge to roll her eyes. Chelsea wasn't the only one she tended to leave behind- her vocabulary had always set her apart as a child, giving her a barrier to simple communication with her peers. It took a special kind of person to even stand being around her, and she knew it. She'd grown up in an intensely literate household, and it wasn't until she'd entered public school that she was brought to understand that most kids her age spoke in... simpler terms. "Right, right... okay, let me see how to say it... well, you know about the three types of matter, right?"

"Oh, yeah, solid, liquid, and gas. It's all gotta do with how fast they're moving on the inside."

"Yes, on a molecular level. Solids are mostly fixed, liquids bounce a little, and gas bounces a lot. Now, what state of matter is electricity?"

"It... isn't. It's energy."

"Everything that can be measured is matter. Electrons have weight, and thus follow the same rules. I'll give you an easier example. Think of neon; those signs they make with it? Neon glows when allowed to become hot, but it's not 'burning' so to speak. While it is in a gaseous form when left alone, it becomes a different matter type with different properties when you run power through it; plasma. Plasma is also defined by ionization-"

"What?"

"Sorry, sorry..." She paused before going on. This was actually the most important part; what set plasmas apart from other matter types. "When something is ionized it has gained or lost electrons, giving it a positive or negative charge. Ionization is part of what lets lighting happen; the air in a storm ionizes with one type of charge, the ground with another, and then the lighting strike happens along the connection. Plasmas are all ionized, and thus, respond to magnetic fields-"

"Okay, okay, I think I got the basics!" Chelsea cried out before Lauren could continue. "They never talked about that stuff in science class, though."

"Of course they don't." Lauren grunted as she rolled off of her bed, a smug smile appearing as she paced her dirty bedroom floor. "Most plasmas aren't found on Earth without someone making an effort to create them. They don't teach kids our age stuff like that, even when it's one of the primary matter types." There was a slight dryness in her voice, as if she felt this was a mistake of the education system.

"Wow... so what does this have to do with electricity?"

"Electrical power is the flow of electrons, a current, that is constantly seeking the fastest path to the ground. That current has a lot in common with plasma; electrons are the very building blocks of ionization, they respond to magnetic fields as well as produce their own, arcs of electrical energy glow... why, think about a flash of lighting; a single flash is a release of over a billion volts of power, hotter than the sun and containing enough electrical current to light a one-hundred watt bulb for three months. All that power... pissed away in less than a second. The sky is the biggest damn power-plant there ever was, but we can't gather any of it because we can't store it. Electrical current always has to be on the move, even the best batteries bleed out in a disgustingly short amount of time and cost too much for anyone to care about it."

"...store? I thought you said your thingy was about efficiency..."

"The storage problem is the same as the efficiency problem! Do you know how much of the power made by electrical plants actually makes it to your house? Like half. The rest gets wasted, keeping the grid hot."

"I'm lost."

Lauren fought her frustration, pulling the phone away from her mouth as she pulled in a terse breath and let it out as a sharp sigh, coming back and trying to keep her mind on a single track. "Alright; the device is for conversion. The idea is that if electrical power is indeed matter, which scientific law tells us it is, then it is matter of the plasma type. If it has a plasma form, it follows that the correct process of slowing down the electrons will yield another matter type that contains the same energy but has different properties and is easier to control, contain, and store. The goal of my device is to convert electrical current into a liquid state."

There was dumbfounded silence over the phone for a few moments. Either Chelsea was still lost, or she was impressed. Either way, Lauren was preening. "That sounds pretty crazy. And kinda awesome. But you haven't gotten it to work, yet?"

"No." Lauren's voice was irritated. "As far as the math goes the theory is sound, but the experiment has failed more times than I want to talk about. I've re-worked the device through multiple versions, with Damien getting me parts, but I keep melting cores. Something is going wrong inside the conversion mechanism... something is missing... I was just setting up another test, actually. First of the M generation, I have high hopes for this configuration-"

"But you were supposed to bring the latest model to my house and show me!" Chelsea yelped, sounding surprised and upset. "You can't melt it at your house, you're supposed to do it with me!"

"Chelsea, I can't bring my control box to your house without someone noticing; it's too big. Without a controlled environment, I can't certify the results of any test. Basic scientific method; only change one variable at a time."

"You promised!"

"That was before I made this model! When we talked about it I was on the L3, now it's the M1, and with the addition of a second magnet to narrow the field I need the first test to be a-"

"If all the other tests in your control box failed, do you think that it might be the problem?"

"What...?" Lauren briefly considered, stopping in her pacing to eye the black box on her desk. It sat next to her computer, looking like an unassuming shoe-box. The truth? It was a sealed space with an air filter attached to the back, as well as humidity and temperature control to ensure all atmospheric conditions within were as close to clean-room specs as could be. Good thing too; this August in Minnesota had been like many others; hot and muggy. "I seriously doubt it." She responded, but finally started to yield. "... but if it means that much to you... fine, I'll come test it at your house. It'll give me something to do while you play the next Jak game."

"Ooh, that's right! I finally get to play it. You've already beaten it, right? So you can help if I get stuck?"

Lauren snickered at her friend, wearing a less than happy expression on her face as she thought about what she'd just given in to. Still, she had promised. Better to move on to different subjects than to rake this one over the coals. "Several times, love. I don't play new games when I'm this bent on a project, and that's been... pretty much all of this year. I stick with old favorites so I can go on auto-pilot. Great game, though. Really need to borrow the third one from Alex..."

"Soon as you're finished changing the world, right Loor?"

Her nick-name brought a small smile back to her face. "With any luck, Fury." She said, responding in kind. "With any luck."

With the ambitions of her project, Loor found her age to be the greatest limiting factor of her life. One did not expect a child to change the world, particularly not with spare parts and devices put together in the basement of a split-level house... and yet, that was exactly what she hoped to do. It was the dream, the aspiration that her mind spent nearly every waking moment thinking of, escalating into an obsession that threatened to make her shake apart from time to time.

Whether or not her family truly knew what she was up to in her room was up for debate; her mother and father could agree that was she was brilliant, but how much did they really expect of a girl who was on the cusp of thirteen? Alone time was permitted, knocking was respected- Lauren was very secretive about her project, not wanting to let anyone in a position of authority know what it was she was making until it was perfected- impervious to scrutiny or argument. Her father, an engineer himself, had taught her how to solder, wire, and some basic programming. He'd encouraged her incredible interest in math and physics, and took her shopping for parts when what she needed could be easily obtained from local hardware stores. Her mother also enabled her, but in different ways; paying her daughter for work with animals she raised or the garden she tended to teach her the all-important value of money... money that would quickly be paid to her close friend Damien, whose father had ways of obtaining other materials through his own job and contacts.

Through these channels, she'd managed to mostly work in seclusion... but constant work led to stagnation of the body. When the hour was late, some minutes past midnight, and she could not stand to stare any longer at her computer for the soreness of her eyes, Lauren would slide off of her bed and turn her attention elsewhere. Outside. Here, on the lower level of her split-level home, she could easily crank open a window, remove the screen, and slip out into the sweet, summer night air. After hours upon hours of trouble-shooting, it felt good to give herself a rest... and stealing out of the house in the middle of the night was most easily accomplished through her window.

Standing up from her open window, she drew in a deep and relaxing breath. She bent down again after a moment, to reach back into her room to grab something inside. The simplest assessment of the object was a stick; just as long as she was tall, stripped of all its bark and sanded smooth. To her, it was a treasure that she'd made with her own hands.

Like most children, Lauren and her elder brother Paul had been given to picking up sticks and 'fighting' each other when she'd been very small. It was something she never fully grew out of. She liked the idea of fighting, of striking out and being able to take down anything that made her afraid. As she'd gotten older, she didn't let the idea go. She held onto it, honing in on the fact that she liked long 'weapons' with which to 'fight'- but when her brother Paul shipped out for the National Guard, he was officially too old to play with sticks. Without her brother, she'd sought out a new sparring partner in her friend Damien. Thankfully, he'd been more than open to the idea; he'd been enthusiastic, and knew a thing or two about woodworking. Between the two of them, the object in her hands had been created; a stave of hardened maple wood. She called it her practice weapon, and he had his own; Damien had a pair of shorter sticks that he wielded like daggers, and the two of them would play-fight nearly every time they were together.

At this moment, she was alone... but that didn't stop her from bringing it with her. Breathing in the night air, she strode away from her window, away from the east side of her house and towards the long grass that grew untamed beyond the more regularly mowed lawn. The grass was wet, and soaked the hems of her PJ pants as she went further and further away from the house. Beyond the area of tall grass, there was a stream that cut through her family's land. Further beyond that, woods rose up in a mostly birch thicket, with the occasional wild plum tree. To the south of the house, swampland dominated the property, and contained many a lost shoe from misguided expeditions to explore it. To the north, a small thicket of more birch and a single, massive oak tree that reached up towards the star-strewn sky. Further beyond that, the rural county road that connected the township to the nearby town of Kingston, Minnesota.

In her head, she was a universe away. Her eyes were closed, and her practice weapon was shifting fluidly from one hand to the other as she walked a faint path she'd worn in the grass with her regular outings. Right hand to left hand, left hand to right hand, the length of maple turning in her fingers as it easily slipped between her palms. She liked the weight of it, liked the way it felt to indulge in the fantasy of 'combat practice' when she had no formal training. Moving just felt good, getting up out of her chair and giving the analytical part of her brain a break.

In her head, she could have an enemy. She could be set upon by a wild animal, a person who deserved a beating, or any other manner of foe. Her body could respond to that imagining, and she could lash out without hesitation. Her strikes could be fast and punctuated to set a faux opposition off balance, before winding up for a vicious finisher. She could share with her body the euphoria of tension and release that her mind already knew from the cycle of study and discovery... and, in the process, clear her mind of the things that didn't matter.

Like how frustrated she was with Chelsea.

The thought became the enemy, and she killed it. She dispatched it with a violent crack to an invisible head, and a barrage of quick strikes to unknowable ribs for the brief and irrational wave of rage it caused. Why the fuck do I put up with her? was a question she could attack, throw out of her mind and strike down into the wet blades of grass, and leave trampled.

It's not ready yet.

One end of the stave was thrown backwards into the gut of a new adversary, a heel planted and her body wheeled around for the other end to swipe out and force it away. Her shoulders were warming up, and her core felt tight against her bones in the way that she felt she had full control of her every movement.

It's going to break. You're going to look stupid in front of your best friend. It might even start on fire. How are you going to explain that to her mom?

Fire, fire drenched her face as embarrassed and angry blush bloomed under cool moonlight, and she threw herself forward with a guttural cry. Headfirst, as if she expected her brow to collide with solid mass. Instead, she halted herself and flipped one end of the weapon upwards with exceptional force. The arc halted where a person's chin would have been, then withdrew for a dizzying spin that added momentum into a sideways strike.

Pause was given. The world around her was alive, with the sounds of frogs in the swam and crickets in the grass. Somewhere, and owl hooted.

Her head was silent. She'd quieted it. Quieted it with her proclivity towards pretending.

"For every age, there is a time of trial."

Lauren sat on the floor with her legs crossed, digging her device out of her green backpack as Chelsea sat in front of the small TV in her bedroom to start a new game on Jak II. It was odd for Chelsea to take the controller for a platforming game where she usually rocked the J-RPGs and shooters, but with Lauren occupied with setting up her test and Chelsea too impatient to hold still, it made a handy distraction.

The two of them honestly made an odd couple, despite the fact that they both had the reclusive nature going for them. Lauren could be described as nothing short of brash in both appearance and conduct. Two weeks form her thirteenth birthday and carrying an early-bloom b-cup, she wore a sports bra to crush it down and a loose tank top. Dishwater blond, short-backed, and blue eyes dulled by sleep deprivation, no one really expected a mind like hers between those ears. Between her strong jaw and defined shoulders, she could actually pass off as a boy if the mood so took her. Chelsea, in contrast, was a list of fragile oddities. She was small, underweight, and white as a ghost. Born two months premature, she'd been turned reclusive by her doting and worry-wart mother. Socially stunted, she was also the bearer of a strip of silver hair among her chocolate brown locks; a condition Lauren had been too keen to inform her was called poliosis circumscripta... not that knowing the name of it had done anything to keep kids from making fun of her when she tried to explain it was natural, not dyed.

Lauren was one of the few who knew Chelsea carried a not-to-be-fucked-with rage under that shy shell. One day, that girl was gonna snap. Sometimes she hoped she would be there to see the poor sod who set her off. Other times, she half-expected she'd be the one to set Chelsea off. The idea was actually scary.

That was where the nick-name 'Fury' had come from. Lauren knew Chelsea had it in her. Some day, that ugly rage was going to come out.

"How long is it gonna take for you to set up?" Chelsea asked, glancing away from the opening for a half-second.

"Not long." Loor answered with a shrug and a dull smile, pulling out a small black box that looked just large enough to hold an apple within and setting it aside. Then came some tubing, some wires with a specially shaped plug, a manual breaker switch to cut the current in the likely event that something went wrong, and finally a cord that would plug into a wall socket. She quickly started putting things together, opening the black box and drawing out a silver-colored metal ball. There was a clear division where the two hemispheres had been fused together, two holes in it like the two poles on a globe. The wires with their specifically shaped end plugged into the jack at the top of the device, the tube connecting to the bottom with a gasket sealing it.

She had to stare at it for a second. This was her baby. More than two years of work; obsession, really. An idea put together from a theory of liquid energy, and a awareness that the world she lived in had a growing power crisis that had tensions as well as prices rising all over the world.

All she had to do was make it work. Then she wouldn't have to pretend anymore. She wouldn't have to imagine changing the world. She'd really do it.

"Is that it?" Chelsea asked, leaving the game paused where it automatically did so to explain the auto-save function. Jak stood in the fortress, Daxter on his shoulder, just waiting for a player to guide him through his prison-break. "Looks pretty simple..."

"The inside is where all the complicated stuff is." Lauren answered, connecting the wires and power cord to their respective ends of the breaker-switch. Finally, she pulled out a glass mason jar from her pack and set the device on top of it, the tube hanging down inside. If this worked, the liquid would need somewhere to go. "It uses layers of conductors and insulators, as well as electromagnets, to manipulate the electrons and trap-"

"Loor." Chelsea gave her a pointed look, reminding her that a full explanation would be useless and a waste of time. "So, what now? We just plug it in?"

"You wanna do the honors?" Loor asked, holding the plug up for her to take.

"You sure?" She seemed surprised that Lauren was offering. The girl was very jealous of her creations and who got the credit for any thought that came out of her mind. The idea of letting someone else plug in her creation seemed... odd.

"Sisters keep promises." She answered with a shrug. "I tried to back out... call it my apology and get it over with." Her tone grew uncomfortable, looking away with a slight pout on her face as she cited the relationship they had. The two girls had only been friends for a few years, but they called each other sisters. Siblings by way of friendship, as bad as they both were at it.

"Thanks, Onee-san." Fury giggled, using a Japanese term for 'big sister' as she took the cord to the nearest wall plug and served a short backwards glance before plugging it in.

Lauren scooted back a little, one hand on the breaker-switch and looking for signs of the conversion going wrong. The mechanism had almost no moving parts, but a faint 'tick' came from it several times a second.

"Is it supposed to sound like that?" Chelsea asked.

"Shhhh..." Loor was staring at the tube leading out of the ball, damning the feeling of hope that was rising up in her chest. It was a feeling she'd felt with every test, every model. A feeling that had been crushed just as many times.

"What is that?"

Lauren's eyes came back, the bubble in her chest expanding as a dark colored substance began to ooze out of the bottom of the device and through the connected tube. Slowly, a near-black liquid made its way down the tube, a droplet suspending at the end and small arcs of energy reaching out to dance against the sides of the jar.

Without thinking, Loor crawled forward, abandoning the kill-switch.

The droplet fell into the jar as she picked it up, staring at it. "Oh my God." She spoke in awe and shock, gobsmacked. "It works. Chelsea, it actually works..."

Chelsea's hand clapped on her shoulder as a second droplet fell into the jar, the two drops coming together like quicksilver. The substance flowed to the lowest corner of the jar, where Loor's hand cupped it in wonder while her other hand held her device to keep it in place. The two girls watched in wonder and, in Loor's case, growing pride.

She wasn't just a crazy kid. She was a true child-genius. Here was the proof. Finally, she had validated proof.

Then she felt pain. Sharp, jolting, hot pain- the kind of pain she'd felt in her life before.

Some years ago, Lauren had been electrocuted by an animal fence. The sensation was one she struggled to describe, but could never forget; the sort of rude yanking at her nerves that made her body act outside of her orders. At the time, that had been jumping away from the fence dropping onto her butt.

In this moment, it was freezing in place as she tried and failed to scream. Even her jaw could not comply as she willed it to open, to let even a squeak leave her lungs as she experienced horror and alarm. Her hand, her hand- there was where it burned, where jolting and juddering pain shot through her in continuous arcs and set her whole nervous system ablaze. On her shoulder, she could feel Chelsea's hand, squeezing too-tight and unmoving.

Locked in place, she looked only forward, only into the jar. There, she saw the dark substance that her little device had produced. She saw how it had eaten through the tubing that led down from the device, as well as the glass of the jar. It was touching her hand, but Lauren could not perceive it was wet. All she could feel was the sensation of a rolling electrocution, many times more intense than an animal fence, and a terrible ache as her muscles grew so tense it felt as if they might pull away from her bones.

Her vision was narrowing. Was she even breathing? She couldn't take a breath, she realized. Her ribs had clamped down over her lungs. All at once, she knew she was going to pass out.

She had one thought, a fleeting whimper in her head, before she lost it.

Eco. Electricity as a liquid is eco.