Welcome one and all to something of a discarded idea... or perhaps it was a dream of mine. Either way, it was too delicious to throw away... So some quick notes for those who may not be familiar with my work.

Loor is an OC of mine who ended up in the dark warrior program. When she escaped she kinda shot Errol. She was captured once in the fanfiction she's part of, Vacation or War. If this had ever made it into the story, it would have been set after that encounter. Lyra is her darker self.

For those who ARE familiar with my work.

THIS IS NOT PART OF THE STORY VACATION OR WAR IN ANY WAY. JUST A PLOT BUNNY.

Are we ready? Are we set?

I don't own Jak, Daxter, Errol, or any other trademarked characters.

-Insane Fangirls Productions Presents-

The Animal
Part 1

If there was one thing Loor had learned in the past few weeks... 'don't walk alone at night' would likely top the list.

Of course she was thinking that now. She'd never considered that the slums might not be safe for a girl like her, walking around for a breath of fresh air. Not that she wasn't wanted by the whole of the KG for escaping, and Errol himself out to wring her neck personally. No, she hadn't thought about such things before she left the underground without any of her weapons, not even grabbing her boots for a little after-hours stroll to clear her head of the day's events.

Her head needed a lot more than clearing now. She'd taken a gun stock to the back of the head. A KG must have recognized her. At the time it was like all of her senses had suddenly cut out, like a TV getting switched off and leaving her disoriented and confused. Now, as her vision swam back in blurry swaths of color, pain radiated from the base of her skull; where she'd been struck.

She blinked, several times, trying desperately to figure out what was going on. There was more than the pain of impact on the back of her neck. She could feel something there. Something that wasn't supposed to be there.

Her back was against something cold, and her body was upright despite her recently unconscious condition. The colors that wouldn't settle into a proper image were all various shades of battleship gray. The cold was a sharp and precise feeling in contrast, under her feet as well as her back, the smooth feel of metal extending in loops around her wrists and ankles.

She got a sick feeling stuck in the pit of her stomach. She knew what it was like to be strung up this way. She remembered it from a time not too far past, though she'd been in the chair then.

Another spot of cold pushed her chin up from where it had been resting on her chest, her eyes tracking to the side to get another wash of color. The warm color of skin, a flare of red, and two dim spaces of intense brown.

"Finally waking up, freak?"

Her vision slowly focused as she realized her predicament.

The room was a barren cell, likely within the fortress. There was nothing inside, and the space was rather small; maybe a ten foot box. There was a door on the wall across from her, but she'd be a fool to think there wouldn't be several guards outside, waiting for an escape attempt. Glaring up at where she'd been bolted to the wall by cold bands of metal was Errol, one of his pistols propping up her chin as she stared down her nose at him.

She swallowed her fear, feeling like she was also wearing a collar of some kind. It wasn't part of her metal bondage; it felt like leather. Or something else that was tough but still malleable. It shifted as she swallowed, making the intrusive pain at the back of her head stab into her, as if there were pins. She began to identify the fact that there was some sort of object placed at the back of her head, at the top of the spinal column. There was a band around her neck, holding it on. It felt like it was... hooked into her skin.

"What the hell...?" She tried to shake her head, but doing so only hurt her more. The thing at the back of her skull was rather securely attached.

"About what I said. I never expected you to fall right into my lap after all the trouble we had bringing you in the first time." Errol snickered, some of his insanity leaking through as he holstered the gun and looked up at her with his hands on his hips. "But here you are... and I have a game I'd like to play with you."

"If you're planning on torturing me, you can skip it and just shoot me." She spat, both verbally and literally, her mind still coming around. Errol's grinning face brought her back to a dark place. This man alone had nearly destroyed everything when he first captured her. Last time she was strapped down in his presence she'd been too afraid to speak so brazenly. Now, she was too angry to be afraid.

"Torture?" He sounded mildly offended. "Oh no, this is a much more... scientific operation. As interesting as you are, there's someone else I'd rather like to meet."

She stared at him, confused at first as his face split into a wide grin. She didn't trust that face, nor his assertion that this wouldn't be torture. It was Errol; his proximity to her was torture... and she had no hope of an easy escape. No one knew that she was gone; not even Jak. She made sure of it when she left the underground... and she highly doubted she'd get help from the inside again; Ryan was clearly one-of-a-kind. "Who...?" She began to ask, still-cloudy eyes blinking as she bit her lip to try and regain some cognitive ability.

Errol turned on his heel, walking to the far end of the room and grinning. "Does she have a name?" He asked as he got to the wall, rounding once more to face her. Once there something about the room changed; there was a metal grill coming down from the ceiling that was separating off the two feet of space that Errol was standing in. It looked like steel mesh, holes big enough to see through but tightly woven enough that a person wouldn't even be able to lace their fingers through it.

She stared at this grill instead of answering him, eyes wide and curious as her jaw worked on keeping all the bile she wanted to spit at him in her head and out of the way. Her rage didn't matter. She had to figure out how to escape.

"It's a fence." He said to her gaze. "If she's half as strong as the other one, she'll probably break right out of those restraints... but this should give her a little more pause for thought, don't you think?"

"She..." Loor shook her groggy brain before she finally got it. "Wait... Lyra!"

The thing at the back of her neck. Hooked in to deliver something, anything from an electrical shock to poison, directly to her brain.

But she knew exactly what he was going to pump into her system.

"Ah, she does have a name." Errol snickered, wearing a grin that said he felt like he'd won something. "Nice speaking with you, Loor, but we should get started."

"No!" She bellowed, suddenly frantic. It was one thing that Errol had her trapped and strapped up, but the fact that he wanted to bring Lyra out was a whole 'nother ball game. The animal would kill him; that fence looked like nothing. Lyra would cut through it like warm butter, and then rip him apart. "She'll kill you! She doesn't think when she comes to the surface! She doesn't have the ability!"

"Ability?" Errol's grin only widened as Loor felt the sparks; a rush of power zinged down her spine and up into her brain, making her bellow and arch away from the wall she'd been locked to. "Or time?"

She screamed as she resisted the raw energy suddenly coursing through her, but a direct jolt of eco to the brain was almost impossible to ignore. Not for her, she couldn't ignore the pain, period.

But Lyra was brought to attention, unable to resist.

The transformation could not be denied. Loor's scream of pain became a roar that was almost pleasured, her skin turning white as the girl's psyche was shoved out of the way for a more beastly mentality to take over. Sparks made her black hair stand on end, a light coating of fur spreading to her ears and down her spine as the purple sparks raced over her skin. Eyes formally closed in agony now sprung open, pure black and looking about eagerly for something to hunt as claws came forth from feeble human nails. Fur that had followed her spine now led further to a tail, putting the final touches on a creature more animal than woman.

Lyra roared again, realizing that she'd been restrained. Muscles overpowered by eco yanked forward, causing the steel shackles to stretch and ultimately break with a squeal of metal ripping away from the wall. Pulling forward she freed herself and shook as her body instantly took to a four-legged posture, tail up as her black eyes continued the search for prey.

There was a thin wall between herself and another creature. Human, she noted, but not fearful of her. She smelt no sweat on him, detected no anxiety in his posture...

How foolish. If she wasn't mistaken, there was a curve to the lips of this man that actually indicated he was pleased with her presence, not at all disturbed or even the slightest bit shocked. At first she might have had the capacity to be puzzled, but faced with such stupidity she couldn't resist her natural instincts; something so dumb deserved to be dead.

With a purring growl she gathered her legs under herself, kicking off the cold metal floor to spring forward, talons out to rend the thin wall of metal mesh and get at the silly creature's flesh on the other side. He didn't even flinch as she flew at him, that curve on his face only turning more upwards.

She let a scream out as the net of metal caught her and burned her with blue light and sparks. At once she twisted away, landing back on her side of the barricade with a frustrated snarl, getting back up as the fur on her tail and the line that continued up her spine stood straight up in agitation. Her ears laid flat to her head as she hissed at the man that was officially out of her reach, bearing her fangs while scratching the floor.

She didn't have time for these games. Her instinct was to hunt; to kill quickly and revel in the blood. She enjoyed using her fangs; ripping open tissue-soft flesh and enjoying the visceral spectacle of it all; people had so many interesting parts to rip. The neck was a clear favorite, but the chest was also fun to rip open and pull pieces out. Major muscles could be bitten and torn, fingers broken and often slashed right off, bones snapped and skin peeled away like the outside of a fruit; all with particular sounds and sensations to go with the different acts... but she was instead trapped by this strange fence, and running out of time, as always.

She never had enough time.

The human on the other side of the metal fence took this time to speak to her. At first she didn't pay attention, instead pacing her cage and growling at him from time to time as he paused, seemingly waiting for a reaction. All of her hair was standing up; an illusion of being bigger than she was that didn't work since she wasn't completely furred. She didn't look at him either, getting fed up and attempting to attack the wall again.

Once more she burned for it, screaming as the smell of her own singed hair made it into her sensitive nose.

He was still talking, she noted. She didn't care. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to rip him. He must have trapped her; rage overtook her mind with the desperate need to make him pay.

There was only one thing that broke that. One thing that made her listen.

"Lyra."

Her spoken name made her snap to attention, staring at him from where she'd been knocked to the floor by the zappy-fence. Mid-snarl, she became quiet and stared at him, holding still in her attempts to roll back to her feet and figure out another way to get around the blockade and into him. She imagined ripping off his fingers one by one, perhaps amputating each of his toes as well before moving on to his hands and feet, dicing him into smaller and smaller pieces until he died. He was the only one here that she could see, so there was no need to focus her energy anywhere else.

But he spoke her name. She knew the sound of her name from Loor saying it out loud every now and then. It sounded different on his voice. He saw her differently; he could tell from the tone. She also knew his voice, but didn't take time to analyze. She didn't have that time. Eco was always limited; she had until the fatigue took her, and she couldn't waste a second of it.

He spoke again, but it was just like the things Loor said; besides her name she didn't understand it. At first he stopped and started several times, as if he was testing her reactions against whatever he said, but he eventually seemed to get that all meaning was lost on her.

He then turned his head slightly; she noticed there was a door on the wall beyond him. A portal to the outside. It got her attention instantly as he spoke again; words intended for someone outside. There were more people around, and an escape. Such things excited her immensely; more squishy meat-bags for her to rip apart if she could just get around the stupid wall in the middle of the room.

She was suddenly distracted by a surge; almost exactly indentical to the one that had brought her to the living realm; a cry of pleasure escaped her, purring as a wash of pure eco raced through her veins and made her want to roll about on the ground as if it were covered in silk. Her reaction led her attention to find the source, seeking where the rush had come from.

Rolling to her feet and looking away from her prey, she realized there was something strapped to her. A tube was coming out of the wall, turned black by its contents. She could feel a collar around her neck, something that made her want to rip her own throat out in trying to get it off, but she was held back by another feeling.

Something was hooked into the back of her neck... and it was feeding her. She could feel a constant flow of eco; infinite. She hadn't noticed before; she hadn't been paying attention... but now her attention had been called to it, and she was putting some pieces together.

Her time wasn't limited. That's why this man was wasting his time, trying to talk to her. They both had time; her to figure out how to escape this prison, and he to try and... well, she wasn't sure what his goal was, and she didn't honestly care.

She turned to face him once more, but she didn't hiss at him. It was clear he had given this to her. He'd given her the ability to last longer in this world, and live outside Loor's control. For that, she purred at him, her fur settling a little as she sat and stared at him intently, tail bobbing back and forth as she watched him.

She expected him to do something now that she'd calmed; that seemed to be his first and initial goal.

But in calming she came to realize who she was staring at. Her nose and eyes finally led her to the finer points of this human; red hair and insane brown eyes, along with tattoos, were things burned into Loor's memory and so were things Lyra knew as well. The scent was also familiar; one she'd had between her talons before.

She stared at Errol; her creator.

The purr became stronger, a grin spreading across her lips and making her fangs peek out as the upper lip stretched too thin to cover her maw.

He returned that grin; turning his head to the outside once more and speaking again. That irritated her; she had no idea what he was saying; she couldn't communicate with him, though he clearly wanted to be communicating with her. What was the point of this? She wouldn't sit still for long; she didn't want to. She wanted to act.

He approached the wall that stood between them, reaching out for it. Her hair stood on end again; what was he doing?

He touched it.

Nothing happened.

Was he trying to tell her it was safe?

She carefully let her hands to the floor, slinking closer and staring at the fence suspiciously, growling softly as she looked at his fingers. They were laced through now; she could have tried to bite at him. He was wide open; fingers bled incredibly well, and she did love the feeling of hot droplets on her skin.

Instead she lifted her nose up to carefully sniff at his hands, growling softly again before quickly touching her face to the fence.

She pulled back just as quickly, yowling. He was laughing at her. It had still burnt her! She glared, roaring at his deception. He'd tricked her into touching it again for his own entertainment. By now he'd let go, pulling his digits back to the safe side and smirking.

He then spoke one other word she understood.

"Eco."

He then mimed touching the fence and pulling back. She narrowed her eyes at him, but it was simple enough to understand; the fence burnt her because of the eco she lived off of. Because it was in her body, the wall would shock her.

He was making the point that she was effectively trapped. She would not be free of this cage as long as there was eco in her body, and starving herself of it would allow Loor back to the surface; neither option allowed her to go after revenge for how her nose currently felt after getting touched to the painful surface, but the only other option was to do nothing. To sit in complacent captivity; alive but stupidly occupying space without any purpose.

She refused. She couldn't. She roared at him again, throwing a physical tantrum. Claws dug into the metal of the floor and walls, weight slammed onto every surface besides the fence, all noise she was capable of making getting forced out of her throat. Sparks of eco lashed out from her person, destructive waves that she hoped would reach him but were sadly adsorbed by the same thing that had burnt her. She even went to far as to grab it again, though it only garnered another scream as the heat and pain forced her back against the wall where she was leashed.

And it was a leash. The tube may have fed eco into her system; given her unlimited time in this living realm, but while it took one limit away it gave her new one; her mobility was hampered for fear of breaking the connection. Even as she raged at her bondage, the tugs she felt on the collar around her neck made her movements less rambunctious.

He was laughing at her, standing just beyond that infuriating wall with his arms crossed and a smug smile upon his face. He spoke, but she didn't know nor care why.

She wanted to get to him. Dominate him. Kill him. She wanted to rip and tare him in the most desperate of ways.

Those wants were denied as he turned and left by the door that was also out of her reach.

She was left alone in the cell, still letting out howls of rage.