Jak stared at Yuki, who was looking at the landscape passing, from the mountains to the snake-like rivers. To the drown ruins of the old.
Jak had spent time with her in ruins back in that past life. She was younger. Much younger than the past life she had saved him. Truth be told, Jak hated that they met as enemies. He would have preferred if that they have met normally. The only good thing was that he wasn't forced to kill the woman that saved him in the past life.
It was probably odd to her. That someone would spare someone's life just because of someone saving said man. If only she knew that it was her who dragged him out of that pit. The one who inspired him to rise back up, plant his feet firmly on the ground and rise up.
It was her saving him that pushed him forward. A pat on the back that gave him strength to continue fighting the fight. To help those who were in the future as he grew older and older.
Even though he was in this new life. In this life that made him strong. He couldn't forget about the past. The regrets. The horrors. All of it remained. Just because he got to redo in a stronger body. It didn't mean that what he did would suddenly be gone. He could not forget so easily. His body was young, so young and strong, yet his soul was old.
Jak wondered what would have happen if he took that hand. If he ran away from all of this. Not minding a goddamn thing about the world, the beluas, and the etherians who decided they want to rule over good men like cattle.
He stayed strong in front of children, young men and women, and even the old. Here was Old Jak still fighting and carrying young men to die. He should be resting in some apartment and he still runs around throwing kids who called him godfather to battle. He sends forty to the battle and they would return with ten. Sometimes there were no one who would return and he would return with his bowed. Cursed by their loved ones why he was the only one who survived.
"Why is it always you, Old Jak? Why is it always you?"
"I don't know," Jak would reply all the time.
There are times where he would wait for days on a rendezvous point. Waiting, begging that someone would come home with him.
He had stopped counting how many funerals he had attended. How many young men that honored to act as their father in their weddings. How many of them returned home in bags if they were lucky. All he had in that past life was a single room. A single room that he rested for four hours if he was fortunate enough to have a rest. He was called all the time because all the good men who knew how to pilot and drive had died. He had manned weapons. Pushed the buttons on those who they called enemies until none of them were left and even to those who he called sons.
The Valkyrie was their home and their hope. It was only fair that he would defend it as well. He understood that it was better to die than let the enemy take a step.
The thing about steel is that steels get battered. It gets nicked and bent and rust.
He had to polish that steel on his head. He had lived long enough to learn how to fight by steeling himself. Not because he was particularly good at it. But because he was lucky enough to be the Outrider who survived the longest. He had to steel his mind. Steel his soul long enough until the day he died.
All that resolve just because someone dragged him out of hell. The wise woman that just left after she had saved him. One of the reasons why he had leaned on becoming steel was in front of him.
That's why all he could feel when seeing her was pain. An awful pain that reminded him that this was a new life. A new world where he had changed some things. He might as well call the memories he owned as a nothing more than a delusion or a long painful dream.
Yuki was not the same Yuki he knew. He might as well call the people that he knew as someone different from them.
Jak had thought this place was a parallel world different to that world. The only explanation he could bring to muster was that the amount of ether released that day had caused an anomaly that sent his consciousness or soul into this world.
To spend years fighting again. Jak knew he could do it. As long as he focused his mind into it. Act like steel in front of everyone. Never let that void inside of him corrupt that steel encasing his heart.
But she was the worst person to be with. She makes him feel so weak. As if he was still the same guy who found himself waiting for death, only to be saved by someone.
"Why do you go to battle?" Jak asked himself. He had been hearing that from old friends before. Who had given up on fighting in the front and stayed inside the base. He would have been given the right to stay inside the base, but he thought that it was not right to stay inside while the young died. They would have fought like him if their wounds allowed them to fight.
Even now Jak felt uneasiness at having a young body. It was a perfectly fine body in battle, but when he was idle like this. It felt uncomfortable. The wounds and ache that he had accepted he would carry for the rest of his life was no longer there. It made him feel wary. It disturbed him.
"You've been staring at me for quite a while now," a voice pushed those thoughts away. "I know that you have that mask all the time now, but doesn't mean I don't know when someone's staring up my ass crack."
She was vulgar. She still had that youthful etherian cockiness. Her smile became a frown. She swaggered in front of him with her chainsword dangling.
"Take that mask off will you?"
Jak retracted the mask. "What do you want?"
She looked up. Her arms crossed. "Nothing much. Just want to say to take your mask. Do you find it that better to be inside that?"
"It has a cooling system. It purifies the air and I don't have to smell the putrid water down below. We don't have your talents of purifying the air into cold."
"True," she shrugged. "A shame to hide your face, then again a ghost doesn't necessary need one. It doesn��t excite you? This kind of thing?"
"It does. I've been flying. Never been this far from Aured City without proper gear. Been far with my flyer."
"Nice ride. Haven must have been good to earn money from killing my people."
"Killing isn't new. Just because I am good at killing your kind, doesn't mean that you're not good at it as well."
"Humans always climbing alongside the etherians. Do you know that most your technology is incompatible with our blood?"
"Indeed it is," Edmund raised his chin. He was looking at her with scrutiny. "What do you expect? Even our most enhanced humans are unable to keep up."
"Until you appeared," she said with heavy voice. "Killing an etherian isn't that much of an accomplishment, but to keep up with the Commander of the Recon Korp and killing a beluaman at the sixth layer of power. You are a testament that you humans aren't stopping yet. Not to mention that your ghosts have spread far."
"The Black Hand must have been so free lately. Letting you come roam around without care."
"It was not like this," said Yuki with displeasure. "But since a certain group had started their wholesale slaughter. We haven't be been able to escape. I don't know what you fed them, Jak. But most of the Deckers and the Black Hand are out in the open."
Jak didn't answer. He had revealed the location of the Black Hand and the Deckers Machina Cult. He pulled them out of the roots. Left it all for Helga and Olga to decide on what to do. They probably had wanted to take the Estrella as allies against the Ghosts. But they got to the Estrella, and solve their problems. Minor gangs won't have the guts to create new ones. The Boss of the Estrella won't allow them after Duncan had his head on a spike. Estrella feared the Ghosts. Jak made it so that they don't forget that there was a single person who hunted them down. He wanted to escape Haven's eyes, but that won't stop them from coming to the under-city. It was foolish in the first place to not anticipate what was coming.