Authors note.
Hello and welcome to my story! I might have more to say later, but for now I will let you get on with reading it as soon as I've stopped myself getting slapped with copyright infringement.

Jak and Daxter, and all associated characters, locations names and concepts belong to Naughty Dog. I merely play in their sandbox and feel thankful that they're kind enough not to stomp on my castle. If it's in this story and is not accredited to someone else, it belongs to me.

Lyra could hardly keep her eyes open as the venom coursed through her system, the world was hazy as she felt heard footsteps coming towards her.
"Sedate her."
She felt a needle pierce through her skin and welcomed the relief from the venoms pain.
Waking up groggily she heard movement about her, she must be in a hospital. But then why did she have the feeling she wasn't safe?
Keeping her eyes closed and being careful not to move, Lyra noted that the pain of the venom was no longer there. It had either been cured or simply run its course.
"The green eco did its job, the venom has been flushed out but..."
'Green eco? Is that some kind of anti-venom?'
"But what?"

"She reacted strangely to it, instead of slowly sinking into her body it was absorbed immediately. Then it seemed to travel through her as if she was directing it instead of the way it usually just circulates until it's used up. It was also used incredibly efficiently, there was even enough left to fix the deformity in her ears."
'Deformity? My ears aren't deformed.'
"Did you get scans?"
"Yes Sir, both before and during the application of the eco."
"Show me."
This wasn't a hospital, in a hospital nobody was called Sir and Lyra was fairly sure the beds weren't made of metal. She assumed it was metal, whatever she was laid out on it was cold and uncomfortable. She was glad she'd decided to keep quiet.
"Amazing, this subject could be just what we need for Project Changeling."
'Subject? Project Changeling? This definitely isn't a hospital. It sounds more like...a lab. From the use of Sir it can be assumed a military lab.'
"Sir look at her vitals. She's awake."
She heard quick footsteps heading towards her, a large hand grabbing her and shaking her.
'Don't let them know you heard.'
"Where...where am I? What's going on? I remember...being stung."
"Where are you from? The scans show almost no eco exposure, it's like before you came here you'd never been anywhere near it."
'Don't answer, deflect.'
"What's eco? Why is everything so shiny and pink? The sparklies are pretty."
The large, armoured man grunted as she looked around in a blissful daze.
"She's clearly either simple or still recovering, prepare an eco tank for her immediately, she'll be of no other use."
"Yes Sir."
A few minutes later Lyra was lifted by two more strangely armoured men, one taking each arm and dragging her into the next room. There was a large tank, filled with a thick yellow and green liquid. There were swirls of red too, and occasionally...blue sparks?

What felt like an oxygen tube was pushed into each of her nostrils before she was raised up and dumped carelessly into the tank. She submerged completely almost instantly and it burned, it burned worse than the venom, worse than anything she'd ever felt before. She opened her mouth to scream and instantly regretted it as the liquid went in, burning her mouth and throat as well. Lyra was almost certain she could feel her skin dissolving, but that couldn't be right, it was taking too long. There was another sensation too, under the horrific pain. It felt soft, soothing, but not nearly soothing enough to subtract from the agony.
Why did she feel like she was dissolving?
She didn't have time to try and work it out as she felt her brain begin to shut down. No doubt a defence mechanism to avoid this pain.
As her mind pulled her in, trying to isolate her from what every nerve in her body was screaming, she managed a final question before slipping into a dream like state.
'How did this happen?'

As if glad for the further chance to distract her, Lyra's mind began to provide answers.

She was staring so intently into her book that Dan was almost worried his sister was going to be absorbed by it. He'd never understood the way she read, they were twins but aside from a few common interests and a far above average intelligence they really didn't have a huge amount in common. He'd always been hands on and content to learn as he went, but Lyra refused to make a sandwich without first consulting a book and reading up on the correct buttering technique, the different ways of cutting it and which fillings would strike the best balance between taste and a nutritional, balanced diet.

She was reading when she first noticed it, she don't know how she'd missed it before. It was so obvious. Cultures all over the world, entirely isolated from each other, and they'd developed alphabets with some admittedly large differences, but ultimately the same basic structure. Civilisations had leapt ahead in advancement around similar times. The Roman empire in particular gained knowledge that once lost took hundreds of years to rediscover.
Isolated and widespread cultures alike had idols that they worshipped and myths that were astoundingly similar, even though it was absolutely impossible for them to have been in contact with each other.

Grabbing books on the history of other cultures she'd begun reading through them, page by page, detail by detail. She'd been up all night, two nights in fact, so engrossed in her work that she barely noticed that she'd been reading books and her notes and making new notes and cross referencing for over 30 hours. Romans, Aztecs, Native Americans, Ancient China, Egypt, India - all of them shared details they shouldn't, smaller cultures did too. But it seemed every great empire had been established by an inexplicable social or technological leap. Dan had later told her that he'd found her asleep, still skimming pages and furiously scribbling notes.

A hand was on her shoulder, shaking her. She remembered, it was Dan trying to wake her up. He said that even asleep she just complained that he nearly made her ruin her notes.
But this hand was shaking her roughly, Dan's shake had been gentle, brotherly. This wasn't him.

"So, you survived."
"How? I was...burning...dissolving."
She looked at herself to confirm what she felt, she was absolutely fine. There wasn't a mark on her.

"It was a dream?"
"No, no it wasn't. What you remember is exactly what happened. You see, it's the mix of yellow and green eco. It took us a few tries to balance it properly, but the yellow eco burns through your flesh and muscle, while the green eco repairs it."
She stared at him, briefly speechless.
"Why? Why would you do that?"
"In the hope that with eco running through your system like that for long enough, you'll adapt and be able to store it."
"But, how can I survive? Even with the...green eco? The stress that would put on my body is incredible."
"Yes, we found that out through trial and error too. We've added red eco to fortify your body, and blue eco to increase your metabolism. It will speed up the process and help you survive it, but you have about twenty days, then no amount of red and green eco can keep your body from just giving up. Better hope you adapt before then."
Lyra went back to staring at him blankly. He didn't care, there was no concern for her, just the hard fact that if she didn't produce the desired result quickly enough they'd let the experiment kill her.

It was only when she looked at the man's face to see if there was any sympathy there that she noticed his ears, they were incredibly long and pointed. She reached up and touched her own, letting out a small yelp when she felt them to be just as long and pointed. The man laughed.
"Yeah, the green eco fixed your deformity."
So they were all like this. Why else would they think her previous ears had been a deformity, and this was the correct way to appear? That meant they weren't human, and unless she'd missed something big, that meant she wasn't on Earth. Her revelation was interrupted by a plate being slapped down onto the table next to her.
"There's your rations, you've got five minutes to eat before you go back in the tank."
She felt her heart rate soar. She couldn't go back in there.

'Deal with that next, five minutes to eat, use them first, no point in plotting an escape and collapsing from malnutrition.'
She looked at the plate nervously. Things were clearly different here, what if the food was toxic to her?
Well, one way to find out. She carefully placed a bit of food on her tongue, hoping it would warn her if the food was dangerous to her body. It tasted...ok, pleasant would not be the word to describe it, but it didn't taste like it would kill her.

Lyra barely managed to finish her food before she was dumped back into the eco tank. This time she didn't scream, and felt her mind recognise the sensation and instantly try to protect her again, taking her back to earlier memories, trying to help her make sense of how she got here.

"What is it Dan?"
"You were uh...sleep studying again. How do you even do that?"
She'd been doing it for years, she'd fall asleep studying and just continue. He was never sure whether to be concerned or jealous, she always awoke fairly well rested and with a great deal more work done. But it couldn't be healthy, could it? More concerning, it was always a signal she'd found something that bothered her. Some part of her dissection of the entire history of the world wasn't fitting in to how things should have gone.
"I honestly don't know. I think of what I need to do and if it's important I just keep doing it."
"What is it this time?"
She considered how to explain, how to tell someone that the world was wrong without sounding insane. So far there were only three explanations for the connections that accounted for everything. A hugely advanced culture spread all over the world before history began, died out and parts were eventually rediscovered but integrated instead of recorded as history. There was some way of communicating that was either lost, destroyed or forgotten, possibly one people weren't even entirely aware of...subconscious telepathic communication of ideas. Finally, and most likely, the myths were true and the most likely things to cause those myths would be aliens. How do you tell someone that you were sleep studying because you think another species influenced the evolution of your planet without sounding insane?
"Uh...well...there are a lot of statues and stories"
"Yes Lyra, amazingly, in the entire history of humanity, we've come up with a few."
"BUT THEY'RE THE SAME!"
"So someone was stealing someone else's ideas? That's hardly a revelation."
"No, you don't understand. Cultures, entirely separate, they never ever met, they have the same myths and statues"
"I think you'd better explain properly"
Despite their differences, this was one of the reasons she couldn't ask for a better twin brother than Dan. He sat patiently, listening to her explanation, her theories, skimming her notes for a full two hours before he nodded and stood up.
"You do seem to have a point. Question is, what are you going to do about it?"
She considered this question carefully. She had theory, not proof. Even if she continued her research and factored in every similarity, every anomaly in humanities cultural and technological development, who would believe her?
"I don't really know..."
"You could just accept that you're the sanest crazy conspiracy theorist ever?"
She had to smile, along with unending patience for what she fully acknowledged was a series of quirks that gave him an outright strange twin sister, this was one of his best qualities. He was an absolute genius, smarter than her by far, but he never took anything seriously and had the unique talent of dragging her down to his humorous level. That information however, didn't stop her from elbowing him in the stomach as he stood behind her.
"Ow."
He slapped her round the head and she stood up as quickly as he backed away, raising his guard. They both knew what was coming.
"Outside?"
"Outside."
There was an agreement with their Mother. Living in the countryside and being very well off, they had a large amount of land and a multi-tutored upbringing. Several martial arts tutors were included in this and it had led the usual sibling scuffles to be more destructive than usual. Their Mother actively encouraged them to practice against each other, but only in the sand school, this rule being the result of several expensive antiques falling victim to a deflected kick or a missed tackle.
They quickly made their way down to the ground floor, out the back door and through a field to the sand school, Dan slipping in his gum shield as they went - it hadn't taken him many practice sessions to realise that Lyra was as good a fighter as him but not nearly as good at holding back enough to ensure everyone left with their teeth intact, over the last few years of wearing his specially moulded gum shield he realised that not using it and keeping his smile intact had been pure luck.
Reaching the sand school they moved to the middle and both slipped into the starting stance of their preferred forms on reflex. Dan favoured MMA style, having developed a keen interest in Mixed Martial Arts early on, while Lyra favoured Muay Thai mixed with Judo, a healthy dose of high and spin kicks and a disturbingly effective combination with her gymnastic abilities.
Looking at her stance and instantly recognising what her first move would be he raised a boxers guard as she spun towards him and struck towards his throat with her elbow, a move that if it hit left him winded while he rasped for breath and had landed her a one hit win more times than he cared to count. While he blocked her opening attack he hooked her ankle with his to bring her to the ground, only to curse as mid fall she mixed in that annoying gymnast training and turned her fall into a back flip, barely leaving him time to lean back and dodge the uppercut her foot was making towards his chin in the process. They circled each other with a few metres between them, searching for weakness. Dan saw one, her guard was slightly too low on her left, he considered striking it when he remembered exploiting the same weakness a few months ago and getting jabbed in the process. It was a trap, she knew his defence was far better than his offense and so she was trying to lure him into an attack. Instead he rechecked his own guard and adjusted until he was satisfied it was perfect. Her preferred style left her extremely vulnerable compared to him in attack, and his superior strength meant that without her putting a run or a spin into her attacks she could do little damage. He only had to counter the first strike each time and then she was forced to either retreat or give him a weight advantage.
Lyra made her move, springing back and instantly flipping forwards, twisting at the height of her flip to scythe her foot towards his head as she passed him. He blocked it again but it connected against his wrist with some force and she grinned as she noticed him wince, she'd created a sore spot, a chink in his armour. Grabbing out at her foot he pulled her back as she landed, she was nimble enough not to fall but she was on one foot, facing away from him and off balance. Now was the time to strike. He threw a punch towards her gut, she twisted again, freeing her foot, but still took the blow to the side. Not as bad as it could have been, but she'd just lost a lot of her ability to spin and flip around him without causing herself distracting pain. This had to be finished quickly before he got in another hit.
She turned and struck towards his face with her palm, he instinctively blocked, realising too late that it was a distraction and Lyra's elbow slammed into his ribcage and she straightened her arm as the elbow hit, bringing her hand under his guard and striking his chin. Grabbing his arm as he staggered back she twisted it round behind him and connected her knee to the back of his, putting her arm around his throat as his leg gave way and he fell to his knees.
"Give up?"
He responded by throwing her over his shoulder and putting his foot on her neck as he sprung back to his feet, looking down at her with a smug grin.
"I win"
"Don't I get a chance to counter too?"
"No, I countered because if this was an actual fight all you could have done was choke me, giving me time to counter. If this was an actual fight my boot would have crushed your neck by now."
"Fine."
He took his foot away and extended an arm to help her up, grinning in victory and removing his gum shield.
"Next time, I'm wiping that grin off your face."
"I don't doubt it. Help me feed the horses?"
"Sure, well done by the way, you're getting better."
"An evenly matched practice partner really helps."
They walked back across the field to the stables near their house, absently wandering into the feed room where Lyra began filling bowls with feed while Dan hoisted a bale of hay onto each shoulder. Heading into the first of the two occupied stables Dan started stuffing a bale into the now empty hay net and Lyra's horse let out an approving noise as she placed the bowl of food down and scratched under his chin. Lyra then promptly let out a yelp as he grabbed her hair, again, she could swear her horse found it funny. He'd always been cheeky but this was like their standing joke, he'd pull her hair and she could swear he laughed when she yelped. Even if he wasn't actually laughing, he definitely always looked pleased with himself.
As they put the hay and food in the next stable for Dan's horse her brother finally bought up her earlier obsession.
"So, I know you. You're going to do something, what's the plan?"
She smiled, he knew that this whole time she'd been thinking about it, planning how to react to this information.
"Well" she started hesitantly, encouraged by his smiling nod "There's a particular temple in a mountain range in South America, supposedly. It seems to be a central point for a lot of these similarities."
"Why is it a supposed temple?"
"Nobody ever actually found it. It's an incredibly difficult journey and the environment there doesn't allow technology to be of much help. Strong EM fields mess up navigational equipment, the terrain can stop an 'all terrain vehicle' from getting far enough to be of any use and it's too misty for a fly by scouting or a drop from a plane. Add to that a series of rare species with venom ranging from causing days of violent convulsions and fever, to near instant death, species that are so rare and isolated nobody has synthesised any kind of anti-venom, and the heavy rain on a steep, muddy mountain that has very few paths, all of which are too narrow for even a small supply wagon, and you have a temple that stops being mentioned other than for how many expeditions died trying to find it."
"You're going to ask mum and dad to fund an expedition to 'The Temple of Doom' aren't you."
A statement, not a question. He knew her too well.
"It's not 'The Temple of Doom' Dan."
"Sounds fairly doomy to me. They don't let you stay at a friend's house for the night and we're 16. What kind of overly protective parent forbids sleepovers and then allows their 16 year old daughter to death march through a mountain range with complete strangers?"
"The overly protective, overly ambitious kind that want me to be a world famous expert by 20 and before I even have a degree so they can brag about it to all of their business contacts? Also I was going to downplay the whole 'filled with venomous creatures and only recently known as the likely non-existent temple that's nobody has come back from in two hundred years' side of it."
"Good point. Go for it."
She looked at him in shock, did her twin brother, who had once beaten up a boy 3 years older than them for stealing her pencil sharpener, just encourage her to go on a trip that was outright likely to kill her?
"You...think this is a good idea?"
"No, but I think you're actually on to something, and that if anyone can do this it's you." he said with a sage and supportive smile, which warped into his usual cheeky grin as he said "Plus if you die, your room's only across the hall from mine and it's the perfect size for an air hockey table."
"That's your plan? Support me to death and play air hockey?"
"It's your legacy, with every game I win, I'll think of you!"
She burst out laughing.
"I love you Dan, I really do."
"Love you too sis, now, less talking, more making room for an air hockey table."

She raised it with her parents and got her brothers support. They downplayed the danger, made the results seem a bit more likely and pointed out that after years of being gossiped about for having a daughter that 'wanted to scrape through dirt for a living' they'd be able to tell every gossip about her history changing discovery and then smugly ask how their child was doing on their management or accounting course.
Over the next few days arrangements were made, flights booked, experts, survivalists, field doctors, guides and a small workforce were hired. Equipment was bought and Lyra had to admit, no expense was spared.
Six months, they left in six months.