Author's note: O hai reader. So I tolly said I wouldn't write a sequel to Introspective Hero, didn't I? Well joke's on me! Well, kinda. This is more of a short story set in the same universe, as there will be very little focus on Jak and Daxter's romance.
If you don't feel like slogging through 250k+ words of prequel, here's the gist of it:
Jak and Daxter are stupidly much in love, even though Jak has lingering issues with touching due to his history.
Damas is alive and figured out that Jak is his son.
There are a whole lotta former KGs living in Spargus, commonly referred to as "exes." One of them, Zem, was a prison guard while Jak was held captive by Baron Praxis, and Zem has lived with the guilt of what he did during that time ever since. He'll have a bit of a role later on, but he's not super important. Zem is unable to walk properly, from being tortured by another former prison guard.
City of Light
Kras City just never shut up. If there weren't any races going on at the current time, there were always reruns being played from radios and TVs, heard through open windows and from street corners. Widescreen TVs flashed images of cars interspersed with commercials and G. T. Blitz' grinning face in a never ending cycle. And where there weren't TVs, there were blinking neon lights advertising every useless thing the human mind could imagine.
It gave Sig a headache after just a few minutes, but he knew he had to get through it for the time being. Just taking one step outside in this neon cesspit made him long for the hot, wide open sea of sand he hailed from. But he had a job to do that was far more important than his own wishes – a familiar comfort that left a bitter taste in his mouth if he dwelled on it for too long, but he pushed it aside with the knowledge that he was in Kras to help his friends.
And speaking of which…
Sig had always had the strength and size to move pretty much anywhere without fear. Still, he kept his eyes (normal and mechanical alike) open – Kras could be dangerous at any time of the day, and right now it was near midnight and he was heading right into the seedier parts of the town. It wasn't far less dangerous than a metal head den in broad daylight.
He could feel the suspicious eyes following him from the shadows of the fluttering streetlights, but nobody approached him as he headed through the maze of streets and back alleys. His size and aura of confidence helped, as did his change into his armor made of metal head skulls. A knife wielding moron would have to be more than usually drunk or high to jump somebody like that.
Sig walked with consciously heavy steps, too, making sure everyone knew he was there and not afraid to let them know. It told them very clearly that he knew that they were there, too.
Some may even recognize him from a few years back, when he was Krew's top dog. Top bloodhound.
Sig gritted his teeth at the uninvited thought and shoved it out of his mind, focusing on moving ever deeper into the heart of Kras – not at its center, but to the side, tucked away near the harbor where it would be easy to ship the cars for mainland races. Mizo may or may not be here somewhere. That wasn't Sig's business right then.
It would have been safer, and more subtle, to just send a message and meet up somewhere. But Sig had a second reason for going, and that was to send a message that the opposing team weren't scared. And more importantly, he knew Jak and the others had absolutely no reason to come here. There was no risk of something stupid like them noticing him having a meeting with the person he sought, or somebody seeing his call history on his communicator for some reason. He might be overly paranoid – but he had good reason.
He couldn't let them find out about this. Not about what he had done to them.
By the middle of a wide street was a line of garage doors. In an alley by the edge of them was a closed door, which Sig located after some squinting into the dimly lit way. The few pedestrians who were about pretended not to look at him, then quickly averted their eyes as he went into the alley.
He knocked hard on the door several times, then waited. Out in the street, people and cars kept drifting past.
After a few seconds, the door opened. Common crook sense (Jinx' proverb) would have dictated that it should have opened just an inch, or that the small window on it should've been used to communicate with the visitor. But Mizo had owned the city for years, and his men knew that even a Wastelander in full armor was out of his element here. So the door swung wide open, and the man Sig recognized as Edje casually leant against the frame. Playing with a knife, of course.
In the background, thugs and mechanics – and combinations of it – glared dangerously to make sure they were obvious backup. There was more than one click of a gun being prepared.
Sig just folded his arms, unblinking.
"Whaddaya want, Spiky?" Edje drawled.
"Kleiver," Sig countered.
Edje sneered, and so did many of the crooks behind him.
"An' what's it to ya?" he demanded.
"What's goin' on here?" came Kleiver's voice from the back.
Edje's face scrounged up in frustration, but he stepped back with a glare at the huge man lumbering out behind a car and across the floor. Behind him, a ragged-looking, dark-skinned man with his black hair in a ponytail glared after him, leaning on the car. Sig thought he looked familiar, but didn't consider it too long.
"Heh! 'ello nipper-watcher," Kleiver said, grinning as he saw who it was. "Come to join the winning team?"
Sig shook his head.
"Spargus business," he said.
The grin fell off of Kleiver's face immediately.
"Why didn't ya say so?" he growled. Looking over his shoulder, he shouted, "Oi! You better have everythin' fixed when I get back, ya mincemeat!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" the dark-skinned man grunted back and waved a wrench goodbye before clumsily moving down behind the car again. He didn't seem to be able to walk right. A memory sparked in Sig's mind, but he was a bit too focused on what he was doing.
Playing deaf to Edje's complaints – letting out that they could get orders from Mizo at any moment, and from the way Kleiver's face darkened he hadn't wanted that brought up even though it wasn't much of a mystery – Kleiver followed Sig out into the night air.
They found themselves an open, scruffy and mostly empty restaurant and ordered beers just to keep the waitresses from muttering. The girls and the bartender listened in, of course, but they got nothing for their trouble. The two Wastelanders spoke in too low voices, and with such thick Spargan dialects, that it was impossible for an outsider to catch anything sensible.
Sig knew that the others wouldn't have believed for a second what he was doing. It wasn't just meeting with Kleiver, who was competition, who was an enemy. Sig was spilling the whole story.
They had agreed, long before Sig arrived to help, that they wouldn't tell anybody that they were poisoned. If it got out, Mizo could very well find a way to delay the final race, or try to find and destroy the antidote.
However, Jak and the others' situation was far more dire than they themselves knew. That was why Sig was there in the restaurant, telling Kleiver about the poison. And telling him things that Jak and the Havenites didn't have a clue about.
And in that moment, listening to Sig speaking low and quick, Kleiver was no longer an enemy on the race track. He wasn't a mercenary hired by Mizo because he just saw it as a laugh – and Damas had shrugged his shoulders and said that he knew Jak could handle the competition so he allowed it… because Damas didn't know about the poison either. Jak couldn't bear to tell Damas his son was hanging on a thin line, not from something so chilling, something that couldn't be fought.
But in that moment, Kleiver became a Wastelander again.
And Kleiver didn't like hearing it. And he liked the rest even less.
"That little snake!"
Kleiver slammed his fist so hard into the table that the two mostly untouched drinks tipped over and spilled across the tablecloth. Not that the watery alcohol made the cloth that much dirtier. The waitresses and bartender jumped a mile.
Sig clenched his jaw. His reaction had been more subdued, but only because he'd let Rayn finish her explanation. It had helped a little that he'd suspected the truth from the very beginning.
She'd known about the poison. But there was a reason she told Sig so, and that kept him from lashing out at her.
"She's got 'em all where she wants them," Sig said. He grabbed Kleiver's arm as the man was about to stand, murder in his eyes. Kleiver could take fair fights, and even ones with a little cheating, as long as the opposition deserved it. The racing had been a fun distraction, but it was no longer amusing. Not when this filth had been bared. "Kleiver, shut up for a sec! There ain't no antidote!"
The huge man blinked. Then his lips drew back in a growl and he thumped back in his seat, staring at the other Wastelander.
"Say whot?" Kleiver hoarsely demanded.
Sig could easily imagine that his own initial thoughts were currently going through Kleiver's head as well. At the front was a very, very upset King of Spargus. And Kleiver didn't even know exactly why Jak was so important to Damas, though he may have guessed somewhat right. The man wasn't as stupid as he looked.
"Krew never made enough," Sig said, rubbing his forehead. "Didn'a surprise me. He wouldn't care."
Kleiver said nothing for a moment.
"That's it, then?" he darkly said. "It takes too long to brew. They're dead."
"No. He made a little of it, enough for one person. Just in case Rayn got poisoned. She can use that as a base to cook up more in time. It should work."
Kleiver's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Why she doin' that?" he asked.
"I know I was always a bit of a daddy's girl, but I'm not my father," she said, cradling the bottle in her hands like she feared somebody would break through the window to snatch it from her. Sig watched as she put it back in the small safe, then put the safe far beneath the floorboards, covered up the hollow, and put the floorboard back in place. Finally she pulled the carpet over it and he silently helped her put the table and chairs back on the carpet.
All that done, she gazed up at him again.
"I have to put you in a bit of a pressured situation, I'm afraid. But I need your help, Sig. You just have to help me save them."
She didn't really need to say that, and she knew it. Still, he felt like it cushioned the blow from the truth further. His anger had deflated.
"Of course, kitten."
Sig pushed the memory aside and shook his head.
"She's prolly not so rotten," he said. Then added, in an easier tone, "or mebbe Jak put on the charm without noticin'."
To that comment, Kleiver's ugly mug split in a sneer and he guffawed.
"She din't notice he only likes redheads, eh?" he said. Sig's lips twitched to that, but they both sobered just as quick. "Well, whatever. What's she needin'?"
"Bronze camellia," Sig said.
Pause.
"That it?" Kleiver said and grunted. "Figger. Gotta give 'er props for findin' everything else, I s'pose."
"How soon can you get it?" Sig asked.
Silence reigned for a few seconds as Kleiver thumbed his oily mustache, scowling at the table as he thought. Over by the bar, the bartender rapped his fingers against a shelf, watching impatiently via a mirror to not be too obvious. He and the waitresses could see plain as day that something very important was going on, and the inability to listen in was maddening.
"In two days if we're lucky," Kleiver finally said. He gave Sig a sharp look. "When did they chug it down?"
"'bout two weeks ago, before the championship began," Sig said, his jaw clenched.
Kleiver spat out a curse.
"Gonna be close, 'specially for the wee ones like the girls and the ungodly ex-rat."
In any other situation, Sig would've taken the opportunity to ask what exactly had happened to Veger. The former-slimeball-of-a-man-turned-depressed-Precursor had been seen for about a week clinging to Kleiver's shoulder, and then he had mysteriously vanished.
However, Sig was in no mood to find out the hopefully grisly truth.
"Can she pay for it, tho'?" Kleiver asked, eyeing the man before him. "That stuff ain't cheap, ya know that."
Sig took in a deep breath.
"I'll pay ya."
"Hoo…? She ain't coughing it up?"
No response.
"I dun like the sound'a this, Sig."
"It's all I can do now," Sig said, glaring at the wet tablecloth. Neither one of them had bothered picking up the glasses Kleiver had overturned. "She ain't a big shot yet, either. She got everythin' else."
Kleiver blew out a stinking snarl that made his mustache tremble.
"Ya make that sound like a good thing. She's got ya dancin' to her tune too. Ya get that, right?"
"It's the only shot!" If the glasses had been put back up, they would have fallen again from Sig slamming his fist into the table. One of them rolled over the edge and shattered on the floor.
The waitresses exchanged glances and quietly decided to not say or do anything at all about it.
"Okay, okay, chill yer lizards." Kleiver pulled a face as if he had to wrench out the next sentences. "I'll meet ya partway, alright? You pay sixty, I pay forty."
Sig straightened and studied the other Wastelander for a moment. Coming from Kleiver, it was a very surprising and very generous offer.
"You––"
"Ya better be right about her, ya hear me?" Kleiver stabbed the air in front of Sig's face with a thick finger. "'Cause if this comes crashing down, it'll be your fault our heads'll be on a platter." He threw up his hands. "Whot? Ya think Damas'll be any happier with the guy who got ya that Black Shade so you could suck up to Krew?"
Sig's mouth twisted into a chilling snarl, silently warning Kleiver to make any comment about how he'd said from the start that searching for Prince Mar was a waste of time. The truth about that burned on Sig's lips, but he couldn't share it. Damas had forbidden it.
Leaning back, Kleiver rolled his eyes and waved his hands in a sort of pacifying manner. It was enough to help Sig get a grip of himself and nod.
"Alright then," Sig said. His good eye darkened again. "An' don't you breathe a word about this to anybody."
Kleiver raised a meaty eyebrow at the look of Sig's face and the low, dangerous tone.
"Whut? My ass is toast too if they all croak," he said.
"Even when they're in the clear, Kleiver!" Sig growled. He leaned forwards, hands flat against the table. "She's using them all. I ain't gonna be able to look 'em in the face if they find out it's my fault."
He shook his head hard.
For a moment Kleiver watched him, taking in the scowl and tense jaw. Typically Sig, ever the big brother. Finding that he had gotten his friends into forced servitude hurt him more than he wanted to admit – and it showed all too well right then.
Their King would certainly not like it, either. Damas was proud, and Kleiver knew that few things pissed him off as much as backstabbing tactics. And Damas would not be happy to learn that his best warrior had been reduced to a racing monkey for a zealous mafia girl. It wasn't even a secret in Spargus that Jak had become much like a replacement for the son Damas had lost many years ago.
And if that best warrior/son surrogate died from poison, Kleiver very well knew that Damas would find out. And he'd have two axes to grind.
"Ya better not let nobody know it gets ya this bad, mama bear," Kleiver grimly said as he stood, but he gave Sig a light, reassuring punch on the shoulder as he passed.
Sig remained where he was for a while even after Kleiver had disappeared. Just sitting there, staring at his own reflection and the neon flashes dancing in the window glass. Until the waitresses nervously told him that it was closing time.
