Disclaimer: I own squat. Not even the word "ottsel", alright? That all
belongs to Naughty Dog. They own it all. And I sure ain't makin' no money
off'a this.
Heh heh, what if Gol and Maia decided to be nice and change Daxter back on one condition...everyone else has to be an ottsel for a day! Madness insues. Expect a few people to be somewhat OOC (and expect Maia to be WAY OOC). And excuse any dumb clichés you find. My muse inspired me to write this, then she ran off when I started! What is it with muses? They're never around when you need them, and they're always gone when you do!
Yeah, I know. They probably don't know what an ottsel is (at least Daxter didn't, and no one ever told him what he was. He's just "a furball" throughout the game). Well, I'm gonna say they do know what ottsels are, and that they are a rare animal in their world, and not just something that Dark Eco turns Daxter into. :P
Ottsel For a Day
It was a normal day in Sandover Village. Samos's Green Eco collectors were clogged up again (and he was yelling at Jak to unclog them, because he was too lazy to go over there himself), Keira was working on another version of the Zoomer, Daxter was annoying her, and Jak was practically sitting on his hands to keep himself from strangling the little furball. After all, he had just spent the past three months with him and his wisecracks twenty-four-seven, and his patience was at its end. Besides, the weasel was after his girlfriend!
"Daxter! Would you puh-leaze leave me alone!" the blue-haired girl yelled for what was probably the one hundredth time that day alone. He kept jumping around and knocking things out of place or breaking them; the only bright side was that he found all the unstable places for her, instead of her having to worry about injuring herself while she checked for parts that would fly off while riding.
"Aw, c'mon. You've been in here all day. You need to get out! Smell the flowers! See the sun! Ride your Zoomer instead of constantly working on it!" Daxter said, balancing on one hand on the tail fender.
"There's a potted flower over there," she replied, trying to be patient. "I can smell it fine from here. The sun's comming in the window, and this one isn't opperational yet, and, if I recall, you totalled the last one when you tried to drive it by yourself." She paused in her welding for a moment and set her goggles back around her neck. She looked in her toolbox for a wrech...ah, there it was...and took a firm grip on it, as if about to tighten an extra-stubborn nut. But, rather than tightening a nut, she used it to swat the impish ottsel away, brandishing it like a club.
"She's gone mad! Jak, save me from this madwoman! Help!" Jak just gave him a look that said 'you were asking for it' and leaned against a support beam. The resulting chase ended with Daxter thouroughly tied up, using small amounts of spliced cables and things. She had even gagged him using a bit of chain she'd had lying around, as he'd have been likely to bite through rope or even rubber tubing. Of course she'd used a peice of cloth to cushion it; she wasn't that mean. The furball wasn't too happy about being unable to talk, though. Being unable to move was one thing, but unable to talk? Even five minutes of silence was unheard of to the boy; he snored and talked in his sleep so as to always be making a sound.
Up in Samos's lab...
Samos streched out in mid-air, awakening after falling asleep in the middle of meditation. His little bird twittered at him, nervous. There was something wrong. Something way wrong. Little birdies told the old Sage many things, but most often heard was "there's something wrong"; the common reply was, "Jak, get moving!", as the poor old man was lazy. However, the thing which was so "wrong" today would require that old Samos moved.
In a shimmering flash of black light, Gol and Maia appeared hovering in the Green Sage's lab. They didn't look like they wanted any sort of trouble, though. In fact, there was something that seemed to be rather amusing to the two of them. Perhaps it was the look on the old man's face that was so humorous. Or, perhaps it was the plan they had cooked up together whilst trapped in the Silo. "Hello, Samos," the man greeted. "We've come with a proposition."
"Well, whatever it is, I'm not interested. I don't need anything right now, especially from the likes of you two!"
"Oh, but you will be. I've considered turning your little fuzzball back into his annoying self for you, but Maia won't let me. See, she's getting obcessive with small, cute, furry things, and - "
"Oh, shut up! I just said I wanted to see what everyone else would look like if they fell in! I'm not 'obcessive' over anything, unlike you. You're obcessed with Dark Eco! You should see his room! There's jars and jars and jars of the stuff! I can't even walk past it without getting attacked by a dozen little blobs of goo! I'm sick of the stuff myself, aside from the fact that it makes normal people furry, and furry things are just plain CUTE!" Her voice began to go high and squeaky as she got more and more excited.
"Anyway, we decided that we'd change him back, but only on one condition: you, your daughter, and that crazy kid who beat us have to jump in and be turned into furballs for a day. We'll change you back tommorow and never bother you again!"
"Hogwash! I don't beleive it!"
"You ought to try it some time! It's really loads of fun being fuzzy and only two feet tall!" Daxter called out as the only three kids in the village entered the room. "And I'd get to be me again!" He did a small dance, earning the equivalent of a sweatdrop from everyone.
"Are you absolutely sure that we'll end up as ottsels and nothing more? I mean, everyone's body chemestry is different, and we could become any number of weird creatures if the Eco reacted strangely to one of us," Keira told them, standing slightly behind Jak for protection. "You'd have to do countless complex calculations to make sure everything went exactly as it did that night."
"What do you think we spent our time doing in there? Playing cards? My brain hurts from all the figguring!"
"And the laundry is piled up past my ears!"
"And there's no food left!"
"And the dishes are all crusty!"
"And - "
"ALRIGHT ALREADY!" everyone but Jak and the two grey-skinned siblings yelled.
"We'll do it," Keira said at length. "On one condition of our own: Maia, you have to wear these for the time we're covered in fur!" And with that, she tossed a pair of undies and some decient, normal-looking, modest clothes at her.
"WHAT!? How can you expect me to... Oh, all right, fine. I'll wear the dumb things. But only because I'm so nice!" Everyone rolled their eyes as she dissappeared and reappeared in a T-shirt and something resembling jeans. The half-dozen people (well, five and a half, because Daxter's too small to count as a whole right now) boated over to Misty Island. At the pool of oozy sludge, Samos got cold feet.
"Wait a second. We've got to make this deal final. And to do that, we need to make the one pact that can never be broken: a pinky swear!" So, he and Gol swore over their little fingers that they'd hold to their end of the bargain. "And change the furball back first. I don't want any of his fleas!"
"Fine, fine. Hockus pocus, alakazam, and all that other rot," Gol said, snapping his fingers. Daxter returned to his normal, if somewhat annoying, self. "Now you hold up your part!"
"Hey! Look at me! I can look someone in the eye without standing on anything!" He jumped around and did a silly victory dance. "What? I can! You don't know how bad it is to be too little to reach anything!"
Jak shrugged and gave him a calm, placid look, as if to say 'you could always climb'. He glanced sideways at the pool of Dark Eco, asking the silent question of 'should I go first'? Keira touched his shoulder, almost fearfully, and nodded. He grinned to himself, thinking of the adventure he'd have from an ottsel's eye view. Why, grass blades he'd never even noticed would now be a quarter of his hight! The pool seemed to be considering him as well, like a leopard considers an antelope. However, it spat him out almost immediately, as if he were a bit of rotten meat.
"Aw, he's cuuute!" Keira cooed at the yellow-green creature sprawled by her feet. She picked him up and hugged him like a favorite stuffed toy. Only problem was, even an ottsel needs to breathe. "Maia, would you mind taking a picture? I wanna remember this good!" She was now acting like a very young little girl, posing and acting stupid. Jak might have lost his hight and muscle, but he hadn't lost his sense of dignity, and the expression on his face was quite plainly, 'please, get this over with'! Maia took a quick picture of this high-quality "Kodak moment" with her Polaroid camera (oxymoron there, ne) before she jumped in the pool of slop with Samos following.
"Say, Keira," Daxter began. "You said you wouldn't date animals. Well, Jak's an animal now. So, since you wouldn't date an animal, why don't you go out with me?" He grinned broadly, but the effect wasn't the same as when he was an ottsel; he just looked stupid now.
She cocked her head at him, obviously armed with a witty comeback. "Rule number two: when I'm an animal, I don't date humans." She folded her arms over the tiny shred of a white top she was still wearing over her blue- green fur. Samos was so pale that you couldn't tell if his fur was silvery- green or white, and his ears were now wrapped around a small twig. He still he the silly sumo wrestler diaper on, too.
Maia was trying to control herself, because having one short, fuzzy critter was bad enough, but three was way past her line of self control about cuteness. In other words, she was acting like a crazy fangirl faced with the singer of her dreams, only a thousand times worse.
"Sister, we've got to give them a sporting chance. We'll give them two hours to get away, then you can go chase them or whatever it is you girls do with furry things."
"Oh, all right. But two hours and not one minute more!" The three furballs and the now-human (and much clumbsier) Daxter dashed back to the speedboat, but had to stop because everyone tripped on each other's tails. Daxter figgured he was out of trouble, because he wasn't a furball anymore, but the ottsels decided to stick together and hide in the Forbidden Jungle, as there were miriads of tree roots to hide between and no one ever bothered looking there when they lost something, since no one in their right mind ever went there. However, Dark Eco has certain effects on one's mind.
It only took about an hour for Samos to find a clump of tree roots that suited him, curl up under them, and fall asleep during his meditation (as he was prone to doing). Seeing as they still had another hour before they had to worry about Maia and her obcession with cuteness, Jak and Keira decided to explore along the river. After all, it's not every day you get an ottsel's eye view of the world. Nor every day you discover that you can fit yourself into a hole much too small for your real human body.
"Hey, what's in that little hole? Do you think we should check it out?" Jak paused, looked at the sun to gaudge the time, then shrugged and nodded. He darted into the tiny hole, with Keira on his tail. "It looks like this hole was made for us, you know? Like it was made by ottsels. But they're an endangered species. They normally live farther north than us. It's not like they're butterflies or something." (A/N: have you SEEN the number of butterflies around their village? Then again, they do have a lot of flowers :P)
"Hmn," was Jak's reply. He didn't have much of anything to say, even about his own species. He stood up at a wide place in the dark tunnel and scratched at his ears. They itched; he figgured he had fleas. However, his stop was sudden and unnanounced, and Keira plowed into his backside.
"Ow-w. Jak, would you please mind warning me before you stop right in front of me? I can't see past the end of my nose, and even though that's a little farther than normal, it's still not far enough." He made a small grunt, but made no other intelligible reply. "You know, I really don't get you," she added as they began moving again. "I mean, you have never said anything to anybody that I know of. Why don't you -OOF! Ja-ak!" She whined again as she rubbed her sore nose. "What is it this time? Hey, I can see something. There's a hole or something overhead that's letting light in."
Indeed, there was a hole overhead, and there was indeed something to see. Three somethings, in fact. Two big ones and a smaller one. Apparently, the ottsels that had made this burrow were home. They were all a muddy- brown color with lighter markings. The smaller, younger female had her nose only a few inches from Jak's, but in the dim light his reaction was unreadable. She seemed to be friendly enough, but "friendly" was getting a little too friendly for Keira's liking. "Hey, back off, sister." She stepped up to the smaller, duller-colored female and forced her way between her nose and Jak's. She was, apparently, a little younger than the two of them. Perhaps the equivalent of a year younger; closer to Daxter's age (A/N: I think he's a year or so younger than the two of them, because he's insecure about his age and always says he's full-grown when he's obviously not). 'Too bad Daxter's not still an ottsel,' she thought to herself with a smirk.
The real ottsel gave a startled, almost heartbroken cry and darted behind her mother, kicking up the dry grass that lined the floor of the chamber. The big male, who was almost double their size, stepped forward and growled. He obviously didn't like to see his daughter's choice of a prospective mate stolen by another female, be she larger or smaller, brightly colored as she was or a proper dull, mousy brown. He let loose a rasping, snorting, fox-like bark, and charged at them.
Without so much as a moment's hesitation, Jak shoved his head under the bigger ottsel's chest and used his weight and momentum to throw him over his shoulder. However, he had not been the father's target; instead, this seemingly good move brought him closer to his real target: Keira. However, due to the flip, he was on his back with his feet towards her, and, for a moment, could only thrash his tail in her face and kick blindly. She took the opportunity to backtrack out of the tunnel, turning herself towards the exit at the wide point. She was forced to crawl on all fours, and, being unused to this, she was slower and somewhat clumbsy. A stream of fur poured out of that little tunnel: Keira, followed by the big male with nothing but his daughter's heart on his mind, then Jak, bent on protecting her, then the little female, blindly following the ottsel she'd fallen in love with at first sight, and last the mother, to try and keep her daughter safe.
"Ooo, look! More cute furry animals!" Maia had gotten away from her brother early and had gotten a tip from Daxter as to where they were (in exchange for a few Precursor Orbs, that little weasel). She blocked their only dry path away from the ottsel family, so Keira turned to the water. Ottsels are quite capable swimmers, it's true, but the water plasters their fur to them and weighs them down considerably. Add to that the fact that the parannahs were out and hungrier than ever, and you ended up with five very unhappy fuzballs. The real ottsels turned back and retreated into their burrow, narrowly escaping Maia's groping fingers. She stuck her arm in as far as it would go, only to yank it back out with a shreak and stick a bitten finger into her mouth. The little female came out and did the ottsel equivalent of sticking your tongue out at someone (A/N: don't ask me what it is; I'm not an ottsel), and scrurried back inside at her mother's high-pitched call.
Jak and Keira, however, made full use of this opportunity to get to the opposite shore and up its bank while the parannahs tried to bite Maia as she bent over the water and stuck her arm in the hole. They managed to get under a tree surrounded by pillars of earth, only to discover another family of ottsels! Apparently, they weren't as rare as Keira thought. This one consisted of an eldest brother acting as the father for a set of triplets. The triplets were right at that age where girls begin to go crazy over guys, so I think you can guess what happened. Yep, they chased Jak right out of the hollow and up the tree over it.
Now, most of you out there can probably guess what this lead to. Yes, that's right, Keira was triplely jealous and chased the three young ottsels right out of that tree. Well, she chased them halfway down, then they tripped and fell the rest of the way. They all landed on their fuzzy butts and cried to their brother about the mean blue girl. The silly male, however, would not listen to them, and proceeded to try cheesy ottsel pickup lines, which no one but his sisters understood. But he stood down there and chattered away anyway, if only to hear himself chatter.
It was getting quite late by the time the ottsel boy had given up and decided that she was just too stupid to appriciate his wit (A/N: Daxter's not the only hormonal male around who thinks he's all that and a big o' chips, ne). It was even later when Maia decided she was tired of looking for them and went off to where ever it was she went off to (A/N: I dunno where these characters go off to, alright? They just go 'poof!' and leave). By the time they had gotten away from her Lurker dogs and found Samos (who had slept through the entire thing), the sun had begun to set. Not wanting to find out why this jungle was forbidden, the three furballs marched back to Sandover Village in the dying light.
By the time they'd reached Samos's hut, Keira was asleep and being carried by Jak, who looks as though he might have been sleepwalking himself. Samos was the only one who wasn't tired, on account of he'd slept all day and could fly around, instead of having to drag his furry feet through the slippery sand. After they climbed up to Samos's lab, Jak promptly fell over backwards and went right to sleep; the jarring movement hadn't made Keira even stir. Samos sat up all night and watched them, ready to thwack either of them with his twig, should they make a wrong move (A/N: he sure is suspicious, huh? Oh, well).
The next morning, Daxter took his two friends and the grouchy Sage back to Misty Island to meet Gol and Maia. They found them beside the Dark Eco pool. Gol had his hands in it and was playing with it like a little boy playing in a puddle. Oddly enough, when he pulled his hands out, they weren't furry at all. Maia was bound and gagged so that she couldn't cause any 'trouble' for the ottsels. Gol stood up and look wistfully at the sludgy black ooze, then turned the three of them back into themselves. "And I did so like you better as a furball, Samos. You were so much more managable. Come, sister." With that, the two lunatics left them alone.
After such an ordeal, Keira was in an odd mood. Or maybe it was because Dark Eco screws up your mind. Either way, she decided to finnish what she's started up at the Citadel. Daxter, however, was in no mood to stop her, as he was jumping around like a nutcase, still happy about being changed back into his rightful Homo sapiens igbay arseay (A/N: 'scuse the piglattin. If you can't read it, it says "big ears". Pretty fitting, don't you think?). But, being Daxter, and being clumbsy, he lost his footing and fell into the Dark Eco. Moments later he shot out of it, now back to his lovable ottsel self.
"Aw, man, not again!" No one heard him, though, and Jak and Keira were too busy with each other, and Samos was too busy yelling at them.
You didn't think I'd leave Daxter as his big-eared-human self, did ya? And yeah, I know. It's a stupidfic. That's what happens when my muse inspires me and then runs away. I might as well move to Misty Island; then maybe she'd stick around when I NEEDED her! It's stupid, but hey, I enjoyed it. And it adds to the very small J&D fanbase. We need more, people! Come on, someone write another fic! Or draw some fanart! I'm going insane looking for it! Well, see ya!
Heh heh, what if Gol and Maia decided to be nice and change Daxter back on one condition...everyone else has to be an ottsel for a day! Madness insues. Expect a few people to be somewhat OOC (and expect Maia to be WAY OOC). And excuse any dumb clichés you find. My muse inspired me to write this, then she ran off when I started! What is it with muses? They're never around when you need them, and they're always gone when you do!
Yeah, I know. They probably don't know what an ottsel is (at least Daxter didn't, and no one ever told him what he was. He's just "a furball" throughout the game). Well, I'm gonna say they do know what ottsels are, and that they are a rare animal in their world, and not just something that Dark Eco turns Daxter into. :P
Ottsel For a Day
It was a normal day in Sandover Village. Samos's Green Eco collectors were clogged up again (and he was yelling at Jak to unclog them, because he was too lazy to go over there himself), Keira was working on another version of the Zoomer, Daxter was annoying her, and Jak was practically sitting on his hands to keep himself from strangling the little furball. After all, he had just spent the past three months with him and his wisecracks twenty-four-seven, and his patience was at its end. Besides, the weasel was after his girlfriend!
"Daxter! Would you puh-leaze leave me alone!" the blue-haired girl yelled for what was probably the one hundredth time that day alone. He kept jumping around and knocking things out of place or breaking them; the only bright side was that he found all the unstable places for her, instead of her having to worry about injuring herself while she checked for parts that would fly off while riding.
"Aw, c'mon. You've been in here all day. You need to get out! Smell the flowers! See the sun! Ride your Zoomer instead of constantly working on it!" Daxter said, balancing on one hand on the tail fender.
"There's a potted flower over there," she replied, trying to be patient. "I can smell it fine from here. The sun's comming in the window, and this one isn't opperational yet, and, if I recall, you totalled the last one when you tried to drive it by yourself." She paused in her welding for a moment and set her goggles back around her neck. She looked in her toolbox for a wrech...ah, there it was...and took a firm grip on it, as if about to tighten an extra-stubborn nut. But, rather than tightening a nut, she used it to swat the impish ottsel away, brandishing it like a club.
"She's gone mad! Jak, save me from this madwoman! Help!" Jak just gave him a look that said 'you were asking for it' and leaned against a support beam. The resulting chase ended with Daxter thouroughly tied up, using small amounts of spliced cables and things. She had even gagged him using a bit of chain she'd had lying around, as he'd have been likely to bite through rope or even rubber tubing. Of course she'd used a peice of cloth to cushion it; she wasn't that mean. The furball wasn't too happy about being unable to talk, though. Being unable to move was one thing, but unable to talk? Even five minutes of silence was unheard of to the boy; he snored and talked in his sleep so as to always be making a sound.
Up in Samos's lab...
Samos streched out in mid-air, awakening after falling asleep in the middle of meditation. His little bird twittered at him, nervous. There was something wrong. Something way wrong. Little birdies told the old Sage many things, but most often heard was "there's something wrong"; the common reply was, "Jak, get moving!", as the poor old man was lazy. However, the thing which was so "wrong" today would require that old Samos moved.
In a shimmering flash of black light, Gol and Maia appeared hovering in the Green Sage's lab. They didn't look like they wanted any sort of trouble, though. In fact, there was something that seemed to be rather amusing to the two of them. Perhaps it was the look on the old man's face that was so humorous. Or, perhaps it was the plan they had cooked up together whilst trapped in the Silo. "Hello, Samos," the man greeted. "We've come with a proposition."
"Well, whatever it is, I'm not interested. I don't need anything right now, especially from the likes of you two!"
"Oh, but you will be. I've considered turning your little fuzzball back into his annoying self for you, but Maia won't let me. See, she's getting obcessive with small, cute, furry things, and - "
"Oh, shut up! I just said I wanted to see what everyone else would look like if they fell in! I'm not 'obcessive' over anything, unlike you. You're obcessed with Dark Eco! You should see his room! There's jars and jars and jars of the stuff! I can't even walk past it without getting attacked by a dozen little blobs of goo! I'm sick of the stuff myself, aside from the fact that it makes normal people furry, and furry things are just plain CUTE!" Her voice began to go high and squeaky as she got more and more excited.
"Anyway, we decided that we'd change him back, but only on one condition: you, your daughter, and that crazy kid who beat us have to jump in and be turned into furballs for a day. We'll change you back tommorow and never bother you again!"
"Hogwash! I don't beleive it!"
"You ought to try it some time! It's really loads of fun being fuzzy and only two feet tall!" Daxter called out as the only three kids in the village entered the room. "And I'd get to be me again!" He did a small dance, earning the equivalent of a sweatdrop from everyone.
"Are you absolutely sure that we'll end up as ottsels and nothing more? I mean, everyone's body chemestry is different, and we could become any number of weird creatures if the Eco reacted strangely to one of us," Keira told them, standing slightly behind Jak for protection. "You'd have to do countless complex calculations to make sure everything went exactly as it did that night."
"What do you think we spent our time doing in there? Playing cards? My brain hurts from all the figguring!"
"And the laundry is piled up past my ears!"
"And there's no food left!"
"And the dishes are all crusty!"
"And - "
"ALRIGHT ALREADY!" everyone but Jak and the two grey-skinned siblings yelled.
"We'll do it," Keira said at length. "On one condition of our own: Maia, you have to wear these for the time we're covered in fur!" And with that, she tossed a pair of undies and some decient, normal-looking, modest clothes at her.
"WHAT!? How can you expect me to... Oh, all right, fine. I'll wear the dumb things. But only because I'm so nice!" Everyone rolled their eyes as she dissappeared and reappeared in a T-shirt and something resembling jeans. The half-dozen people (well, five and a half, because Daxter's too small to count as a whole right now) boated over to Misty Island. At the pool of oozy sludge, Samos got cold feet.
"Wait a second. We've got to make this deal final. And to do that, we need to make the one pact that can never be broken: a pinky swear!" So, he and Gol swore over their little fingers that they'd hold to their end of the bargain. "And change the furball back first. I don't want any of his fleas!"
"Fine, fine. Hockus pocus, alakazam, and all that other rot," Gol said, snapping his fingers. Daxter returned to his normal, if somewhat annoying, self. "Now you hold up your part!"
"Hey! Look at me! I can look someone in the eye without standing on anything!" He jumped around and did a silly victory dance. "What? I can! You don't know how bad it is to be too little to reach anything!"
Jak shrugged and gave him a calm, placid look, as if to say 'you could always climb'. He glanced sideways at the pool of Dark Eco, asking the silent question of 'should I go first'? Keira touched his shoulder, almost fearfully, and nodded. He grinned to himself, thinking of the adventure he'd have from an ottsel's eye view. Why, grass blades he'd never even noticed would now be a quarter of his hight! The pool seemed to be considering him as well, like a leopard considers an antelope. However, it spat him out almost immediately, as if he were a bit of rotten meat.
"Aw, he's cuuute!" Keira cooed at the yellow-green creature sprawled by her feet. She picked him up and hugged him like a favorite stuffed toy. Only problem was, even an ottsel needs to breathe. "Maia, would you mind taking a picture? I wanna remember this good!" She was now acting like a very young little girl, posing and acting stupid. Jak might have lost his hight and muscle, but he hadn't lost his sense of dignity, and the expression on his face was quite plainly, 'please, get this over with'! Maia took a quick picture of this high-quality "Kodak moment" with her Polaroid camera (oxymoron there, ne) before she jumped in the pool of slop with Samos following.
"Say, Keira," Daxter began. "You said you wouldn't date animals. Well, Jak's an animal now. So, since you wouldn't date an animal, why don't you go out with me?" He grinned broadly, but the effect wasn't the same as when he was an ottsel; he just looked stupid now.
She cocked her head at him, obviously armed with a witty comeback. "Rule number two: when I'm an animal, I don't date humans." She folded her arms over the tiny shred of a white top she was still wearing over her blue- green fur. Samos was so pale that you couldn't tell if his fur was silvery- green or white, and his ears were now wrapped around a small twig. He still he the silly sumo wrestler diaper on, too.
Maia was trying to control herself, because having one short, fuzzy critter was bad enough, but three was way past her line of self control about cuteness. In other words, she was acting like a crazy fangirl faced with the singer of her dreams, only a thousand times worse.
"Sister, we've got to give them a sporting chance. We'll give them two hours to get away, then you can go chase them or whatever it is you girls do with furry things."
"Oh, all right. But two hours and not one minute more!" The three furballs and the now-human (and much clumbsier) Daxter dashed back to the speedboat, but had to stop because everyone tripped on each other's tails. Daxter figgured he was out of trouble, because he wasn't a furball anymore, but the ottsels decided to stick together and hide in the Forbidden Jungle, as there were miriads of tree roots to hide between and no one ever bothered looking there when they lost something, since no one in their right mind ever went there. However, Dark Eco has certain effects on one's mind.
It only took about an hour for Samos to find a clump of tree roots that suited him, curl up under them, and fall asleep during his meditation (as he was prone to doing). Seeing as they still had another hour before they had to worry about Maia and her obcession with cuteness, Jak and Keira decided to explore along the river. After all, it's not every day you get an ottsel's eye view of the world. Nor every day you discover that you can fit yourself into a hole much too small for your real human body.
"Hey, what's in that little hole? Do you think we should check it out?" Jak paused, looked at the sun to gaudge the time, then shrugged and nodded. He darted into the tiny hole, with Keira on his tail. "It looks like this hole was made for us, you know? Like it was made by ottsels. But they're an endangered species. They normally live farther north than us. It's not like they're butterflies or something." (A/N: have you SEEN the number of butterflies around their village? Then again, they do have a lot of flowers :P)
"Hmn," was Jak's reply. He didn't have much of anything to say, even about his own species. He stood up at a wide place in the dark tunnel and scratched at his ears. They itched; he figgured he had fleas. However, his stop was sudden and unnanounced, and Keira plowed into his backside.
"Ow-w. Jak, would you please mind warning me before you stop right in front of me? I can't see past the end of my nose, and even though that's a little farther than normal, it's still not far enough." He made a small grunt, but made no other intelligible reply. "You know, I really don't get you," she added as they began moving again. "I mean, you have never said anything to anybody that I know of. Why don't you -OOF! Ja-ak!" She whined again as she rubbed her sore nose. "What is it this time? Hey, I can see something. There's a hole or something overhead that's letting light in."
Indeed, there was a hole overhead, and there was indeed something to see. Three somethings, in fact. Two big ones and a smaller one. Apparently, the ottsels that had made this burrow were home. They were all a muddy- brown color with lighter markings. The smaller, younger female had her nose only a few inches from Jak's, but in the dim light his reaction was unreadable. She seemed to be friendly enough, but "friendly" was getting a little too friendly for Keira's liking. "Hey, back off, sister." She stepped up to the smaller, duller-colored female and forced her way between her nose and Jak's. She was, apparently, a little younger than the two of them. Perhaps the equivalent of a year younger; closer to Daxter's age (A/N: I think he's a year or so younger than the two of them, because he's insecure about his age and always says he's full-grown when he's obviously not). 'Too bad Daxter's not still an ottsel,' she thought to herself with a smirk.
The real ottsel gave a startled, almost heartbroken cry and darted behind her mother, kicking up the dry grass that lined the floor of the chamber. The big male, who was almost double their size, stepped forward and growled. He obviously didn't like to see his daughter's choice of a prospective mate stolen by another female, be she larger or smaller, brightly colored as she was or a proper dull, mousy brown. He let loose a rasping, snorting, fox-like bark, and charged at them.
Without so much as a moment's hesitation, Jak shoved his head under the bigger ottsel's chest and used his weight and momentum to throw him over his shoulder. However, he had not been the father's target; instead, this seemingly good move brought him closer to his real target: Keira. However, due to the flip, he was on his back with his feet towards her, and, for a moment, could only thrash his tail in her face and kick blindly. She took the opportunity to backtrack out of the tunnel, turning herself towards the exit at the wide point. She was forced to crawl on all fours, and, being unused to this, she was slower and somewhat clumbsy. A stream of fur poured out of that little tunnel: Keira, followed by the big male with nothing but his daughter's heart on his mind, then Jak, bent on protecting her, then the little female, blindly following the ottsel she'd fallen in love with at first sight, and last the mother, to try and keep her daughter safe.
"Ooo, look! More cute furry animals!" Maia had gotten away from her brother early and had gotten a tip from Daxter as to where they were (in exchange for a few Precursor Orbs, that little weasel). She blocked their only dry path away from the ottsel family, so Keira turned to the water. Ottsels are quite capable swimmers, it's true, but the water plasters their fur to them and weighs them down considerably. Add to that the fact that the parannahs were out and hungrier than ever, and you ended up with five very unhappy fuzballs. The real ottsels turned back and retreated into their burrow, narrowly escaping Maia's groping fingers. She stuck her arm in as far as it would go, only to yank it back out with a shreak and stick a bitten finger into her mouth. The little female came out and did the ottsel equivalent of sticking your tongue out at someone (A/N: don't ask me what it is; I'm not an ottsel), and scrurried back inside at her mother's high-pitched call.
Jak and Keira, however, made full use of this opportunity to get to the opposite shore and up its bank while the parannahs tried to bite Maia as she bent over the water and stuck her arm in the hole. They managed to get under a tree surrounded by pillars of earth, only to discover another family of ottsels! Apparently, they weren't as rare as Keira thought. This one consisted of an eldest brother acting as the father for a set of triplets. The triplets were right at that age where girls begin to go crazy over guys, so I think you can guess what happened. Yep, they chased Jak right out of the hollow and up the tree over it.
Now, most of you out there can probably guess what this lead to. Yes, that's right, Keira was triplely jealous and chased the three young ottsels right out of that tree. Well, she chased them halfway down, then they tripped and fell the rest of the way. They all landed on their fuzzy butts and cried to their brother about the mean blue girl. The silly male, however, would not listen to them, and proceeded to try cheesy ottsel pickup lines, which no one but his sisters understood. But he stood down there and chattered away anyway, if only to hear himself chatter.
It was getting quite late by the time the ottsel boy had given up and decided that she was just too stupid to appriciate his wit (A/N: Daxter's not the only hormonal male around who thinks he's all that and a big o' chips, ne). It was even later when Maia decided she was tired of looking for them and went off to where ever it was she went off to (A/N: I dunno where these characters go off to, alright? They just go 'poof!' and leave). By the time they had gotten away from her Lurker dogs and found Samos (who had slept through the entire thing), the sun had begun to set. Not wanting to find out why this jungle was forbidden, the three furballs marched back to Sandover Village in the dying light.
By the time they'd reached Samos's hut, Keira was asleep and being carried by Jak, who looks as though he might have been sleepwalking himself. Samos was the only one who wasn't tired, on account of he'd slept all day and could fly around, instead of having to drag his furry feet through the slippery sand. After they climbed up to Samos's lab, Jak promptly fell over backwards and went right to sleep; the jarring movement hadn't made Keira even stir. Samos sat up all night and watched them, ready to thwack either of them with his twig, should they make a wrong move (A/N: he sure is suspicious, huh? Oh, well).
The next morning, Daxter took his two friends and the grouchy Sage back to Misty Island to meet Gol and Maia. They found them beside the Dark Eco pool. Gol had his hands in it and was playing with it like a little boy playing in a puddle. Oddly enough, when he pulled his hands out, they weren't furry at all. Maia was bound and gagged so that she couldn't cause any 'trouble' for the ottsels. Gol stood up and look wistfully at the sludgy black ooze, then turned the three of them back into themselves. "And I did so like you better as a furball, Samos. You were so much more managable. Come, sister." With that, the two lunatics left them alone.
After such an ordeal, Keira was in an odd mood. Or maybe it was because Dark Eco screws up your mind. Either way, she decided to finnish what she's started up at the Citadel. Daxter, however, was in no mood to stop her, as he was jumping around like a nutcase, still happy about being changed back into his rightful Homo sapiens igbay arseay (A/N: 'scuse the piglattin. If you can't read it, it says "big ears". Pretty fitting, don't you think?). But, being Daxter, and being clumbsy, he lost his footing and fell into the Dark Eco. Moments later he shot out of it, now back to his lovable ottsel self.
"Aw, man, not again!" No one heard him, though, and Jak and Keira were too busy with each other, and Samos was too busy yelling at them.
You didn't think I'd leave Daxter as his big-eared-human self, did ya? And yeah, I know. It's a stupidfic. That's what happens when my muse inspires me and then runs away. I might as well move to Misty Island; then maybe she'd stick around when I NEEDED her! It's stupid, but hey, I enjoyed it. And it adds to the very small J&D fanbase. We need more, people! Come on, someone write another fic! Or draw some fanart! I'm going insane looking for it! Well, see ya!