A/N: Hello again! It's good to be back! And I'm so excited to be starting a sequel (you all know how ecstatic I was just to finish something for the first time in my life...). Though this is a sequel, the world won't end if you haven't read A Twist of Fate. This story will diverge more from canon than the last, starting later on. I hope you all enjoy reading this fic as much as I do writing it.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Jak and Daxter, or any of the other colorful characters and places and...thingamabobbits created by Naughty Dog. I'm not making any money off of this. If any dialogue seem eerily familiar, it's because it's taken from the game.
Jak and Daxter: The Darkness Within
by Jam
It was amazing how quickly one's life could change. One innocent trip to a forbidden island on the edge of the horizon had changed two young boys' lives forever. Jak sometimes wondered what would have happened if Daxter hadn't agreed to go with him that fateful night. Would the older teen have gone alone, or would he have stayed behind with his friend? If Jak had stayed, he would have never fallen into that vat of Dark Eco. He wouldn't see this pale, washed-out version of himself every time he saw his reflection, wouldn't have to deal with claws and horns and a rage that constantly simmered under the surface. But, if he had stayed, would he and Daxter have even made it to Gol and Maia's citadel? Would Jak have been able to fight, and possibly kill, all of those Lurkers on his own without the thirst for blood fueling him? What would the world be like now if Gol and Maia had succeeded? Would there even be a world at all?
Such a simple decision to break a rule might have ended up saving the world.
It made Jak think about the significance of other decisions he'd made in life.
What if Jak had gone to see the Oracle like was supposed to?
What if they had never found the Rift Gate?
What if, what if…
How much of an impact did other seemingly meaningless choices have on the greater scheme of things? 'What ifs' would haunt Jak for a long time. If he had done this, would this have happened; if he hadn't done that, would things be better; and what if he hadn't done anything at all? Jak wasn't usually the kind of guy to worry so much about the consequences of his actions. He lived in the moment and did what felt right, and everything had always worked out just fine. At the young age of fifteen, Jak hadn't had any regrets. Why waste time worrying over things he couldn't change when his and Daxter's actions had saved everyone? But two years can change a person. It gives a person time to think and linger on all of those 'what ifs,' and stew on the fact that, no matter how much you might want to, you can never go back.
-x-
"Today's the big day, Jak!"
The pale fifteen year old boy smiled as his mentor strode towards him, staff in hand. Even though the sun had only just barely risen over the horizon, it might as well have been midday at Samos' hut. After a long two weeks of lugging Precursor parts and letting Keira work her magic, the strange machine they had found at Gol and Maia's citadel had finally been moved and reconstructed back at Sandover. The finished product looked something like an oversized warp gate. The gate itself was made up of giant, intricately carved interlocking Precursor rings which they had propped up and attached to Samos' little island by building scaffolding underneath it. The energy swirling in the center of the rings glowed with a brilliance that could only be outmatched by Light Eco. Keira was finally satisfied that she had gotten the machine back to working order and all of them were excited to see what exactly the machine did. Well…at least he and Keira were. Seeing as it was a giant Precursor artifact, Daxter could honestly only get so excited. Jak had practically had to carry him out of their hut to get him to show up at all, and he had promptly fallen asleep where he had been dumped in the seat of the cart that was connected to the machine via a rickety wooden ramp and homemade tracks.
Samos, on the other hand, was hard to read. One minute he would seem excited but, when he thought no one was looking, he would gaze at the Precursor machine with a hard, pensive expression. That look was leaking into his expression now, though Jak could tell the old sage was trying to hide it.
"I hope you are prepared for whatever happens..."
"I think I've figured out most of this machine," Keira grinned before Jak could dwell too much on the sage's words as she affectionately ran a hand over the side of the cart. She was definitely the most excited about today's test run. Though the strange machine wasn't an invention of her own, she had put just as much blood, sweat, and tears into it as her Zoomer or one of her scout flies. As she slid into the seat next to Daxter, she gazed at the machinery around her not unlike a mother or father might look at their child. "It interacts somehow with that large Precursor ring. I just hope we didn't break anything moving it here from the lab."
"Easy for you to say!" Daxter groused sleepily as he was accidentally jostled awake when Jak climbed into the seat next to him. He threw his arms behind him and stretched in the seat, not caring if Jak and Keira had to duck to miss being hit. He didn't see why he had to get up at the crack of dawn to test out this Precursor monstrosity when they could have just waited a few more hours and let him sleep in. "We did all the heavy lifting!" he finished, jerking his head in Jak's direction.
It was only slightly true. Moving the smaller parts had been pretty easy. All Jak and Daxter had had to do was carry them down the elevator in the Gol and Maia's citadel and chuck them through the warp gate by the Yellow Sage's hut. To move the larger pieces, Keira had come up with the brilliant plan of recycling the Lurkers' dirigible. They had figured that if it could pry Precursor robot parts from the thick, cloying mud of the swamp, then it could be used to move parts from the citadel back to Sandover with no problem. Jak's uncle had been more help in that department. The thought of climbing a 50 ft sheer rock wall exhilarated Jak, the rush he got from being launched by a Blue Eco pad thrilled him, but there was something about the thought of hovering in midair, hundreds and hundreds of feet above the surface, that just rubbed him the wrong way. For his uncle, though, it was just another adventure to add to his list. Jak and Daxter would live vicariously through the old explorer's stories of the glory of flight so long as they never had to try it out for themselves.
Despite how much Daxter really wished he could just go back to bed, however, there was still a very, very small, almost insignificant part of him that was curious about this machine. Even if he didn't particularly like the Precursors or anything they had built (they made all their crap such a horrible shade of orange, and who needed Dark Eco or giant robots anyway?), he still wondered about them. How could he not occasionally wonder about the race that had apparently created the entire world?
"Daxter! Don't touch anything!" the Green Eco Sage snapped before Daxter's wandering hands could touch any of the controls in front of him. The orange-haired boy winced and glared out of the corner of his eye to see Samos practically looming over him. Nope. He did not need this first thing in the morning. "Though the Precursors vanished long ago, the artifacts they left behind can still do great harm!"
Daxter shared an exaggerated eye roll with Jak before shaking his head and shimmying further down into the seat. As if he had to tell them that. It's not like they hadn't gone on a trip practically across the world to stop Gol and Maia from using a giant Precursor artifact to open another giant Precursor artifact full of ancient Precursor sludge. He tried to look slightly less homicidal when his horned friend nudged him with an elbow and smiled knowingly down at him, but it was hard. Daxter first thing in the morning had a shorter fuse than Jak, and that was saying something these days.
At least now that this…thing had been built, Jak could finally get his sorry ass down the beach and go talk to the Oracle. Daxter wasn't going to let his friend come up with any more excuses. First there was the whole 'we need to stop the end of the world first' excuse which, Daxter had to admit, was pretty good. If they had stopped to train Jak's Eco powers, the world would probably be kind of dead by now. The 'we should collect all the Power Cells' excuse was pushing it, but had there really been any harm in procrastinating just a little bit more when it was just the two of them running around and Jak didn't have to worry about accidentally skewering somebody he actually liked? And there had still been plenty of pissed off Lurkers to deal with.
But Jak had been different when he came back to the village. It wasn't that he wasn't the same cheerful, thrill-seeking, hard-headed teenager he always had been, but he wasn't as friendly with the other villagers as he used to be. It hadn't taken the villagers long to realize that talking badly about Daxter anywhere within earshot of Jak was very, very unwise, and Daxter hadn't suddenly forgotten that none of those people had been particularly fond of him to begin with. Though Daxter sort of liked the fact that people had stopped picking on him, it was only a matter of time before somebody slipped and it would be really bad if Jak accidentally butchered somebody. The orange-haired teen had a sneaking suspicion that Jak had been avoiding the Oracle because he didn't want to have to confront the darker side of himself, wanted to shove it away in a box and pretend it didn't exist. Daxter could understand that, but pretending it wasn't there wouldn't make it go away.
"…or great good," Keira was saying, trying to lighten the mood and again reminding Daxter of the Precursor Oracle watching them stoically from just down the beach, "if you know how to use them!"
"I've had some experience with such things. I know you can make it work," Samos said to Jak as he, too, slipped into the cart. It was a tight fit with the four of them all crammed into one tight space, but no one was willing to sit on the side and miss out on...whatever was about to happen. Which was another thing Daxter was kind of sore about. There had to be a safer way to test this thing than piling into it and crossing their fingers that they wouldn't blow up. The young teen had been paranoid from the second he'd seen it – he just knew something bad was going to happen – but Jak and Keira were forces to be reckoned with. Daxter had never been able to prevent Jak from going on any of his hare-brained adventures before, and there was no way he could have prevented Keira from diving headfirst into this machine. He just had to cross his fingers and hope that Samos' presence would counteract his and Jak's questionable luck.
Though Keira had recreated the machine and claimed that it was completely functional, she hadn't actually been able to get it to do anything. Yea, the gate thing was glowing like crazy and the funny screens on the cart were spouting gibberish in the Precursor language, but that's about all it seemed to do. The lights were on but nobody was home. The green-haired mechanic was putting all her hopes in Jak, who seemed to have a natural affinity for Precursor crap. With only the slightest bit of hesitation, Jak reached out and placed his hand on the badge-shaped red gem on the console in front of them. Instantly it began to glow with a soft warmth and they all heard a surprisingly loud click as the switch activated. The cart around them began to hum with life, and many of the screens that had been dark before suddenly snapped on and began to display messages that neither Jak nor Daxter could ever hope to understand. The piece that Daxter had been about to touch earlier, a gizmo that looked a lot like a Precursor Orb if slightly bigger and rounder rather than egg-shaped, suddenly popped open by itself and revealed a fiery, golden core.
"Looks like Jak's still got the mojo," the youngest teen commented smugly, in part to cover his sudden nerves. They were really, actually doing this. How did he let Jak talk him into these kinds of things?
"Interesting…" Keira whispered as she leaned closer to the small, fiery light and glanced with awe at the various screens across the dashboard. "It appears to be reading out some preset coordinates!"
'Preset coordinates to where?' Daxter wanted to ask but, before he could say anything, everything started to go south. The Precursor Orb-shaped gizmo suddenly snapped shut with an ominous click and the smaller ring of Precursor metal attached to the back of the cart behind them started to move. It rotated slowly behind them, beams of Blue Eco from its protruding antennae lancing out like bolts of lightning to latch onto the larger rings ahead of them and disappear. With each beam, the giant rings began to move themselves until they lurched from their wooden stand so violently that it tore it apart completely and began to hover in midair. At first Daxter could admit that he'd been a little scared (completely terrified), but as seconds passed and they weren't being blown to smithereens, he could appreciate what was going on in front of him. It seemed that the machine really was just one giant warp gate. The gate itself, which had been glowing with brilliant white light before, now swirled with the chaotic blues and purples of any other warp gate.
"Wow…wouldja look at that?" Daxter gasped in awe. If any of the teens had been paying attention to their mentor, they may have noticed the way his skin had suddenly paled with realization or how his eyes had filled with dread. If Samos was right, and Samos was almost always right, then this was the day he had been waiting for all these years. This was the day everything would change.
The sky suddenly turned dark as if someone had snuffed out the sun, and the only light came from the swirling gate before them. The wind inexplicably picked up, whistling harshly around them, and faces full of wonder quickly morphed into faces of concern and worry. From the depths of the gate, a deep and foreboding voice the likes of which none of them had ever heard bellowed triumphantly. "Finally! The last Rift Gate has been opened!"
Nope, nope, nope – this was bad. This was very bad. Daxter knew he should have just stayed in bed. It wouldn't have helped, but at least he could have died peacefully in his sleep. The terrified boy yelped and unconsciously leaned into Jak as swarms and swarms of…something began to pour out of the gate. They almost looked like wumpbees, if wumpbees were the size of Yakows and let out ear-splitting screeches that made Daxter feel as if his spine was trying to slither out of his back. Next to him, Jak watched them with narrowed eyes, his aura of Dark Eco crackling sporadically. At any other time, Jak's mere presence might have been enough to keep Daxter calm, but the scene playing out before him was like something out of a nightmare. The younger boy yelled as one of the giant beasts flew dangerously close overhead and ducked as far down into the seat as he could. "What are those things?!"
The old Green Eco Sage looked around with a surreal sort of calm, watching as the creatures began to fly over the village. "So this is how it happened," he muttered to himself. When he turned back to the gate, a hideous face he had honestly hoped to never see again had appeared in the cycling vortex. A face not from this world, attached to a creature antithesis to everything the Precursors stood for. The massive creature lurking in the gate roared with bloodlust and triumph, its claws reaching through the portal and entering into their world. Eleven years couldn't have prepared Samos for this, even if he knew that this would happen.
"You cannot hide from me, boy!" the monster crowed, crawling even further into their dimension. Keira was the first to recover and turned to the only one of them who could control the machine.
"Do something, Jak!"
Daxter snapped next, his panic getting the best of them as the monster in front of them let out a cackle so full of malice and sadism that it filled him with more fear than any of Maia's crazed chuckles ever could. He began pressing every gizmo and pulling every lever in sight, hoping that something, anything, he did would make the monster go away. "What's this thing do?! Or…or that? How 'bout this one? Everybody, press all the buttons!"
Jak slammed his and down on the red gem-like button he had pressed before, hoping it would shut off the machine, and hissed as the cart suddenly flew into the motion. It soared down the ramshackle track and headed straight for the grinning maw of the beast in front of them. Daxter was positive they were going to die. He had been absolutely right, not that it mattered much now. Nothing ever good came from messing with Precursor junk! The teen shut his eyes as they got closer and closer to the gate and waited for the end but…nothing happened.
Well, something had happened. They had apparently gone right past the monster, had entered the rift gate, and were now flying towards who knew where. It wasn't like any warp gate Daxter had been through before. Whenever he used the gate at Samos', there wasn't any time between when he jumped into the gate and when he was spat back out. He didn't have time to look around and see what the inside of a gate looked like. It was dizzying and vibrant and nauseating and beautiful all at the same time, and Daxter wasn't sure if he wanted to shut his eyes to block it out or keep looking to make sure he didn't miss anything.
"What was that thing?" Keira yelled into the rushing wind of the inside of the gate, but even if someone knew the answer, they were being rocked and buffeted around too much to answer properly. It wasn't exactly a smooth ride.
"Hang on everyone!" Samos warned as they barreled faster and faster toward the light at the end of the sickeningly spiraling tunnel.
Daxter finally made up his mind and decided that he really, really hated warp gates. He was never going to go through another one again – EVER. He didn't care how big or small it was, he was just going to have to walk! Provided they made it out of here alive. As the cart really began to rattle and shake, feeling almost as if it wanted to fling itself apart, Daxter couldn't hold back a terrified scream. "I want off this thiiiiing!"
And just as they were reaching the end of the tunnel, just when Daxter thought this crazy ride from hell might be over, the worst happened. A jolt of energy lanced through the rattled machine and literally shook it apart. It practically disintegrated beneath them, the explosion sending all four of them tumbling in different directions. Daxter couldn't tell which way was up and which was down, let alone where Jak or anyone else had flown off to. He threw his arms over his eyes as he rocketed closer and closer toward the blinding white before him and just prayed that everyone would make it to the other side in one piece.
Jak was just as lost, tumbling helplessly toward the other end of the gate and hating every second of it. He couldn't see the others anywhere and that worried him, but he couldn't do anything about it now. As he braced himself for whatever was coming, he thought he could hear Samos call to him in the distance.
"Find yourself, Jak…!"
That was the last time Jak would hear a friendly voice for a long time.
Now, the pale teen wasn't exactly sure where he expected to land, but he had expected to feel soft earth or hard rock beneath him. Maybe grass. Something familiar, at least. And perhaps the surface he landed on was somewhat familiar. He landed hard on some sort of metallic surface and winced as he skidded against the abrasive floor beneath him. With a pained groan, the young elf pushed himself to his knees and glancing warily around him to try to get his bearings. What he saw…well, he wasn't quite sure how he felt about what he saw.
Jak had never seen anything like it. Gol and Maia's citadel had been made out of nothing but Precursor and elf-made metal, but it had just been one building and most of it had been built by the Precursors. It hadn't been so different from the lost temple in the jungle, if much larger and far more sinister. But this? This was a sprawling landscape made from nothing but elf-made metal. Square-shaped buildings as tall as three or four of Samos' huts stacked on top of each other surrounded him like towering walls, blocking out the horizon and making him feel as if he were somehow indoors even with the sky right above him. And the sky itself had a strange filmy quality to it, almost like the sky over Misty Island and yet different, hazier. Jak glanced around in wonder as he pushed himself to his feet. Giant screens like the ones that had been on the machine flickered on every building with words Jak didn't understand. Dozens of Zoomers of every color and shape conceivable flew through the air above him. And towering above everything was a building that he thought might have dwarfed even Gol and Maia's citadel. He couldn't get a good look at it with the sun shining right behind it, but the spires silhouetted against the sunlight reminded Jak of claws.
He appeared to be on some kind of metal bridge, and there were dozens, hundreds of people gaping up at him in shock. He had never seen so many people, and certainly not all in one place! Jak's purple lightning crackled curiously around him against his will, and the people nearest to him screamed and ran away in terror. He might have been more upset about it if he hadn't still been in such a state of shock himself, or if his instincts hadn't honed in on the group of elves approaching him from the other side of the bridge. Unlike the other elves, who were now running and screaming in earnest, these elves were approaching him at a steady, confident march.
"There he is. Move in!" one of the elves barked in an oddly muffled voice. They wore some kind of armor that Jak had never seen before, made out of a material that didn't appear to be metal, wood, or bone. Most of them wore red suits from head to toe, with masks covering their faces and red-tinted goggles over their eyes, but not the elf in front. He didn't march so much as swagger towards Jak, and a yellow bodysuit peaked out from underneath his red armor. His face mask was pushed back to reveal a smirking face covered in strange, blue tattoos that vaguely reminded Jak of Maia, and he wondered if there was any connection between the two. The pale teen let out a warning growl as the group marched closer, instinctively hunching into a defensive position and spreading his claws. He had never fought elves before, but there was something about this group that didn't feel right. He didn't know what the strange items they held in their hands were, but he heavily suspected they were weapons they wouldn't hesitate to use.
Jak glanced around him quickly to see if he could spot Daxter or any of the others, but he seemed to be alone. He could only hope that they would be okay, wherever they had ended up.
"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" the yellow-clad elf in front purred as he finally came to a stop. The other elves continued forward more hesitantly and fanned out on either side of their leader, weapons raised. Something about that voice rubbed Jak the wrong way. He bared his fangs and let his aura run wild, let it whip and snap around him like angry tentacles of lightning. Though the bloodlust was already singing through him, he didn't want to fight these elves – not really. Fighting Lurkers was one thing. He didn't particularly like doing that either, but most Lurker species weren't sentient and the ones that were had been hell bent on destroying the world. These elves, though? They could just be protecting their village from the strange demonic creature that had fallen from the sky. Jak knew they probably had families and friends waiting for them after they took off those clunky-looking suits. Could he hold back enough to just knock them out?
"Don't damage it too much," their leader ordered, and Jak bristled at being referred to as 'it'. "The Baron will want it alive."
The group of red-clad elves surged forward at once and Jak prepared to do whatever he needed to get them to back down, but he never got the chance to do much of anything at all. Almost as one, the elves aimed their weapons at him and something that almost looked like Blue Eco crackled out of them. But it couldn't be Blue Eco, because he just would have absorbed it. Jak didn't know what it was and he didn't care because all he knew was mind-numbing agony – a pain so sudden and all-encompassing that he couldn't even scream. It felt as if every single cell of his body had been set on fire and it just kept burning. When the elves finally relented, the pale ten collapsed to his hands and knees and tried to stop the world from spinning, stop his limbs from quivering, but he couldn't. And when he finally managed to glance back up, that tattooed elf was smirking down at him with a dark leer that would have put Gol and Maia to shame.
"We've been waiting for you…"
And everything went black.
I'm going to try to update on the 15th and 30th of every month, but I will update sooner than that if I end up having more free time this semester. Please, please, let me know what you think. Your opinions mean a lot to me. :)
