Author's note: This story takes place during Jak 2, sometime after surviving through the assault on the water slums.
I am super excited to finally get this written. It's another fanfic that I always regretted not getting around writing out, though I had most of it in my notes. Silly Weiila.
Amongst the Ruins
Chapter one
"Who the heck would even get the idea to stash coded messages in Samos' hut?" Daxter complained as he dragged down another old, smelly tome from the shelves and shook it. Nothing fell out. "Doesn't he have enough moldy books?"
Jak shrugged as he pulled out several more books and shook them. Torn had said that the courier would stash the message somewhere amongst the manuscripts. What he had refused to explain was from where the courier actually came, though he had said something about not daring to use communicator for such "long distant calls" due to the risk of them being intercepted. Inside the city there was enough of a buzz to be fairly safe and lost in the electronic conversations, apparently.
But despite Daxter's complaints, though, they both knew that Samos' hut was the only place in Dead Town that was safe from the metal heads, for whatever reason. It was just that neither of them wanted to be there.
Too many memories – not just of hours' worth of boring lectures, but of what life had been then.
Jak shoved the message-less books back on the shelf so hard the furniture might have broken, just to stop his mind from going there.
"Aha!"
Daxter triumphantly shook a thin, leather package out of his latest tome and snatched it up from the floor.
"This must be it!" He sniffed it and quirked a furry brow. "Smells weird, though."
Jak took it from him and peeled it open, not only out of curiosity but also to make sure this really was it. He did not feel like staying, nor getting forced to go back. A faint smell of salt whiffed up into his nose, and grains of sand slipped around in the folds of the package.
Almost like the ocean, but dryer.
As he peeled it open, he realized that the package itself was the message. Strange letters had been inscribed on the inside of the leather. It struck him that the material itself felt strange, not at all like that made from yakkow hides. There was no fur, rather a scaly pattern. Had it been made from a snake? Or a lizard, maybe?
He pushed the idle musings away. That didn't matter. What did matter was that this really had to be it. He could not read the message, the letters nothing like he had ever seen before. Satisfied, he wrapped the message up again and stuffed it in his backpack.
Torn had given them strict orders to leave the hut the same way it was, so the Demolition Duo spent some time putting all the books back on the shelves. If they got back upside down or not, however, was another question entirely.
With no little relief Jak turned and leapt out of the hut over to the nearest crumbling apartment complex, Daxter clambering onto his shoulder even as he was in mid-air.
"Well, that's enough heroics today," Daxter said. "Can we have a breather?" His belly made a gurgling sound as if on cue.
Smiling a little, Jak ducked around a decrepit corner and sat down. He was fine with a break, but he had no desire to stare at that hut made of too distant memories, especially not while resting. From a pocket he fished out a ration bar and broke it in two, giving one half to Daxter.
"I could murder for some ketchup…" the ottsel sighed, but he accepted his share. He'd only eat a quarter of it, of course, and give the rest back to Jak. Daxter had, after all, a tiny stomach. But sharing by half was one of their small, important routines.
As he took the first bite out of the dull ration bar, Jak could not avoid noting the bizarreness of the situation. He stared at the opposite wall, thinking of the placement of the hut behind his back. If they were here, then the beach would have been over there, and the other huts there, and there, and…
Frowning, he turned his gaze upwards and looked at the sky through the hole in the roof. It was grey from smog, but beyond that there was unmistakable blue, promising that it was once again the limit.
That, unfortunately, did not manage to pull the brake on his line of thought, which immediately took a swan dive into…
"Jak!"
Daxter's voice whipped through the air. Jak blinked and looked down at him, meeting the ottsel's glare.
"Put the thoughts down and walk away slowly. No eye contact. I'm warning you, buddy." Daxter waved the remains of his food like a rectangular, crumbling sword to emphasize.
When Jak only gave a small, strained smile, Daxter sighed.
"I can't leave my post for a sec, can I?"
He hopped up on Jak's shoulder in a single jump.
"There, all better, ya needy teen?" he asked, but the annoyance was so fake and melodramatic that Jak had to chuckle.
His laugh, and Daxter's grin, disappeared immediately at a sudden, distant buzz. It was low, still far away – but familiar, and growing fast. They knew that one all too well.
Jak scrambled up and dove under what remained of the ceiling, the ration bar pieces falling from both his and Daxter's grips. Within a second the morph gun was in Jak's hands, as Daxter clutched onto his friend's shoulder plate.
Dust powdered down the walls as a shadow passed by above, then another. A glint of red flashed past in the corner of the ceiling hole, but as Jak pressed himself against the wall far away from that, there was no way he and Daxter could have been spotted by the guards in the two air trains.
The buzz of the engines continued on, fluttered upwards and further away.
"They're looking for a place to spill out," Jak murmured as he straightened up, looking towards the direction the hum could still be heard from. Crumbled walls stood in the way, but they had come from that way to the hut. It would be no problem to go there.
"What does the Krimzon Gutballs want out here?" Daxter complained. He turned and sniffed the back of Jak's ear, causing an involuntary snort of laughter as it tickled. "Maybe you should change your cologne, bud. Seems they're picking up on it!"
The amusement died, and he gave Jak as commanding a glare as he could.
"And for the record," Daxter continued, "my cologne is Eau de Getouttahere."
Jak, however, was already creeping forwards, in the very, very, very wrong direction.
"We're supposed to avoid those goons, remember?!" Daxter hissed.
"But we better find out what they're here for," Jak countered in a low voice. "It can't be anything good."
He had that Look again. The "Haven's Most Wanted" one. Daxter groaned as loudly as he dared.
The buzzing had settled, coming from the top of a decrepit, two-story house. As Jak silently leapt and ducked his way over to that building, dozens of heavy steps made the roof tremble. Sand and flakes of paint rained down on the two spies as they got inside. There had been a couple of floors to this one, but most of that had fallen off and sunk into the thick mud that flooded large parts of the ground floor. Most of one wall was gone, too, but there was a metal staircase leading at least up to the remains of the second floor.
Jak approached the stair but, to Daxter's great relief, stopped some ways away from it, crouching behind a pile of rubble. That was the only visible way up, but also the only visible way down. Not even Jak was crazy enough to risk getting spotted from above, stuck on a stair.
The light lazily filtered through falling dust as the boots kept clamping about up there. Daxter thought to himself that this whole "town" might crumble at any second. Then again, he'd seen parts of it do so already.
He really, really wished Jak would get the bright idea to stop doing insane stuff like this. Gritting his teeth, Daxter curled up further, leaning into the soft safety of Jak's hair.
"No enemies in sight, Sir!" came a rough voice from above. The steps moved around again, sounding like they lined up. Shadows danced on the wall by the stair to the sound of the heavy feet.
Jak raised one arm to shield his own and Daxter's eyes as concrete pebbles and more sand rained down.
"Y'know," Daxter whispered, "if they cause the whole thing to collapse with all that fancy footwork, I'd rather we weren't down here!"
To that Jak just softly hushed, never taking his eyes off the stairs.
Somebody up there started to say something, only to be cut off by a sudden, hissing shriek. A hail of pebbles tumbled down, the soft clicks and splashes as they fell drowned out by the shouting and gunfire from above. Daxter eeped, grabbing Jak's hair.
"Spread out!" somebody on the roof shouted, almost muffled by the unmistakable roars of more metal heads. Sounded like grunts. But they did not make that kind of wail that had been heard seconds before.
At the order, though, Jak's shoulders tensed and he straightened up with such a sudden start that Daxter almost fell off.
"What the––" Daxter started.
"Get down!" the same somebody shouted.
The guards' curses were cut in half by an explosion. Raw dark eco splattered down the stairs and over the remains of the wall, mixed with shrapnel. But by then Jak had already thrown himself away from the stairs, deeper into the room, crouching with one hand on the floor for balance.
Judging by the shouting above, it was not the KGs who had decided to rock the party. Rather like the metal heads had chosen to use them as test subjects for some new eco bomb.
And then, suddenly, there was a creaking noise.
For a surreal second everything stopped as everyone all at once realized what was happening.
Then the creaking grew to a deafening roar, mixed with the screaming and screeching from the combatants above as the whole building began to topple.
Daxter clung desperately to Jak's ear as the renegade ran towards the wide open wall. And then Jak slipped, sinking halfway up to his knees in the mud. The world seemed to move in slow motion in those horrible, desperate seconds.
A furiously shrieking metal head fell from the roof, one of those creepy, big ones that looked like humanoid snakes. Daxter never bothered to learn their names, they were awful and a pain to fight even for Jak and that was all he needed to know. It crashed into the thick, dirty liquid, splattering mud all over. A screaming KG followed, head first. That splash was heavier.
Daxter realized, when a block of concrete fell down in front of them and cause Jak to recoil and slip backwards… that they would not make it.
Then Jak's hand clamped around the ottsel's body, tearing him from the safe shoulder. Daxter grappled for the thumb – No! No! – catching a glimpse of Jak's eyes – I'm sorry – and then Daxter sailed through the air. He flew through the gaping opening in the wall, desperately reaching back.
Not without you!
He saw the crumbling building, the soldiers and monsters on the top floor desperately struggling to keep their balance. They, at least, had the luxury of open air above them.
The sun blinded him and his downwards arch began, his ears filled with the thunder and roar of collapsing concrete. Then he could no longer see it, but even as he hit the muddy water and sunk, stunned for the first terrible moment by the cold, slimy slap, all his mind could picture was the walls toppling like a card house. Cards that weighed ton upon ton, metal and concrete falling on top of Jak.
He pushed upwards and broke the surface screaming in air, muck coating his mouth as well as his body. Coughing and sputtering he tried to swim, tried to make it in the direction he though was towards the ground. After some frantic seconds he managed to get to a rock and clung to it, shaking his head to get the mud out of his eyes.
He knew there was only destruction before he could properly see. And still, the shock stunned him so that he froze solid, sitting stock still on that cold rock with sludge licking his fur slick to his body. For how long he sat there, he wasn't sure.
It was a jagged heap, just another one amongst many, many others in this landscape of sad ruins. Dust peacefully fluttered in the wind above the sharp angles and pipes that stuck out of it like bent needles. The two air trains had careened into the dirty water, blots of eerie red amongst all the grey and brown. There were dark bodies, too, and some red armor showing here and there in the wreckage.
Nothing moved.
Nothing.
"Jak… Jak!"
Daxter cried out before he had considered that there may be more metal heads around. But the monsters didn't matter anymore.
He started forwards, tried to leap to another rock only to fall into the mud again, too weighed down by the slimy dirt to jump properly. Scrambling, he managed to crawl out again gasping and sobbing at the same time. Some instinct managed to make it through, driving him to stop and shake off the worst mud before he struggled onwards.
The mountain of rubble rose above him, and for a moment he felt a wave of dread. Suddenly back there, two and a half year in the past, staring out at the jungle of metal in which he had to find Jak and get him away from those strange people who had dragged him off.
Find Jak.
Not a single thought apart from that remained in Daxter's brain as he hurried up over the nearest chunk of what had been a wall or ceiling.
"Gods, you just keep getting us into trouble! I gotta keep you on a shorter leash so you'll stop pulling this kinda crap, man! It'll be the death of me, saving your neck every––"
A splash from below caught his frantic mutterings in his throat. He spun around, already knowing that it wasn't Jak. Jak didn't make sounds like that when he moved in water. Daxter had heard Jak thrash around in a warm ocean almost every sunny day for ten years. He knew.
The metal head he had seen falling earlier rose from the mud, spewing out dirty water. Hissing, it turned to the unmoving red armor sticking out of the sludge, slithering forwards. The monster's mouth opened, revealing dripping, hungry fangs.
It would only take a heartbeat before it realized that the KG was dead, and go looking for something else to kill. Like something small, that could squirm and struggle and go down in one bite.
Daxter dove over the top of the broken edge of concrete, only to find there was a slope on the other side. He managed to get a hold and not fall, but kicked down a piece of rubble in his fight for purchase. It tumbled downwards, and there was a hiss and lazy slap of the metal head moving through the mud.
Holding his breath Daxter let himself fall, slipping on the debris as he frantically looked around for a quick hiding hole.
He heard the scraping, but his frenzied brain didn't recognize it as anything but another creak of the unstable wreckage. Not until the shadow of a hand flashed into his vision and, clamping over his mouth, ripped him in under the shade of a precariously leaning wall. The other arm of the attacker came down, locking Daxter's thrashing legs and tail between itself and a cold wall of chest plate.
"Shh!"
Hot breath flowed against the top of Daxter's head and ears by the hush.
Despite the warmth, and the thick moisture still covering him, every hair on Daxter's small body rose like ice cold needles. He went stock still, feeling his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest.
"Don't give me any trouble," the hushing voice breathed. "If I miss this shot you'll be the appetizer and you know it."
Daxter shuddered, but when the fingers pressed to his face squeezed in a demand for a reply, he nodded to the best of his ability.
Claws clicked just above, and a serpentine shadow rose up against the sky above the concrete slab Daxter had jumped over moments before.
The arm that had been trapping him whipped out and a shot from a handgun went off, the noise almost silenced. Fancy technology. It did the trick. Without a sound the metal head fell backwards, a hole straight between its eyes. A hard thump, and then nothing.
If it had been Jak, a "headshot!" cheer had been in order. But it wasn't Jak.
The arm was back against Daxter before he had a chance to try to use the small freedom to struggle loose.
"Were there any others out there?"
Daxter shook his head.
"Okay. I'll let you up for a bit but you're still not going to cause me any trouble. Got it?"
Daxter had to be treated to another hard squeeze before he nodded.
The hand over his face let go, only to grab him by the middle and lift him up and turn him over. And with that, Daxter came face to face with Commander Erol.
