"True strength is keeping everything together when everyone expects you to fall apart." - Unknown
21
Jak is immediately nervous inside. The lights are too bright, the air isn't moving, and on top of that, she doesn't want to speak with Torn if she can help it. If she sees that understanding look on his face again, her pride will walk her straight back out the door and she'll lose her best chance at revenge.
The Underground headquarters aren't bad, though. Most of the light comes from a trash-can fire against the back wall, the furnace in the corner (which also lets off a wonderful amount of heat) and the lamp over Torn's map table. Along the walls are propaganda posters with notes scribbled on them, some of them official, some of them rude. Still, it smells like a barracks, like rowdy soldiers
(you gonna go visit the Bitch? Nah, too skinny- ain't my type. You go ahead, though, screams'll be pretty entertaining)
even with the soothing overlay of wood-smoke.
There's a good chance that Jak's nervousness is the exact reason Daxter starts screwing around; she'd probably known that pulling a random lever was the opposite of a good idea, but did it anyways, since it smoothed a few of the anxious lines on her friend's forehead. A faceful of mud was the price to pay. Jak glanced at her friend, and sniffed, raising an eyebrow. That mud was foul, and they would both be smelling it for hours.
Torn, for his part, stays completely professional. It's clear that he sees dozens of kids like her on a pretty regular basis, fed up with oppression, a boy trying to work off his pointless teenage anger or a girl trying to escape some kind of demon at home. She's just one in a crowd to him, and feels better for it.
"The Baron's cut off the water to an entire section of the city."
How unsurprisingly cruel. Her scowl deepens.
"Which shouldn't surprise me. I've seen his evil before- when I was in the Krimson Guard."
Jak twitches.
"You were in the Guard?"
He stares at her, incredulous. "Said that."
"When?"
If he was anywhere near where they kept her- there were a lot of them- o please no, don't let him have been there-
"Years ago. Before your time." He turns away, continues debriefing her.
Jak relaxes, fractionally.
22
The sight of a palm tree hits her in the gut with terrible homesickness.
Unfortunately, between an attack of homesickness, and an attack by Metal Heads, the Metal Heads require more attention if you intend to see tomorrow.
They're not terribly large, looking something like a cross between a dog and a Lightning Mole, but she supposes from all she's heard that there must be different breeds out there. They move fluidly; one gets a lucky bite in on her leg, and gets its head smashed in for its troubles.
The other backs up, snarling, waiting for her to make the first move. Unconcerned, Jak moves towards the pipes nearby, figuring that's where she needs to go.
The Metal Head leaps at her, and is rewarded with a boot to the jaw. It stumbles backwards, and Jak smacks the flat of her hand down against its skull, stunning it. While it's still dazed, she snaps its neck. She climbs up, looking for something she can use to turn the water back on.
The Pumping Station seems like a mockery of the beaches back home, with dirty sand, awful water (drinkable, though, if you don't mind the taste of algae- she hadn't had water for entirely too long), sick plants, and half-dead palm trees, bowing to the hissing wind. Her heart feels squeezed; she misses solid colors, clean air, good people. She misses home.
Either Daxter feels the same way, or she can read Jak's mind (which hasn't seemed so unlikely at times), because the second an opportunity is available, she starts goofing off. They make their way to a cluster of pipes, where the lever to turn the water back on rests. Daxter hops off Jak's shoulder.
The ottsel strains at the valve for a while, grunting theatrically. Fine, then; if she wants to look like a moron, Jak can help with that.
She figured the valve would turn suddenly, possibly knocking Dax on her ass. They'd laugh, it'd be fine.
She was not expecting the valve to whip around at the same time a hatch opened above them with a violent sucking sound, or for Daxter to be thrown up into the air, into the pipe system. Jak can hear her friend's frantic screaming echoing inside the metal, but if she's making noise at least she's still alive. She follows the sound, trying to trace it through one area or another, see where Dax is heading, but it's too difficult to tell which one she's in.
Daxter hits the nozzle, and Jak rushes over; the sound of her friend whimpering her name, quietly, won't be leaving her alone for weeks. She turns the second knob with all of her strength.
Dax gets squeezed out like she's made of rubber, landing flat on the dusty ground and staying there, silent, for a minute.
Jak starts to say something, her heart thumping wildly in her chest, and Daxter lifts a single finger in the air.
"Say. Nothing."
She sits up, shakes herself all over, looks down at her body like the first time she'd ever seen it (with less screaming involved) and blinks rapidly. She doesn't appear to be in pain; the worst she looks is confused, ears twitching as she flexes her arms and legs. She scampers up Jak's sleeve, settling herself on the shoulder-pad and trying to get her fur to lay down in the right direction.
Jak opens her mouth to speak, and Daxter interrupts once again.
"We are not going to talk about that."
She shrugs, glancing at her friend with worried eyes. But she supposes that if Dax is willing to put up with her new issues, she can let the ottsel's weirdness pass without comment from time to time.
23
They make their way back into the water slums, the docks creaking beneath their feet. Daxter is silent, eerily so; with what just happened, it would seem like she would be hurt. But she isn't, and so she sits quietly on Jak's shoulder, puzzled.
Jak feels the noise before she hears it.
The familiar buzzing along the ground that means an oracle is nearby, singing its low, humming song until someone speaks to it and it gets a chance to spout off an absurdly obscure prophecy, or demand an absurd number of Precursor orbs for a power cell. Although that last bit may not hold true here; evidently Haven runs purely on eco-lines, no power cells needed.
But still, she feels the tug of it in her bones, something familiar reaching out to her. They get about halfway there before Daxter sits up and realizes where they're going.
"Aw, no, not one of them big creepy Precursor piles of crap! I have spent enough of my time being told about the future in the most unclear language imaginable, thank you very much! One of you has the light within. Gee, thanks, buddy, it's not like we needed to know anything about this giant ring that could catapult us Precursors-know-where! We don't need anything it's got, why're we going?"
Jak shrugs, walking through the doorway. The hum is louder than ever, incredibly familiar.
The hut is small, with a frayed rug in the middle of the room, the oracle itself surrounded by candles. Jak remembers how, if someone in the village was close to death, she would be asked to place a candle with the sick person's hair tied around the wick by the Oracle. It was supposed to help the Precursors know to whom the spirit coming to greet them belonged. There are so many candles, that to think each represents someone who is dead or dying is a somber thought.
The Oracle, in its low, rolling voice, confirms her suspicions; the Dark Eco in her system is slowly killing her. She'll have to work fast if she wants the Baron to die before she does.
But if she can kill enough Metal Heads, the oracle can help her learn to control It. She's heard of sages receiving tutelage from the Oracles themselves- according to rumor, the Blue Sage was raised by one, although this was generally held to be a joke- but had never considered it happening to her.
Never considered that it might be the only way to prolong her life, either. The tip of Daxter's tail is twitching, which means she's thinking; that makes two of them.
They step out into the Water Slums and start walking back to base.
24
Jak decides very quickly that walking is inconvenient.
She also notices several zoomers parked at the docks. There are KG all around, but they don't look at her, and they don't seem to care what the citizens do as long as they don't bother the Guard. So she hops on.
It's obviously a piece of crap that's been sitting in the same spot for a while; all the paint is chipping off, water damage on the undercarriage, the grips are half-rotted.
She takes it anyways.
Being up in the air again is very strange; it's cold and dry where Sandover was warm and humid, and this hunk of junk she's riding is not as well constructed as Keiran's little A-Grav, even if it is more advanced. Still, she can turn and accelerate without blowing up (although there is a heat rise she can feel in the engine) and so she sets to learning the city from above.
She adapts quickly to the controls, even if they are terrible; this is how much she needs to lean into a turn, this much acceleration is too much, this speed is when the engine gets dangerously close to overheating. Jak circles around over the Water Slums for a while, getting a feel for the new zoomer while Daxter talks to her, or just sits, enjoying the wind.
Problems arise when they leave the Water Slums for the city proper, and immediately hit a Guard vehicle.
Daxter yelps, screeching several obscene curses, and Jak grits her teeth. They surge forward, hopefully before the KG in the cruiser sees them, and speed off. Jak takes the little zoomer up as high as it will go, leveling with the third-story windows and sputtering as it does its best to rise. All the guards in the area have turned their attention to the blonde girl on the shitty zoomer. (She actually hears them referring to her as this over their radios, with her newly sensitive hearing.) She hits the throttle.
They make it a good four blocks before the zoomer starts to overheat.
This time it's Jak that swears. She does a nose-dive towards the street (causing several citizens to run for cover) and slows down as much as she dares before she rolls off. It continues on its path, hitting a wall with a crunch and a small grease fire.
She's got bigger problems. About ten guards are closing in, she's far away from anywhere in the city she knows well, and she's being backed into an alleyway. Things look bleak; she casts about for anything she could use as a weapon, comes up with nothing; the alley is dark and damp, nothing around but puddles and trash. Takes a deep breath. If she's going to go down, she will go down fighting. She'll die before she lets them take her again.
"Jak?" Daxter sounds rightly nervous. "Please tell me you can do that thing again?"
She takes a deep breath. That's an idea.
A stupid idea, but an idea.
The Guards are radioing in for orders; one of them, at least, will figure out who (what) she is.
But then, what does it matter if it keeps her alive, even for a little while longer?
Jak closes her eyes and thinks of the Dark inside her body, the heavy, roiling blackness in her veins, imagines pulling it up and over like a hood. The air in her lungs is stale with the scent of a huge population; the wind is whistling over the buildings around; the guards' uniforms are making loud noises as they move. Her fingertips tingle. It's not working.
And then, with an incredible rush, it is. Her nails force themselves outwards, leaving pain lancing through her hands, and her teeth lengthen into fangs. Black slides over her eyes, feeling like something slimy crawling into (or perhaps out of) her skull.
It wakes up.
Short work is made of the guards, fighting becoming a game; It draws them like flies to a corpse, and they are cut down as they swarm. Hard, sharp claws cut through KG armor easily, and It relishes in the slick blood dripping down her claws, the flesh tearing under her teeth.
Daxter is petrified. She sits on her friend's shoulder, watching the fight become a massacre, frightened past the point of speech. Only when It has taken out all the guards that followed them into the alley, and moves for the street, does Daxter work up the courage to act.
"Hey- hey girlie, I know you got issues with men in uniform, but that's no reason to take it out on the civvies, huh? How about we just go... Back here..." She tugs on her friend's long, pale grey ear, trying to make It turn back around. If she can just get Jak to the back of the alley, where they won't be seen...
It seems to listen, head turned towards her left shoulder. It only blinks at Daxter, so she jumps down, walking backwards, coaxing Jak towards one of the corners. It makes a playful noise, evidently thinking of this as a game, and bounds around her, cutting her off with an open smile filled with bloodied fangs. Daxter freezes, then relaxes herself. The Dark thing is much faster than she is; this is as far as she's getting from the street. She'll just have to pray that no one sees.
She darts forward, clambering onto the shoulder-pad, and brushes the white-grey hair aside. Full black eyes stare at her, trusting, making her feel like a traitor.
"Sorry, Jak."
Daxter bites her friend on the back of the neck- right where Nusair had installed the "panic button", a small sac underneath the skin filled with a nano-regenerating sedative. Her sharp teeth clamp down on false-flesh plastic, but they don't break it, and the button depresses, sending heavy tranquilizers through her friend's bloodstream.
It yelps, reaching for the furball on her shoulder and throwing it off (her claws very nearly missed slicing her friend's belly open) backing up to the wall and still growling. It walks forward, approaching Daxter, still on the ground. Black eyes widen, sharp teeth revealed by It's gasp of surprise.
Jak's body sways for a moment, goes to her knees, and then she falls flat. Laying curled towards her stomach in the dirty alley, her skin slowly fades back to its normal color.
Daxter moves closer, curling up on her best friend's upper back, and tries not to give in to her ottsel brain's desire to groom her unconscious "mate".
25
Jak wakes up slowly, feeling Daxter's warmth on her neck. The cold is seeping into her bones, but Dax's small, furry body can keep her warm for ages. Stone underneath her, soft yellow light coming in from above- they must be in the swamp, hiding away from the rain...
She opens her eyes, and the memory of the swamp disappears, replaced by Haven, in the evening once more. Her head hurts, the ground underneath her is filthy, and Daxter...
Daxter knocked her out. That thing on her neck- that was what had knocked her out.
Jak shakes her head. She couldn't have, that would mean...
That would mean she knew. Knew about the things Nusair had done to her, knew as much or more about it than Jak herself.
Shaking her head, she sits up, nearly dislodging the dozing ottsel flopped between her neck and shoulder. Dax yelps, holding on with dulled claws. "Watch it!"
The puddles on the ground splash quietly as she lifts herself off the ground. She can't look at her friend, unsure if she's angry or guilty, afraid or ashamed. There's an ache in her gut that has nothing to do with how long it's been since she's eaten and her ears are ringing from clenching her teeth too hard.
Running, she leaves the alleyway behind.
26
They make it back to HQ without exchanging a word. Daxter has clearly realized there's something wrong and, not wanting to press the issue further, has said nothing to Jak. For her part, the former hero is barely staying calm. She doesn't steal any more zoomers, even though she badly wants to hit something. Probably because she badly wants to hit something. Getting into a vehicle now would end in several explosions.
Going indoors is still a trial, but Jak is finding it easier to ignore the nerves the second time. (She flinches when the fire in the corner starts flickering. Daxter notices, but no one else does.)
Torn is marking up a map of the city when she stops in front the table.
"Water's back on. Good work."
She nods, not particularly concerned about his approval.
Several moments of silence go by before he tries to suggest another mission to her. She interrupts him in a flat voice.
"It can wait half an hour. I need a wash."
He looks her over, greasy hair, dried blood flaking off her hands, her clothes covered in algae and dried mud. He sighs.
"Out that door, take a right, fourth door to your left. Half an hour."
She leaves without acknowledging him.
27
The universe has mercy on Jak for the first time in two years, and leaves the locker room blissfully empty.
The walls are a faded, flaking beige, but the color is dark and rich enough that it doesn't remind her of the sterile-white or steel-grey of the fortress. Lockers line two walls, with rows in between separating out the room. She sits down on one of the worn benches between the lockers, and stares at the cheap plastic curtains separating the showers from the rest of the room. Light comes, not from unshielded bulbs hanging from the ceiling, but from lamps on the floor, five in total, all with their cords braided painstakingly into the wires that poke out of the walls. Daxter hops off her shoulder, inspecting the jury-rigged light source.
Jak sits for a moment, blinking in the low light. It feels good to have her weight off her feet. Sighing, stretching, she unbuckles the ring holding her knapsack to her back, and lifts the hem of her shirt over her head, shaking the goggles and scarf off with it.
Movement catches her eye, and she whips around, startled. She finds herself staring into a full-length mirror on the opposite wall.
She sees a small, pale figure that looks like it might have been human, once, but has been shattered and pasted crudely back together. She sees ribs sticking out of her skin, breasts nonexistent. Her waist is curved, barely, and her hips bow outward, but the are none of the curves of a healthy young woman; that her ears have lengthened is the only physical sign that she is older than fourteen. Between her lacking breasts is a large purple marking (still sore), half bruise and half stain, where the Dark Eco was forced through her by that damned chair.
Her eyes are huge, her face baby-round, her mouth bright and wet. It's a vicious parody of attractiveness; there are deep black circles under her baby-blue eyes, her cheeks are swollen from vomiting, her mouth pink with raw flesh where she's worried the skin off with her teeth. Her blonde hair- she used to catch herself in a looking-glass and pride herself on it, her crowning glory, thick and wild and standing stubbornly upright- her hair is a solid mass, held in one place by blood, grease, sweat, other things she doesn't care to think of. There are scars and bruises up and down her torso, her arms, her neck.
Jak reaches an arm around her shoulders, touching the skin over her right shoulder-blade. She can't feel the tattoo, but she knows it's there, remembers being held down while they branded her; 86-12-416, like that's all she is, all she'll ever be. She clamps her eyes shut and takes a deep breath.
"Dax?"
The ottsel scurries over, a caricature of innocence on her furry little face. Jak would be the only one who could catch the guilt in her expression.
"Whaddaya want?"
"How did you know?"
Jak turns away from the mirror, tugging her boots and leggings off. She can't see her friend's face, but she knows what Daxter is avoiding. Jak wishes she could ignore it too. But if left alone, this would infect, scab over, and be picked at constantly; a blemish on the face of their friendship. She won't let that happen. Daxter is all she has.
"How did you know how to knock me out?"
Still not looking at her friend, she makes her way to the showers. Behind the plastic curtain, the dim blue light casts a caricature of moonlight against smooth tile. There's a wreck of a plastic chair in the corner, wobbly but stable enough for Daxter to sit on. Jak drags it over by the shower-head with the least amount of rust on it.
The knob to turn the water on isn't difficult. The temperature gauge is. Jak gets slammed in the face with icy water right off the bat, and ducks out of the spray with a curse. By the time she wipes the water out her eyes, the water is all the way to "taking a bath in the Lava Tube" hot, and she stays out of its way while she tries to get a good grip on the valve. She turns it all the way around to the right, and the water flow stops. Turning it back around, it goes straight back to boiling heat. She fiddles with it until she finds a temperature just a little too hot to be comfortable, and then steps back into the water.
Brown water circles the drain, taking with it everything that's been caked on her body for months. The dried blood melts off her hands, the water diluting it into a sickly yellow color, and once they're clean she tries to scrub her fingers through her hair without much luck.
Daxter darts in and out of the water, playing in the warm mist but not wanting to get soaked. Eventually she perches on the chair, tiny droplets clinging to the tips of her fur. Jak looks down at her friend, and Dax raises her chin to meet Jak's eyes. The hero's question is asked again, this time silently, speaking through her expressions just as she did years ago. She feels manipulative for doing it; Daxter's ears droop with guilt.
"Don't get mad." Daxter says it like she's trying to talk a Lurker out of charging, a bright, soothing tone colored with nervousness. Jak's throat closes up.
"I read their files on you."
Jak's hand has to go out to the wall for balance. "You what?"
"There were paper records in a filing cabinet, I found the one with your picture in an' stole it, okay? I took it out, read it until I knew every damn thing, and then I burned it."
"You burned it."
"Lit it up and watched it go, baby. Burned it to ashes and burned the ashes."
Jak risks a glance at her friend, afraid of the rage that might rise up inside her if she looks. There's just Daxter, looking smaller than Jak has ever seen her, but with determination in her eyes. "How else was I s'posed to know how to help you, Jak?"
She doesn't know what she's feeling. Her hair is still not being penetrated by the water. She grabs an abandoned bar of soap, and lathers up her hands.
It makes a difference; her fingers work through the thick mass of grime that has formed around her hair, and it loosens. Slowly, but it does.
She keeps working at it for what feels like a long time, until fistfuls of blonde hair are clustered around the drain. Daxter doesn't speak to her, but she also isn't silent, humming rude old songs they used to make up around the campfire.
By the time she's done, her hair is much smoother- but also thinner, and it breaks.
It's still the unruly mane she's always had. Even if it has been weeded, there's still some left. It will still grow.
28
The door doesn't shut as quietly behind her as she would have liked, alerting Torn to her presence in the room. She doesn't feel so high-strung now; the smell of the prison (of Erol of the guards and the doctors) has been washed off, her lizard-brain slowly releasing its iron grip on her fight-or-flight reflex. Nevertheless, she doesn't want him close, so she moves to the opposite side of the table, the side closer to the door. Stands in front of him, stares him in the eyes when he bothers to look up at her.
He assumes she's there purely for the Underground's benefit, without any motives of her own. He wants a soldier, who signed up willing to follow orders. She isn't one, and she didn't. Jak is in this to find the Shadow and hurt the Baron, nothing else.
Causing mayhem for the KG is a bonus, though. Her mission is to go into a KG fortress, blow some things up, get away and not die. Sounds like a good day to her.
"More patrols than you can spit at, automated turrets, cameras everywhere. There's a good chance you'll be spotted and your face revealed to the public." He cautions her, giving her a way out if she needs one.
She doesn't. "I don't care. If the bastard knows it's me doing it, all the better."
Torn scoffs at her a little, at her teenage bravado, as he points them to the exit with a sharp glare.
It's not until she's halfway out the door that she realizes that the ammo dump she's supposed to destroy is inside the very KG Fortress that she escaped from, too late to find some excuse not to do it.
29
This part of the building doesn't smell like anywhere she'd been before, but the lights are the same. Bare bulbs, shadows coating the walls along with the rust and cobwebs.
The giant tank is new.
She stares for a moment, intimidated by the huge machine; it looks like a very powerful gun on top of a steamroller. With spikes.
She feels that the spikes might just be overdoing it a little.
The tank spots her when she goes through the doorway, and she starts to run. Daxter points out to her that the gun doesn't aim very fast, so all Jak has to do is keep moving around and it can't hit her.
Well, Daxter screams at her to "move faster dammit Jak don't you dare let it hit us holy shit we're going to die", from which she draws the above conclusion. She translates Daxter-speak in her head, most of the time.
It's difficult; she doesn't like being shot at (who does? Torn, probably) and the Fortress is about three hallways down from where she was tortured on a regular basis, so she's jumpy and pissed, which both make her clumsy.
Three shots singe her ankles. She can smell the burned flesh.
When she disables the field that kept her cut off, she steps off into the antechamber for a minute. Lets herself breathe, pulls a leg up to look at the damage. She has to lean against the wall to keep herself from falling while on one leg. There are black wings fluttering at the edges of her vision; thinking back, she can't remember precisely the last time she had slept or eaten, but she knows it would have been in the prison (unconsciousness doesn't count).
So she has to storm a heavily guarded government facility, and destroy a delightfully vague ammo store- while unarmed, hallucinating from sleep-deprivation, twitching with panic, and weak from lack of food.
Torn is going to have hell to deal with by the time she gets done.
Jak grits her teeth, pushes herself off the wall, and goes looking for some KG to kill.
30
So that's what a Metal-Head looks like. The name is certainly apt. Their skull gems shine with a dull yellow light- that's what she'll need for the Oracle, she tries to memorize their shape and color- and underneath the armor plating their skin is mottled grey.
And the KG are giving them an Eco-shipment? On Praxis' orders, nonetheless?
When Praxis is dead at her feet, she should remember to rap on his forehead to see if it echoes.
There's a deep, creaking whirrr? from behind her. The tank has- by some fluke of the universe- managed to sneak up on them. How does a tank do that?
"Fuck." Jak breathes.
"Son of a whore! Run!" Daxter screeches.
Jak doesn't need to be told twice. She jumps- a shot goes underneath her, barely, and she takes off.
There's a large silo-looking hunk of metal in the middle of the room. She barrels towards it, with no plan whatsoever; her heart is pounding, vision beginning to swim, but she hasn't felt this alive in a long time.
"Hey, get behind those big pokey things!" Daxter sound like she's just had an idea. The silo is indeed surrounded by what are probably explosive projectiles.
Jak moves towards the missiles, and as she dodges another shot from the tank, it hits one-
There is a terrific explosion.
Daxter laughs, her claws digging into the shoulder-pad. "Bull's-eye!"
They circle the room for a few minutes- Jak gets another burn, this time on her side- leading the tank to the explosives. Every boom that goes off robs her of a little more of her hearing and balance, making it harder to keep running. She stumbles more than once.
"Jak! Door's open!" She turns around; the door on the opposite wall is opening, and it takes her a second to realize there's an alarm sounding- something's going to blow up, she can feel it in her bones.
"Let's go!"
Jak races for the door. Her feet pound against the metal, and she crouches in the doorway, pulling Daxter in towards her chest so she doesn't fall alone. She pushes off with all her strength and hopes it's enough.
Her instincts weren't wrong. The building's explosion makes her ears ring, leaves her disoriented as she gets thrown outdoors, rolling off aluminum roofs without a clear sense of direction.
The ground slams into her and the whole world spins. Laying down feels nice. Not moving feels nice. Everything else feels fairly awful.
Daxter crawls on top of her chest and flops there.
"Jak, I know you're a crazy adrenaline junkie. But this place is just a little too exciting for me. I'm takin' the next bus outta here."
They giggle together, breathlessly, not so much because it's funny as it is because they're alive.
Hi guys :3 I can't believe people are actually reading and reviewing this, you's given me a happie :D So great thanks to DarkEcoFreak, Detallista 257, Taru Toshito, and my lovely Guest and Anonymous :)
Special thanks to Taru, she beta'd this chapter :) Thanks milady, you up for the next one as well?
Anyways, since I can't reply to anonymous comments (I C U THAR CORDATES_ROCK) but I really like to talk about this fic, Guest commented on the weirdness of girl!Jak getting her first period at fifteen; I got mine at twelve, but I regularly talk to a friend's little sister, who is fourteen and freaked that she hasn't gotten it yet. She eats fine, it's not amenorrhea, she's just... kinda late. Bodies are weird. I think Jak's a late bloomer, probably (also DRAMA DAMMIT). And, as the Bird Lady doesn't strike me as being completely sane, it likely wouldn't have crossed her mind until Jak or Daxter showed up frantic with "HOLY SHIT I'M BLEEDING WHAT DO".
Which, well, Daxter got furry, Jak didn't start until she was locked up, and the Bird Lady probably got eaten by a Metal-Head. So much for that plan. And the last paragraph... Well, whether she was sterilized purposefully or not, I don't think a fetus would be able to healthfully develop in an environment saturated with the most volatile substance in existence, so girl!Jak would not be able to maek babby. Her periods or lack thereof will come up later, though.
SO MUCH CANON DIALOGUE. Would you guys rather I type out canon dialogue, or just skim over it with Jak's internal monologue? I feel like I'm plagiarizing if I put it in, but without it the story loses some flow. As it is, I'm trying to only put it in if something has changed from canon, i.e. some comment on Jak being female. (Krew is uncomfortably creepy to write btw, he reminds me of my pedo!uncle.)
Also I can't write Daxter for shit, so if anyone could volunteer to help me generate some awesome dialogue for her it would be great. :P Girl!Daxter is at least not so weirdly, jokingly misogynistic. I know it's supposed to be funny, but some of the shit coming out of that butthead's mouth just strikes me wrong. At least he lets up on it in later games; Tess straightens him out a little. XD I can't wait to write Tess, she's my favourite.
The phrase "Burn the ashes and then burn the ashes" is the fireman's slogan from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which contests with Watership Down as my favourite book.
I'll shut up now.
I love you,
(yes, even you)
S.S.o.D.