Hello everybody! Sorry for the long wait in an update for this story. For those of you who have noticed, the site has been down and a good chunk of people have been unable to update any of their stories. I just happened to be one of the unfortunate victims of this injustice. Oh well, the important thing now is that it's fixed and this new chapter is up.

Anyway, it's time to move this story on to the next level and build on to the plot. And just to clarify to some of my reviewers; Sig is not going to be asking The Shadow about Samos and Keira. It doesn't fit in with my ideas, and he's too busy to really be talking with him. And as for saying that Jak should learn how to shoot, he already knows how. He wouldn't have really made the cut to become a member of the Resistance if he didn't know how to use one three months ago.

I hope that clears up some of the reviewers' questions and thoughts. Hope that you all enjoy this new and long overdue chapter. Until the next update everybody!

And just as a note, I just finished writing a new one-shot for Jak and Daxter. It's titled "Battle in Spargus Desert". Hope you guys will read it once you're done with this and review both of them.

Chapter 4: Moving up the Ranks

When the next morning had approached, Jak and Daxter were rudely awakened by the sound of the blonde's communicator ringing away on top of the dresser table next to them. The Ottsel lazily uncurled himself and rolled off of his perch on top of the teen's chest just as the teen himself rolled over to his side towards the direction where the sound was coming from. Raising a lazy hand from under the covers of the warm blankets, he wrapped his fingers around the small device and accepted the incoming call.

"Jak, I need to see you and your buddy back at the base," the sound of Torn, the commander of The Resistance and the one who issued the missions to their people, was heard commanding. "I got something important I want to talk to you both about, and I want you guys here as soon as possible. Don't even think about taking some side trips and making me wait any longer than I have to."

Before the teen had a chance to pose an adequate response, he heard the other's end of the communication line disconnect and was replaced with a light static sound. Without saying anything and allowing a sigh that ended up turning into a yawn leave his mouth, he got up and groggily went to the bathroom to get himself ready for the potentially long day ahead of him. Daxter had opted to get in a few more minutes of shut eye and wrapped the still warm blankets around him. Being that he could not generate his own body heat, the blankets would only work for a few more minutes, but those extra minutes of sleep were better than nothing for him. That and he needed to wait a little bit for the big guy to be done before he could go get himself ready in the bathroom.

Once both boys had finished prepping themselves up within a combined seven minutes, they left the apartment with a piece of toast in their hands that Jak made right after he gotten himself ready. It was not much of a breakfast, but it was definitely better than running on a completely empty stomach for only the Precursors knew how long. When they reached the lobby of their apartment complex, they noticed that Tess was not manning the receptionist's desk that day. Being that she has been working there for at least the past six months they lived there and never missed a day, they found it to be a bit weird. However, that was the last thing on their minds as they quickly exited the building and boarded a Zoomer that was on loan from Sig whenever he was out on a mission.

This whole entire thing including the drive through town to the base all happened about thirty minutes ago. The two teens had first entered the base expecting to be able to just walk in and straight to Torn's office, but they were stopped short when they saw the door shut. When they knocked lightly to see if he was in, they only received a rough "I'm busy," from inside. Not being able to do much of anything else, they sat down on the lounge chairs nearby and have been sitting there ever since.

"Alright, this whole waiting game he has us playing is starting to become really ridiculous," Daxter said with an aggravated sigh forcibly leaving his lips. He was right now lying flat on his stomach on top the arm chair mindlessly tapping his fingers on the material. "We've been waiting here for a long while now. You'd think that he'd want to talk to us as quickly as possible after waking us up so early in the morning and telling us to get here as quickly as we could. Talk about being an inconsiderate piece of work."

"It was barely eight in the morning when he called us Dax," Jak responded with a small smile while bringing his left hand to the animal's back and stroking it lightly as a way to try and calm him down. "Give or take, we got here about fifteen minutes after prepping ourselves and driving here. I'm sure something really important that required his immediate attention came up during that time. He's not really the type to break of appointments without a good reason."

"Oh, I'm not saying that Tattooed Wonder is an appointment breaker," the Ottsel said as he barely registered that there was a hand stroking away at his back. Unlike other times, it was not really working its calming magic on him on this occasion. "What I'm really saying here is that he's nothing but a supplier of backbreaking and life threatening work. Have you kept count of how many missions he's had us working on ever since we first started three months ago? We've been on about forty of them as of now, all of them just taking canisters of eco from those Krimzon buttheads and bringing them back to him. He has us doing nothing but boring jobs that's not even worth our salt in doing."

"Cut the guy some slack buddy," the blond said with a small roll of his eyes that was not really in annoyance but more at the stuff the other was saying. "The things he has to do behind the desk is probably a lot more dangerous than the things any of us do. He has to make sure that he has every hole sealed when we go on crazy missions so as to not have the Krimzon Guard trace us back to this base. One single mess-up on his end of things and everything will be falling apart right from under our feet. Have you ever thought of it like that?"

"Since when have you known me to think of things like that?" the animal questioned as he half-heartedly shoved the stroking hand away and sat straight up. Jak had then turned his hand into a fist and allowed the other to lean back on it as if it were a backrest. "I like to think of things at face value only. That way, I won't be taken by complete surprise in case things do end up hitting the roof and we're forced to run for our lives or something as drastic as that. It does wonders in helping to tone things down in the internal mind surprise department, you know? You should try it out sometime."

"Yeah, I think I'll pass on that idea and keep up with the optimistic side of thinking, thank you very much. It's the only way of thinking that I know how to do. And besides, we'll be able to keep each other in balance in case either one of us starts to lean too heavily on one thought prematurely and end up becoming tricked into a sense of false security, something that we shouldn't be caught in this city and timeframe."

"Geez, I still can't believe that we actually managed to travel all the way here to this unreal future of ours. Who would've thought that things could've taken such a turn for the worse in two hundred years? If you did the math, then we should be at least two hundred and seventeen years old by now. I never thought that I'd live to be that long."

"I'm sure you're only being sarcastic there and that I'll probably suffer a comment backlash from you for saying this, but we only jumped through time. I'm more than sure that we're the same age as we were from before we came here."

"Oh, you just have to open your big mouth and take the fun away from everything, do you?" Daxter responded with a frown that tried to cover up a smirk. He knew, however, that Jak would have been able to catch it, and catch it he did as indicated by the smirk he was flashing back at him and the small playful shove against his back.

Before they could continue on with their rather pointless yet unwinding conversation, the door to Torn's office suddenly opened up. Immediately, they shifted their gaze towards it to see if it was the commander asking them to now come in so they could commence with whatever they were asked to come here for. Instead, they saw a woman, and a familiar one at that, with familiar red dreads ending just past her neck walking out.

"Hey, you look kind of familiar," the Ottsel responded out loud, eliciting a stare from the woman as she froze right in front of the doorway. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow as her eyes seemingly reflected the same feeling Dax was showing. "Haven't we met somewhere before sometime in the distant past?"

"Your name's Ashelin, isn't it?" Jak inquired as he slowly stood up from the couch and walked a few steps ahead until he was at a distance suitable to hold a conversation while also being respectfully distant from her.

"Yes, I am," she answered in a femininely masculine tone as she cocked her head to the side minutely for a second before bringing it back to its rightful position. "And might I ask who you two are?"

"I'm Jak, and this furry little guy on my shoulder's Daxter," the blond introduced himself as he felt the animal quickly scurry onto his self-proclaimed perch with a small frown on his face at being called little. "You were one of the people who rescued us from the Baron's palace three months ago, weren't you?"

"Three months ago?" Ashelin repeated as she crossed her eyebrows a bit in a thoughtful manner. A second later, her eyes lit up with recognition as she closed the office door that was still open behind her. "Oh, you two were the ones who managed to get yourselves caught by the Krimzon Guards and had to be busted out before they did their Dark Eco experiments on you. Boy, I never thought that I'd be seeing the two of you again, especially as allies in the same base. I take it then that you both decided to take part in our cause to revive Haven City back to its former rightful glory, right?"

"I suppose you could say something like that," Daxter responded with a small shrug of his scrawny shoulders as he mindlessly picked at the ends of one of his super thin whiskers that could have easily been missed by anybody. "We just figured that since we didn't really have much to do, we'd go ahead and join the Resistance and help you guys out. It was better than just sitting around our apartment while wondering when the Krimzon bozos will be barging in and taking us back to their place for their experiments."

"Well, constantly moving around and never staying in one place for a long time is the best way to keep yourself safe from these corrupt guards," the woman agreed with a small nod of her head before she took a communicator from her pocket and presumably checked the time on it. "It's an especially good tactic when you're forced to live right under the enemy's nose. Anyway, I better hurry and get on with my mission. Torn wants me to check up on something that concerns the baron and needs the results of it as soon as possible. I'll see you two around sometime. Oh, and tell the commander that I was busy talking to you, and that's why you were taking a while out here," she added in a slightly elevated tone as if she were trying to speak through a wall.

"W-wait a minute!" Jak stammered, but she had continued on down the hallway and towards the only known exit. Within a few more seconds, she had turned the corner and officially disappeared from their sight. "Wow, that was definitely the shortest conversation that I ever had with anybody."

"Tell me about it big guy," the Ottsel responded as he scratched the tip of one of his ears absentmindedly while moving restlessly between the two shoulders in a pacing manner. "Even all those annoying conversations I had with old Loghead were longer and a lot more interesting than this one. I guess that's what happens when you're busy trying to save the place you live in from crazy rulers."

"I suppose so," the teen simply said with a shrug of his shoulders as he continued to stare down the hallway a few seconds more before turning around and facing the door that lead into Torn's office. "Come on, let's hurry up and meet up with the commander. Ashelin managed to give us an excuse to be hanging out here, and I don't want to be chewed out for making him wait any longer unexcused."

"Yeesh, you'd think that he'd learn to relax over small simple things like us coming into his office a minute or two after his meeting with someone is done. It seriously can't be good for his heart, especially when there are so many other sources of stress that could make him go belly up. That and it's probably fair that we make him wait for us a little while after making us do the same thing."

"Uh, you do know that term is usually used with fish who are dead and floating on top of the water, right?" the other said as he placed his hand on the doorknob and gave it a small twist before opening it slightly.

"It's about time you two decided to come in here," the sound of Torn's voice was heard calling out from across the room right after the door was fully opened. "I heard from here what Ashelin said about you talking with her, so thank you for not wasting any more time after finishing your discussions."

Once the two were inside, the blond closed the door with a soft click and walked slowly up towards the desk where the commander was sitting behind of working on some papers spread out across the surface. Daxter was busy mumbling something rather incoherent that only Jak could hear being that he was so close to his ear. Even with that being the case, he could only have guessed what it was he had said being that it was too soft to be understood, but he already had a pretty good idea as to what it was.

"You got something to say to me, you annoying orange rat?" the man behind the desk questioned without looking up from his work and keeping his hand moving over the paper with pen in hand. "If you're going to say something, say it loud enough so that everybody in here can hear you perfectly."

"Have you ever figured that I might have something I want to say to Jak here and don't want anybody else to hear about it?" Daxter shot back with a sarcastic bite to his words. "Unless you want to hear all of my most personal and probably embarrassing secrets that only he would know, then how about you try minding your own business? You don't hear us asking about your personal life, although I myself am a bit curious as to what you do outside bossing us around and sitting on your lazy behind in this place."

"I never thought I'd be saying this, but touché," he admitted as he put the finishing touches on the paper he was working on and placed the pen down. "And no, you're not going to know the things I do outside working for this base."

"Might I ask what it was that you asked us to come here so quickly for almost a whole hour ago?" Jak asked before they went off topic and ended up waiting another hour for the reason why they were asked to come here. "With all due respect, you asked us to rush here as quickly as we could, and we're both a bit tired and annoyed at having to wait a half an hour after that. If it really were that urgent, then I would have figured that you would've wanted to see us the moment we got here."

"Always blunt and wanting to get to the point aren't you? Don't get me wrong; I want to get this over with as quickly as you do so I can get on with my other important things. Now to get on with this meeting, I've decided to assign the both of you on another mission that I want you to finish as soon as you can."

"Aright, where do you want us to park our butts and wait for the Krimzon Guard transport Zoomer to ambush?" the Ottsel asked in a boring tone as he seemingly already knew what they were going to be asked to do without yet being debriefed about the specifics. "To be quite honest with you, these jobs are seriously starting to get real boring, but we'll do it if you really need us to do it."

"You haven't even heard what it is that I'm asking you to do. Stop assuming you already know everything and let me get on with this meeting for the sake of both of us quickly getting this over with. Now, I want you guys to go on a mission different from what I've usually been putting you two on up till now."

"A different job?" the blond repeated inquisitively as he raised his eyebrow at Torn upon hearing this. "Did you manage to figure something through examining all the things you've been having me and Dax get for you, or is there something more pressing that requires you to put us on a different mission?"

"To be quite honest with you two, it's kind of a combination of the two," Torn admitted with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. "You see, I asked you two to go ahead and capture those canisters from those transport vehicles because I was suspecting something going on. With the things that were in there, it only goes to further the suspicions floating around in my head."

"And what was it that were in those canisters?" the teen asked quickly, cutting off a response he both knew and felt being formed inside his little buddy's head while feigning interest in something he already knew to keep any suspicions at bay. "I've been wondering why you always wanted us to take things that were all in the same thing. What's so important about them that you needed to take them?"

"Well, those canisters that you've been bringing back to us have all been filled with Eco. While I still don't know why it was that those simple canisters were being kept under relatively close guard, I can clearly say that I smell something rotten cooking with all this. Also, we've been keeping tabs on the baron's men for quite a while now, and there aren't any Eco warehouses along the routes that we had you ambush them on."

"And as such, you're wondering what they're planning to do with the stuff if they aren't going around putting it away in some kind of hidden safety deposit box kind of place," Daxter finished as he began to grow thoughtful on the subject, something that he did not usually do under most normal circumstances. "And before you say anything, I do pay attention to some of the things you spew out. I just don't like listening to the sound of your voice."

"It's a wonder why I even keep your annoying little self around here. Fortunately for your big mouth, you're right on that. We have some people in the Krimzon Guard working for us, and we know through them that the baron hasn't made another secret stash of Eco since the day he took interest in you. That was when the transport of Eco started to arise, and they aren't being taking from one storehouse to another. We tried sending a couple of low-key scouts to follow the transport, but we never hear from them again."

"Why do I have a feeling I know where this conversation is going?" Jak asked with a small groan coming at the same time from his buddy on his shoulder. "And I'm supposing that you're not going to be giving us much choice in the matter."

"Well, you two are the only ones who I can feel comfortable sending in for this kind of mission. In essence, I would like you two to follow another Eco transport and see where it is that the Baron's sending them to. This is something that I need to know, and you two are the only ones capable enough to go through this mission and survive it."

"And what makes you so sure that we're going to achieve what some of your other men couldn't?" the Ottsel asked with great skepticism apparent in all four corners of his voice. "You said it yourself that a couple of your own men ended up dying on the same job that you are trying to send the both of us on. And considering that we both happen to have a certain history with the Krimzon Guard, I highly doubt that we'd survive an attack against them if and when they catch us following them."

"And I highly doubt that that would be something that'll happen to you two," Torn countered with a small snort of his breath. "The reason why I'm sending you two on this mission is because I'm more than positive that you'll be able to finish it and come back to us alive. Even if you were to be captured by them, the chances of them killing you on the spot should be quite low. After all, I've taken to figure that the commander of the guards has had an eye on you two ever since you broke out of the palace. I suppose you can call it safety through the stubbornness of the enemy."

"Sounds like a pretty risky bet on safety there," the blond teen stated with skepticism clear in his voice. "Just because Errol has a beef to pick with us for making a fool out of him right in front of the Baron, that doesn't necessarily mean that he'd want to capture us alive and run the risk of being embarrassed again."

"You don't know how Errol likes to think," the man responded with a shake of his head as he tried to prove the teen wrong. "He's been the commander of the Krimzom Guard almost as long as I've been the commander of the Resistance. In all the times we've had minor skirmishes with him and his men, he's always exuded this type of stubbornness that could almost be seen as an obsession. He's made it his personal mission to try and take us all out, but he has been showing less interest in us these past months."

"We already took a figurance that the guy was too stubborn for his own good," Daxter said as both guys in the room raised an eyebrow at the strange word he used. Seemingly reading this curiosity hanging in the air, he explained, "It's my way of saying that I already kind of figured on that being the case. And before you start grilling me about that, are you saying that he's obsessed with us? I know we're both good looking and all that, but I didn't think that he'd go chasing us to the ends of the planet if he wanted to."

"Look, the more time we stand here talking about nonsense that has nothing to do with this mission debriefing, the less time you'll have to track down that Eco transport. I'm sorry to have to cut this short, but hurry up and get yourselves into position. Our sources say that they should be heading towards the direction of their weapons warehouse."

"Is it in a part of the city that we can have access to?" Jak asked as he remembered talking to Sig yesterday about the new security measures that the Baron was putting up all over. "We can't really follow them if they move into a spot inaccessible to us."

"I see you've already noticed the new security measures all over the city. Don't worry; their warehouse is just a few minutes drive from here. Until it comes to following them inside, which is something that you'll most likely have to do, there shouldn't be anywhere you can't easily get to while on their tail. Now hurry up and get out of here! They'll be on the move soon, and we can't afford for this chance to slip by."

"Jeez, aren't we in a rush to get what you want," the Ottsel scoffed with a roll of his eyes at the sudden command directed at them. "Things aren't going to be moving any quicker just because you boss us around."

"We'll be back with the information as soon as we can," the blond teen stated as he turned around towards the office exit with his buddy still planted firmly on his shoulder. "Hopefully, this shouldn't pose too much trouble."

"I so hope you're right on that Jak," Torn said just as the two teens reached the door and left the office. When the door slammed shut, he then mumbled to himself, "What I really hope is that you don't end up figuring out something about the Baron's plans that could easily take us all out. It's just not natural to be transporting all that Eco to somewhere unless you're planning something large. As much as I know I'm not, I really hope I'm wrong."

With a worried sigh leaving his lips, he picked up his discarded pen once more and began to skim through the rest of his papers that had laid forgotten.