Chapter 6: Jak the Mute Becomes Just Jak
After maneuvering through the many confusing streets of this strange city for about a minute or so, Jak and Daxter finally stopped in an alleyway that was relatively well hidden from view. The Ottsel, who had been taking a well deserved ride on the blonde's left shoulder ever since they left the scene he had created with the two Krimson Guards, jumped off from his perch. He then sat down on the cold metal ground right next to the teen who had done the same thing and planted his back up against the cold metal wall. Unfortunately, he chose a spot that was right next to where the blond had decided to let his slightly bloodied hand rest, but he was too mentally exhausted to really move to another spot or even care for that matter.
"It think we managed to lose those dumb guys," the small animal said with a sigh of relief after he stole a glance out at the street. "I still can't believe that they couldn't even handle me, a simple little animal that could be easily killed by them, without having one of them start freaking out like crazy. At least everything ended up falling into my plans. Uh, most of it, at least. I don't want to go through something like that again. I seriously could have been killed there; although, I did think that it was kind of fun," he added with a small smile.
All Jak gave out as a response was a stare and a raised eyebrow at the small Ottsel accompanied by a small wince of pain. He then shook his head a bit before he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the canister he picked up just before he made his escape. He gave it a small shake to listen to what was inside it before opening it up. Once opened, a dull greenish glow came out from the can and reflected against his face. Inside was a substance that looked like the consistency of fog, yet it also appeared to have a form solid enough that one could easily pick it up.
"Hey, isn't that Green Eco you got there in the can?" Daxter asked as he took a look at what the blond was looking at. He then took a small pinch of it in his hands and rubbed it on a small red scratch he just happened to notice. He rubbed the small amount on it and it instantly healed itself up. "I guess that answers my question. What are you doing with a can of it in your hands? More importantly, when did you find the time to actually get a hold of some?"
Without answering the question, the teen shoved the can right into the Ottsel's hands, indicating that he wanted him to help administer the Green Eco and take care of his wound. Understanding the message word for word, the small animal happily took the object into his small furry hands and climbed back onto the blonde's shoulder so he could get a better view at where on the head his wound was and how much of the Eco he would need to use.
"Boy, you sure took a nasty blow to the head there," he stated with a wince once he found the bloody spot hidden within thick strands of hair. "It definitely wasn't an innocent little bump that brute gave you. That wound's blood red and is still pumping out a bit of blood. This is one of those times where I'll say that you got really, really lucky there, big guy.
"Now stay still for a moment while I work on this," he continued on as he dipped his hand into the Green Eco can and took out a small handful of the cloud-like stuff. "I still can't believe those stupid Krimson butt-heads actually gone and did this to you. Boy, I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up stinging a bit, so just try and suck it up like you normally do.
"Don't think I never noticed whenever you got yourself badly hurt before," he added in a slight chiding tone when he saw the look of surprise come around to Jak's face. "You did a good job of hiding the pain of your injuries, but I've been with you long enough to know when you're just trying to play the tough guy. I know that you didn't want me to worry about you when you did that, but you don't have to go playing the tough guy every time you're injured. I don't really like it when you hide things like that from me that could potentially get you killed, just like how you hate it when I start fooling around at the worst of times. The last thing I need right now is for you to go down because of a wound becoming infected."
As Daxter was administering the first aid with soft and caring hands that were almost befitting for a mother, he thought he saw a slight dusting of red come across the Jak's cheeks. Whether it was from embarrassment at how he stated the truth or on how he was sounding like a mother, he did not know. It soon disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, though, and his cheeks had returned back to their normal tan color as if the emotion never appeared before. Unfortunately for the blond, his eyes easily gave away the embarrassed emotion he was trying so hard to hide from the Ottsel. Unless he tried very, very hard, his eyes always gave away whatever feeling it was that his heart was trying to project.
After a couple minutes of smearing the Eco on the head wound and watching it get absorbed through the skin, thus sealing up the injury in the process, the small animal jumped off from the teen's shoulder and placed the can on the ground. He then looked up at his buddy in the eyes and was admiring his great healing job. The only thing he was not happy with was the red blood that was messing up with the color of the blond hair, but there was nothing that they could do about it until they were able to find some water and wash it out. Oh well, at least the main problem was taken care of, and that was all that mattered right now.
"There you go, big guy; that head of yours is as patched up as I'm able to get it to be," Daxter stated with a big smile on his lips as he folded his arms in front of him in a triumphant gesture. "At least the blood that's still on your hair is the only thing that shows you were actually bleeding there before. Just make sure that you take a couple minutes to rest a bit before you start jumping around like you normally do and everything should be alright.
Geez, I feel like I'm acting like your mother here, fixing you up and telling you to not do crazy things until you're feeling all better," he added with a mock gagging face, bringing out a small smile from Jak. "After all the time you spent helping me out with whatever crap I was dealing with back in Sandover, I never thought that I'd be the one to be helping you like this. Now that I think about it a little bit, it's actually kind of weird in a funny sort of way. Talk about having a major switcheroo with each other in our roles here, right big guy?"
In the next couple of seconds that would soon pass by, Daxter would be getting a huge surprise; a very pleasant surprise, no doubt about it, but one he thought to have been completely impossible until this very surprising moment comes to pass. It would be something that he would have never thought possible in a million years. It would only be another few seconds after the initial shock that he would be able to let whatever was going to surprise him sink in and register with his mind.
"Th-thanks, Daxter," Jak said-yes, he said-to his little buddy, who only stared back in shock at what his ears, which were now standing straight up with surprise, just heard. Jak, his long-time buddy that he had known for only the Precursors would know how long, was actually talking to him. Not miming, not sending those messages with his body language, but actually speaking with his own mouth and voice, a crackly sounding one at that, too.
"Wha…? I, uh… Huh?" the Ottsel stuttered out, unable to form even a single coherent word. For the first time ever since the two have known each other and been together, he was completely speechless. He did not know what to say; to be more precise, he was not able to come up with anything to say about this period. All his mind could wrap around was the two words the blond had said to him; the first two words he had ever heard him say.
Even the teen, once he noticed what he had just did, seemed pretty surprised at this. For all his life, he was never able to form even a single word with his voice. At best, he was able to make subtle sounds that either lied along the lines of agreement or disapproval. It was enough to get his emotions across in combination with his body language, but not once could he ever say anything verbally about, well, anything. This was a first for him and a great surprise for him at that, too.
"D-Daxter?" Jak asked, his voice sounding slightly cracked, no doubt due to the fact that this was most likely the first time in his fifteen years of life since he was able to say any kind of coherent speech. "Wh-what did you mess around with while you were working on my head? Did you do something up there while you were healing me that you're not telling me about?"
"Wh-what was I messing around with?" Daxter exclaimed loudly, still clearly shocked at what he was hearing. It was a miracle that nobody that happened to be walking near the well hidden alleyway decided to stop what they were doing and peer inside to see what was all the commotion was about. "I promise you, I messed around with nothing up in that head of yours buddy! That wound didn't even go all the way through to your bones, so I couldn't have done anything in there. I don't know how you're able to talk now, but I can't believe it; I just can't believe you're actually talking right now! You're actually saying things that I can actually hear without having to watch you mime the whole thing and all that crap!"
"So I noticed," the teen sighed out in a frustrated manner as he glared at the Ottsel. He then said with his new-found voice which was slowly starting to gain strength, "Are you sure you didn't mess with anything up there, buddy? I don't think that people who've been a mute for their entire lives can all of a sudden just gain the ability to talk at such a random time."
"Look, I don't know what happened up there to make you start talking all of a sudden," the animal said as he pointed to the blonde's head. "To be quite honest with you, I don't really care about how it happened. The point is that it happened and you're able to talk now. I don't know about you, but I really think that this is something that's totally cool," he added with a wide smile. "I've always wondered how things would be if you were able to talk, and I can now find out for myself. Oh, this is almost like a dream come true for me!" he finished off with a dreamy sigh escaping his lips, earning him a very strange look from the teen.
"Uh, I don't think now's the time to be getting all excited over this," Jak replied as his face suddenly changed to that of seriousness. "I admit, it's pretty good that I'm able to talk now, but we have more important things on our hands here. We don't even know if those Krimson Guard guys are trying to look for us or have already asked for some help from their friends. We could be in serious trouble right now until we can find somewhere safe to hide out besides here. We need to at least find some different clothes other than this if we don't want to get caught."
"You need to find a different set of clothes, big guy," Daxter emphasized. "I, on the other hand, don't need them. In case you haven't noticed, I haven't worn even a single piece of clothing ever since I got turned into a nearly good-for-nothing Ottsel! I can't even wear a decent pair of pants right now because there aren't any my size out there. Yeah, I have fur to keep me warm, but I still prefer at least a nice pair of short jeans over this."
"Alright; I get it; just stop going on with your ranting," the blond urged the animal in a voice that seemed to be fully working now, revealing a voice that was not uncommon for a teen his age yet still held on to a small hint of immaturity and a slight undeveloped nature behind the words spoken with it. "You're going to get us caught if you continue on like that. That's really the last thing we need right now, to be found and possibly gunned down by the guards for resisting arrest and then escaping their clutches after already being apprehended by them."
"Then what do you suggest we do while those guys are out there probably looking for us? You said it yourself earlier that they're probably doing that. Unless you're planning on staying in this ever so wonderful alleyway, which you also said that you're not going to do, then I don't know how we're going to move out of this one. Our hand in this game of cards is…pretty bad right now."
"Yet we don't have much of a choice but to play along with it," Jak said with a stifled sigh as he looked out into the open streets of what they now know to be Haven City. "We'll just have to go with it and see if we're lucky or not. Besides, I'm sure you didn't have a good chance when you decided to try and rescue me, and look where that ended up bringing you."
"Well, that's because I had the advantage of being smaller than they were," Daxter explained as he quickly hopped onto the teen's shoulder, already knowing what he was going to do. "I figured that if I could just get ahead of them before I lost them, I could hope that they would pass my way and I'll be able to get the drop on them. Let's just say that I drew a lucky card there."
"And that's what we're going to be able to do," the blond explained as he left the protective shade of the alleyway and entered the exposed streets of the city where the less-than-happy people and the multiple Zoomers were plentiful and minding their business under the hazy sun. "Sure, they have the upper hand here since this is their city and they practically outnumber us two to who knows how much. But we have something that they probably don't have under circumstances like this; we have each other. As long as we stick together, nothing can take us down or stop us from getting to wherever it is that we need to get to. It's work for us when we were in Sandover trying to look for a way to fix you up, so it should work for us now while we're trying to dodge these Krimson Guards."
"…Geez, I never thought of it that way before," the Ottsel said after he thought about it for a second or so as the teen maneuvered through the crowd of people and tried to look as casual as possible while towing around a talking animal on his shoulder and with a patch of blood still on his head. "When you put it that way, it's pretty easy for me to see you being right on that. Now that you mention it, things have worked out for us whenever we were working together and all that stuff. So you're saying that us being with each other and working together is our lucky card out of this mess, right?"
"Now you're getting it. Sure, it may have been just luck that things turned out the way they did while we're together, but I doubt it happened that way every time. I'm sure that because we were working together, we always managed to finish what we started and get out of messy situations. Trust me; even while you're screaming in my ear about how dangerous whatever we're doing is and I'm trying to concentrate on how to do it right, I take your concerns to heart and try to be real careful, even if it doesn't really look like that sometimes."
"Uh, try all the time big guy. The way you try to knock the living daylights out of the Lurkers we find and how you tend to stand so dangerously close to the edge of a cliff or lava pit doesn't really show me that you were trying to be careful. If I didn't know you as well as I did all this time, I would have thought that you had a death wish or something like that."
"But you trusted me enough to stick around with me while I did all those crazy things. And here's another thing that you probably already know, but I want to make sure and tell you right now. No matter how hectic the moment is or how busy I am in a battle, I always make sure that nothing bad happens to you. Even if I sometimes act a bit careless, I always try to make sure that you're alright in case the worst happens."
"Hey, stop talking like that Jak!" Daxter said with a slight groan as he shuddered a bit. "Saying things like that can be a real jinx against us, you know that? You say it now without meaning it, and the next thing you know, it's going to end up happening. I don't want the worst to happen anytime soon, thank you very much."
"Oh, you ought to relax a bit, Dax," Jak said with a playful tone lacing his words as he patted the Ottsel's head comfortingly. "Nothing bad is going to be happening to you or me anytime soon. We just need to look out for each other like we have been all this time and everything will turn out alright."
For a moment, the animal stood quiet as he felt the teen's slightly rough hand ruffling the fur on his head. He enjoyed having that happen to him because it helped him to relax a lot whenever he needed it. He soon ducked out of it, though, and made his way to the other shoulder.
"You just called me 'Dax,' didn't you?" the Ottsel asked as he felt a smile start to come across his lips, liking how natural it sounded, even with it being the first time he heard the shortened version of his name being said. "You never used a nickname for me before, have you?"
"Actually, I have been calling you that for the past few years that we've known each other now," the blond explained without looking at his buddy who was on his other shoulder. "I've been using it whenever I had to say your name. I guess it was pretty hard to notice, though, since both practically use the same emotion to portray. You don't mind if I start calling you 'Dax,' do you?"
"…Are you kidding me?" the small creature asked as he felt his smile grow even bigger. "I love it! I like how it just flows off your tongue without having the slight roughness of the last syllable messing things up. It sounds a whole lot more natural that way."
"Alright, then Dax it is from here on out. Now let's hurry up and find some place to stay before any more Krimson Guards find us wandering around here and try to take us in again for 'trying to plot against the throne." God, those guys are pretty dense when it comes to that. I'll be amazed if any of them are able to get any work done right around here."
At this comment, the two friends laughed lightly as they continued on down the streets of Haven City. They knew not of where they were headed or if there was even anyplace that they could call safe for the time being, but they knew that they were together right now, and that was all that mattered to them. Except for maybe another run-in with the Krimson Guards, nothing could really put a damper on their happy mood at this moment.