Axel thought that after Jak had retrieved the gem, he would be finished with the hulking dead scorpion. These things are starting to creep me out. It might have been Axel's imagination, but the filtered light which drizzled through the ever present clouds seemed to grow lower, as though some celestial dimmer switch was being turned very slowly. The shadows around the scorpions grew deeper, and the corpses were beginning to look more like grotesque monuments rather than dead bugs. Axel wasn't one to become paranoid, but he sensed that something very bad was happening.
Suddenly, in what appeared to be a spontaneous, violent need to desecrate corpses, Jak began pumping rounds into a dead scorpion's claw. Axel didn't jump, but he was mildly curious as to why Jak would waste bullets on something that was already very dead.
Jak kicked the scorpion's claw, widening a crack made in the shell by the bullets. Kneeling down, he pried the claw open, peering intently at the dark insides of the carapace. After the rift was wide enough, Jak stuck his entire hand into the claw, prodding it's dark insides.
"Excuse me, but what the Hell are you doing?' asked Axel, somewhat disgusted.
"Seeing how much meat is in this thing. Loads by the feel of it." Jak sighed, stepping away from the claw. "Doesn't do us much good without wood. We'd need a fire to cook it."
Axel gave a short laugh, "You can't be serious! If I didn't know better, I'd say you'd been blindfolded this entire trip. Jak, you have honestly wounded my pride."
"What are you talking about?" said Jak suspiciously, he eyebrows mirroring the concern in his voice.
"Come on Jak. Where I am, there's fire." said Axel, shrugging and spreading his long arms. With a brief burst of flame, Axel called one of his chakrams, twirling it casually in his hand.
Jak stepped back and Daxter winced in fright. They both thought that Axel had suddenly turned on them.
However, Axel merely laid the chakram on the sand, and snapped his fingers at it. The weapon burst into flames which were as concentrated and intense as those on a range. "You can use it on the condition that you keep this memorized: I am fire." he said in a superior tone, touched with humor.
Within a minute after Axel's display, Jak had arranged the claw so it was cooking over the fire. Though the scorpion meat smelled edible, Axel glad he wouldn't have to eat it. Reclining in the sand, he watched as Jak sat down stiffly and slowly. "If you're always so stressed out, your gonna end up with an ulcer. And good luck finding a doctor in this wasteland." Axel said with a wave of his hand.
Jak simply glared at Axel from across the fire. "It pays to be on the look out here." he said simply.
Axel decided to pursue another topic of conversation. "So, how'd you get here? You didn't die right?" he asked, leisurely playing with flames which had sprouted from his fingertips.
"Daxter and I used Precursor technology to open a rift gate. We just went through and ended up here." Jak explained tersely.
"Precursor? What's that? Sounds fancy." asked Axel, mildly curious. Generally Axel was only interested in things that were of immediate value to his survival, but Precursor's sounded so bizarre he couldn't resist learning more.
"Why, a Precursor is me, of course!" said Daxter cheerily, as he struck a few poses which Axel assumed were crude attempts to look 'macho'.
"You might wanna invest some Munny in a personal training program." Axel said, unimpressed by Daxters non existent muscles. Turning to Jak, Axel said, "There's no way a bunch of squirrel-rats like him could build something complex enough to rip a hole from a Media to Fiction." Axel jerked a lanky arm and pointed at Daxter with his thumb. "He's and idiot." Daxter flicked Axel off behind his back, and was rewarded for this action when a shower of sparks leapt from the campfire/chakram and singed his fur.
Jak sighed, "Well Daxter couldn't do it, but apparently the rest of his race is pretty bright. But then again, Daxter isn't a Precursor by birth, but you know that. Anyway, before my race was building anything more complicated than stick and mud dwellings, the Precursors came and 'blessed' us with all kinds of advanced technology. Their shrines and architecture linger all over my world. The Precursors used life force, or Eco as they called it back home, to manipulate their inventions. I happen to have a special affinity for Eco, so I could use their stuff, too."
"So, you found and old Precursor gate opened it." finished Axel. "Did you just bring your rat with you? I know if I were traveling to some freakish alternate dimension, I'd bring someone much more...useful. Or at least and overnight pack and a sleeping bag."
Daxter began making frantic gestures, drawing his finger across his neck and shaking his head vigorously.
"Sore subject?" asked Axel with a grin, pointing at Daxter. "I know I would regret not bringing an air mattress too, if I had the opportunity to do so."
"Shut up!" growled Jak, getting to his feet, "Shut the Hell up! You don't know a thing! Not a fucking thing!" with that, Jak paced out into the desert, and was quickly lost from sight.
Well, that was unexpected. Thought Axel. Jak was paranoid, but Axel hadn't pinned him for a manic depressant. Schizophrenic. Something in that neighborhood. He thought. When Jak was out of earshot, Axel shrugged and turned back to Daxter, "He must really regret not having that sleeping bag."
Daxter plopped down onto the hard dirt and poked at the cavernous cracks in the soil with a piece of scorpion shell. "Its not the sleeping bag. It's that...we didn't come alone. There were three babes that came with us. Tess was one of 'em. Back in our Media, she got turned into an ottsel, like me. Damn, she was hot! It takes a special kinda women to be that hot even when she's covered in fur. And she had these huge..."
Axel rolled his eyes. Female rodents were simply not appealing to him.
Daxter gave a little cough to recover his composure and continued, "And there was also Keira and Ashelin. Keira knew Jak for a long time; since his was just a wide eyed scrawny mute galloping across the plains of our Media. Then there was Ashelin. She was hot stuff too. And a clever KG officer and the daughter of the head hancho of Haven City to boot. 'Course her daddy kept trying to kill Jak and me off but..." Daxter trailed off, lost in he memories of the lovely ladies of his past. More specifically, their impressive curves and 'smokin' looks.
"Is there a point to this or are you simply demonstrating how your memory lane runs past Playboy Manor?" asked Axel, though he was not completely adverse to contemplating the looks of the women Daxter had just described.
"I'm getting to the point! Don't rush me!" snapped Daxter, "Anyway, Jak, Tess, Keira, Ashelin and myself all came through the portal to Fiction together. The first couple of days were swell. Not perfect, but ya know. Bearable. Then...we were ambushed. It was out of nowhere. Avatars just snatched Tess and Keira...there was nothing we coulda done for them. Ashelin, Jak and I ran for it, but these Fan Characters...well we didn't know what they were then of course, jumped Ashelin and tried to hold her down until the Avatars could catch up. They were right on our tail...gosh you could HEAR them! Jak was gonna start fighting when Ashelin told him to run off and hide. Well Jak you know..he's all honor...y...and stuff so he wasn't gonna hear that. But Ashelin, she took out her standard issue KG pistol from her leg brace and held it at her temple, saying she would blow her brains out if Jak and I didn't run...it was intense man. Jak was nearly in tears...Ashelin too, actually, but in the end Jak ran..."
"A few days later, we heard some noise in the woods. Jak, he wanted to investigate. Turns out it was a huge gathering of male Avatars. They were all laughing and jeering...but Jak and I couldn't see what they were looking at, so Jak climbed a tree real silent like to get a peek. From the top, we could look down at the center of the circle of Avatars. That's where Tess, Ashelin and Kiera were. Tess was human again, and all three were naked. They were...well...having a threesome. Guys around the circle were cheering them on, and calling out different positions they wanted to see the girls in. And Tess, Keira and Ashelin did exactly what they asked. That's after we learned that Avatars got control of you if they caught you, so at least we knew what was going on. Jak wanted to leave, but the crowd had gotten too large and we couldn't get down from the tree safely. We were up in that tree for hours...you could hear the girls the whole time. Eventually, the male Avatars started taking turns...'doing it' with the girls. That's when Jak learned you can't hurt Avatars unless they've violated copyright laws. Jak got a few rounds off before we ran for it, but the bullets bounced right off the Avatars." Daxter shook his head, as though trying to clear the awful images from his mind.
"How do know that Tess and them didn't just agree to do all that sexual stuff to save themselves? I mean, they were hostages, right?" asked Axel, ever the skeptic.
Daxter looked up, staring into Axel's sharp, green eyes with a haunted expression. Axel was surprised to see the ordinarily breezy ottsel so...traumatized. "If you were there...you would have known. It wasn't an act. And like I said, by then we knew what Avatars did to you when they caught you."
Standing up slowly, Daxter peered out into the desert, "I better go get Jak. If we just let 'im wander, who know's where he'll end up. He gets turned around when he's cranky." Daxter left the illuminated circle of earth around the fire to follow Jak's footsteps into the gloomy desert.