A/N: I'm so sorry this chapter is late! ;A; This week has been very busy and I tried to get it out on time, but it felt rushed. So here it is, a little late. I'm happy I took my time with it. =) I hope you guys like it, too.

Oh! And I will be, uh...attempting to write a fic for Jak II and Jak 3 as well. I have a whole plot worked out in my mind and I hope to be able to continue. There will be more on that after I finish this fic.

DISCLAIMER: Is in the first chapter. If Jak and Daxter were mine...well...I wouldn't be writing this fanfiction because this would have happened in the game.

Jak and Daxter: A Twist of Fate
by Jam

The spider caves were nestled deep in the crater where the sun didn't shine and the lava, thankfully, didn't flow. Daxter had been worried – hoping – it'd be too dark to see, giving them an excuse to head back, but the cave was illuminated by the same kind of crystals that had lit the explosive-filled cave outside of the crater and strange, glowing mushrooms. The young teen couldn't decide if the bluish green glow was peaceful or creepy – maybe a little bit of both. But as the two friends kept walking and nothing nefarious came out to grab them, Daxter started to think that maybe this wouldn't be so bad. What was so scary about spiders, anyway? Sure, some were poisonous, but they were just tiny, little specs and they ran most of the time anyway. They even ate all the more annoying pests! Really, there was nothing for him to worry about.

Or at least, that's what he told himself until he rounded a corner and met face to face with the biggest, ugliest spider he'd ever seen in his short life. Six feet of black, matted fur; writhing, stubby legs; and massive, slobbering fangs. Daxter screamed as he went for the weapon he had tied to his back, the thorn-covered stick from the boggy swamp, and flailed it wildly in front of him. One day he and Jak were going to have to work on his ability to think and aim when under attack, but anything that could get that horrible thing away from him worked fine at that moment. The teen cheered triumphantly when he actually managed to catch the monster across the face and the spider went spinning through the air suspended only by a thin strand of silk. When it came swinging back like a demented pendulum, Daxter was ready for it. He swung at it again as hard as he could and, with a pathetic pained shriek, the spider hung limply from the ceiling, dead.

A light punch to his shoulder was Jak's way of congratulating him. See? That hadn't been so bad. If he could take out an elf-sized spider in two hits, than this would be a breeze.

And really, he should learn to stop underestimating things.

Because around the next corner was the most terrifying thing Daxter had ever seen in his life.

Now, there was a lot in front of the two boys that might be considered terrifying. There was just the sheer size of the chamber they had entered, which looked big enough to fit the entire jungle temple back home inside of it. It would take hours to search the entire chamber and all of the tunnels Daxter could see leading off into parts unknown, and he wasn't looking forward to it. There was also the copious amount of Dark Eco that was setting Daxter on edge. It flowed along the cave floor like a river of death, gurgling quietly and giving off strange purple wisps of light. But neither of these compared to what had really paralyzed him with fear. He had thought he'd had a slight problem with spiders and their six extra appendages, but that was nothing to the absolute horror that filled him at the sight of the fifty foot long…abominations slithering through the pole-like formations filling the cave.

Dozens, hundreds, no, thousands of legs twitching along, weaving in and out of the burrows the horrible things had made in the rock.

"You know what, Jak? I think you could probably handle this place on your own," Daxter said with a nervous chuckle. He quickly shuffled backwards the way they had come, hoping he could slip out before any of the monsters noticed the two small snacks that had showed up for dinner. "I should just head back and, uh, help Keira with the Zoomer! Or, you know, I bet Samos could use help sorting through the Red Sage's notes!"

Daxter couldn't believe he was resorting to using Samos as an excuse to leave, but, before he could get very far, a clawed hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged him back into the chamber. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy. He never could escape Jak when he had a mind for adventure. It wasn't even as though his friend were forcing him or anything. The grip around his wrist was light and easy to break. They both knew that he wasn't really going anywhere. Daxter hated it whenever Jak went off on some hare-brained adventure without him because the boy always came back with a broken arm, or some other horrible injury, or some tale of how he'd narrowly avoided death. Maybe Daxter was just being a mother Flut Flut, but he couldn't help but worry.

He wouldn't just go along quietly, however, so he whined as they began to climb up the rocks on the far side of the cave, thankfully steering clear of the multi-legged creeps slinking throughout the cave. They had a long, long day ahead of them, Daxter could just feel it.

Three hours later, after leaping across pits of Dark Eco, hopping across moving platforms hovering dozens of feet in the air, and killing more spiders than he cared to count, they still hadn't found the Dark Eco crystals Samos had sent them to destroy. The caves, which Daxter thought had to be an old mine of some sort, were like a giant labyrinth of twisting tunnels and dead end chambers. The two boys had gotten lost more than once, and Daxter wasn't the only one who was getting frustrated.

Jak was actually sorely tempted to just head back and tell the old sage that they hadn't been able to find the crystals, but two things stopped him. First, he couldn't just leave the crystals there for the Lurkers to find. Second…he had actually been looking for the entrance to the caves for quite some time. He would feel better if it didn't seem like they were running around in circles. He didn't like these caves. They had a sinister feeling to them, and he'd much prefer to be outside in the sun than trapped underground. There had been a strange feeling itching at the back of his throat from the moment they'd entered the caves, something he couldn't pinpoint gnawing at the back of his mind, and he didn't like it one bit. The purple lightning that clung to him, which the teen sometimes suspected had a mind of its own, had been crackling more so than usual, and it got worse every time they approached a pool of Dark Eco.

He had felt the same back in the Precursor city. There had been Dark Eco there as well, and the gurgling of the Eco had almost been like whispers calling to him, cajoling him, but he didn't know what it wanted. And he really felt like he was going mad, thinking that the Eco might actually be reaching out to him like it was sentient or something, but he couldn't find another way to describe it. The longer he had been in that sunken city, the worse it had gotten. He already knew what bloodlust felt like. He wished he could forget it, could undo all the deaths he had caused, could deny what it had been like. Fighting those Lurkers in the swamp had been exhilarating. He had enjoyed every brutal, bloody second of it, and the worst part was that he couldn't say that he hadn't been himself when he'd done it.

He had thought at first that maybe the Dark Eco was controlling him – making him do things he wouldn't normally do. And, maybe to an extent, that was true. Jak wouldn't normally growl at people, or kill anything if he could avoid it, and he wasn't one to get angry. But the anger he felt wasn't coming from some outside force. It was his own. It was his own anger he felt whenever people treated Daxter poorly or tried to hurt him. It was his own exhilaration he felt when he was fighting Lurkers. His own satisfaction from the end of a good fight. They were all his, just…amplified. To the point where he didn't care anymore that he was soaked in the blood of living things until the high wore off. And then he would have to deal with the fact that he was surrounded by corpses he had made himself, would have to bear with Daxter's tense, worried smiles, and try not to fall apart.

But that had been nothing compared to how Jak had felt down in the Precursor city. The young boy quickly shook his head as if that could dislodge the images out of his mind, could shake off the phantom rush of elation that coursed through him. If he could keep these feelings from Daxer, he would, for as long as he could. Jak could tell that his friend was afraid of him, no matter how hard the younger boy tried to hide it behind his smiles or tell himself otherwise, and the older teen hated it. He was starting to become afraid of himself. Jak couldn't control himself, and it scared him. He was starting to regret not listening to the Oracle, but it was too late now. They didn't have time for him to train when Gol and Maia were moments away from destroying the world.

Jak just had to hope that they would be able to do something about it after they had stopped the two demented elves from flooding the world. Then he would have time to figure out what the 'pure light' was and find it…

"This cave gives me the creeps…" his orange haired friend muttered to himself a few feet ahead of him. "How much do you wanna bet Old Samos just sent us out here for kicks?"

If the world wasn't at stake, Jak would probably agree with him. It wouldn't be the first time the Green Eco Sage had sent them out on a pointless mission just to get them out of his hair.

"Let's turn around and try another tunnel. This one's probably a dead end…" The tunnel was getting darker and darker the farther they went, with less and less of the bright blue crystals to light the way. Jak was about to agree, but he caught sight of something shining in the distance. He couldn't tell what it was from this far away. But he could tell that it was purple, and that was more than enough for him. He smiled at his friend and nodded toward it before sprinting into the darkness. He could admit there was one perk to being saturated with Dark Eco, and it was that he was his own personal lantern. His Eco aura lit the cave almost as well as the crystals did, and it seemed to grow even more volatile than before the closer he got to the object. It would make sense that it would react when he was getting closer to a crystal of concentrated Dark Eco.

The cave positively lit up when the pale teen stepped next to the crystal. The strange stone began to glow, filling the cavern with a ghostly, surreal sort of light. His aura leaped and crackled, latching onto the crystal and running along it. It was actually kind of beautiful…

"Huh. It likes you, Jak," Daxter remarked, eyes wide with wonder as he circled the crystal. He liked to think he'd seen a lot of things in his short life, but this probably took the cake. Jak should have looked terrifying illuminated by the light of the Dark Eco crystal, his lightning whipping around him so violently that it was actually stirring up a breeze, but that was the farthest thing from Daxter's mind. His friend looked like some sort of otherworldly being, like something out of a strange dream.

"So, uh, how are we gonna take care of this thing?" he asked more to fill the silence and distract himself than anything else. This wasn't a glass statue they were trying to destroy. This thing was probably solid crystal, harder than rock, and Daxter had no idea how Samos expected them to destroy it. Jak's claws were sharp, but they couldn't slice through this.

Jak frowned thoughtfully and reached out a hand to touch the stone. Daxter quickly reached out to bat his friend's hand away, staring at him incredulously. "I'd rather not have you running around as crazy and ugly as Gol, thanks! This is a delicate operation requiring the proper tools and equipment."

The pale teen raised an eyebrow at him and folded his arms over his chest, but thankfully backed up a step. There was a smirk on his lips as Daxter approached the crystal warily. The younger boy had absolutely no idea what he was doing, but he was pretty sure touching it with their bare hands was about the stupidest thing they could do. Poking it with his stick didn't turn out to be much better.

Everything suddenly stopped. The light within the crystal flickered and died, and the purple arcs of Eco petered out as well. Even Jak's aura was gone, and the entire tunnel was bathed in darkness.

"Why do I have the feeling this is going to end badly…?" he asked the black void where he was fairly certain Jak still stood.

The cavern suddenly exploded with a light so bright that Daxter's eyes actually stung. He quickly closed them and threw his arms over his face to block it out. He could hear Jak hiss in pain somewhere to his left, and he blindly stumbled in that general direction. The light hadn't gotten any dimmer, was growing brighter if the redness of his eyelids was anything to go by, and he knew they had to get away before something worse hap - .

The only warning he got was a sound like shattering glass before the crystal suddenly ruptured, sending out a wave of shards and energy. He should have been expecting the second explosion, but it still took him by surprise. Daxter went flying through the air, unconscious before he hit the floor.

It took him a while to come to. Everything was pitch black, and it took the teen a while to realize that no matter how many times he opened and closed his eyes, it wasn't going to get any brighter. For a terrifying moment, Daxter was afraid that he'd gone blind, but eventually his vision cleared enough that he could see a blur of light far off in the distance. He wasn't inclined to get up and investigate it, though. His head felt like the Sandover fisherman had jammed his spear into it and his stomach felt like the sea during a bad storm. The floor beneath him was nice and cool and he would probably feel better if he just didn't move.

Something was nagging at him, though. Something wasn't quite right. Where was he? Hadn't he been doing something? It had been important…They had been in a cave doing…something. Him and Jak. Where was Jak? With some difficulty, Daxter shakily pushed himself onto his knees and peered through the darkness. This would be so much easier if his head didn't feel like it was about to split open. It shouldn't be this hard to find Jak – he practically glowed. Glowed. With Dark Eco. Like some sort of otherworldly being…

The crystal!

Panicked, he swung around with the intention of taking another look around the cave, but the world decided it wanted to turn in the complete opposite direction. He curled into a ball and waiting for the world to stop spinning, which took longer than he would have liked. He must have hit his head when the crystal exploded. Daxter was lucky that was all that happened. Though, who knows. Maybe he was pasty and pointy now and he just couldn't see it. But where was Jak? He couldn't be far. And if he had been caught in the explosion, too, he might be hurt! What if he was lying on the cold floor bleeding to death and Daxter couldn't find him?

"Jak?" he called into the darkness, wincing at how loud his voice seemed. "Jaaaaaak?"

This was not good. This was bad. This was all kinds of bad. What if Jak was dead? What if the Dark Eco had done something to him? What was Daxter going to do? He winced as a sharp pain lanced through his skull and placed a hand to his temple. His warm, sticky temple.

Great.

Just great.

He was going to kill Samos if they got out of this stupid cave alive!

Daxter couldn't just sit there and wait to bleed to death. He was hoping the wound wasn't as bad as it felt, but either way he had to move. He had to find Jak. Because Jak wasn't dead. That just wasn't possible. Nothing could kill Jak. The panicked boy still spent an untold amount of time shuffling around in the dark, seeing if he could find a body, just to be sure, but he had a feeling that Jak just wasn't there anymore. Daxter knew his friend wouldn't have just left him behind. Something must have happened to him.

The determined boy pushed himself slowly to his feet and began to stagger down the tunnel toward the light in the distance. It was a relief to see that it was one of the light blue crystals and know that he was going in the right direction. Daxter didn't know how he was going to find one boy in this maze of caves when it had taken over three hours to find a crystal, but he had to try.

He got help from a surprisingly likely source. He hadn't stumbled far when the eerie silence was suddenly broken by the echo of a scream reverberating through the tunnel. He had heard screams like that before, back in the swamp. The screams of Lurkers dying in agony. If Daxter had had any doubts about Jak's wellbeing, they were gone now. He staggered down a tunnel they hadn't taken yet, following the sounds of death and destruction even though every instinct he possessed told him to turn around and run the other way. He had an idea of what was going on at the end of the tunnel, but nothing could have prepared him for what he actually saw.

The Lurkers weren't just after the Dark Eco crystals. They had an entire excavation going on, and it looked like they were trying to dig up some sort of giant Precursor machine. It had a face on it, like the Precursor Oracles, and an entire body to go along with it. It was huge, and he had a perfect idea of what an army of Lurkers planned to do with a robot large enough to crush a hut with one step. Daxter wouldn't have to worry about them ever using the robot, however, because none of them would be alive to. A blur of white and purple flashed along the wooden scaffolding constructed around the robot, and suddenly another yell pierced the air as a Lurker fell to its death. The whole cavern was littered with them – Lurkers who hadn't gotten out of the way in time, who hadn't known about the danger coming until it was too late.

There were bodies everywhere. And not all of them had died from falling. Most of them hadn't…

Suddenly he couldn't breathe. All Daxter could see was red and the twisted expressions of pain and fear that would be etched on the Lurkers' faces forever. Just so much death, and his best friend had done this? Sweet, innocent, lemon-headed Jak? Daxter backed up a step and stumbled, pried his eyes away from the horror in front of him, and that was when he saw him. Standing near the top of the scaffolding, hand wrist-deep in a Lurker's chest. Covered in blood and purple lightning snapping around him, singing everything it touched. The younger boy choked when he realized those inky black eyes were staring straight at him. His friend was gone. Nothing in that gaze looked familiar. There was no warmth, no humor, no nothing. Just a predator hunched over its kill. He had to get away. Daxter didn't know where he was going to go or how he was going to get there in the state he was in, but he had to be anywhere other than here.

He turned to run, but he didn't get very far. He could tell he was slipping into unconsciousness but there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. He didn't know if it was the fear or the head injury that finally caused him to pass out. The last thing he saw was Jak, the creature wearing Jak's face, leaping off of the scaffolding and bounding towards him.

The next chapter will definitely, probably, maybe not come out on Thursday, because I'm being kidnapped for the 4th of July, but I should be able to get it out by Saturday. I will see all you lovely people in (approximately!) a week! ^^