Chapter 10: A Drunk Daxter and a Sketchy Scientist
Music: West Coast Smoker, by Fall Out Boy
'Wished bounce me weightless
The infrared scope on pointlessness
the bulls are sedated
And this fight's fixed
Oh hell yes,
I'm a nervous wreck
Oh hell yes.'
Mood: Tired
Disclaimer: Writers lie, just like your parents.
We went back to the Hip Hog after leaving the mechanics. But this time, we didn't see Krew. We saw two girls. I felt my eyebrows pull together; this can't be good.
We walked up to the bar, and Daxter went straight to the girl on the left, the blonde. Wait. That was Tess. And Katie. What were they doing here?
"Hey Sugarplum. You new here? Well, whatcha got that's, uhh, hot?" Daxter asked wiggling his fingers. He paused. "Wait, I've seen you two before. You guys are with the Underground!"
"What are you doing here?" I asked loudly, glaring at both of them.
"Shhh! I'm Tess. She's Katie. Torn sent us to spy on Krew. Play along, and we may be able to get our hands on a few of Krew's secrets." Tess said, putting two fingers on Daxter's lips to shut him up.
I laughed quietly, shaking my head at him. "Oooooh... I love undercover work, baby! But, uhh, don't you two honeys think that you could use some help from Orange Lightning?" Daxter asked, slinging his arms around both the girls' shoulders. Tess giggled, but Katie just shook his arms off, putting her hands on her hips.
Daxter jumped behind the bar, and I saw Jak roll his eyes at him. "Wow! There sure are a lot of bottles back here." I sighed. Leave it to Daxter to get drunk in the middle of a mission.
"Whew! Ooh that's, ooh that, that goes down aah..." Jak leant over the bar with concern for a second, and sighed exasperatedly, grinning apologetically at Tess and Katie, both of which looked irritated. "Ooh boy, gee ya 'spose that's real gold floatin' in here? How 'bout this purple stuff?" All eyes turned to look at Daxter, who was consuming a lot of alchohal.
"Jak! Maddy!" Krew said, coming into view. "I need you two and the talking rat to go around and make a few collections for me."
Before he could continue, Daxter popped up from the bottom of the bar, swaying slightly, and hiccupping occasionally. I saw Tess giggling.
"Hey there, five chins... how's crimes?" He pointed a shaky finger at Krew. I saw Jak shaking with silent laughter behind his hand, and I couldn't help but laugh with him. Before I knew it, we were both clutching out midsections, laughing.
"What's his problem, 'ey?" I held a hand up, gasping for air, but before I could respond, I fell into another fit of laughter, grabbing onto Jak's shoulder pad.
"Nothin'... I'm just fine... mind your own business..." Daxter said defensively. Well, as defensively as you can get when you're trashed. He then proceeded to fall down on his back, eyes twirling, singing loudly and off key. I pressed my face into Jak's chest to control myself, taking heaving breaths to calm down.
Jak and I both sobered up enough to hear Krew again. "Listen, I have six 'clients' around town who are about to make money drops for me." He whispered urgently, I glanced quickly over my shoulder to see Tess cleaning the bar, subtly glancing at Krew. I knew she was trying to listen. Katie was cleaning a glass, but staring at me warily. I glared at her before turning back to Krew. "I need you two to collect each moneybag as fast as you can." He took a deep breath before continuing, louder this time. "Take care of any guards who get curious, mmmmn. Get to a moneybag too late and some townie might pick it up."
"-DRRYY!" Daxter exclaimed, cutting off what Krew was going to say. You know what's da trouble with you Krew? You got no vision... This place could be a real swingin' joint... Hop Heg Hiven" Daxter slurred, Krew glared at Jak, who just smirked. "with more dancin', more mac'n, more WOMEN!..." He fell back on the counter.
"Come on, Dax. Gotta sober up." I said gently, picking him up and cradling him in my arms, still keeping an ear to what Krew was saying.
"You're a good person 'Mddy." Daxter slurred, placing a big wet kiss on my cheek. I wiped off the otzel slobber with my gloved hand, and Daxter jumped up on my arm, grabbing Jak's hand, and kissing it wetly before saying, "I love you, man." And falling down.
"If you lose even one bag, then don't come back, 'ey!" Krew said harshly.
"Let's go, Dax." I said. I didn't know where this mother hen was coming from, and I didn't like it. So I walked over to Katie's side of the bar. "Can I get a glass of water? A big one." I growled at her.
"Yeah," She said shakily. I freaked her out. Good. "That'll be ten credits." I glared at her. "Right. Uhh, coming up."
She handed me a glass of water, and I took a sip of it, before reaching over, and dumping the whole thing on the sleeping otzel on the counter.
Jak almost fell over in laughter when Daxter shot up, "What was – We was – that was-?" He looked up and saw me with the glass in my hand and a smirk on my face. "That," He said soggily, "Was rude."
"Got you up didn't it?" Jak said, smacking him in the head.
At that moment, with a distracted bundle of boy, Katie lent over to me and said, "Hey, bad ass, after your mission with Krew head over to the Underground. Torn needs your help. He just won't admit it." She walked away before I could respond. I just shook my head and grabbed my bundle of laughing boy.
We walked outside, and Jak jumped on the Zoomer, and I got on behind him straddling him, opening up the mini map. There was a timer on there with thirty five seconds. Jak took off.
The second the Zoomer moved, KG's were on us, and I had to use my bow to deflect shots to avoid getting out heads shot to bits. I rapidly started pulling arrows and letting them fly home in the KG's heads as Jak took off like a bat out of hell to the money bags.
We flew through Sector 4, and Sector 6, avoiding turrets and KG's alike, before looping around and heading back to the beginning of Sector 4, still collecting the bags that we apparently couldn't get on the first ride around.
We picked up the last money bag, and headed towards the Hip Hog. Apparently after our mission, we weren't important enough to need to keep looking for, because all the KG's gave up the search at once.
"Mmmm, quite the money collectors, 'ey?" Krew said when we walked up to the bar. Neither of the girls were there now. "Here's a Weapon Upgrade. Now get out! I need my beauty nap." I scoffed.
"Trust me brother. There aren't enough hours in the day." Daxter said sarcastically. Jak and I grabbed our upgrades, attaching them to the weapons, before heading out to the Underground.
xMx
"One of the Baron's mining operations is under attack by the Metal Heads." Torn informed us as we walked in.
"That's not our problem." Jak responded, harshly. He was right, though. It wasn't. That was all on Praxis.
"It is our problem when the foreman's one of the Underground's best informants!" Aww hell. Another mission. "His name is Vin, and he's just valuable enough to save. Find the warp gate at the Power Station and use it to travel to the Strip Mine so you can rescue Vin's pathetic hide.
"Hey, Tattooed Wonder, how come we get all the crappy missions?" Daxter asked, standing up on the table in an attempt to stand eye to eye with Torn. It wasn't even close.
"Because I... DON'T... LIKE... YOU!" He responded, pushing Daxter to the floor.
"Fair enough..." Daxter squeaked out sheepishly.
"Whatever deal the Baron made with the Metal Heads, the city's eco is almost gone, and his time is running out. If we don't get those kids back on the throne soon, there may not be a city left to defend…" Torn said seriously.
"Eco, huh." Jak said, looking at me.
"Eco, huh." I echoed, holding out my hand. A small spring of red eco burst up, looking like flames. Torn stared at me. I just shrugged.
Truthfully, though, I was running out of Eco. Dark Eco wasn't enough to replenish my Eco sources when I wasn't in Dark mode. I only had small amounts of Eco left in me. I closed my hand, absorbing the eco again.
Torn turned away, muttering, "You're going to get yourself killed with tricks like that."
We took off towards a small icon in Sector 4, hidden away in the corner. Inside was a blue room with a floating, almost translucent ball in the middle, we brushed it off and headed to the right where there was a teleporter ring.
"Nice to know these are still around." I said with a smirk, before diving through, Jak and Daxter right behind me.
We flew out of the teleporter ring, and I felt fine. "Huh," Jak said. "They must've fixed the after affects."
He grabbed my hand and pulled me forward, both of us easily blasting out the Metal Head scorpions in the way. We decided to split up to cover more area to find whatever we were looking for, so I took to the right, and Jak and Daxter took to the left.
I followed a big looped trail, taking out Metal Heads and collecting their skulls, before reaching a big machined factory with moving tracks leading upward. I followed the path opposite of mine and found Jak and Daxter killing another Metal Head.
Daxter saw me and started waving vigorously, like I had been gone for 10 days, rather than 10 minutes. They caught up to me, and we headed back towards the moving tracks.
At the top was a few more Metal Heads, and across the ledge we could see a glowing yellow column. I figured that that's where we were supposed to go.
We went over to it, only having to jump over some coal mining carts, and found a door with a big red button. And, of course, Jak pressed the button automatically. No caution at all. The doors opened to reveal a barricaded doorway and a nervous scientist.
"Aaagghh! Stay back!" We heard, before shots were being fired in every direction. I automatically, dropped to the ground, rolling over and pulling out my bow, already having an arrow aimed at the guys head. Then I remembered he was the good guy and put it away.
"Do something, Jak! This guy's crazy!" Daxter exclaimed from the right side of the doorway.
"Hey, are you Vin? We're here to help. Torn sent us." Jak said loudly, trying to reason with a nervous scientist with a pistol. Why was this man so important? Seemed kinda sketchy to me.
" Stay back!" He said, still shooting.
"Look, if we were here to kill you, you wouldn't be talking right now!" I snapped loudly, trying to get the insane gunman to stop shooting. He stopped, and I laughed menacingly. "You have no idea how close you were to getting your brain blown to the other side of the room."
Jak glared at me and gave me that look that said, not now.
"Oh, friendlies? Oh thank goodness! We... so... whe... where's the army?
"Ah... we're it." Daxter said, flicking his hand and me and Jak.
" What?" Vin asked, adjusting his goggles. "Just you three? What do they think I'm worth?" He face planted against the barricade to his right.
"I'm beginning to wonder that myself!" Jak said.
"Look." I said sharply. "If you know what's good for you. You'd stop waving that pistol around because I could be on you in exactly 0.3 seconds."
"If you want, you can stay here and be Metal meat, but Maddy, Daxter and I are leaving before those monsters get back." Jak said, taking my hand and beginning to walk towards the teleporter gate.
Vin automatically jumped out after us, waving his gun around, despite my warning, walking backwards until he tripped on the ring and fell backwards into it.
I laughed quietly. "He's quite the character, ain't he?" Daxter said, jumping through the ring. I jumped through after him.
We reappeared at the Power Station to Vin, who was already puttering around his lab. "Hey, I want to thank you guys for saving my butt out there at the Strip Mine."
"And we'd like to thank you for being such a bad shot." Daxter said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Ah yeah, sorry about that guys. Ah, I'm a bit jumpy these days." Vin responded, rapidly pressing buttons on his control panel.
"Hadn't noticed." I scoffed.
Vin looked down at Daxter who was smiling at him sweetly, before widening his eyes and screaming, "Aaah! A Metal Head behind you!"
"Vin flipped out, jumping everywhere. "AAH! Whatha?... Whatha?... Wha!... Whhoooo.. Oohh...!" He fell to the ground in shock.
"Just kidding... nice reaction time though." Daxter said airily, walking passed the scientist.
"Not funny!" Vin said, getting up.I gave Daxter a small high five. "Those Metal Heads have been attacking our mining operations and we're running out of eco! Eco power keeps the city shield walls up," he breathed, running his finger over writings telling of the shields system configurations. "and if the shield drops... well, we can all kiss our butts goodbye!"
"I've got a few surprises for those Metal Heads." Jak said nonchalantly, looking out the window.
"You've got to keep the shield walls up until the Shadow figures out what to do." Vin exclaimed, pressing more buttons.
As he spoke, Daxter climbed on top of one of the control panels, pressing his face into the swirling patterns.
"My readings show a drop in eco flow at the Drill Platform. Probably some Metal Head eggs draining away power." Daxter lost his footing and fell to the ground, backwards. "So, use the Warp Gate to go to the platform and destroy every Metal Head egg you can find.
A/N: Fin!
I love Vin he's so fun and sketchy :P Well review with thoughts please *crosses fingers*
(Im going to try to update this every day. I already have the next few chapters written out, and the ones after than planned, so that shouldn't be a big deal, but if I do lag behind, feel free to yell at me until I get my ass back out there and write.)
Cheers!
xMonster