This is a fight-chapter, ok? Daxter will get to prove he's a lot tougher than he looks. ^^
Daxter knew this wasn't going to be easy even before he had fully grasped the concept of what was waiting for him at the end of the tunnel.
The marauders had brought them all back to some sort of a base camp. There were tents, cars and marauders everywhere.
And a cave.
Or rather, a tunnel through the mountain.
Holta and the other monks were brought directly to the middle of the camp and were displayed for the gathered lot as the "catch of the day" as they were all put inside a cage made of barred steel gates.
Daxter however, was brought straight into this tunnel.
The crowd of marauders grew steadily as soon as they discovered what was going on, leaving the monks to themselves at the middle of the camp.
Daxter didn't like this.
Normally this amount of attention would suit him quite well, but this wasn't that pleasurable kind of attention which he liked.
"Could ya' just tell me what's going to happen?" he whined to the marauder leading him on.
The man laughed and shook his head at the comment.
"You're sure this whelp's a spargan, Dart?" the man asked the blue haired marauder who'd brought them there.
"Why of course not, but the monks said so," Dart answered him with a crooked smile and winked at Daxter, who instantly felt like throwing up on the spot.
"'Sides," he continued, smile widening, "this 'whelp' managed to somehow totally knock out Gauter for about five or ten minutes."
This made the other marauder stop in his step to whistle a low tune of amazement.
"And if that ain't proof this kid's a spargan, then at least he's got one hell of a talent," Dart said and motioned for them to go on.
Dart's speech had drawn even more attention to Daxter and now the crowd gathering around them in the tunnel was doing its best to catch a glimpse of this strange kid.
Suddenly they got out into an open area, and the end of the tunnel.
It proved to be some sort of arena inside the mountain, reminding Daxter pretty much of the arena at Spargus, except this one didn't have lava floating around it, nor an open sky above it.
As soon as they got out of the tunnel and in to this arena of sorts, the marauders scattered and got up on the audience seating, their voices rising gradually from a murmur to an excited roar.
"Come on, could ya' please tell me what's going on?" Daxter begged Dart with his whiniest voice.
The marauder turned to face him and Daxter could se the laughter playing in his eyes and smile.
"Well, since you ask so nicely," he said sarcastically and imitated a court bow. "We do enjoy having spargans as visitors, so in order to celebrate this we're going to let ya' entertain us. It's simple, really. Fight and prove your worth and you'll live to the next round up. Probably."
"Fight? Me? No way, I'm in no condition to fight!" Daxter objected wildly as the marauder who'd lead him there untied his hands from behind his back.
"Well, sorry to say then that you have no choice," Dart snickered and grabbed his shirt to pull him close.
"It's a fight or die thing. Just do your best."
The words were whispered slowly with a hard intonation on each word and before Daxter had any possibility to object any further, he was pushed hard into the sand of the arena floor.
He could hear a heavy door slam shut behind him and realised he had no escape route left.
"Aww, shoot!" he muttered and sent some not so nice thoughts towards the gods of fate and luck.
As he got back up on his feet he noticed that the crowd had grown quiet.
Surprised, he looked around the place to see what might be the cause for this and caught sight of a huge figure in the far end of the place.
"Buggers, it figures that the one time I actually manage to do something good, it turns out it's actually a bad thing," he mumbled to himself and tried to find something to use for his defence.
"Let the fight begin!" someone called out in a loud voice from somewhere above at the stand.
Now the crowd immediately started roaring once more and at the corner of his eyes, Daxter could see the large figure starting to move closer.
"Jak where are ya' when I need ya'?" he squeaked out through his teeth and searched even more desperately for some sort of weapon he could use.
He was ready to give up the search when he found a piece of a broken staff lying in the shadows of the wall surrounding the ground of the arena.
He picked it up and took to his feet just in time to avoid the first attack from the marauder who was coming up from behind him.
The large man stumbled and fell face first into the sand, at the very spot where Daxter had been only a second earlier.
The crowd roared anew in excitement as Daxter ran for his life and tried to come up with some sort of a plan to get through this fight alive.
As he looked back over his shoulder, Daxter noticed that having been a small animal for a great part of his life had somehow affected his body. In this case it seemed to have made him a lot faster than he remembered being.
He'd made it across the ground in no time at all and he wasn't really tired either.
Stunned at the discovery, he stopped running for a moment and looked down on his feet as if to ask them how this had happened.
The angry outburst of the marauder at the other end woke him up from his wonderings though.
But he didn't start running.
Instead he started troubling his brain with what he could possibly do with the sharp wooden stick in his hand.
The marauder came running in high speed and once more Daxter managed to dodge him in the very last moment, causing him to take another dive into the sand.
"Fight! Fight! Fight!"
The crowd on the stand was getting restless.
Sorry to disappoint ya', but I ain't up to fighting this fella' just yet, Daxter thought and ran once more across the ground to win some more time as the angry marauder got back up on his feet.
Daxter thought that he might be able to keep this game of catch for as long as it would take to make the other fighter tired, but as the marauder came at him for the third time, Daxter was suddenly hit in the back by something that had been thrown at him from the stand.
This was enough for him to miss his chance to get away, and this time the marauder crashed right into him.
He felt like he was going to get crushed underneath the mountain of a man who'd landed on top of him and started to kick and hit him wherever he could reach in order to make him get away.
But as the man got off, he grabbed Daxer's right arm and pulled him up as well, a gesture that ended in Daxter sailing through the air and landing some strides away.
The sand scratched his skin and he felt like he'd hit solid ground instead of soft and giving sand.
His arm ached violently and the scratches stung something fierce, but he didn't have much time to think about this, as the marauder once more grabbed him.
He was lifted high into the air and thrown away to land in the very midst of the arena.
This time he had bit through his lip at the land and as he tasted the blood on his tongue he felt nauseous.
He didn't think he'd be able to survive very many of those throws.
As his opponent once more got close, Daxter managed to roll away and found himself lying on something hard and pointy.
Just as the man was about to flatten him against the ground, Daxter got the staff out from underneath his back and by pure reflex he shoved the weapon upwards, toward his enemy, and closed his eyes.
"Huff!"
Daxter felt a heavy pressure on the staff and opened his eyes.
The crowd had suddenly fallen silent.
Daxter couldn't stop staring at the man who only a moment ago had tried to kill him.
Now the man was bending over the staff held out by Daxter's shaking hands, impaled by it's pointed broken off end, having pushed it himself all the way through as he'd thrown himself at Daxter.
The blood was pouring slowly out of the wound, dripping down the staff and colouring the sand beneath them with red spots.
"What the…" Daxter mumbled in doubt of what he had done.
Suddenly the crowd above seemed to wake up from its state of shock and the roar of appreciation over the sudden ending of the fight they'd been watching filled the air and echoed off the walls, creating a horrible mixture of screams for blood.
"We have a winner!"
Daxter turned to look at who'd spoken, but couldn't find a face to go with the voice, as the marauders started to move around to get out of the cave arena.
Someone grabbed his shoulder and pulled him roughly up on his feet and his hands were forced back behind his back before he even realised what was happening.
"Move," Dart's voice told him from behind.
For the first time ever, Daxter didn't feel like talking back.
He just couldn't stop thinking about the man he'd killed, the blood and the weight pressing on his arms.
He walked back through the noisy tunnel barely noticing the ruckus around him.
As he was shoved into the cage where the monks were sitting, he didn't really care about the pain of hitting the ground without having a chance to catch him self in the fall.
So this is how it feels when you've killed someone, he thought as the monks tried to help him up.
He felt awful.
He felt dirty, like he'd never be able to clean his hands again.
He'd seen people die before.
Heck, he'd been on Jak's shoulder in the midst of a killing raid!
But he'd never actually done the killing with his own hands before.
No matter the fact that this guy had been trying to kill him, Daxter still felt like he'd done something terribly wrong.
And that's when the thought hit him that he might not be the only one who felt like this and the realisation of the full meaning of this brought tears to his eyes.
Precursors, Jak, why didn't you say something?
----
Claws tore the dark flesh open within seconds.
He scaled the gigantic body as if it was an ordinary hill, reaching the neck within a minute.
With the claws digging deep into the muscles, he swung himself downwards, ripping the beast open as he went.
The windpipe was torn right before he let go and the huge animal screamed out its pain, but it wasn't dead yet.
Dark purple and black blood dripped down on the ground and he dove for it, absorbing the eco as he ran on without stopping.
It was weak now.
He had to finish it off before the eco let it heal.
A surge of energy started to tickle in his arms as a purple light started to gather in his hands.
Still running to get to the monster's head, he pressed his hands together, creating a static noise as the power of the dark eco was building up inside him.
The release of the energy that had assembled in his hands gave off a loud bang and the metalhead was stopped in its step by the impact.
As it fell down on its side, he growled with pleasure at the feeling of laying down the prey.
And then the eco left his system, all used up on the final attack.
As his vision cleared, Jak noticed that the monstous metalhead was still breathing shallowly.
He tried not to think about what had just happened.
This was the first time his dark self had come out into the light of day since more than two years back.
He'd almost thought of it to be gone, had fooled himself into feeling safe.
And now this.
It was pure luck that he hadn't turned while still inside the city. Who knows what he might have done if that had happened?
He stumbled back to his overturned car and reached for the com in his belt as he walked.
Just as he was about to make the call for someone to help him, the com beeped, telling him he had an incoming call.
"Yes?" he answered slowly, voice still shaking from the stress of his transformation.
"Jak? This is commander Karidi speaking. Are you still at Haven City?"
"Yes."
"Could you meet up with us in a few minutes? We've gotten word from Sig to take care of some business with the marauders. Apparently they claim to have caught a spragan trespassing their grounds."
Jak wrinkled his forehead in deep thought as he heard this.
The marauders loved to brag whenever they did catch a spargan off guard, but to send a group of others to listen to them wasn't something usual.
"Why…" he started asking, but was cut off as Karidi answered the unfinished question.
"Some monks were to have been caught as well. Seem has demanded we at least take a look to make sure whether this is true or not."
Well, that explained it partly.
Jak looked at his car.
"Karidi?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm having trouble with the car."
"We'll pick you up then."
"Good. I'm at the north gate."
Jak looked once more at the dying metalhead and decided he should give the woman and her companions a warning.
He pressed the speaker button again.
"It's the one with the dying wasteland metalhead in front of it."
----