A/N: I live! You were worried I wouldn't update when I said I would, weren't you? Well, I couldn't stand the thought of starting the new year without having updated.

I have been gone for...a while, and I apologize for that. There are reasons, but I'll just say...real life was kicking me in the shin a bit. And writers' block. A little of both. But I want to start this new year off right because I'm going to try my darndest to update as regularly as humanly possible, though I won't be able to do the 15th/30th thing I was shooting for (and failed miserably at).

And so we shall start this new year off with a bang, somewhat literally! Absolutely nothing I wanted to happen in this chapter happened in this chapter (and that always seems to happen...), but I am happy with it regardless and I hope you like it, too. I honestly feel a bit rusty after five bloody months of absence, but I think I got back into the swing of things. I think.

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: The Darkness Within
by Jam

The sun had settled well below the horizon when Jak abruptly snapped awake. Besides the gentle crackling of Dark Eco, the glare of passing Zoomers offered the only other source of light. The teen glared suspiciously around the room, but nothing seemed amiss. The floor was half covered with belts and buckles, rags that might've been shirts once upon a time, tattered newspaper clippings, and bits of general trash that a teenager might claim made the place seemed 'lived in.' Anyone else, particularly ornery Green Eco Sages, would call it what it was – a hiphog sty. Really it was no worse than their room back home, though this place would never feel like home. When nothing nefarious jumped out of the shadows, Jak rolled onto his back and settled back onto the scratchy sheets with a sigh. Whatever it had been that had woken him up, it would be impossible for him to go back to sleep now. Something nagged at the back of his mind and set his nerves on edge, and it would bother him for the rest of the night.

Another Zoomer flew past the shoddily covered window and the glare of its headlights caused the shadows in the room to writhe and twist. The sight sent an unconscious shiver down Jak's spine. The pale teen had never been afraid of the dark. He had been wary of the things that might lurk in the darkness, but that unknown had never really bothered him like it had Daxter. And Jak still wouldn't say that he was afraid of the dark, not really. But for two long years his life had been nothing but darkness; the dimness of the prison cell and the lurching shadows that meant Krimzon Guards were coming. Maybe it would be different if this city didn't just feel like a larger version of the prison he had only recently escaped. But the massive wall that surrounded it served to keep the people in as much as it kept the Metal Heads out. The Krimzon Guard didn't care whether they tortured a prisoner or fellow citizen; they just had to show more discretion out on the streets. People couldn't even go where they wanted in the city without permission in the form of security passes.

"We are all his prisoners…"

Nothing about Haven City made any sense to Jak. People like Baron Praxis and Erol hadn't existed back home. The blatant cruelty of the Guards, the corruption of seemingly anyone with power, the apathy of the rest of the citizens…Gol and Maia had been the only evil Jak had ever known, and Samos had always attributed their madness to exposure to Dark Eco. Despite the Baron's obsession with the volatile substance, that wasn't the problem here. None of them, not Praxis or Erol or any of the Guards, showed any signs of being effected by Dark Eco. No pale, greying skin or sickly, yellow eyes or strange growths. Their malice was entirely their own.

It was disturbing to think that people could be so willfully cruel to each other. And it made Jak think more and more about the Dark Eco coursing through his own veins. Jak was the one with the claws and the horns, the fangs and the seemingly insatiable thirst for blood that always simmered just beneath the surface. And yet, he would argue that Erol and Praxis and the corrupt Krimzon Guards were the bigger monsters. The people of Haven City depended on them, trusted them – willingly or not – to protect them from the Metal Heads clamoring at the city walls. To protect them from any threat. And yet every day they betrayed their own city, betrayed and abused the people they were supposed to protect, for…what? Their own amusement? To further their own selfish needs?

Perhaps Jak wasn't the best judge of character these days. How could he be when he had so much blood on his hands? When he had bathed in the blood of his fellow elves and hadn't felt so much as a shred of remorse – had enjoyed it, even? But he could never, ever see himself willingly betraying the people who depended on him, who trusted him and put their faith in him. He hadn't forgotten about Samos and Keira. He would find them and get them all home, somehow. And Daxter…

Beside him, the gangly elf snuffled in his sleep and flopped away from the shifting light leaking in through the window. Sound asleep despite the fact that he was lying not a foot away from a bloodthirsty monster who was still covered in thick splashes of dried Metal Head blood. Just thinking about what had happened that afternoon, about what had nearly happened, tore at Jak's already frayed nerves and caused the electric tendrils of Dark Eco arcing off of his skin to crackle menacingly for a moment. He could see the dark red blood flying through the air, the wide-eyed look of shock on Daxter's face as he collapsed into the sand…the paleness of his skin, how cold he had been. Jak still couldn't believe how close he'd come to losing his best friend, right in front of him. One minute he had been fine, but the next…

How was he supposed to keep Daxter safe? As long as he was within five feet of Jak, he would always be in danger, from Krimzon Guards or some other threat. But Daxter would never agree to let Jak go off on his own, and, no matter how dangerous Jak knew the road ahead was, he didn't want him to. They were a team, the 'dynamic duo' as Daxter liked to call them. They always had been. Daxter had come a long way from the clumsy teen wielding nothing but a thorn-covered stick, but there was a still lot that he needed to work on if he planned on fighting Krimzon Guards and Metal Heads. It didn't matter how good Daxter's aim with a gun was if he didn't stay aware of his surroundings. He wouldn't always have someone there to watch his back. Maybe some sparring…

Jak froze as a strange but not unfamiliar sound reached his ears. Even his Eco stopped for a second, and the room seemed ominously dark without it. It wasn't the sound itself that had set him off, but the fact that he had been able to hear it. That he had been able to hear the clack of a Krimzon Guard cocking their rifle - over the hum of flying Zoomers, the stomp of booted feet along the pier, the murmuring of the never-sleeping citizens of Haven City, the crackle of a Guard's voice over a radio, the gentle lapping of the polluted water against the wooden and metal poles below them – so loud it sounded as if the Guard doing it had been standing right in the room next to him. It made him realize what had woken him in the first place. He couldn't hear the stomping of booted feet on the pier, or the murmuring of the crowded streets, or the Krimzon Guards talking to each other on their radios. And though he could still hear the hum of the Zoomers, the shadows along the walls had stopped shifting.

"Dax. Daxter, get up!" the silver-haired teen whispered roughly, shaking the elf beside him none too gently. But even if Daxter had changed quite a bit, he was still Daxter and waking him up had often been like pulling teeth.

True to form, the fiery-haired teen merely grumbled irritably before burying himself further under the tattered linen sheet. But every disturbingly silent second that passed caused the feeling of dread in Jak's stomach to grow, and they didn't have time for this. Something was wrong.

The silver-haired teen couldn't hold back a smirk at the sense of déjà vu that went through him as he ran a pitch black claw from the nape of Daxter's neck down his spine, a thin arc of Dark Eco trailing behind. Two years ago it had been enough to send his young friend flailing over the side of the bed as if he had been electrocuted, and this time was no different. Daxter went tumbling to the floor with a squawk that made Jak wince, but it had worked - and better than he thought. Instead of lying on the floor in a tangled heap, Daxter had sprung back to his feet, the little dagger he kept shoved under his pillow held tightly as he looked wildly around the room. It didn't take him long to realize what had happened and who had woken him up, and he was just opening his mouth to let loose a tirade that probably would have been legendary when the front door suddenly slammed open to welcome in a volley of gun blasts.

The two teens both leapt out of the way at the same time, Daxter landing awkwardly on his back and scrambling out of the line of sight of the army of guns that seemed to be fighting for room in the open doorway while Jak rolled and landed with a little more grace on the far side of the room. The bed they had just been lying on had been reduced to a pile of splintered, smoldering wood – tinder for the newly made fire already starting to chew at the newspaper clippings and tattered rags on the floor.

The night that had been so still and silent before suddenly filled with noise and movement. The snap and crackle of the flames starting to spread, dark and familiar shapes rushing back and forth just beyond the door, the gruff voices of Krimzon Guards shouting over their radios. The Krimzon Guard had finally found them, and Jak was only surprised it had taken them this long. For a second he wondered if this wasn't another one of his blood-filled dreams, but heat of the burgeoning flames was real. The sting from the dozens of cuts caused by the splintering wood was real. And when Jak glanced across the room and locked gazes with wide, blue eyes, the fear he saw there was very real. So was the line of blood that ran down his younger friend's cheek from a shallow cut right under his left eye. Such a small, insignificant thing. But that small cut could have been a dozen gaping bullet holes, if Daxter had been any slower, and that's all Jak seemed to be able to focus on. A second slower, and both of them would probably be dead. A very, very small part of him knew that he needed to stay calm – he couldn't afford to lose control when he didn't even know how many enemies he needed to deal with, or how heavily armed they were. But the larger part of him couldn't get the image of a limp, fiery-haired body lying on the beach out of his mind. He wasn't going through that again. He wasn't. These Guards weren't interested in taking Jak in alive and didn't care who happened to get in their way, and that had been a fatal mistake.

The Guards had paused in their shooting, not brave enough to enter the building and trying in vain to see through the smoke caused by the growing fire. The pale elf slipped through the door, hidden by the smoke and debris, and drove his claws through the chest of the first Krimzon Guard he met, armor and all.

Inside the house, Daxter was wondering why he couldn't go five minutes without something horrible happening. He was starting to think Jak was a jinx. That must be it. Things like this just didn't happen when Daxter was by himself! But throw Jak into the mix and before the day was over they would be fighting for their lives or needlessly putting their lives on the line. The young teen grumbled all of this to himself under his breath as he searched for his Scatter Gun. The fire wasn't bad yet by any means, but it was spreading a lot more quickly than Daxter would have liked and he was actually starting to wish he had cleaned up the place a bit. The shock of nearly being shot to death hadn't quite hit him yet, which he was glad for. He had a much bigger problem to deal with, and he didn't know how to even begin handling it.

Screams had joined the sounds of gunshots and pounding boots and Zoomer engines. Daxter didn't have to look outside to picture what was going on out there. After two years of living in Haven City, he knew about raids. It was something every citizen dreaded and feared – a squadron of Krimzon Guards marching onto your street and informing you that rebels had been found in a nearby house, or someone had been hoarding Dark Eco, or someone was suspected of distributing stolen supplies. Those rough, staticky voices condemning an entire block to death. It didn't happen often, but it happened often enough that seeing any large number of Krimzon Guards sent a shudder down your spine and had your stomach inching up toward your throat. Daxter hadn't thought it was true, at first; he had thought it was just another horrible rumor. It wasn't like people didn't say horrible things about the KG behind their backs all the time. But one day he had gone to 'borrow' a loaf of hard, burnt bread from the local baker, and the local baker hadn't been there. Or anyone else, for that matter. A whole street in the slums had disappeared overnight, and everyone else went about their daily business as if they had never been there at all. The old local baker was eventually replaced by an old lady from Main Town who hadn't been able to afford her house after her husband and son were drafted into the Guard, and life in Haven City moved on.

These screams didn't belong to citizens, though. This, thankfully, wasn't an actual raid, but it was easy to mistake it for one. The piers swarmed with the reds and occasional yellows of Krimzon Guards, armed and trigger happy, and the air practically buzzed with the hum of dozens of Hellcat Zoomers and the odd Cruiser. A veritable army lurked outside their door, but it was the Krimzon Guards themselves who were screaming.

Daxter had seen the look on Jak's face as he had disappeared through the door and the screams had begun. It wasn't the almost childlike expression of homicidal joy Jak sometimes got when he was about to kill something (or someone), which Daxter had actually started to get used to back when they had been fighting Lurkers. Nor was it the cold, calculating look Jak sometimes got when the enemy fought back a little more than he would have liked, the look of a predator who had tired of playing and was going in for the kill. This look couldn't be described as anything other than anger. Even when Jak had first escaped from prison, he hadn't looked quite so unhinged. There had still been a smile on his face as he ripped through those Krimzon Guards back in the prison, as disturbingly vicious as it may have been, but there was no smile tonight. Jak wasn't playing, but neither were the Krimzon Guards. This wasn't like the raid they had stumbled into as soon as they had slipped out of prison – a few floating crates of KG on a routine purging of some unfortunate neighborhood. The Guards here had one target, and he had just literally thrown himself at them.

"You'd think he'd learn ta think before he leaps headfirst into danger," the younger teen growled to himself, as if Jak had decided to take a stroll through the snake-infested jungle back home and hadn't just chucked himself into an army of heavily armed Krimzon Guards. "But nooooooo. It's all fun and games to you, isn't it, Jak?"

He wasn't mad, not really. Not at Jak, anyway. More mad at…fate or…karma, or whatever it was that seemed to keep poking and prodding at the two of them all the time. He wished…

He wished he were home, plain and simple. Home, to clean white sand beneath his sandaled feet and the smell of a blindingly blue ocean. Home, to bright colors and relatively friendly people and a world that made sense. But he wasn't home, and the longer he stayed in Haven City, the less likely it seemed like they would ever get to see Sandover again. He couldn't cower behind Jak at the first sign of danger like he could back home. Daxter wasn't a kid anymore and this wasn't Sandover Village, by any stretch.

Another yell snapped him out of his thoughts, and the world seemed to speed up around him. The fire roared behind him, done with the bed and hungry for the rest of the ramshackle house, and gun blasts flashed outside the door like the fireworks they sometimes set off after a race. Daxter hastened his search for the Scatter Gun, ducked through the door when he finally found it, and waded into a sea of red. Crimson everywhere. The glaring scarlet of uniforms, the vibrant vermillion of Hellcat Zoomers and Cruisers, the glow of gunshots reflecting off of the red metallic surfaces, and everywhere – everywhere – the dark sanguine of blood. It was a scene out of a nightmare, a scene not unlike some of the nightmares Daxter had had before. Except the dead Krimzon Guards lying on the pier and floating in the water below had been Lurkers lying mutilated in the spider caves, and the dream had always ended when he fainted at the sight of Jak running toward him, covered in blood. He forced himself to look away from the bodies and look for Jak. Where was Jak? There. A pale, silver speck floating in the sea of red, arcs of violent purple whipping about him like vicious tentacles of living lightning. But it wasn't enough. Jak wasn't invincible, despite what he liked to think, and there were too many Guards. Jak was on the defensive, covered in cuts and favoring his left leg.

Jak…was losing. Jak didn't seem to have realized it yet, by the way he darted between Guards, tearing through them like a Lurker shark through a school of fish, but these fish had teeth. It was almost like, in his bloodlust, he couldn't feel the pain, and that was dangerous.

Daxter knew Jak wasn't invincible. He had been there through broken bones and multiple near-death experiences, but this…this was different. This wasn't a boyhood stunt gone wrong, some story to laugh about the next day. These men were trying to kill Jak and if Daxter didn't think of something soon, they might very well succeed. He glanced around wildly, for help, for a sign, for something, but the piers only swarmed with an endless wave of Guards…like an ant hill that had been kicked. Every door and every window was shut tight, but Daxter highly doubted anyone could possibly sleep through all this madness. He would get no help from his neighbors, though that didn't surprise him. They hadn't helped the couple who had lived there before, who had lived there for years, so why should they help a stranger, especially now when they would just get themselves killed?

But…maybe one of his neighbors could help…

With all the chaos going on around Jak, no one noticed when Daxter dashed down the pier and threw himself over the side, landing on a rickety yellow Zoomer that had definitely seen better days. No one noticed when he hotwired it and got the ancient engine to putter to life – who would be able to hear him over all of the screaming and shooting and general mayhem? Daxter hazarded a glance back up to the pier and winced. The young teen had done a lot of stupid, dangerous things in his life on account of Jak, and this probably took the cake. He was tired, and irritable, and really just wanted to go back to sleep and pretend this whole mess had just been a horrible blood loss induced nightmare, but when did things ever go the way he wanted them to? Things were supposed to have gotten easier after he had busted Jak out of prison, but everything had just gone pear-shaped.

As he strapped his gun to his back and slid his goggles over his eyes, Daxter might have smiled if his heart hadn't been trying to pound its way up his throat. "Orange Lightning to the rescue…again." At least there wasn't any lava this time…just…a torrential storm of bullets, propelled through the air with a volatile mixture of Yellow and Red Eco, and enough Krimzon Guards to make Gol and Maia's army of Lurkers look like a petting zoo. With that comforting thought in mind, Daxter revved the old engine as much as he dared and took off down the pier. Dodging the red-armored elves was no more difficult than ducking around trees though, to be fair, Daxter was out of practice and may have 'accidentally' sideswiped a few, knocking them to the ground where they clung desperately to the wooden planks. The automated security system had been activated and was patrolling the water below, and it didn't recognize friend from foe. But soon enough the Guards noticed him and scrambled to duck out of his way. In front of him he could still hear screams of pain and terror, but behind him came shouts of confusion.

He pushed the Zoomer as fast as it would go, aiming for the silvery blur in front of him. Time seemed to slow as he grew closer and closer. Five feet away from Jak, he thought he could almost see the wide-eyed disbelief of the surrounding Guards' expression behind their ugly face masks as they hesitated and backed out of his way. He grinned at them all as he soared past and ducked around Jak at the last second, grabbing him around the waist and holding on for dear life. The Zoomer, coughed, sputtered, and spun, bowling over Guards and almost bringing up Daxter's breakfast, and claws dug into his arm where either Jak was trying to dismember him or prevent himself from falling – Daxter wasn't quite sure which and he didn't want to look down to find out. Guns fired again, filling the air with light and sound and deadly blasts of Eco, and Daxter wheeled the Zoomer around and took off again. The Guards on foot wouldn't be able to keep up, but now the whole city would be on high alert and he didn't have to look behind him to know that the Hellcat Zoomers were on already on his tail. Sleek and lightly built, they were faster than the average Zoomer and twice as maneuverable, and they came with a fancy gun attached. There was no way Daxter would be able to outfly them.

His Zoomer lurched again as Jak hauled himself up and threw a leg over the side, and the pressure on his arm lifted even if the pain didn't. Purple lightning crackled wildly around them, lashing at the sides of buildings if he drew too close and filling the air with hisses and snaps, but thankfully none of it was directed at Daxter. And when blood-covered arms slid around his waist, he knew at least that he wasn't in danger of being ripped in half, even if he was still in danger of being shot to death. The fiery-haired teen steered the Zoomer out of the water slums and into the dusty darkness of the slums proper. It was almost as if the fire in 'his' house had followed him as the Hellcats roared around the corner, their gunfire lighting up the night with violent reds and oranges and yellows. The night life was still alive here, and panicked citizens screamed and ran from the chase, ducking into whatever building was nearest. The young teen had no idea where he was going; he just knew he needed to get away, somehow. But where to go? Where to go?

The teen yelped as a gunshot hit the Zoomer in the tail, sending them careening toward a ramshackle apartment building before he managed to set them straight again. Another Hellcat, or maybe the same one that had fired, came up beside him and tried to ram into them, but Daxter changed hover zones at the last moment and the red Zoomer ran into the building beside them with a sickening crunch. As it wobbled drunkenly through the air, another Hellcat going too fast to stop slammed into it, and they both went down in a small explosion.

Daxter felt bad for the drivers and hoped, mostly, that they had miraculously survived, but he didn't have time to worry about them. He glanced wildly around him, looking for somewhere they could hide. Dead Town? No one usually ever went in there anymore, but there was no reason the Guards wouldn't just follow them beyond the Wall. The Underground Hideout? No way. If the KG didn't kill them first, Torn would for leading them right to his doorstep. And the thought of going to Krew for help actually forced a bubble of somewhat hysterical laughter out of him. The arms around his waist tightened, and Daxter tried to focus. He drove close to the ground, ducking around market stalls and parked Zoomers in hopes that the Hellcats would miscalculate and run into something and back off just a little, but he could hear them closing in.

"We need to jump," Jak yelled over his shoulder, voice rougher than usual.

"WHAT?!" So he didn't need to yell quite that loud, but he was a bit panicked at the moment and Daxter could have sworn Jak had told him to jump from a Zoomer going a thousand miles an hour. He must have heard wrong.

"Trust me." Right. Trust the homicidal maniac who had gotten them into this stupid mess in the first place. Well…to be fair, this particular mess wasn't exactly Jak's fault…It's not like he had asked the Baron to take an unhealthy interest in him and kidnap him and experiment on him for two years and give him even worse anger management problems than he'd already had and hunt him down like a wild animal. And Jak had never steered Daxter wrong before…well…no, Jak steered him wrong all the time, but they hadn't died yet, so that had to count for something.

"Where exactly do you expect us to jump? Into that cozy, little pile of rubble or maybe onto that nice, soft patch of broken concrete?" Daxter snapped over his shoulder, yelping again as another shot from a Hellcat came within inches of removing him of one of his ears.

Jak's silence went on forever, it seemed to Daxter. One clawed hand buried itself in his shirt while the other disappeared…somewhere – Daxter wasn't about to take his eyes off the road to see where exactly. It wasn't until they had zipped around a corner and left the Hellcats' line of sight that Jak moved, rolling off of the side of the Zoomer and dragging an unsuspecting Daxter with him. A hand clamped over Daxter's mouth as they fell, muffling his scream of terror as they plummeted to the ground below them. Above, the yellow Zoomer wobbled but kept flying straight until is flew right out of Daxter's sight. The night sky grew smaller as the earth rose up in his peripheral, seemingly swallowing them whole. And then they were crashing into the ground, rolling and tumbling, skidding against gravel and slamming into rock. An explosion went off somewhere above them, and Daxter could hear Krimzon Guards cursing and yelling, but they sounded distant and seemed to be moving farther and farther away. The night sky above him swam sickeningly slowly, until finally he couldn't stand it anymore and he closed his eyes and let everything go black.

Please, pretty please, be brutally honest about what you think! I need to know!

And to all of you wonderful readers, I hope you had a fantabulous holiday season and have a spectacular new year!