Chapter 28: Race Day

Finally. The Boonta Eve Classic has finally dawned over the planet of Tatooine, and the sell-out crowd was electric at the Grand Arena in Mos Espa. Fans of all different species gathered on this special holiday to watch their brave racers tackle the terrain of the deadly desert for three long laps around a ten-mile radius of the Galaxy's most treacherous pod racing track.

Fifty racers representing fifty different species from fifty different systems all over the galaxy converged on the starting grid. One of the competitors that was valiant and daring enough to tackle his greatest racing challenge yet, was Jak, who was starting at the rear of the field. Adorned in his blue racing gear, Jak paced through the grid with Daxter perched on his shoulder. They scanned their competition, sized up their pods, and stared at their opponents, who then scowled and sneered at them back.

The large crowd noticed him walk through the grid, and poured a massive rain of boos and jeers at them. However, with a face like stone, Jak failed to notice the animosity, and continued to walk towards the end of his pit, which was on the back end of the front straightaway. There, Keira (in her racing gear identical to Jak's, but in a purple color), Tym, Ratchet, and Clank waited for him as his four crewmembers. Tess, Ahsoka, and Master Windu looked on from the front seat of the grandstands. The two Jedi were cloaked, hooded, and unidentified by the crowd.

As Jak approached Keira in the pits, she asked him, "All set?"

"Yeah," Jak loudly whispered, "I'm ready to go."

"Good." Keira accepted, then handed Jak a small device, "Take this," she said as she placed it softly on his palm, "you'll need it."

"What is it?" Jak asked.

Keira explained, "It's an earpiece, so you can hear your spotter. Daxter will be on top of the spotter's stand looking out for you." Then, she pulled out a tablet and handed it to Daxter, who hopped onto the ground. She told the Ottsel, "Take this, it has a camera on Jak's pod so that you know what's around him." Surprisingly, the Ottsel nodded and scurried up towards the spotter's section, at the top of the grandstands.

"I don't think I'll be needing this." Jak rejected, and tried to hand it back.

"It's part of the regulation," Keira replied, "Every racer is required to have an earpiece that their spotter can talk through. How else are you gonna expect to survive?"

"The Force." Jak replied as he put the earpiece in. Keira rolled her eyes as the crowd suddenly cheered and looked on at the center balcony of the main grandstands, where Jabba and a few of his Hutt escorts slugged and slithered on the balcony and into the public. As an opening fanfare began to play, he waved at the crowd that roared even louder for his acknowledgement.

"I'll never understand how they even like this over sized banana slug." Daxter commented.

"Greetings fans and racers!" Jabba bellowed, "Today racers, your nerve and skill will be tested on this historic tradition in The Galaxy's most treacherous pod race. If by some chance one of you survives this deadly course, and wins this race, you will forever be indebted as a galactic hero. Your prize…" a few moments, he waited, and fans and racers alike perked up their ears, waiting to see what will be offered to the winner. He exclaimed, "A planet's supply worth of a new substance called 'Dark Eco!'"

"WHAT!?" Jak, Keira, Daxter, and everyone else exclaimed in shock as the large eco tanker pulled out onto the front straightaway. The fans cheered as they marveled at the sight of the prize. By far it was the biggest and most prestigious trophy in Boonta Eve history.

"Think, racers," Jabba continued, "A planet's supply worth of an illegal, yet powerful substance from an unknown world. Think, with all of that power, worth billions of credits, you could be able to start an Empire that can challenge our Empire! The reward is worth more than the risk of taking on this challenging course, and the stakes are higher than ever."

"If it's illegal," Keira pondered, "I wonder why he's putting it up as the prize for winning this damn thing?"

"Remember," Jabba concluded, "Only one of you will win, but the rest of you may die. I wish you luck today, but then luck won't help you. All racers to their pods!"

Jak turned to Keira, Tym, Ratchet, and Clank and told them, "Thank you guys, for all the hard work that we've done over the past few days. I know we have a fast pod today, but we've got a big hole we need to dig ourselves out of. We will win this race, and we will save this Galaxy, together."

"You'll do us proud, my boy!" Tym complimented, "We've all seen you do it before!"

"It has been an honor embarking on this journey with you, sir." Clank politely added on, "Regardless on what happens, we will find nothing but success."

"Just don't die out there, okay buddy?" Ratchet requested as he patted him on the shoulder, "We need you back."

"I'll be back, no matter what." Jak replied as he patted his shoulder back, then he turned to Keira, and looked into her emerald eyes for a few moments.

"Be careful out there, all right?" she softly pleaded as she approached him.

"Yeah, sure," Jak replied, "I will." They hugged, and then he kissed her on the lips for a split second.

Keira whispered, "I love you. Now go out there and win. You know what to do."

"And I love you, and I won't let you down, any of you." Jak replied as he broke off his embrace with her, and climbed inside his pod. He took out his red bandana, and tied around his neck so that the small, cherry-colored garment would conceal his mouth. He pulled his goggles over his eyes, and then fastened himself tightly with his safety harnesses. He placed his hands on the handlebars and zoned himself in the moment.

"Use the Force, Jak," the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn whispered to him, "Concentrate, trust your instincts, and let the race come to you. You will win if you use patience. May The Force be with you."

"Racers," Jabba shouted boldly, "START YOUR ENGINES!" With that command, all fifty pod racer engines roared to life. The racers thrusted their engines as they rumbled on the starting grid, itching to release their racing machines into the wasteland. Jak was the last racer to fire his engines as his pod stood still at the back of the grid.

'Patience,' Jak thought to himself, 'Patience.'

Jabba then took a large slug from a bowl beside him, and then bit off the head of the slug. He spat it out towards a gong, which ignited the first of green lights that hung overhead on the front stretch. Once that light turned on and the fans cheered, the race began. All fifty pods, ten rows deep, leaped from the starting grid and zoomed past the main grand stands, already swapping sheet metal with one another. As they came around the corner, the track thinned into a rugged canyon with plenty of large boulders and rocks to dodge.

Jak was hanging at the back of the field, creeping at the back of the pack with a considerable distance between him and the pod in front of him. As he was flying around the desert, Jak looked up the cliffs, and noticed that the Tusken Raiders were perched on top of the bluffs, opening fire at the other racers with their rifles. One of them aimed at Jak, and he instantly saw a vision of the Jedi that slaughtered the Sand People tribe that killed his mother. He saw the rage in his eyes as the Jedi stared them down with every strike of death. He then heard bullet shots from the side of his pod, causing him to come back to the race, and then veered side to side to avoid them.

"Uhh, Jak?" Daxter began to talk with a grimaced countenance as he looked at Jak's progress on the pad, "Just a reminder, you're in last place. Is everything all right?"

"What the hell is he doing?" Ratchet implored as he looked at Jak's same progress on the screen that Clank displayed, "He's only got three laps. He needs to go now if he has any chance of winning this damn thing."

"Patience, Ratchet." Keira calmed him.

Tym then approached her and barked, "You said he was a skilled and winning racer, and that he's won the hardest and deadliest races before! Surely this can't be his best!"

"It's not," Keira confirmed, "but he'll bring it back out. He's just got to wait for the right time."

Tym retorted, "You said that we can win this! You said The Force would be on our side!"

Keira calmed him, "We will, because The Force is with us." She turned to everyone in the pits, "Have patience, guys. I know exactly what he's doing."

Jak was successful at veering from the bullets of the Sand People while other back markers were not. As they successfully sniped down and killed the racers in front of him, Jak was able to dodge the fiery debris that blazed in his path. He followed the other remaining pods through a narrow trench when Daxter chimed in on the radio:

"Jak! A bunch of pods are crashing into that dark cave up ahead!" He panicked, "There's a fiery explosion right at the entrance, so find another way around!"

Instead, Jak accelerated towards it as he caught a sight of the inferno blazing before him. Keira shielded her eyes as she looked at the footage streaming on Clank's screen, while Ratchet and Tym shivered with fear.

"Oh boy," Daxter sighed, "This isn't gonna end well."

Just before the scorching flames that erupted from the mouth of the cave approached Jak's pod, he closed his eyes and turned into his light eco form, using the flash-freeze technique that stopped time. The scorching flames instantly stopped and turned into a cool, breezy gust of wind as Jak raced his pod through the searing cave. He approached the collapsing rocks and pillars and the other exploding pods floating in slow motion as he swiftly glided past them all. By the time the flash-freeze expired, he blasted out from the other end of the cave, bolting himself from 30th to inside the top 10.

"WOOHOO!" Jak exclaimed as his pod erupted from the carnage of the burning cave, unscathed. Daxter sighed in relief while Keira, Ratchet, Clank, Tym, and Ahsoka, cheered. Master Windu, however, remained seated with a stern countenance.

He yelled with stimulated elation, "I'm through it, guys!"

"Thank The Precursors you are!" Daxter yelled back on the radio, "You almost gave me a heart attack after that stunt! Can you please try to not do any of that crap again!?"

"Can't promise you that, Dax." Jak replied, "I'm here to win!" With that, he proceeded to pass every pod, one by one, though the flat section of the course, until he raced down the front stretch in second place, right behind the leader's pod. As the pods crossed the line to complete the first lap, the second green light lit up, and the fans cheered for the man coming from deep in the pack to race for the win with two laps remaining. The crowd roared for their underdog, their symbol of hope, their source of inspiration, cheering him on to win the most prestigious pod race in the Galaxy.

"He's gonna do it," Keira whispered to herself, and then turned to Clank, "Hey Clank, see if you can pull up the roster for today's entrants and look them up on the galactic database, would ya?"

"Yes ma'am!" Clank affirmed as he followed with her orders, while monitoring Jak's progress on the screen. The field came to the rocky terrain of the course for the second time. The leader could actually feel and hear Jak's engines creeping up behind him. As the leader was dodging rocks, Jak took a slingshot move to the outside of him. In response, the race leader turned his pod into Jak's forcing him off course.

Jak took a glance at his pod, and noticed that it was far more advanced, polished, and powerful than his. The pod had a chrome paint cover with a clear visor surrounding the driver, who was adorned in Mandalorian soldier gear. The sliver twin turbines on the pod were similar to Jak's, except they had two pairs of boosters on each turbine, while Jak only had one each.

The Mandalorian's pod disengaged with Jak's as he was forced onto an off-ramp. Jak had trouble slowing down, so he ended up flying in mid-air over the landscape of the track, knocking down all of the Tusken Raiders perched onto the cliff in the process. While the rest of the field dashed their own hopes by crashing into the fallen Tusken Raiders, Jak flew over the trench where the leader had already crossed. Keira, Daxter, Ratchet, Clank, and Tym were all shivering, groaning, and holding their breath with anxiety, fearing that he would nosedive into a fatal crash landing.

He landed, right in front of the leader, but regained control of his pod, and darted away with the lead as his pod screamed through the cave. It all happened so fast that no one realized he had the lead until he emerged from the dark cave ahead of the Mandalorian pod racer. Then the crowd roared as he sprinted ahead of him through the flat plains of the desert.

"GO JAK!" Keira screamed as she saw him on screen.

"You got this, buddy!" Daxter chimed in on the radio. Underneath the bandana and goggles Jak was grinning from ear to ear and his eyes were beaming as he steamed through the desert. He nearly tasted the euphoria of victory with one lap to go, until he felt bullet holes bouncing off his pod. He knew it was the Mandalorian warrior using automatic blasters installed on his pod. His moment of elation grew into a sudden stint of fear. He veered left, then right, then left again, then right again, until the Mandalorian launched rockets at his pod. One of them actually knocked the tether off of the post on the right side of the pod. Causing Jak to spiral rapidly as both of his turbine engines were bursting with accelerated speed, blue eco, and flames. He couldn't slow down, he couldn't relieve the damage done, and he tried everything.

Everyone back in the pits held their breath and the fans gasped out of fear, as they were beginning to watch their underdog spiral to his painful death. Just before he was about to crash into the wall, Jak used The Force to grab the tether and clip it back on to the post, causing the engines to cool down to their normal state, and thus, slow down. He shut the engines off and coasted the pod into his pit, where Keira, Ratchet, Clank, and Tym were waiting to service their valiant racer.

"Jak! You okay buddy!?" Daxter yelled on the radio.

"The good news is, the accelerator isn't locked," Jak diagnosed swiftly, "The bad news is the engines are still overheated and won't re-fire. I'm coming in!"

With that, Jak slid his pod to a halt, and the team went to work. While Tym worked on refueling the turbines with blue eco, Ratchet and Clank went to work on repairing the thrust cones and acceleration circuits that were damaged, as well as removing some of the protective body panels, to help reduce weight and cool the engines off faster.

While the crew worked feverishly to get Jak back out on track, Keira swiftly approached an agitated, but calm driver sitting in the cockpit.

"Jak?" She began to speak to him, "I hate to break it to you, but there's no way we're gonna win this now."

"How do you figure?" Jak replied,

"Well," she continued, "even though these are easy repairs, they're still gonna put you far enough behind where you can't catch the leader. Besides, he's one of the forty-nine other entrants in this race that are registered bounty hunters that work for the Empire. The race is rigged! Jabba played us by hiring all of these bounty hunters to compete against each other for the eco as the prize! He's got a shady deal going for The Empire, and is looking to make a huge profit off of them. This 'bet' is designed for you to lose!"

"So that's it?" Jak complained, "It's over?"

"I'm afraid so," Keira solemnly affirmed, "we're gonna have to withdraw from the race, and come up with a 'Plan B' to get the eco."

"Let's go Jak!" Ratchet commanded as the repairs were completed. He turned to Ratchet, then turned to Keira, then Ratchet again, then back to Keira. This made the Lombax so restless he cried, "What are you waiting for!?"

Then, Jak looked forward out into the racetrack and grumbled, "Screw Plan B." He turned back into his light eco form to freeze time, re-fired the engines, and then streaked off into the deep desert for the final lap of the race. He was using every last burst those turbine engines could take, knowing they could blow up and destroy the pod at any moment. Death suddenly became a real possibility for him in this race, but he failed to acknowledge or care about it. He ignored any warning sign that could possibly thwart him from gaining the ground he lost. He just wanted to win. At this moment, that was all he cared about.

By the time his light powers wore off, he entered through the thin trench back in second place, chomping away at the Mandalorian's lead once they both emerged from the trench, Jak was in striking distance of him. As they dove their pods into the dark cave, the Mandalorian dropped land mines all over Jak's path, detonating with massive explosions as he hovered over them. Flames engulfed his sight and rocks dropped on his machine, but none of that stopped him from trying to keep going.

As they both emerged from the cave, Jak pulled up right behind the leader, and was one overtake away from winning the race. He swung left, he swung right, but the Mandalorian racer closed the door on him every time he tried to pass him. Once Jak pulled up right beside him, but then the leader bumped into his side, forcing him to veer over towards a rock standing in the middle of the desert plain. Jak looped around it, and promptly tucked back in behind the leader.

"Please, Jak," Daxter implored with anxiety on the radio, "Don't do anything stupid to get yourself killed!"

"Dax," Jak boldly responded, "His ass is mine!" Then he attempted the slingshot to get around the leader, one last time, as they both saw the finish line rapidly approaching before them. Both of their engines were burning and fuming with exhaustion, smoking and steaming to get one last burst in, hoping that they had enough to cross the line. The Mandalorian vigorously shoved his pod up against Jak's one last time, and they were on a collision course towards the entrance wall of the front stretch. The Mandalorian thought this would do it and that he would win. But Jak had other plans…

"Eat wall!" Jak yelled as he pulled on his brake levers to stop the pod, which sent the Mandalorian's racing machine careening into the concrete wall, disintegrating every last part of the racer into balls of flames that sprouted from the massive explosion. Only the pod was intact, and he rolled violently on the front stretch before coming to rest on his lid, without any further damage.

"NO!" Jabba shouted with disappointment and fury as he watched his pre-race favorite crash into a ball of flames.

As Jak's pod streaked across the finish line, the crowd erupted with a thunderous applause and a rain of cheers. He skidded his pod to a stop as the engines expired, removed his bandana, lifted up his goggles, stood up on the seat of the pod, smiled, and waved at the crowd, screaming for him as the fanfare played once more. He turned around, to see his entire team running to him. Overjoyed that he was the only racer remaining that survived. Keira led them all as she ran to him, clapping her hands rapidly with joy. Then came Daxter, Ratchet, Clank, Tym, Tess, and Ahsoka. All came to celebrate the victorious upset with him. All, but Mace Windu.

Keira screamed with pure joy as Jak hoped down from the pod racer to embrace her and twirl her around. She laughed and yelled, "YOU DID IT!"

"No," Jak boldly replied as he looked into her eyes, "We did it. All of us!" He broke off the embrace and declared, "Everyone involved was a huge part of this win. I owe it all to you guys."

"And we owe it all to The Galaxy!" Ratchet added on, "We have a chance of saving it again!"

"Thank the Precursors we do!" Daxter yelled as he hopped on Jak's shoulder once more, "I tell ya what buddy, you about had me scared for you pretty much the entire time!"

Jak chuckled, "I always try to make it exciting, don't I?"

Tym congratulated him by shaking his hand vigorously and shouted, "We're proud of you, my boy! I thought we were goners for sure but I also knew in the back of my brain you had it in ya to win this darn thing!"

Keira then turned to everyone and declared, "You know what guys, I feel that The Force is truly at work for us. Not just today, but since The Empire came and took over our planet. We've been through a lot of hardships worse than we ever faced in our entire lives. We've been chased throughout the entire Galaxy with targets on our backs, and every day it's been getting harder for us. I mean, every system we go to we have more allies on our side. Before we were fugitives that were wanted dead, and now we're symbols of hope!" She finished by turning to her husband, "Jak, what you did today shows an example on how we can make a big impact on an entire Galaxy! I knew leaving home wasn't the worst thing in the world even though the circumstances were detrimental. They know your story. Now they see who you really are, and they believe in you. They believe in us. If you inspired yourself to come all this way to stand up for what is right, then we can inspire the entire Galaxy to do the same! We are doing something that is bigger than all of us, and I have a feeling that hope is around the corner!"

"I have a feeling you're right." Ahsoka concurred as the large dark eco tanker pulled up right behind the winning race team, all for them to claim it. They all turned around to gaze the immense structure with wonder, admiration, relief, and glory. Not only did they claim the winning prize of the biggest race of The Galaxy, they claimed the penultimate prize of everyone's hearts that day.

"Let's get the eco and get out of here." Jak instructed to the group.

"Don't worry!" Tym declared, "I worked on this big bird, I know how to operate it!" And he ran off towards the tanker, Jak turned around and noticed the Mandalorian warrior emerging from his wreckage, with a pistol in hand, aiming at him. For some reason, that was the least of his concern. He sensed that something was wrong with the tanker. He sensed that something was not right with the compartments inside of it. In fact, the more he sensed it, the more he worried, and worried, and worried. Until…

"TYM! NO!" Jak suddenly turned around and shouted. Once Tym tried to ignite the engines that powered the tanker, the whole shipping apparatus exploded and created a massive purple mushroom cloud that spread to a 500-mile radius. The whole planet quaked and shook with seismic waves as the explosion spread, poisoning the desert with radiation from an unknown purple substance. Tym's body was disintegrated from the explosion, as was the entire tanker that spread the width of the entire racetrack. The grand stadium of Mos Espa was no more.