Chapter 28:
When I woke up next, I saw that I was actually in a small pool of water and that my allies were also next to me and were busy drinking from it, including Daxter. I decided to take a swig myself as well.
"Ah... I love water. It's so good... desert bad!" Daxter said as a gruff voice then started to speak from behind us.
"Well, you've come back from the dead finally. And my monks were ready to pray for you," the gruff voice said as I saw who it belonged to. It was a guy who has some very fine hairs growing on the sides of his head, he was dressed in warrior attire, and he looked pretty tough with his large staff and spikes on his shoulder armor.
"Yeah, can you tell us who you are and where we are, now that Jak's awake?" Sasha asked with annoyance, me smiling at that.
"I am Damas, the king of Spargus City," Damas said, Sasha gasping at that.
"Damas?!" Sasha asked before she then did the oddest thing. She knelt before him and then looked at us and it looked like she expected us to do the same. "Forgive me, sire... I didn't know what kind of hell I was in for when I married that asshole, Baron Praxis... I regret that day that I was forced to banish you..." Sasha said, me only then connecting two and two together to realize something shocking. This Damas... he was the original ruler of Haven City!... But that could only mean one more thing... he was... my father! I immediately knelt after Sasha said that, knowing that he probably wouldn't believe a word of what I had to say if I just outright told him I was his son.
"How very odd... you say you were a part of that team that banished me and my wife, bless her heart, to the Wastelands all that time ago? And that you married Praxis?" Damas asked, Sasha nodding at that.
"At the time, I was on the KG team... and I divorced Praxis almost two years ago after he showed me what he was doing to my friend Jak, here... Jak? Care to show what that is?" Sasha asked, me nodding as I then went dark form for just long enough so that Damas got the gist before I then turned back to normal. I'd gotten much better control of my feral side since Sasha and I gave more Precursor Orbs to the Oracle after the ordeal with Metal Kor had ended, after all.
"I do not fully understand... could you elaborate on this, Errol?" Damas asked, me hearing hostility when he said Errol's name. I guess he knew Errol as well.
"Hmph. He and Sasha were put into a program that injected Dark Eco into their bloodstream for a long period of time. I still have no idea how Jak survived for 2 years and Sasha 1 year, however..." Errol frowned.
"It's because we had Light Eco in our bodies that was able to counter the Dark Eco. Jak used his long ago when fighting a very powerful baddie while I got an injection of Light Eco when I was 8 years old... it was mainly because I had a horrible sickness that almost killed me," Sasha said.
"I see... either way, now that you are awake, it is time to prove how useful and deadly you lot can be. Here in the unforgiving Wastelands we value strength and survival above all us. Either prove your worth or you'll be considered dead weight," Damas said, Kiki frowning at him afterwards.
"You still have yet to apologize for poking me with that sharp object you call a gun," Kiki frowned, Damas frowning at that.
"Sorry, miss. Though I must say, it is very odd to have a Metal Head in Spargus, one that is able to think and act exactly like a human," Damas smiled.
"That's because I found her as an infant and she then merged her traits with me and Sasha, since both of us have Dark Eco in our bloodstream and there were no Metal Heads around at the time. She's actually a Metal Head Scout, but she's evolved to look more humanoid while also having the wings and acrobatics of a Scout with some powerful bombs on top of that," I explained.
"I feel that's all the introductions out of the way then. I will meet you all in the combat arena. In there, you will fight for your right to stay in Spargus. Only the bravest and the toughest are able to crawl out alive," Damas said.
"And what happens to the ones that don't crawl out?" Daxter asked.
"Then it will be as if we never found you," Damas said, Daxter gulping at that.
"I was afraid you'd say that," Dax frowned as we then proceeded to the arena alongside Damas and we actually learned that we had to take turns in the arena, though luckily me and Daxter were considered one entity either way. And when we got there, we saw that there was a certain other person near a throne that Damas sat in. One that I knew from way back in Sandover Village!
"What the hell?! Is that the Muse? What's she doing here?" I asked, the Muse looking at me with a smile and then did something shocking.
"Huh? I know I've seen your faces before, but I can't quite place it... ooh, what does it matter anyways? Being alive since the dawn of time can leave the brain a bit scattered at times," the Muse actually spoke! It was so surprising, since the Muse didn't talk at all back in the past!
"Don't you remember? We saved you from that Misty Island place a long while ago! Jak and Daxter, remember?" Dax asked, the Muse then looking at Dax with a glare.
"Oh, I remember now! You stuffed me inside that horribly tight backpack!... But wasn't that a very, very long time ago, though? How are you two still alive?... Unless you are also eternally young?" the Muse asked, me shaking my head no at that.
"Sorry, but no. We used some strange rift ring and we were sent 2 thousand years into the future after going through it... but we'd rather not get into it, because it's a whole lot of confusion as to how we got here in the first place," I admitted, the Muse smiling at me.
"Got it. Anyways, now that that's out of the way... Prepare the arena for full combat! It's time for you two to prove you can fight with the best of them! Prepare the Marauders and Matter Formers!" the Muse exclaimed, Damas smirking at that and me being confused as Dax and I then got lowered down to the arena and we saw that we had to take out at least 30 different combatants, all of them being released from odd containers that jutted out of the molten lava. I quickly started the match by using my Blaster to attack the warriors directly through their chests while Daxter fired a couple blasts from his Lazerus, as he decided to call it, him managing to slice off the heads of a couple different combatants in the process.
We managed to defeat 20 of them before I then got surrounded by the last ten and decided to go Dark Mode to use what I called the Dark Bomb, which completely annihilated all of the remaining warriors in the vicinity as I then went to the podium and turned back to normal... only to feel a massive headache after I saw some odd white-faced person staring me down from the exit platform, me groaning at that as Damas then smiled.
"Your victory has earned you your first battle amulet. If you are successful in two more arena fights, you will earn citizenship to Spargus. And for your victory, a gun mod is your prize," Damas smiled as he showed off the gun mod in question and I smiled at it. It was an upgrade to the Scatter Gun which turned it into a new type of Red Eco weapon altogether! I then decided to use it as a test run and smiled at how it actually fired underneath me for a bit of a jump as well as leave a ring of red eco in its wake!
"This is cool!" I smiled as I then looked over to the exit again... only to see that the one that was previously standing there had left already. "Who was that?" I asked myself with just air as I then proceeded over to the exit, wondering how the others would do in their trials.