Chapter 2, Echoes from the past

The familiar streets of Haven City swept by beneath him. The soldiers in blue were long since a common sight, as opposed to the red and yellow ones which hardly a year ago had been ruling the town. But now, nobody would be shot down for merely bumping into an armed man. No, a speck of red would be the source of alarm these days. However, Jak failed to spot anything in the hated color even though it was a considerable distance between the HQ and the harbor.

No, times had changed, even in the past few days. There were now a few brave civilians out on foot, and the snapshots of conversations which Jak caught along his way definitely sounded a lot more optimistic than those he had grown accustomed to hear. Instead of the grim conclusions of certain doom, people appeared to be discussing things such as dates, the possibility of rebuilding the town and even – how daring the thought – the future.

With the war factory and main metal head nest blown up, and Erol gone, there really was no war left to fight. In the last couple of days there had only been that random outbreak earlier this evening.

As he passed overhead of far more hopeful people than he had seen in weeks, Jak found himself struggling between the decision to hurry to the gun course, or slow down to listen. The voices, warmed with smiles and relief reached out to him. It had been ages…

A young woman spoke to two soldiers, holding a securely wrapped up bundle in her arms.

"… a boy," she said, eyes sparkling with joy, "we're going to name…"

Jak turned the handle and the zoomer shot forwards, past the small group before he could hear anything more.

There was another thing he did not want to be reminded of.

If he could just keep from thinking, everything was fine. Not only to stop the psychological agony, but also to stave the risk of his dark side breaking free. Even though the precursors had made it far easier for him to control himself with the light powers balancing the dark, the dark eco remained inside of him.

Jak gritted his teeth as his pitch black well of memories nearly spewed another wave at him. He needed something to do, right now.

The vast waters of the harbor spread out before him, to Jak looking like an obscure blessing. He sharply turned right and pointed the zoomer's nose a little downwards as his final goal came within sight.

He parked just outside the door with the skill of a self-trained driver and hopped off. The small vehicle would surely be gone when he came back out, but he could care less. It happened all the time. Apart from the use of your own feet, all methods of travel appeared to be collective property in Haven City. Democratic, really. At least if you were a thief. Jak did not care about that label either.

The door obediently opened as soon as the sensors picked up his movement, and he stepped inside. The sharp smell of burnt gunpowder filled his nostrils and he breathed in deeply. Finally.

He was so far off into his own resolve that not before he had pulled out his morph gun and set it to blaster mod did he notice that something was askew. In retrospect, he mentally kicked himself for it. Hard.

"Boom, baby! Badaboom!"

"Just a thousand more points to silver! We could make it!"

The only excuse for not noticing the two crazed ottsels on the control panel, Jak figured, must have been that until those comments they had remained silent with tense excitement. Which, in Daxter's case, did not seem like a possibility.

Jak was quite disgusted with himself for being so careless. Had there been enemies instead of junior precursors, he might have been dead. Then again, enemies tended to set his instincts flaring long before the attack came.

Yeah, that thought made him feel better.

Hanging his weapon on a shoulder he crossed the floor.

"What are you doing?" he said.

Daxter half turned away from the small screen he and Tess were watching.

"Evening there, Jak," the male ottsel grinned, "we're just watching… Jak!"

Suddenly with eyes open wide, Daxter flung his back against the screen and spread his stick thin arms over the glass while summoning the most plastic innocent smile since the dawn of elfkind. Tess immediately followed suit. Their scrawny bodies only partly managed to obscure the blurry image of a long-eared character moving through the gun course.

Jak raised an eyebrow.

"Why hi there, big buddy," Daxter began to babble, nonsurprisingly, "weren't you going in for some rest and relaxation? Bunk bed too soft after the rocks in Spargus?"

He turned to Tess with an overly pained expression.

"Let me tell you, babe, you've never known the meaning of 'uncomfortable' before you try to take a nap in that town. Makes my back hurt just to think of it!"

"Oh, my poor shnook-munchs!" Tess cooed, leaving the attempt to hide the screen in favor of giving her darling a big hug.

If "big" was a suitable word for her anymore could of course be discussed.

Jak was about to ask them to either take it somewhere else or at least answer his question, but the exit door of the course opened and this cut him off.

Daxter eeped, but it was too late. Jak's eyebrows twitched.

"Wow, you've done a great job on the improvement, Tess! The fire rate could be tweaked just a little, but I'm really impressed by what you have…"

The voice was strange for a woman's, high-pitched and hoarse at the same time. A pair of dainty hands spun a small handgun each around and up in a wide arc above a head crowned by teal hair, masterfully catching both of the weapons in the opposite hands.

"I'm sure that if we make a bigger model they will be- what?"

Dear, absentminded Keira finally took heed of the strained grins on the two ottsels' faces. She also noted that there was somebody else in the room, and turned her head.

"Jak! Oh, uhm…"

She quickly hid the guns behind her back and lowered her face, looking up at him through her eyelashes.

Jak watched all of this with growing confusion.

"What?" he finally managed to ask.

It seemed to be the only word able to sum up the entire situation.

"Nothing, nothing at all," Keira said, her voice suddenly devoid of the earlier energy.

She gave him a dreamy smile.

"I thought you were resting," she added.

To summarize, Jak had never been good with words. It was easier to just follow the gut feeling and shoot, punch or chew out anything that looked like a threat whenever he was unsure of what was going on. This however did not apply to the rules he was used to. Normally, being in an unfamiliar situation meant frustration and anger, not confusion.

Just a moment ago, it had been as if a dearly missed ghost from the past had appeared before him, and now this familiar phantom had reverted back into something he did not recognize.

It all boiled down to one possible pick of action.

"When did you become such a girl?" he said.

"What? I've always been a girl, you know," Keira replied.

There was a certain sharpness behind the smile, however. The dreamy, strange smile that she had evolved merely a short time ago. It was as if she had practiced it.

"Sorry," she said, perking up a little, "I just remembered that father asked me to come back early. I'll see you later…"

She started towards the door leading outside, but Jak stepped into her path. He frowned, and she met that look with a nervous smile.

"What is it?" she innocently asked.

Jak raised his free hand with the palm upwards, twitching his fingers in a silent demand. For a moment, Keira remained still. Eventually however, she sighed and surrendered one of the guns to her friend's waiting grip.

It hardly weighed anything, and in compare to his normal arsenal it looked more like a toy than a weapon. But… "just a thousand more points to silver"?

"What are you doing?" he asked, giving all three of them a dose of his stern look.

He did in no way like the strange behavior of his friends. It made him feel itchy. The fact that the trio all looked a little guilty did not make things any better.

Finally, Tess piped up.

"I have been working on these lightweight handguns for a while, on the side of making the big babies," she said and leapt off the control panel, waving her arms around for emphasis as she spoke, "backup stuff, you know? They pack a lot of power despite their size, thanks to the meta-technology derived from precursor-nano-stabilizators. It wasn't easy deciphering the microcoding from the pseudo-science charts, but once we finished that it was simple to finish off the design."

She looked up at him with big, expectant eyes.

"Aha, right. Whatever," Jak said and nodded.

Despite his – albeit vague – verification of Tess' skills, he had this nagging feeling that what she just said consisted of nothing but techno-babble. The suspicion of foul play grew larger when he turned to speak with Keira again, only to find an empty spot where she had been standing. A quick look around and he spotted her on her sneaking way towards the door.

"Wait, Keira!"

She immediately straightened up, stiff as a poker or a soldier hearing his lieutenant scream bloody murder after finding the charred remains of the ammo shed.

"Yes?" she said in a meek voice, without turning around.

Jak took a few steps forwards, but stopped. She seemed absolutely spooked, and though he could not understand why he was suspecting that it was his fault.

"Why are you acting so weird?" he asked, glancing between her and the small gun in his hand.

"I-I have no idea what you're talking about."

She still refused to turn around.

Okay, this really was a situation he could not sort out. Jak turned his head and gave Tess as much a pleading look as his macho appearance allowed. She in turn looked up at Daxter.

The male ottsel quickly realized that he was out of people to pass the look to, as Keira sternly watched the door before her. With a dramatic sigh, Daxter heaved his upper body and arms forwards.

"Oh give it up, Keira," he said, "you're busted."

"Busted?" Jak repeated, turning back to his other childhood friend.

The female elf's shoulders fell and she turned around, sighing softly.

"I was… working on a surprise," she said and smiled.

Despite the fact that the smile was less dreamy this time, that relief did not keep Jak from noting the hesitation following "I was". Keira's voice became more steady past that, as well.

"The truth is," she continued and held up the gun she still had in her custody, "I am the one behind these babies, not Tess. She's just been tweaking them a little for me."

There was still something that she did not tell him, Jak suspected. But the lack of something to prove it with kept him from arguing, and he decided to just accept what he was given. Keira, he could trust. He offered her the gun he had taken, and she nabbed it from his hand with a grateful smile.

"That's cool," he said and tilted his head, "since when are you making guns though? And testing them yourself?"

"I, ah…"

Keira looked away, using pocketing the two guns into a couple of leather sheaths hanging in her belt as a blatant excuse to not meet his eyes. Had Jak not noted the hint of pink on her cheeks, he would have started to work up a good deal of irritation by now. But with all the proof pointing at an embarrassed Keira, the confusion kept its grip of his mind.

Putting the weapons away could not take so long of course, and soon she was forced to straighten up again. Despite this, she kept averting her gaze.

The silence painfully stretched.

"I… I wanted to finish them earlier," she finally said, "but you already won, so…"

He must have done something wrong, because he felt a small stitch of guilt even if he had no idea why. It was starting to get on his nerves, and quickly.

"I stopped Erol, but there are still metal heads out there," he said, desperately trying to offer a penance, "besides…"

In the racking of his brain to find something good to say, he only managed to stumble onto one of the subjects he had tried to keep off his mind for a few days. Dammit. Well, might as well use it.

Voice growing softer and tiredly determined, he raised his hand to hold the wrist armor up for inspection.

"… I'm sure that I'll be needing new weapons sooner or later anyway."

"For new adventures, huh?" Keira said.

"Yeah."

The young woman reached out and poked the shell armor with her pointing finger, muttering something that sounded like "Interesting…" under her breath.

"This is said to be the armor that the great Mar wore," Jak said, letting her continue her antics, "and it fits me perfectly."

Keira's movements stopped dead.

"Oh," she said.

They watched each other for a moment, both trying to figure out all the possibilities this fact opened up.

"We don't know if you are the Mar, though," Keira eventually pointed out, trying to smile a little again.

Jak was about to agree, noting that Ashelin had told him the same just before they got the call for help from Haven. But another recent memory about Ashelin sparked up, and he decided to remain silent about what she had said. It was enough that the mere thought of her made him feel awkward before Keira.

Instead, he spoke without thinking and heard his own voice all too late.

"I might have been named Mar after the great one, but father never knew-"

He cut himself off with a hiss, but it was too late.

"And he never knew… how delightful."

Damas' dead body father is dead and I never knew he never knew Veger smirking tear him apart drink his blood kill him killhimkillhimkillhimki

"Aaaaggh! VEGER!"

Snarling and clutching his mouth, Jak spun away from Keira. The morph gun hit the floor with a violent clanking sound, but he could not care. His skin violently tingled and he knew fully well that a hand would not keep the fangs from sprouting.

No no no no… not here, not in front of her!

He could vaguely hear voices screaming his name, his second name, but the rage was pounding at him, the dark eco in his veins boiling hot it hurt it hurt…

"Bad Jak! No doing the super moves in front of the ladies! No biscuit!"

"Jak!"

Gentle warmth exploded from his chest and streamed through him, forcing the darkness back down under control. With a gasp he lurched forwards, one hand hitting the rough floor while the other remained by his lips.

No… the dark eco did not have the dominance it had savored not long ago. He could control it now. But the wound was still wide open, he had not dealt with the pain yet.

It took his brain several moments to cool down enough to start processing the information his senses provided. Another couple of seconds were also needed before it took heed of the unfamiliar sensation of somebody touching his arms.

He opened his eyes, dully curious about this new approach. Nobody ever touched him, it was all grabbing, tearing and punching. More often than not with claws.

No, that was wrong… Ashelin did touch him. Placed her hand on his armor, and he let her move closer. Lightheaded from the battle won, intoxicated by the feeling of triumph.

She was the first one he saw after winning. It should have been Keira. It had always been Keira, but she had changed. She would no longer have gone that close to the battle.

What happened?

A pair of seemingly dainty hands curled their way in between the pieces of his armor. The warm fingers against his skin had been tempered by oil and machine work, and lacked that ladylike softness that her new personality demanded. No… Keira was not a dreamy little girl. He had seen it just a few minutes ago, she was still the energetic woman on her way towards "nutty inventor" status. The woman whose mere silhouette behind a curtain had made his face twitch until Daxter's paw to his forehead had awakened him from the paralyzed staring. Maybe he had known that it was her, but never dared to believe it until she stepped out upon hearing Daxter's familiar voice. The old attraction had definitely been there, warped and strengthened by his two years of lonely agony.

But then that…

"And Jak! You look… different."

A change of tone might be felt much harder than a scream.

He was either changed, a freak, "not the one I used to know" – even those who were hardened by countless battles against the metal heads, such as Torn and Ashelin, drew back when they saw him turn into a monster.

"Ah… then he is dangerous. And that could be useful."

A tone that was only pleased, that hinted at that the "could be" was only a possibility easily replaced with "is". Somebody that did not more than raise an eyebrow, with curiosity and fascination instead of fear and disgust.

But what would Damas have said if he knew that it was his own flesh and blood which grew horns and claws?

'I'm a…'

No no… don't think, don't remember, stay focused…

Keira's repeated calling of his name and her shaking his arms brought him back to reality. Muttering something that he did not even hear himself, he shook himself free and ripped the morph gun from the floor as he passed it.

"Tess, set the course for the highest danger level," he growled, eyes set on the door between the set up battle and him.

Had the door been a little more sentient it would have been running for the hills by now.

"Oh, uh… right away!" Tess said.

She dashed across the floor and managed to make it up on the control panel before Jak reached the end of the room. Fearing that he might blow the door open she quickly set the program due to his wishes.

"Thanks," he snarled and stepped through as soon as an entrance was offered.

The door slid shut behind him and immediately the sound of gunshots rung though it, only partly muffled by the thick walls.

Keira listened for several seconds before she finally stood up.

"Does that happen often?" she asked Daxter.

The ottsel tilted his head, watching the door with his arms folded.

"Not as often as it used to, now that he's got the flashy stuff implanted and all that jazz," he said, "it was no cakewalk before that though. Never knew when to duck away from those horns. They almost nicked my tail a couple of times!"

For a moment Keira felt inclined to ask what Daxter had been doing with his tail in Jak's hair, but she controlled herself. Probably one of those man-to-man things, anyway.

Daxter made a thoughtful sound and began to vigorously scratch his hair.

"Was ages since I saw him about to go super-crazed without anything nasty with lasers or fangs around, though. Guess he's still mad about Damas, considering what he said before the snarling."

Watching the door, a frown appeared on Keira's forehead.

"Yeah, that really must hurt," she murmured.

She looked back down at Daxter.

"Does he ever talk about things when he's feeling down?"

The ottsel's brow – such as it was – twitched, and he gave her a bewildered look.

"Feeling down? Keira, sugar, you can't talk about 'feeling down' when it comes to Jak. Look at him go!"

He waved an entire arm towards the gun course, from which the explosions kept coming in uneven waves.

"He blows stuff up, and does a good job too," Tess called from the other end of the room.

"Yep!" Daxter said with a proud grin, "he ain't feeling down, he's just-"

"Got issues," Keira said, her fingertips drumming against her forehead.

"Now that's a cruel way to put it!" Daxter protested.

"No!"

Keira scowled at the closed doors.

"If he keeps bottling everything up, it's no wonder he loses control," she snarled, "even you should understand that."

Daxter loudly cleared his throat and strutted around for a few seconds before finally getting around to answer.

"Well, y'know," he said, "Jak deals with stuff. Like now. He ain't sitting around, moping like there's no tomorrow. And if there weren't he'd go out and beat up the reason until it was okay again."

"I suppose we should be grateful that he fights instead of drink…"

"What's your problem here, Keira?" Daxter said, "you're designing weapons to help him, for the precursors' – which me and my Tessy-poo are! – sake."

Keira looked down at the sheaths holding her guns, and sighed.

"Yeah, yeah," she said and returned to staring at the door, "but what happens when he runs out of bullets?"

"He finds some more, of course!"

Daxter scowled up at Keira, a worried look on his face.

"Are you feeling okay? That ain't the hardest thing to figure out, you know," he added.

"That's not what I… oh never mind."

Sighing, Keira turned around and began walking towards the exit.

"I'll see you later," she said, waving over her shoulder.

"Sure thing. Do get some sleep to get your head straight, okay? I'll be worried otherwise!"

No reply. Keira left.

Daxter turned around to see Tess watching him, shaking her head with an exasperated sigh.

"Whaat?" he said.

Outside, Keira glared up at the dark sky above the harbor's black water. Metallic walls rose up from the waves and all around her, even the ground beneath her feet was hammered out by elf hands.

She was a mechanic, and metal was one of her natural elements because of that. But this place, it lacked love. Industry had put it together, not caring hands.

"I hate this place. Hate it."