Haven

Chapter 3

Jak and Keira moved carefully out of the slums with Jak in point, silently side-stepping the wreckage as his eyes constantly scanned the situation around them.

Keira moved less stealthily, partly because of her wrapped ankle and partly because she wasn't watching where she was stepping. Once, she tripped over a twisted piece of metal and earned a warning glare from Jak. She just glared back and tried to keep up with him. She was learning to not deliberately look at the ground, as that was where most of the bodies lay. The stench of burning flesh filled the air, making Keira swoon more than once, but soon that too became only a dull ache in the pit of her stomach.

They found fewer signs of death and wreckage as they moved, pressing in on the city. It made sense that the signs of the attack would have been less severe as they left the initial ground zero, when the walls had fallen. They kept up the pace until they reached the power block, which Keira recognized as the place with the metal-sided buildings and the roadways running above them.

Upon entering the area, the smoke became thicker and they could hear flames blazing strongly ahead of them. They rounded a corner and found a massive wreck burning in the middle of the parkway, and there seemed to be no way around it. Jak motioned for her to pull back from the heavy black smoke. Keira crouched down on the ground, trying to breathe some cleaner air while Jak surveyed the area from a distance and made his decision.

"Are you kidding!" Keira nearly squeaked when Jak proposed they go through the sewers. "You want me to go in there? With the rats, and, and the..."

Jak rolled his eyes as he walked down the nearby ramp and started removing debris that blocked the entrance to the sewers. "It'll be way easier to go under the wreck than around it," he said gruffly as he heaved a heavy piece of metal away from the door. He had no way of knowing whether or not the Metal Heads had used this way to penetrate the city– after all, he had encountered them down there before. But it was better than back tracking and risking another pass so close to the exposed walls.

"I've been down here– before... and, urrgh!" he panted as he strained to manually open the lock. All the doors within the city were in lock-down after the power-outage, and now Jak was trying to shove the bolts backward. They weren't budging. Keira watched him with some amusement for several moments before stepping around him.

"Need some help?" she grinned. Jak just narrowed his eyes.

"No. Just keep a look out for..."

Keira slipped one slim hand behind the bolt that Jak was pushing against. She screwed her face upward in concentration as she fiddled with the latch.

Click.

Keira beamed as all the deadbolts simultaneously released. She dusted her hands off and crossed them over her chest, waiting for her props. Jak stared at the unlocked door with his mouth hanging slightly ajar for a second or two, but quickly snapped out of it when he saw the look of triumph on her face.

"All right, I get it..." he said grudgingly, but not without a small smile. "I guess your freakishly tiny hands came in handy after all."

"These aren't 'freakishly tiny' hands! These are skilled mechanic's hands," she said smugly as she flexed her fingers.

Oh man, Dax would have a field day with that one, Jak grinned as he thought what his friend would say about Keira's "skilled mechanic's hands." All at once, the smile fell from his face as he remembered that Daxter was still missing, and that he had no way of knowing if he would ever hear him crack another bad joke again. Keira noticed the sudden solemnity that passed over Jak's face, and she could only wonder what he was thinking about as he stepped toward the door with such grim determination in his eyes.

"Come on, Ms. Mechanic," he said as he pushed his shoulder into the crack between the double doors. "Help me push."

Together, they managed to push away the left side of the door to reveal the elevator shaft. The elevator was stopped at the bottom. Jak wasted no time in jumping down to land on the platform several feet below, but Keira with her sprained ankle had to hobble toward the near-by ladder.

Meanwhile, Jak approached yet another sealed entrance. This one was the official "You Are Now Exiting The City, Be Careful Not To Die" door with the whirring cogs. Not wanting to look as foolish as he had when he tried to force the last door, he waited impatiently for Keira to carefully pick her way down the ladder to examine it with him.

"You could have jumped, you know," he said when she finally joined him in front of the door. "I would have caught you." Keira glared at him reproachfully.

"Did you forget? My ankle is sprained."

"So? I wouldn't have caught you by your feet."

"No one in their right mind would take a jump like that, Jak," she said airily as she stepped forward to study the door. Before Jak could open his mouth with a retort, Keira pointed to the top-most cog in the door mechanism.

"Jak? Can you give me a lift? I can't reach that one..."

Jak kneeled down in front of the door and cupped his hands for Keira to step into. She placed her un-injured foot on his hands and he stood up, lifting her effortlessly– a little too effortlessly, as Keira lost her balance from the sudden motion and fell backward.

"W, whaaa!" she cried, almost kicking Jak in the face if he had not just stepped backward to catch her. She glared at him as he held her, legs draped over one arm and her back supported by the other. He flashed her a boyish grin, one she remembered from their days back in Sandover.

"Whoops," he bit back a laugh. "I meant to do that..."

Keira managed to wriggle out of his grasp, almost wriggling out of her borrowed sweatshirt that Jak had forced her to wear. She fought with the excess fabric of the gigantic shirt and pulled the hem back down to her knees. Jak had to bite his lips very hard to keep from laughing at her as she preened herself.

"Finished?" he asked, eyes laughing.

"Only if you think you can give me a boost without throwing me over your shoulder again!" she exclaimed huffily. "Honestly, I don't know what sort of acrobatics you and Daxter get up to, but I'm not as flexible as an ottsel..."

"Okay, I promise I won't try to throw the smack down on you again. Now let's just try to get this door open already." He kneeled in front of the door again, and Keira regarded him warily. After a moment realizing that she hadn't moved, Jak looked over his shoulder at her.

"Come on! What are you waiting for?"

"Well, turn around a little so that I can step into your hands again!" Keira said, frustrated with having to explain the obvious. Jak just shook his head and turned back around.

"Just climb up onto my shoulders. It'll be more stable if I can hold your legs so you can't wobble around again."

Keira blushed at the idea of straddling the back of Jak's neck, but when he made it clear that he wasn't going to move, she took a deep breath and climbed up onto his shoulders. He rose slowly this time and she came eye-level with the offending cog.

"Can you break it?" he called out from beneath her.

Keira squinted at it. The doors were built to be brute-proof, but delicate screws held the complex parts together. She picked one and twisted it carefully…

The cog abruptly fell from the door, narrowly missing Jak's foot as it hit the ground. He flinched and took a step back to regain his balance. Keira nearly screamed as her center of gravity swayed, and she clutched Jak's head as an anchor.

"Ouch! Keira! Get your nails out of my scalp!"

"You said you weren't going to move this time!" she yelled, thumping him on the head.

"Ow!"

Keira put her hands on his shoulders and jumped gracefully backward, pushing Jak headlong into the door. He collided into it, sending the second, larger cog reeling now that its lock on the first cog was broken. The doors slid open easily.

"See, was that so hard?" Keira asked as she daintily stepped past Jak, who was picking himself off the ground and rubbing his forehead. The two entered the long hallway of the sewer entrance, and Keira heard Jak draw and cock his gun behind her.

"Okay, so the sewers pretty much run in a circle..." he said as he walked up to stand beside her. "I think we should take the elevator down and look for a grill or something that can be blasted away, and then we might be able to follow a tunnel to the other side of the city..." Keira turned to stare at him disbelievingly. He blinked back at her.

"What?" he asked, genuinely confused by the look on her face. "I think it's a pretty good plan…"

"A grill, or something..." she said, eyes narrowing as she crossed her arms over her chest in her patented "indignant princess" stance that she had once ruled over Jak and Daxter when they were kids. Jak cringed slightly.

"That we might be able to follow... Jak!" she resisted the urge to smack him upside the head. "Don't you realize how shaky that sounds? If we find a way out, we could end up anywhere! You really expect me to just go along with this?"

"Hmm... well," Jak began, as if he were considering her argument. He brought his gun up to eye level and began to walk forward while Keira stood huffily in place behind him. "I mean, if you don't like it, you can always hang out here..." he trailed off mildly. He shifted the Morph Gun into "Blaster Mode."

"But I'm warning you," he turned around quickly and aimed the laser sight directly over Keira's shoulder. Keira jumped and looked behind her, certain that Jak was aiming at a Metal Head that was creeping up on them.

"I'm not just fooling around, Keira," he said softly, lowering his gun. Keira glanced around the narrow cavern like a nervous rabbit, looking for what Jak had been aiming at and finding nothing. Realizing that she had been tricked, she whirled around to face Jak again, expecting another grin on his face. He stared at her somberly.

"Just stay close to me, Keir," he said seriously. "I won't let them hurt you."

Keira's heart was beating faster than the time she and Jak had sneaked out of the village on the zoomer and wrecked it on Sentinel Beach. Jak turned and started walking down the tunnel, and Keira swallowed hard before racing after him. She clung to his left arm, and Jak suddenly felt guilty for scaring her like that. But she had to take this seriously. They were in enemy territory now.

A/N: Oh yeah, and Keira's characterization seems to have a mind of its own. I myself am surprised by this suddenly clumsy, indignant princess (she kind of had that anyway– "Jak! Get me 20 more powercells!"). She'll get better, though. I just don't want her to be a she-male like Ashelin.

-P

Disclaimer: I do not own nor did I create Jak II, its characters, plots, locations, etc. It all belongs to Naughty Dog and Sony Computer Entertainment America.