Disclaimer: Only thing I own is the character Snake and this story. Everything else belongs to ND. -sigh-

A/N: I guess I owe an apology for the longer than usual wait. So...SORRY!!! I won't dish out excuses, but I will warn you the total lack of GOODness in this chapter. I am VERY unhappy with the final result but hopefully things will be better next time around. I'd still like a review from my readers. Puh-puh-puhwease?? ¬.¬ Work with me, people..!

Well... I think this story is starting to fall when it comes to people reading it. I only have three reviews to respond to this time around but I DO love them to death '!! There ARE still times when I think about stopping this story, but each review renews my interest in it so THANK YOUUUUUUU!!!

SO! Thank You's go out to:

Midnyte Wolf: Ehh...sorry to make you wait so long. I've waited so long to update, I hope that by now things with the family has worked out for the better.

Demyrie: Ah...It's good to have you back! Thanks for the...filled review as well as the... 'encouragement'... oo S'also good to hear you still hold interest in meh story, whew!! But I pretty much said my mucho thank you through email so ya!

goggle head girl: Uhm, I didn't update very fast, and I didn't have much luck with this chapter. Sorry 'bout that " But I tried, I really did..


My vision was bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down as I bobbed on his shoulder. Jak always did have a certain stride to his walk. His chin always seemed to be held high, and his arms had a proud swing to them.

The scene before my eyes continued to bob as he entered the now familiar door and took the stairs down. Not like it's a big surprise or anything, but Snake was waiting for us when we reached the bottom, in her usual position; hands on her sides with a feminine hip overly pumped out to the side.

"What do you LIVE down here!?" I barked, gaining two glares from the other occupants in the room. I gave a modest shrug and Jak got right down to business.

"What do you need this time?"

Unaffected by the face Jak was giving her, she rummaged through her shirt, around the breast area, before pulling out a piece of paper and handing it to us. Snatching the paper from her hands, Jak held it up for both of us to see. It was a poorly sketched map of the graveyard just outside these walls, where one particular square (squares apparently symbolized headstones,) was circled in red. Once we had gotten a decent look at the paper, Jak tucked it away and Snake began her instructions.

"Find that grave, dig it up, and bring me the map inside."

Simple.

"Waitaminute, Snake Lady. Slither over here!" Jumping to the floor, I took a firm stance and pointed to the ground right in front of me. Novanya 'Snake' merely licked her lips and refused to budge from her position. Not a big surprise, if you think about it. I'm probably not the most intimidating thing around. So I pressed on. "Lemme get this straight. You want us to dig up some guy's GRAVE, and then STEAL from it?"

I made sure to use fun little hand gestures to emphasize specific words.

"You catch on fast."

I noticed that almost every time Snake finished saying something, she would nibble at her lower lip for a while. She was doing it right now and it was annoying the hell out of me for whatever reason.

I locked onto Jak's eyes, looking for some kind of emotion or SOMETHING in them. I know that somewhere deep in his heart, he felt the same way I did about this! He had to. It was sick and wrong and... Disturbing. Digging up someone else's grave, disturbing the whole idea of 'rest in PEACE' and then TAKING something from inside made my stomach twist in the most disturbing way and I gritted my teeth at it all. Then I locked onto Snake. She had SOMETHING up her sleeve, obviously. I mean, she had this all planned out to some extent, if she knew exactly which tomb she wanted us to disturb. Not to mention it was hard for us to find out anything since she would make our 'conversations' as short as she possibly could. Although, the lack of information on her motives might also have something to do with Jak never bothering to question her.

I wanted so badly to hear Jak decline her request and state how he would never do such a thing. Sometimes I forget how much he's changed over a couple of years.

I remember a time in Sandover when Jak was misty-eyed upon finding a dead bird on the ground. He insisted on burying the thing out of respect. Old Samos had to do it, though. I refused to touch anything dead, no matter how bad I felt about it, and Jak didn't want to be the one to cover it with dirt and prevent it from ever being in the sun again. 'Course now we're talking about someone out of our own species, dead for who knows how long and was already six feet under. And Jak was going to go through with doing the deed, and I was going with him.

"I trust you to get the job done," Snake smirked.

Nibble...

Nibble...

I could hear Jak's footsteps from behind me as he turned around and left the room, without so much as a regretful sigh. I had no choice but to follow after him, not daring to look back.

As soon as we reached the outside, a hard wind brushed against me and I sunk lower to the ground. Although the graveyard was chilling, I was gradually getting used to the sight. As usual, Jak never flinched. His eyes never even once flickered over to the side as he took those straight and steady strides. It was almost pitch black outside and I was on all fours following Jak close enough to be his shadow. Even with my animal eyes it was difficult to see so I was amazed at how well Jak was weaving between rocks and trees, and avoiding stray roots. My ears were lowered and my nerves were jumping all over the place as I darted my head back and forth in natural uneasiness. When Jak stopped, I rammed into his leg and fell on my rump, rubbing my head with a sour pout.

I saw Jak looking Heavenward, holding out a hand with his palm facing up. It figures it would start to rain now of all times. I sighed and climbed up Jak's clothing all the way to his shoulder guard. He slowly made his way through the headstones, his feet making a more distinct squishing sound with each new step he took as the dirt beneath him gradually turned into mud. Fishing the paper out, he studied it, walking as he did so.

Sure enough, we found the one Snake wanted and Jak tossed the paper aside and let it slowly sink into the mud. Jak turned his head to look at me as I hopped off of his shoulder and onto the gravestone in front of him, hands nervously fiddling in front of my chest.

"You know you don't have to do this if you really don't want to," I informed him. Inside I was praying he would decide not to, even though I knew that the chances were close to none.

"But there's something going on," his voice was almost in a whisper. I cocked my head to the side as he went on. "I don't know what exactly, but I intend to find out."

"So you're just gonna keep doing these stupid tasks until you find out? Just 'coz you're curious?" I almost suggested maybe SAYING something to that reptile woman but my mouth didn't seem to want to say it. So I bullied the thought away.

"I can't refuse or she'll stop trusting us," he spoke mostly to himself, almost ignoring my last remark. He gave himself a nod for confirmation. "Then we'll never know."

"Well...why do we NEED to know?"

He looked at me. He almost looked into me. He was serious about all this.

"I just have this feeling, Dax," his hand connected with his stomach, as if to show that the feeling he was referring to was coming from there. "I can't explain it."

For some reason - I don't think I'll ever know exactly - I let the issue go and returned to his shoulder as he kneeled down to the ground. I wasn't going to press further into anything because if Jak had some 'feeling' he wanted to deal with, I wasn't in any position to stop him. I trusted him enough to follow him to the end, even if I didn't entirely understand it. And that's what I intended to do, I told myself, even as Jak started to dig his fingers into the mud underneath us.

The rain started to pour harder and harder on our heads, and Jak seemed to dig faster and faster along with it. His back eventually hunched as his hole got deeper. Every once and a while, he would grunt in frustration as the soil he pushed aside would slowly flood back into the hole, and his efforts would become more violent.

He scooted to another side of the hole while on his dirtied knees, doing his best to widen it in all directions. My eyes were absorbing the whole episode... this chapter of our life... and once I had come to accept what we were doing, I landed myself next to Jak and started to dig with him. Sure I wasn't too much of a help to Jak, with my small size and even smaller amounts of dirt I pushed aside, but he smiled at my attempts.

Once the size of the hole allowed us to, we jumped into it and continued raking our fingers into the soil. Deeper and deeper...

With the rain increasing its speed and even size, drilling us from above, it filled the hole with a brown puddle, making it even harder - almost impossible - for us to make it any deeper. So with rain dripping madly down our faces, and soaking into our eyes, we both had eventually put on our trusty goggles, although it didn't help our vision very much.

Just as Jak's hand scratched across something solid, I found myself looking up at the moon. The sky was still so very dark even though the moon looked especially bright, almost loud in a way. I admired it. And then I almost felt bad for it as gray and black clouds swiftly covered it, making the area around us even darker than before. Isn't it funny? The moon is so beautiful, but it doesn't have a choice when it comes to being seen or not. The clouds come and go as they please, ignoring the moon and showing themselves instead. Like so many other crummy things in this world...

Heh, if Jak ever knew I was thinking like this, he'd think I was a wimp. Hell, I even think that.

"Daxter!"

From the sound of his voice, he had been shouting my name for a while. Either that or he was trying to be heard over the pounding rain.

"Help me dig this thing out!"

Looking down I saw a dark red oak coffin that was barley visible beneath the pool of water that had occupied our hole. And after that I noticed the ground beneath me was more solid than it was before. Without much hesitation, I snapped my attention away from the sky and to the ground as I helped Jak uncover the full length of the huge box.

Not bothering an attempt to take it out, Jak gave the firm lid a good kick before opening it as it lay.

Immediately I reeled back and fell into the muddied puddle with a outward gasp. I was freaked and I didn't even look. The smell, the atmosphere, the very fact that we opened it in the first place..!

"Don't look, Dax," I heard Jak whisper over the rain. Hey, he didn't need to tell ME twice! I kept my head turned and my eyes open. I was afraid to close them; I knew that if I did, I would see involuntary images of a dead humanoid in a coffin, his skin all dissolved and his bones showing in numerous places, possible maggots and other bugs munchin' away at his corpse, and the limp figure sprawled in what was supposed to mimic a bed, though he was never going to be getting up any time soon. I could hear Jak's disgusted sounds as he was rummaging his hand in the coffin, feeling the man's pockets and patting all of his clothing, no doubt sickened at the feel of the fragile and meatless corpse.

Not until I heard the lid closing did I turn my head. Jak just finished stuffing something into his pocket, and was now scrubbing his hands wildly against his clothing, his face distorted into nothing but pure sickness. My nose twitched at the stench of death and I felt like I was on the verge of vomiting. Sadly, I didn't, leaving the bothersome disturbance in my tummy to mock me even longer into the night.

I clung to Jak's clothing, like so many times before as he jumped, clinging to the mud wall as much as he could, scrambling to the top. I let go as so as we were out of the hole, and assisted Jak in recovering the pit we had dug, once more hiding the casket. Obviously, it didn't take as long to cover it than it did to uncover it, but it still ate up a lengthy amount of time. Without another word between us, Jak walked back to Novanya's place, slightly hunched.

I didn't realize how cold I was until we were inside and out of the rain, sitting at the top step of the long staircase that led to the room where (no doubt) Snake would be waiting for us.

Jak's ears were drooping and his skin was uber pale. Water soaked his clothing and his skin, dripping off of numerous places, and his once wavy hair was frizzed and curly (more so than usual) from the rain. For a moment, I was confused. After all the killing and blood and gore and danger and downright dirty deeds he's done, you think this'd be nothing more than a mere walk through the park for him. The polluted, nasty smelling, overcrowded park, but still, you get the general idea I'm getting at. Pretty simple for someone like Jak. Unless he WASN'T upset about it.

You know, like maybe he was thinking about... something else?

Raising my head, I saw he was looking straight at me. I mean, he was really looking at me.

Almost as if he was seeing me for the first time. Unless it was just me. And he gave me one of those looks. The one that I was getting sick of until he stopped giving them to me; sad, tired, and almost as if he was discovering something. I just sat there, letting him stare at me as I stared back, jaw oh-so-slightly hung open, wondering just what was going through his head.

His gaze was so deep, so intense, he was boring into my soul and making me weak in the kneecaps. In fact, I actually collapsed to my knees, and eventually to my rear. His irises scanned over the small body, the clotted fur, the lack of orange due to the heavy mud, dirt and grime, and the total soaked and fatigued animal that was me.

He still said nothing.

His eyes still said nothing. At least, nothing I could read, which was a little irritating on my part

But he definitely saw something.

What, I don't know.

Finally shaking his head, Jak stood up, scooping me into his arms in the process, and placed me on his shoulder as he walked down the stairs. His hair brushed against me on the way down.

I was glad this particular mission was over with, and a little confused. Jak's little 'act' had me pondering a lot of things. Honestly, I have no clue what to think. I mean, was Jak really looking at me? And if he was, was he really seeing anything, or was he just zoning out in my particular direction?

Jak's hand had grabbed the paper we had gotten just moments before. His slow pace down the steps and his fingers absently tapping at the rolled up piece of paper, and his eyes flickering down to peak at it for just a second, showed me he was curious. I can't be too sure but I think he was about to open it up and take a look at it, but he had already reached the room where you-know-who was standing.

"Very, VERY good."

Nibble...

Snake's voice broke me out of my own conflicted mind. I felt small. I felt like the world around me was quiet and small along with me. All because Jak's face when he was staring me down had me lost. My lips were still slightly parted as I looked down at the concrete floor. I could see Snake's black boots shining near the corner of my vision, but I never really looked at them.

The paper we retrieve was handed off to Snake, who was more than happy to have it in her hands. My head shook slowly and my eyes widened in attempted to wake myself up from my thoughts.

"I don't have anything for you now," she eyed the paper, waving her hand at us to leave, which we did without so much as a word.

Going up the steps, I tried to talk. I tried to be that 'comic relief' I mentioned before. The one that everyone saw me as.

"So what d'you supposed that thing was, anyway?" Jak didn't answer me. "She doesn't seem like too much of a people person, does she? Bet she never had any friends growing up," I smirked at my own childish comments, no matter how stupid I knew they were.

Jak wasn't answering me, but I knew he could hear me. He was softly grinning, as though he was... happy to hear my voice. At least, that's what I can only assume. I stopped yappin' when the door opened only to show it was still pouring outside. Jak gave me a warning glace and then bolted passed the graveyard, between the buildings, and out onto the streets.

I was almost relaxed, because all I could think about was getting home. And by home, I mean at the old den that Jak agreed we could stay at for a while, and maybe even reach the point of having that certain conversation about us that I've wanted to have for so long. But my relaxation soon turned to regret when Jak started running in the wrong direction. I just can't get a break, can I? I think someone up there hates me, 'cause that's the message I'm getting.

Soon, the fact hit me and I slumped into some limp heap on Jak's shoulder as something twisted suddenly appeared in my stomach. I had forgotten all about her.

He was headed straight for the race garage.