Disclaimer: I own nothing and nobody. Except poor Tarry. And Elda. Not that she shows up in this chapter, but later on she will, of course. Everything else belongs to Naughty Dog, that I hope will keep churning out games for many years to come.
Author's note: Why yes, yes I know that it was an evil cliffhanger in the prologue. I take lessons in being evil from people like Erol, dear readers. Muhahahahaha…
Also, constructive criticism is always welcome. I try to take everything into consideration to improve my writing :)
Well, it's story time again. Don't say I didn't warn you about being evil.
Chapter 1, The tunnels
But what would Jak be doing dangling above a pit of lava, anyway? Not a very long story, actually.
It had started off easily enough. Unless you counted the popping blood vessels.
"Are you sure there are no metal heads here?"
"Yes, we're sure."
"I mean really, really, really sure?"
"Yes! Trust me!" Jak impatiently snapped.
"Yes, trust him!" Daxter said with a fake, helpful grin, "if there were any of 'em left they would have hopped out and tried to bite Jak's arm off already!"
The middle-aged scientist stared at the two for a moment. Then he suddenly reached into his jacket, ripped out a white bottle, opened it and shook out a heap of pills which he immediately swallowed in one gulp before shoving the bottle back into its original resting place. His quick, jerky movements caused him to remind the watching duo of some kind of chicken, and the long nose hardly helped to stop that image.
The squadron of Blue Guards remained silent, nervously holding their weapons as they took a stand to guard the three possible entrances to the cavern. One of the tunnels might have led up to Haven's slums, but it was a half-hour trek there and you could never trust metal heads not to have illogical shortcuts.
"R-right…" the scientist finally mumbled in a feeble voice, "let's get to work then…"
He took off his backpack and hunched down in front of it, starting to search inside for his equipment. Jak refrained from putting the morph gun away, listening closely to make sure that nothing would come dashing towards them through an eerily lit tunnel.
They had met surprisingly little defense this time as well, especially considering the heavy attack that had come through this tunnel merely four days ago.
It was the second time Jak and Daxter had been in the cavern; they had already gone on a patrol down there together with a smaller group of Blue Guards the other day. But after realizing how far the tunnels stretched, the group of explorers had turned back to report and have a bigger party organized.
And bring a geographer. This underground lair stretched way too far to be left unchecked.
Of course, a guy who only draw maps does not a scientist make. The jittery fellow in the white jacket busied himself with unpacking a small portable table, papers and pencils, as well as a set of small bottles, tweezers and plastic gloves. Jak had to look in another direction, swallowing a putrid taste of bile.
To take his mind off the turn it was taking, he looked up and sniffed the air, once again taking note of the reason that they had brought a guy who was also a geologist. There was a strange, spicy scent hanging in the air. It was so weak that it eluded his attempts to categorize it, but for some reason it made him think of Spargus. Or more precisely, the arena.
It did not quite hurt as much to think of those places anymore, even if the pain still remained. Of course, there was nobody who could completely fill the empty space Damas' had left, but Elda could step onto the void beside the first one. There was somebody whom with he could share his sorrow better than with anybody else, and who offered a connection he had been derived earlier.
And then there was Keira, and her hands gently relaxing his frowns. Their renewed relationship was still fresh, but he firmly believed in it this time.
It put a strain to being in the same room as Ashelin, of course. They had to deal with that, all of them. For the moment he tried not to think about it and instead focus on the possibility that angry, snarling, drooling monsters with feet-long claws could come crashing though the walls. Okay, so they were not exactly sure that there were no metal heads in the area. It was quite impossible to feel that way. But telling such a lie had apparently been the only way to get their jittery scientist working. Speaking which…
Daxter's voice brought Jak out of his status of being on steadfast guard.
"Say, Tarry my good mud boy," the ottsel said, "are you possibly related to Vin?"
The geologist, Tarry, snapped up from his suspicious sneaking towards the nearest wall. He lowered the hands holding a test tube and the aforementioned pair of tweezers as he narrowed his eyes at the ottsel. As he did so, the glasses on the very back of his nose enlarged his eyeballs in a way that rivaled even Samos' technique.
"Vin as the Precurian Theoretical Physics and Eco Grid expert?" he said.
Jak and Daxter exchanged rather blank glances.
"Err, yes," Jak finally said, "I think I heard him say something like that, once."
"Oh no," Tarry said, with a jerky, rooster-like shake of his head, "I knew him from the time at the university, though."
"Let me guess," Daxter said, "same classes?"
"Why, yes!"
Tarry smiled for a second, but suddenly went even more bug-eyed in fear.
"Why, have you checked my files?" he croaked, starting to take tiny step backwards, "that's-that's illegal you know!"
"No-o, just a clever guess," Daxter said, "really."
He added the last as the geologist kept backing away.
For a moment Tarry continued to look skeptical, but he soon jerked up and spun towards the wall. Probably he recalled the fact that the quicker he finished working, the quicker they could get on with the mission and return to the surface.
"Sheez!" Daxter muttered to Jak in a very loud whisper, "we better find that university so we can stay the hell away from it!"
"Hey now!" Tarry protested.
He spun around and waved the tweezers at Daxter.
"I'll have you know that it was a very good university, even if it was largely founded by the Baron!" he declared.
A silence heavy enough to give a man a headache fell. Several of the Blue Guards exchanged glances and began backing away, towards safer grounds. With an eeping sound, Tarry threw his back at the wall.
"Really," Jak said.
No emotion could be read from his face. However, he sounded collected enough and did not move. Daxter still gave him nervous glances.
"Even if! I said even if!" Tarry assured, trying to mold his body to the uneven cavern wall.
Apparently he expected to get a set of black claws in his stomach at any second.
"I heard you," Jak said.
He finally moved, turning away with a disgusted shake of his head.
"What's all the ruckus about?" a voice surrounded by the crackling of electricity and bad connections demanded.
The Blue Guards immediately stopped moving and saluted as Jak's communicator hovered away from his pocket and grew into proper size. From the small TV window, Torn suspiciously peered at the badly lit scene.
"Oh nothing!" Daxter hurriedly reported, "we're just, ah… discussing school memories with Tarry while he works."
"I'm sorry!" the geologist croaked.
Torn raised an eyebrow.
"Why are you shouting about that?" he said.
Silence.
"Ehhh…" Tarry finally started, nervously fidgeting with his equipment.
Jak's patience ran out.
"All of you!" he snapped, running his irritated glare over every last elf in the cavern, "I can control myself. I'm not going to go berserk just because somebody mentions Praxis!"
"Yessir!" the Blue Guards nervously said, automatically raising their hands to their helmets in another salute.
As Jak's irritated focus returned to him, Tarry jumped and quickly spun front to the wall. With slightly shaking hands the geologist began collecting loose pebbles and put them in the small glass tube.
Torn gave an exasperated sigh. It sounded awful through all the sparkles from the speakers.
"Whatever," he said, "what's your status?"
"Surprisingly little resistance," Jak said, "we've reached the cavern without any wounded, even though there were a few smaller attacks. Right now we're waiting for Tarry to do his work."
"Excellent. Just make sure he isn't killed as you proceed," Torn said.
There was a squeak, and Tarry just barely managed to keep from dropping his working tools.
"Sweet precursor huts," Daxter said, looking between the jittery geologist and the floating com link, "what did they do in that university of Praxis'?"
For a moment it looked like Torn would just ignore the needless question, but finally he shrugged.
"They educated a good deal of our specialists," he said, "until the Baron withdrew all their funds in favor of the war."
"Yeah sure, whatever," Daxter said, "as far as I can see they turned people into nervous jellyslugs."
"Hey!" Tarry weakly protested.
The left corner of Torn's lips tilted upwards. The smirk seemed only half-amused, however.
"Actually, I hear one of the head professors was Erol's father," he said.
Jak's eyebrows went up.
"Oh. Oh!" Daxter mumbled.
He stood up and crossed his arms.
"Sheez, Tarry, you just earned sympathy points!" the ottsel said, "I sure hope you did your homework!"
Torn winced. But it was too late.
A nerve started twitching on Tarry's face, while his already pale cheeks lost even more blood.
"Ye-yes, I d-did…" he croaked.
A static smack was heard as Torn slammed a hand into his own face, groaning. Under the perplexed stares of the other elves, Tarry melted down on the floor and curled up in a fetal position.
"I s-swear I di-did-did it, Sir!" he whispered in a quick, manic tone, "I-I-I-I just fo-forgot it in the do-do-dormito-tory, I'll go and- no Sir, please, not the corner, not the corner!"
"Daxter!" Torn snarled.
"Whaat?" the ottsel complained.
"I'm gonna charge you for breaking equipment!"
"You never said anything about the guy having nervous breakdowns!"
"Yes I did! I told you on the briefing not to mention homework around Tarry!"
The word "homework" evoked another senseless whimper from the geologist.
Jak tried to zone out the argument as he massaged his forehead with three fingers. He was getting a headache from trying to decide whether to sympathize with Tarry or just think him a loon like everyone else.
"I don't remember that!" Daxter went on.
"I though even you would have noted it!" Torn snapped back, "I told you five times!"
"Really? When?"
But before Torn could start chewing him out again, Daxter countered with a sidetrack in the argument.
"Anyway, do you know what you just did?" he shouted, waving his hands around, "you just doomed me and Jak to go up against a vengeful father further down the plot! That's gonna get sticky, I tell you!"
For a moment, everyone held up their anger and psychoses to give the fourth wall a chance to heal. This one was a tough bugger though, since it had been stretched a few times before in canon.
Finally, Torn drew a deep breath to calm himself.
"Erol's father died five years ago, I attended his funeral. Ashelin did too," he said.
"Yeah, right. Like that ever stopped anyone in that family," Daxter snorted.
"He was cremated."
"Oh. Okay then."
Daxter thought for a moment. The suspicion of what plot may come would not let up so easily.
"What about his mum, then?" he asked.
Torn rolled his eyes.
"Died when giving birth to Erol," he said.
"Whoa, poetic justice. Or does that automatically give him an Oedipus complex(1) or something? What do you think, Jak?"
Jak just growled something unintelligible.
"Sca-ary," Daxter concluded, then turned back to the communicator, "so, did he have siblings?"
Torn's palms slammed down on the table before him.
"No, and the rest of his relatives are all above their seventies!" he snarled, "if you're going to get stalked by some angry family members in this story, then it's not going to be Erol's!"
"Man, you're stingy today," Daxter said and crossed his thin arms.
The communicator hissed and sparked as Torn once again breathed in deeply.
"Somebody slap Tarry back to reality and get a move on before I go down there and give the rat a lobotomy," he snarled through tightly clenched teeth.
Sighing, Jak stepped over to drag the shivering heap that was the geologist back to his feet. This would apparently be a long day.
'-'
(1) Normally I wouldn't use a reference to the real world in a fanfic with no connection to it, but since we were already breaking the fourth wall we might as well do it a little more.
What? You thought I'd up and let you off the cliffhanger in the prologue just like that? Foolish little pretties, uweeheehee! I'll make you feel grateful about that first cliffhanger!
