I don't own the song below, it belongs to Kutless they rock my face off and that was what I was listening to when I wrote this and was to lazy to write my own song. Fun stuff.

Chapter 2: Caliber

"Times are changing, rearranging
All the raging over little things
Has got me all confused
And I don't know why
But it seems I caught the big lie
And I'm letting go and reaching for truth
So I can't stop now till I find out what it's all about
And somehow grab a hold
So no one can take it away

I'll be holding on
I see right where I belong
I know everything that's going on around me

Your frustrations complications
Time is wasting
You better figure out whether you're wasting
Time it all comes down to
I can't make you feel what I do
But I can feel for you
So what do you go to lose

I'm gunna keep on holding on
While all of this is going on
I should've seen this all along

But now I see where I went wrong
That doesn't mean I can't be strong
So now I've got to carry on
It's hard to see that I was gone

I'll stay right here
Where I belong."

A girl with long silver hair that reached almost to her heals tied near her mid-back with a piece of brown leather cord, and with bright teal eyes, strummed and electric guitar and sung those words out loud. She was all alone in a small apartment that she now called home.. At least for the time being. She defiantly had a ruff appearance and any one with half a brain was smart enough not to mess with her. She had a rifle, large heavy ax, and a short sword strapped to her back, a knife strapped on her right leg, and a hand gun on a belt that slanted down her left hip. She also had a dark pair of black sunglasses planted on her nose that her teal eyes peered over, on her forehead where two scars that didn't look more than a year old, and on her back she had black angel wings tattooed from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. But probably the thing that stood out the most about her was the kind of clothing she was wearing. She still wore the open toed cloth type shoes with similar forearm coverings. Everyone thought it was strange. No one had wore clothing like that for decades, it had been study closed toed boots and strong leather gloves (for those who even wore them) for quite some time, so to see some one still wearing these clothes was odd, quite odd indeed. She also wore a pair of white short and a blue and orange spaghetti string tank top that showed her stomach. Her shoes were brown with a piece of white cloth around her feet, and her forearm gloves were the same brown color with pieces of black leather around her wrist and near her elbow to keep them in place, her right leg had white bandages wrapped around it a little past her knee, her left arm was bandaged as well from around her fingers all the way to her shoulder and she also wore 4 silver rings, 2 on each hand.

After she had finished her song, she sighed and laid down the guitar and plopped down on the bed and sighed hanging her head, sadness pouring into her cold and angry eyes.

She looked up as a knock came to her door and a gruff voice came from the other side, "Talon."

"What is it?" She asked regaining her cold edge.

"We need to talk Jak." Torn said as he and Ashlein both entered the garage where the 4 still where.

"About what?"

"There is a large army of rouges who have made a pack with the remaining metal heads. They are planning on attacking various cities, including this one. They plan to take control of as many cities as they can get their grubby hands on, if that happens everyone will be defenseless against them, around sitting ducks for what ever other plans they've cooked up." Torn replied explaining the situation to them all.

"And what do you expect me to do about that?" Jak asked raising an eyebrow.

"I want you to accompany me and my men down to the canyon where we're going to ambush them before they can take any more cities, they've already taken Sea Coast, and 3 other cities to the south. The sooner we stop them the better."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." Daxter said waving his arms out in front of him, "You want us, to go down to some canyon where there is going to be a whole army of metal heads and psychos who want to kill us, and take over the city?!? Sorry to break it to ya... BUT THIS ISN'T THE UNDERGROUND ANY MORE!" Daxter yelled.

"If you don't go down and help, it will only be a matter of time before they get here and find you." Ashlein said in a matter of fact tone.

"Ehhhh... Good point." Daxter replied after a brief pause.

"Klia, I want you to go down there with them to, you're a pretty good shot from what I've seen." Ashlein continued, "Here you guys are going to need these." She finished tossing ammo upgrades to Klia and Jak.

"Me?!?" Klia asked staring at the ammo upgrade... "You sure that's a good idea?" She asked nervously, she was ok with a few metal heads, but a whole army of them.... She wasn't so sure about this.

"O, and we are also looking to make an alliance with a hunter group who will most likely be in the canyon waiting for the army too." Torn added, "So be careful who you shoot, you wouldn't what to make one of them mad... You'd be dead before you could blink." He finished with a smirk.

"Dead?" Daxter asked gulping.

"We should get going, they'll be showing up soon, and we want to surprise them." Torn said turning around and walking away.

Jak glanced over a Keira, and then followed after Torn, followed closely by Klia. They boarded one of the Krimson Guard zoomers with Torn and took off towards the canyon, once there they landed the zoomers far out of sight and took places high on the canyon walls that looked straight down into the canyon, giving them an advantage over the army that would be passing through below.

"Be prepared for anything." The auburn Krimson Guard captain said walking past them loading his own gun.

Klia closed her eyes and griped her own gun to her chest while leaning against a rock that blocked her from view.

'Why me?!?' She asked herself, 'I can't do this.. Why did I even agree to come?'

"Hey Klia." Jak said noticing that she didn't look quite sure about any of this, "Everything will be fine, you've got nothing to worry about."

"Yeah," Daxter broke in, "I'll protect you." He said cockily flexing his nonexistent muscles.

"Here they come." Ashelin said looking out over the rock as she loaded her gun.

It felt like an earthquake had just hit the canyon, they walls shook and lose rocks tumbled off of the cliffs. Klia griped her gun tighter and gritted her teeth.

"Jak.. Take out their leader." Ashelin said nodding towards a figure below covered in thick armor with silver hair that led the pack of elven people and metal heads.

Jak nodded and took aim over the rock that he sat behind. He looked through the sight until he had a direct shot at the leaders heart. He grinned to himself, "One leader, goin' down." He then pulled the trigger and a large ball of blue and white light shot towards the person below, and hit him just as he looked up to see it coming.

The shot exploded on impact, taking a few others that were near by out as well.

"OPEN FIRE!" Torn said commandingly after the shot hit.

The metal heads howled in rage at the attack and began to climb the canyon walls towards the people of Haven City who had come to stop them before they got any closer to their city, along with their elf counter parts.

"DON'T LET THEM SCALE THE WALLS!" Ashelin yelled as she to took aim shooting the enemies down.

Klia still crouched behind the rock clutching her gun so tightly that her knuckles had turned white, gritting her teeth, and keeping her eyes closed tightly. She listened to the sound of gun shots and people as well as metal heads yelling in pain as they were shot and fell off of the canyon walls back to the pass far below.

"Come on Klia! Where's your head?" Ashelin yelled to her shooting down more metal heads.

'Come on Klia, pull yourself together!' She thought to herself trying to pull herself together.

"THEY'VE SCALED THE WALLS!" Torn yelled to them pointing towards the right were a few very large metal heads had made their way to their level followed by the others who had used them as shields.

"Come on Klia!" Jak said getting to his feet to keep their enemies at bay as long as possible.

Klia still sat there on the ground, she couldn't move, she was afraid. 'This isn't right... None of this should have ever of happened! Why did we have to find that precursor ring!?'

"Where are the hunters?!?" She heard one of the men ask just before a metal head devoured him.

"They should have been here by now!" Another yelled as he desperately shot at the creatures.

"Klia! Look out!" Ashelin yelled to her.

At this warning, her eyes popped open to see an extremely large metal head towering over her. She screamed and pointed her gun towards it and pulled the trigger letting round after round of bullets shot out of the barrel. After about the 5th round she stopped and look to see the creature push far away from her crumpled on the ground it's contents oozing out of all the shots she had forced into it's body. Klia sighed in relief and looked around her for the first time.

After seeing one of the largest of them shot down, the army began to retreat, running back down the walls and scurrying back through the pass. The Krimson Guard however kept on firing on them until they were dead or had escaped back through the canyon.

"So much for these hunters eh?" Daxter asked holding his hand out in front of him and looking at it as if he had done most of the work by himself. Jak shook his head and suppressed a laugh folding his arms across his chest.

"Watch what you say fuzz ball." A man with chin length brown hair and menacing black eyes said holding a knife to Daxter's neck that was covered in black metal head blood. The man also had a few other various sized knives strapped to him along with a handgun on his right side. He wore black pants tucked into brown and black boots and a deep dark red tunic with the sleeves torn off, he was also well toned and had a tattoo of a sun with 3 swirls inside of it on his left shoulder. "Where's Torn?"

"Over there." Jak said pointing his gun in Torn's direction.

With that the man with drew his knife and walked past the various carnage around them to Torn.

"Sheesh! What's with that guy!" Daxter asked pointing after the man, "Him and Tattoo wonder over there must be related or something. They both have that or so welcoming air around them." Daxter continued sarcastically referring to Torn.

Jak raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

"Jak, Klia! Come over here!" Ashelin yelled to them waving them over to where she, Torn, and the brown haired man from earlier stood.

Klia and Jak looked at each other and then walked over, careful not to step on any corpses.

"These are your best?" The man asked raising an eyebrow, "I guess I'll have to take what you give me."

"What do you mean?" Klia asked putting a hand on her hip.

"I need you two to go fins the old eco vents in Dead Town. They say that eco flows in great supply down there. But the vents haven't been used in years.. I don't even know if they really exist, but if they do we'll be able to expand the eco grid and have something to fight the metal head and those fools off with something besides guns."

"The vents exist... But most of them are below the water or covered by rubble." A woman with long silver hair said coming up to them, "And as for you Crim." She said turning her attention towards the man as well as her handgun that produced a silver light and a whir that told them that it was powering up when she cocked it. Positioning the gun right under Crim's chin she continued, "You broke rank, and left 5 men, 2 of which are now dead, and you have the guts to be giving orders to other people not even under your watch." She said walking towards him forcing him to move backwards. "If you EVER break my orders again I'll pop that head of yours right off your shoulders and have it mounted." She finished venomously with drawing her weapon and turning to Torn.

"It's not my fault those rookies couldn't protect themselves." Crim stated in an attempt to defend himself, "If you had just listened to me and left them behind until they were trained right they would still be alive."

The woman narrowed her eyes and brought the gun back up to his neck again as she spun around to face him again, but this time she pressed the barrel against his skin.

Crim wretched in pain, "Ahhrrraaaahhh!" He tried to back away, but the woman kept pursuing him.

"It burns doesn't it?...." She asked coldly, "I can tell you time after time how much pain this thing will inflict, and you may have it ingrained in your brain that it will hurt, but until you actually feel it, you'll have no idea what it really feels like." She then took it off his throat and he dropped down to his knees holding his fresh burn that bleed freely, "The same applies to everything else. Those 'rookies' as you so plainly call them would never be trained properly enough by your so called training exercise, the only way they will ever know what to do it by actually getting out their." She then paused and pressed the gun to the bottom of his chin forcing him to look up at her and making another burn. "Therefore, you were assigned to watch over them an make sure they survived so that they could gain the experience so that they would know what to do. And then you deliberately broke my orders and left them like deer's caught in head lights with an open six." She finished like she was talking to a child. She then jerked the gun up dragging the burn to the end of his chin until it came free, she then put the safety on and sheathed it. "If you ever break my orders again you won't live to do it a 3rd time. Now I believe you have some wounded men to tend to."

Crim glared at her for a moment, but knew better than to press the situation he knew that she really would kill him.. And she would make it painful. He got to him feet still holding his neck where she had burned him and where it was bleeding and went to attend to the injured.

As he left, the woman mumbled something about 'insignificant leeches' and then turned her attention back to the others around her.

"And I thought you had anger issues." Daxter said in a low voice to Jak.

"Who are you?" Ashelin asked looking at the woman.

"Talon." She replied with the same cold edge to her voice but with out any venom to it as it had been when she had confronted Crim.

"Talon?" Torn asked, "You're the leader of the hunters?"

"You're a regular captain obvious aren't you tattoo boy." Talon replied flatly.