THEMAKEROFLIGHT:hello people, I'm back with chapter 5, you may notice that I made up the names of the sages in the last CH, and I would like to point out that I do not own J&D, I was just extrapolating for the sake of the story, now on with the show.

CHAPTER 5: THE ALLIANCE

After the return of The Swird Of Freedom to Haven city the overall morale of the Havinians and the Shassan refugees was boosted considerably, even the news couldn't the the marauders of Manaras were planning to attack Spargusdampen the people's spirits,. Well...the civilians that is, behind closed doors Havens goverment was in a frenzied rush to help their old allies, most people thought that after Erol was defeated Haven and Spargus would be enemies, but the Spargians were smart enough to know that it wasn't Haven that threw them out, only Praxis.

Jak was on his way to Kras to ask someone who owed him a favour for support, but it wasn't going to be easy, first he had to get past the guards, this particular person wasn't too keen on actually returning the favour, thats right, you guessed it, Rayn.

She had taken up stead in a small but wealthy part of the city aptly named, Racers Town. Now that she controlled the Krew faminly business and the Mizo business she had considerable influence over the other gangs, and had already "convinced" three other "legitimate" businesses to join with hers to make a super gang, Jak wanted her on his side bacause in total she controlled about 70 percent of the city, and that was about 3.2 million people, not someone you want looking at you down a pair of barrels in other words.

He had seen a small gap in her security at the east wall of her stronghold, a fifty foot wall with no guard placed on it, he was actually quite impressed, with her ingenuity, the only reason he could get in is she wasn't expecting someone who could fly to come after her. He slowly emerged from the shadows, making sure he was well inside the perimiter before he turned light, any sudden upsurge of eco might show up on her scanners. He drew his wings out and flaped hard to catch the updrafts and then sped up the wal only a few centimetres away from it, he could see the alarm that he had spotted before, he had to destroy it at the precice second he wanted, just before he came into view of the infrared, he couldn't pull out a gun now, it would alter his aerodynamice too much, he had to use his good old fists, they were efficient enough, they had got him past a whole lurker army before guns were invented, he could do it. The choke point was coming up, he got into position, it was only a metre away, NOW! The box crumbled into peices and fell to the ground, no alarm went off, he was safe.

Inside the building, Rayn was uneasy, ahe had heard a strange sond a crash of something breaking, now she swore she could hear rattling in the airducts, none of her guards could hear anything above a shout because of all the training with percussion granades. CLANG! That was it, now she definately heard something, her men around her heard it too, someone was in the control room messing with the controls, her entire team raced there with her, if she got there before the lights went out she could avert the crisis, she entered the room at a sprint, and saw that little runt Daxter chewing on the wires, he grinned at her.

"Don't blame me, IIIIIII didn't do it." He yammered, before snapping the wire in his mouth and cutting the lights, then jumping back into the duct above him, his maniacal laugh sending shivers down the trained soldiers backs.

"Miss Rayn, said one of her seargents, "You should go to your quarters, we can hold the fort at base, hopefully you'll be safe there."

Rayn sighed and resigned herself to the fact that all her men were as good as dead and she was in Jak's hands already, at least she could wait it out a bit longer a her own room, she ran down the dark corridors to her quarters, bursting through the door and loocking it, backing away from the tempered steel. And then she heard a familiar voice.

"I figured this was your room, very nice, you always did want the special treatment."

:And what was I supposed to do, entrust my life to a pair of bungling morons, I don't trust anyone, and especially not friends, the only person I trusted was Mizo, you can always count on your enemies to do exactly what you expect them to do, and thats why I've been preparing for this day." The whole time she had been speaking she had been slipping her hand down to her gun holster, hopefully Jak hadn't noticed . She felt for the leather strap of the holster,it was empty.

"Looking for this? Jak said, she spun around, to find Jak with a sword at her throat, twirling a gun on his index finger.

"Now lets do this right, you give me military support for the battle against the marauders, I let you live, and we both gain a powerful ally, clear."

She considered it, but in hindsight she didn't have much choice," Deal."

"Good." He muttered, and then jumped into a glowing hole in the roof, the lights came back on. A corporal came to the door, and shouted.

"Miss, we've rerouted power to the lights, we can't see the bastard on screen, he must have not fancied tangling with us."

"Get our troops up, all the most experienced racers are to soup up their cars, I want Shiv, Edgie, Cutter, UR86 and Razer to get those beasts up and running, we leave tomorrow for the oasis at Spargus, we're giving our dupport to King Jak of Haven, and King Sig of Spargus."

"B-but miss." Stuttered the obviously inexperienced corporal.

"Look, do you want to know what happened to the last person who presumed to question my orders.

"W-what?"

"I ran him over." that seemed to do it, the corporal ran to tell the news to his superiors to try and get back in her good books. The young ganglord looked in the mirror, sometimes she thought she was too young for this lark, then she took a lie down till it wore off.

the next morning at the oasis

The army Jak had massed numbered over 6.5 mllion people, the refugees from Shassa had shown their gratitude and pledged the entire compliment of their forces, every man women and child had walked out of Spargus in the night with a gun in their hand, Kras city government had sent 500 000 troops to the battle, but they were beaten to the post by Rayn, who had brought 2, 000, 000 soldiers and gang members to the scene, and Haven itself had brought 1 million FL troopers, 200 helcats, and 500 of the old KG tanks and bomb bots . Intelligence in Jaina and Halas had seen 10, 000, 000 marauders leave the capital cities and set sail for the wasteland, they had with them a great flat walker that simply rolled into the sea with wheels on it, that would be their base of operatioons, Jak planned to wait for them to come to him, the thin bridge across from their base would force the marauders into a bottle-nack, Havens allied force had much more firepower than Manaras, since the precursors had never lived there, there was no technology to copy weapon designs from,all they hd was a few thousand primitive guns and next

to no armour. The wild men planned to simply charge in and hope to engulf the allies in sheer force of numbers, shows the difference eh?

The thre main sections of the force wer the Haven force, which included the government of Kras city's forces, the Spargus section, led by Sig of course, and the Kras section, since Jak still didn't trust Rayn, he had placed Kun at the head of this flank, the hellcats circled above, and the bomb-bots had been placed at the front to destroy the first wave of cars as they came across.

Jak had placed snipers at the top of the volcano beside the oasis to spot when the ships were coming, three hours into the wait he got the signal, and gave the order to start picking off the main cheiftains, a hail of orange fire spat out from the volcano once more as the snipers began their bombard, through his goggles Jak could see the ship clearly, and more importantly the number of bodies dropping from it.

"Alright Ashelin, get those systems online, we need the sheild wall to old against the main ships bombs!" He shouted through his comm, and looked to his side, Keira had, again, got the better of him and convinced him to let her come, she had been practising all week with the blaster and was getting pretty good. Samos and the other sages had a smallunit of monks in the centre of the force to cast eco spells and heal wounded, all in all, it was looing pretty good, but Jak's ears were tingling, a usual sign of trouble, he loked at Keira, he loved her so much, but she insisted on following him into the most dangerous situations, she herself was pretty frightened by the coming battle, she had been in round skirmishes before, but those were nothing compared to what was facing her, a full 10, 000, 000 men fully willing to kill her sailing right down towards her, she caught Jak looking at her and smiled, trying not to show how scared she was, by the look on his face, she failed miserably.

Now the first wave of troops were landing on the islands just off shore, unfortunately for them, the were now in peacemaker range, only six people in the whole army had peace makers, Jak, Sig, Kun, Torn, Rayn, and Keira, but they still managed to kill over a hundred enemies before they got their sheilds up, it was a good result, but now the bridge was starting to extend, the bomb-bots powered up, the bridge was almost down, in one more second they would be hit by the full force of an entire country, and the bridge dropped, letting loose the racers.

The first bot walked forward onto the bridge, the cars on the other side revved their engines, and shot out of the boats, they attempted to ram the bot, not knowing what it was, all they did was set it off, the first wave was wiped out in a second by only two bots, and the army had another twenty-three to go, the hellcats moved in and circled around the area where the most fighting was happening, the main ship had lowered two other smaller pamps on either side to let the infantry through, and were met by the Kras section in all its wheel-spinning clory, an entire regiment (in Haven terms, 10 000) was run over by the gangsters of the mob city, and Keira felt a slight pang in her side, as if something had been taken away from her, she bent over in pain, and Jak stopped firing in confusion, big mistake. He snapped up in time to stop a leaping marauder in mid air, just before it landed on Keira, who writhed in pain when he died, the battle was going well on the front lines, the marauders spirit had been broken sooner than expected, Guards had now taken to simply shooting the men out of their cars, getting in and turning their own machines back on them, the sight of their own cars speeding up to kill them made the marauders despair, they're own ships began to one by one surrender to the allied forces, many of them took onne look at the army marching over the ramp, and dhot their comrade in the back to how they wanted to join the Haven forces. The main experts on explosives, including Jinx, had begun to place TNT on board some of the main ship, they then moved some way back, and Jinx yelled, "SHOVE THIS UP YER ARSE CUNTS!" And blew up the ships. Keira screamed in pain, she could feel each individual persons death as it happened, she coulsn't stop it, Jak was becoming frantic, he called to Kun to stay by Keira and make sure she was OK, then raced to find Shorine.

He found her wedged in a romantic kiss with Samos, which Jak found particularly annoying, her was the father of the woman he had just seen half dying for no reason, and he was a few minutes away snogging someone.

"Samos! SAMOS! Snap out of it, listen you need to get back to Keira, shes been hurt somehow, I don't know how though, she just screams randomly, and I can't see any wounds, you two get back there, I'm needed on the front line." And he left before either of them could answer.

The main ship of the marauders was beggining to pull away, and had left the people still on the land to die, all the gangways had been pulled down, so there was no way anwone could get aboard anymore, Jak arrived just in time, he could see only one way to do it, he whipped out the peace maker, and attached a fitting to it he had sworn never to use again, but desperate times and all that, he told himself, a long purple rocket protruded from the end of the barrel, he carefully set aim for the main engine section of the ship, and fired. The missile sped through the air, time semed to slow, Keira, from her vantage point saw Jak and realised what he was doing, she hadn't the strength to drie out, there was nothing anyone could do, the nuke hit its target and blew the explosives, the chemical reaction of fire to fuel set a great blaze in the engine room that soon spread to the main oil tank, the entire ship blew up, none survived. Keira shuddered, and blacked out.

THEMAKEROFLIGHT: I bet you all thought Iwas going to kill her didn't you, I must admit I thought about it, but how could I kill Jak's future wife when I havn't had a chance to do the wedding yet, and this makes for a better cliffhanger.