Chapter XXXIV: Back Into The Sewers
LES: It's all downhill from here, and things start speeding up. And, in about five chapters or so, things start heating up. (Grins)
Jak: Oh no, what are you going to make me do THIS time?
LES: Krew's gonna make you do a strip-tease to a bar-full of women.
Jak: (is very pissed) WHAT!
LES: Just kidding. Nice reaction time, though.
Daxter: Thus does LES's sanity weep in a small dark corner.
LES: And also my parent's hope of me ever making any money off these fanfictions. All money goes to Naughty Dog, because they own all the copyrights.
Jak: And Naughty Dog is part of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, so they really own me too.
LES: Hmm… never thought about it that way… Sony rocks too! Without you guys, we wouldn't have PlayStations!
Jak: I am merely a slave to my fans. But no striping, got it!
LES: I got you down to your birthday suit once, and almost twice. It wouldn't be so hard to do it again.
Jak: Grr…
Jak had just accidentally revealed a major secret in his life to the loose-tongued Daxter, and he was sure he would be teased for the rest of his short life. So what does one do when faced with eternal humiliation? Go to a bar and get pissed off your ass, of course. Yes, getting drunk out of is mind seemed like a very good idea right now. Nothing seemed to be going right. Praxis was still alive, and so was Erol, every single person in Haven was pissed at him, Keira hated him, and he knew that he was being used by various people for their own ends, Krew… Torn… and even Keira… the list went on and on.
Jak pulled up to the Hip Hog. "You remember the rules, Dax?" Jak asked.
"No purple stuff." Daxter repeated instantly. Daxter wasn't allowed to drink the mysterious purple stuff. The last time he did, Daxter had told Jak that he 'loved him.' Jak shivered. Besides, alcohol loosened his tongue even more than usual. Jak could see it now. 'Yeah, Jak just told me that he loves Keira! Yeah, that's right, as in 'loves loves!' Jak shivered some more. That's all he needed. A bar-full of people to know what he had accidentally confessed.
Jak sat at the bar, not even caring that Dark was reflected in the mirror. Many people stared at the demon that was only visible in the mirror, but Jak didn't care anymore… he was somewhat used to being stared at.
Unfortunately for Tess, who was working the bar at the time the first thing she happened to see was Dark's reflection in the mirror. She jumped and spun around. "AUGH!" Then she saw that it was Jak, not his Dark alter-ego who sat at the bar. "Jak! You nearly scared me to death!" The she-elf paused. "What's wrong, Jak? You are normally careful around mirrors. Why the sudden…?"
"Carelessness?" Jak finished. "What's the point, Tess? Everyone knows what I am, so why should I hide in the shadows?"
"Because it doesn't make people as nervous to be around you." Tess said. "So, do you want something or not?"
"Something strong. I don't care what it is." Jak said.
"And get me something too, baby!" Daxter said. "It's been a really tough twenty-four hours!"
Tess smiled. "You can say that again." She said as she went to go get their drinks.
Little did Jak know, one other person had heard his proclamation of love, someone that was far less welcome to the information. It was the Krimzon Guard assassin that had been with Erol in the garage. This was, without a doubt, the strangest assignment that he had ever had, but he had been trained not to question orders, only to obey them. Instead of Erol putting a hit on the Freak, he had only marked him. This meant that he had to follow the Dark Eco Freak around day and night to see if he could pick up any useful information, mostly about any weaknesses that could be exploited. Strangely, the Commander had asked specifically to discover what sort of feelings the Freak had for the mechanic, Keira Hagai.
He grew excited as the Freak and his rat began arguing about the girl and he practically soared when the Freak shouted 'Because I love her!'
Oh yes, Commander Erol was going to be very happy about this… very happy indeed.
Jak quickly polished off his drink and slammed the empty mug down on the bar, Daxter doing the same with his smaller mug. Daxter looked up and his face blanched. "Oh-oh… don't look now, but Mr. Tub-of-Floating-Butter is heading over, and he has that look on his face…"
The Dark elf growled in annoyance and turned to face the over-weight bar-owner. "What do you want this time?" Jak asked.
Krew smiled evilly. "Jak, I need you to go back down into the Sewers again, eh." The fat man growled. "I've just heard a rumor that Mar's cheeky face might contain another secret… and I want to see if the stories are true."
"So what am I suppose to do about it?" Jak asked.
"You are going to escort three of my men to Mar's statue." Krew said. "Make sure that all three of my men reach that statue, eh. And they'll do all the rest."
"And what's in it for me?" Jak asked.
Krew growled again. "Fine, once you are done, I'll give you another gun upgrade."
"Nice doing business with you." Jak said with false cheerfulness.
"Bloodsuckers." Krew hissed.
Jak descended down into the Sewers and the blast-doors opened. Jak heard the voices of the three men, and the one spoke up, louder than the others. "Quiet, here comes the Pretty Boy." Jak frowned, since when could he even be considered a 'pretty boy'? "Bout time you showed up." The man who spoke mock-saluted the Dark Elf. "Jinx's the name, pyrotechnics' the game."
"Pyrotechnics?" Jak asked, confused.
"Explosives, Blondie, explosives. Try to keep up with me." Jinx said. "Now, this here is Grim…" Jinx pointed to a wiry looking man. "And this is Mog." A large man. "Now move your butts, or I'll move 'em for you!"
The group began to move down the hallway. "I've got fifty kilos of high explosives strapped to my back… great." Grim grumbled.
"So, Jakkie-Boy, you've got quite a reputation." Jinx commented casually. "If half the stories they spread about you are true, then you must be the greatest warrior since the Old Boy Mar himself!"
"Damn stories." Jak swore quietly. "I don't know about Mar, but I can hold my own in a fight."
"What is it with you and understatements?" Daxter demanded. "Jak fought the Baron one-on-one not so long ago and kicked the Baron's ass all over the place!"
Jinx laughed. "Then you might have a chance! I've been waiting a long time for Praxis to get a good ass-kicking. It's just what every tyrant needs." They reached an elevator and the group piled on. "We're going down." Jinx said as he adjusted the controls on the elevator to go down.
They reached the bottom and Jak jumped off the elevator. Suddenly there was a noise… a loud growl. The group paused, Jak pulled out the Blaster instantly.
"What was that?" Grim asked quietly. "I knew this was a bad idea."
"Maybe… it was my stomach." Mog said hopefully.
"That was no stomach." Jak said simply, aiming at the next corner.
Suddenly, the strangest creature that Jak had ever seen moved around the corner. The creature was a Metal-Head and it walked on all fours, like the old Crab-Heads. Except, these Metal-Heads were built low to the ground and where the nose should have been, there was something that looked strangely like the barrel of a gun.
"It's a Metal-Head!" Jinx yelled. "Shoot it! Shoot it!"
Jak raised the blaster and shot three times and the creature expired. "What the hell was that?" Jak asked.
"Hose-Head." Jinx said. "I've come across these type before. Watch out for the lasers that they shot out of their noses, they can cut you down at the ankles."
The group moved past the Dark-Eco oozing carcass. The Dark Eco jumped instantly into Jak's system as he passed and the three men were surprised by Jak's complete indifference. Most men would die instantly after contact with Dark Eco. They had heard stories of the Demon he could become, but none of them had ever witnessed Dark in action before. But, before the day was out, they would have stories of their own to tell.
They walked into the next room and Grim gasped, looking up. "Shit! We are so dead!"
"Metal-Heads are crawling down the walls!" Jinx yelled. "Get them!"
Jinx was right, the Hose-Heads were crawling down the walls, heading towards their prey. Jak raised the Blaster and began shoot the Metal-Heads off the walls. Soon, they were all gone.
"You're pretty handy with that pea-shooter, Blondie." Jinx said.
"I'm not a blonde." Jak grumbled. "My hair is naturally green."
Jinx seemed to ignore him and he set off toward the path out, which was blocked by an assortment of rubble. "This is where I come in." Jinx said, setting a bomb down next to the rubble.
"Cover your ears." Grim said.
"Cover your ears?" Jinx repeated. "You mean cover your ass! Fire in the hole!" Everyone hid behind various objects. "You better keep your head down, sugar." Jinx sneered in Jak's direction. Jak growled loudly and rolled his eyes behind his chosen cover, a large pipe.
There was a loud explosion. When the dust cleared, the pathway was open to them. "Mar, what did you put in those boom-sticks, Jinx?" Mog asked.
"Your bad breath." Jinx answered sarcastically. "Come on!" Jak was starting to think that Jinx had never been the popular kid considering his disgusting nicknames and sarcasm.
"Let's get out of here before we all get killed!" Grim said. And Jak was beginning to see why this guy was called 'Grim.'
"I wanna go home." Mog said with a whimper.
They had only walked a short ways when Jinx froze. "More of those monsters?" Jak looked up and saw some more of those Hose-Heads approaching.
"They're coming from behind too." Mog said. Jak spun around and saw two of the Metal-Heads coming from behind. These were much closer, so Jak went for those first. The Blaster was out in a second and he began to shoot. One shot to the head killed each of them instantly. Jak spun around and took out the two that were coming from the front.
"Nice work, Jakkie-Boy." Jinx said. "I'm beginning ta like you."
"Jak's my new favorite hero after Mar." Mog commented.
"Shut up, Mog!" Jinx hissed.
They walked up to a new elevator when a terrible scent hit Jak's nose like a sledgehammer, it was made even worse considering that Jak's sense of smell was many times that of a normal elf. "Oh Precursors, that smell!" Jak gagged.
"That's the smell of sulfur." Jinx said. "Ain't it grand?"
"No." Jak shot back. "It smells like shit to me."
They stood on the elevator and it went down, deeper into the sewer system and they got off and walked down a long, clear hallway. However, when they came to the next corner, blue lasers began to sweep across the floor. "Whoa, beams of death!" Jinx said. "Those are the beams of a Hose-Head! I'm staying right here until you do something about it!"
Jak was beginning to think that he could have done this by himself. He put the Blaster back into his holster and began moving down the hallway, jumping skillfully over the sweeping lasers. Jak reached the origins of the lasers, three Hose-Heads, and destroyed them using only hand-to-hand combat.
"Sweet as a ballerina." Jinx said as the last one expired. The Dark elf was beginning to grow sick of all of Jinx's 'cutesy phrases' and nicknames. He was as bad as Sig, honestly.
They moved down the hallway until they came to another blocked passage.
"Stand back." Jinx ordered. "I'll detonate this one remotely." Jinx set the bomb and the group crowded in a safe corner. Jinx remotely activated the bomb and the resulting explosion cleared the path.
Suddenly, there was a rumble that had nothing to do with the explosion. "What was that?" Jak asked.
"Sounds like I've got gas." Mog said.
Daxter tugged on Jak's ear… hard. "Ow!" Jak hissed. "Why you little…" Then Jak saw that Daxter was looking up with a look of pure horror on his face. The group looked up and gasped.
"AUGH! The ceiling's crawling!" Grim accurately described the situation. The ceiling and walls were crawling with Metal-Heads, and there had to be hundreds of them.
"Metal-Heads everywhere!" Jinx yelled.
"It was a trap!" Mog groaned.
"Set by who?" Grim asked, but none of them had the time to ponder this question. Jak got out his Blaster, aimed at the nearest Metal-Head, pulled the trigger, and…
'Click.'
Nothing.
Jak tried again, still nothing. He was out of ammunition. "Shit!" Jak swore, dropping the useless gun to the ground.
"Shit? Shit yourself!" Jinx yelled. "We don't have the fire power to deal with this mob!"
Jak suddenly grinned insanely. "I do." The Metal-Heads were getting closer. "Take cover if you value your lives."
Jinx didn't ask questions, and he dived for cover; Grim and Mog followed him almost instantly. "Jak, are you gonna…?" The answer to Daxter's unfinished question came when Jak let out a roar of pain. He doubled up as the pain of the Dark Eco transformation overtook him, and Dark Eco rushed, activated, in his system. His skin lightened into a horribly pain color, until he looked like a corpse, and his hair turned to a gray color. His fingernails grew with unnatural speed into long, black claws. Jak's eyes opened as the pain abated to reveal deep, black, pitiless eyes.
Dark Jak grinned. Not even Daxter knew that he had practiced a new technique while he was stuck in Mar's Tomb, waiting for him to bring him clothes. There was nothing better than unleashing a new technique on the Metal-Heads. Oh yes, nothing better…
Dark Jak roared as he gathered his full power, every ounce of Dark Eco that he had in his body. "Jak?" Daxter asked worriedly.
Suddenly, Jak released the energy with a roar of pain, for the release of all that Dark Eco at the same time was extremely painful. The energy expanded to fill the room, destroying the Metal-Heads instantly. The monster's bodies began to rain from the ceiling, piling on the ground in mounds.
Dark Jak changed back instantly because he had used all of his Dark Eco. But that was soon fixed by the Metal-Heads, oozing Dark Eco in death. His stock was soon full again.
"Whoa! What was that?" Daxter asked. "That was amazing!"
"Just something I worked on in Mar's Tomb." Jak said, gasping for breath. That attack took a lot out of him.
"Hey, it's safe!" Daxter yelled at the three men's cover.
Jinx, Grim, and Mog came back into view, glancing around and the many Metal-Head bodies; there were many, many dead bodies. "Whoa, that was fast." Grim said.
"Great, now let's get out of here before more of those monsters show up." Jinx said.
Everyone agreed unanimously with this statement. Jak bent down and picked up his useless Morph-Gun and put it in its holster. Jak followed the group down the short hallway to the next room where the Statue of Mar had come to rest after its bumbled burglary.
Once again Jak felt strange in the presence of the Ancient Warrior, one who he was now being compared to. It seemed, or maybe it was just his paranoia, that Mar was judging him somehow. It had to be his imagination. Statues can't judge anyone. Geez, was it just him, or was his imagination playing big numbers on him?
"Ooh… pretty statue." Mog said.
"Stand back." Jinx said, waving Jak off. "We're professionals." Jak relaxed, standing back to allow Jinx and the rest to do their thing. The three men placed the rest of the explosives and the statue's base and Jak got a horrible sense of foreboding. "Okay, men, let's blow this sucker sky high!"
Jak jumped. "Wait! Who told you to…?" Jinx and the men ran away from the statue, away from the explosion. "NO!" Jak cried. The Statue exploded with an earth-shattering explosion. The force of the blast sent Jak flying back and he crashed into a wall. He fell to the ground, groaning.
He looked up just in time to see the once majestic face of the Warrior-King come skidding to a halt mere feet from his face. He didn't know why, but the sight of the destroyed statue filled the Dark elf with anger… and sorrow.
"There it is… the Heart of Mar Gem!" Jinx said, inspecting the rubble. Jak looked over and saw Jinx carrying a large ruby… a horribly familiar one. It was the same one that was attached to the front console of the Rift Rider. But, before Jak cold comment, Jinx slipped the stone into his pocket. "Thanks for the escort, buddy. We'll take the Heart of Mar back to Krew." Jinx and his gang walked out without a second glance at Jak.
Jak walked up to the remains of Mar's once great figure. He hated the look that the ancient face was giving him, like everything was his fault.
He didn't know what possessed him to do it, but he looked down at Mar's face and said: "I'm sorry." And he meant it.
Suddenly, Jak's TalkBox activated. "Jak, my men just called me and told me the good news. So the bedtime stories were true after all, eh." Krew said. "About your weapon upgrade… it's in the Gun range. Find it, and it's yours." The line disconnected.
With one final glance at Mar's broken face, Jak allowed Daxter to jump on his shoulder and they walked out of the room back to the exit.
Several minutes later, Jak found himself in the Gun Range, searching through box after box. "Damn Krew." Jak swore as he tore through another box of… nothing. "The least he could do is leave it out in the open somewhere."
"Jak!" Daxter called. Jak jumped up and walked over. Daxter was pointing at… "Is that what I think it is?"
Jak picked up the item. "It is." Jak said with a wicked grin playing across his face. Jak attached the new mod to his Morph-Gun and pressed a button. The weapon instantly shifted into a familiar, but slightly different looking weapon… the PeaceMaker!
"All right, our own PeaceMaker! Now we're rockin'!" Daxter paused. "What if this isn't the upgrade?"
Jak scoffed. "Who gives a damn?" He asked. "You heard Krew. If I find it, then it's mine. I found it, so it's mine." Jak laughed insanely.
"I get the feeling that you are about to use the Krimzon Guards as guinea pigs to test that new weapon." Daxter said.
"Actually, we're going to the Oracle." Jak said suddenly.
"Huh? Why?"
"It's calling to me." Jak said, and Daxter didn't question Jak anymore when he said he heard these voices. Some of the time, it had been proven that there was something there. Instead he jumped on his friend's shoulder and Jak walked out.
Jak walked into the Oracle's hut several minutes later. The Golden Statue greeted him with its usual rumbling voice. "Greetings, Great Warrior."
"Why have you called me here?" Jak asked.
"The times have changed. You received the Precursor Stone from the Tomb, but you lost it to Praxis before you were able to use it." The Oracle said gravely. "The answer to all your questions and victory was within your grasp, but you failed to hold on to it."
"Thanks for rubbing my face in it." Jak grumbled.
"However bleak the situation may appear, there is still hope." The Oracle said. "The Precursor Stone may yet return to the hands of its rightful owner and a needless death may yet be prevented. It is not your strength, cunning, or ability that holds you back, but merely yourself." The Oracle paused. "You and I both know that you don't have much time left. You have begun to feel that Dark Eco, slowly turning against you and destroying your body. You need all the help you can get… now. For, as of now, the date that you dread is November fifteenth."
Jak was horrified. Only three months left? How could that be? "So, how are you going to help me?"
"Yes, I can help you right now." The Oracle rumbled. "I have discovered files in my own archives that documented how beings imbued with Dark Eco, like yourself could use Dark Eco weapons in regular combat without transforming in any way."
"Wait… that have been others like me?" Jak asked.
"Yes." The Oracle said. "You will meet them one day if things go according to plan now." The Oracle paused. "Stand still and try not to struggle against it. This will feel strange, but I assure that you can not be harmed."
It did feel strange. It sort of felt like someone was trying to suck his brain out of his skull with a straw. However, the feeling only lasted a few seconds. "Whoa, what was that?" Jak asked.
"You now have the power to use Dark Eco as a weapon, quite literally." The Oracle rumbled. "Feel into the corners of your mind and you will find a list of these weapons. Jak looked inside his mind as the Oracle told him and was surprised to find a list of just that… weapons. Swords, maces, spears… you name it, it was there. "Now, concentrate on a single weapon and will it into existence."
Jak found a weapon that caught his fancy, a broadsword of sorts and concentrated on it. Suddenly, his right hand felt slightly heavier than normal. Jak looked down and saw, to his amazement, that the sword had suddenly materialized itself in his hand. Jak lifted up the blade to study it. It seemed completely solid, but it seemed to be made entirely out of Dark Eco.
"Whoa! That is sweet!" Daxter exclaimed.
"Wow." Was all that Jak could say. He swung the sword experimentally. Even though it was slightly obvious that he had never used a sword in his life, he was able to swing it with power and a little precision.
"You'll learn how to use those weapons with practice." The Oracle said. "Dark One… good luck… we are all counting on you." The ancient presence vanished from the room.
"No pressure, of course." Daxter laughed. The duo walked out of the hut.
LES: Okay, I admit it. The list of weapons that manifest themselves at will comes from a cool book I read recently: 'The Fallen.' In that book, the warrior angels can manifest weapons of fire. I thought it would be cool if Jak could do that with Dark Eco weapons. We'll see what works out, which fighting style I like the most, guns or melee. And that will be the one that sticks through the rest of the story. (Though I have a feeling the melee will stick.)
Muse: Because you've already finished this story and you know exactly which one you started to prefer, not to mention your record of giving Jak a sword to play with.
LES: That sounds wrong…
Muse: O.o