Chapter XXV: Behind Enemy Lines
LES: I'm really upset right now because I going to summer school (even though I didn't have to, just because I'm good and I want to get my math grades up for collage), and they're making us get to school at 7:30 every morning! That's a freakin' half an hour earlier than REGULAR school! Hell, I don't even get to school until 7:30 usually! Why can't it at least start later?
Muse: Because then it would go later.
LES: Shut up! That doesn't mean I can't think its stupid!
Once again, for the second time that day, Jak thought about the mysterious song that he had heard during his near death experience.
"From the time when I was young
I prayed for a child to call my own
But now that the day has come to me
I wish it wasn't so
It's not that I don't love you
My precious baby boy
But what the fates have planned for you
It rips my heart in two
How could the Fates be so cruel
As to take my boy?"
The words tore at Jak's heart. They were words sung out of pain and sorrow. But the identity of the singer confused him more. Was it possible that he was hearing his mother's voice?
And if it was his mother's voice, was it possible that she somehow knew what would happen to him in the future? About prison? About the demons that he fought on a daily basis?
Jak hesitated slightly before he spoke. "Mom… did you know?"
"What was that?" Jak looked up and saw that Daxter had entered the room. "What did you say?" The furry rodent asked.
Jak looked away. "Nothing."
"Keira?" Daxter asked.
"This time? No, actually." Jak said. "Things are great with her, apart from the fact that about three force fields separate us. However…" Jak paused. "The separation makes me aware that it is a miracle that we're still together at all… after all we've been through."
"Oh, come on…" Daxter sighed. "You've been nothing but loving and faithful!"
Jak scoffed. "If only that were true."
"Come on, I mean, it's not like you've ever cheated on her… or hit her…" Daxter laughed, as though the very idea was a joke.
Jak looked away in shame. He and Keira had been fighting over the nature of their relationship. Jak believed that it would be better for her to forget about him all together, but she had refused to give up on her love. He remembered feeling his anger spike, something that was so common back then… then the next thing he knew, she was on the ground, gingerly touching the large red mark he had left on her face.
"Jak?" Daxter began slowly when he saw the shameful look on Jak's face. "You haven't cheated on Keira, have you?"
"I've never cheated on Keira!" Jak said.
"Then don't tell me you…"
"It was a long time ago." Jak interrupted. "Back when I was a complete bastard. I knew… even then, what I did was wrong, but my anger overpowered my reason." Jak looked at Daxter and saw that the rodent had a shocked and disgusted look on his face. "If it makes you feel any better, that episode caused me to have the worst guilt-trip I've ever had, even worse then when I killed Sorus. I vomited from the effing guilt!"
"Yeah, well, you were throwing up a lot back then." Daxter said.
"But Keira has forgiven me for that episode." Jak said.
"All the worse!" Daxter said. "Listen, buddy, you're my best friend, ever since you showed up in Sandover with old Log-Nog and Keira. But I keep a healthy respect of just how dangerous you are. You are a good person, there's no doubt about that, but you are dangerous! You of all people can't deny that!"
"Of course I don't deny it!" Jak hissed. "Look at me, Dax! I've probably got the highest murder count of any single person in history! I've killed, Dax, and worse… I've enjoyed it. I've killed my friends as well as my enemies. I can't give mercy anymore… even when the only merciful path is death."
"What are you talking about?" Daxter asked.
Jak sighed. He hated reliving his time in prison. "Back in prison… a friend was dying of Eco Poisoning. He begged me to kill him… but I couldn't. For my life, I couldn't. It was fresh after my first murder and I wasn't ready to do it again. Sorus had to kill him. You see, Dax? I'm not capable of showing mercy."
"I think you are just as capable of showing mercy as the next guy." Daxter said. "You showed mercy to Sig in that arena. A cold, merciless person wouldn't have thrown down their sword like that…"
"He begged me to fight him." Jak said. "To him, the only merciful path was for one of us to kill the other. What I did was not merciful. I nearly got all of us killed."
"Don't worry. That's just your Dark personality talking." Daxter said. "I think you'll see the Light in the end."
Jak shook his head. "For my own sake, and everyone's sake, I hope you're right."
"But… one thing's for sure!" Daxter said. "You shouldn't ever hit Keira!"
"You think I'm proud of that?" Jak demanded. "You think that I'm proud that I hit Keira in a fit of rage? Cause I'm not!"
"No. But that doesn't change the past." Daxter said.
"I know. I know." Jak said.
Suddenly, the door opened and Torn walked in. "Word's getting around about you." He looked rather nervous.
"Let me guess, people are demanding why a dangerous freak like me is back in the City?" Jak sighed. "Just what I need."
"Actually, the public's rather excited about your return. Many are convinced that you will end the war. But this isn't all good attention." Torn paused. "Tess has found out that you're back in the City."
Jak blinked. "Oh my God!"
"My Tessie-Poo!" Daxter yelled.
"No, please, anything but that! I'd rather die again!" Jak cried, and for good reason. Tess was a ditzy blonde woman who was extremely annoying and clingy. But Jak was relieved that she clung to Daxter and not him.
Suddenly, Tess walked in. She squealed and launched at Jak. "What the…" Jak yelled as she tackled him. For a split second, Jak feared that this was one of his worst nightmares come true. But Tess' true aim was to go through Jak and get to the Ottsel on the other side.
She grabbed Daxter and tried to embrace him. Unfortunately for Jak, he was still trapped between them. "Daxxie!" Tess squealed as she embraced both Jak and Daxter.
"Excuse me!" Jak growled, extracting himself from Tess' grip.
"Oh, Daxxie, you're back!" Tess fawned. "Aw! Did that mean old desert burn your itty-bitty paws?"
"Hey, Tess-baby, don't crusha the merchandise." Daxter extracted himself from Tess' cleavage. "So, how are things?"
"Well, I've been designing new guns to help out the war effort." Tess said.
Jak blinked, still slightly horrified by the fact that Tess had embraced him. "You make guns now?"
"Yeah." Tess said, only giving Jak the slightest look. "I've only just finished my latest project." She pulled out a huge, lethal-looking weapon. "It sports a multi-bore, high-powered gyro-burst launcher with blowback breach assist. It has full-jacket, eco-depleting armor piercing slugs and a continuous kill-zone scanning for tight groupings and a high cycle rate of fire." She finished with an evil grin. Jak blinked. Although he had handled guns before, most of the vocabulary was lost on him. Tess laughed at the look on the elf's face. "It's a hobby."
"That's great, baby, but… ah… I'm not so into guns anymore." Daxter said with the air that he used when he was stealing the limelight. Jak shook his head slightly. "Much too uncivilized for me."
"Oh, Jak, meet me in the bar." Torn said.
All too happy to leave Daxter and Tess in the room. Jak got up and walked into the bar.
Torn sat at the bar and Jak sat down next to him. "I've got a job for you. The Metal-Head section needs to be broken into. We need to attack their hive from below, and the sewers are the only way in right now. We haven't been in those old passageways since the war broke out, but no scouts have reported movement down there."
"For once." Jak said.
"Let me rephrase that." Torn said. "I mean no scouts have come back alive to tell us."
Jak laughed. "Things are never as simple as they seem." He paused, and leaned against the bar. "Dark… dirty… dangerous… I'm beginning to like this war."
"That's the spirit." Torn said.
"Dax! It's time to go!" Jak called into the back rooms. There was no answer. "Dax?" Still no answer. "Dax!" He yelled.
Daxter peeked out of the room. "What?" He yelled back. "Precursors! I almost miss the quieter Jak! Could you get any louder? What do we have to do this time?"
"A suicide mission into the sewers. We're heading into the Metal-Head City section." Jak said.
"Oh, I get it…" Daxter said, looking at Torn. "You're still giving us the crappy missions, I see!"
"Stop complaining. You've got me." Jak said.
Daxter glared at his friend. "The last time you said that, I ended up hanging from a wooden beam twenty feet in the air, not to mention almost having a Dark Idol fall on me!"
Jak grabbed the small rodent. "Quit complaining. You're coming whether you like it or not." Daxter struggled vainly against his captor, but Jak was vastly stronger than he was. He could easily hold older and larger men in a nelson, and Daxter wasn't an elf at all.
With Daxter still struggling with all his might. Jak walked out of the bar.
After a rather long walk through the sewers, which were full to the brim of Krimzon Guard Death Bots, evil robots whose metal skins were damn near indestructible as it could be without using Precursor Metal. However, the Dark Eco blades cut through the metal easily.
The elf arrived at the elevator that, if Jak's sense of direction was right, would come up right into the farming district which the Metal-Heads claimed as their own after Jak's banishment.
The elevator proved to be the right one when it opened topside. It reminded Jak of the Metal-Head Nest. Everywhere, the ground had been upturned into the spiky rock formations similar to the ones at the Nest. Dark Eco pools covered the ground every few dozen feet. Their sizes ranged from puddle-size to lake-size that spanned the entire path.
Suddenly, a hologram of Ashelin appeared and Jak jumped. There was no hologram projector in sight. "Don't worry. While you were gone, one of our scientists developed a technology that allows us to project holograms anywhere within the City, or its immediate surroundings." Ashelin's slightly blurred image said. "We have a special job that requires your… unique talents. We've received intelligence that the Metal-Heads are using a large cache of Dark Eco for their own nefarious purposes. They must not be allowed to unleash these weapons of mass destruction on the City. The damage these weapons would cause would be total: total damage… total loses."
"Well, can't allow that to happen." Jak said.
"You are the only being in existence that can absorb Dark Eco with no harm to yourself. I want you to infiltrate the enemy's stronghold, find this Dark Eco cache, and absorb every ounce of Eco in it." Ashelin paused. "Be careful, Jak, you are behind enemy lines now. If you should fail, get injured, or become unable to return in anyway, there is no backup to save you. You are truly alone on this one."
"That's how I like it best." Jak said. "I can't stand babysitting."
"Jak…" Ashelin said. "Please be careful."
"Will do." Jak said. With that, Ashelin's image disappeared into thin air. Jak began to move stealthily through the maze of the Metal-Head City section. Jak wished that he had a Dark Idol handy because the place was crawling with some of the big-type Metal-Heads. Jak knew that if they discovered him, and ganged up on him, he'd become overwhelmed. Even with all of his powers, he didn't have eyes in the back of his head. So he used all his agility to move through the environment without making a sound. In the general darkness of the area, Jak with his black trench coat was little more than a shadow that was barely noticeable to all but the keenest eye.
He moved south, back towards the Port, quietly killing any Metal-Heads that got in his way or that happened to discover him.
Finally, he could feel the Dark Eco, it was very close. The concentrated Dark Eco stuck out like sore thumb in the back of his mind.
Then he saw it. It was a huge, crudely made container of Dark Eco. It was a wonder how the Metal-Heads managed to contain the evil substance without Precursor Metal containers.
Jak walked over to it. The smell of the Dark Eco was more intoxicating to the elf than any alcohol. This Eco was concentrated and therefore much more powerful than regular Eco. Jak reached out a hand towards the tank, fully aware that, just like the Lightning Storm showed him, too much Eco at once could kill him. He was unsure of how much Dark Eco it took to create that Lightning storm, but it had to be several hundred million units of Eco, at the very least. Much more than that would definitely destroy him.
With that in mind, the elf pressed a hand against the container and felt the Dark Eco being absorbed into his system. He kept a careful idea of just how much Eco was entering his body. The fact that this Eco was concentrated meant it was absorbing a lot faster. In fact, within a minute, he had already absorbed over a thousand units of Eco.
Several minutes later, and he began to feel sick. His body had already been mostly full of the Dark substance, and this new batch added on top of that… But he kept his hand against the container.
"Jak? Are you okay?" Daxter asked when he friend groaned.
"I'm fine." Jak said. "There's just a lot of Eco." Dark Eco began to cackle over his skin, as it was simply overflowing.
Suddenly, the container fell apart, and Daxter was forced to do a quick retreat. Jak took a step back, but he groaned in pain as the last of the Dark Eco, tens of thousands of units, absorbed into his body at once. He looked at his hands and gasped. Both of his hands were covered with some sort of dark-purple fire.
It seemed that the Dark Eco he had absorbed from the container and been the last straw on his tortured system. A familiar pain tore through him, the pain of the Dark Transformation. But this one was different. Most of his transformations occurred so fast, that he didn't have much time to think about how much they hurt, but this one was occurring painfully slow. He doubled up as the pain of the drawn-out transformation began. The worst part by far was the horns. Usually, they came so fast; he didn't even have time to feel them hurt. But he felt his head explode with pain as the horns protruded from his forehead. The fangs grew in his mouth slowly and his skin and hair paled until they were deathly white. His pupils slowly expanded until his eyes were completely engulfed by Darkness. Last of all, the claws grew slowly until they curved into cruel talons. The transformation was complete. Dark Jak cackled with Dark energy, and his hands and claws continued to glow with the strange fire.
Instinct told the demon that this was a new Dark Power, and a powerful one at that. The Dark Monster looked around his surroundings. The road to the Port was blocked by a tough filmy substance. The perfect thing, his instincts told him, to try out his new-found power.
He cupped his claws together and focused his powers between them. A glowing orb appeared, made out of thousands of units of Dark Eco. It didn't look like much, but it contained enough explosive force to blow open the side of a Metal-Head Beast.
And so, without further ado, Dark Jak chucked the explosive ball toward the filmy barrier, it didn't stand a chance. The ball exploded and disintegrated the barrier instantly.
"Talk about knocking the door down." Daxter commented.
Dark Jak could feel the Dark Eco in his body, and he knew that it would be quite a while before he would be able to change back to normal, so he decided to ignore the fact that he was currently a demon, he did have it under control and all. "Come on, Dax." Dark Jak said with a slightly echoic demon voice. "Let's get out of here."
LES: Yikes! I tell you, I'm really really tired right now. So… sleepy…
