WOOOOOOOAH long time no update huh? Hope some one out there is still reading this….this was a ridiculously hard chapter to write and keep both these guys in character. I'm not sure I want to take this fic in the same direction any more so if things seem to shift that's why… I'm gona try and speed up the plot too . oh by the way this has mad fore shadowing in it.

---Get Your Freak On---

Jak slide into the both, completely ignoring the sudden din his presence caused.

"You're DEAD! I SAW YOU!…. She's dead, it went right, right through you!…your not!..its" Flamebrough made it half way across the bar before a couple of lieutenants cut her off. At this point the pilot turned her furry on her comrades. It wasn't long till torn was bellowing and other lieutenants were echoing the pilots questions at Jak's seemingly miraculous return to base. The command room suddenly became a whirl wind of disorder. Daxter's voice burst into the ungodly uproar and the lieutenants suddenly chorused together in outrage.

Jak crossed his arms on the table and laid his head on them, willing the rest of the occupants in the room to simply disappear.

Clue looked over at the blonde now sitting in front of him and then at the mass hysteria to left, "you really can't stay out of trouble at all, can you?" he asked almost rhetorically.

"No," came Jak's dark replied, barely audible over the ruckus.

"HEY! SHUT THE HELL UP! ALL OF YOU! NOW!" the room went dead, Clue snapped his head towards the figure standing on the halo table.

The little marauder was a ragtag mess and an even odder sight from her new position on the table. Jules swallowed hard and held her stance on the table, she hadn't really expected anyone to listen, "Well….that's better," she said to the crowd, still bursting with frustration that flooded out her nervousness. The holographic images shimmered around the small woman as she took a step or two towards the bulk of the lieutenants. "rabid leapers make less noise than you pieces of shit," she said casting her gaze across the room. Standing in the midst of the swirling holo projection her every movement caused the images to churn and cast unrealistic shadows across her face.

"Who the hell do you think you are, get down from there you little bitch!" some one in the small crowd roared.

Torn stood back with his arms crossed, fuming, watching the odd, fierce, little woman with a hammer strutting about on his holo table.

"ME!" Jules yelled, swinging her hammer in the general direction of the heads of her audience, "I'm the one that had to listen to your stupid god damnable shitty ass-" at this point the red head broke into the marauder language, she ended her rant nicely with "-sissy punk ass whiners!"

The lieutenants collectively blinked at her.

"Don't you think you should argue about something more productive! Cause, Damn, you blue tin cans are not good at thinking-" it was at this moment that clue slide out of the both and made his way thought the small crowd to the table.

"Who you calling stupid!" Flambrough was on her feet again, "You haven't been here, you don't what this is all about. You say we can't think! We've been out thunk a thousand times! And we just lost the best damn Lieutenant in the regiment! So either you get your ass of the commander's holo table or I'll do it for you!" the pilot stood away from the others. rage, grief and frustration burned in her eyes and she was quite serious.

"Hey Cupcake, just chill out. We can talk this-" Daxter's attempt at peaceful negations failed miserably and the room broke out into yelling and pointing. Each lieutenant began blaming the failures of the war on each other and any other scapegoats they could come up with.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Torn roared like some distempered lion, Banging both fists on the table making the images jump. The bar was silent again. "Now get the HELL of my table." He pointed at Jules.

She stood clutching her hammer to her breast like some small lost child. Clue reached across the holo table and tapped her ankle, "Come on," he said gently, in a no threatening way. She took his gloved hand quickly and hopped down from her podium.

"You call yourself soldiers!" torn growled, he new the moral was bad, but he had just now realized how bad. "You act more like children, if we want to make it out of this suicide hole then you have to hold it together. You were the best, and If you made it this far its-"

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" Some one yelled, the remark was followed by whoops and yells of approval. The atmosphere had suddenly gone bipolar. Torn just grumbled to himself.

"I'm tired…..I can't remember when I ate anything, and I nearly died several times, and I mean several!" Jules complained half heartedly as she slide into the both followed by Clue who was smirking to himself.

The military personnel to the left reformed itself into order and the discussion of their next move continued as if the whole incident had never happened.

"Next time you do something CRAZY! Tell me first, so I don't try to help you or anything…" Daxter said popping onto he table top pointing a finger at the woman.

"Alls I ever do is crazy stuff," Jules admitted with a sigh. Clue said something and put an arm around her shoulder, but Daxter didn't pay attention to the following conversation.

The otsel stood in front of his friend's slump form tentatively, "you okay?" he finally asked.

"Tired," Jak grumbled, never picking up his head.

"Seriously," Daxter started in, "are you alright cause you know, that was a little dramatic! You had me worried for a minute or two."

Jak snorted and sat up, "I'm good." He said simply. His right hand was still plastered over where the wound on his abdomen had been. The blood on his hands and tunic were still fresh, but all that was left of the injury was a pink scar, a stomach ache, and a migraine. He rubbed some of the drying blood off his fingers thoughtfully, he was still baffled. The pain of the shot didn't concern him much at the moment, or that he had lived, or even the fact that once again he had channeled white eco, for he had recognized it immediately. What bothered him was how opposite the healing of the wound had felt from the pian of its infliction, not pleasure, Just some unknown ineffable opposite of pain. To say the least it had been disturbing.

"…Ello, hey? You still in there?" Jak was jolted out of thought by clue's waving hand.

"What," Jak rubbed his face groggily.

"You've been sitting there staring off into to space for while now," the wastelander informed him. Jules was asleep, curled up against his side as he held her. For once the two struck him as an actual couple.

"I must have fallen asleep," he explained lamely. Clue shrugged with his free shoulder.

The bar was dim and quiet, just Torn and a few other crowded around the holo table and several more hunched over in sleep in the booths. Daxter was curled up in his lap and presumably asleep.

"By the way," clue said icily, "She is never getting gin a vehicle with you. Ever."

It didn't take a genius to figure out who 'She' was. Jak shrugged. There wan't much he could say to it, it was a hauntingly and oddly possessive statement, that reminded them again that they really were some dysfunctional couple. He hadn't really thought of them that way before.

"How'd you get into the city anyway," Jak asked changing the subject. This was only one a hundred questions streaming through his head, and something warned him to be subtle. Something that was highly uncharacteristic of him to warn himself about.

Clue's bout of cold possession melted away as if it had never happened, "sent out an old Kg distress signal, some hair brain pilot picked me up, thought I was you till she got there."

Jak nodded, "that easy?"

"Hell no that pilot had less brain cells than…….you remember Eruka? Less than that," he said flatly with half a snort.

Jak remembered the leader of the Spargus gang and found it hard to believe. He was quiet for a minute trying to figure out how best to broach the next question. He shook his head, he wasn't sure were it was come from but this subtly just wasn't his thing.

He threw caution to the wind, he wanted answers he wanted them now, "What the hell happened at the temple?"

Clue blinked in surprise, it wasn't the sort of thing he was expecting nor was it the kind of thing he felt inclined to talk about under the circumstances. But from the way Jak glared at him, that strange predatorily look , he found little choice.

"I'd have thought some like you would be grateful for that," the wastlander said evenly.

Jak's glare didn't waver, it wasn't the first time the precursors had done him a favor nor did he guess, pessimistically, would it be the last.

"That's not what I meant."

Clue shifted uncomfortably, "I don't really…"

Jak leaned forward, "What the hell was that? The oracle attacked you! What the fuck are you any way!" Jak said this rather loudly and torn and the handful of officers at the holo table shot them a few curios glances.

"A pain in the ass is what he is," Torn grumbled, before going back to his work.

Clue looked like he had just been struck.

Then his face was oddly vacant, like his personality had just seeped out along with the color in his face. For a long time he said nothing, just sat there staring at the table.

Jak sat back; maybe he wasn't going to get an answer. If he didn't get one he'd spend the rest of forever trying to figure out the answer to an impossible question. He had enough of those personally as it was.

"Are you evil?"

the child's voice echoed around inside his skull unexpectedly. Jak clenched his jaw and let his anger simmer. One more question with out an answer. Too many puzzles and too much at stake. He suddenly realized what kind of nerve his own question must have hit.

Clue looked up suddenly and gave him an icy glare and angrily patted down his pockets for a cigarette as if suddenly prompted by some foreign force.

He rolled the unlit cigarette between his fingers thoughtfully, "I don't know," he said finally seeming to address the cigarette more than Jak.

"Never mind," Jak said mostly to himself.

Clue snorted, "Alls I'm good for is party tricks, really," Jak heard a small static crackle then. He looked up, Clues elbow was propped straight up on the table, a little arc of blue eco ran jumped from his thumb to forefinger. He leaned his head forward and put the end of his cigarette through the arc till it started to smolder. The arc of blue eco vanished with a soft sizzle and he took a puff, "just party tricks compared to the shit you can pull off," He said actually looking at the blond. A strange silent understanding passed between them, "Though I can move pretty fast when I fell like it," clue added finally before the silence could turn stagnant.

"When you feel like it?" Jak repeated, feeling a little more at ease.

"Yes, that's the operative word," Clue said with a lazy hand gesture as he grinned around his cigarette.

Jak shook his head, that was as much of an answer as he was likely ever to get, and it wasn't really his business, "so, what's your grand plan now?" Jak asked looking at Jules. He had come to 'rescue her' he thought, amused by the notion, wondering if they would head to Spargus.

"Well…" the blue eco freak started, "I didn't think that far ahead. Planning is just planning for disaster" he informed him. "I don't like him…." He continued looking over in Torn's direction, "but after all this time I'd be a shame for this city to go under, so, if you don't mind Mr. Hero, I'd like to stick it out."

Jak gave him the look, he had worded that funny, there was something strangely cryptic about it if he ignored the last bit, "that's not my call…" he said finally, realizing that by that morning head be off doing Torns dirty work and playing hero again. He was actually mildly surprised by the wastelander's decision to stay. He didn't look to think to hard into his motives and didn't ask.

"just a few things I have to see through, you know?" he explained t hen blew a smoke ring, looked like his mind was in another place. Jak dind't knows what he was taking about and was tired. "I finally figured out who you remind me of," clue said after a minute, "Well not really but you make me think of him."

"Who?" he asked sounding only half interested.

"A old friend of mine, his name was Reece." He said sounding just as half interested. By now even torn had settled down for the night and that was last thing either of them said to each other. Jak even managed to get some sleep for once.