Chapter 5: The Unexpected

Location: Lurker Camp

Daxter glared as he was groomed by his new female lurker friend Clindra. The lurker ape fussed over him like he was her child. It wasn't all so bad, she did run off and get him food whenever he was hungry; which was a lot because he'd been stress eating over the last week. Meria had yet to get back to him about getting back to Jak and Sig; knowing those two they were probably having a time of their lives without him; which sucked!

Daxter suddenly let out a growl and forced Clindra to stop picking at his hair and grooming him and stood up looking around the camp. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to him, except for the lurker ape and she was just looking at him as if waiting to see what he was going to do. Turning towards her he spoke. "Look I've gotta get back to where I belong, I can't stay here forever." He tried explaining to her, though he really couldn't tell if she understood him or not.

Suddenly the female pushed herself up, Daxter took a step back thinking she was going to make a grab for him; but instead she walked past him and a bit further before looking at him and giving him a grunt for him to follow her. Holy shit! he thought. It worked!

He took off after her and began to follow her every footstep until she came to a stop by a stream. He realized that, as she sat down, that he spotted his quiver in some bushes. He then began to search along the stream and up the incline, where he found his and Jaks totaled vehicle. As he searched he found his arrows and his bow. Checking the strings on his bow, to make sure everything was in tip top shape he turned around and smiled at the female lurker. "Thanks for bringing me."

His answer was another grunt.

Daxter then spotted old footprints in the dirt. Hmm. he thought as he examined them. Might be Jaks footprints or it could be Sigs; but it's so damn dark I can't tell. He then stood back up and continued up the incline until he came to a cliff that overlooked a beach and a tiny village. Squinting his eyes at the setting sun Daxter could make out the silhouette of a hut on a tiny cliffed island just off of the village and for the life of him he'd never forget whose house that belonged too.

With eyes beginning to mist over he felt an emotion that he hated showing around anybody, except for Jak. Home. he thought and at that thought joy mingled with his sadness as he realized that he was home. Jak would be there! Jak had to be there. If I travel slowly through the night, I might make it there by morning. he looked down at the village. But if I make a mad dash for it I might make it in an hour.

Upon hearing a noise behind him, he turned to see Clindra waiting for him. "Look, my village is down there." He pointed towards Sandover. "If I run I would make it in an hour."

The female snorted before looking behind herself and then at Daxter.

"I can't go back there." He said solemnly. "I don't belong there." He pointed towards the village down by the beaches. "I belong there."

The female walked up to him and looked down the cliffs and jungle area of Forbidden Jungle and then back at Daxter before walking forward down a little path that led down the cliffs. Daxter blinked and scratched the back of his neck. Okay, so she's taking me home? Snortting Daxter silently wondered what Jak would say about this one and followed the female to his home village.

Location: Forbidden Jungle

Taking Mar into the Forbidden Jungle a week ago may have been a bad idea. Jak suddenly knew where he got his adventurous side now. Mar was nuts when it came to climbing cliff sides, killing dangerous snakes that were five times his size; he obviously had forgotten his own experiences with such creatures when he and Daxter had gone to the blue eco temple years ago. Thinking about his best friend made an ache appear in his chest and shook his head as he watched Mar jump across the gorge where the eco bridge should've been and slapped his face is disbelief as Mar activated the temple doors; almost having been attacked by a large carnivorous plant at the same time.

Jak finally understood why Daxter almost had panic attacks every time he did something stupid and irresponsible because Mar was causing him to do the same thing which got a laugh out of the older man. "You know you'd think you hadn't just saved the world from the evil Dark Sages; Gol and Maia, by the way you're acting." Mar commented as they climbed up the several levels to the elevator at the top of the temple.

"Yeah." Jak snorted. "Thing is I had my best friend with me and he helped me. Gave me the courage to do the impossible."

"Sounds like a great guy." Mar smirked as they got to the top and Jak activated the elevator by touching the large button in the center of the floor.

"He was." Jak replied sadly as his thoughts turned away from his current mission and towards Daxter. It'd been a week and he still hadn't returned to the burnt out corpse of their vehicle to retrieve his body and give it a proper burial. For all he knew the jungle animals had been feasting on Daxter's body. That thought made Jaks face turn sour and his stomach twisted in revulsion.

The elevator came to a stop when Jak's comm. unit went off. Grabbing it from his belt he activated it to the floating mode. "Yeah?" he answered.

"Sig here," came Sig's voice. "We just finished the last touches on the rebuilding of Sandover, however some strangers from a nearby village called Rock village, just showed up."

"Is there a blue sage with them?" he asked hoping that perhaps the old Blue sage had survived.

"Yes," Sig answered, "he seems pretty intent on talking to you Chilipepper."

Jak smirked at this. "Tell him to wait awhile and I'll be back soon. Once we find the eco grid computers I'll send you the map to the temple so you can bring him here."

Jak suddenly heard somebody arguing with Sig. "Uh, he says he knows where the temple is and can be there in a blink." Sig then whispered. "Is it me or does this guy remind you of Vin from the Power Station back in Haven?"

Jak blinked before laughing which caused Mar to look back at him for making such a large noise and smiled himself to see some joy was still left in this young man. "Yeah, I guess he does." Jak said still laughing.

"Good, I was beginning to think it was just me." Sig then said his goodbye and left Jak to continue to help Mar.

Daxter yawned as he plopped down in a heap on the ground. He was tired. His feet, which were soaking in a stream in the Forbidden Jungle, hurt like heck. He picked up it boots and realized that they had a big ass hole in them. Looking across the stream he saw the female just waiting on him. She reminded him of his mother before she died. She seemed to want to care for him, keep him safe and looked worried. Jeesh, next thing I'm gonna know is that reincarnation is real or something.

His head hurt and his eyes were droopy, but he was determind to get to Sandover before sunrise. He had a best friend to surprise and boy was Jak gonna be surprised when he got to Sandover and woke that lazy assed hero out of bed by throwing water on him. Ah, better make that cold water. Daxter snickered at that thought and thought of Jak being soaked because of him was strangely hilarious.

Diciding he'd rested enough Daxter stood back up and almost didn't see the deadly fish coming towards him and jumped back with a yelp. Clindra roared at the piranha fish and slapped it with her overly large hand, thus killing the fish. Daxter gave a toothy grin and decided that he didn't mind having Clindra with him as he turned towards the old path in the jungle Daxter spotted the old Blue eco Precursor temple off in the distance and silently wondered if Jak would want to go exploring later. That'd be fun. He silently thought as they continued their way back towards his home.

Sig had seen a lot of things in his thirty odd years of life. He'd seen brave men piss themselves in the middle of battle because of fear. He'd seen a man twice his size fit through a hole that was the size of a small zoomer bike with no problems. Heck he'd seen metal heads destroy cities, kill brave men and women alike without any discrimination on who they were. However none of that could compare with seeing grown men with blue, yellow or red skin. Sure he'd met old Samos a time or two, but he'd never paid attention to the old sage's green skin, after all he lived in Haven, it wasn't too unusual to see somebody with weird looking skin, but blue skin and yellow skin; that just took the cake.

At first he had thought that perhaps the yellow skinned yellow sage was sick or something, but the man assured him that this was his skin's natural color; same went for the blue sage; who had decided not to wait for Jak and had gone off into the Forbidden Jungle by himself.

Sitting down on the porch of the farmer's hut Sig sighed as he finally realized why Damas threatened to quit being the leader a few times. Helping people help themselves was exhausting work. Especially when he knew these people needed to learn to fight.

That was another thing he had yet to begin doing. Jak said that these people were nothing more than farmers; which he'd seen firsthand and had learned very quickly in the past week that most were extremely lazy and asked very nicely for others to do the work they didn't want to do. It was no wonder why Haven City was filled with lazy, ungrateful people. These lazy bastards were ancestors to an even lazier generation and it made him sick.

Upon hearing a noise coming from the entrance of the jungle he grabbed his peacemaker; just in case it was a stray metal head coming back for round two. What he saw though made him rethink that perhaps he'd been a bit too hasty in thinking that Jak's little red haired friend had died. For low and behold Daxter came stumbling out of the jungle with a mighty large lurker ape just steps away from him.

"Daxter!" he hollard, which got the youths attention.

Lifting his head slightly Daxter looked up and saw Sig standing on the farmers porch. "Sig." he sighed and weakly gave a wave of his arm.

The female lurker ape took a few steps back towards the entrance of the jungle before turning around and taking off; though Daxter didn't seem to notice. The only thing Daxter had in mind was laying on something nice and soft for the first time in a week.

Sig took notice on how haggard the youth looked and rushed over to him. "Easy Cherry." He said as he looked the red head over a bit. Daxter's eyes began to droop as Sig pulled Daxter's left arm over his shoulder and helped him to where the red head claimed was Jak and his hut. Once inside Sig watched the young man flop onto a bed and was out like a light.

Chuckling, mostly to himself, Sig couldn't help but wonder how Jak was going to react to this.

M-Angel: Yay, Daxter made it to Sandover, now is when thing's will get real interesting.