Chapter 9
Work and No Play

Jak, Daxter, and Alexander got back into the city, through the crowded streets, and back to the sliding wall of the Hideout without any trouble at all. As the hidden doorway automatically opened, Daxter jumped off Jak's shoulder and said, "Y'know, that's pretty hard to get used to."

Alex smirked and nodded to himself. A giant, moving wall that always opened for you was difficult to take for granted.

In the center of the den, predictably, was Torn. He was pacing back and forth in front of the table, and he leaned over a map of the city as the adventurers approached. "The Slums' water is back on!" he declared excitedly. "I'd love to see the heads roll when the Baron finds out!"

As amusing as the thought was for Alex, Jak soon brought things back down to earth. "Yeah, I'm sure he's losing lots of sleep over this armpit of the city," he growled angrily, glaring at Torn. "We've done what you've asked! Now when do we see the Shadow?"

Torn was quick to adapt. Looking back at Jak with scorn to match, he replied, "When I say so, if I say so."

"And I imagine," Daxter suddenly interrupted, "that goes just for us! But your boyfriend here can go and see the Shadow whenever he likes, can't he?"

"Daxter..." Alex growled.

Torn turned around and leaned against the table. "As a matter of fact, yes. He's already proven himself to be more than useful, as you might've already found out. But you two... not so much." He then shrugged and turned back to the map. "But... if he chooses to stay with you two, I won't go out of my way to bring him to the Shadow. Though I can't imagine why."

Alex fought hard to remain stonefaced under the glares of Jak and Daxter in tandem with Torn's comments. It was even more difficult not to roll his eyes – Alex knew Torn knew exactly why he was hanging around Jak and Daxter. They were the heroes. But Torn was insisting upon playing the tough guy.

Then again, that was nothing new.

"Before I even think about the Shadow," Torn started up again, motioning for the three of them to come to the map, "I want you to take care of an ammo dump we've ID'd in the Fortress. Lots of Krimzon Guards, plenty of Heartless, constant patrols. We know it's–"

Alexander fought back a laugh and failed, cutting off Torn in the middle of his exposition. The ex-KG quickly turned to the Interference with a stern, reprimanding look. Alex simply smirked back at him. After a moment of staring, Torn said, "Care to tell me what's funny?"

Surprisingly, Daxter answered in Alex's stead. He jumped up to the table and said, "I think I know. It's because you're playing up this mission to be more difficult than it really is, isn't it? Compared to what we could be doing, this is going to be a walk in the park."

The Interference sighed internally. For a second, he'd been worried that Daxter had figured out his indirect clairvoyance. Still, the Ottsel was close enough in his reasoning.

Torn looked even more pissed off for a second by the response, but somehow managed to calm himself down. "Fine. Better for you to think like that, anyway." He looked back at the map. "But this is no child play. You blow up all that ammo, and we'll deal a body blow to the Baron."

Daxter grimaced. "You're sending us in, tough guy, so what's with this 'we'll deal a body blow' stuff!"

"That's fine," Jak cut in. There was a smirk threatening to appear on his face. "I want the Baron to know that it's me who's hurting him." With that said, he started to walk toward the entrance. "Let's go, guys."

Daxter walked off the table and followed, but not before giving Torn a snooty, disapproving look. Alexander remained for an extra moment, a realization forming in his mind from Jak's words. "Riiiight..." he said in a low voice to himself. "I know it's coming, but Even doesn't..."

Alex grinned and turned toward the door.

The trio followed the mini-map on Jak's communicator to the Fortress's entrance. The big red building loomed over them ominously as they walked up the ramp to the armored door. Daxter was skeptical. "What, they gonna just let us walk in?"

As they neared the door, though, it opened automatically to let them in. Inside was a room Alex had seen several times before: the main lobby of the Fortress. There were several rows of control panels leading to a dimly lit hallway up ahead, but it was blocked by an electrical field created by two twin generators.

To the left was another pathway, but the more pressing issue was that there was a big, red tank with a spiked steamroller idling in the center of the room. While Alex was expecting this to some extent, it caught him off guard after seeing this room before in the distant past.

Jak, upon first seeing the tank, immediately hid back behind the door for cover. But when the tank made no reaction at all as Alex strolled in, he too walked in warily. The tank certainly wasn't inactive; they could hear the engine running. But they walked right next to it without triggering an alarm or anything.

"That way," Daxter said helpfully, pointing off to the left path.

"Wait up," Alex said urgently. "Gotta take care of something first." He moved toward the side of the tank and regarded it for a moment. Then he clapped his hands and placed them on the metal. Almost instantly, green sparks traveled across the vehicle and enveloped it in a glow. When the glow faded, the sound of the engine had stopped, and the tank had been transformed into a tank-shaped lump of gray granite.

Jak and Daxter jumped back in surprise. "Woah woah woah!" Daxter exclaimed at the top of his lungs. "How the heck did you do that!"

Alexander grinned, completely satisfied by their reactions. Sure, it was giving him away, but it was too appropriate! He held up his hands as he turned to them, saying, "A little trick called alchemy. It's a science where I can turn any non-living substance into any other substance."

"Man, that is..." Jak started, but trailed off as he seemed to notice something. He stepped forward and said, "And what are those?"

He pointed at Alexander's wrists, which had been partially exposed by Alex's lowered sleeves after he'd raised his hands. The deep, still-fresh scars were now plainly visible, even from Jak's distance.

Alex looked at where he was pointing, and his glee instantly evaporated as he was brought back to memories he'd been quick to suppress. He lowered his hands swiftly and said, "Nothing important. ...Not to what we're doing right now." He moved past Jak and walked into the open hallway.

As soon as he passed two electrical generators similar to the ones guarding the other path, an alarm went off. "Unauthorized use of Fortress door. Activating security tank."

Jak and Daxter looked around worriedly while Alexander stood completely still. But then the voice said, "Unable to activate security tank. Alert status has been raised."

"You know what this is?" Alex said suddenly. He pulled back one cuff and revealed the scars to Jak again. "This is another reason to get this done in any way possible."

A flanging sound occurred behind Alex as Soldier and Shadow Heartless appeared on the metal platforms overlooking a bottomless pit. In response, Jak assumed a battle stance while Alexander summoned the Heartless Seal Lockshield to his hands. "But I guess I'm not the only one trying to be clever," Alex muttered to himself as the enemies approached. He then lifted up his shield and intoned, "Magnega!"

A sphere of dark, magnetic energy warped into existence in the middle of the pack of Heartless, dragging them all into one clumped group. One of the Shadows dissipated instantly. While they were disoriented, Jak rushed in and thrust a fist into a bunch of the Soldiers, knocking them against the wall.

Alexander then cast Thundaga to blanket the whole area in lightning bolts, vaporizing the whole group of Heartless. He shook his head as the black smoke cleared, saying, "More of the same."

Jak flexed the fingers of his right hand. "These Heartless come in all shapes and sizes, huh? And some are stronger than others."

"Makes ya wonder why they don't just swarm us with the big ones," Daxter noted.

Jak and Daxter walked onto the metal pathway, and Alex started to follow after a moment. "Yeah, that's a good point..." the Interference muttered to himself.

What followed from there was a linear path guarded by a series of strange pitfalls and traps, like laser-guided turrets, moving platforms, and timed floor spikes. Krimzon Guards and Shadow Heartless littered the pathway in small groups at a time, no match for the group of invading heroes.

At the moment, the three of them were facing three alternating rows of floor spikes, the different timings of which allowed for a path of sorts through it. On the other side of the rising spikes stood two Krimzon Guards and three Shadow Heartless. As soon as the farthest row of spikes dropped, the Shadow Heartless dashed forward and pounced toward them.

Alexander tried to swing at the Shadows in midair, but his timing was off. Two of the Shadows latched onto his shoulders and started clawing at his back and face, pissing him off immensely. Meanwhile, Jak spun and punted the remaining Shadow back into the spikes to eventually get impaled.

Bringing himself to ignore the pain, Alexander grabbed the Shadows by their backs and tore them away from his body, and tossed them into the spikes just in time to get stabbed by a rising group of them. His face and back burned of deep claw wounds, and it took him a while to regain proper control of himself.

Jak used the timing of the spikes to maneuver through them toward the Krimzon Guards. The guards were ready for him, lifting up their rifles horizontally and thrusting them toward him in order to push him back to the spikes. But Jak was ready, double-jumping over them to land on the other side before roughly shoving them onto the spiked ground. The rising spikes stabbed through the red armor, and soon the Krimzon Guards had faded away.

Alexander used a High Jump and an Aerial Dodge to clear the spikes in one shot. As he rose to his full height, he looked at Jak for a moment, then averted his gaze and said, "I was a little early on that one..."

Jak didn't say anything, but merely continued leading the way along the path. As it turned out, the hallway made a right turn into a big square dead end section. But there was a metal grate in the middle of the floor, which led into a lower floor of the Fortress.

Naturally, one dive attack kept things moving along.

They were now facing a wide conveyor belt that led up to a bottomless pit with a stack of large metal crates on the other side. Every once in a while, a platform would slowly move by like so many they'd already encountered.

Jak waited until his hardened platforming senses indicated the perfect time to charge, and Alexander followed his lead. They ran through the conveyor belt, jumped onto the platform as it passed, and then leaped up onto the metal crates.

On top of the current crate was a box with the Krimzon Guard emblem on it. Alexander smashed it open with his Lockshield, revealing a Health Pack which Alex immediately absorbed. The Shadows had left him with damage he hadn't anticipated to suffer this early in the proceedings. Perhaps he was getting a bit too cocky...

The crates were easily taller than Jak, but a bit of climbing and High Jumping was enough to clear the stack, which conveniently led to a conveyor belt bathed in red light with a door at the other end.

As they passed through the door, Jak and Alexander were inspired to marvel at what they'd just stumbled into. Boxes and barrels of every kind were stacked not-so-neatly throughout the room, and large stacks of missiles were set up in the corners. In the middle of the room was a humongous missile sticking out of the floor with smaller missiles all around it. In short, they'd found the ammo dump.

Jak walked toward a barrel, and Daxter jumped off his friend's shoulder to stretch his little furry legs. The green-haired protagonist picked up something off the barrel, and Daxter grinned. "Cool!" he said, looking at the small, square, metal red chip. "We need those to get through city checkpoints!"

Alexander nodded to himself at this, but then realized something. After digging through his pockets for a bit, he pulled out his old KG communicator. Yen Sid had restored all of his old equipment and munny to him with his new garments. In the communicator, he had Red, Green, and Yellow passes. Everything to get you through the city. It would be good for Jak to find his own, but Alex was glad to know that there were at least some perks to having been in Haven for two years.

A large banging noise interrupted everyone. After a moment of being on edge, Jak placed a finger to his mouth and shushed everyone. The three guys gathered around a thick metal grate and peered down into the floor below. In the room below, two Krimzon Guards were standing next to a rather huge pile of barrels. They were facing a large steel pipe, in which two Metal Head Grunts were poised and ready.

Between them were four Neoshadow Heartless.

"These barrels are the latest shipment of Eco," one Krimzon Guard said. "The Baron says take them and get out!"

In response to this hostility, the Metal Heads growled and took a few menacing steps toward them. The Krimzon Guards readied their rifles in return. But the Neoshadows took meaningful steps toward both groups, which eventually backed down.

All of them were confused, including Alexander. "Wait, what...?" he said in a low voice.

"Metal Heads in the city?" Jak mumbled. "Why are the guards giving them Eco...?"

Nearby, a security tank suddenly activated. The whirring sound as the twin turrets on top of the tank turned to aim at the three intruders alerted them to the immediate danger.

"Uh, Alex...?" Daxter started quietly. A red targeting reticle bathed the whole group in red light, and all of them started running. From his new position on Jak's shoulder, Daxter shouted, "It'd be nice if you could take care of this one!"

Behind Alex, the targeting reticle followed them before stopping to fire. The resulting blasts of Eco destroyed a bunch of crates that had been in the way. "We need this one!" Alex said simply. "Lead it toward these things!" Alex indicated the large missile in the middle of the room.

"Oh, great!" Daxter yelled back as the tank began to aim again. "This is what Torn sent us to blow up, isn't it!"

"Let's do this, then!" Jak said. He dashed toward the side of the missile and led the targeting reticle toward his position. As the tank stopped to fire, Jak dashed out of the way. The blasts from the tank tore through several small missiles and caused several large explosions, but it also tore off a valve that had been connected to the side of the much larger missile. Pressurized smoke started to rise rapidly from the empty space, and an alarm went off.

With Jak hiding behind the missile, the tank then aimed at Alexander, who was standing near another valve. Predictably, the tank fired upon him and ended up taking out the second valve out of four stationed around the missile.

The tank continued to move around the missile, doing its best to fire upon the moving targets but failing. There were a couple of times where the tank failed to hit a valve, but such mistakes were soon corrected without either Jak or Alex getting shot.

Finally, the fourth valve was destroyed, and the room's lights changed to a warning red. "Danger. Warhead detonation imminent. Evacuate immediately."

A door in the back of the room opened up automatically, which led outside the Fortress into the streets of the Slums outside. Alexander and Jak immediately bolted for the door, and Daxter got on his own feet to hightail it out even faster.

The smoke was coming out fast enough to envelop the whole missile in seconds. They had little time left.

As they reached the doorway, Jak prepared to make one last flying leap out the door in the precious time they had. But the warhead chose that moment to explode, and the resulting force blew all three heroes out the doorway with a fireball right behind them.

Daxter and Jak bounced off a metal awning below, while Alex missed it completely and crashed headfirst into the ground a few feet away from the protagonists.

It took a while for Jak to regain his senses. As he propped himself up with his elbow, he winced as he felt something squirm underneath him. A few moments later, Daxter popped out from under Jak's backside, gasping for air.

"This place has too much excitement," Daxter decided, finally catching his breath. "We need to move back to the country!"

Jak smiled and shrugged, and then finally got off Daxter so that he was no longer sitting on him. Looking over at where Alex fell, he said, "Alex, you alright?"

No answer came. Daxter finally stood and rolled his eyes. "Wonderful."

It was a little while before the trio managed to get back to the Hideout with a stumbling Alexander in tow. The outsider's head injury – while softened by a quick casting of Curaga – was disorienting and caused him to move and act in a loopy fashion.

In the safety of the Hideout, Jak and Daxter confidently approached Torn, who had his back to them on the far side of the table. Daxter grinned and jumped onto the table, announcing, "The 'termination trio' has returned! One barbecued ammo dump served up hot!"

Torn, more focused on examining with his curved knife, simply rolled his eyes and said nothing.

Then Jak spoke up to change the subject. "We saw something odd while torching that ammo," he reported. "The Baron's guards were giving barrels full of Eco to a group of Metal Heads!"

Torn looked over his shoulder in surprise. "Really?" This finally caused him to face the group properly. "The Shadow will be very interested to hear that."

Alex, having been hanging on the side of a bunk bed until now, stepped forward at last. "No, it gets better," he said in a strained voice, a hand on the side of his head. "The Heartless were between them. Acting as a sort of... mediator."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Jak asked him.

Torn scowled. "It means the Shadow will be extremely interested to hear this."

"Y'know," Daxter interrupted, "so far, your gigs have been easier than stealing grass from a sleeping yakow."

Alexander and Jak shook their heads disapprovingly, but Torn was amused. "You and the rodent want to start proving yourselves?" he said with a chuckle. "One of our... 'suppliers' needs his payment delivered. A bag of Eco ore. Take the Zoomer parked out back and drive it to the Hip Hog Heaven saloon in South Town. Ask for Krew; he'll be there. And don't let the Baron's patrols stop you."

All three of the adventurers soaked in the details, but Daxter was doing so with a comically serious air about him, his eyes darting left and right suspiciously as if there would be potential eavesdroppers in the pipework.

"By the way," Torn added, turning his back on them, "when you get there, pump Krew for information. He's wired into the city and may know what the Baron and Even are up to."

"You can count on us!" Daxter declared confidently.

Torn wasn't impressed. "Are you still here?"

Daxter led the group out of the Hideout, far more enthused by the prospect of a "serious" mission. He was quick to point out the parked Zoomer near the bend in the alley's path. Strapped to it was a rather large cloth bag which bulged with the solid material stuffed inside it.

Alex shook his head to try and steady himself. "As soon as the KG see the package, they'll raise an alert," he told Jak and Daxter. "Blockades will come up, soldiers and Zoomers will chase after us, and the Heartless will start appearing all over the place."

Jak placed a hand on the Zoomer, giving Alex a confused look. "So how do we get through them?"

It took Alex a moment, but then he came up with an idea. "You get up on the Zoomer and race through them as fast as you can. I'll stay on the ground and do my best to clear the blockades ahead of you."

"Wait," Daxter cut in, "you're gonna get ahead of us on the ground?"

Alexander grinned. "Why not?"

"Whatever," Jak growled, climbing onto the Zoomer and firing up its engine. "Lets move."

As Jak brought the Zoomer into the high hover zone, Alexander rushed out into the streets using his Quick Run ability, managing to get far ahead of them before Jak could even accelerate.

Jak quickly turned onto the main Slums thoroughfare and weaved between lanes of traffic at high speed, making sure to follow the general direction of the symbol on his minimap, which was placed southward and in the shape of a blue wine glass.

Soon, he managed to head south enough to the point where the Slums and the Industrial Sector met. There was a red barrier cutting a line between the two zones, but it faded right before Jak's Zoomer reached it. Finally, they were moving into another section of the city.

When they crossed the border, though, the city alarm came on, sending a repeating blare throughout the entire city. Jak immediately dropped the Zoomer into the low hover zone to avoid traffic and put the pedal to the metal.

As he made a left turn into a large square clearing of the metal street, a turret suddenly popped up to life to his right and aimed at him. Jak quickly swerved to avoid a flurry of shots that soon followed.

All of a sudden, a golden bolt of lightning crashed through a large Krimzon Guard vehicle that had been stationed up ahead of the protagonist. The vehicle exploded, damaging a number of surrounding KG vehicles and causing them to crash as well. Just in front of the wreckage was Alexander, who quickly climbed over them and started Quick Running ahead once more.

Jak brought the Zoomer higher and lower quickly to hop over the wreck without losing too much momentum. He was then forced to make a sharp right turn as the street swerved around between two large industrial buildings. Several small KG Zoomers flew toward them, and one of them tried firing a few shots, but Jak was able to fly past them quickly enough to avoid getting hit.

A few more corners and another sharp U-turn later, and Jak was barreling down into the largest clearing in the entire Industrial Sector. The greatest number of civilians and KG soldiers were there, and Jak was forced to rise up into traffic in order to avoid crashing into people who would slow him down.

On the right side of the far clearing was a narrow path leading out of the sector, but it was guarded by another vehicle blockade. The communicator hummed to life as Torn shouted at him to evade, but Jak couldn't hear him over the volley of shots that the vehicles commenced.

But then another Lightning blast cut through the central vehicle, sending all of them crashing and burnign to the ground in the resulting explosion. Without losing any momentum, Jak was able to fly over them and into the official South Town area.

The street was now much wider and clearer, and the path was made of gray stone instead of black steel. The alarm was still blaring, but the path was too wide for any more blockades.

Jak and Daxter flew out into the semicircular port, crossing the large expanse of water in order to reach the saloon on the other side. Unfortunately, Alexander was forced to stop and start moving along the land path around the water. He couldn't swim as fast as he could Quick Run, after all.

Meanwhile, Jak found himself dodging bullets and ramming KG Zoomers that headed toward him over the water. He swerved and kept changing hover zones in order to keep moving and stay hard to hit.

As he neared the large neon sign with the animatronic Hip Hog, though, the KG started to give up the chase. By the time Jak disembarked in front of the saloon's door and Alex had finally reached him through the long way around, the city's alert status had been dropped altogether, and the alarm had ceased.

"Not bad," Jak said simply, hauling the bag off the Zoomer and holding it firmly in his hand as they walked through the door to the saloon.

Alex grimaced as he followed through the door. In his entire time as a KG officer, he'd avoided coming to this place entirely. Besides it being a shady place to hang around and a source of bad reputation at the office, there was something from the game he just didn't want to see in reality here.

Still, he took the time to drink in the familiar sight as they walked in. It was about what you'd expect from a cheap, seedy restaurant in the real world. It was square-shaped overall with several tables dug into the walls on either side. To the side of the door was a sort of arcade game, in the center was a makeshift arena with a pole sticking up through the center, and at the back was a bar. Lewd pictures, Metal Head trophies, and lots of neon lights covered the walls, especially near the roof.

The only person visible at the moment was a dark-skinned, green-eyed man with a gray hair and a goatee. The man was obviously dressed for battle, with armored plating made out of Metal Head plates covering him from head to toe. Even the man's rifle had a Metal Head skull at the business end.

As they approached, Daxter smiled and said, "Let me handle this, Jak. Watch my finesse and style."

Daxter jumped off, and Jak said, "Don't forget to ask–"

"Everything's cool," Daxter declared to no one in particular, cutting Jak off. "Nobody panic. Hey, big guy." He then stepped through the armored man's legs and looked up, expecting to see who they'd come to see.

He did see. Finesse and style were thrown out the window as Daxter's jaw dropped and his eyes went as wide as they could go.

The man was floating down in a hover-chair, and for good reason. The chair had been made with a rounded back and seat, and the man filled those curves and then some. This man was unbelievably fat. His body was nothing more than rolls and rolls of disgusting flesh, eating up his neck, plumping up his face, dragging his ears into a drooped position, and stretching his clothes obscenely. The man's pants looked like a big green tarp stretched around his ballooning lower body that was still tearing it at the seams. Not only that, but the man looked absolutely greasy, staining his green shirt brown and making the light shine off his doughy skin.

Alexander instantly froze up and gagged. This was definitely Krew, the most disgusting single person ever imagined. And he was so much worse in person.