Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Daxter didn’t know how he let Jak ‘talk’ him into these kinds of things. Every day, every single day, the slightly older boy would somehow convince him to do something he didn’t want to do. Whether it was running around the hot and humid jungle, or teasing the Lurker sharks, or climbing some craggy rock face, Jak could get him to do it. Daxter would have been content to just bum around on the beach with his best friend, but Jak thrived on adventure. It wasn’t a good day unless they were almost eaten alive or chased by wumpbees or the dashing young green-blonde had saved Daxter as if he were some sort of damsel in distress. All Jak would have to do was pin him with those enormous sea-blue eyes of his and Daxter would be in peril before he could say ‘Samos the Sage’ three times fast.

And now he was being dragged to Misty Island, a place that Daxter wouldn’t admit had haunted some of his scarier nightmares. Why did it have to be Misty Island? Why not…Misty Hill or Misty Plain or something that wasn’t surrounded on all sides by a watery death? Just the thought of all the Lurker sharks that could be swimming around underneath them…waiting for the perfect moment to strike…ugh…

“Ya know, sometimes I really hate you,” the orange-haired teen groaned miserably after he had emptied breakfast, lunch, and dinner into the sea. He squawked as he slipped when he tried to get back to his seat only to end up falling overboard and was glad that he hadn’t landed anywhere near the mess. Daxter scrabbled back into the boat with a helping hand from Jak, who was chuckling warmly but not in a cruel way. “Yea, yea, laugh it up. You’re just jealous of my elegance and grace.”

Jak’s smile only grew the more Daxter fussed, and it was times like this that the younger boy really wished he could know exactly what Jak was thinking. He often wondered what Jak would sound like if he ever actually spoke, but for whatever reason the older boy chose to remain silent. Old Samos said there was nothing wrong with Jak’s voice – he could laugh and he tended to shout whenever he got really into sparring out on the beach, but he never said a word. It used to bug Daxter when they were younger because he was always such a chatterbox; he had sometimes felt like his conversations with Jak were rather…one-sided. But he had grown used to it, and Jak’s silence had never been a real problem. Everyone understood Jak – he was just so expressive. He didn’t need words when he could talk with his hands and his eyes. Sometimes his eyes were even too expressive. Daxter was glad when that fond blue gaze moved off of him and settled back on the foggy horizon.

It wasn’t long before they reached the conveniently placed dock at Misty Island, and Daxter glanced around warily while Jak secured the boat. Misty Island had been off limits for as long as Daxter could remember, but maybe the villagers had used it at some point. Why else would there be a dock here? If that was the case, then Daxter could definitely see why this place had been abandoned. The island was a dump – a dark, creepy dump, and he hoped that they wouldn’t be staying for very long. Jak, of course, had no problems with their surroundings. He hopped off of the dock with an excited perk to his step and looked around with wide eyes. Daxter sighed under his breath, shot a last glance to the hazy image of Sandover Village behind him, and resolutely followed Jak.

“Hey! Uh, Jak? Old Green Stuff told us not to come here,” the younger boy pointed out half-heartedly. Jak didn’t even bother to deign his comment with a look. He just kept going, and Daxter cautiously followed after him.

The island didn’t get any more interesting the further they went, or at least not to Daxter. He chewed nervously on his fingernails as he spotted the eighth pile of miscellaneous bones and surreptitiously scooted closer to Jak. Unfortunately, because he had been paying so much attention to their surroundings, he hadn’t noticed that the other boy had stopped and ended up running into his back. Jak prevented him from falling over with a steadying hand on his shoulder. They had stopped in front of a round Precursor door, the same as could be found at the temple in the jungle. Jak was smiling down at him with that Look that usually meant that Daxter’s life was about to be in peril. His ears drooped just at the thought of it, but the pathetic look on his face only cause Jak to laugh.

“What are we doing here, anyway, Jak?” Daxter whined plaintively as they went through the door and entered a wide, round empty space surrounded on all sides by tall walls of Precursor metal. The metallic echo of their footsteps on the cool, orange material rang throughout the space and sent a shiver down Daxter’s spine. Directly across from them was another round door, but Jak ducked to the side and climbed up at rickety wooden ramp to a second platform Daxter hadn’t noticed before. With some hesitation and another couple of glances over his shoulder, the young boy followed.

“This place gives me the creeps…” Daxter muttered under his breath as he looked around. Again his inattentiveness cost him, and he went tumbling to the floor as he tripped over something underfoot. With a scowl he pushed himself onto all fours and looked to see what had decided to get in his way. “Huh?” An odd cylinder-shaped object with strange markings sat innocently on the floor, and Daxter picked it up to get a better look at it. It was made out of the same orange Precursor metal that made up the walls and floor of this place. “Oh, stupid Precursor junk…”

Still holding the mysterious object, Daxter headed toward Jak to see what had caught his attention. The taller boy was staring down at what appeared to be a vat of dark, blackish-purple…jelly of some sort. It seemed to be churning with a life of its own, because there was certainly no wind to move it, and strange strings of purplish light came off of it in wisps and curls. Daxter had never seen anything like it. “Euch. What is that dark ooze? It sure don’t look friendly.”

When Jak merely shrugged, Daxter turned his admittedly faulty attention away from the pool of liquid death and focused back on the strange object in his hands. Best to focus on things that didn’t look like they would kill him on contact. “The sage yaps on about the Precursors who built this place all the time. ‘Where did they go? Why did they build this crap?’” he said in a poor imitation of his least favorite person, as he carelessly threw the strange object over his shoulder. It was Jak’s quick reflexes that prevented it from clanging noisily to the floor. Much to the older teen’s amazement, the glyphs on the objects surface began to glow a soft red as soon as he touched it – the same hue of Red Eco. He quickly glanced up to see if Daxter had noticed, but the younger boy was still absorbed in his rant.

“Now, I like Precursor Orbs and Power Cells as much as the next guy, but if you ask me? They must have been real losers…” As he said this, Daxter finally looked over his shoulder and noticed that the Precursor artifact had started to glow. More excited than he’d been since he’d set foot on this forsaken speck of dirt, he rushed to his friend’s side to get a better look. “Wow! How did you do that?”

Jak shrugged helplessly, staring down at the Precursor item as if it would suddenly reveal the answers. Before Daxter could say anything else, however, they were startled out of their amazement by an earth-shaking thump. The biggest Lurker Daxter had ever seen had just appeared out of nowhere and landed behind Jak, and he did not look happy to see them. The orange-haired teen immediately shuffled behind Jak as though the scrawny seventeen year old would be able to protect him from the seven foot tall blue-furred monstrosity clothed in the bones of its victims. “Jak, I think we’re in trouble!”

The Lurker let out an ear-splitting roar and swung its bone club around menacingly before it began to charge. Jak glanced down at the object in his hands and then back to the Lurker before an idea formed in his mind. The object had the same glow to it as Red Eco, so maybe it would behave similarly. Anything was better than standing there and waiting to get pummeled to death, and he had to protect Daxter. With that thought in mind, Jak ran toward the Lurker head on and threw the Precursor artifact at it as hard as he could. Jak didn’t see much of the resulting explosion – if he had, he would have noticed that the stuff that flew out of the container looked much more like the strange ooze in the pool than Red Eco. But Jak didn’t see much as the force of the explosion threw him backwards. He soared past Daxter and disappeared into the vat of ooze with a sound that sounded more like a slurp than a splash.

“Jak!” Daxter crouched at the edge of the pool and looked in, his dark blue eyes glancing around wildly in the hopes of spotting some sign of his friend. This was not supposed to happen! Bad things like this weren’t supposed to happen while Jak was around! Jak kept the bad things at bay! That’s why they never got eaten or stung or fell to their deaths – because Jak was always there to take care of them. He couldn’t be…gone! “Jak! Can ya here me, buddy? Speak to me, just this once!”

The teen shrieked when a hand suddenly shot out of the horrible ooze, and the scream only got more shrill when he got a closer look at the hand. The skin was so pale that it was bordering on grey and the fingers ended in sharp, lethal looking ebony claws. A second hand appeared and joined the first to clutch the edge of the pool, and the claws struggled to pull whatever the hands were attached to out of the vat. It was like some vision out of a nightmare, and Daxter was paralyzed with fear. He didn’t notice that those hands were wearing a very familiar pair of gloves. He just knew that he was scared and, this time, Jak wasn’t around to make everything better.

“S-stay back!” Daxter managed to squeak as more of the body pried itself from the ooze. The hands were followed by a pale pair of muscular arms, and then by broad shoulders. The head of the strange creature was bowed so that all Daxter could see was a long, silver mane of hair. He thought he could see twin black horns peaking from that thick hair, but he prayed that he was wrong. Then came the feet, one after the other, both tipped in claws that looked just as deadly as the ones on its hands. Strange purple energy, like little tongues of lightning, leaped off of the creature and snapped at the air around it, and the hair on the back of Daxter’s neck began to stand on end. He was going to die here. He was going to die on this dump of an island, probably in the most gruesome way imaginable, and he hadn’t even kissed someone yet.

Then the creature lifted its head, and Daxter’s world was turned upside down. This…this was Jak. If the fact that this washed out horror show and his best friend were wearing the same exact outfit didn’t clue him in, then this would have. Daxter would recognize that face anywhere. Sure, he was about fifty shades lighter and had weird growths coming out of his skull, and his eyes were two dark, soulless pits of doom that seemed to go on for all eternity, and were those fangs? But it was still Jak. And Jak was looking right at him. And it was hard to tell if it was a ‘What just happened, Daxter?’ look or a ‘I’m going to kill you!’ look when he couldn’t see any emotions in those disturbing eyes. But this was Jak he was talking about. Jak would never hurt him…Jak was his best friend. They were pals. Buddies. Brothers from another mother. Just because he had suddenly grown pointy didn’t change that.

“Jak…?” he offered tentatively and tried not to flinch when those black eyes narrowed. “You alright there old buddy, old pal? You took quite a tumble there…” He opened his arms wide in what he hoped was a non-threatening gesture and stepped a hair closer.

If anything, now Jak just looked confused, but Daxter took that as a good sign. He stepped even closer, wary of the strange jolts of energy that seemed to reach out for him the closer he got. Jak lifted a hand like he was about to try to ‘say’ something, and it was then that he seemed to notice his rather drastic change for the first time. He lifted his hands in front of his face and wiggled his fingers experimentally, as if he wasn’t sure that they were really his. From there he looked down to his feet, and his eyes widened when he saw that he now had a full set of claws. He quickly patted his hands over the rest of his body looking for anything else that had changed, and he eventually stumbled across the horns that had sprouted from his head. He seemed to grow steadily more panicked the longer this went on, until his black eyes were the size of saucers and he was breathing as if he had just done the training circuit on Geyser Rock three times in a row. Though, if Daxter was honest, it was starting to sound more like growls than anything else, and it was scaring the ever living out of him. Jak was scratching at his horns as if he could somehow pull them out, and if Daxter didn’t stop him then he was going to end up hurting himself.

“Whoa, settle down, big guy,” he said as he stepped forward and grabbed Jak’s hands. The purple energy immediately started crackling against his skin where they touched. Though it wasn’t the agony he thought it would be, it definitely wasn’t comfortable, either. It was kind of like that time that he had tried to channel a Blue Eco vent like Jak and had just gotten a strange jolt and poofy hair instead. Jak bared his fangs and growled – which was a very un-Jak thing to do and Daxter was about to pass out if things didn’t go back to normal in about two seconds – but at least he had stopped trying to claw his own head. Now…they just had to get rid of the claws. And the teeth. And the horns. And get Jak a tan. “We’ll figure this out, whatever…this…is. It’s not so bad. You just won’t be winnin’ any beauty contests any time soon.”

And it really wasn’t so bad, now that Daxter knew that at least Jak was alive and not floating at the bottom of a vat of ooze. It could have been so much worse. This was just a minor mishap. All they had to do was go back to Sandover Village and get Old Green Stuff to - .

Jak shoved Daxter aside unexpectedly, almost causing the younger boy to fall over, and started growling at something that had been behind him. Daxter held his tongue about the rough treatment if only because he didn’t want to take the chance of pissing someone off who had claws that looked as if they were meant for more than decoration. Down below on the first level, the two round Precursor doors had opened and what looked like a small army of Lurkers was glaring up at them with rage and bloodlust in their eyes. Apparently that little explosion from before hadn’t gone unnoticed. Daxter had had his doubts about Jak defeating even just one Lurker; twenty was definitely pushing it, strange Feral Jak or no. Jak didn’t seem to share his growing concern, however. He eyed the slowly approaching Lurkers with something akin to hunger sparking in those soulless black eyes, and Daxter instinctively backed up a step. The Lurkers split up, one group coming up one ramp while the other group came from the opposite direction. They were trapped,, and now they really were going to die.

The first Lurker on the left, which was dressed in bone armor much like the first, charged forward with club in hand. To their right, an unarmored Lurker started to bound forward on all fours. Jak looked from one to the other and back again, and then he rolled his shoulders and waited. Daxter wasn’t entirely sure what happened next. One minute he was standing there muttering a prayer under his breath, and the next he was being splashed with some thick, hot liquid. He squawked and flailed fearing that somehow the dark ooze had gotten on him, but the mess that had splattered on his face and neck and down his chest wasn’t purple. Or black. It was red. And wasn’t that a strange color? There wasn’t anything red around here, or at least Daxter hadn’t noticed it before. He blinked once, twice, and then the scene in front of him came into focus. Two Lurkers lay dead in front of them, their blood pooling underneath their bodies and flowing along the smooth metal back down to the first level. Jak stood above the corpses, his shoulders hunched and his fingers spread. The blood that dripped from his claws seemed to fall in slow motion, and the edges of Daxter’s vision turned grey. The other Lurkers, too, seemed to be in a state of shock, but Daxter was pretty sure he was the only one who fainted.

Chapter Text

When Daxter finally started to awaken, he did so in stages. At first he wasn’t even aware that he was awake. He was just floating alone in a sea of blackness, and he couldn’t move or speak. Eventually, he realized it was so dark because his eyes were closed, but moving and speaking were still out of the question. His thoughts felt like they had been buried under a ton of sand that he couldn’t remove no matter how hard or fast he dug. He could sense what was going on around him now and that, at least, was a bonus. He could hear the waves of the sea rocking gently against the shore somewhere nearby. Something cold and wet – a cloth? – dabbed at his face and neck. Daxter must have gotten sick again. He had never been very good at fighting off illness. Keira must be taking care of him…good old Keira.

The memories of what had happened started to come back to him, but he wasn’t afraid. It all must have been some fever-induced nightmare. He always did get the craziest dreams when he was sick. Jak turning into some terrifying monster and slicng apart Lurkers with his bare claws? Ha! It was more of a comedy than a nightmare. He would have to tell Jak about it as soon as he got better. The older boy would definitely get a kick out of it. He would probably be smug that he had been so badass in Daxter’s dream. Of course, he would leave out all of the parts where he had been cowering behind his friend…

The cloth wiped over his forehead one more time before disappearing, and Daxter struggled to open his eyes. “Keira,” he said, “I had the weirdest dream. Jak was in it. And fifty of the filthiest, mangiest, ugliest Lurker’s you’ve ever seen! We were surrounded! If it hadn’t been for me and my awe-inspiring fighting skills, all would have been lost!”

The chuckle that he heard was definitely not Keira’s. He could have sworn it was Jak’s, but it sounded…different. Rougher, somehow. Maybe he was sick, too? He forced his eyes to open and looked around him blearily, and what he saw made him blanch. He was not in Sandover Village like he had thought he was. The sky was the pale, filmy gray of Misty Island, though it was thankfully brighter than it had been when he had passed out. They appeared to be on the beach sitting in the sand not far away from the dock. He noticed with some embarrassment that he seemed to be laying in Jak’s lap, and it must have been him who was dabbing at his face with something, but he was mentally freaking out too much to move. Because the Jak whose lap he was laying in was not the Jak he had come here with last night. It was the pale, pointy-version of Jak who had sliced through thick Lurker meat like a knife through butter. He could feel those claws brushing against his shoulder where one of Jak’s arms was trapped under his back.

“So…um…not a dream, then, huh?” he offered, twiddling his fingers nervously. This was bad. This was all kinds of bad. Old Green Stuff was going to kill them!

Jak shrugged helplessly and shook his head in a way that was so familiar that Daxter couldn’t help but relax. So what if Jak looked a little…different? And was armed to the teeth, literally. This was still Jak. He could get used to this new face. The eyes were a bit creepy, but they weren’t so bad. Yea, everything would be fine. The two of them would move far, far away so that they would never have to deal with Old Samos’ reaction, and all would be right with the world. He would miss Keira and the other villagers, but living in exile was much more preferable than being killed by a short, green man with a fungus problem. He awkwardly rolled out of the other boy’s lap and sat next to him in the sand. “So, uh…how are ya feelin’, tough guy?”

Jak just gave him a Look (not the excited Look he had had last night, but the 'What kind of question is that' sort of Look) and flicked at his horns with his claws. “Don’t gimme that look! I told you it was a bad idea to come here, but does anyone ever listen to Daxter? Nooooo.”

The pale boy growled at him! Growled at him! The nerve! Daxter stood and place his hands on his nonexistent hips so he could stare down his pointy nose at Jak. He was not the only one possessing a signature Look, and this was the Look his mother used to give him before she got ill whenever he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He had been too young when she had passed to really remember her much, but if he had kept anything from her it had been this Look. Unfortunately he didn’t get to use it very often because it was typically Daxter and Jak who were misbehaving. The older boy’s ears drooped, but Daxter wasn’t sure if that was because he was on the receiving end of a Look or because he was upset that he had actually growled. “Don’t you growl at me! Now sit still so I can get a better look at ya. Maybe we can fix this before Old Green Stuff finds out.”

Jak sighed as Daxter came closer with his head tilted and his chin propped thoughtfully in his hand. He didn’t seem to have changed any from last night. He was still pale, sporting claws and horns, and his eyes were still disturbingly black though now he realized they weren’t exactly…soulless. There were still emotions in them; it was just harder to tell when he couldn’t really see very much of his eyes. The strange purple lightning was also still there and idly crisscrossing over Jak’s body. He remembered last night it had felt like a harsh jolt and he wondered why he hadn’t been affected by it while he was in Jak’s lap. He reached out a tentative hand and gasped when a bit of the energy reached out for him. It felt more like…a puff of air now, if that made any sense. It was gentle. Maybe he had gotten used to it while he’d been unconscious. This was definitely out of his league…

His pale friend jerked his head in the direction of Sandover Village, which could be seen clearly now in the morning light. Daxter didn’t bother to resist the miserable groan that crawled out of his throat. But he supposed Jak was right. They might as well get this over with. Maybe Old Samos was having a good day and wouldn’t knock them over the head with his staff. “Okay, okay. But you do all the talking. I was forced there against my will.”

Jak snorted and shook his head as he stood and brushed the dark sand off of his clothes. The two of them made their way onto the dock and Daxter climbed into the boat while Jak untied the line that had secured it. Soon they were on their way back to Sandover Village, though the sight of Samos’ house was anything but comforting. Jak tried to reassure him, but Daxter did not share in his optimism. No matter that his had been all Jak’s idea, Daxter was still going to end up taking all the blame. He swore the old log had it out for him.

Luckily there were no villagers around when they reached the village. Even Keira wasn’t out working on her Zoomer, so it must have been earlier than they had thought. It certainly made things easier. They didn’t need to make the situation any worse than it was already was by freaking out the entire village. Unfortunately, Samos was an early riser. The two of them peaked through the doorway to see him floating in one of his meditative trances. Daxter jerked his head toward the old man, but Jak quickly shook his head. Neither of them wanted to be the one to break the news to Old Samos. Finally Daxter rolled his eyes and took a tentative step forward. The soft squeak of the floorboards was enough to wrest Samos’ attention, and he spun around to glare at them in all his evergreen fury.

“What in green tarnation do you two want?” he growled.

“We – we was – they was – I was - !” Daxter jumped at the shout and started nervously fidgeting with his hands.

“Don’t tell me!” Samos interrupted. “Instead of heeding my wisdom, the two of you went mucking around in the only place I told you not to go; Misty Island!”

“That’s right! And then we…”

Samos didn’t pay any attention to Daxter’s inane rambling. He was much more interested in the boy who was lurking in his doorway, reluctant to come in. He knew for a fact that that was Jak, but he hadn’t seen Jak like that for a very, very long time. And it had been an older Jak who had had skin as pale as moonlight and horns and claws as black as pitch. Something was definitely not right. If Jak was fated to receive dark powers, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. He would just have to hope that this little mishap wouldn’t drastically alter things from their intended course… “It appears here that our friend, Jak, has taken a bath in a tub filled with Dark Eco.”

Daxter snapped his mouth shut irritably, hating that he had been interrupted not once, but twice. He pointed an accusatory finger up at the old sage. “Look, old man! Are you gonna keep yappin’, or are you gonna help us outta this mess?”

“I’m gonna keep yappin’!” the sage mocked as he came to land on the floor in front of Daxter. “Besides, I couldn’t help you if I wanted to…”

“Whaaaaaat?!” Daxter yelled in horror. Behind him, Jak covered his ears to block out the high-pitched noise. This was not the news the younger boy had wanted to hear. If Old Samos couldn’t fix Jak, then who could?

“There is only one person who has studied Dark Eco long enough to have a chance of returning you to your previous form, Jak. Gold Acheron, the sage. But he lives to the north. Far, far to the north! Nobody has spoken to him for ages. I would teleport you there, but I can’t do that, either. None of the three sages that maintain the other teleported gates have seen fit to turn their ends on for quite a while,” Samos explained, gesturing to the bright blue swirling vortex behind him. Jak and Daxter often used it to head out to Geyser Rock, but Daxter hadn’t realized that it went to other places, too. Figures it wouldn’t work the second they needed it.

“The only other way north is by foot through the Fire Canyon. But its volcanic soil is hot enough to melt Precursor metal. You can’t just walk through it!”

“But you could fly over it – if you had a Zoomer equipped with a heat sheild!”

Jak jumped at the sound of Keira’s voice and turned to see that she was standing right behind him. He backed up a couple of steps and ran a nervous hand through his silver hair, not sure what the sage’s daughter would make of his altered appearance. But true to form, Keira seemed much more excited about the prospect of mechanics than she did over Jak’s new look. “I just happen to be working on such a thing at this very moment,” she continued smugly. She strode further into the room, completely ignoring Daxter who was waggling his eyebrows at her suggestively. Jak whacked him over the head to get him to stop. “All I would need are twenty Power Cells to give it enough energy to withstand the Canyon’s heat. Isn’t that right, Daddy?”

“Yes, Keira, that might work. But where are these two knuckleheads going to get twenty Power Cells?” the sage asked with a sour glance toward It was hard for Jak to look ‘innocent’ with horns growing out of his head, and Daxter just looked pathetic.

“From the villagers! Most of them have a Power Cell or two stashed away somewhere. And even if they aren’t willing to just give them away, greasing their palms with a few Precursor Orbs should do the trick. And I bet there are even more of them out in the wilds just waiting for some brave adventurer to find.”

As she said this, the young girl leaned toward Jak and fluttered her eyelashes at him. The older boy couldn’t help but grin at the compliment, fangs and all. Keira did seem startled by the teeth, but she still wasn’t freaking out, and Jak’s respect for the strong-willed girl grew a little bit more. Daxter had been taking things pretty well, too, actually. He was surprised that his orange-haired little friend hadn’t passed out sooner. Even Jak had been stunned at how easily those Lurkers had gone down. He hadn’t meant to…kill them…He had just wanted to keep them away from Daxter. But the punches and kicks had morphed into…into deadly attacks with lethal claws. Before he knew it, there had been three bodies on the floor, and two of them had been ripped to shreds. He hadn’t really had time to think about it before the rest of the Lurkers had descended upon him. After that, he had been more concerned with waking Daxter up than anything else. He still didn’t want to think about it…

“Well, we’ve got the brave adventurer, at least,” Daxter boasted, striking a ‘heroic’ pose.

“Brave adventurer?” Old Samos asked incredulously. “You two couldn’t find your way out of the village without training! Before you do anything else, you better go through the warp gate and get some practice on Geyser Rock. Now get out of here before I turn you both into ferns!”

Jak jumped in first, eager to get away from Samos’ wrath. Daxter was quick to follow. They landed on a familiar patch of grass on Geyser Rock. “I think that went pretty well,” Daxter said with his hands on his hips. “Old Green Stuff didn’t hit me even once!”

The older teen ran a hand through his hair, cautious of his new horns, and smiled weakly. He didn’t understand the relationship between Samos and Daxter. Daxter wasn’t a bad kid. He was a little lazy and sometimes he could get a bit mouthy, but out of the two of them Daxter was typically the word of reason. He tried to keep Jak from doing anything that was too dangerous, and Jak knew that Daxter always came with him to make sure Jak was safe even though the younger boy often felt like he was useless. Yet all Samos ever did was put Daxter down, insult him, and call him names. There was really no stopping Samos, so Jak tried to cheer up his friend as much as possible whenever he came out of the old man’s hut with drooping ears and slumped shoulders. He wished Samos could see what effect his words had on Daxter, but he didn’t care enough to look past the sass and constant jokes.

“Uh, Earth to Jak? Hello? You in there, buddy?” Jak snapped to attention when he finally noticed the hand waving in front of his face. Daxter was standing not a foot away from him, looking up at him with bright, excited eyes, and Jak started to worry. There wasn’t much around Sandover Village – or on Geyser Rock – that excited Daxter. “Come on. Ya gotta show me some of those cool moves of yours!”

He was excited about learning to fight? Jak hadn’t really expected Daxter to do anything while they were on Geyser Rock. Maybe make jokes about Jak’s skills while he practiced, but never join in himself. When Jak had first started practicing martial arts, mostly for the fun of it, Daxter had declined his invitation to join him with a raised eyebrow and a, “I’m a lover, not a fighter, Jak.” He would cheer Jak on when he practiced out on Geyser Rock and he admired his skills, but he never joined in himself. He couldn’t see why Daxter would want to learn now, of all times. He loved his friend, but Daxter was much more likely to run away yelling than put up his fists and fight. His incredulity must have been as plain as day on his face, because now the younger boy was scowling up at him.

“Whaaaaat?”

Jak shrugged in a way that Daxter knew meant, “Well, how do you expect me to react to that? You’ve never been interested before.”

“Yea, but this is different! Who knows what kinda nasties are lurking outside of the village. It’s bad enough when I get dragged into the jungle and suddenly everything wants to eat me!” Daxter groused emphatically. “This ain’t gonna be like a stroll along the beach. Somebody’s gotta watch your back to make sure ya don’t hurt yourself. Enter the dashing young hero, Daxter, here to save the day!”

The older teen rolled his eyes in amusement and folded his arms over his chest as Daxter did his best to look ‘heroic.’ But he supposed he had a point. There was no way Daxter was going to let him go wherever ‘far, far to the north’ ended up being without him, and it would be better for both of them if Daxter at least knew how to defend himself. It certainly couldn’t hurt any, showing him a few moves. It would be easier if Jak could spar with him – experience was the best way to learn, in his opinion, but there was no way he was going to fight Daxter while he had these claws. Ripping the Lurkers apart had been an accident, at least the first two, anyway. He wasn’t going to allow himself to have an accident with his best friend.

They passed the morning training on Geyser Rock. Jak was actually surprised at how well his friend was doing, considering he had never done any of this before. He had never been particularly graceful, so Jak started with posture and moved on from there. Daxter was much better at punching than kicking, though he really wasn’t particularly good at that either. A breakthrough came when Daxter, bored and frustrated, had stumbled across an old stick and had started swinging it around. It was about the size of Samos’ staff and just as sturdy. He had gotten the insane mental image of Daxter whacking Samos over the head with a staff, and that’s when the idea had hit him.

Daxter did much better when he had a weapon in his hands. It made sense. Daxter hated pain (not that Jak didn’t, but Dax was terrified of it) and did everything he could to avoid it. Punches were supposed to hurt the opponent more than they hurt you, but Daxter was still new to it and punching a Lurker’s skull would probably hurt no matter how long you’d been practicing. With a weapon, Daxter wouldn’t have to get up close and personal with whatever they met on their journey. Daxter was surprisingly graceful with his stick. He felt more confident using it, and it definitely showed.

When they were both exhausted, they finally stopped. Jak dragged Daxter into a headlock and started ruffling his hair. He grinned viciously as Daxter laughed and flailed, but it wasn’t long before Daxter recovered enough of his wits to fight back. The young boy immediately reached for Jak’s sensitive ribs and started tickling without mercy. The older boy couldn’t fight back with his fingers tipped to lethal points and he was reluctant to even grab the other boy to shove him off, and Daxter fought dirty enough to gladly take advantage of this. Jak toppled over into the grass with a coarse laugh, and Daxter immediately descended upon him. When it came to physical prowess, Jak always won, so it was nice to finally be able to have the pale teen at his mercy. When he felt that he had tortured him enough, Daxter stood and smirked down at Jak, who was clutching his ribs as if he were in pain but had a goofy, toothy smile on his face.

“Had enough yet, tough guy? I knew you were no match for…The Daxinator!”

Jak snorted and shook his head at his friends antics as he rose to stand. He reached out to ruffle his friend’s hair again, but in an affectionate way. Daxter smiled happily before shaking the hand out of his hair and sauntering toward the warp gate, stick in hand. “Yea, yea. We best get back before Old Green Stuff changes his mind about turning us into plants. Can you see me in green? Yeuch!”

The taller teen when through the gate first and landed in Samos’ hut with no problems. Daxter, on the other hand, came flying through the gate and landed painfully on the floor and Jak had to stifle a laugh while he helped his friend to his feet.

“Well, if it isn’t my brave adventurers. Certainly took you long enough,” Samos glared down at the two of him from his place floating near the roof of his hut. He swooped down to take a better look at them and raised a bushy eyebrow at Daxter’s new accessory. Had the scrawny runt actually been training? The boy was certainly holding himself more confidently than Samos had ever seen him, and he seemed just as tired as Jak. Interesting. “Good training, boys,” he offered, and he inwardly smirked when Daxter’s jaw dropped at the compliment. “But that’s nothing compared to the challenges that lie ahead!”

“Ah, they’re no problem! We got the moves, eh, Jak?” Daxter enthused, nudging Jak in the ribs with his elbow.

“Well, since you’re so confident, let’s put your moves to the test,” Samos quipped. “Something serious is happening. There appears to be quite a lot of Lurker activity on Misty Island. I can see them bombarding the Precursor Silo from my lookout tower! If the Lurkers open it up and release the Dark Eco, we could all end up running around looking as ridiculous as him!” He gestured vaguely to Jak with his staff and ignored the boy’s look of indignation. “Boys, it’s time for you to prove your worth. Take the boat back to Misty Island, get to the top of that Precursor Silo, and take out that cannon!”

“Wait a minute! We are NOT going back to Misty Island!” Daxter exclaimed with no small amount of fear. Misty Island was the absolute last place he wanted to be. Just look at what had happened the last time they had been there! But Jak was giving him a Look and Samos looked like he really was contemplating turning him into a bush. All he wanted to do was get ‘far, far to the north’ as soon as possible so that he could fix his buddy, but he supposed they had a point. It would kind of suck if the whole world got flooded and everyone turned pale and pointy. “Are we…?”

“Yes, you are. Now get out of here!”

Chapter Text

“Sheesh!” Daxter yelled as soon as the two boys were out of earshot of Samos’ hut and heading down to the boat. “What a grouch! Couldn’t even spare us a little time to catch some Z’s before throwing us back into peril!” But hopefully this time would be different. Daxter wasn’t completely helpless this time, and Jak had proven that he could definitely take care of himself. They just had to keep an eye out for any nefarious pools of Dark Eco and make sure they didn’t trip into them, and they would be back home before he knew it. And then maybe he could finally catch a nap…Unfortunately, being unconscious was not the same as being asleep, and after fearing for his life all night and training all morning he was feeling pretty beat. Even Jak didn’t seem quite as eager for adventure as he would when he was at 100%, but he didn’t let that stop him.

This second trip to Misty Island passed in silence. Daxter was stealing his nerves for what he feared lay ahead and was too preoccupied to say anything. But the trip passed without a hitch, and son the two of them were padding along the familiar dark beach of the island. It was just as deserted as before; however, because Daxter now knew the Lurkers were out there, the lack of them just made him all the more nervous. Had Jak taken care of them all, or were they lying in wait somewhere ready to ambush them? Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, they didn’t have to wait long to find out where the Lurkers were.

They were on their way to the far side of the island that they hadn’t explored the night before when they hear the grunting and growling of Lurkers nearby. Jak pressed a finger against his lips to show that they needed to be quiet, but it wasn’t necessary. Daxter was not in any hurry to attract the attention of Lurkers, and there were a lot of Lurkers up ahead. They hid behind a stone and watched them curiously. They seemed to be gathered for something, but what…?

Daxter gasped when two people suddenly popped out of nowhere in poofs of purple smoke in front of the Lurkers, and Jak slapped a hand over his mouth to make sure he kept silent. They were two elves, like Jak and Daxter, but they were markedly different. For one, they were floating in midair like Old Samos tended to. The most startling thing about them, however, was the fact that they were blue. A sickly, grey-looking kind of blue, at that. In fact, it was kind of similar to the pale shade that Jak had turned, if a hair darker. The two teens exchanged a confused look and waited to see what would happen.

“Continue your search for artifacts and Eco,” said the male elf in a voice that had a disturbing echoing quality to it. He clutched at his chest and took a deep, rasping breath before continuing. “If the locals possess Precursor items…you know what to do.”

“Deal harshly with anybody who strays from the village,” his female companion said in a voice that was strangely clear compared to that of the man’s. “We will attack it in due time…”

Attack the village? Busting open a Precursor Silo to destroy the whole world was one thing, but that was just making it personal! Daxter turned to see what Jak’s thoughts on the matter were, but Jak had slipped from their hiding placing and was gesturing for him to come over. The two of them crept away from the Lurkers and the strange elves undetected and continued heading toward the far side of the island. “You heard what the Tattooed Wonder said, Jak,” Daxter whispered, referring to the woman who seemed to have colored two thirds of her face black. “They’re gonna attack the village! We gotta go back and tell Old Samos pronto!”

Jak should his head quickly and pointed above them. Daxter could just barely see a rickety wooden platform constructed over the Precursor Silo they had explored last night. If he squinted, he could just barely make out the shape of a cannon. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any Lurkers up here. Hopefully they were all still occupied. “Okay, destroy the cannon and prevent the world from being flooded with horrible dark ooze, then go warn Samos about the impending apocalypse! Let’s just hurry it up before those fuzzy, purple creeps come back!”

Taking out the cannon was easy without any Lurkers to contend with. Daxter might have actually be a little disappointed he didn’t get to try out his staff if he hadn’t been so worried about being caught or about their coming doom. The Lurkers sure would be pissed when they realized that their cannon had been destroyed. He had to wonder who those two elves were, though. Why were they grey, like Jak? They hadn’t had horns or claws or black eyes like Jak did, so were they grey for the same reason or was it some weird skin condition? Why were the Lurkers listening to them? Lurkers weren’t that bright and they didn’t like elves, so it didn’t make sense for them to be taking orders from a pair of them. Finally, why did the elves want to destroy the village and flood the world with Dark Eco? Jak looked kind of cool, but Daxter was sure those claws just got annoying after a while. And he was starting to miss Jak’s lemon-lime hair and deep blue eyes.

By the time they got back to Sandover Village, the sun was starting to set and Daxter couldn’t keep from yawning. He had been awake for far too long, and he just wanted to curl up in his little cot in Jak’s house and go to sleep to the sound of his uncle’s obnoxious snores. Instead he had to deliver more bad news to Old Green Stuff, and he had a feeling that the old man wouldn’t take it nearly as well as he had this morning. With no small amount of trepidation, Daxter tried to enter the hut as quietly as possible – only to step on the squeakiest floorboard in the entire building. Samos whirled around to glare at him.

“It look you long enough! You two act like the world isn’t in peril!”

“Yea, uh, about that-.” Daxter tried to speak but the Gren Sage was quick to cut him off.

“So you’ve destroyed the cannon?”

“Yes, but-.” The orange-haired teen failed yet again to interject.

“Then I don’t want to see either of you until you’ve collected all the Power Cells! I am trying to conduct delicate research and I can’t do that with you yapping away!” With that, Samos turned back to the plant he was studying, and tried to ignore the two boys he could tell hadn’t left like he had asked them to. A deep, menacing growl behind him caused him to rethink that plan. A glance over his shoulder revealed a Jak who honestly looked ready to jump across the hut and attack him. The sage wasn’t sure if it was simply because the black eyes and horns seemed to make even Jak’s happiest expressions look slightly demonic or if the boy really was that angry. He sincerely hoped it was the former, because the latter would present a problem. Jak never got mad. Frustrated, yes. Annoyed, maybe. But never angry. To see such a violent expression on the young boy’s face now was worrisome. The Dark Eco had affected more than just his appearance. Best to diffuse the situation before it got out of hand. “Fine. What is it, Daxter?”

“The Lurkers want to destroy the village!”

Well, that changed everything. “What in blue blazes are you blathering on about?”

Daxter rolled his eyes and cross his arms over his scrawny chest Now he wanted to listen. “The Lurkers on Misty Island are plannin’ on attacking the village! We heard ‘em talkin’ about it, didn’t we, Jak?”

Jak seemed to have calmed down enough to give a shaky nod, but he was distracted. He had disturbed himself with how uncharacteristically angry he had gotten. He didn’t approve of Samos ignoring Daxter and treating him like he was some sort of nuisance, not one bit, but that didn’t warrant the sudden urge he’d had to sink his new claws into his mentor’s face. And this hadn’t been the first time he’d felt such rage. He had felt it back on Misty Island when he had torn into all of those Lurkers and, if he was honest with himself, it had been bubbling under the surface ever since. He hadn’t known what to do about it, though, so he had pushed it to the side. It would go away as soon as they cured him…assuming he could be cured.

“You stumbled across a couple of Lurkers cordially discussing their plans to annihilate the village? Why do I find that hard to believe?” the old sage asked sarcastically. While he didn’t necessarily doubt the claim that the Lurkers wanted to destroy the village, he did have serious doubts about the Lurker’s ability to mobilize and launch an actual attack. However, their actions on Misty Island had been eerily coordinated and well thought-out as of late. He would have never previously thought the barbaric Lurkers had the wherewithal to try and break open a Precursor Silo.

“If you don’t wanna believe us, fiiiine. But don’t come crawlin’ to me when the Lurkers are wreckin’ the place!” Daxter spat, finally fed up with Samos’ attitude for one day. You try to warn a guy of impending doom, and this is how they treat you! He turned toward the door with a huff and tried to strut out with as much dignity as possible. “Come on, Jak – we’re outta here. Tall, dark, and wheezy and that tattooed chick probably wanna destroy the village to get rid of this guy.”

Those didn’t sound like the descriptions of Lurkers – at least, none that Samos had ever encountered. “Wait just a minute. Who else did you see on Misty Island?”

Daxter was sorely tempted to just ignore the old man and walk out. If there was one guy on the entire planet that he could maybe admit to completely loathing, it was Samos the Green Eco Sage. He was pretty sure the feeling must be mutual. Why else would the old log treat him worse than the mud caked on the bottom of his oversized green feet? He only put up with the sage because Samos and Jak were close. Jak, for some unfathomable reason, sort of looked up to Samos, and Samos treated Jak like the nephew he had never wanted but was stuck with and secretly actually liked. They were a lot closer than Jak was to his own uncle, and who was Daxter to deny Jak more family? His family had taken Daxter in, after all. And Daxter supposed he couldn’t afford to be petty when the fate of everyone he knew (the whole village) and loved (his best friend, and that was about it. Keira, too, he guessed) was at stake. He stopped in the door way and shot the sage the dirtiest glare he could manage. “Yea, we saw someone. There were two elves there tellin’ the Lurkers what to do. Real creeps, too. The guy was about yay high with a scraggly goatee and one of the ugliest mugs I’ve ever seen. Um…white hair? Claws? Grey-blue skin? Sunken, yellow eyes and sounded like he was about to drop any second? Ring any bells?”

“No. I don’t know anyone ugly enough to match that description,” the sage couldn’t think of a single person who looked like that. He had never heard of elves with discolored skin who weren’t sages, and he certainly couldn’t be referring to the Blue Eco Sage.

“Well, the chick he was with was pretty hot,” Daxter added with a leer. “The tattoos were kind of a turn off, but you shoulda seen the chest on that babe. If she wasn’t evil, I mighta-. Ow! Hey! You were thinking it, too!”

Jak had whacked Daxter over the head, again, and was frowning down at him. They had much more important things to worry about than the body of some lady who was much older than them and homicidal to boot.

“Hrumph. And you’re sure that’s what you saw?” Samos asked skeptically as he looked expectantly at Jak, who quickly nodded. Things were even more serious than he had previously thought. It made much more sense now. The Lurkers were more coordinated than before because they were being ordered by elves, but why were the Lurkers following their orders? Who were these odd-looking strangers and why did they want to attack the village? The fact that they had tried to break open a Precursor Silo full of Dark Eco was a clue, but Samos hoped that he was wrong about where that clue was leading his mind. The old sage stroked his beard thoughtfully as he tried to puzzle out what to do. He highly doubted they would be able to hold off an actual attack from the Lurkers. The villagers wouldn’t go down without a fight, he didn’t doubt that, but they didn’t stand much of a chance with people like the Mayor and that odd bird woman.

“Uh, Samos? What’re we gonna do?” Daxter asked when the silence seemed to stretch on for too long.

“Give me time to think!” Samos snapped irritably. He was too old for this! Could he go one day without Daxter bringing him some sort of bad news? “Go home before you collapse on my floor. You both look like something a Yakow chewed and spat out. We’ll settle this tomorrow.”

Daxter was more than happy to leave. He was dead tired and he wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t slept in two days or because he’d had to deal with Samos more than usual. He was glad it was so late because he did not want to deal with Jak’s uncle’s reaction to his nephew’s impromptu makeover. The boys snuck into Jak’s house with no problems. The village was silent and sleeping with the only sound being the old explorer’s raucous snores. Jak fell backwards onto his cot with a contented sigh while Daxter just sort of flopped onto his pathetically. The orange-haired boy yawned widely and pulled his pillow to his chest and blinked through the darkness at his older friend, who was staring pensively out of the window. He didn’t have to ask to know what Jak was thinking about. The way he was idly playing with the claws on his hands was a bit of a giveaway. It was so strange seeing his friend like this. With the moonlight pouring through the window, Jak seemed to almost glow white. The black of his claws and horns and eyes almost seemed to somehow shine in the glow. The purple lightning seemed to have settled somewhat, but it was still there and caused weird shadows to dance around the room. He was almost like something out of a dream.

“Don’t worry, pal. We’ll fix this somehow,” he muttered sleepily. If Jak heard him, he didn’t show any sign that he did, but Daxter never let unresponsiveness stop him. “Things’ll look better in the morning. Ya might even wake up and be your old lemon-headed self again.” That got an amused snort, which was good. “And then all we’ll have ta worry about is saving the village. I’ll take care of that. You just leave it to the professionals…”

Jak was at least smiling now, which was better than him staring forlornly out the window. Daxter yawned again before burrowing into the sheets. “G’night, Jak.”

Chapter Text

The next day started blissfully late. Daxter was only awakened by the sound of the explorer’s annoying accent, which he must have picked up on his travels somewhere because no one in Sandover talked like that. The young teen poked his head out from under the sheets and saw that Jak was trying to explain to his uncle what had happened the other day and why he and Daxter had been gone longer than usual. The explorer was taking things well, but maybe that wasn’t so surprising. He had traveled everywhere, even past the places that were marked on the map, and he must have seen some odd things over the years. Maybe waking up and see his nephew with horns was about as shocking as waking up and seeing snow outside – a strange phenomena but nothing to freak out over.

“Well, you seem to have gotten yourself into sticky wicket, m’boy. No matter. I’m sure you’ll be right as rain in no time. You always were good at figuring these things out. Not like that simple little friend of yours…” his uncle was saying. Daxter buried his head under the sheets and added Jak’s uncle to the list of people he wouldn’t mind being mauled by Lurkers. He couldn’t wait to get out of this village. Who cared if his life was probably going to be in peril – at least he would be away from these people. They had collected eighteen Power Cells the other day at Geyser Rock and on Misty Island, and they only needed a couple more before they could go. “You’re going off on your first real adventure, m’boy! There’s nothing like that first one. I say, I do believe I have a Power Cell stashed around here somewhere. You did say you needed one, didn’t you? What kind of uncle would I be if I didn’t invest in my nephew’s first journey into the vast unknown? Here, I hope you put this Power Cell to good use! And take this map. I hope this will be useful in your quest. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my own adventure to attend to! Cheerio! Ta-ta! Bye-bye!”

Daxter could hear the clunk-pad-clunk-pad of Jak’s uncle strutting out of the house with his staff. So maybe the guy had his uses and he didn’t deserve to be mauled, but he still didn’t have to insult Daxter when he was barely two feet away from the guy. He could at least have the decency to do it behind his back. He was sick and tired of people treating him like scum. What was it about him that pissed people off so much? Jak liked him! He would go insane if it wasn’t for Jak’s friendship. But everyone else seemed to almost hate him by instinct. Even Keira really only seemed to tolerate him because he sort of came with the Jak package. But enough moping. Jak liked him, and Jak was awesome. That was enough. So what if 99% of the people he knew probably wouldn’t care if he got eaten by a Lurker shark tomorrow? Screw them. They were just missing out on the awesomeness that was Daxter. He should feel sorry for them!

He was so wrapped in his thoughts that he didn’t hear his friend creeping up on him until it was too late. A tingling, prickly sensation started at the nape of Daxter’s neck and dragged lightly down his spine, and it felt so weird that he shrieked and flailed. He tumbled to the floor in a mass of tangled sheets and growled when he heard Jak cackling above him. With some effort, the younger teen managed to free at least his head from the mess of sheets and he glared up at Jak in mock anger. “You just wait ‘til I get outta this, Jak, and then you’re gonna pay!”

Jak shook his head and ran out of the house, and Daxter did his best to worm his way out of the sheets and chased after him. He was nowhere in sight when he made it outside, which wasn’t a good sign. That just meant that Jak was hiding somewhere waiting for the opportune moment to-.

“Gah!” A blur of blue and silver rammed into him and the two boys went tumbling down the hill and into the sand of the beach. Daxter laughed as they mock wrestled, again taking advantage of Jak’s reluctance to accidentally skewer him with his claws. He didn’t win this time – Jak was on to him and was quick to dodge any attempts to get at his ribs – but it was close. He might’ve won, too, if the crazy old bird lady hadn’t stumbled upon them.

“Oh my!” the two boys froze in place at the birdwatcher’s startled exclamation and blinked up to see her goggling at them through her oversized binoculars. “Unhand that poor, sickly bird you terrible brute!”

“What bird a-.” was all Daxter managed to say before a pair of binoculars came swinging at him. He yelped as the ocular equipment came within inches of knocking him in the teeth and fell backwards in his attempt to get away. He had known the bird lady was crazy, but she had always seemed so sweet tempered before! He threw up an arm to block the next incoming attack, but it never came. What came instead was a terrified cry and the sound of metal being crushed. He peeked over arm and blanched at what he saw. It was homicidal Jak all over again, the same one who had taken down an army of Lurkers the night before last, except this time it was a little old lady he was eyeing viciously. His fangs were bared and the purple lightning was crackling and snapping around him like little whips of energy. The offending binoculars were a crumpled heap in the sand, discarded and forgotten. The bird lady’s eyes were wide with fear and her ridiculous hat shook back and forth as she tremebled with fear. “You’re not a Horned Slaty-Breasted Long-Eared Screamer!” was all she managed to get out before her panic overtook her and she turned and bolted toward the village. Shoot, Daxter would have booked it, too, if he’d been on the receving end of that glare.

This was the third time Jak had lashed out uncharacteristically, but this was definitely a lot more serious than some angry growl. He had crushed those binoculars like they were made out of eggshells, and Daxter shuddered to think what might have happened if he had grabbed the old birdwatcher instead. He knew that, under normal circumstances, Jak would never hurt a fly, but this situation was about as far from normal as they could get. The orange-haired teen certainly hadn’t appreciated being assaulted, but it wouldn’t have been the first time and it definitely wasn’t anything to maul anyone over. He didn’t like the way the Dark Eco seemed to be…changing Jak. None of the other Eco’s had an effect on his appearance or attitude like this, but, then again, Jak had never jumped into a pool of pure Blue Eco before. Daxter thought he might prefer Jak blue and twitchy than pale and homicidal, but he’d really just rather have him lemon-headed, blue-eyed and back to normal.

It didn’t feel right approaching Jak like he was some sort of wild animal, but he didn’t know what would set the older boy off when he was like this and he really wanted to avoid being skewered. Instead of just coming up behind Jak like he usually would, he skirted around him to approach him from the front and tried not to flinch when that ebony gaze snapped onto him.

“Uh, Jak? Ya might want to tone it down a little bit. I don’t wanna deal with an angry mob first thing in the morning.” He could just imagine it now. The villagers might not seem like much, but that fisherman could probably snap them both like twigs and the sculptor was pretty good with a hammer and chisel. “You’re supposed to be nice to little old ladies – especially senile ones.”

Jak’s eyes widened as it finally seemed to sink in that he had practically attacked one of the sweetest (usually) members of the village. The lighting settled abruptly, almost disappearing completely, and his ears drooped pathetically. He went to go after the birdwatcher but Daxter stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“I don’t really think chasin’ after her’s the best way to go on this. Ya might give her a heart attack,” and the other villagers might attack first and ask questions later, and there might not be a ‘later’ for them if they attack.

“For once, Daxter might actually be right,” Samos the Sage, condescending as ever, was walking toward them from the village. The younger teen didn’t appreciate the backhanded compliment. “You gave the old birdwatcher quite a scare. If I hadn’t run into her she might have had the entire village chasing after you. You act like we’re not all in peril!”

“Keep yer pants on; we were only playin’,” Daxter muttered, coming off more surly than he usually did when confronted with Samos. Jak frowned at him in concern and even Samos seemed to note the difference, but he thankfully didn’t comment. “So what’s the plan?”

“There’s no way this village is capable of defending itself from a full out attack from the Lurkers. I’ve noticed the increase in Lurker activity on both Sentinel Beach and in the jungle, and there’s no way this lot could handle an attack from three sides,” Samos explained glancing disdainfully around the village. “The best course of action would be to activate the warp gate so that we could ask the other villages for help or evacuate if need be. Unfortunately, we don’t have a way of opening the other Sage’s gates because you two have been fooling around!”

“Well, we just got the last Power Cell this morning,” Daxter said with a smirk and a shared glance with Jak. He rolled his shoulders and smiled smugly down at Samos, who looked like someone had just sneezed in his tea. “So, uh, if you’ll excuse us, the brave adventurers have got work to do. We’ll get that gate opened for you.”

Old Samos harrumphed as Daxter sauntered off with Jak in tow. He would never understand teenagers. He rolled his eyes and headed toward the Mayor’s house. He would have to worn the eccentric man of the Lurker threat since he doubted the boys had seen fit to do so. At least he would be rid of them for at least a couple more hours. Perhaps he could get some research done before they activated the warp gate. But where had wishful thinking ever gotten him?

Further along the beach near the farmer’s house and away from Samos’s eyes, Jak bumped his shoulder against Daxter’s and gave him an odd look. The younger boy shrugged lightly and smiled up at his friend weakly, glad he didn’t have to fake a grin with his best friend. “Just stress, ya know? I mean, the past couple o’ days haven’t exactly been what you’d call a stroll along the beach. First you try to die on me, then you go all homicidal on me, then we have to stop Lurkers from flooding the world with dark ooze, and then we hear they plan on destroying the village, and now we have to go to parts unknown to open this gate before all hell breaks loose, and we still have to eventually go ‘far, far to the north’ to fix you, and we have no idea where ‘far, far to the north’ is or what new problems will be waiting there when we get there!”

Daxter had started off alright but he was sort of shrieking by the end of it, the reality of the situation finally catching up with him. Jak winced at the assault on his ears but shrugged sympathetically when Daxter turned to him with panicked eyes. “What’re we supposed to do, Jak? Two days ago the worst I had to worry about was remembering to clean Samos’ hut before Old Green Stuff got on my case, and now the world is in jeopardy!”

Now Daxter was flailing, which really wasn’t a good thing. Jak was the kind of guy who lived by the minute and just sort of took things as they came, but not Daxter. He didn’t like change and never reacted very well to it. Something this catastrophic was bound to send him into a panic, and Jak was surprised Daxter had managed to hold it in for so long. He had probably been holding it in until he could freak out away from prying eyes – specifically Samos’s. Jak didn’t think that Samos would stoop low enough to mock Daxter when he was like this, but Daxter probably wouldn’t agree. He’d been ridiculed by the sage for too many years to think that he had any boundaries left. Jak hoped that after all of this Samos would be able to see Daxter differently and treat him better. And if he didn’t…well…Daxter didn’t need to be around that kind of constant negativity. Daxter acted like he had an ego the size of a Yakow, but Jak knew he really didn’t have a lot of self-esteem. That wouldn’t change if no one gave him a chance. He had often wondered if it wouldn’t be best for Daxter to live in another village, away from the people who had given up on him. The thought of Daxter living somewhere else hurt…but there was no reason why Jak couldn’t come with him. He’d always wanted to explore new places…

Jak grabbed Daxter by the wrists to stop him from flailing, which was usually enough to snap Daxter out of a panic – but not this time. His breathing was quick and thready and it wasn’t getting any better. He tried to think of another way to help him but none of them sounded like particularly good ideas. Daxter might just drown if he threw him into the sea like this. He drew the other boy closer to him and hugged him to his chest. The purple lighting engulfed him like a web but it didn’t seem to be hurting him, so he didn’t let go. Daxter seemed to freeze for a second, but then he seemed to melt. His arms flopped useless to his sides and he rested his head on Jak’s shoulder. The older boy could feel his chest expand as he took a deep breath, and he took that as a sign that Daxter wasn’t about to pass out on him. He didn’t let go until Daxter pushed him away lightly and he didn’t try to ask if his friend was alright. He knew Daxter wouldn’t want to talk about it. The younger boy hated it when he freaked out. He wanted to be brave, like Jak, but it seemed like all he could be was a coward. He shrugged it off and smiled up at Jak, a fake one this time, before continuing along the beach and heading up the rocky path behind the farmer’s house that led to Fire Canyon. Jak sighed softly before following.

Keira was kneeling by the Zoomer when they arrived adjusting something. Daxter winced at the heat of the Fire Canyon, which was essentially a long stretch of hot liquid death. He was glad that Jak had never needed much persuading to stay away from this place. He could jst imagine if Jak had fallen into…never mind. He didn’t want to imagine it. They were going to have to cross this thing soon and he didn’t want any horrible mental images throwing off what little bravado he had managed to scrounge up in the last thirty seconds. He took a deep breath and strutted over to Keira, hoping if he acted like his old self he would feel better about riding over a pit of molten lava that would melt their bones on contact.

“Hey, baby! Whadd’ya say you and I go cruising on this A-Grav Zoomer?” he asked with a suggestive waggle of his eyes. Keira gave him a deadpan look before setting her equipment down and standing.

“I don’t date short guys,” she said with a hand on her hip.

Daxter leered up at her but he was honestly just teasing. Keira was more like a sister to him than anything. She teased him, but she teased him like Jak teased him. They weren’t the blunt insults that came from Samos. And even if she acted like she couldn’t stand him most of the time, she was the one who took care of him when he got sick or broke a bone on one of his Jak-related adventures. “Awwwww! You don’t know what you’re missin’!” he laughed as he made an obscene gesture with his hands, which Jak promptly whacked him over the head for.

“Real alluring, Daxter,” she said with a roll of her eyes. She turned to Jak and smiled up at him, a light shining in her eyes. “If you both are here you must have finally gotten all twenty Power Cells. I knew you could do it!”

“Hey! I’m the one that did all the hard work! He just carried the Cells,” Daxter snapped with mock indignity. Jak shrugged and smirked at Daxter as he handed over the Power Cells, and the younger boy stuck his tongue out at him.

“You’ll need to be careful out there!” Keria warned as she began to install the Power Cells. “The shield will only protect your Zoomer until it reaches 500 degrees, so try to keep her cool. Flying over open lava will definitely heat you up fast! Hit 500 degrees and it’s all over?”

“Over?! Like ‘burning molten metal’ over?!” Jak ran a hand through his hair and hoped that Daxter wasn’t about to panic again. Though, even Jak was a little worried. Keira was awesome at what she did, but she had never made anything like this before. Would her Zoomer really be able to get them through the Canyon safely?

“The Fire Canyon get’s pretty hot, so keep a lookout for jumps to keep you off the hot ground. I’ve also released several blue cooling balloons you can use to drop the shield’s temperature quickly,” Keira continued to explain as if Daxter hadn’t said anything. She was so calm about it, as if this was just a stroll along the beach and not a journey of fire and death. “Oh! And when you get across, don’t forget to activate the teleport gate in the Blue Sage’s Lab! Then we’ll be able to teleport over and meet you!”

Daxter glanced dubiously at the Zoomer hovering innocently over the Precursor trans-pad and froze when he noticed something odd. “Uh, Keira? There’s only one seat.”

“Yea…?” she seemed confused, which did not bode well.

“Well, uh…there’s two of us.”

Keira’s eyebrows raised in surprise as she glanced from Daxter to Jak and back. “You wanted to go? Really? I didn’t know. Either way, I didn’t design a new Zoomer for this. I just retrofitted my original model with the heat shield, and I didn’t want to design a two-seater until I had perfected this one.” Which meant that this Zoomer wasn’t even perfected yet and she expected Jak to use it to cross LAVA?! “Don’t worry. You’ll be able to get to Rock Village as soon as Jak turns on the gate.”

“I’m much more worried about the skinny, frail elf being sent into a chasm of molten doom on a rickety piece of metal!” Daxter exclaimed heatedly. If Jak felt any offense at being called skinny or frail, he had the wherewithal to keep his opinion to himself.

The green-haired girl’s expression soured at the slight toward her invention. “Jak will be fine. He’s tested out my Zoomer before.”

“And he broke his arm!”

“Just the first time!” the mechanic defended. “Look, one of you has to go across. There’s no other way to the village.”

“Well, why can’t you ride your Zoomer across?” Daxter asked incredulously with an emphatic flail of his arm.

While the two teens were arguing, Jak rolled his eyes and mounted the Zoomer without being noticed. It wasn’t until he revved the engine and sped off into the distance that Daxter turned to gape at his back with a dismayed expression. Keira just shook her head, amused, but she paused when she saw Daxter’s face. His complexion had drained of all color and his eyes were the size of saucers. He could catch wumpbees with how wide open his mouth was. It didn’t last long, though. As soon as he realized Keira was standing next to him, he seemed to snap out of it. He ran back toward the village without a word, and the taller girl hurried to keep up with him.

“I’m gonna kill him!” he hissed under his breath. “I’m gonna strangle that guy!”

Chapter Text

“He’ll be fine, Daxter. This is Jak we’re talking about,” she tried to reassure the younger boy, but nothing she said seemed to help. They reached her father’s hut in record time, and Daxter rushed straight toward the gate and started to pace in front of it. He kept muttering under his breath, and if Keira listened hard enough she could hear the words ‘strangle,’ ‘mercy,’ and ‘kill.’ Samos seemed ready to explode at Daxter’s behavior, but Keira quickly stopped him. She had seen Daxter like this a couple of times. The time Jak tested out her Zoomer for the first time and broke his arm so badly that it looked like he had grown a third elbow. The time that Jak went off to the jungle without Daxter because the orange-haired boy was being stubborn and he ended up almost being eaten by a plant. The time they had gone rock-climbing and Jak fell, thankfully landing in water and not on the rock that had been two feet to his left. Each time Daxter had gotten angry and inconsolable until he had made sure that he had beaten it through his thick friend’s skull that he was not allowed to do death-defying stunts because no one could defy death.

The wait for the gate to activate was agonizing. Eventually Daxter stopped muttering to himself altogether and just started biting his fingernails while he stared at the gate. The sage didn’t comment but he was staring at the young boy strangely as if he had never seen him before. Eventually, though, the gate lit up, and Daxter jumped through it before Keira could so much as blink. When she did make it through, Jak was slowly backing away from an irate Daxter who seemed to be beyond words. The orange-haired boy shoved his friend harshly in the chest before tackling him, and Keira wasn’t sure if Daxter was trying to hug him or choke him – it could have gone either way. The Green Eco Sage followed quickly behind her and flopped onto the floor of the hut rather ungracefully. He stood and brushed himself off with an annoyed frown.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that teleporter tingling sensation… Hey!” the old sage looked around the hut in surprise, finally having noticed his surroundings. All of the Blue Eco Sage’s equipment appeared to be smashed, and his notes were scattered everywhere. “It looks like the Blue Sage threw a party!”

“Oh my!” Keira gasped as she peered out of one of the windows. “Rock Village is on fire!”

“One heck of a party,” Samos added incredulously.

“No, no! I mean Rock Village is being bombarded with flaming boulders! There’s a massive Lurker at the top of that cliff and he’s attacking the village! ” she explained as she peered through the telescope the Blue Sage had placed in the window and tried to see if she could get a better look around. She gasped when she saw the machine at the base of the cliff. “But it looks like the Blue Sage is working on a levitation machine to move the boulders! Assuming it’s operational, we’re gonna need Power Cells to fuel it. I guess you two will have to find some more.”

She glanced behind her at her two friends and rolled her eyes. Daxter was standing as close to Jak as comfortably possible but was refusing to look at him. He ears were drooped and his eyes were narrowed, and Keira was pretty sure he was pouting. Jak, who still managed to look like a kid who had gotten caught with his hand shoved down the cookie jar even with horns and fangs, just shrugged helplessly at her.

“We’d better take a look at his notes,” the Green Sage muttered before turning to Jak. “Jak, go check on the villagers, then come back and give us an update.”

Jak hurried out of the hut with Daxter following sullenly behind him. He knew his friend was upset with him, but what did he expect him to do? He and Keira would have just stood around arguing for hours if he hadn’t just taken the Zoomer and gone. It hadn’t been that dangerous. Sure, there had been a couple of moments when he hadn’t been sure he would make it, but he had gotten across in one piece. And there had been no way he was letting Daxter ride that Zoomer across Fire Canyon. Keira was excellent at navigating the Zoomer even if she wasn’t into pulling tricks like Jak was, but Daxter had never ridden it before. Letting him go would have been tantamount to letting him commit suicide, and Jak wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Don’t you ever,” Daxter poked Jak in the back, “EVER do that again! The next time there’s a need to go soaring over a fiery pit of death, I will be doing the driving!”

Jak frowned down at the other boy and shook his head. It made no sense. Jak was the better driver. He was the only driver out of the two of them. Of course he would go next time, assuming there was a next time. The two boys glared heatedly at each other before Daxter rolled his eyes and kept walking. Arguing with Jak never got anywhere. He would just have to be quicker than Jak next time and grab the Zoomer before he could. The older boy risked his life far too often for Daxter’s comfort, and he didn’t seem to find anything wrong with it! “Let’s just go check on those villagers. If there are still villagers…”

He had always complained about Sandover being too small, but there only seemed to be one other building here besides the Blue Sage’s Lab. And he did not like being so close to water so deep. One inconvenient trip and he would be a Lurker shark’s dinner for sure. Maybe the place was more cheerful when it wasn’t raining, and when the place wasn’t littered with giant flaming rocks of death. He wondered what people did for fun around here. Maybe they really did throw wild and crazy parties.

The two boys soon arrived at the only other building in the village – what seemed to be some sort of gathering space. It sort of reminded Daxter of the strange ruins out on Sentinel Beach, except instead of stairs there were rows of stone seats on either side. The middle of the large space was lit with braziers. It seemed like a good a place as any to have a party, but there were only two people there now. One was a short guy who reminded Daxter of a skinnier, younger, sneakier version of his mayor. He didn’t like the way the creep was eyeing them, especially Jak, so he turned to size up the other person there. And size was the right word. The guy was huge! He might have been even bigger than the fisherman back at Sandover, though this guy’s size was due to muscle and not the excessive consumption of fish. He was wearing metal armor from head to toe and seemed almost ready to go into battle, but instead he was sitting their sobbing like someone had just told him his mother died. Well…er…maybe she had…

“Hey! Have you seen anybody else runnin’ around or is it just you two?”

The green-haired warrior stopped bawling long enough to glare up at the orange-haired teen, but his attention was soon caught by the pale creature standing behind him. It didn’t matter that the beast resembled an elf – all he saw were the horns and the claws and the fangs and the soulless dark pits that were its eyes and – “No, not again!” he bellowed, leaping to his feet. “There’s no way I’m not fighting any more monsters, not after what happened last time!”

“That’s my friend you’re talkin’ about, pal,” Daxter groused, hoping this wouldn’t become a pattern. He could only get so mad with the guy, though. Daxter had freaked out when he’d first seen Jak, too, and he’d known the guy practically his entire life. So he couldn’t really blame this stranger for mistaking for something less than friendly. He should just be thankful the guy didn’t run away screaming. “Take it easy. He’s one of the good guys.”

The behemoth of an elf frowned down at Jak distrustfully and was about to speak before his entire face contorted in pain. With a groan he collapsed back onto the bench and clutched his head in his hands. “Oh…my aching head…” the warrior grumbled to himself. Maybe he just had a hangover from those infamous Rock Village parties. Daxter shot Jak a disbelieving look before shuffling toward the bawling elf in armor.

“I doubt that’s one of your vital organs,” Daxter commented. “Walk if off, tough guy!”

“Oh, sure, I was tough once – maybe even the toughest of them all! I single-handedly defended this village against those horrid creatures for almost a year!” the warrior grumbled, either ignoring the insult or missing it completely. Daxter heavily suspected the latter. The guy wasn’t all bad, though, if he had protected this dinky village all by himself. And he had just given them a useful clue. The warrior must have been referring to Lurkers, and Samos would probably like to know that Rock Village had been under siege for an entire year. It’s strange that the Blue Eco Sage wouldn’t have asked for help, though. Daxter hated Old Green Stuff with a passion, but he knew the old man wouldn’t just abandon someone in need. He would have helped them, with lots of insults on the side, but still.

The warrior glared up toward the cliff where the giant blue Lurker Keira had first seen was looming over the village. As they watched, the massive beast hefted a house-sized boulder and chucked it with disturbing ease toward the village. Daxter was just glad his aim seemed to be off and it landed in the water…or maybe it was playing with them… “Then that horrible monster arrived and commenced the boulder bombardment… So, full of valor, armor shining in the sun, I climbed the hill to take him on! But he pounded me like one tenderizes a Yakow steak…”

This guy was more dramatic than the sculptor back home, and he seemed to be in love with his own voice. “Have you tried attacking him with your melodrama? ‘Cause it’s killing me.”

Again, the insult flew right over the big lug’s head, and Daxter rolled his eyes at Jak as the warrior just kept yammering on. They should have talked to the guy wearing the barrel instead. “After my last stunning failure, he sealed the passageway to his roost with a thirty-ton boulder, leaving no way for anyone to challenge him again. So, our Sage, a master of Blue Eco and a mechanical genius, devised a plan to lift the boulder out of the way…! But alas, he disappeared before we had a chance to turn it on, and he took all his Power Cells with him. At least I was able to pull enough pontoons out of the bridge to prevent that monster from coming down here to do me harm!”

Finally, he seemed to be done. The things Daxter suffered through to make sure the world was a safer place. “Yeah. Good. Good job there, tough guy,” Daxter offered, because he supposed the guy did have it rough. After a year of trying to keep his village safe all by himself, he’s smashed flat by one single Lurker and had to watch his village burn, so Daxter could cut the guy some slack. Maybe. “But, um, we’re gonna need you to, uh…put ‘em back and stuff.”

The warrior glared at Daxter for a moment like he was the slow one, and then he snorted derisively. “Oh sure, and seal my doom?”

“So we,” Daxter started, gesturing to both Jak and himself, “can take care of your Lurker problem for ya. We’re the toughest warriors in Sandover. Aren’t we, Jak?”

It was hard to tell without him having irises and pupils and stuff, but Jak was definitely rolling his eyes at him. The younger boy placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder and shoved him closer to the warrior. “Just look at this guy. Teeth more vicious than a Lurker shark’s. Claws that could skewer a wild hiphog. Horns made more goring. And that crackling, zappy stuff? One thought and he can turn it into a lethal weapon!” He didn’t have to look at Jak to know the boy was glaring at him, but Jak looking homicidal would just help him sell his case. “One look at my boy, Jak, here and that nasty Lurker will be running back home to his mama before you can even blink!”

The green-haired warrior looked Jak over critically before sighing and looking away. Score! “Alright, fine, I’ll raise the pontoons – but on one condition! A fellow villager lived deep within the boggy swamp, on the other side of the bridge, but we haven’t heard from him since the bombardment began. Go into the swamp and bring me news of his wellbeing.”

“Sure thing, tough guy.” Daxter was quick to usher Jak and himself out of there quickly after that. The warrior went to fetch the pontoons to put them back, which would probably take some time, and he did not want to hang around that creepy gambler any longer than he had to. His beady little eyes had practically lit up when Daxter had been describing some of Jak’s demonic assets, as if he had been hearing the description of a particularly virile Yakow up for auction. As soon as they had left the gathering hall, Jak whacked Daxter over the back of the head and glared down at him with an eyebrow raised. The orange-haired boy rubbed at his abused head and glared at the other boy half-heartedly, knowing exactly why his friend was mad. “Aw, come on, Jak. He just needed a little convincing and I convinced him! Ya gotta admit, you do look pretty fierce! If it makes ya feel better, those horns really aren’t any good for goring. They’re way too small. They’re just there to look good so you can show off and impress the ladies.”

Daxter waggled his eyebrows suggestively and Jak shoved his friend away with a snort. A hand unconsciously flew up to one of his horns and he couldn’t help but wonder what he actually looked like in someone else’s eyes. Jak just thought he looked strange. He didn’t see himself when he saw his own reflection; it was like seeing someone else entirely, and not a person Jak would have liked to meet. Every time he looked at his reflection, he would remember the look of fear that had been in his friend’s eyes the first time Daxter had seen him like this, the way the birdwatcher had recoiled from him in terror, and he would wonder how the younger boy could even stand to be around him. Before he could think on it too much, Daxter nudged him in the shoulder and jerked his head in the direction of the Blue Sage’s Lab. “Come on, tall, dark, and handsome – we better talk to Old Samos before he gets a mind to come looking for us.”

Jak quickly followed after Daxter, and it would only be later that he would think back on this conversation and wonder if his friend really did think he was ‘handsome.’

They were walking along the dirt path leading back to the Blue Sage’s hut when the older teen noticed something nestled in the base of the cliff. It was another one of those strange Precursor machines, like the one back in Sandover, that Samos liked to go on about. The funny-looking statue had always given Daxter the creeps – he had always felt like it was watching them, or something – but Jak thought they were fascinating. Samos went on and on about how the Oracles contained vast amounts of untold wisdom, but the Sage never seemed to get more out of it than cryptic riddles. Though, if the Oracles really were all-knowing, maybe this one would have answers…

“Another one of those googly-eyed Precursor Oracles?” Daxter said, eyeing the artifact with suspicion. “You ever wonder if they were ever that ugly in person?”

Jak merely gave him a Look before turning to the Oracle, which came to life as soon as he’d stepped close enough to it.

“Who awakens the Oracle?” the ancient machine demanded in its gravelly voice. It continued before Daxter could say anything, but now it sounded almost…distressed? But that couldn’t be right, because this thing was just a machine – like Keira’s Zoomer but a lot more complicated…right? Programmed to spout off mysterious mumbo jumbo in its monotonous drone and stare menacingly at innocent bystanders? “Wait! From before time I have watched and waited for the true hero to return, but the dark light has twisted your fate. I sense there is a dark rage burning within you, and, in time, it will destroy you with its madness.” Definitely not pre-programmed mysterious mumbo jumbo. That hit way too close to home and was more than a little foreboding. Daxter glanced up at Jak in concern but the older boy wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t looking at the Oracle, either. He was staring down at his clawed hands as if they were about to pop off any second and go on a rampage. He really hoped that the Oracle was just being needlessly dramatic, but he doubted it. He’d known that Jak had had some anger issues ever since he’d taken the plunge into the Dark Eco, but it couldn’t be that bad, could it?

“I can teach you to control your powers…”

Daxter actually though that sounded like a pretty good idea. Curing Jak would be a lot easier if he didn’t have to worry about his friend going berserk on the wrong person. Jak obviously didn’t agree, however. He was shaking his friend frantically and looking down at Daxter with those giant, inky eyes of his, and he knew the answer was no. There was something more to this Dark Eco thing than the mood swings, and Jak wanted no part in it. He was terrified of the anger that was bubbling inside of him, simmering just under the surface, and he was afraid of what would happen if he dug too deep. They just had to get Gol Acheron to fix him, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about controlling it. He wouldn’t have to use it. But Jak obviously couldn’t, or at least wouldn’t, say all of these things, so Daxter did it for him.

“He doesn’t want to control it – he wants it gone.”

The statue seemed to stew over this before finally answering. “Then seek the pure light, for within its flame answers reside…”

Chapter Text

“The pure light, huh? More cryptic Precursor crap,” Daxter said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. What was the point of an all-knowing Oracle when it couldn’t give you a straight answer? “Any idea what he’s talkin’ about?”

Jak shook his head and shrugged helplessly, but he was optimistic. The Oracle hadn’t said he couldn’t be cured, which was a possibility he hadn’t realized had been eating at him so much. If there was a cure, they would find it, and he just had to hope that they were on the right track by seeking out this Gol Acheron person. In the meantime, they had people to help.

The Blue Sage’s hut was just a mess as it had been when they had first arrived, but Keira had left to go tinker with the levitation machine. Samos spun around from the pile of notebooks he was pouring over to greet them both with a surly glare. “The situation here stinks worse than a Lurker’s armpit! Before Blue Sage’s disappearance, he journaled trouble in all the surrounding areas! There are Lurkers everywhere! How are the villagers?”

“We found two of ‘em down in the village, and we’re supposed to look for another guy who lives out in the swamp,” Daxter explained.

“Keep an eye out for any more of the villagers. I’ll teleport back to Sandover and let the Mayor know the warp gate is finally operational. And while you’re out in the swamp, you can do a little favor for me,” a shudder ran down Daxter’s spine at the tone in Samos’ voice. He knew that tone, and it never meant anything good. “According to the Blue Sage’s notes, Lurkers have invested the swamp. Apparently, they’re planning to use a dirigible to lift an important Precursor artifact from the muck! You’re going to have to get over there and dislodge their tethers! Who knows what they might want with the artifact?”

Of course this couldn’t be easy. There just had to be Lurkers around every corner! They couldn’t just pop through the warp gate and see the Blue Sage sitting there, happy to see them – he had to disappear at the worst possible time! And now Daxter had to go mucking around in a nasty, smelly swamp full of things that would probably want to eat him. They couldn’t even get a break first before they were sent off to stop some nefarious plot. He hoped that the Lurker problem wouldn’t follow them ‘far, far to the north,’ because he didn’t want to deal with it.

It was raining when they left the hut, which just served to dampen Daxter’s mood further. Even Jak seemed downed by it – he loved the sun and heat of the beach or even the jungle, not this grey rain that began to beat down on the shattered remains of the broken village. By the time they got back to the gathering space, the warrior had put all the pontoons back and was eyeing the bridge distrustfully as if Lurkers would suddenly spawn out of nowhere to attack him. It was really less of a bridge and more like rickety looking rafts just floating there, waiting to turn over and dump them into a sea full of Lurker sharks at any second, but it would do. Jak leaped across the pontoons easily, even throwing in some spin kicks to show off, and Daxter followed him at a more cautious pace. Clumsy though he might be, Daxter could be perfectly coordinated when the only thing standing between him and being ripped to shreds was a flimsy piece of wood. They both eventually made it safely across the ‘bridge’ with little trouble, and Jak led the way into the swamp.

Neither boy had actually ever been in a swamp before, but they had heard stories about them from Jak’s uncle who had trudged through a few on some of his many adventures. The closest they had ever come to one was probably the jungle, which was full of windy little streams and got quite a lot of rain. But in all his stories, the old explorer had never mentioned just how disgusting swamps were. He had mentioned the mud and the numerous animals that wanted to eat you and how dreary they were, but he hadn’t mentioned the stink of stagnant swamp water or how nasty it felt to have mud oozing between your toes. Wet sand was bad enough, but this stuff just wanted to suck Daxter into the earth.

“And they say somebody lives out here? Willingly?” Daxter groused incredulously. He groaned as one of his sandals got stuck in a particularly thick glob of mud and tried unsuccessfully to yank his foot out. No amount of tugging would get it to come loose, and Jak finally had to actually yank Daxter back in order to free him…at the expense of his sandal. The poor shoe sank into the mud with a sad gurgle, never to be seen again. The pale teen didn’t bother to hide his laugh at Daxter’s pathetic expression. “I hate swamps…”

Swamps, apparently, hated Daxter, too. He didn’t get much warning before a large, ugly Lurker rat came leaping out of the muck to attack him. He flailed backwards to avoid it but he needn’t have bothered – five long, black claws had ripped through the air and torn the thing open like it was a watermelon. Daxter stared at the place where the rat had once been before glancing at Jak’s hand, which was now covered in…stuff. The older boy frowned at his hand in distress and quickly tried to wipe off the worst of it with the rainwater. Killing Lurkers in the heat of the moment was one thing, but this was the first thing Jak had killed without the bloodlust clouding his judgment. And he hadn’t even wanted to kill it; he’d just wanted knock it away from Daxter. It surely would have left them alone if it knew they could beat it. He hadn’t even meant to use his claws, but it was just like some sort of instinct had taken over.

He jumped when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, and the purple energy crackling over him leaped out as if to defend him, but it was just Daxter. The lighting calmed and ran over his friend’s skin lightly as if it had a mind of its own, and wasn’t that a disturbing thought? “Hey, don’t worry about it, big guy. It’s no big deal. It was gonna eat me! And those Lurkers wanna destroy the planet, so it’s not so bad if one or two of ‘em disappear, right?”

Jak shook his head defiantly and Daxter had to agree. Daxter didn’t condone killing things. Yakows were different, because even if he didn’t particularly like eating meat himself, at least the death wasn’t a waste. Even nasty Lurker rats were different, because the animal had attacked him first and it had meant to bite his face off, which would have killed him. Jak had just been defending him. But actual Lurkers? The ones that wore clothes and swung weapons and had at least a half a brain? Killing them felt wrong. Yes, they were trying to destroy the world and would attempt to kill Jak and Daxter on sight, but they were sentient beings capable of thought and…possibly emotion. And Jak had killed a small army of them. Though he tried not to show it, Daxter could tell that that was eating his friend up inside.

But could they really hope to save the entire world without killing a single Lurker? What were they going to do, knock them all unconscious and hoped that that deterred them from their evil ways? The Lurkers would just come back, probably fighting harder knowing that their opponents would go easy on them. And the enemy wouldn’t be holding back. When they attacked, they’d be going for the kill, and Jak and Daxter would only be leaving themselves open if they didn’t fight back with their all. Old Green Stuff had to have known they’d be fighting Lurkers when he sent them to Misty Island and into this swamp. He had to have known they would have to kill them. The idea of sending a fifteen and fourteen year old into dangerous places to do his bidding and fight for their lives was apparently okay with him! If he was so powerful, why wasn’t he the one trucking through the mud? If Daxter had any respect left for the sage, it was pretty much gone now.

The younger boy placed his free hand on Jak’s other shoulder and blinked up at him through the rain. He really, really wished that Jak’s eyes were familiar blue instead of this eerie blackness. But he knew that hangdog expression Jak got when he was feeling guilty about something – he could read it from the furrow of his brow and the frown of his mouth and just the aura the guy was giving off, and he had to do something about it. Jak was the optimistic one. Jak was the one who always kept going no matter what obstacle they ran into, who pushed them to keep going even when Daxter had long given up. It wouldn’t work if it was the other way around. “Jak…this isn’t just another adventure,” and it was hard to say that, as it had only really just sunken in for Daxter himself. This wasn’t like sneaking off into the jungle or playing forts on the beach. Lives were at stake. Lives depended on them of all people! The world was in pretty big trouble if it was depending on two teenagers, but they couldn’t afford to mess up. Samos would kill them. “I know you’re worried. You’re worried that I’m gonna get hurt, that we’re somehow not gonna be able to stop the Lurkers, that you’re somehow different now just ‘cause you’re pointy and have an eye condition… But you’re not allowed to worry. And ya know why?”

Jak shook his head slightly. “Because that’s my job, that’s why! I do enough worryin’ for the both of us! And I’m not worried about me, or about you bein’ any different, so you shouldn’t worry, either. We’ve got a world to save! Taking out Lurkers and anything else that tries to stop us is just part of the job description!”

The younger boy left his friend’s side to walk over to one of the giant, thorny growths and carefully snapped off a branch. He had forgotten his pole back at Sandover, but this would probably be much better. And maybe Jak wouldn’t feel so bad if he wasn’t the only one doing some real damage. The older boy was smiling when Daxter turned back around, and it was almost like a sun coming out behind the clouds. Man, Daxter was good! “So whaddya say? We save the world, get you back to your regular self, and then we’ll just sit back and let the babes shower us in gratitude.”

Daxter smiled triumphantly as a clawed hand ruffled his hair appreciatively. Crisis averted. Now Daxter could go back to worrying and nagging and Jak could go back to being the real hero. “Don’t mention it, buddy.”

The two friends continued to trudge through the swamp, though they were much more upbeat than before. Jak was extremely pleased to learn that he could still channel other Eco even if he was altered by Dark Eco, and he had fun taking out legions of Lurker rats with balls of Yellow Eco. A death was a death, but for some reason it hurt less to kill the creatures from afar with Eco than up close and personal with his own bare hands. Daxter took care of his fair share as well with his thorny new weapon, but it was hard to beat someone who could launch several deadly fireballs a second without pause. Blue Eco also wasn’t a problem. The Precursors must have been a wild and crazy bunch, because those launch pads of theirs were something else. Daxter couldn’t channel the eco himself, but Jak had made sure to grab onto him with a manic grin before he had launched himself a hundred feet into the air, and landed with a jarring thud fifty feet away. The first time had been terrifying, but it was kind of fun after a while.

It was one of these exhilarating rides that dropped them right in the middle of the Lurker operation. On all four sides standing on platforms were some fierce-looking Lurkers that did not look happy to see them. On the other side of a gate, Daxter could see a giant Precursor…something was attached to the dirigible floating overhead. The younger boy brandished his weapon with more courage than he actually felt, but the crackle of Jak’s Dark Eco energy was strangely comforting. Jak had hunched his shoulders and spread his claws, and he looked very much like he had that first night when he had pried himself out of the ooze. It was almost as if a flip had been switched, the change was so abrupt. He unleashed an inhuman growl as the first Lurker leapt from the platform to charge them and rushed forward to meet it. Daxter turned away both because he didn’t really want to see the spray of blood that was inevitable and because a Lurker on the other side had decided to go for him instead. He swung his branch as hard as he could and tried not to flinch as the thorns carved a nasty scar across the Lurker’s face. It jerked back for a moment in pain but then it was back and angrier than ever, and the battle begun.

The Lurkers seemed to be targeting Jak, as he was the biggest threat, which was kind of a blessing for Daxter. It was easier to fight them when they were distracted, and they all underestimated him. It also meant that Daxter maybe wasn’t as distracted from Jak fighting as he would have liked to be. Jak was covered in blood and mud, but he didn’t seem to notice. He slipped and slid between the Lurker’s as if it was some sort of demented dance, bobbing and weaving and ducking and killing. Sometimes they died by his claws, and sometimes they died from a snapped neck, but either way they were dropping like flies. The Lurkers who were left started to shy away from him and went to go for Daxter instead, but this just seemed to further enrage Jak. He leapt between Daxter and the Lurkers before the younger boy could so much as lift his weapon and tore at the offending creatures with disturbing vigor. The purple lightning snapped and crackled all around him, reaching out to lick at their fur and singe their flesh. After a while, Daxter couldn’t do much more than stand and watch. That same lightning that had felt like a gentle breeze to him was causing the Lurkers pain.

Finally, the last Lurker slumped into the mud. The…person standing over the bodies, with teeth bared and claws still poised and ready, did not look like Jak. Jak’s face was not made to snarl like that, and the cold fire flickering in those pitch black eyes of his was not anything Daxter had ever seen in the eyes of an elf. Not even the hungriest Lurker shark had looked at him with quite that amount of malice, and a shiver ran down Daxter’s spine when he realized that Jak was looking at him like that. Like he was deciding whether he wanted to start by ripping off Daxter’s arms or slicing off his legs. Instead of running away to cower in the corner like he was sorely tempted to, he sidled up to his friend and nudged him in the ribs with his elbow. The purple lightning immediately reached out to crackle across his skin, but it didn’t hurt, which he supposed was a good sign.

“Geez, Jak. Talk about a showoff. You coulda left one or two for me, y’know?” Because humor was the answer to every problem. Besides, Daxter had said he wasn’t worried about Jak changing. And so maybe he had been lying a little bit and he was worried about Jak’s burgeoning homicidal tendencies, but he didn’t have to let Jak know that.

The feral teen eyed Daxter a bit longer before jerking his head toward the pile of Lurkers, particularly the one with a jagged scar running down its face. The younger boy tried not to show too much disgust at the pile of carcasses, but it was hard. “So, yea, I got one. I’m just sayin’ take it easy next time, okay. Now, uh, let’s get outta here pronto before those guys are missed.” And before Daxter got sick. “We still got two more tethers to break.”

The orange-haired boy practically shoved his friend toward the Blue Eco vent and could only sigh with relief when they were finally out of that neck of the swamp. The farther away from the dead Lurkers they got, the less tense Jak seemed to become. But now instead of the cold, calculated look that had swirled in his inky black eyes, the guilt was creeping back. Daxter kept up a steady stream of chitchat and light, one-sided banter to keep his friend distracted and bragged about his own victory, which had been more a fluke than anything else. He had just sort of flailed the stick around and hoped the Lurker would back off, but he had actually managed to do some damage. Of course, it was a loose swipe from Jak’s claws that had finished him, but if Jak hadn’t noticed and wanted to give the credit to him, then who was Daxter to complain?

They continued further into the swamp without too many other incidents. Other than the swarms of Lurker rats and the occasional Lurker, they didn’t run into anything too dangerous. The worst thing was the rain, which hadn’t let up since they had arrived at Rock Village. Daxter was soaked down to the bones, and running around in a dank swamp with one shoe wasn’t helping matters any. He just knew he was going to get sick from this, and the sooner they got out of here the better. They had found and broken the third tether and now just had to find the last one, but they still had to find the numbskull who had decided to live out here. Luckily it wasn’t too much longer before they came upon a rickety house perched next to a pit of noxious mud.

Daxter had thought the swamp smelled bad, but the man sitting on the porch of the house had a miasma of funk oozing off of him that was almost visible. No, it was visible because it was full of flies. He stumbled as Jak suddenly nudged him in the side and turned to see his friend smirking down at him. The pale teen nodded his head toward the slovenly man and gestured toward his friend’s teeth and hair. It took Daxter a moment to realize what his friend was insinuating, but when he did his eyes widened in indignant horror. “No! No way! There’s no comparison!” They might share buck teeth and orange-yellow hair, but that was where he drew the line with similarities. Besides, Daxter’s hair was soft and vibrant while this guy looked like he styled his hair with swamp mud, and Daxter liked to think his teeth made him look…um…innocent.

He shoved his friend and took a deep breath before marching up to the elf. The swamp dweller greeted them with an easy smile that showed surprisingly white teeth. “Howdy, friends! Enjoyin’ my beautiful swamp? I own these here parts. Everything that doesn’t sink into the mud, that is!” The elf burst into a fit of cackles and flailed as if he had said the funniest thing in the world. He obviously didn’t get out very much.

“Judging from the smell, I’d wager your bathtub sunk into the mud long ago!” Daxter couldn’t help but taunt. He had an aura of flies for goodness’ sake!

“…What’s a bathtub?” the man asked curiously, and Daxter took an instinctual step back from the man who had apparently never bathed a day in his life. He could hear Jak chuckling behind him, but he didn’t see what was so funny.

“Don’t, uh, don’t worry about it. We just came out here to make sure you were okay, and everything here seems to be in order so, um…we’re just gonna go.”

“Aw, shucks. Ya should stay for supper! It ain’t often I get visitors out here in the swamp,” the man seemed genuinely sad to see them go, but if Daxter held his breath any longer he was going to pass out.

“No, no, we’re good! We’ll tell the others you’re okay and stuff. Come on, Jak, we’ve still gotta get rid of that oversized balloon.” He was going to get back at Jak for insinuating he was anything like that hillbilly. He didn’t know how, but he would.

Chapter Text

Daxter was running. He had never run so hard or for so long in his life, but he couldn’t stop. His life depended on putting one foot in front of the other. No matter how much he ran, he couldn’t seem to put any distance between him and the thing that chased him. It didn’t take him long to realize the creature was toying with him by letting him think he had a chance of getting away, but there was no way he was going to stop. He had to keep going, he had to keep pushing himself, and maybe he could get out of this alive.

It didn’t help that he had gotten hopelessly lost. He had gotten confused in his panic and must have taken a wrong turn at some point, because nothing around him looked familiar. He knew he was still in the swamp, but he couldn’t tell which way Rock Village was or how far he’d wandered from it. All that mattered was getting away before that thing caught up with him. Before it sank its claws into him and ripped him apart. Before it pinned him to the dirt and stared down at him with that painfully familiar face of its and grinned as it took him apart piece by piece. Because the creature pursuing him was not a Lurker, or even some wild animal. No, he wished he were so lucky.

The creature behind him looked like Jak, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. They might have the same ears and the same nose and the same mouth. They might be wearing the same clothes. But that terrible, manic grin didn’t belong on Jak’s face. Its whole expression was twisted into a smile that was all fang and no mercy. Its claws were spread threateningly, eagerly, and the purple lightning whipped around it like thousands of deadly whips. Daxter couldn’t even bring himself to look at its eyes when he glanced fearfully over his shoulder. He already knew what would be lurking there – hunger, malice, and bloodlust. Jak would never look at him like that. Jak couldn’t ever look at anybody like that – it was physically impossible.

Jak was possessed. The Dark Eco had taken hold over him and no amount of humor had been able to snap him out of it.

Daxter yelped in surprise when his foot suddenly snagged on a root buried in the mud and he went toppling head over heels into the muck. He could hear Jak – no, the creature – loping ever closer with each second he wasted trying to get back on his feet, and he finally gave up and just started crawling instead. There were perks to being small, and being able to squeeze between the giant thorny vines that littered the swamp without getting sliced up was one of them. He kept moving until the vines were just too thick for him to maneuver through, and then he curled into a ball to make himself as small as possible and hoped that the creature wouldn’t be able to get to him.

He didn’t want to die like this, he really didn’t. He had never fooled himself into thinking he’d be lucky enough to just grow old and die in his sleep. Knowing Jak, Daxter probably would have died some dramatic, death-defying stunt gone horribly wrong. Maybe in a freak Zoomer accident, or in the heat of battle, or because they’d gotten eaten by a plant. But it would have maybe been cool to go out in a blaze of glory, provided it was a quick death and there weren’t actually any blazes involved. But dying like this? Like a corned muse ripped apart by rabid jagwolf? By a thing wearing his best friend’s face? Who the hell had he pissed off to earn a death like that?

Daxter peeked through the fold of his arms when he didn’t hear anything. Not the snap, crackle, and pop of the creature’s aura, nor the coarse, bloodthirsty cackle that sent chills down the young boy’s spine. There was only the sound of his own stuttering heartbeat and his shallow, panicked breathing. Maybe he had actually lost him? Then he could book it back to the village and maybe Samos could use his sage mojo to snap Jak out of it! Just to be sure, Daxter would wait a couple of minutes, or maybe thirty or forty or however long, to make sure the thing was actually gone, and then he’d sneak out and find his way back to the - .

“GAH!” he shrieked – there was no way around it; it was a shriek – as a clawed hand suddenly burst through the thorns and grabbed him by the leg. This is it, he thought to himself as he was dragged out of his hiding place and turned to see black, soulless eyes leering down at him. The purple lightning crackled around them both, lancing across his skin like hundreds of little snakes biting at him. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. I’m going to die and I never got to tell hi-.

“Daxter?”

-m how I -.

“Daxter, wake up!”

Daxter shot awake so suddenly that he almost flailed right out of the bed, but he managed to catch himself just in time. He groaned pathetically as a sharp pain lanced through his head and buried his face in the dusty sheets. It had all been a horrible, terrifying, fever-induced nightmare. By the Precursors, but did he hate being sick. He’d just known he’d come down with something trudging around through that disease-infested swamp. Usually his dreams got really weird, like that one time he’d dreamed he’d turned into an Ottsel and had gone on a qyest for a pair of rodent-sized pants. He’d never had a dream this terrifying, though, or one that hit so close to home…

“I guess you’re not feeling any better,” Keira was standing over him, looking down at him with a quirked eyebrow and a concerned frown. “Are you okay? I’ve been trying to wake you up forever.”

“Yea, it was just a real freaky dream. I should be back to my bright and cheery self in no time,” Daxter said with a tired smile. Hopefully. Even if that wasn’t the case, there was no way he was going to lie around waiting to get better – not if he was going to have another dream like that. Thankfully, he was never sick for long. He had gone to sleep the night before last feeling a bit off and had woken up feeling like a herd of Yakows had stampeded over his head. He had spent all of yesterday stuck in bed trapped in the hut with Old Green Stuff, and if he had to spend another second with Samos yapping on about plants and Precursors and Lurkers his head was going to explode. He would force himself to be well if he had to. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and glanced groggily around the hut, which Jak had spent yesterday straightening out as best he could. He didn’t see his horned friend anywhere, and he was more than a little ashamed of the pulse of relief that flashed through him. It had just been a dream. Jak would never do that to him. He would never let himself lose control like that…

The Precursor Oracle’s words whispered insidiously in the back of his mind, and he wondered not for the first time if rejecting the Oracle’s help had really been such a bright idea. He could understand where Jak was coming from, but neither of them knew how long it was going to take to fix him. Daxter had thought going ‘far, far to the north’ wouldn’t take more than a week, but that was before the world decided to be in peril. Though, ultimately, it wasn’t up to Daxter. He had to trust that Jak knew what he was doing, and in the meantime they would just have to save the entire world as fast as possible so they could hurry up and get on to more important things. Like preserving Jaks’ sanity. “So what’s on the agenda for today? Any nefarious Lurker plots that need foiling?”

“I don’t think you’re up for any ‘foiling.’ Besides, Jak’s already got it covered. He headed down to check out that Precursor city a while ago,” the green-haired girl explained as simply as if she was commenting on the weather.

 “Oh, oh, that’s good,” Daxter remarked calmly, at first. But his voice got more and more shrill as he continued. “And, uh, nobody thought it would be bad idea for Jak to go wandering through an underwater, Lurker-infested, Precursor city, full of who knows what, all by his lonesome?!”

“The Lurkers won’t wait for you to get better, Daxter,” the old log snapped from the other side of the room where he looked up from a pile of notes long enough to glare over his mismatched spectacles at him. He hadn’t even noticed the sage was lurking over there. “According to the Blue Sage’s notes, that city is swarming with Lurkers and they must be down there looking for something. I suspect their activities are tied to the chambers the Blue Sage was attempting to bring to the surface…”

“He’ll be fine, Daxter. This is Jak we’re talking about,” Keira said with a warm-hearted roll of her eyes, but that wasn’t what Daxter was worried about at all. Not really. He knew Jak could take care of himself. Even if he wasn’t armed to the teeth, he’d still be more than a match for any mangy Lurkers that came his way. But Daxter seemed to be the only one concerned about the Dark Eco running through Jak’s system. But had anyone else seen Jak’s angry side? Samos had gotten growled at, but he hadn’t seen the cold, malicious glint that entered Jak’s eyes when he was fighting or when he had been staring down the bird lady. Maybe they really didn’t realize that there was a lot more going on than pointy body accessories and an aura that could double as a nightlight. What if Jak got overexcited down there and went off the deep end? He wouldn’t have Daxter’s charms to bring him back down to earth!

“Maybe I should head down there. You know Jak’s practically helpless without me. Buddy might need some backup…”

“It’s a lost city, Dax,” Keira said over her shoulder as she started to gather miscellaneous tools lying around the hut. She was probably going to go back down to work on that weird levitation machine. “You’d get lost before you could find him.”

Daxter would probably be able to just follow the trail of eviscerated carcasses…

Actually, maybe it was a bad idea to go chasing after Jak… Yea. It would kind of suck if he surprised him or something and the older teen accidentally mistook him for a Lurker. Daxter would never forgive Jak if he sliced him up like a Yakow steak. There were some things that just weren’t done. But there was no way he could just sit around the Blue Sage’s hut and do nothing while he waited for Jak to come back. Samos would drive him mad.

The young boy was suddenly overcome with the itchy feeling of being watched, and he glanced up to see that the green-haired mechanic was eyeing him critically. He swallowed thickly when she suddenly smiled at him. He suddenly had a very, very bad feeling. “Hey, if you need something to keep you busy I think I’ve got just the job for you…”

-x-

It was still raining when Daxter left the Blue Sage’s hut, but it didn’t dampen his mood one bit. He was a man on a mission.

The day before yesterday, Keira had managed to track down who seemed to be the only woman in the entire village – a geologist who was studying the animals who made their home in the nearby Precursor Basin. She was apparently more worried about the Lightning Moles that had been scared out of their burrows than she was about her own fellow villagers, but she couldn’t climb into the Basin to get to them. So Keira had spent yesterday afternoon fiddling with the nearby Trans Pad until she hadshe had finally gotten it working and had brought her Zoomer over. Daxter had to give Keira credit. She was a genius when it came to machines, and she basically was just teaching herself as she went along. And now he was about to trust his life with that technology…

Best not to think about that part too much.

The geologist was standing under a makeshift wood and cloth roof that had been fixed into the mountainside. She was surrounded by boxes and barrels and Daxter wondered what in the world could be in all those containers. The young boy stood as tall as he could manage and squared his shoulders before sauntering up to the woman as confidently as he could. For once, he was going to talk to somebody and they weren’t automatically going to start comparing him to the mud on the bottom of their sandals.

“Somebody called for the best driver in Sandover?”

“That’s strange. I was expecting someone a bit taller…and frankly much scarier looking,” the Rock Village native commented good naturedly. “Keira was going to send over that pale-looking chap I’ve seen running around.”

“Yea, well, he’s a bit busy at the moment so they called in the real specialist,” Daxter smirked, examining his fingernails nonchalantly.

“Well…you seem like a capable fellow,” the geologist was smiling at him knowingly with amusement, but she wasn’t rolling her eyes at him or telling him to go away so that was a plus. Maybe this chick was alright. A little bit too old for him and that accent sort of reminded him of Jak’s uncle, but she was alright. “I’m worried about those Lightning Moles. Those awful Lurkers have scared the moles to the surface and, since they’re blind as bats, they can’t find their way back underground! If you could herd them back into their burrowed tunnels, you might just save their lives. I’ve got a Power Cell that says you can do it!”

And she believed in him! There was no way he could mess this up, now! “Lady, you just sit back and relax and let Daxter take care of everything,” he said with a grin that was 100% genuine, no extra sass or bravado included. How hard could it be, really? If Jak could ride the Zoomer over a pit of firery death, than surely Daxter could fly the thing over a field of grass. He just had to make sure he didn’t accidentally run over a mole. There was nothing life-threatening about this at all. This was going to be easy…

At least, that’s what he thought until he was standing in front of the Zoomer. He was glad the geologist wasn’t close enough to see the expression of panic on his face. But he had to do this. He would show Jak. He was just as capable of driving this mechanical monstrosity as he was. He didn’t give himself any more time to talk himself out of it. With a deep if slightly unsteady breath he threw a leg over the Zoomer and sat down. Another deep breath and he gripped the handlebars with hands that were surprisingly steady. He had this. No sweat. Now he just had to crank the engine like…that! And, yea, the vibrations were kind of…um…yea, but it didn’t feel like it was going to fall apart. Okay. He could do this. He was actually starting to feel a little excited. With a grin that nearly split his face in half, he readjusted the goggles he always wore to cover his eyes.

Now all he had to do was turn the handlebar thingies and…yes! He was moving for - .

“AAAHHHH!!!” The Zoomer shot through the air and raced up the ramp leading into the Precursor Basin so suddenly that Daxter was almost knocked clean off. It was only his instinctual urge to cling to the machine for dear life that kept him from flying through the air. For the life of him he couldn’t remember Keira’s instructions for stopping the thing. Releasing the handlebar thingies might have been a part of it, but he was freaking out too much to remember properly. The world had been reduced to a blur of green and orange, and the only thing he could barely hear his own yelling over the whir of the engine and whistling of the wind. He had been wrong! This thing was a deathtrap!

He was just glad he had enough wits left to avoid crashing headlong into a wall or a cliff. The Basin was full of weird Precursor buildings and strange rock formations that would all probably be pretty deadly to run into. But after a bit of time had passed and he hadn’t crashed and burst into a ball of fiery death, Daxter started to calm down enough to actually kind of…enjoy it. This was actually kind of fun. Maybe this was what flying was like? Sure, he wasn’t more than a foot or two off the ground, but he was still off the ground and cutting through the air like a knife. He was like an unstoppable force of nature! He was…Orange Lightning!

The screams of terror slowly morphed into cackles of glee as Daxter got the hang of maneuvering the Zoomer. He weaved through the tunnels made by the ancient Precursor buildings as fast as he could make the Zoomer go. Now for the Lightning Moles… Herding them back into their burrow really wasn’t too difficult once he knew what he was doing. He just had to make sure he didn’t accidentally chop the poor guys up with the Zoomer’s propellers. Before long, the last of the moles had been shepherded back into its burrow and he started to head back toward the Trans Pad. He crested over the hill and was rolling down the slope when he noticed someone sitting at the bottom of the hill. He would recognize those black Yakow horns and crackly aura anywhere. He couldn’t help but show off just a little bit when he brought the Zoomer back to the pad. He revved the engine and, instead of just parking the Zoomer and sliding off, he tried to jump off of it instead. He was pretty proud that he only stumbled a little bit and didn’t fall flat on his face.

Jak was grinning from ear to ear when he stood up and approached him, but it was nothing like the terrifying leer that had haunted his dream. This smile was all Jak, even with the fangs, and Daxter admonished himself again for ever doubting his best friend. Of course, Jak had doubted Daxter, too. The orange-haired teen had been perfectly capable of driving the Zoomer, and he hadn’t broken his arm his first try.

“I don’t know what all the fuss was about. Drivin’ that Zoomer was a cinch!” Daxter bragged as he slid his goggles back to their proper resting place. “Those moles are tall taken care of thanks to the one and only Orange Lightning!”

He struck a dashing pose and laughed happily when Jak clapped him on the shoulder. The purple lightning was crackling merrily around him, nothing like the snake-like whips that had attacked him last night. Maybe Daxter really did worry too much. It was hard to believe the Oracle’s warning when Jak was smiling down at him like that. There was no madness there. No malice or bloodlust. Just warmth and pride, and Daxter soaked it all in like a sponge.

Hundreds of feet below them, buried under the weight of the sea, the lost Precursor city rang with the silence of death.

Chapter Text

Keira was tinkering with the levitation machine’s controls when the two boys arrived. They had found quite a few Power Cells lying around in the swamp, and Jak had stumbled across more than enough while he’d been in the Precursor city. Now that they had enough Cells to move the boulder blocking the mountain path, they could finally do something about that ugly blue eyesore terrorizing the village and hopefully the citizens of Rock Village could get back to whatever they’d been doing with their lives before the Lurkers had shown up. The young mechanic smiled down at them from the wooden scaffolding that led to the controls and placed her hands on her hips. “Hey, guys! It looks like you got all the Cells for the machine! See, I told you Jak would be fine.”

Daxter folded his arms over his chest and looked determinedly anywhere but at the pale teen now watching him with a smirk and raised eyebrows. “Just lookin’ out for Jak here. Somebody has to, since he won’t do it himself.”

Jak smiled sheepishly and folded his arms behind his head. Just because every time he slipped off on an adventure without Daxter, he usually ended up in some kind of life-threatening trouble, did not mean that there was any correlation. He had always made it out of trouble in one whole, if slightly battered, piece. He had done just fine in the Precursor city. Things had gotten a little hairy in that room with the rising Eco, but it was probably better that he had gone alone. If Jak had survived dunking his entire body into a vat of Dark Eco, he didn’t really think a little more would hurt him, but who knew what the stuff would have done to Daxter?

“Well, it looks like she works!” Keira exclaimed happily as she installed the Power Cells and fired up the levitation machine. The strange machine crackled to life as the Cells activated and Blue Eco ran through it. The Eco gathered until it finally shot toward the still smoldering boulder in a brilliant beam of blue light. It lifted as easily as a feather and hovered a few meters off the ground, glowing and crackling with fire and Blue Eco. “You two be careful taking care of that Lurker up top!”

“Wait!”Daxter quickly backed up and shuffled behind the green-haired mechanic. “Uh, I’ll stay here and protect Keira. Jak, I think you’re ready to handle that monster without me.” Somebody had to stay down here to take care of her on the small, insignificant chance that Jak somehow failed and the monster came looking for revenge. Daxter had no illusions about who would be taking care of that behemoth of a Lurker. Even if he wasn’t still feeling a bit fuzzy in the head, there was no way he was getting anywhere near that monster.

“What was that about looking out for Jak?” the sage’s daughter asked with a knowing smile.

“I will!” he defended hastily. “From a…safe distance…”

He ended up following after Jak anyway, like he always did. There was no way he could just wait with Keira while his best friend put his life on the line. And even though he was pretty sure there was no way in heck he was actually going to try to fight that monster, he had to be there to dive in and drag Jak’s unconscious body out of harm’s way in case the Lurker got the better of him. That’s what cowardly best friends were for, after all. And even though he loathed the thought of letting Jak handle a big, bad, armor-clad Lurker all by himself, if they didn’t do something soon then there wouldn’t be a village left to save. But the sight that met them when they reached the top of the cliff gave him second thoughts. Jak was supposed to fight that?

The Lurker hadn’t seemed quite that big before when they’d been gawking at it from the other side of the village, but Daxter had never seen anything that big before. It had to be at least twenty feet tall and twenty feet tall in the shoulders, like some disturbing ball of furry blue muscle perched on top of two stick legs. Its entire torso and its disproportionately tiny feet were clad in armor made out of scraps of Precursor metal, which explained why he was just standing in the lake of fiery, molten lava as if he were taking a dip into the ocean. The ugly brute grinned nastily at him as if he had read his thoughts. There was no way that they could get to it while it was standing out there. Jak might have gotten super powers but he could still burn to a crisp!

The older teen didn’t seem fazed by the turn of events at all. He had that stupid eager look on his face he always got when he was presented with a new, life-threatening challenge. He stepped forward as if he actually planned on just leaping into the flaming pit of doom and the orange-haired teen had to grab him by the shirt to keep him from flying off the edge. Daxter was really going to have to do something about those nonexistent self-preservation instincts of his before the guy got himself killed one day.

“Whoa there, buddy! Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Look before ya leap?” he asked as he moved to stand between his friend and certain death. Jak had the nerve to roll his eyes at him and gestured to the three dark rocks floating in the lava not too far from their cliff. So, okay, he had sort of had a plan, but what was he going to do after he stranded himself? He couldn’t reach the Lurker from there. One well-aimed splash and game over!

An emphatic, if vague, gesture at the landscape around them clearly said, “Well, what else are we going to do? We don’t have a lot of options here, Dax.”

And Daxter hated that he was right. There were no other options. But he didn’t have to like it. He let out a strangled mixture between a whine and a groan and turned away with his arms folded over his chest. “Fine! Go, before I change my mind!”

His was going to end so badly. He heard Jak leap off of the cliff behind him and held his breath, waiting for the scream of agony that meant that Jak had missed his landing and had burst into flames, but there was just a soft thump as the pale teen landed safely and unharmed. He chanced a hesitant peak over his shoulder and saw Jak standing there on the flimsy, floating piece of rock, back straight and feet apart, fingers curling more out of excitement than growing bloodlust, and he couldn’t look away. He was best friends with a lunatic. Who else could face off with something that freakishly huge and be that disturbingly calm? Daxter would have passed out by now if that had been him down there.

And then the boulders started flying.

The beast began reaching into the lava with its armor-clad right arm and chucking house-sized boulders at Jak as if they weighed no more than coconuts. And Jak dodged them all as if he had been practicing dodging giant flaming projectiles in his sleep. He jumped from rock to rock to avoid the boulders with a stupid grin on his face as if it were some sort of game. He was having fun down there while Daxter paced back and forth on the cliff going out of his mind with worry.

It seemed like it would go on forever like this – the Lurker chucking rocks and Jak dodging them easily. But the last boulder that shattered revealed a glowing ball of Blue Eco, and Jak was quick to snatch it up. The ground shook under Daxter’s feet as bolts of Blue Eco flew out from Jak’s body and dived into the lava. Huge chunks of Precursor metal that had long been buried beneath the magma rose from the molten rock and flew through the air, forming a bridge that led all the way to the behemoth Lurker. The monster snarled ferociously and quickly backed away from the bridge, seemingly out of harm’s way, but Jak wasn’t havingit. Still charged with Blue Eco, he sprinted across the newly formed bridge faster than Daxter had ever seen, and he wasn’t slowing down. He got to the end of the bridge and jumped. And Daxter knew then that this wasn’t Jak anymore, per se. This was Dark Jak, the thing from his nightmare.

Even the Lurker seemed dumbstruck by this new turn of events. It stumbled more from shock than anything else when Jak landed on his breastplate, but he was quick to recover. He roared in outrage and tried to grab the pale boy with armor-free left arm, but Jak was quicker. He used the strange bars protruding from the Lurker’s armor to climb out of the way and onto the beast’s shoulder, and he clung on for dear life when the blue Lurker tried to shake him off. The purple lightning was crackling and snapping like mad, attacking any inch of exposed skin it could find, but it seemed to just annoy the Lurker rather than to actually hurt it. No matter which way it turned or how fast it tried to be, it couldn’t grab a hold of Jak, and its eyes widened in fear as the pale creature managed to get closer and closer to the Lurker’s vulnerable skull. With another roar it made a dive for the lava, and Jak finally had to relent. He pushed off of the Lurker’s shoulder and used his claws to grab onto one of the massive stalagmites sticking out of the lava, and he watched the molten lake below him with the eyes of a predator as he waited for the Lurker to resurface. Apparently the thing was immune to lava…

“Is that…Jak?” Daxter looked up to see Keira standing beside him watching the scene before her with wide, awe-filled green eyes. There was a hint of fear there, which was completely understandable. Daxter himself was terrified, but he couldn’t let it show.

“I showed him those moves myself, ya know,” he said instead with a smirk.

“I’m sure,” she said somewhat shakily, with only a tenth of her usually sarcasm. She pried her gaze away from Jak and looked down at Daxter with a worried frown. “I want to ask you about Jak later, but right now we might have a bigger problem…”

“How much bigger?” the younger boy asked incredulously, wondering how things could get any worse than his slightly insane friend fighting a giant, mangy monster in a pit of deadly liquid fire.

“I sent a scout fly ahead to check out the mountain pass. The Lurkers have rigged the entire passage with explosives. I saw a group of Lurkers on flying machines leave the swamp. They must plan on blowing up the pass behind them!” Keira explained quickly. “If you don’t get there before the Lurkers do, we won’t be able to get to the Red Sage’s hut.”

“And I’ll be blown to smithereens! And what do you mean ‘If I don’t get there?’”

“Well, you were saying how you wanted to take the Zoomer next time. This is your chance to show off to Jak. I already sent the Zoomer ahead to a Trans Pad at the pass’s entrance.” Before Daxter could ponder on her choice of words, the Lurker emerged from the lava with an earthshaking roar. It glared around frantically, looking for the pale creature that had attacked it. Jak pushed off from his perch and landed on the Lurker’s back this time. The two teens watched as Jak climbed back onto the beast’s shoulder and made a dive for the Lurker’s head. Daxter wasn’t sure what exactly was about to happen. He kept getting flashes in his mind of that poor Lurker rat that had been ripped to shreds and wondered if Lurker heads were as easy to go through.

But, thankfully, Jak didn’t use his claws. With reflexes Daxter hadn’t even known he’d had, he grabbed onto one of the Lurker’s massive horns with one hand and reached back with the other. His purple aura crackled and seemed to glow even brighter, gathering in his free hand until his entire hand seemed to be lost in the glow of the Eco. And then with a grin that would haunt Daxter’s dreams, he shoved the ball of Eco into the Lurker’s face.

The Lurker screamed in pain and flailed, stumbling around blind before it fell to its knees. Jak leapt onto the Precursor bridge before it just keeled over and began to sink into the lava, apparently dead. When the last of the Lurker had disappeared, those inky black eyes snapped up and locked straight onto the two teens watching him from the cliff. Keira gasped and backed up a step, but Daxter was just frozen in fear. He had killed it in one hit. Like it was nothing. With the same manic grin that he had just dreamed about the night before. And now he was staring at them with those creepy eyes of his and what exactly was Daxter supposed to do?!

“Daxter, the Lurkers!” Keira whispered suddenly. A group of Lurkers was actually flying through the air on strange wooden contraptions, and they soared over them and disappeared into the mountain pass. Apparently his freaking out was going to have to wait a moment.

“Everything’s cool! Nobody panic!” he said more to himself than to Keira. With a little less grace than Jak, he jumped from the cliff and onto the rocks below, and then onto the Precursor bridge. Walking toward his best friend shouldn’t have felt like walking toward to his execution, but those eyes hadn’t left him and they didn’t look any friendlier. He swallowed thickly and just tried to make sure none of the fear showed on his face. He didn’t want Jak to know how scared he was – how much he really just wanted to turn around and sprint in the other direction. So he planted a smile on his face and walked up to Jak as if nothing was wrong. “You’ve been holdin’ out on me! Since when can you do that?”

The grin that spread across Jak’s face was slow and malicious, but Daxter realized that the malice wasn’t directed toward him. It was directed at the corpse sizzling somewhere beneath their feet – and he really wished he could unthink that thought. But with that realization came a strange sense of calm. Maybe…he didn’t have anything to fear from this strange darker version of Jak? Every time he had gone off the deep end, he had been protecting Daxter. He couldn’t say that the being who had hacked through Lurkers like they were nothing was Jak, because he knew his best friend couldn’t kill so ruthlessly, but Jak was in here somewhere. Or…the dark side of Jak just happened to like him and didn’t feel like gutting him.

This time Daxter’s smile wasn’t quite as stiff, and it was a little more genuine. “Now it’s my turn! Let a real driver show you how it’s done.” He ducked around him before Jak could do anything and leapt across the rock path to the other side of the lava lake. He didn’t have any time to waste. He had to get to the other side of this pass before those Lurkers did and he had no idea how long the passage was or how far ahead of them they were. But Keira was right…he did want to show off. Just a little. He wanted to prove, mostly to himself, that he could pull his weight on this adventure. Maybe he couldn’t take down gigantic Lurkers with one hit, but he could drive a Zoomer through a mountain canyon, right? A glance down the pass showed nothing but grass and trees, and Daxter felt his confidence growing. He could totally handle this. With a smile he mounted the Zoomer and pulled his goggles back over his eyes.

He started when he felt a hand land on his shoulder, but it was just Jak. His Jak, and not the Dark Jak from earlier. His friend was frowning down at him uncertainly, worry evident in the droop of his ears and the furrow of his brow. “I got this. It’s just one little measly canyon…chock full of explosives and maybe a few Lurkers out to kill me. No sweat!”

Jak’s frown was quickly going from worried to “I’m going to rip you off this Zoomer if I have to,” so Daxter revved the engine and sped off before the older teen could get his claws into him. He was just giving him a taste of his own medicine. Now who was going to be stuck doing all the worrying while Daxter was the one risking his tail? He glanced over his shoulder and couldn’t help but laugh at Jak’s incredulous expression.

He quickly forced himself to focus, however. The terrain was smooth at first, but that only lasted the first few yards. He turned a corner and all of a sudden there was a gigantic hill looming in front of his and no room to maneuver around it. He went flying through the air with the greatest of ease, and it was only his catlike reflexes that allowed him to land safely if somewhat roughly on solid land instead of plummeting into a pit. He was just glad no one was around to hear him screaming his head off.

The whole canyon went on like this. There was nothing but cliffs that sent him flying, rocks for him to crash into, and bottomless pits for him to fall into. Though it certainly made for a wild ride, all of the obstacles were really making it hard to get any speed. Every time he felt like he was getting the hang of it, a tree would pop out of nowhere or he’d have to narrowly dodge one of the Lurker’s explosives. There were Eco vents pouring out Blue Eco, which gave the Zoomer speed, but it didn’t last very long. Even though Daxter was making progress, he felt like he wasn’t really getting anywhere. He started to worry that he wouldn’t make it to the end of the pass in time.

But then he saw them. Three purple Lurkers bobbing ahead on their funny-looking flying machines. They ducked into a cave and disappeared from view. All he had to do was catch up with them, pass them, and he would be in the clear. Hopefully. He pushed the Zoomer as hard as it would go and sped into the cave after them. He had been worried that it would be too dark to see, but the entire cave was lit with strange red, glowing crystals. Unfortunately, they just revealed that the cave was filled with enough explosives to sink Misty Island. He was forced to slow down to avoid them and all the gaping pits.

He hit a lucky break when he squeezed through a tunnel that had three Blue Eco vents in it. The Zoomer shot forward like a rocket and Daxter hung on for dear life. He didn’t dare slow down, though. There were more and more explosives and he could just feel that they were getting closer to the end of the passage. If he didn’t pass the Lurkers soon, he was going to die and Jak would never be able to get far, far to the north. They would never be able to get to the bottom of their Lurker problem. He bobbed and weaved through the giant explosives, his gaze focused on the end of the cavern where he would see a solitary Lurker waiting by a trigger of some sort. He had passed one of the Lurkers and was gaining on the second.

The Lurker at the end of the cavern placed his furry hands on the trigger and waited.

Daxter passed the second Lurker. The last Lurker in front glared nervously over its shoulder at him.

The Lurker by the trigger glanced at its fellows uncertainly, not knowing if it should detonate early or not.

Orange Lighting sped past the last Lurker and flew at the Lurker with the trigger, who turned to try to run at the last second. He rammed into it with the full force of three Blue Eco vents and was glad that it got knocked into the cavern wall, rather than getting chopped in the propellers. Either way, it was dead, and the Daxter had made it in time. For the moment he could ignore that he had essentially run the poor thing over, and he leapt from the Zoomer with a whoop of triumph. The three flying Lurkers zoomed past him and disappeared further into the cavern, but he wasn’t worried about them. He had done it! He had outraced the Lurkers and saved the day! He was in the middle of a victory jig when he realized that Jak and the others were still waiting for him on the other side of the warp gate.

He quickly made his way through the cavern, wincing as the air seemed to grow thicker and hotter the farther he went. It didn’t take him long to figure out why. The Red Sage had thought it was a bright idea to build his shack in the middle of a frigging active volcano. Daxter carefully made his way across the rickety wooden bridge and sighed when he entered the Red Sage’s hut. This place was just as torn up as the Blue Sage’s had been , and he would bet a hundred Precursor Orbs that that was no coincidence. He quickly maneuvered around the chunks of broken wood and scattered books and activated the switch that turned on the warp gate. The swirling blue vortex had barely been active for a second before Jak came barreling through.

Before Daxter knew what was happening, pale arms were wrapping around his middle and tugging him against a warm body. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hugged. He and Jak touched all the time – high fives, fist bumps, noogies, wrestling – but not hugs. It felt…nice. A little more than nice, really, with the Eco energy crackling pleasantly across his skin. And he probably would have been fine with continuing if he wasn’t sure that the old mossy log wasn’t about to tumble through the teleporter any second. He was glad his face was stuck somewhere in Jak’s neck because no one needed to see him blushing. When he slipped out of Jak’s embrace, the paler teen was grinning down at him. He couldn’t have kept the answering grin off his own face if he had tried.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t long before Old Samos came tumbling through the warp gate as gracefully as ever, this time somehow managing to land on his head. “I always wonder if I’m losing body parts in those things!” the sage grumbled irritably as he floated himself right side up. The old elf’s eyes widened almost comically as he took in the devastation that was the Red Sage’s hut. “Holy Yakow! The Red Sage’s lab looks worse than the Blue’s!”

“Well, it definitely looks as though there’s been a struggle here…” Keira remarked as she folded her arms over her middle and walked further into the lab. It looked like a hurricane had blown through.

A spine-numbing chuckle suddenly pierced the hot air like a knife, and Daxter was sure that it hadn’t come from any of them. He half hoped that it had come from Samos – he had never heard the old grump laugh before and maybe he had a funny sense of humor - but Daxter would recognize that sick, raspy voice anywhere. “I’d hardly call it a ‘struggle,’ would you, dear sister?”

“Certainly not. The Red Sage gave up with so little effort. No fun at all,” a woman’s voice whined almost petulantly. There was no doubt about it. The two elves from Misty Island had decided to pay them a visit.

Daxter and the others turned to see that they hadn’t been as alone as they’d thought. The two grey-skinned elves were floating not ten feet away looking down on themwith sn nasty mixture of malice and amusement. From this close, Daxter could see that the guy was even uglier than he’d thought. His lower jaw was abnormally large and disturbingly Lurker-shaped, and his eyes were like two drops of blood glaring at them from the dark.

“Gol?! Is that you? You’ve finally gone off the deep end, ey?” Samos asked incredulously as he readjusted his spectacles. He actually seemed to recognize the elf, which surprised Daxter less than it probably should have. Of course the green log would keep weird company. The Eco Sage favored the woman with a frown that was almost like a disappointed father’s. “And Maia, I told you the Dark Eco would affect you both! Nobody listens to Old Samos…”

Dark Eco? It explained the claws and the sickly-looking skin, but that was where any similarities with Jak stopped thankfully stopped. And these guys wanted the flood the world with Dark Eco and make everybody look like them? He would pass, thank you very much. He didn’t care how phenomenally powerful he might be hyped up on Eco – he like the way he looked. And there was that high probability that he would just drop dead from exposure that he had to consider.

“What have you done with the Blue and Red Sages?” the Sage demanded. Personally, Daxter thought he should be a bit more polite to the two elves who had probably just come here to pick off the guys ripping their plans for world domination apart piece by piece.

“Don’t worry about your colorful friends, you old fool!” Gol spat venomously. Yep. Just another poor soul that had been exposed to just a little too much of Samos the Green Eco Sage. “They’re perfectly safe in our citadel. Our special guests.”

“They have graciously agreed to help us on a little…project,” Maia said with a smile that would have been more appropriate in a Lurker shark. Even though Gol was definitely the creepier of the two, it was the guy’s sister that was causing Daxter’s blood to curdle. There was just something…off about her, something wild and none too friendly swimming in her gaze. The orange-haired boy had unconsciously shuffled behind Jak before he could even think about it, but moving had just drawn attention to himself. Those horrible red eyes snapped onto him and then widened eagerly when Maia saw who he was hiding behind.

“Well, well, well. I’ve been waiting to meet you,” she practically cooed as she floated closer to circle around the two boys slowly. Jak watched her suspiciously through narrowed eyes and turned to keep himself between her and his cowering friend. He resisted the almost uncontrollable urge to actually bare his teeth at her, but he couldn’t stand the smug, almost appreciative way she looked at him. “You’ve caused us quite a bit of trouble, you know.”

“Ah, the Dark Eco child,” Gol wheezed, his eyes shining. “You’ve taken to the Eco remarkably well. It took us decades to achieve what you managed to accomplish in a mere manner of seconds,” here he had to pause to catch his breath before continuing. “But you’ve only just begun to scratch the surface, boy. There are so many possibilities waiting for you. Don’t let this ignorant fool hold you back. We can teach you how to use your gift…”

“Thanks for the offer, but, uh…I think we’re gonna have to pass…” Daxter answered for his silent friend, and Jak gave one determined nod in agreement. The Precursor Oracle had offered to train Jak to control his powers, but these guys wanted Jak to willingly use them. From what Daxter had seen, Jak’s Dark Eco powers were nothing but raw destruction and nothing that his kind-hearted friend was particularly interested in. He was wracked with guilt every time he killed something. Daxter could guess what these two demented elves would want to use Jak’s powers for, and it would tear Jak apart.

“Any more exposure to Dark Eco and he could end up as delusional as YOU!” Samos added as he flailed his staff in Gol’s direction. The twisted elf sneered down at the Sage with more hate than Daxter thought was possible.

“You were wrong, Samos. Dark Eco can be controlled! We’ve learned its secrets…And now we can reshape the world to our liking…”

“You can’t control Dark Eco by itself!” Samos tried to explain, though he knew it was far too late. The two elves were past the point of no return. “Even the Precursors - .”

“Until now we’ve had to scrape by with what little Dark Eco can be found near the surface,” Maia was quick to interrupt the Sage before he could go on one of his rants, and Daxter had to wonder just how familiar these guys were with each other. “But soon we will have access to the vast stores of Dark Eco hidden deep underground.”

Old Samos looked scared. Scratch that, he looked terrified. “Not the silos?”

“Yes, the silos!” Gol exclaimed with glee. “They will be opened! And all the Dark Eco of the world will be ours!”

“But that’s impossible! Only a Precursor robot – !”

“Oh, don’t look so upset, Samos,” Maia interrupted again with a cruel smirk. “We’ve got big plans for you…”

Daxter winced as she let loose a cackle that made Gol’s sound like it had been a warm-hearted guffaw. With a puff of purple smoke, the two elves disappeared as suddenly as they’d come, and Daxter let out a sigh of relief. He was glad they had just dropped by for a friendly chat and hadn’t killed them all like he’d thought they would. There was something that was bugging him, though. That name, Gol, sounded familiar…Hadn’t he heard it…before…

“Wait a minute!That was Gol? The same Gol that’s supposed to change Jak back?! Gol is the guy trying to kill us?!” They were doomed! Either they killed Gol and saved the world and left Jak pointy and crackly for the rest of his days, or they let Gol live on the nonexistent chance that he would change Jak back and let the maniac and his demented sister destroy the world. In Daxter’s opinion it was a lose-lose situation, though saving the world did have its perks.

“Unfortunately. We can’t allow them to open the silos! If they do, the Dark Eco will twist and destroy everything it touches! We simply must get to their citadel to stop them!” Samos insisted with more passion than Daxter had ever seen out of him.

“The fastest way there is through the lava tube at the bottom of this crater,” Keira informed them with a knowing smile. Another death-defying journey by Zoomer, and somehow Daxter doubted Jak would let him go so easily this time. No, he knew, because he didn’t even have to look at the guy to see that he was glaring daggers at him. The younger boy threw a shit-eating grin at him over his shoulder. Daxter had every intention of taking the Zoomer. If Jak had to put his life on the line fighting gigantic freaks of nature, then Daxter could pitch in by offering up his superior driving skills. It was only fair. “A few more Power Cells and the heat shield should get you across safely.”

“Well, it’s been a long day. You won’t get much done when you’re dead on your feet,” Samos grumbled as he looked the two boys over critically. They had both accomplished so much more than he’d expected of them, but then again, he hadn’t expected their journey to be so difficult in the first place. He was worried about Jak, though. Gol Acheron had been their only shot at curing the boy, and now that was no longer an option. This was not the Jak he remembered. Either some new solution had to present itself soon, or Samos was going to have to consider the possibility that they may have altered the future… More had changed than Jak’s appearance. He knew well the effects of Dark Eco, and in his opinion it was only a matter of time before the substance started to affect the boy’s mind irreparably.

There might be one thing that could reverse the effects of the Dark Eco…or at least something that could counterbalance it. But he wasn’t even sure if it truly existed…

“Hurry up and get some rest! The sooner we collect the necessary Power Cells, the sooner we can get to Gol and Maia’s citadel!”

There was nowhere to sleep in the ruin that was the Red Sage’s hut, but the nice thing about the warp gate was that home was literally a jump away. Keira stayed behind to investigate the lava tube, and Samos to see if he couldn’t find some of the Red Sage’s notes buried beneath the rubble, but Daxter was itching to get as far away from that volcanic pit as possible. It felt weird, flying through that gate and appearing back in Samos’ hut, walking through the sleeping village. He hadn’t thought they’d come back until Jak had been fixed, but the boy walking silently behind him still had skin paler than Yakow milk and eyes like drops of ink. Jak didn’t seem at all upset, though. He had the same jaunt to his step that he always did and, when they arrived at his uncle’s empty hut, he flopped down unto their cot and folded his arms behind his head as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“I know I said I was supposed to do all of the freakin’ out around here, but aren’t you worried at all?” Daxter asked his friend incredulously. Jak shook his head and just smiled up at him calmly. Maybe Samos was right and the Dark Eco was starting to affect Jak’s head. “Jaaaak. What if we can’t change ya back?”

The older boy sat up and gave him a long look before gesturing toward the small window. Beyond the jutting cliffs that protect the farmer’s hut from the worst of the tide, nestled in the mountain range that hid the vast jungle from view, sat one of the Precursor Oracles. Its eyes shown through the darkness like two, creepy twinkling stars.

“Then seek the pure light, for within its flame answers reside…”

“So you believe that Precursor crap, huh?” the flame-headed elf asked as he folded his arms over his chest. It wasn’t as if Daxter didn’t believe in the Precursors or something. He just didn’t see the point in foaming at the mouth over a civilization that obviously couldn’t have been all that great, if they were all dead and gone. So he was a little skeptical most of the time. And he could admit that he might be a little biased after one too many Precursor lectures courtesy of his favorite Sage. He wanted to believe the Oracle, but at the same time he didn’t. If the Oracle was right, there might be another way to help Jak, but that also meant that Jak might go insane if they couldn’t find it.

If there was another way to help Jak, though, Daxter wouldn’t rest until he’d found it.

Well…he’d rest occasionally. Growing boys needed sleep.

Jak shrugged his shoulder at him and smiled.

“You are disgustingly optimistic. Can’t kill one measly rat without freaking out but, faced with the end of the world and possible insanity, ya don’t even break a sweat!”

Hearing Jak’s laugh helped to calm some of his nerves. They would figure things out. Tomorrow they would find more Power Cells, and now they were literally a hop, skip, and a jump away from ‘far, far to the north.’ It really hadn’t been so far after all, but he supposed everything seemed like an epic journey when you had never really left home before.

His dreams, thankfully, were untroubled and as normal as dreams could be. It was nice sleeping in his own bed, and he could almost pretend that he wouldn’t have to go back to trying to save the world the next day. At least, until his rather rude awakening the next morning.

“When I said to go and get some rest, I wasn’t giving you permission to SLACK OFF!” Daxter screamed in absolute terror when he awoke so see beady eyes glaring down at him. His attempts to get away failed when his flailing entangled him hopelessly in the sheets. The Green Eco Sage rolled his eyes at him before floating to a more respectable distance. The disgruntled teen glared at the boy standing on the other side of the room, laughing at his plight. Was it too much to ask to be able to wake up normally for once? “If you haven’t noticed, the world is in peril!”

“Sheesh! Aren’t you a barrel full of sunshine this morning,” Daxter hissed as he worked his way out of the sheets. “What life-threatening misadventure do you have lined up for us today?”

“There seems to be a large Lurker presence in the spider caves inside the volcanic crater,” the old sage informed them briskly. If all went well, they might be able to get to Gol and Maia’s citadel the next day, providing these boys got a move on.

Daxter was in no hurry to go anywhere, though. If there was one thing he absolutely loathed beyond all else, it was spiders. Anything with more than four legs just creeped him out, and he never knew which ones were deadly or not. And there was that time that Jak had hidden an army of spiders in his pillow…He’d had nightmares for a month. “Great. Sounds like a real cheery place. Let’s me guess…there are spiders in spider caves, right?!”

“Of course there are spiders in the spider caves!” Old Samos snapped incredulously, completely missing Daxter’s sarcasm. “But that’s the least of your problems! The Lurkers are after the crystals of concentrated Dark Eco. You’ve got to destroy the crystals before those monsters get their hands on them! Hop to it!”

He emphasized his point by swatting at Daxter with his staff, catching him in the back of the head. He grumbled irritably at the sage and was surprised when the old log actually backed off, but then he realized it wasn’t because of him. He could hear Jak’s purple lightning snapping and crackling behind him.

“We’ll handle it,” he said before Jak could do anything rash like…accidentally breaking his beloved mentor in half in a fit of rage. “Everything’s under control.”

For now. Once he was trapped in an enclosed, underground space with a horde of spiders and who knows what else...well, that would be another story entirely.

Chapter Text

The spider caves were nestled deep in the crater where the sun didn’t shine and the lava, thankfully, didn’t flow. Daxter had been worried - hoping - it’d be too dark to see, but the cave was illuminated by the same kind of crystals that had lit the explosive-filled cave outside of the crater. The young boy couldn’t decide if the bluish green glow was peaceful or creepy. Maybe a little bit of both. But as they kept walking and nothing nefarious came out to grab them, Daxter started to think that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. What was so bad about spiders, anyway? Sure, some were poisonous, but they were just tiny, little specs and they ran most of the time anyway. And they ate all the more annoying pests! Really, there was nothing for him to worry about.

Or at least, that’s what he told himself until he rounded a corner and met face to face with the biggest, ugliest spider he’d ever seen in his short life. Six feet of black, matted fur; writhing, stubby legs; and massive, slobbering fangs. Daxter screamed as he went for the weapon he had tied to his back, the thorn-covered stick from the boggy swamp, and flailed it wildly in front of him. One day he and Jak were going to have to work on his ability to think and aim when under attack, but anything that could get that horrible thing away from him worked fine at that moment. He laughed triumphantly when he actually managed to catch the monster across the face, and the spider went spinning through the air suspended only by a thin strand of silk. When it came swinging back like a demented pendulum, Daxter was ready for it. He swung at it again as hard as he could and, with a pathetic pained shriek, the spider hung limply from the ceiling, dead.

A light punch to his shoulder was Jak’s way of congratulating him. That hadn’t been so bad. If he could take out an elf-sized spider in two hits, than this would be a breeze.

And really, he should learn to stop underestimating things.

Because around the next corner was the most terrifying thing Daxter had ever seen in his life.

Now, there was a lot in front of the two boys that might be considered terrifying. There was just the sheer size of the chamber they had entered, which looked big enough to fit the entire temple from the jungle inside of it. It would take hours to search the entire chamber and all the tunnels Daxter could see leading off into parts unknown, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. There was also the copious amount of Dark Eco that was setting Daxter on edge. It flowed along the cave floor like a river of death, murmuring quietly and giving off strange purple wisps of light. But neither of these compared to what had really paralyzed him with fear. He had thought he’d had a slight problem with spiders and their six extra appendages, but that was nothing to the absolute horror that filled him at the sight of the fifty foot long…abominations slithering through the pole-like formations filling the cave.

Dozens, hundreds, no, thousands of legs twitching along, weaving in and out of the burrows the horrible things had made in the rock.

“You know what, Jak? I think you could probably handle this place on your own,” Daxter said with a nervous chuckle. He quickly shuffled backwards the way they had come, hoping he could slip out before any of the monster noticed the two small snacks that had shown up for dinner. “I should just head back and, uh, help Keira with the Zoomer! Or, you know, I bet Samos could use help sorting through the Red Sage’s notes!”

Daxter couldn’t believe he was resorting to using Samos as an excuse to leave. But before he could get very far, a clawed hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged him back into the chamber. He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. He never could escape Jak when he had a mind for adventure. And it wasn’t even as though his friend were forcing him or anything. The grip around his wrist was light and easy to break. They both knew that he wasn’t really going anywhere. Daxter hated it whenever Jak went off on some hare-brained adventure without him because the boy always came back with a broken arm, or some other horrible injury, or some tale of how he’d narrowly avoided death. Maybe he was just being a mother Flut Flut, but he couldn’t help it.

But he couldn’t just go along quietly, so he whined as they began to climb up the rocks on the far side of the cave, thankfully steering clear of the multi-legged creeps slinking throughout the cave. They had a long, long day ahead of them, Daxter could just feel it.

Three hours later, after leaping across pits of Dark Eco, hopping across moving platforms hovering dozens of feet in the air, and killing more spiders than he cared to count, they still hadn’t found the Dark Eco crystals Samos had sent them to destroy. The caves, which Daxter thought had to be an old mine of some sort, were like a giant labyrinth of twisting tunnels and dead end chambers. The two boys had gotten lost more than once, and Daxter wasn’t the only one who was getting frustrated.

Jak was actually tempted to just turn around and tell the old sage that they hadn’t been able to find the crystals, but two things stopped him. First, he couldn’t just leave the crystals there for the Lurkers to find. Second…he had actually been looking for the entrance to the caves for quite some time. He would feel better if he didn’t feel like they were running around in circles. He didn’t like these caves. They had a sinister feeling to them, and he’d much prefer to be outside in the sun than trapped underground. There had been a strange feeling itching at the back of his throat from the moment they’d entered the caves, a little feeling he couldn’t pinpoint gnawing at the back of his mind, and he didn’t like it one bit. The purple lightning that clung to him, which the teen sometimes suspected had a mind of its own, had been crackling more so than usual, and it got worse every time they approached a pool of Dark Eco.

He had felt the same back in the Precursor city. The gurgling of the Eco had almost been like whispers calling to him, cajoling him, but he didn’t know what it wanted. And he really felt like he was going mad, thinking that the Eco might actually be reaching out to him like it was sentient or something, but he couldn’t find another way to describe it. The longer he had been in that sunken city, the worse it had gotten. He knew what bloodlust felt like. He wished he could forget it, could undo all the deaths he had done, could deny what it had been like. Fighting those Lurkers in the swamp had been exhilarating. He had enjoyed every brutal, bloody second of it and the worst part was that he couldn’t say that he hadn’t been himself when he’d done it.

He had thought at first that maybe the Dark Eco was controlling him – making him do things he wouldn’t normally do. And, maybe to an extent, that was true. Jak wouldn’t normally growl at people, or kill anything if he could avoid it, and he wasn’t one to get angry. But the anger he felt wasn’t coming from some outside force. It was his own. It was his own anger he felt whenever people treated Daxter poorly or tried to hurt him. And it was his own exhilaration he felt when he was fighting Lurkers. His own satisfaction from the end of a good fight. They were all his, just…amplified. To the point where he didn’t care anymore that he was soaked in the blood of living things until the high wore off. And then he would have to deal with the fact that he was surrounded by corpses he had made himself, would have to bear with Daxter’s tense, worried smiles, and try not to fall apart.

But that had been nothing compared to how Jak had felt down in the Precursor city. The young boy quickly shook his head as if that could get the images out of his mind, could shake off the phantom rush of elation that coursed through him. If he could keep these feelings from Daxer, he would, for as long as he could. Jak could tell that his friend was afraid of him, no matter how hard the younger boy tried to hide it behind his smiles or tell himself otherwise, and the older teen hated it. He was starting to become afraid of himself. He couldn’t control himself, and it scared him. He was starting to regret not listening to the Oracle, but it was too late now. They didn’t have time for him to train when Gol and Maia were moments away from destroying the world.

Jak just had to hope that they would be able to do something about it after they had stopped the two demented elves from flooding the world. Then he would have time to figure out what the ‘pure light’ was and find it…

“This cave gives me the creeps…” his orange haired friend muttered to himself a few feet ahead of him. “How much do you wanna bet Old Samos just sent us out here for kicks?”

If the world wasn’t at stake, Jak would probably agree with him. It wouldn’t be the first time the Green Eco Sage had sent them out on a pointless mission just to get them out of his hair.

“Let’s turn around and try another tunnel. This one’s probably a dead end…” The tunnel was getting darker and darker the farther they went, with less and less of the bright blue crystals to light the way. Jak was about to agree, but he caught sight of something shining in the distance. He couldn’t tell what it was from this distance. But he could tell that it was purple, and that was more than enough for him. He smiled at his friend and nodded toward it before sprinting into the darkness. He could admit there was one perk to being saturated with Dark Eco, and it was that he was his own personal lantern. His Eco aura lit the cave almost as well as the crystals did, and it seemed to grow even more volatile than before the closer he got to the object. And it would make sense that it would react when he was getting closer to a crystal of concentrated Dark Eco.

The cave positively lit up when the pale teen stepped next to the crystal. The strange stone began to glow, filling the cavern with a strange, surreal sort o flight. His aura leaped and crackled, latching onto the crystal and running along it. It was actually kind of beautiful…

“Huh. It likes you, Jak,” Daxter remarked, eyes wide with wonder as he circled the crystal. He liked to think he’d seen a lot of things in his short life, but this probably took the cake. Jak probably should have looked terrifying illuminated by the light of the Dark Eco crystal, his lightning whipping around him so violently that it was actually stirring up a breeze, but that was the farthest thing from Daxter’s mind. His friend looked like some sort of otherworldly being, like something out of a strange dream.

“So, uh, how are we gonna take care of this thing?” he asked more to fill the silence and distract himself than anything else. This wasn’t a glass statue they were trying to destroy. This thing was probably solid crystal, harder than rock, and Daxter had no idea how Samos expected them to destroy it. Jak’s claws were sharp, but they couldn’t slice through this.

Jak frowned thoughtfully and reached out a hand to touch the stone. Daxter quickly reached out to bat his friend’s hand away, staring at him incredulously. “I’d rather not have you running around as crazy and ugly as Gol, thanks! This is a delicate operation requiring the proper tools and equipment.”

The pale teen raised an eyebrow at him and folded his arms over his chest, but thankfully backed up a step. There was a smirk on his lips as Daxter approached the crystal warily. The younger boy had absolutely no idea what he was doing, but he was pretty sure touching with their bare hands was about the stupidest thing they could do. Poking it with his stick didn’t turn out to be much better.

Everything suddenly stopped. The light within the crystal flickered and died, and the purple arcs of Eco petered out as well. Even Jak’s aura was gone, and the entire tunnel was bathed in darkness.

“Why do I have the feeling this is going to end badly…?” he asked the black void where he was fairly sure Jak still stood.

The cavern suddenly exploded with a light so bright that Daxter’s eyes actually stung. He quickly closed them and threw his arms over his face to block it out. He could hear Jak hiss in pain somewhere to his left, and he blindly stumbled in that general direction. The light hadn’t gotten any dimmer, was growing brighter if the redness of his eyelids was anything to go by, and he knew they had to get away before something worse hap - .

He should have been expecting the second explosion, but it still took him by surprise. The only warning he got was a sound like shattering glass before the crystal suddenly ruptured, sending out a wave of shards and energy. Daxter went flying through the air, unconscious before he hit the floor.

It took him a while to come to. Everything was pitch black, and it took the teen a while to realize that no matter how many times he opened and closed his eyes, it wasn’t going to get any brighter. For a terrifying moment, Daxter was afraid that he’d gone blind, but eventually his vision cleared enough that he could see a blur of light far off in the distance. He wasn’t inclined to get up and investigate it, though. His head felt like the Sandover fisherman had jammed his spear into it and his stomach felt like the sea during a bad storm. The floor beneath him was nice and cool and he would probably feel better if he just didn’t move.

Something was nagging at him, though. Something wasn’t quite right. Where was he? Hadn’t he been doing something? It had been important…They had been in a cave doing…something. Him and Jak. Where was Jak? With some difficulty, Daxter shakily pushed himself onto his knees and peered through the darkness. This would be so much easier if his head didn’t feel like it was about to split open. It shouldn’t be this hard to find Jak – he practically glowed. Glowed. With Dark Eco. Like some sort of otherworldly being…

The crystal!

Panicked, he swung around with the intention of taking another look around the cave, but the world decided it wanted to turn in the complete opposite direction. He curled into a ball and waiting for the world to stop spinning, and it took longer than he would have liked. He must have hit his head when the crystal exploded. Daxter was lucky that was all that happened. Though, who knows. Maybe he was pasty and pointy now and he just couldn’t see it. But where was Jak? He couldn’t be far. And if he had been caught in the explosion, too, he might be hurt! What if he was lying on the cold floor bleeding to death and Daxter could find him?

“Jak?” he called into the darkness, wincing at how loud his voice seemed. “Jaaaaaak?”

This was not good. This was bad. This was all kinds of bad. What if Jak was dead? What if the Dark Eco had done something to him? What was Daxter going to do? He winced as a sharp pain lanced through his skull and placed a hand to his temple. His warm, sticky temple.

Great.

Just great.

He was going to kill Samos if they got out of this stupid cave alive!

Daxter couldn’t just sit there and wait to bleed to death. He was hoping the wound wasn’t as bad as it felt, but either way he had to move. He had to find Jak. Because Jak wasn’t dead. That just wasn’t possible. Nothing could kill Jak. He still spent an untold amount of time shuffling around in the dark, seeing if he could find a body. But he had a feeling that Jak just wasn’t there anymore. Daxter knew his friend wouldn’t have just left him behind. Something must have happened to him.

The determined boy pushed himself slowly to his feet and began to stagger down the tunnel toward the light in the distance. It was a relief to see that it was one of the light blue crystals and know that he was going in the right direction. Daxter didn’t know how he was going to find one boy in this maze of caves when it had taken over three hours to find a crystal, but he had to try.

He got help from a surprisingly likely source. He hadn’t stumbled far when the eerie silence was suddenly broken by the echo of a scream reverberating through the tunnel. He had heard screams like that before, back in the swamp. The screams of Lurkers dying in agony. If Daxter had had any doubts about Jak’s wellbeing, they were gone now. He staggered down a tunnel they hadn’t taken yet, following the sounds of death and destruction even though every instinct he possessed was telling him to turn around and run away. He had an idea of what was going on at the end of the tunnel, but nothing could have prepared him for what he actually saw.

The Lurkers weren’t just after the Dark Eco crystals. They had an entire excavation going on, and it looked like they were trying to dig up some sort of giant Precursor machine. It had a face on it, like the Precursor Oracles, and an entire body to go along with it. It was huge, and he had a perfect idea of what and army of Lurkers planned to do with a robot large enough to crush a hut with one step. But Daxter wouldn’t have to worry about them ever using the robot, because none of them would be alive to. A blue of white and purple flashed along the wooden scaffolding constructed around the robot, and suddenly another yell pierced the air as a Lurker fell to its death. The whole cavern was littered with them – Lurkers who hadn’t gotten out of the way in time, who hadn’t known about the danger coming until it was too late.

There were bodies everywhere. And not all of them had died from falling. Most of them hadn’t…

Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. All Daxter could see was red and the twisted expressions of pain and fear that would be etched on the Lurker’s faces forever. Just so much death, and his best friend had done this? Sweet, innocent, lemon-headed Jak? He backed up a step and stumbled, pried his eyes away from the horror in front of him, and that was when he saw him. Standing near the top of the scaffolding, hand wrist-deep in a Lurker’s chest. Covered in blood and purple lightning snapping around him, singing everything it touched. The younger boy choked when he realized those inky black eyes were staring straight at him. His friend was gone. Nothing in that gaze looked familiar. There was no warmth, no humor, no nothing. Just a predator hunched over its kill. He had to get away. Daxter didn’t know where he was going to go or how he was going to get there in the state he was in, but he had to be anywhere other than here.

He turned to run, but he didn’t get very far. He could tell he was slipping into unconsciousness but there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. He didn’t know if it was the fear or the head injury that finally caused him to pass out. The last thing he saw was Jak, the creature wearing Jak’s face, leaping off of the scaffolding and bounding towards him.

Chapter Text

Daxter didn’t really know what to expect in the afterlife, but Samos the Sage’s bright, cheery visage looming over him really wasn’t it. For some reason his mental image of the great beyond had always looked a little like the beach outside of Sandover – sunny, warm, and Lurker-free. He would be perfectly content to just laze on that beach for all eternity. Maybe the orange-haired teen should have been nicer to people while he was alive, even if they did get on his nerves most of the time.

But it didn’t take the boy long to come to the startling realization that he was still alive. He bolted upright to find that he was lying on a mat on the floor of the Red Sage’s hut, probably one brought over from Sandover. The horrible splitting pain in his head that had plagued him before was thankfully absent. He didn’t remember making it out of the spider caves…how had he gotten all the way back to the Red Sage’s hut in one piece? The last thing he remembered…was a sea of dead Lurkers…a blood crazed Jak barreling toward him. There was no way Daxter could have outrun him, let alone beat him in a fight. So how had he ended up here? And what had happened to Jak?

“Finally decided to grace us with your presence?” Samos barked with slightly less sarcasm than usual, but only slightly. It was back in full force with his next sentence. “Why is it I can’t ask you to do the simplest things without something going horribly wrong?”

Things couldn’t be all that dire if Samos’ warm and friendly demeanor was anything to go by, but that did nothing to calm Daxter’s nerves. Usually he’d snap back with his own brand of sarcasm, but he couldn’t even bother when inside he was freaking out so badly he could barely think straight. Worst case scenarios were flying past his mind’s eye. What if Jak was still down there, out of his mind and killing everything in sight? What if something bad had happened to him and he was hurt, or worse? What if he had snapped out of it but he was all alone, surrounded by blood and gore and with no one to help him? “Where’s Jak?” he managed to squeak out before his imagination could provide him with something worse to think about.

The old sage gestured angrily behind him with his staff, and Daxter craned his neck to peer around him. He didn’t know how he hadn’t been able to see Jak before. Even though the boy was asleep, or more likely unconscious, his Dark Eco aura was still whipping around him erratically. He, too, was lying on a mat. His brows were furrowed angrily even in sleep, and his claws dug into the material of the mat. So he was alive and uninjured – that was a huge weight off of Daxter’s shoulders. But was he still sane? “What happened?”

“That’s what I’d like to know!” Samos snapped emphatically. He began to pace back and forth across the hut, gesticulating so wildly with his hands that Daxter was afraid his staff might go flying. “Jak came charging in here with you thrown over his shoulder like a sack of flour, bleeding all over the floor! The boy nearly ripped my head off when I tried to kick him out – hence his comatose state at the moment. He should know better than to try to take on a fully trained Eco Sage.”

But Jak hadn’t been in his right mind when he’d come storming into the Red Sage’s hut. The old sage had turned to snap at the boy for interrupting him, but the elf standing in the doorway hadn’t been the boy that he had practically raised for the past fifteen years. Or, it had, but it had been a side of him that Samos hadn’t seen for some time and hadn’t been expecting to see again anytime soon. The sage had made a mistake underestimating the effect the Dark Eco had had on Jak. He had assumed that because Jak hadn’t degenerated into a mindless killing machine, they had thankfully dodged a bullet, but that apparently wasn’t the case.

He had expected the worse when he had seen Jak standing there, arcs of deadly Dark Eco snapping around him almost like tentacles, eyes filled with more malice than Samos thought could fit into one small boy. The only thing that had stopped the sage from knocking Jak out sooner was the sight of Daxter’s limp body draped over the pale teen’s shoulder. If Samos looked hard enough, he thought he might have been able to see concern and fear swimming under the layers of bubbling rage in those black eyes of his.

In retrospect, Samos probably could have handled the situation much better than he had. Nearly attacking the volatile young man as soon as he’d come inside had gotten them off on the wrong foot, and barraging him with questions and foul-tempered sarcasm afterwards had only made things worse. Daxter was lucky Jak had had the foresight to drop him, if somewhat indelicately, before he’d lurched forward with his claws outstretched. The boy may have been reaching for Samos’ staff, which had come close enough to Jak’s head at one point for the Dark Eco sparks snap angrily at it for a second, or he could have been reaching for Samos’ face – the old sage wasn’t going to take any chances. Being an Eco Sage meant more than being green and having a fondness for plants, and he had used a burst of Green Eco to push Jak against the wall and pin him there.

Any sanity Jak had been holding onto flew out of the window as soon as he realized he couldn’t move. The usually quite boy had snarled and growled, making noises not even a rabid Lurker was capable of as he thrashed against the wall. The aura of Dark Eco clinging to Jak had crackled with his growing rage, reaching across the room and singing everything it touched. Samos had knocked him out before he could hurt himself, and before he got loud enough that Keira would have been able to hear him from all the way down in the lava tube. He knew how his daughter felt about the young man and the sage didn’t want her to see him like this. He had half-hoped Daxter hadn’t been an unconscious lump on the floor because, for all his faults, the one thing he was excellent at was communicating with Jak. But Daxter had been an unconscious lump on the floor, and if Samos hadn’t healed him soon he might have been a dead lump. Head wounds typically looked worse than they actually were, but who knew what had happened to the boy. Luckily, healing him had been a trifle matter for a master of Green Eco, and the boy had woken up on his own not much longer after that.

“Yea, well, Jak gets a little cranky when he’s around Dark Eco,” the orange-haired boy groused as he pushed himself up from the mat and warily crossed the room to kneel by Jak. Even out of his mind and covered with blood, Jak had still managed to drag Daxter out of that spider-infested labyrinth. The orange-haired boy didn’t know what on earth he might have done to earn a friend like Jak. He must have been pretty awesome in a past life or something, because he really didn’t deserve him. Daxter would have snapped long ago if he had been in Jak’s shoes, but Jak just kept going and, even in his darkest moments, he still managed to be himself and be a hero without even trying. Daxter didn’t know how he did it.

“The Dark Eco crystals…?”

“Yea,” Daxter drawled, shooting Samos an acidic look over his shoulder. The old man had stopped pacing and was staring at Jak with growing realization, but Daxter couldn’t help himself from shooting a barb. In the young elf’s mind, this had all been Samos’ fault. “Somebody thought it would be a bright idea to send the guy suffering from Dark Eco poisoning into a cave filled with Dark Eco to destroy volatile, exploding crystals of concentrated Dark Eco!”

“He showed no adverse effects when he came out of the Precursor city,” Samos countered, tapping his staff against the wooden floor. He frowned pensively as a thought occurred to him. “Of course, it wouldn’t have any effect on him if he didn’t come into direct contact with it. He must have absorbed the explosion of the Dark Eco crystal, which explains why you’re still alive to pester me!”

No apology. No ‘Sorry for sending you both off into a horribly dangerous cave filled with who knows what on a mission I should have known would go horribly wrong because I’m an Eco Sage and I should know these things.’ Just more jabs. Honestly, Daxter had to wonder how Keira had ever been born. What woman would have been able to put up with Samos long enough to…no! No! He was going to stop that train of thought right there!

The Green Eco Sage raised an incredulous, bushy eyebrow at him and huffed in frustration. “It seems we need Gol Acheron’s help now more than ever, though the likeliness of him aiding us now is practically nonexistent…”

But Gol wasn’t their only option. There was one other way to help Jak, and Daxter was seconds from asking Samos about it. If there was anyone on the planet who might know what the ‘pure light’ was, it would probably be Samos. For all his shortcomings, Daxter had to admit that the guy was an expert on all things Precursor-related. But the teen kept his mouth shut. He and Jak didn’t need any help from Samos the Green Eco Sage. If he was so powerful, then why wasn’t he the one out there fighting the Lurkers and destroying Dark Eco crystals? Why would he encourage two teenagers to continually risk their lives like this? The old log probably wouldn’t help them, anyway. All his life it had always just been Jak and Daxter, and it looked like it would keep being that way.

Samos hadn’t always been this bad. It used to be that the worse he would get from the old sage was a harsh scolding for not cleaning his hut fast enough. He wouldn’t have said the old log was his favorite person, but he’d respected Samos. Ever since the two boys had come back from Misty Island, Samos had been more caustic than usual. Yea, Daxter understood that they had sort of royally screwed up. If they had just stayed in bed and slept like Daxter had wanted to instead of going off on another of Jak’s adventures, they would never have been in this mess in the first place. Granted, if they hadn’t gone to Misty Island, they might have never found out about Gol, Maia, and the Lurkers until it was too late, but the teen could see why Samos would be upset with them. But if this was some sort of punishment for disobeying him, it was going too far. Daxter was honestly surprised the two of them were still alive.

The orange-haired elf placed a hand on Jak’s shoulder, for once completely unafraid of the purple lightning that reached out to latch onto his skin. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind anymore that Jak would never hurt him, no matter how far gone he was – at least not intentionally. “Well, maybe Gol just needs a little…convincing,” he eventually said with a smirk. Maybe if they could capture Gol or something, they could get him to help Jak – though, the likelihood of getting through this whole ‘saving the world thing’ without Jak tearing Gol and Maia to pieces was looking pretty slim. Well, the faster they dealt with Gol, the faster they could look for the pure light. “We found plenty of Power Cells when we were fighting for our lives down in that spider-infested pit. They should be enough for Keira’s Zoomer. We’ll just hop over and pay Gol a visit, stop him andhis crazy sister from destroying the world, and then have a little chat about him fixing Jak.”

“And I’m sure that would be an excellent plan,” the sage intoned with so much sickly sweet sarcasm it made Daxter’s teeth hurt, “if the boy doesn’t just rip Gol apart!” the sage finished with a cry of frustrated exasperation, and Daxter had to wonder if maybe Old Samos couldn’t secretly read minds. “I fear Jak is too volatile in this state. There’s no telling what he might do.”

“So…what? You’re not telling me you wanna just leave him here?” the young elf asked incredulously as he climbed to his feet and folded his arms over his chest. That put a major hitch in the whole Jak and Daxter against the world plan. It just didn’t compute. “How is that helpful?!”

“I cannot remove the Dark Eco from his system, but perhaps I can attempt to suppress its effects – if only temporarily,” the sage pondered as he ran a hand through his white beard. He glanced at Jak speculatively and seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment before he realized that Daxter was still standing in the hut trying very hard not to have a panic attack. “If you’ve got all the Power Cells, there’s no point in you loitering around here. Since you’ve been so eager to prove yourself lately, you can take the Zoomer through the lava tube and activate the warp gate on the other side. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to concentrate!”

The orange-haired teen was shoved unceremoniously out of the Red Sage’s hut, and it was only his fear of what the Green Eco Sage might turn him into that prevented him from storming back in and giving the old man what for. It seemed like the two teens just couldn’t catch a break lately. If it wasn’t one thing it was another and things just seemed to be getting worse. And what if they just kept getting worse? What if Jak woke up and he was still the killing machine that Daxter had run into down in the spider caves? What if he never snapped out of it and they never found a cure, and he was stuck that way forever? What if he lost his best friend to the blood lust or, worse, what if they all just ended up dead because they couldn’t stop Gol and Maia? Daxter ran his hands raggedly through his flame of yellow-red hair as he paced furiously just outside of the Sage’s hut. He could really use Jak’s sickeningly laidback confidence right about now.

He couldn’t do this by himself…

With one last glance toward the hut, Daxter began to make his way toward the entrance to the lava tube. He couldn’t afford to let himself fall apart now. He had to hold himself together. Besides, Daxter would just be driving the Zoomer. That was something he was actually pretty good at, if he did say so himself. How hard could it be to ride through one measly lava tube? Full of burning, molten rock and noxious fumes. Where one minor mistake would probably cook him alive in an instant. Where there could quite possibly be a trap waiting for them on the other side.

It would be a cinch. Now he just needed to keep telling himself that over and over and maybe he would believe it.

By the time he got to the lava tube, Daxter it had actually sort of started to work. But his fragile confidence went up in flames when he got his first peak of the river of death he would be flying over. There weren’t any patches of rock to cool the Zoomer down, just a lava as far as the eye could see. His poor, naked toes would be dangling inches above that mess. The young elf quickly looked away before his common sense could talk him out of what he was about to do.

Keira was just scooting out from underneath the Zoomer by the time Daxter climbed down to the lava-warmed rocks below. The green-haired teen smiled at him as she pushed her damp bangs out of her eyes. He still didn’t know how she could be so at ease standing not three feet away from a bubbling pool of hot magma, and he probably never would. “Hey, Daxter! I just finished calibrating the heat shield. Don’t tell me you guys are ready to go already?”

“This is me and Jak you’re talkin’ about. Getting’ those Power Cells was no problem!” It felt good to be able to joke with Keira, like he was pushing a bit of weight off of his shoulders. For about two seconds he could pretend that the world wasn’t in peril, that Jak wasn’t in a Samos-induced coma to prevent him from skewering people, that Daxter wasn’t about to go sailing over a river of burning hot lava…

“So where is Jak?” she asked curiously, and Daxter’s froze for a second. How was he supposed to explain this to Keira? ‘Oh, my other half isn’t here because he got caught in an explosion and went into a murderous rampage, which is your dad’s fault by the way, and he’s still off his nut so the old log knocked him unconscious and we’re not sure how homicidal he’ll be when he wakes up’ was definitely not an option. He tried to laugh to cover up his nervousness, but it hadn’t worked if the mechanic’s raised eyebrow was anything to go by.

“He’s, uh…he’s helping Samos out with some…things,” because that had been completely convincing. Normally Keira would see straight through a lie that bad, and she probably did now, but something else was nagging at her.

“Is it just me or does he seem…different?” she asked tentatively, as though she were reluctant to face what she was about to say. She frowned down at the lava-lit rocks beneath them and wouldn’t look back up. “I mean, obviouslyhe looks different, but has he been acting strangely?”

Lying wasn’t going to work here; Daxter could tell by the way Keira was gazing at him imploringly with those giant, green eyes of hers, and he could swear she must have been taking puppy eye lessons from Jak when he wasn’t around. Who could lie to a face like that? But he didn’t think he could tell the truth, either! “Let’s just say that Jak’s got a, uh…slight anger management problem. Gets a little carried away. But it’s nothing we can’t handle! This is Jak we’re talking about, right?” he said, using the same words Keira had used to reassure him so many times before.

“It’s just I worry about him. Usually he just works the Eco out of his system, but this time…and now with the whole apocalypse thing on top of everything else,” she added with a roll of her eyes. “But at least we can knock Gol and Maia off the list soon.”

“That’s if I can make it there in one piece,” the orange-haired teen commented with a dubious glare toward the tunnel of lava.

Keira placed a hand on the side of the Zoomer and looked down at her invention with a fond, excited smile. “With these additional Power Cells, I should be able to supply the heat shield with enough power to stand up to this lava. It will now withstand temperatures up to 800 degrees, but no more, so keep an eye on the gauge. I don’t want to think about what those temperatures would do to the Zoomer if the shield gives out!”

“Yeah, the heat…” Daxter nodded along absently, still really mulling over whether or not it was worth it to go through the tube. But…wait… “WHAT?! The Zoomer?! What about me?! Isn’t there a safer route to Gol’s citadel?”

“Look,” the green-haired mechanic said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ve released more cooling balloons into the tube, so you can use them to keep the temperature down. And don’t forget to activate the teleport gate in the Yellow Sage’s lab. We’re counting on you!”

The teen grumbled to himself as he mounted the Zoomer and shot off as fast as the homemade machine would go. If he had to do this – which he did, there was really no way around it – then he was going to get it over with as quickly as possible. It’s not like he could really cruise through here and take in the scenery anyway, not if he wanted to avoid burning to a crisp. But after the first five seconds, Daxter really wished he had thought more about this and hadn’t just taken off so quickly. Because he really, really wished he could turn this Zoomer around.

He was pretty sure he was going to die.

He had felt the heat of the lava tube long before he had made it to Keira and the Zoomer, but that was nothing compared to actually soaring directly over the churning lava itself. He’d never felt heat quite like this before – the hottest days on Sentinel Beach didn’t get this bad, and he could have sworn not even the Fire Canyon had been like this. Daxter thought that maybe this must be what baked bread must feel like. The air was thick and burned in his chest, and the glow and heat from the lava stung at his eyes even through his goggles. With every second that passed, no matter how fast he felt like he was flying, the temperature steadily grew more and more unbearable. He found himself seeking out places to jump on purpose even though he knew it was dangerous, just to try to escape from the heat.

The first cooling balloon was like the first breath of air after being held underwater for too long. He could ponder how on Earth Keira had managed to get those things all the way down here later, but for now he would just take them as the godsends they were.

Daxter didn’t really notice it at first, but, the farther along he went, the less…organic his scenery became. Rock walls slowly transitioned into layers of pipes, thick tubes, and massive vents, and the ground under his feet more often than not was made of metal rather than rock. He had never seen so much technology in one place that was so obviously not built by the Precursors. Keira would have loved to be able to take a closer look at it all. But suddenly Daxter had a lot more to worry about than just the heat. Storage containers filled with Dark Eco rattled across his path on pulleys and conveyor belts, undoubtedly on their way to Gol and Maia’s citadel. What Daxter could only assume were bombs dangled from the ceiling. Gol and Maia had obviously been expecting them if they had taken the time to leave behind so many explosive presents. He pushed the heat from his mind as he focused solely on avoiding being blown to smithereens.

It was a relief when he sailed over one last ramp and found himself landing safely on relatively cool, completely solid ground. He parked the Zoomer at the trans-pad nearby and glanced around warily. The young boy could see the teleporter not far away, its gate empty and inactive, but he didn’t see much else. If Gol and Maia’s citadel was through the Precursor door behind him like he thought it was, then where exactly was the Yellow Sage’s lab? A movement just out of the corner of his eye had him glancing back at the strange hunk of metal standing not far from the warp gate. Was that a…flag fluttering in the mangled heap? A yellow flag. And then it hit Daxter that that mangled heap was the Yellow Sage’s hut. That was his lab. Gol and Maia hadn’t just stormed in and wrecked the place – they had crushed it like an egg. The Yellow Sage hadn’t stood a chance. How was Samos expecting him and Jak to stop the people who had taken down three Eco Sages without breaking a sweat?

Old Samos had to see this. If Gol and Maia were capable of this kind of destruction then there was no way two teenage boys were going to be able to stop them. Daxter rushed to the warp gate and pressed the switch that would activate it, but only one person came through. Keira shot through the teleporter and Daxter could immediately tell something was wrong. The young girl had buried her face into her hands the moment she had made it through the gate, and her father hadn’t tumbled inelegantly behind her. His first thought was that something must have gone wrong with Jak, but he managed to keep the terror out of his voice when he finally asked, “Hey! Where are Jak and old, green and wrinkly?”

“This is terrible!” Keira cried out, running a hand through her green hair. Daxter had never seen her so torn up before – not even the day the first prototype for her Zoomer had spontaneously combusted. “They’ve both gone missing! I think Gol and Maia may have kidnapped them!”

For a moment Daxter couldn’t breathe. All thought had stopped, and the only thing that ran through his head was a breathless, horrified ‘TheyhaveJaktheyhaveJaktheyhaveJak’. But instead of the rush of blind panic that he had been expecting, instead a flood of rage that rivaled Jak’s newfound temper filled him from his toes to the vibrant red tips of his fiery hair. No one messed with his pal, Jak. No one. And they had snatched him when he couldn’t even defend himself! If Gol and Maia misplaced one silver hair on his friend’s head… “Relax, sweetheart,” he drawled, surprising himself with how calm he felt. It wasn’t the ‘everything’s going to be okay’ sort of calm that he hadn’t felt in what felt like ages, but more a sort of…battle-calm. Orange Lightning was not happy. “I got everything under control.”

“Under control?!” Keira had apparently reached her breaking point. The girl that had been helping hold Daxter together throughout their little adventure looked like she was experiencing her own panic attack. He hadn’t known she’d been so worried. She was so good at hiding it, always so much more concerned with her machines and getting removing any obstacles in her way, that Daxter had thought she just hadn’t let their problems get to her. He’d apparently been very wrong. “Lurker armies continue to grow across the land, the sages and Jak have been kidnapped, Gol and Maia have enough Eco to complete their terrible plan, and to stop them you’re going to have to fight your way through their citadel!”

“Uh…yeah. That about, uh…sums it up,” he agreed cautiously, honestly more afraid of Keira unraveling any further than he was of venturing into the citadel.

“You’ve got to save them before it’s too late!” she pleaded, clasping her hands together and peering down at him earnestly.

“You can count on me!” Daxter exclaimed with genuine confidence. There was no way he was going to fail and let those whack jobs do who knows what to his buddy, Jak. Jak had saved his skin more times than he could count, and now it was finally time for Daxter to finally pay him back. He squared his shoulders as he turned and started determinedly toward the Precursor door that he assumed led toward Gol and Maia’s citadel.

“And Daxter…?” He paused when he heard Keira call softly behind him and turned to see her gazing at him with not a hint of her usual tough girl sass. “Be careful?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, beaming back at her. “I will.”

Chapter Text

Daxter had run away from him.

From Jak.

All his life, Daxter had always been running toward him. Running because he wanted to tell him something. Running just because he was excited to see him. Running, more often than not, because he wanted to use Jak as a living shield between him and whatever was trying to eat or kill him. Jak never minded. He had no problem with protecting Daxter from the trouble Jak constantly got them into. The teen was honored that his friend trusted him with his life so often and he took his job very seriously. Whether it was an angry crocadog or a fifty-foot Lurker, Jak would have protected Daxter from anything.

But how was he supposed to protect Daxter from himself?

Jak didn’t remember much from spider caves from after that crystal had exploded, but he would never forget Daxter’s fear-stricken face. Daxter had been looking at him. He had looked at Jak with pure terror in his eyes, written in every line of his body, and the pale teen didn’t know how to deal with that. He didn’t know how to protect Daxter from this – this burning rage inside of him that he couldn’t seem to control. Even now as he glared at the Lurker sneering at him from the other side of the bars of his cage, Jak was filled with the urge to rendtearbreakkill. He itched to sink his claws in the creature’s flesh, rip it apart, break its bones, make it scream in agony and - .

Jak tore his eyes away from the Lurker with a hiss. He was starting to not mind this cage so much. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there; he’d just woken up suspended in the air and surrounded by the vast emptiness of what he could only assume to be Gol and Maia’s citadel. He had raged at first, tried everything he could to break the cage or force his way through the strange bars that seemed to be made of pure energy. Jak had thought, at first, that the bars were made of Dark Eco and that he could maybe pass through them, but the bars might as well have been made from Precursor metal. At first, he had thought that was a bad thing…

But while he was trapped in here, he couldn’t act on the violent thoughts running through his mind. He couldn’t kill the Lurker who had come to guard his cage at the first signs of his attempted escape. He couldn’t hurt anyone. The boy paced back and forth, the cage so small that it rather felt like he was just turning around in circles, but he couldn’t stop. Jak had to be doing something. He had to move or the blood-soaked thoughts running through his mind would drive him insane. The longer he was in the cage, however, the more he was able to push past these thoughts. At first, Jak thought he was just calming down on his own, but that couldn’t explain why he felt weaker by the minute. It couldn’t explain why the aura of Dark Eco that had clung to him like a cloak had all but disappeared, leaving Jak feeling strangely naked without it crackling around him.

The longer he was in the cage, the more he thought of Daxter. Jak couldn’t at all blame his friend for being afraid of him. Jak could only imagine what he must have looked like, covered in blood and surrounded by a sea of his own bloody destruction. He wouldn’t have hurt Daxter, he knew that. He had seen his friend standing there with blood running down the side of his head, barely standing on his own two feet, and he had though the worst. He had only wanted to help. But how must Jak have looked leaping from that scaffolding and charging toward him like he had? Like some sort of demented demon? It was no wonder Daxter had turned and ran, but it still hurt knowing that Daxter was afraid of him.

Daxter thought he was a monster.

Maybe he was right.

-x-

Daxter had to hand it to them, Gol and Maia had gotten the whole ‘creepy, evil lair’ vibe down pat. The strange mixture of Precursor and elf-made technology continued past the front door into their wonderful parlour, which flickered eerily with the glow of Blue Eco and the sparks of faulty wiring. But that was nothing compared to the sight that greeted him when he entered the main chamber of the citadel.

The room was enormous. Daxter had thought the spider caves were obnoxiously huge, but this chamber was so deep that he couldn’t even see the floor! And right in the center of the room was another Precursor robot like the one he’d seen in the spider caves, only much, much uglier. Gol and Maia had apparently added their own artistic touch, though the teen doubted the modifications were just for show. The whole thing was incased in a force field of what might have been Dark Eco, thankfully keeping it separated from the rest of the world…for the time being.

He was just starting to take in the rest of his surroundings when something large and blindingly purple flew into his field of vision.

“It’s about time you decided to show up!” Samos the Sage barked at him from within the confines of a floating cage. The bars glowed with the same light as the shield that blocked off the Precursor robot. Daxter was glad that the old log was alive and well; despite how much he really wanted to whack Samos over the head with his own staff, he didn’t want anything bad to happen to the old man. And if he was still this snarky, then Jak must be okay! And, okay, so it did cheer him a little to see the guy locked away in a cage like a misbehaving muse.

“Nice to see you, too. Do they have you mopping the floors now?” Daxter taunted, unable and unwilling to help himself.

The sage ran a hand over his face and rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “This is no time for jokes, Daxter,” he grumbled. “Gol and Maia kidnapped us to sap our energies to power their abominable machine! It appears they have combined the functional remains of a Precursor robot with scavenged artifacts from across the land. Then they added a few diabolical additions of their own, creating the one thing capable of opening the Dark Eco silos!”

They really were running out of time. There was no telling just how much more energy Gol and Maia needed to power their robot; there could be three days or three minutes between now and the end of the world, and the fate of…everything was resting on Daxter’s scrawny shoulders. He had to find Jak, pronto. His stature just wasn’t made for this kind of pressure.

“If you can free all of the sages, we can use our combined powers to break the force field surrounding the robot before they can use it to destroy the world,” Samos finished gravely.

“Any idea where they stashed Jak?”

“I haven’t the slightest, though I’d assume they’re draining him just like the rest of us,” Ssmos proposed. “Be careful, Daxter.”

The old man and his cage flew off before Daxter could pry his jaw off of the floor, let alone come up with a response. Whatever was draining the sage’s powers must have been doing something funny to his head, as well. Time was definitely running out.

Daxter could see the other sages in the room if he glanced around. They floated dozens of feet up in the air in their own energy cages, far out of the teen’s reach. And there weren’t any stairs to climb, or any ladders. No, that would be too easy! Instead there were floating chunks of Precursor metal everywhere, and rickety wooden and metal scaffolding with flimsy supports that disappeared into the dark abyss below. Daxter supposed accessibility wasn’t really a problem when you could just float wherever you wanted, but it posed a bit of a problem for those who were stuck with more basic forms of locomotion. There was no point in standing around waiting for some sort of sign to come to him so, with a sigh, Daxter chose a random direction and started to run.

Years of running and climbing along the beach and through the jungle with Jak finally paid off as Daxter leapt over scaffolding and across hunks of Precursor metal. It was much more disconcerting, and terrifying, when he couldn’t see anything but a lifeless abyss beneath him and the ground under his feet had a tendency to spin, but it honestly wasn’t too bad. He was just glad there didn’t seem to be all that many Lurkers – for an evil lair, it was really pretty empty in here. Daxter had expected an entire army of Lurkers to come charging at him as soon as they realized their base was invaded, but so far he’d only come across one. He felt bad about shoving the poor brute off of the scaffolding, but it was probably much less painful than death-by-thorny-stick, assuming Daxter could have even beaten it. The problems started when he came across one of Gol and Maia’s creative security measures.

The orange-haired boy had come across a gap in the scaffolding that was too wide for him to jump across, but soon enough he discovered the handy switch nearby. Stepping on it caused little square chunks of metal to fly from seemingly nowhere and form a bridge between him and the next bit of scaffolding. Rather than the muted orange of Precursor metal or the dull grey of the elf-made variety, these squares came in a rainbow of colors. Daxter should have suspected something, but he didn’t think anything of it as he took his first step across the bridge onto a bright blue tile. He yelped as the tile suddenly gave way underneath him and scrambled to move onto a red one, not noticing at first that all the other blue squares had disappeared as well. When the red tile dropped and he suddenly didn’t have very many places left to go, he realized what was happening. Daxter lunged for a yellow square, and then green, and then a plain one until he was finally safely across the gap.

Now he was closer to the Precursor robot, right next to the force field, and he could really get a good look at it. He felt so small standing next to it. Their entire home could probably fit inside the robot’s chest. Even if Gol and Maia didn’t succeed in opening a Precursor Silo, they would be able to cause more than enough damage with this monstrosity alone. The teen gave it a last wary look before moving on, shoving another unsuspecting Lurker off of the scaffolding before leaping across yet another hunk of spinning Precursor metal.

It went on like this for a while. If he wasn’t running across scaffolding, he was leaping across chunks of Precursor metal or shoving Lurkers to their deaths or trying not mess up too badly on one of the strange bridge puzzles. Eventually, Daxter made it to solid “ground” and a Precursor door. Daxter didn’t hesitate before strolling through, actually hoping for something a little exciting after practically waltzing through Gol and Maia’s citadel.

And what could be more exciting than finding Jak?

Daxter hadn’t expected to find his friend so soon, but he definitely wouldn’t complain. He couldn’t believe his luck! Jak stood trapped in a cage hovering not twenty feet away. He looked unharmed, though it was strange to see him without his ever present Dark Eco aura. The glare he shot at his single Lurker guard was more sullen than homicidal, so Daxter assumed he had snapped out of his bloodlust – at least for now. Now he just had to take care of the Lurker…looking right at him…and charging straight for him…and maybe he should have been paying more attention?

The boy leapt back when the Lurker tried to grab him and swung with his stick (and he really needed a cooler weapon, or maybe he could give the stick a name or something?). He missed, only catching a tuft of fur before the Lurker moved out of the way and roared at him. It lurched forward and grabbed the stick, tearing it away from him and not caring that the thorns were cutting into its flesh. It threw the flimsy weapon carelessly to the side before taking a swipe at Daxter’s head, which he narrowly avoided. He could hear Jak growling behind him, wanting to take on the Lurker but unable to.

Daxter was crap at hand-to-hand combat, but he didn’t really have a choice. His weapon was way out of his reach, and there was no way the Lurker was going to wait politely while he went and fetched it. He dodged another swipe from the Lurker’s jagged, broken nails. Just how hard were Lurker skulls, anyway? Would punching it even faze it? The teen narrowly dodged another attack, but suddenly the floor had disappeared beneath him. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to where he was standing and his arms windmilled as he tried desperately not to go tumbling to his death. The Lurker lunged just as he managed to regain his footing.

Time seemed to slow as 300 lbs of furry, purple muscle came flying at him. There was no time to dodge, only time to brace himself as he was slammed into. He could hear Jak screaming as he went over the edge, and he thought he might actually hear a distinct word, but his friend’s voice was too hoarse to tell.

But Daxter didn’t fall. He managed to grab onto the ledge with one hand and struggled to pry himself back over the edge. He really wished now that he had climbed more when he’d gone exploring with Jak instead of staying on the ground and complaining. He could really use more arm strength. The teen heaved a sigh of relief when he could finally flop onto the cold metal floor beneath him.

Jak was grinning at him from ear to ear when he finally pushed himself up from the floor. Daxter offered his own shaky smile in return, still waiting for his heart to stop trying to beat its way out of his chest. He didn’t know how Jak could deal with near-death situations on a daily basis.

The orange-haired teen swaggered toward the cage when he’d finally caught his breath and struck a dramatic pose, unable to keep the satisfied smirk off of his face. “Someone call for a knight in shining armor?”

Jak just laughed, relief swimming in those black eyes of his. He pressed as close to the bars as the cage would let him.

“Don’t get used to this whole rescuing thing. The whole ‘damsel in distress’ look really doesn’t suit you, buddy,” the orange-haired teen teased. Maybe this wasn’t the best place to be cracking jokes, but Daxter couldn’t help himself. For once, he had been the hero. He had soared across a field of lava and fought to the death to save his friend, and he was feeling pretty giddy. Gol could swoop in right now and tell them he was about to flood the world, and even that wouldn’t wipe the smile off of Daxter’s face. But there was still the matter of getting Jak out of that cage. There had to be some kind of way to turn off the energy bars. There was a giant machine nearby that looked promising. It looked like a giant mushroom oozing Blue Eco, but there weren’t any switches or levers or any discernible ways to turn it off. After a good few minutes of poking and prodding and mumbling irritably under his breath, he finally just kicked the blasted machine in frustration.

There was a crack as the component he had kicked shattered, and the two boys watched in surprise as the bars of energy flickered and died. Daxter let out a whoop at his success, turned to grin at his friend, and froze. He couldn’t handle the way Jak was smiling at him. It wasn’t his usual toothy grin, or the indulgent smile he gave when Daxter was filling the silence with complaints. It wasn’t even that relieved smile he had whenever Daxter narrowly avoided death. He had never seen this smile before, and he didn’t want to take the time to try to analyze it. Because he would start blushing. And that would lead to awkward questions…or, well…awkward questioning looks.

“Whaaaat? Is there something on my face?” he asked as he reached up to touch his own cheek, not actually expecting anything to be there. He winced as the hand came away sticky – the Lurker must have been bleeding pretty badly if its blood had managed to get on him. “Yeuch…there is something on my face…”

Jak hopped from the cage and immediately wrapped the teen in a hug that made Daxter’s bones creak. Trying to escape only made it worse. “Yea, uh, I’m glad to see you, too!” he managed to gasp out. “But, um…could you let me breathe?”

Daxter sighed with relief when he was finally let go and twisted from side to side, trying to get the cricks out of his back. He glared sourly up at the pale teen who was scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Jeez. You save a guy and then he tries to kill ya! Next time, you’re on your own! Now come on, you’ve got a world to save!”

Jak folded his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at him as if to say, “And what are you going to be doing?”

“Oh, me?” Daxter asked casually over his shoulder as he went and grabbed his stick (there just had to be a better name for this stupid thing) off of the floor. “I guess I can sacrifice some of my precious time to help you out. We both know how helpless you are without me!”

Chapter Text

From then on, moving through Gol and Maia’s citadel was almost ridiculously easy. Terrifying at times, yes, but still easy as far as Daxter was concerned. The only real threat seemed to be the constant danger of plummeting to their death, but years of associating himself with Jak had ensured that that wasn’t really a problem. He might not be the most coordinated guy in the world, but bearing the fate of the world on his shoulders kept his clumsiness temporarily at bay. Daxter expected something to go wrong any second now. It just didn’t make any sense. Had Gol and Maia been so confident that they would win that they hadn’t bothered to keep around much security? He supposed two boys not even out of their teens hadn’t seemed like much of a threat, even if one of them was high on Eco, but he hated to be underestimated! Well, Gol and Maia certainly wouldn’t make that mistake again! They wouldn’t have a chance to.

It wasn’t long at all before he and Jak had hopped, skipped, and jumped their way through the cavernous room and made their way to the top, where an orange Precursor door spiraled open to reveal one of the four sages. Jak took the honor of breaking the machine keeping the sage locked in his cage, freeing the blue-skinned master of Eco.

“Good work, fellows! Old Samos was right about you!” the Blue Sage cheered in voice that, in the back corner of Daxter’s mind, reminded him of someone who had been kicked in the nads one too many times. But even he wasn’t mean enough to say that out loud. Within earshot. He would definitely tell Jak later, though, even if he would get smacked in the head for it.

“Great piles of Precursor metal!” the sage exclaimed as he turned and gaped down at the giant Precursor robot below them as if he hadn’t been in the same room with it for the past who knows how long. Yep, this guy definitely had a few screws loose in that funny looking hat of his. “That insidious mechanical creation must not be allowed to wreak its terrible havoc! I will try and actuate the shield door by eliciting a conduit of energy between myself and the vast portal below!”

By the Precursors, he was even worse than the warrior at Rock Village had been. “Uh, yea. You do that,” Daxter muttered, sharing an incredulous glance with Jak and scooting away minutely as the sage began to conjure Eco through his staff and aimed it at the robot’s shield. “We’ll, uh, go find more help.”

Boy, was he glad that Jak hadn’t gotten dunked in Blue Eco. His friend didn’t need any more energy than he already had. The orange-haired teen quickly walked off before the sage could say anything else and didn’t bother to muffle his parting comment in any way. It was true. All he had to do was take a glance at the sage’s lightning-shaped moustache to know that he was a real, “Weird-o!” Jak rolled his eyes and threw an apologetic grimace over his shoulder at the blue-skinned elf before following, but he secretly agreed.

The older teen got them back down to the main level of the chamber by using Blue Eco to activate a small, floating disc of Precursor Metal. From there, Jak took the lead and navigated along the ramshackle scaffolding as if he knew the layout of Gol and Maia’s lair by heart. He probably had no idea where he was going, but he always had a way of walking with complete confidence even when he was completely lost. But really, any random corridor seemed as good as another in a place like this.

The next solid path they found was lit with Blue Eco and elf-made wiring much like the entrance had been. At the end of the hall was a Precursor door, and on the other side of the door…

“Ugh…Jak? I think you can handle this on your own, right? You don’t need me for this, right? I’ll just go back and wait for you in the other room…”

The grin on Jak’s face was devious and terrifying, lit by a combination of his Dark Eco aura and the crackling fire of the Blue Eco vent behind him. The pale teen dipped a hand in the vent, soaking himself with the familiar Eco, before he took a threatening step towards him.

“No. No way! You keep your pointy hands away from me!” Daxter turned and bolted, but he knew there was no chance of him escaping this. Even on his best day, there was no way Daxter could outrun Jak. And a Jak saturating in Blue Eco? The orange-haired boy was snatched in seconds and barely had time to make sure he was properly clinging on for dear life before they were sailing through the air.

“I hate you!” he shrieked as the black abyss of the citadel stretched underneath them. The room they were in was vast and completely empty save for Blue Eco launch pads floating seemingly aimlessly through the air. It was like the swamp all over again, except this time there was absolutely nothing beneath them – no thorny bushes or pools of shallow, stagnant water – and that somehow made it all the more terrifying. It was one thing to know that one wrong move would leave you a lacerated smear lodged in the swamp muck, but another thing entirely not to know what would happen if you fell. Was there even a bottom to this citadel, or did the blackness just go on forever and ever? What would happen if they fell down there? Would they die from shock or something, or would they just keep falling until they starved to death? And keep falling after that…?

Jak’s exhilarated laugh as they landed on a pad and immediately took off again pried Daxter from his increasingly morbid thoughts. They were not going to fall, Daxter just had to keep telling himself that. They were not going to be two skeletons plummeting for all eternity. This was just like the swamp, only slightly more complicated. He had had fun at the swamp, hadn’t he? Just don’t think about the horrible black expanse of emptiness beneath them waiting to swallow them whole. Jak’s obviously having fun.

Of course, Jak’s idea of fun involved trekking into jungles full of elf-eating plants and animals.

It was working, though. The less Daxter focused on how close they were to dying, the more he could focus on what it was like to soar almost weightlessly through the open air. It was almost like being back on the Zoomer. It was actually a little less nerve-wracking than the Zoomer, if he thought about it, because he didn’t have to worry about steering or getting to a cooling balloon fast enough. Jak had the reins here, which he was far more used to. And Jak wouldn’t let them fall. Probably. Hopefully.

Thankfully it wasn’t long before they reached solid ground once again. Daxter shoved his laughing friend when he could safely plant both his feet on the ground and glared up at the pale boy. “You enjoy this, don’t you! You get some sort of sick pleasure out of this!”

Jak quickly shook his head in denial but he couldn’t suppress his grin – he didn’t even try. Riling Daxter up would never get old.

“Yea, yea. I see right through you,” Daxter groused with false anger. “You’re gonna pay for that, mark my words!”

The older teen huffed with a smirk and made his way for the Precursor door. Jak was waiting for the day that Daxter finally acted on that promise. Though he didn’t know what Daxter thought he was going to do to him. What Daxter found terrifying, Jak found exciting, adventurous, daring. Though, his younger friend had been surprising him in all kinds of ways lately. He had always known there was more to Daxter than he let on, but it was another thing to see it for himself.

The Yellow Sage was an ochre-skinned elf with a drawl that reminded the two teens of the hermit who had lived in the swamp. He was less than grateful for the rescue, but soon he was channeling his Eco powers at the shield along with the Blue Sage. The two boys quickly moved on, not sure how much time they had before Gol and Maia noticed something was up. Because they had to, any minute now. How could they not intervene when Jak and Daxter were slowly ripping their plan apart?

“Doesn’t it seem strange to you that we’re just breezing through this place?” Daxter commented as they were ambling down a fairly long, empty hallway. The Precursor metal of the floor beneath them bonged almost musically as they walked, like some sort of strange drumbeat. The sound was almost comforting, reminding Daxter of their many trips to the temple in the jungle back home. Jak nodded grimly, but what could they do about it but just brace for the inevitable and keep going? It was only a matter of time before something…went…wrong…

“Do you hear…what I hear…?” Daxter asked warily as he stopped and took a step backwards. A strange, disturbing…squeaking noise was coming from the end of the corridor, and it was getting louder…closer. He peered into the distance, through the open archway at the end of the hall, and wasn’t sure if he should be more disturbed, frightened, or amused by what he saw. “We’ve got company, Jak. Lots of Lurkers!”

Jak raised an eyebrow at his orange-haired friend before grinning himself. The younger boy sounded almost excited, though it was probably just relief that the trouble they had been waiting for had finally found them. The army of Lurkers squeaking toward them, however, was nothing like Jak had expected. Big-eyed, fuzzy, and only coming up to Jak’s knees, the pygmy-sized Lurkers hopping down the corridor didn’t seem like much of a threat. But they were armed with sharp teeth and sharper claws, their size and erratic movement made them hard to hit, and there were just so many of them. Within seconds, he and Daxter were surrounded by dozens upon dozens of the annoying, biting pests, and more just kept coming.

Jak’s aura of Dark Eco came in handy, as the small Lurkers were weak and couldn’t stand to be near it. He barely had to lift a hand as his mere presence was enough to take care of any Lurker unwary enough to come close to him. Daxter had a harder time of it, swinging his weapon around like a bat as he tried to keep up with the beasts, but his friend seemed more frustrated than anything else. The longer they fought, however, the more of the creatures came loping down the corridor, and dodging became problematic when there were over thirty mouths trying to bite you at once. If they didn’t do something, and soon, they were going to be overwhelmed.

He heard Daxter cry out in pain behind him and he was reacting before he knew it, reaching out not with his hands but with his aura to kill the Lurker that had tried to take a chunk out of his friend’s arm. For a moment, Jak could only stare in shock. He had used his aura purposely once before, when he had fought the Lurker destroying Rock Village, but that had been a spur of the moment thing brought on by the bloodlust. He had never thought about trying to do it again. He would have no time to practice now, however. The surge of Lurkers was getting even larger, pouring down the hallway like a cacophonous flood. He grabbed onto Daxter’s hand and began tugging him down the corridor, keeping him close so that his aura would hopefully fend off any Lurkers that came too close.

The two boys sprinted down the hallway, now assaulted from the front and chased from behind by an army of Lurkers. Their numbers only grew the closer the teens got to the end until it was getting hard to see through all of the bodies. Daxter had wondered where the security was, and this must have been it. Why worry about the rest of the citadel when anyone stupid enough to wander into their lair would just end up buried under the weight of a thousand baby Lurkers? Rather than plummeting for all eternity in the black abyss of Gol and Maia’s citadel as skeletons, he was going to be crushed to death by Lurkers. Or eaten alive. Or suffocated when the Lurkers took up all the room.

Finally, though, they made it to the room at the end of the corridor, and discovered the reason for the unending flood of Lurkers. Three giant machines were spewing out the little beasts from seemingly thin air. Jak didn’t hesitate before lunging forward and destroying the power sources of all three machines, but that only solved half the problem. They still had a room, and hallway, full of Lurkers they needed to deal with. The creatures, thankfully, were not very bright and kept throwing themselves self-destructively at Jak, but defeating all of them still took longer than they would have liked. Afterwards, the room rang eerily silent, and the sight of all those furry bodies lying on the cold metal floor was somehow just more creepy than actually traumatizing.

“I despise Lurkers!” Daxter exclaimed heatedly once they were finally out of danger. He winced as his arm throbbed with pain and held the appendage close to his stomach. It hurt worse than it looked, he hoped, but with his luck it would become infected from Lurker germs. “Let’s hurry up and free Samos before this thing falls off.”

Probably the wrong thing to say, but Daxter ducked through the Precursor door before his friend could do anything rash. The Red Sage was waiting for them behind the bars of his cage, staring down at the robot. He was a massive elf, which was understandable for the master of an eco involved with brute strength. Like both the Blue Sage and the Yellow Sage, the Red Sage’s attire was littered with tubes and strange contraptions Daxter figured helped him channel his Eco. He wondered why the other sages all used extra equipment while Samos seemed to be able to channel Green Eco with no problem. Was it because his Eco was so closely tied to nature, or was it because he was just that good?

The sage began to chuckle softly when they destroyed the machine and the energy bars dispersed and turned to peer at them through red lenses of his goggles. “You’ve finally come to rescue me! Do you know how long I’ve been in here?” he chuckled again good-naturedly, leading Daxter to suspect that he had been trapped here for quite some time. “What are your names?”

“I’m Daxter,” the orange-haired boy puffed up his chest and tried to look as impressive as possible – which wasn’t hard, because he always looked impressive. Almost as an afterthought, he jerked his head toward the pale teen rolling his eyes behind him. “He’s Jak. He’s with me.”

“Good job, Daxter. You’re a real hero!” Daxter liked this sage. It figures that the nice sage is the one that sequesters himself in the middle of a lonely, volatile volcano. He would have to pry teeth to get that sort of compliment out of Old Samos. “You’ve got to stop Gol from launching the robot! I’ll use my Eco power to help open the shield door.”

“You can count on – huh?” Jak had swatted him on the shoulder and was now pointing to their right, where several platforms had begun to float out of the darkness. They formed a staircase that led from the scaffolding below to a bit of scaffolding near the top of the room. From there, it looked like they would be able to climb on top of the mechanism holding the shield in place. “Well, that’s convenient. Let’s go climb those platforms!”

Now Daxter knew what was going on. Gol and Maia had been watching them the entire time, and they didn’t consider him or Jak to be a threat. At most, they were probably a source of amusement, but that would just lead to their downfall. If they wanted to make things easier for the boys by helping them to Samos, then that was fine with him. It meant less work on their part. The two boys wasted no time in making their way to the main level of the room and scrambling up the new path. They could both feel that the end was near – the moment they had been waiting for. The moment when they would face Gol and Maia and either get trounced and let the world die, or triumph and save the day. Now that the moment was finally here, Daxter just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

After hours of navigating through the citadel, climbing to the top of the machine housing the Precursor robot took no time at all. Soon they were standing next to a Precursor door at the top of the machine and another power source, just like the ones that had fed the cages ensnaring the other sages. Daxter took his stick, rammed it through the fragile glass, and watched as the light within it flickered and died. Down below, the bars of Samos’ cage also flickered and died, and the old sage flew up to meet them. For once the sage’s brow wasn’t furrowed with anger or frustration, his mouth wasn’t pulled into a frown. If Daxter didn’t know any better, he might say that the old log actually looked…happy, but that couldn’t possibly be right.

“Good work, boys! You’re real heroes now!” the sage exclaimed with pride, and Daxter’s jaw promptly hit the floor some ten thousand feet below. Had…had that been a compliment? From Samos? He had said ‘boys’! That was plural! He had been talking about him, too! A compliment from some random sage he didn’t know was one thing, but from Samos? Daxter was feeling slightly faint…

“I’ll combine my power with the other sages’ and together we’ll open the shield door surrounding the Precursor robot!” the Green Sage continued, seemingly unaware of the impact his comment had had on the young elf. Jak was beaming, though. If there was anyone Daxter had needed to hear that from, it was Samos. And it was true. If it hadn’t been for Daxter, Jak couldn’t have made it all this way by himself.

“Yea, yea, that sounds like a good start!” Daxter piped in after he had remembered how to breathe properly. “And after you guys open the shield, what are you going to do about the robot?”

“Nothing, Daxter,” Samos said with some confusion, as if he had thought that was obvious. “We have to keep the shield open. It’s up to you two to figure out how to destroy the robot.

“Now, go save the world!” Samos called as he swooped down and began to channel pure Green Eco through his hands and into the shield surrounding the robot. “Then we’ll try and convince Gol to help Jak.”

It didn’t take long for the four sages, with their combined powers, to bring down the shield. Samos flew back up to smirk smugly at them, but he wasn’t alone. Gol and Maia had finally decided to grace them with their presence.

“You’re too late, Samos!” Gol chuckled darkly, the insane glint in his eyes brighter than it had been before. “Once I possess limitless Dark Eco, I will have the key to creation itself!”

“This is madness!” Samos declared fiercely. “Releasing that much Dark Eco will destroy everything we know! Just look at what it’s done to YOU!”

It was Maia who spoke this time, sneering down at them as if they were ants beneath her notice. “It has given us beauty beyond anything you could understand.”

“‘Beauty’?!” Daxter scoffed incredulously, which wasn’t really fair, because he actually thought Maia would be very pretty if she would just wear actual clothes and not hunks of Precursor scrap metal. And Jak was anything but ugly. Gol on the other hand… “Have you two looked in a mirror lately?!”

“Just wait until we open the silos, little one,” the sister cooed sinisterly, the malice under her voice sending a shiver down Daxter’s spine. Sometimes he should really keep his mouth shut. “Let’s see how you turn out…”

“And to think the two of you traveled all the way here for my help!” Gol cackled gleefully as he glared down at him with his yellowed eyes. “FOOLS! Enjoy your front-row seats to the recreation of the world!”

The two grey-skinned elves swooped down and entered the robot below through an opening installed in the left eye. Daxter expected the ground to shake as the robot came to life and began to slowly rise beneath them, but the event was disturbingly silent. The robot just slipped away, disappearing as if it had never been there in the first place and leaving the two boys and their mentor to stare at each other with growing looks of horror. The robot was out. Daxter had thought they would have to fight Gol and Maia themselves, not a gigantic Precursor monstrosity! How were they supposed to stop a robot as tall as the jungle temple?! Daxter’s stick would be completely useless, and even Jak’s new claws couldn’t hack through metal! Had they really come all this way for nothing?

“Boys!” Samos snapped, prying Daxter from his thoughts. “Take the elevator up and stop that robot!”

He was serious! The old log had finally snapped and gone senile if he actually expected Jak and Daxter to go fight that robot by themselves. The four sages were free now; Daxter couldn’t see why they couldn’t go out and fight the robot. They were the ones who had been studying Eco for years and were supposed to be the most powerful people on the planet, so what sense did it make to throw two teenage boys out there? But Jak was already nodding at Samos and took a step toward the Precursor door before turning back to look at Daxter. He had a look on his face that Daxter didn’t think he’d ever seen before, because he didn’t think Jak had ever had to steel himself for something like this. Throughout this entire adventure, their lives had constantly been in danger. They could have been burned to death, beaten to death, fallen to death, drowned, eaten, blown up. But no obstacle had ever seemed so insurmountable until now. And yet Jak still planned to throw himself into danger like he always did, seemingly without a thought as to whether there was another way or whether he would come out of this encounter alive.

“Jak…?” he sounded so small, and he felt small in the face of that sort of blind, reckless selflessness. And yet if Jak stepped into that elevator, which he knew that he would, then Daxter knew he would be with him every step of the way. Even if they did end up getting crushed to death. Because Jak was his best friend and he wasn’t going to let him face a gigantic Precursor robot by himself. And, on the off chance that they were victorious, he wasn’t going to let Jak steal all the credit. So when Jak smiled reassuringly at him, Daxter only sighed exasperatedly before folding his arms and trudging through the door into the elevator. Far up above him, he could see a glimpse of the night sky littered with stars. He felt like he hadn’t seen the stars in ages. In Rock Village, storm clouds had perpetually blocked out the sky. In the volcano, it had been the smoke and ash. He could only see two or three from so far down the elevator shaft and he wondered if they looked the same as the ones over Sandover.

He could hear Jak pad across the elevator to stand next to him. The sound of his footsteps against the Precursor metal gave him away, and his aura of Eco could be heard crackling gently around him. When Daxter glanced at him, Jak was watching the stars as well. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into these kinds o’ things,” he commented.

Jak smiled at him and shrugged helplessly, trying to look apologetic and failing miserably. It wasn’t as if he needed to ask Daxter to come with him on his many adventures. Sure, he might beg with his eyes, but he had never had to do much before Daxter would cave and come with him. This adventure had been different. He would never ask Daxter to risk his life, and he had tried to keep Daxter as safe as possible along their journey, but he couldn’t fathom going outside to face Gol and Maia without Daxter with him. Even though he knew that there was practically no chance of them winning. Even though he knew that they might very well die tonight, or watch the world drown in Eco, or perhaps both. He couldn’t do this without Daxter.

“If we get this, you’re gonna owe me. Big time!” Daxter poked Jak in the chest to get his point across and the older teen merely hummed in response. “Really! I don’t know what, but I’ll think o’ somethin’!”

The two teens froze as they suddenly heard a sound like thunder echo from outside and trickled down the elevator shaft.

“It’s showtime,” Daxter muttered almost disbelievingly. “Let’s get this over with before I come to my senses…”

Jak triggered the switch that activated the elevator and the two boys began to rise.

Chapter Text

Coming out into the fresh night air was like that first deep breath after being underwater for too long. The sky over Gol and Maia’s cell was beautiful, tinged with more hues of indigo and violet than the sky over Sandover. Jak would have to take in the view later on, if he had the chance. While Daxter glanced around him with wide, curious eyes, Jak walked to the edge of the tower on which they now stood and peered over the edge. The whole world seemed to be stretched out beneath him, but Jak only had eyes for the robot in front of him. Gol and Maia’s abomination hovered not too far away, bobbing in the air as if buffeted by an unseen current. A beam on concentrated Blue Eco streamed from its right eye to eat at the metal of the Precursor silo below it. Free of its shield, the robot looked far more forboding than it had before

“So, uh…what’s the plan?” Daxter asked as he sidled up next to him. “Other than ‘try not to die’?”

That pretty much was the plan, Jak thought with a shrug. It was a good plan, and it had always worked for him before. Besides, there was no way to plan for this. Here, Jak’s Dark Eco powers were useless. His claws couldn’t cut through Precursor metal, and he highly doubted his aura could affect two masters of Dark Eco or their homemade robot. And Daxter’s stick? No, they really didn’t have anything going for them here. And yet that just filled Jak with confidence, as opposed to fear. If everything had been going their way, then he would be worried, but things tended to always end up alright when everything started out wrong. At least for them…

So, faced with a temple-sized robot with absolutely and no viable plan for attack and zero hope of coming out alive, Jak was actually feeling pretty confident.

“No plan, huh? Greeaat,” Daxter threw his hands in the air and then placed them on his nonexistent hips. “How are we even supposed ta get over there? I dunno about you, but I can’t exactly fly all of a sudden, Jak.”

That was going to be a problem. There was a little Blue Eco platform sitting by the edge of the tower, almost as if it was waiting for them, but there was no Blue Eco nearby to activate it with. Gol and Maia may have underestimated them, but they weren’t quite cocky enough to just leave Blue Eco lying around. They probably wanted Jak and Daxter to stay trapped up here, to be forced to watch as they forced open the silo and the Dark Eco came bubbling up like sludge to cover the world. But they’d thought wrong if they thought that Jak or Daxter were just going to stand idly by and watch the world be drowned in Eco. There had to be another way to get down there.

It came to Jak as Daxter came closer to peer over the edge with him. The purple lightning that made up his aura reached out and latched onto his friend, like it always did when he came too close. It was strange how one minute his aura could be burning through flesh, and the next it could be calm like this. The way it crackled, though, was familiar. Almost like the crackle of Blue Eco, though more like tentacles than the almost-cloudlike clusters of energy Blue Eco tended to form when outside of a vent. It gave him an idea.

He stepped onto the Blue Eco pad and stared down at the dark blue of the lightning symbol etched into the Precursor metal. Jak had never had to think about how these things worked before when there had always been a bit of Blue Eco nearby. He didn’t even have to touch a Precursor artifact when he was charged with the energetic Eco; sometimes it stretched for yards, leaping off of him to eagerly move hunks of Precursor metal probably weighing hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds. But if Jak was going to make his idea work, he couldn’t just wait for the Eco to do its job. Dark Eco was all about destruction, not energy or motion, but he had to make this work somehow.

“Uh, Jak? I hate to tell you this, but staring at it’s not gonna make it work,” Daxter chirped unhelpfully from behind him, but the pale teen was trying to concentrate. When he was angry, when bloodlust and rage surged just beneath his skin, it was easy to control the Dark Eco surrounding him. He didn’t even think about it; it just happened, so fast that he had started to think that maybe his aura had a mind of its own. But that wasn’t the case at all. He didn’t know if the aura was tied to his thoughts or just his will, but he thought he could control it if he tried hard enough. Maybe even channel it…

But no matter how hard he focused, tried to feel his aura and manipulate his aura, nothing was happening. He couldn’t feel his aura like a part of himself, like a new arm or something. It was just there, reacting to how he felt or what he thought, and though he ached to go down there and stop Gol and Maia before they destroyed everything he knew, it was not enough for the purple lightning to react.

“Jaaaaak. I appreciate the view as much as you do, but we’re runnin’ outta time, here!” this time there time a thread of worry was tied into Daxter’s complaint. The orange-haired teen glanced down at the Blue Eco pad, trying to see what fascinated his friend so much about it, but there was nothing particularly interesting about it. Except for the fact that they couldn’t get the thing to work. He was starting to worry that they really would have front-row seats to the apocalypse, and now Jak was spacing out on him!

The older boy turned to him and gestured in frustration at the air around him and then down at the Eco pad. When Daxter just raised a perplexed eyebrow at him, he tried again, attempting to express without words what he was trying to say.

“Ooooooh,” Daxter’s eyes widened in realization. He placed his hands back on his hips and stared down at the pad speculatively. “So, what? You got a short fuse or something?”

Jak shrugged helpless and waved again at the aura around him. Not for the first time, he sort of wished he’d taken up the Precursor Oracle’s offer on Dark Eco lessons.

“Well, your powers always go haywire when you go off the deep end, so we just gotta make you angry!” Daxter said with a devious grin. “What really pisses you off?”

Jak didn’t anger often, but it was a surprisingly easy question to answer. He remembered the night he had first pulled himself from that pit of Dark Eco. What had driven him to kill all those Lurkers but the instinct to keep Daxter safe? What had caused him to lash out at the birdwatcher, to attempt to harm even Samos. Yes, there was the bloodlust Jak now associated with Dark Eco, but there had always also been the raw, uncontrollable anger. The anger that swelled inside of him whenever Daxter was in trouble or someone was treating him wrong. It had been there all along. It had been there even before the Eco, though as more of an irrational protectiveness than an urge to slaughter anyone who so much as looked at his friend the wrong way.

Why did it not surprise him that Daxter would end up being the answer? The two of them had stuck together like glue for as long as he could remember. Daxter’s slightly nasally voice, flame-colored hair, and cheeky grin were imprinted on every single one of Jak’s memories. The other boy was a part of him. Separate from him and yet inextricably tied to him, almost like his Dark Eco aura and yet not. He couldn’t imagine a world without Daxter in it, but wasn’t that what was about to happen? If they didn’t get down there and stop that robot, what would happen. Jak could imagine the Dark Eco flowing through the trees, melting them to touch and warping them into something new and terrible. He could imagine it pouring into the sea, turning the cerulean water dark and foreboding until its taint kissed the horizon. He could imagine his village burning, his uncle’s maps up in flames in their little hut and the sculptor’s masterpieces cracking from the heat of the fire.

But it was the thought of Daxter, of his terrified face, that sparked the first real flame of anger. He latched onto it and ran with it. He thought of the Lurkers that had tried to harm his friend, of every cruel comment that had ever come out of Samos’ mouth. He thought of Daxter screaming in pain as the Dark Eco sucked him down, down, until Jak’s world was empty save for the ring of silence.

The purple lightening woke, rising and lashing out like angered snakes. He ignored Daxter’s whoop at his success and focused on the Precursor robot below. On the two elves within it. The two elves that were trying to destroy the world, warp everything he knew. Jak hadn’t died in the Dark Eco because he was a channeler, but as far as he knew there was no one out there like him. The Sages had the powers they did from years and years of study and dedication. Samos had total mastery over Green Eco, but he couldn’t use Blue or Red or Yellow. Daxter couldn’t channel Eco. The Eco would touch him and he would burn, he would scream, and Jak would be helpless to do anything about it and he would be forced to watch, watch Daxter die and - .

The Dark Eco around Jak surged with a jolt, forcing itself into the bad below him with so much force that the surface actually cracked beneath his feet. The Dark Blue lightning symbol reluctantly sparked to life, flickering between brilliant light blue and a sinister violet. Daxter quickly hopped onto the platform before it could float off without him, but he hesitated to get to close to Jak. That proved to be particularly difficult on a metal disk this pathetically small, but Jak was practically glowing with angry, crackly tentacles of doom, and, though the aura had never really hurt him before, Daxter was not going to push his luck. He kept any sarcastic comments to himself as they descended toward the silo, though he itched to say something as they got closer and closer to the giant robot and its blue lazer of death. Because he could really use some humor or something to try to smother the budding terror growing in the pit of his gut – not at Jak, no, but at the prospect of the imminent battle.

“Jak,” he couldn’t help himself from at least one comment, and the aura that wasn’t forcing itself into the platform curled almost inquisitively even if Jak couldn’t pry his black eyes away from Gol and Maia’s machine. “It’s been nice knowin’ you, buddy.”

Jak grinned at him over his shoulder, but it was that bloodthirsty grin that looked so out of place on Jak’s face, no matter how many times he did it. The same grin he had had when he had killed the Lurker guarding the mountain pass by ruthlessly shoving his Eco-charged fist into the creature’s skull. And yet somehow Daxter now found that macabre grin reassuring.

The Blue Eco platform came to a shuddering stop and the two boys hopped off. Daxter clutched his thorned stick from the swamp tightly in both hands, though he had no idea what he was going to do with it. Up close, the robot looked even more impossible to destroy. But they had several things going in their favor. Maybe it was discharge from the robot, which seemed shoddily put together, but there was a lot of Yellow Eco strewn across the silo’s surface. A vent of Blue Eco pulse not too far away, and he could see a launch bad on one side as well. Jak didn’t even hesitate before he was scooping up a flame of Yellow Eco and firing it at the robot’s right eye – the one shooting the beam of Blue Eco. Daxter could hear Gol’s scream of rage from here as the robot jerked with each hit. He grinned from the sidelines, hope budding in his chest now that it looked like they had an actual shot at this. Gol and Maia weren’t even fighting back!

And, of course, that thought jinxed everything.

The robot’s eye suddenly exploded and the beam of Blue Eco petered out. It lurched back out of reach of Jak’s attacks. The yellow glow faded from his outstretched claws as he began to pace, watching Gol and Maia’s robot impatiently. Daxter was again reminded of the fight outside of Rock Village, of the dark predator that had temporarily replaced his friend. He turned back to the robot when he saw his friend suddenly bare his teeth and raised his eyebrows as something popped out of the robot’s back. Something that looked suspiciously like a cannon. Somehow, he could hear Maia cackling even from within the confines of the robot, mad with a bloodlust that probably matched if not outstripped Jak’s.

Daxter was yanked just as the cannon fired, shooting a strange disc of Precursor metal at them that stopped to hover just over the silo. He tried to get his feet under himself but failed as Jak sprinted toward the Blue Eco vent. The Precursor missile was starting to spin in midair, faster and faster until it was a blur. The orange-haired teen suddenly had a very bad feeling, only half because he had a sneaking suspicion of what that missile was about to do. Atrip through the Blue Eco and Jak was darting for the launch pad, and Daxter loudly, and viciously, cursed the Precursor who had invented these blasted things in the first place. What did Precursor need with launch pads?! Had they been so bored that trampolines wouldn’t suffice? And this pad was worse than all the others, launching them not dozens but hundreds of feet in the air. His ears actually popped from the sudden altitude change. Then there was that horrible gutless feeling as they hovered in midair for a second, when they were trapped in the middle of the force that had shot them up and the gravity that pulled them down. And then gravity won, and they were plummeting back towards the silo. The missile exploded below them, sending out a cloud of blue smoke bluish purple smoke, but that didn’t offer Daxter any comfort.

Because he didn’t care how much Eco someone was pumped with, he was pretty sure falling from his height would turn him and Jak into pancakes. No, into a smear of jam. Falls from a few dozen feet were jarring enough, but this?? And Daxter wouldn’t be able to try and land properly even if he tried. He was flailing in midair, connected to Jak only by the clawed hand ripping into the sleeve of his tunic. Jak was falling feet-first, staring down at the ground with grim determination, but staring was not going to make the ground any softer. Daxter should half stayed back on the citadel. He thought there might be less terrifying ways to die than watching the death come towards him and not being able to dodge. He didn’t bother to muffle the scream that ripped through his throat as the silo approached, but he couldn’t shut his eyes and look away.

Jak lurched at the last second, nearly pulling Daxter’s arm out of his socket as he pulled the boy closer and wrapped the younger boy’s arms around his neck. Daxter had barely wrapped his legs around Jak’s waist before they were landing, striking into the silo with enough force to make the Precursor metal sing. The pale teen fell into a crouch to absorb some of the impact, and a boneless Daxter tumbled lifeless off of his back.

“I thought…I made it perfectly clear that I CANNOT FLY!” Daxter hissed between desperate gasps for air. Dark Jak just cackled at him as he stood, leaving Daxter lying on the metal to catch his breath. Of course he would find near-death experiences funny, the sadist. The younger teen could hear a thick gurgling that hadn’t been there before, and the orange-haired boy scrambled to his feet with a growing horror. The silo was open! It wasn’t exactly gushing Eco everywhere, but it had opened slightly, enough for a Daxter-sized body to fall through, and he could hear the Eco gurgling restlessly below. As he watched, Green Eco began to pour into the silo, shooting out from the Precursor robot’s chest.

The Dark Eco writhed and twisted below, merging with the Green Eco or reacting violently to it, Daxter couldn’t really tell. It began to bubble wherever the Green Eco touched it, shifting as if something was moving beneath the surface. Daxter scrambled away from the crack in the silo just as the strange reaction came to a head and a blob of something came shooting out of the Eco to land with a sickening plop on the other side of the opening. And then the blob roared, showing off several circular rows of sharp, serrated teeth, and, by the Precursors, but what particular brand of stupidity had Daxter been suffering from when he’d decided to come down here and die next to Jak? The monster lurched forward, stumbling along on stubby, fingerless limbs. Its entire purple-black body was covered in spikes of various sizes, and, though it was not particularly large compared to some of the things they had fought, it exuded the most malice.

Jak jumped across the gap in the silo and attacked it with claws outstretched, but the creature was faster than either he or Daxter could have ever imagined. It lashed out with one of its stubby appendages and slammed into Jak so hard that the boy went flying. He landed on the other side of the silo and slid across the smooth metal before coming to a stop dangerously close to the edge, dazed. Daxter was frozen with his mouth open and his eyes wide, shocked that something had actually been able to hurt Jak. But he didn’t have any time to think about it, or even to run away, because the monster was now barreling toward him with its maw open wide and hungry.

He jumped back to dodge the first punch and lurched to the side to avoid the second. For something that looked like more blob than monster, it was disturbingly fast. Though Daxter could keep up with the thing’s attacks and avoid them with some struggle, he was quickly running out of room. Each step back put him closer to the edge, and the monster seemed to sense that. Either Daxter was going to be mauled, or he was going to plummet to his death. Neither was preferable. He made the mistake of glancing nervously behind him, and when he turned back a thorned stub was coming right for his face. He fell onto his back in his attempt to dodge and shivered as that horrible mouth was suddenly looming right over him.

The monster roared before it lunged, swooping down to bite off his head, or maybe an arm or a leg or just everything all at once. Daxter squeezed his eyes shut and held his stick above him feebly, resigned to the fact that, of all the ways he could have died tonight, he just had to be eaten alive. He felt his arm jerk as the creature roared again, more shrill this time, but its teeth never descended upon him. The terrified elf blinked up and a slightly hysterical giggle bubbled from his throat as he saw what had happened. The stick had lodge itself in the monster’s throat, and without fingers it couldn’t pull it out. It backed away and thrashed from side it side, trying to dislodge the stick, but the thorns ensured that it wasn’t going anywhere. And now Jak was back on his feet and angrier than Daxter had ever seen him.

Daxter had to look away. The high-pitched, unnatural screams were enough to let Daxter know that Jak was winning, but he couldn’t watch while his friend tore the monster apart. It was just a blob monster made out of Eco, yes, but it could obviously feel pain and some things were just too horrifying to watch.

When at last the screams stopped, the Precursor robot moved again, and the cannon reappeared. When Jak grabbed him this time, his hands were slick with…something, and he had to dig his claws into the younger boy’s clothes so that he wouldn’t slip away. On another day, Daxter might be upset about his clothes becoming ripped and stained, he might even throw a little mini tantrum over it, but right now he just really needed to focus on breathing. Because even if he trusted this version of Jak implicitly, that did not make him any less terrifying. When they landed, there was no amused cackle from this Jak as Daxter succumbed to his jelly legs and fell over. There weren’t any snarls as he glared up at the Precursor robot, not red-hot anger. Just a cold, calculating frown that sent a shiver down Daxter’s spine.

Gol and Maia attacked with Red Eco next, shooting balls of Eco that sent out a wave of energy across the ground when they exploded. Dodging them was as easy as jumping at the right moment, and so Daxter could focus on Jak and how he was fairing. The older teen was done playing games. More Yellow Eco had discharged from the robot, and Jak used it to throw a volley of fireballs so numerous it looked like a continuous stream. When he wasn’t dodging the Red Eco blasts, he was ceaselessly shooting Yellow Eco, efficient like a machine. Gol and Maia had made the mistake of angering Jak, really pushing him over the edge, and now they wouldn’t stand a chance. The right arm of the robot exploded and the Red Eco attacks ceased, and Daxter could hear Gol cursing vehemently within the confines of the robot.

The siblings shot another bomb at them, easily avoided by the now familiar Blue Eco launch pad. The silo was steadily being blasted open as quickly as Gol and Maia’s robot was being torn apart, leaving Jak and Daxter with less room to move around. The siblings began to charge their next weapon, a canon on the left arm almost bigger than the robot’s entire chest. Yellow Eco flashed brighter than the sun as it came barreling towards Jak like a wall of flame. He dodged dispassionately and continued to shoot his own Yellow Eco at the new weapon. Daxter was completely forgotten as Gol and Maia focused on the Dark Eco child now destroying them so effortlessly, but he was okay with that. He had had enough excitement for one night, for one lifetime, and Jak seemed to be handling things pretty smoothly on his own.

When the Yellow Eco canon was destroyed, the Precursor robot backed away to shoot another bomb at the silo. Daxter wasn’t sure how many more bombs the silo would take before it opened fully and the Dark Eco came pouring out, but he didn’t have to worry. The Acheron siblings never got a chance to fire the missile. The four sages, finally, had decided to pitch in. There were four skinny towers surrounding the silo that Daxter had not paid any attention to, but now their peaks each began to glow with the color of Eco. Beams of red, yellow, blue, and green coalesced above the center of the silo, forming a light so blinding that Daxter had to look away.

“Light Eco! It does exist!” Gol’s voice was a mixture of awe, incredulity, and disbelieving rage.

“They must not be allowed to get it!” Maia cried desperately, her usual malice suddenly gone In the face of her fear, and that’s when Daxter realized what exactly was floating in front of him.

It wasn’t a ball of light; it was a ball of Eco. A ball of Light Eco. This had been what the Precursor Oracle had been talking about! What else could he have meant by the ‘pure light’ than this?

“Jak! Jak!” Daxter leapt forward and grabbed his friend by the shoulders, so ecstatic that he didn’t think to be wary of the older teen’s bloodlust. But the sight of the Eco had snapped Jak out of the cold rage that had overtaken him. Daxter couldn’t have kept the grin off of his face if he tried. “That could be the stuff to change you back!”

But Jak wasn’t smiling back. The expression on his face was almost apologetic, but what did Jak have to be sorry for? Unless… “Or…it might stop the robot…”

Jak nodded grimly as Daxter let out a grown of anger and frustration. Typical. They come all this way, and now they had to use the only thing that could change Jak back to destroy the only one who could change him back. But maybe…If the Sage’s had made Light Eco before, surely they could make it again! Jak would be okay, Daxter was sure of it. Samos wouldn’t let Jak stay like this forever if there was something he could do about it! Apparently Jak was thinking along the same lines, if his reassuring smile was anything to go by.

“Okay, fine, we’ll save the world first!” Daxter consented, not like Jak actually needed or had planned on asking for consent. Jak did what he wanted, when he wanted, but Daxter wouldn’t be Daxter if he didn’t throw in his two Precursor Orbs. “Just do it quickly before I change my mind!”

The older boy grinned at him, and, though Daxter tried, he couldn’t have stopped his own answering smile. Gol and Maia, frantic now to kill the Eco channeler before he could stop them, filled the air with missiles. With a final smile over his shoulder, Jak dived for the ball of Eco and disappeared in a flash of white.

Chapter Text

Daxter didn’t know what to expect of a Jak chocked full of Light Eco. If Dark Eco embodied chaos and bloodlust and rage, then what did Light Eco encompass? Serenity? Inner peace? Hopefully something a lot more useful than that if they were going to use it to destroy a robot. But the Jak who appeared when the glow of the Light Eco dispersed wasn’t wreathed with white, ethereal flames. He wasn’t bursting with brand new, phenomenal Eco powers never seen before. In fact, there wasn’t anything particularly special about him at all.

And Daxter might have found the whole thing very anticlimactic if that last thought didn’t resonate so strongly within him.

There was nothing special about him.

There were no sinister, ebony horns. No sharp, talon-like claws. The Dark Eco aura had completely disappeared. All that remained was the gangly teenager that had disappeared what felt like years ago on Misty Island – the boy with the lemon hair with lime roots, eyes bluer than the sea, and a smile brighter than the sun – and he seemed oddly naked and vulnerable without all of his pointy, crackly accessories. No smile graced Jak’s lips now, no, but that didn’t matter because this expression of grim determination remained unmarred by bloodlust or rage or malice. This was pure, 100% Jak, and Daxter hadn’t realized how much he’d missed his friend until now. Even though Jak had been with him the entire time, there had always been that darkness hovering over them because of the Eco, tainting every interaction.

The sight of his friend’s original form should have filled Daxter with joy, and it did, but terror also pooled in the bottom of his gut. They had run out of time. At least five of those missiles had reached the silo and hovered over it, spinning faster and faster, ready to go off any second. They didn’t have enough time for Jak to try and grab more Light Eco, and Daxter could tell by Maia’s relieved and slightly hysterical cackle that the siblings in the robot had come to the same conclusion. After all this, after all they had been through, they had managed to fix Jak and they were still going to be blown to smithereens and - .

“Do something!” Maia shrieked as Jak’s arm suddenly began to glow. Eco, Light Eco, flowed down his arm and began to pool in his closed fist. It seemed to ooze out of his own skin, flowing around him like dust motes bathed in sunlight. The Light Eco hadn’t simply vanished when it had canceled out the Dark Eco, like Daxter had feared. It hadn’t canceled out the Dark Eco at all. As more Light Eco gathered in Jak’s hand, the color just seemed to drain right out of him. Yellow and vibrant green faded back to a newly familiar silver, warm tan cooled to a hue so pale it was almost white. It wasn’t a slow, gradual process. One minute Jak was there in all his multicolored glory, and in the blink of an eye the darker, black-eyed version had taken his place almost as if he had never changed back at all. His right arm was practically swimming in Light Eco, lost in the brilliant white glow. The Light Eco hadn’t removed the Dark Eco; it had balanced it out.

Jak didn’t give Gol and Maia time to react. When he threw his arm forward and launched the miniature sun at the robot, it was almost as if he had released a comet. The robot didn’t explode so much as just disappear, almost completely obliterated. Random gears, pipes, and plates of glass went flying through the air to spiral down to the earth below, but the majority of the robot just seemed to have vanished. The head was the only intact piece that fell. Gol and Maia screamed, not in fear, but disbelieving rage as their new prison plunged into the open vat of Dark Eco and began to slowly sink. They continued to yell and curse and spit until they had completely sunk beneath the surface of the rising ooze and the Precursor silo shut itself violently, sealing them away forever.

The resulting silence was almost deafening. The two boys stood on the edge of the Precursor silo and just stared at each other for a moment. The sun had started to rise sometime during the battle without them noticing it, sneaking over the horizon in the distance. If Daxter squinted, he thought he might be able to see Sandover all the way from here. There was Samos’ hut – his second home. There, peeking from the trees, stood the jungle temple he and Jak would explore all the time. Closer still, Daxter could see the dirigible floating aimlessly over the swamp. The people of Rock Village wouldn’t have to worry about Lurkers attacking them again, now that Gol and Maia were out of the picture. They could start rebuilding their village and move on.

“We really did it…” he whispered disbelievingly as he stared at the world blanketed out beneath them. Those little trees down there, the ones that looked no bigger than his fingernail from all the way up here, they still stood because of him and Jak. The people who lived in Rock Village and Sandover, and wherever else there might be people, were still relatively normal-looking and not hideous mutants because of them. Two teenage boys had accomplished what four fully trained Eco sages had been unable to do. “We saved the world!”

Jak’s grin made the glow of Light Eco pale in comparison. Even the reappearance of the onyx black horns, lethal claws, and savage teeth couldn’t dull this moment at all. Even the warm crackle of his returned Dark Eco aura was more comforting than it should have been. Now they knew how to help Jak. They couldn’t fix him per se. Maybe no one would ever be able to remove the Dark Eco from his system, but he would be fine as long as he had some Light Eco in there to balance it out. Hopefully. All they had to do was get the Eco Sages to whip up some more Light Eco and Jak would be okay. And now the fate of the world wasn’t bearing down on their shoulders. They didn’t have to worry about collecting Power Cells or getting to the next warp gate fast enough. They wouldn’t have to fight, and kill, another Lurker again. Without Gol and Maia to direct them, the purple brutes had no reason to attack the villages. Daxter could finally kick back, relax, and pass out. Sentinel Beach was calling his name.

Daxter’s whoop of triumph could probably be heard all the way back at Sandover. The two boys shared a high five before promptly breaking out into a victory jig of epic proportions. For the first time since they had started this adventure, it felt like things had finally gone their way.

The two boys were still horsing around when they rode the battered Blue Eco pad back to the citadel and found that everyone was already there, waiting from them. Samos greeted the two boys first, stepping forward with an actual full-fledged grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye that Daxter had never seen before. “Well, it looks like I may have been hard on you, boys!” he said with an actual chuckle. “You do have what it takes to be heroes.”

“Pinch me, Jak, I’m dreaming!” and then Daxter quickly rethought that statement as Jak brandished two talon-like claws at him. “Er…On second thought, let’s not.”

“But, Jak…now we can’t change you back,” Keira was there as well, caught halfway between joy that Gol and Maia had been defeated and concern for her friend.

“Well, that’s no problem, right?” Daxter waved her concern away with a careless gesture and turned eager eyes to the four Eco Sages. “You guys can just use your holy sageness to cook up some more Eco!”

But the Sages didn’t seem to share in his excitement. In fact, they swapped hesitant glances that looked suspiciously like trepidation and guilt. The faces of people who knew they were going to have to give someone really bad news and didn’t want to have to be the one to say it. “Uh…right?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Samos explained with a sigh, reluctantly taking on the mantle of the bearer of bad news. “While we’d love to just ‘cook up’ some Eco for you, creating enough Light Eco to destroy a temple-sized Precursor robot exhausted nearly all of our resources. I doubt I could heal a paper cut, the way I feel right now.”

No, no, no, that was not the kind of news Daxter wanted to hear. He hesitantly glanced over his shoulder at Jak and instantly regretted it. The pale teen looked like a kicked crocadog puppy. No, worse, because Jak sad and defeated was the kind of thing that made clouds weep and the sun hide its face in despair. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but no one could look at a Jak with drooping ears and wide eyes and not have their heart strings tug just a little. “So….wait. What are you saying? You can’t change Jak back? He’s…he’s stuck like this? Forever?”

If Daxter’s voice went up an octave with every sentence, the others possessed enough kindness not to point it out. Instead, the four elves exchanged yet more uncomfortable glances. But what did they have to be uncomfortable about? They weren’t the ones that were stuck with Dark Eco running through their…whatever Eco ran through. Veins? Special Eco channels? Whatever. Jak was the one who would be uncomfortable, for the rest of his life, dealing with bloodlust and anger issues and people shying away from him because he would perpetually look slightly homicidal. Daxter would stand by his friend no matter what, but Jak shouldn’t have to resign himself to a life full of Dark Eco if a way to help him existed. “What kind of Sages are you?!”

“If you want Light Eco so badly, Daxter, than how about you create some out of thin air!” Samos snapped, his good will exhausted for the day. “With meditation and a great deal of hard work, we may eventually gain back some of our original strength, but I highly doubt we’ll be able to make more Light Eco. Gaining back that much strength would take years that some of us just don’t have.”

As he said this, Samos shot the Yellow Sage a particularly surly look, though Daxter suspected that the old log was older than the other three sages combined. “We’ll have to find another way to help you, Jak,” the Green Sage sighed.

But there is no other way, Daxter’s inner pessimist wanted to say. Gol was no longer an option. Even if the poor, insane sod wasn’t completely out of his mind and trapped in a bottomless pool of Dark Eco, or dead, he probably hated their guts right now if he hadn’t already. Even if there was a way to pry him out of the silo without unleashing a flood of doom on the world, Gol would sooner turn them inside out with his bare hands than actually help them. There only other option had been the ‘pure light,’ but that route had been stolen from them now as well. What were they supposed to do now?

A lanky arm suddenly slung over Daxter’s shoulder and pulled him against a solid body. Jak was smiling down at him, all traces of despair either gone or hidden away behind a mask of reassurance. Daxter had feeling it wasn’t a mask. Jak never let anything bother him for long, not even something like this. If he could face the end of the world with a grin on his face, then living with Dark Eco would be like a stroll along the beach. Sometimes Jak’s disgusting optimism just made Daxter sick.

“Why do I look more let down then you do? What’s wrong with you?” Daxter snapped, and only half from actual annoyance. The other half stemmed from the fact that Jak’s arm still hadn’t left his shoulder or relaxed its grip. Wrestling, gleeful hugs when you realized your friend hadn’t fallen off a cliff, high fives…all of that was one thing. All of that was safe. Pressing your friend against your side for no apparent reason and smiling down at them like that? It was just reassurance, that had to be it. Something this life altering apparently required more than a punch to the shoulder and a warm grin. It required lingering side hugs and smiles that had abruptly stolen Daxter’s rather prodigious affinity for speech.

“You know, there might be something we can use behind this Precursor door!” Keira’s excited voice suddenly cut through the tension like a knife. Not that there had been any tension to begin with. Of course not. Daxter had just imagined it. Just like he completely imagined the way Keira winked at him after she was sure Jak’s attention was focused on the door.

Daxter actually hadn’t noticed the door at all. When he and Jak had first come out onto the roof, he had been much more focused on the giant robot than anything else. He had assumed it was just part of the architecture. It was larger than any door Daxter had ever encountered and had to be fifty feet tall, at least. It took up a good third of the platform – a solid wall of thick Precursor metal with what looked like a giant emblem emblazoned in its center. Dozens of little circular indentations ringed the emblem – empty cavities waiting to be filled. The orange-haired teen wondered what artifact could be so great, or so dangerous, that the Precursors had felt the need to lock it behind something that elaborate. Something that powerful could be promising…or disastrous. With their luck, both, but there was a little seed of hope budding in his chest.

“Who knows what mysteries the Precursors might have sealed behind these ancient walls!” the Blue Sage chirped excitedly. “It is entirely possible that the solution to your dilemma lies tantalizingly within your grasp!”

“It is possible, I suppose…” the Green Sage agreed as he ran a hand through his beard and eyed the door speculatively.

“And we’re in luck! It looks like it takes Power Cells,” and now Keira was smiling diabolically at her two young friends, a dark gleam in her eyes.

“How many Cells…?” Daxter asked hesitantly, terrified of the answer.

“Oh, only a hundred and one.”

Great. Just great. So much for getting a little rest and relaxation after saving the entire planet. And Jak had the nerve to look excited! Like he didn’t realize that this mean tthat they would have to spend who knows how long scouring the wilds with a fine-toothed comb until they found every single Power Cell in the name of existence. “Oh, boy…HERE we go again!”

Chapter Text

It had snowed in Sandover once, years ago. It had been an odd winter to begin with, one of the few where the weather had actually been downright chilly, and Jak had woken up one morning to find cold, white specks of sand spiraling down from the sky. He had known what snow was, in theory. His uncle had traveled to barren ice fields and wild, untamed expanses of tundra, and he had come home with all sorts of stories. But hearing about snow and actually seeing it for himself had been two very different things. The snow had melted before it had even reached the ground, but it had been beautiful and strange while it lasted. However, even that childhood memory proved insufficient for warning him what true snow was like.

High above the volcanic crater loomed the tallest mountains Jak had ever seen. Their peaks disappeared into the clouds while layers upon layers of ice and compacted snow hid away forgotten Precursor secrets. Lurkers lived up here, far removed from any elf village and well adapted to the cold. Here the white-furred Lurkers had constructed villages and fortresses out of wood and machines that could dig through ice. They clad themselves in carefully made wooden and metal armor rather than the scavenged bones used by their purple cousins. And there were creatures hidden in the snow that Jak had never seen before – strange icemen that had tried more than once to run him and Daxter off the side of the mountain. Usually, the silver-haired teen would be all for exploring new places, discovering things.

But no matter how beautiful the snow was, or how fun sliding on ice turned out to be, or how many hidden secrets there might be, nothing could quite distract Jak from the fact that his toes were about to fall off.

He and Daxter had been up here for what felt like hours scouring every crack and crevice of the mountain for Power Cells. A month had passed since they had defeated Gol and Maia Acheron and stopped them from flooding the world with Dark Eco, and the two boys had spent every day of it exploring the nooks and crannies of every strip of land from Sentinel Beach to the Acherons’ citadel in search of Power Cells. Instead of work, though, it had felt very much like a vacation. Without the end of the world looming over their heads, he and Daxter didn’t have to rush. Jak had always wanted to explore the world, entranced by his uncle’s stories, and now here was his chance.

However, after a month of running through jungle, swamp, cold citadel, and dank cave, the pale teen itched to go home. Sure, with the warp gates all activated now, Sandover was never more than a few minutes away, but Jak wouldn’t mind actually staying for a while. But Daxter had been like an elf possessed these past few weeks, more eager than any of them to find out what might lay behind the Precursor door. Daxter never said anything, but Jak knew his young friend hoped there was some magical cure for him hidden behind that door because Daxter knew that, under Jak’s carefree smiles and bright attitude, he stilled struggled with this change, this Eco coursing just beneath his skin.

Rage and bloodlust still burned inside of him like embers waiting for the slightest spark. It would steadily grow, like an itch that needed to be scratched, until he inevitably snapped and lashed out. It wasn’t so bad when it was just him and Daxter and some poor, unsuspecting Lurkers who just conveniently happened to stand between them and another Power Cell, but Jak worried about when the adventure really was over and there was no more reason to fight. How could he stay in Sandover knowing that he could snap at any moment? What if Daxter wasn’t there to calm him down and the next person he attacked wasn’t a fully fledged Eco Sage, but one of the villagers? His uncle? Keira?

Which was why, as soon as this was over, Jak planned to go to one of the Precursor Oracles and ask them to teach him how to control his powers. Despite everyone’s hopes, he had a pretty strong hunch that whatever lay on the other side of that Precursor door wouldn’t help him. That was okay. Jak could get used to this. He would adapt to it, with help. He had no other options. He wouldn’t allow himself to degenerate into some kind of…bloodthirsty monster. He would never be the cause of Daxter’s terror again. The younger boy seemed well enough at ease around Jak and never treated him any differently, even when the Eco-saturated teen went off the deep end, but Jak would never forget the look that had been in Daxter’s eyes in the spider caves. The sooner they collected these Power Cells, the sooner the pale teen could take the first step toward preventing that from ever happening again.

Thankfully, he had just found the last Power Cell they would need to open that Precursor door. All the boys needed to do now was take the warp gate at the Red Sage’s hut to Sandover and tell Keira and Samos the good news, but first he had to find Daxter. The two boys had split up to try and make finding the last Power Cell a little easier. After a month of traveling and all that they had been through together on their quest to stop Gol and Maia, Daxter had finally picked up some skill at fighting. The younger boy had even gone back to the swamp to get another stick, swearing left and right that the other one had saved his life. So Jak wasn’t particularly worried that Daxter would get hurt, but getting lost…that was another matter entirely.

He had just resigned himself to the fact that he would have to go searching through every ice-filled tunnel in search of his friend when something cold and wet smacked him in the back of the head and exploded down his neck. He shuddered as snow began to melt down his back and spun around, claws bared and aura crackling, but nothing was there. Just mounds of snow and tufts of frozen grass. When nothing sprang out to attack him, Jak glanced suspiciously at the bowed branches of the trees above him. Maybe one of the branches had snapped under the weight of the snow…but if that were the case, he would have been hit fro-.

The next wad of snow hit Jak squarely in the face as he turned back around. He no longer had any doubts about his mysterious attacker. Even if Daxter had managed to dodge behind the tree fast enough to hide, his cackling would have given him away. So, that’s how his friend wanted to play it? Well, Daxter had made a grave mistake. He should know better than to mess with the master.

Jak had been practicing manipulating his Eco aura over the past month. He couldn’t really control it, not with any skill, but he could suppress it for a little while if he concentrated hard enough. And without bright purple lightning whipping and crackling around him, he blended in fairly well with his muted, snowy surroundings. When the pale teen ducked into a copse of trees, he practically disappeared altogether. His blue tunic stood out a bit, but for a just moment he didn’t miss his shock of lemon-yellow hair. He didn’t expect Daxter to come after him – his friend would be on to him already – but now he could sneak up on the other boy.

Jak missed this – something as simple as a game of hide and seek. Something without a goal that affected the fate of the entire world. Something as easily fulfilling as putting a smile on Daxter’s face, and a fistful of snow down his tunic. The other boy was easy to find, his fiery orange hair and red tunic shining out like a beacon amongst the white blankness of the snow. If Daxter thought he was well protected, hiding behind a crop of rocks and surrounded by small evergreens, he was dead wrong. No place was safe from Jak. In fact, Daxter had made Jak’s job easier for him by hiding where he had. It almost made him feel bad about what he planned to do, but not bad enough to stop. Pitch black claws made climbing the fir tree behind Daxter so much easier, and from there it only took a gentle shake to cause the branch above Daxter’s head shudder and drop every single frosty inch of snow on the unsuspecting boy’s head.

Daxter’s yelp of surprise was swallowed up by the onslaught of snow. One minute he was there, and then the next he was gone, almost as if he hadn’t even been there at all. A second later, a hand shot from the pile of snow and flailed helplessly, and Jak would have been content to laugh at his friend’s misfortune if he wasn’t worried that Daxter might not be able to breathe under all of that snow. But by the time he had leapt down from the tree, Daxter had managed to pry his upper half free and was shooting Jak one of the most disgusted glares he had ever seen.

“Very funny. You just had to go there, didn’t you?” he snapped as he shook snow out of his hair and tried, in vain, to prevent it from sliding down the back of his tunic. The older boy shrugged helplessly at him, though he couldn’t keep the satisfied smirk off of his face. Jak suppressed a snort as Daxter tried unsuccessfully to pry the rest of his body out of his frozen prison, but he couldn’t push himself up when his hands kept burying themselves in the snow. “I’m goin’ numb in places I didn’t know I had!”

Jak didn’t bother to hold back the next chuckle as Daxter folded his arms over his chest and glared up at him. He looked ridiculous half-buried in the snow as he was, and they both knew it. “A little help here, chuckles?”

A few sharp tugs and Daxter came flying out of the snow, only to land face-first when the momentum sent both boys crashing back into the snow. Jak braced himself for a tirade from Daxter, but it never came. The younger boy pushed himself to his knees, spat out a mouthful of snow, and calmly brushed chunks of snow off of his shoulders. He shook half-melted snow out of his tunic before fastidiously straightening it and smoothing out every wrinkle. Then he ran a hand through his hair to remove every errant snowflake and took a moment to readjust his goggles. Jak had expected Daxter to yell or complain or throw sarcastic remarks, but the younger boy didn’t seem bothered at all.

“You know what, Jak?” he asked almost conversationally, but there was an undertone to his voice that Jak didn’t like. He, too, sat up, tensed and ready to sprint at the slightest sign of danger. Alarm bells went off in the back of his mind, and even his purple lightning crackled with suspicion. “You’re good, I’ll give ya that. But you forget that I know your one weakness…”

Daxter launched himself at the taller boy so suddenly that Jak couldn’t possibly dodge, and nimble fingers reached his ribs before he could stop them. A boy who had managed to take down a fifty-foot Lurker with his bare hands, who had destroyed a giant Precursor robot, who had wiped out an entire city’s worth of Lurkers, was reduced to tears in a matter of seconds. It was so much worse with cold, wet snow slipping down his back with every helpless flail, but he didn’t really mind. He hadn’t realized it, but Jak hadn’t laughed this hard in a long time. About a month, to be precise, ever since he had killed that Lurker rat and realized that he wasn’t on any ordinary adventure. Freaking out over a rat seemed almost silly now compared to…all the blood that was on his hands. All the death had been weighing on him and it felt good to finally let go, if only for a short while.

Yes, Jak had missed being able to just fool around without having to worry. This adventure had, in a way, been both the best and worst experience of his young life, and he was ready to go home.

-x-

The view from the top of the Acheron’s citadel was even more stunning during the day. The sun set the orange-hued metal aflame and bathed the land below in a warm, golden light. Growing up, Jak had never understood why his uncle was never home. He had partially developed his love of adventure from a desire to understand what waited beyond the craggy mountains and lush jungle that blocked his little village off from the rest of the world. He wanted to know what out there was so fascinating, and now he could see it all laid out before him as clearly as one of his uncle’s maps. The world was huge, and Jak was just a small part of it. This adventure might be coming to an end, and maybe he planned a break, but this wouldn’t be the end. There was no need to rush when he had his whole life to see what else was out there, to discover what lay beyond the edges of the map.

“Well, there’s just one more Power Cell to install,” Jak pried his eyes away from the view to see Keira smiling excitdely at him and holding out a single Power Cell. In front of them, the Precursor door y glowed with the combined light of one hundred Power Cells, tediously arranged in concentric circles in the grooves in the door’s surface. “Would you like to do the honors?”

The pale teen took the Power Cell in his hand and stepped toward the door. He glanced to his left when Daxter padded up beside him. The younger boy was oddly quiet and biting his lip as he stared up at the door with wide, blue eyes. Behind them, Samos the Sage and his daughter shared look before also stepping forward. This was Jak’s family. Samos, who had, in his own ornery way, been more of a father figure to him than his own uncle had been. Keira, who was like an older sister to him with the way she nagged at him and watched out for him and ‘forced’ him to try out all her inventions. And then there was Daxter…the one who understood him the best, who had been with him in his darkest moments and still stuck by him no matter what, who he would do anything for to protect…

Jak carefully placed the Power Cell in the final indent and took a step back. He almost expected this door to spiral open, like any other Precursor door, but this one was different. It suddenly split down the middle, and through the small gap shined a light so radiant that Jak thought that maybe the Precursors really had hidden Light Eco away here. But it wasn’t Eco emanating that brilliant light. He…he wasn’t sure what it was – Jak had never seen anything like it.

“Wooow!” For the first time in his young life, Daxter actually sounded awed by a Precursor artifact. “What is it?”

Keira’s eyes were shining as she took in the scene behind the door, possibilities already running through her mind. “It’s so beautiful…!”

“By the Precursors!” And Samos? Jak had a feeling Samos would be going on about the Precursors for months. He shot a sidelong glance at Daxter and grinned when he saw the other boy shooting him a slightly panicked look. Jak knew that look. That was the same look he got whenever Jak wanted to explore the temple in the jungle, or do anything stupid and dangerous. It was the look Daxter had given Jak the night that he had convinced him to go to Misty Island. It seemed like their next adventure might be sooner than they’d thought.