(no subject)

[ddddropthebass]

Who: Jak and Bass
What: One year after the defeat of the Dark Makers, Jak is a brick with a gun doing what a brick with a gun does: clean-up. He comes across an unfinished project in an old Krimzon Guard facility and his work ends up following him home.
Universe/CR: Jak-Universe AU



Clean-up, they'd called it. Really, it was more to give Jak something to do, although it was necessary to maintain the peace they'd so carefully constructed. Old enemy storehouses needed to be examined, categorized and, in most cases, blown up. Jak was the most qualified warrior to deal with any potential resistance so for the more remote posts to where it would be difficult to transport troops, Jak was dispatched. It wasn't entirely to get him out of their political hair-

Well, it was kind of for that too. But Jak was never meant to sit behind a desk. Ashelin knew it, Torn knew it, Sig knew it. Even Daxter knew it, to a degree, which is why he stayed behind as Jak went out, and hadn't that been a tough decision. Jak had taken it in as much stride as could be assumed, being separated from someone with whom he'd spent almost every making moment, and Daxter was about as happy about it but there were responsibilities to which he had to attend now, least of all the management of the Hip Hog. Things with Tess were getting serious, and for some reason Dax was actually sort of good at helping write up diplomatic legislature, in some hilarious twist of fate. So that meant a lot of staying put, something that Jak was unarguably bad at doing.

Just a few runs, Samos had asked. To tie up loose ends. If left alone, loose ends always tie themselves, and never in a way you want them to. ...he could've gone longer with that string metaphor (included something about the knots and snares of life maybe) but Jak had already since lost interest and was ready to leave.

Krimzon Guard Depot Alpha-581 was on the outskirts of the Wasteland, on one of the southern islands and only barely accessible by land. The outer walls of the depot were rusted by water and bleached pale pink by the sun, salt crusting along the seams of the plates from where the waves slapped against the foundation. Inside wasn't much better; the depot was still, sand piled up in corners and the ocean breeze whistling through holes in the roofing, manufacturing equipment in varying states of disrepair, only a handful of Deathbots wandering about the facility in confusion. Another depot set for decommission.

Only...the power grid showed one room at the center of the compound with power consumption. Blowing the building sky high would undoubtedly take that room with it, except that the Krimzon Guard were infamous for using Dark Eco in the construction of their later models thanks to Errol. An explosion with Dark Eco involved could drastically affect the surrounding ecosystem, even all the way up to Spargus. That room would have to be investigated first.

In the center of a room, near a flashing panel indication a critical power failure, is a capsule. Inside that capsule is the body of what can only be a strange-looking young boy...either asleep or dead. The panel reads CATASTROPHIC POWER FAILURE: ACTIVATE UNIT? YES/NO in blaring, blinking red. A remnant of the KG to be sure, but...definitely nothing that they'd made before. Especially with the room stinking like it'd had been painted with Dark Eco.

Comments

[doeseverything]

Dax rolls his eyes as Jak climbs the stairs and heads into his room. "You sure know how to pick 'em, Jak." He leaps down from Jak's shoulders onto the dresser and stretches, snapping his goggles off and kicking his jeans elsewhere. "How long're you gonna stay in town for? Torn's already sicced you on somethin' else?"

[shadesofeco]

"Picked you, didn't I?"

Jak grins and ducks the pillow that narrowly misses clipping his ear.

"I dunno." Kicking off his boots and flinging off his goggles, he unclips his armor and lets it fall to the ground with a loud thunk. "He said there's some... compound somewhere in the Wasteland. Old Marauder smuggling routes, there was a cave in and some equipment got unearthed. Wants me to go check it out sometime."

And as eager as Jak is to get back into things, he does feel guilty constantly being away from Haven. Ever since Damas died he's had this weird sense of responsibility, like he's supposed to be here, doing something. Of course all the things that need doing are things he sucks at, so instead he's just goofing off with explosives and guns and doing donuts in the desert with Kleiver's vehicle collection.

Sitting down hard on the bed, he groans and flops back, closing his eyes. A day off would be nice but knowing Jak, he'd be bored after three hours and when he and Daxter get bored bad things happen.

[doeseverything]

"I picked you," Daxter says as he retrieves the pillow he'd chucked at Jak and shoves it against the wall beside Jak's chest. He stomps on it a few times to soften it up before throwing himself down on it, half-draped in the crook of Jak's arm. "Why d'you keep taking those lackey details, Jak? You're better than most of the crap he gives you." Dax knows why, but it doesn't stop him from asking, if only to get Jak to think about it.

[shadesofeco]

Nope, Jak's asleep.

Or at least, pretending to be.

Because that is a really, really uncomfortable question and he generally doesn't like talking about the dark eco tests. They were years ago now and the pain has dulled -- thanks both to time and light eco -- but he still wakes up shouting, drenched in sweat sometimes. Still goes quiet for a few days, still drinks far, far too much, still slips off to spend hours at the gun range without answering his communicator. It still affects him more than he likes to let on, even though everyone's figured it out already. Ashelin still isn't comfortable facing all the terrible things her father did in that prison, and Torn isn't exactly the touchy-feely "let's sit down and talk about our emotions" type. So, life just goes on like normal and everyone pretends things are fine. It's the Haven way.

And then he really did fall asleep, because now he's waking up and his mouth tastes gross and his head is pounding and Daxter's butt is in his face. Grimacing, he shoves the ottsel away and grumbles something about manners before pushing himself up and stretching for his boots, half-heartedly tugging them on and leaving them unfastened. Fuck it, it's not like anyone else is here, the bar is still closed and he can get something to wake himself up with before checking in with Tor--

Oh.

The previous day's events come rushing back at him when he sees KG-001 in the booth and Jak clenches and unclenches his fists, jaw tightening. Wordlessly, he steps over and shakes his shoulder to wake him up. "Rise and shine."

[ddddropthebass]

Daxter drops it because Jak won't answer anyway, and he shoves at Jak's shoulder for a while as punishment for ignoring him and pretending to be asleep until he finally passes out himself. He actually drank a lot of that bottle too, so even when Jak shoves him upon waking he barely moves, just flopping back onto the pillow with a grumble and passing back out. He doesn't have to be up for hours, there's no fucking way he's getting out of this bed.

KG-001 is exactly where Jak left him, eyes still closed, arms still folded. When Jak shakes him he moves slightly, like a person really asleep instead of a robot turned off and there's a quiet engaging click and a hum as his main power generator comes back online and warms up. His eyes open slowly and he looks up at Jak, unfolding himself from the booth. ...he really did come back and wake him up. Huh. He wasn't sure Jak even would.

It takes him a second to move past that realization, process it and tuck it away and then he tilts his head back. "You look like shit. Also you should shave, because your face is molding." The dangers of having green facial hair.

[shadesofeco]

...what? Jak rubs his cheek and scowls petulantly. He is way too hungover for this bullshit first thing.

"Whatever."

Slouching over to the bar, he fumbles with the coffee pot until it flickers on. Tess, the angel that she is, already set it up before she left for the night. Which is great, because Jak cannot figure out for the life of him anything past "on" and "off" for that damn contraption.

Setting a mug down on top of the bar, he uncorks a bottle and adds a generous slug of something that smells like gasoline. "Do you need like... food? Fuel? Eco?"

[ddddropthebass]

KG-001 snickers to himself when Jak scowls, sliding out of the booth. Heh. What a loser.

"Nope." KG-001 boosts himself up to sit on the bar because he figures that'll make someone angry (hopefully) and ignores the way it creaks dangerously. "Don't need anything, I just keep going. No fucking revolting digestive tract like what you animals have."

[shadesofeco]

Jak flinches slightly when the bar creaks -- mostly because if that thing gives way it's gonna make a lot of noise that he is absolutely not able to deal with -- then tops his mug up with strong, black coffee. It's not good coffee, but frankly he wouldn't know the difference anyway.

"You don't recharge?" Jak squints at him, then takes a sip and grimaces. Tastes gross but at least it'll get him moving. "Not ever?"

[ddddropthebass]

"That's what 'I keep going' means, dipshit." KG-001 shifts his weight to make the counter creeeeeeak obnoxiously. "Do you want the care and feeding rundown? It'll be excruciatingly awkward for me but if it'll get you to stop asking fucking stupid questions, I'll soldier on."

[shadesofeco]

Ughhhhhhh stoooooooop.

Jak just shoots him a withering look. "I'm good."

He's almost as annoying as Daxter when he's found a button to push. Dragging his fingers through his hair, Jak yawns and trudges over to a booth to settle in and finish his coffee while he wakes up.

"We've got a mission, I told Torn we'd be there in an hour."

[ddddropthebass]

"Does this mission involve explosions? 'Cause that's what I was promised." KG-001 picks at a splinter boredly. He's not expecting much. Promises are bullshit anyway, things parents use for little kids to keep them from screaming their irritating little heads off.

[shadesofeco]

Jak snorts and smirks over his coffee.

"All my missions involve explosions."

Some, y'know, unintionally but still.

[ddddropthebass]

KG-001 searches Jak's face for a trace of a lie. He tilts his chin up, staring judgmentally before finally breaking into a sharp-toothed grin, kicking his feet up onto the bar and leaning back against the wall, hands behind his head. "All right. I guess I'll go with you after all. I was wondering if I should ditch you and go for joyrides today, but if we're really gonna blow something up then it's worth tagging along." Like he has a choice either way; if Jak told him to go, he'd have to go. He's pretty sure Jak doesn't completely get just how much power he's got though, and he'll definitely play that ignorance to his advantage for as long as possible.

[shadesofeco]

dude stop staring that's creepy and weird

Twenty minutes and three cups of coffee later Jak looks a little less like warmed up crap. Finally evaluating himself ready to tackle Torn's particular brand of bullshit, he pushes himself out of the booth.

"C'mon, let's go get into some trouble--" Pausing, he wrinkles his nose as he drags his zoomer out from the corner, miraculously still in place from where he "parked" it the night before. "I still don't know what to call you."

[ddddropthebass]

"That's your problem then, isn't it? Come up with something." KG-001 ambles out after Jak and pokes around at the zoomers lining the street before selecting one at random. He punches a few fingers through the circuit cover, pulls out two wires and splices them until the engine turns with a click and the zoomer drifts to the side.

KG-001 drives just as dangerously as Jak but always keeps a few paces behind him, some kind of hard-coded directive forcing him to keep an eye on his so-called master to make sure he doesn't die. Ugh. He should find a loophole around that; he's not going to let himself get scrapped to save this loser's sorry ass if he gets himself killed by being stupid.

The mission -which Torn is not happy about KG-001 going on- is just to clean out a Metalhead nest just outside of Dead Town. The water stinks and sets off all kinds of chemical alarms in his head, which makes sense considering how careful Jak is to avoid touching it. There isn't much opposition; a few of the crawling, catlike metalheads and mostly lizards and frogs, but the water bubbles ominously in a few places. Jak lingers when they pass an old, mostly-rotted thatch hut just past the last of the buildings and the sludge begins to sink into the earth to give way to stone pockmarked with potholes and waterlogged caves. "This is bitchwork," KG-001 complains. "How the fuck are we gonna blow anything up here? This is gross. You know my hair's synthetic, right? Doesn't clean well, doesn't fucking grow back. I'm gonna smell like this cesspool for weeks."

[shadesofeco]

To be fair, that's almost exactly what Jak whined to Torn. He fucking hates going to Dead Town, it stinks and the whole place is rotting to the ground, making him have to go much, much slower than he usually likes. That and seeing his childhood home crumbling to dust and crawling with Metal Heads stirs up all kinds of emotions that he has to bury deep, deep down.

"Suck it up, someone's gotta do it." Picking his way carefully across the remains of what looks like an old dividing wall, Jak jumps down the other side and wrinkles his nose. The acrid stench of Dark Eco hangs heavy in the air, making his skin itch and his blood pump a little faster. It creeps him out.

"In here. Keep an eye out for the smaller ones; they're not tough, but when there's a couple hundred of them at once they're a pain in the ass." Jak pauses. "Eran?"

[ddddropthebass]

KG-001's Dark Eco detection hardware rings alarms in his head before he silences them. Yes, pre-programmed instructions. He understands. Mine it or whatever. Later, if there's time.

"No. And why the fuck does that someone have to be you? More importantly, me by extension? Tell Torn or whoever to fuckin' do it himself." KG-001 shoves his shoulder against a boulder to push it aside, down into a cavern that leads to a fetid swamp. The slop sound of the boulder sinking into the muck makes the 'bot curl his nose in disgust. "Or just fucking deactivate me already. I'd rather be decommissioned than doing shit jobs like this."

[shadesofeco]

He might actually complain more than Daxter.

"Are you gonna bitch the whole way down?" Jak grumbles, slipping his morph gun from his shoulder and checking his ammo before switching to blue. If he's lucky, he can snipe anything before it even knows they're there.

The low chitter and cackle of Metal Heads echo through the cave as they pick their way down the slick remains of what were probably stairs at one point. Now they're more like a slightly rugged slope.

Holding up a hand, Jak stops dead and levels the gun. He lets out a breath, then pulls the trigger. The eco ammo pops and something screeches and splashes into the water a few hundred feet away. Now to wait and see if it attracted anything else.

[ddddropthebass]

The skittering of claws follows the echo of the gunshot, snarls and shrieks of a hundred other tiny bodies rustling down the tunnel and through the water.

KG-001 changes like a flipped switch. His teeth grit into a ferocious grin and he plants a foot forward to stand beside Jak, hand splitting apart and fingers folding back to expose the bright purple-pink of his arm cannon as he fires alongside him, shot after shot until there are too many, until they things begin to overwhelm him and then he jumps into that wholeheartedly too. He slams his fists against the ones crawling down the walls, splitting the rock with sharp cracks of sound. He punts them like stones, picks them up and tears the gems from their skulls with his fingernails. He turns into as much of an animal as the Metalheads are except that he, with his grin, his laughter, the vicious glee with which he throws himself into the fight, is obviously enjoying it.

And he's not paying attention to the damage he's doing to their surroundings either, too eager to get his fill of violence before he's eventually put back into his box.

[shadesofeco]

Shit.

Stealth isn't an option as hundreds of glowing skull gems start bobbing and weaving their way through the thick sludge towards them. Jak flips his gun to red mode to get a better chance of hitting them but they're strong and fast and on top of them before he can pick off more than a few dozen. Razor sharp claws tear jagged lines down his back and his gun slips from his hand as he shouts in frustration, whipping around to club the creature with his fist. Two more leap onto his back and that's it, he's got no choice, it's happening whether he wants it to or not--

The pain throbbing across his back, the anger from making such a stupid call, the indignation of knowing that these fucking things ruined his home, killed so many of his friends all spill out like a pot boiling over. His skin turns deathly pale, pupils enlarging to swallow the rest of his eyes, claws forcing their way through his skin like knives. It hurts so much and feels so good all at once, and Jak grins viciously as the Dark Eco completely takes over.

Sparks skitter down his skin and light up the cavern as he slices through the beasts like tissue paper, flinging gems across the ruins and tossing aside corpses as the bodies pile up. For a moment, it's almost like he and KG-001 are dancing side by side, moving like they were born to fight together against a common enemy. It doesn't take long for the Metal Heads to realize this is a losing battle, but it's too late for them to run now. Jak snaps the neck of one as it tries to scrabble away and drops it into the water with a loud splash.

It's followed by another splash. And another. And then an ominous rumble.

[ddddropthebass]

Well. That's new.

When whatever happens to Jak doesn't turn him into a slobbering, team-killing lunatic, KG-001 just shrugs and continues onward. Jak's still got enough sense in his head to not attack him and that's all that matters in the middle of a firefight; nevermind that there's something nagging at him like he's never experienced, like he's got a deleted file somewhere that should be full of info. He'll look into this in greater detail when he's not otherwise preoccupied and-

Wait a minute. KG-001 splinters off a subprocess to analyze the sounds and data he's receiving, because that didn't just sound like the result of them bringing the fucking pain to these little Metalhead pests. There-

Oh shit. The cracks in the wall from his earlier display are splintering. That was a supporting wall, and a fragile one- "Fuck!" KG-001 exclaims, and he thrusts out a hand to grab at Jak, to try and shake some sense into him, try to pull him toward the exit but it's like trying to leash a rabid crocadog the size of a hellcat. "God damn it, we gotta go-!"

[shadesofeco]

Even as the cave is coming down around their ears, Jak won't stop fighting. Not until every last Metal Head is a bleeding corpse piled up in the swamp water at least.

When KG-001's hand grabs his arm he turns and snarls at him, like he just sees him as another target -- an impatient one who wants to skip ahead in line. He considers gutting him there and then, or maybe just wounding him and making him wait his turn in agony... But a split second later something a little more human seems to dawn on his features and Jak narrows his eyes, glancing up at the rocks showering down around them.

Oh shit.

The remaining Metal Heads have already scattered, familiar with the cave and well aware that a cave in means certain death. The rumbling and groaning is deafening now and Jak scrabbles to follow KG-001 but it's far too late. Dust turns into pebbles turns into rocks, the rock face crumbles as they try to climb it and there's an almighty rumble as the entire cave collapses.

[ddddropthebass]

There's a second where their eyes meet and KG-001 is certain he's going to be attacked and he grits his teeth because there's not a goddamn thing he can do about that, can't intentionally harm his master even if he's being torn apart, but then-

Then the ceiling above them rumbles, Jak's claws scrabble over the rock and the mountain caves in atop their heads. KG-001, by virtue of being a synthetic being, doesn't lose time. He doesn't get confused, he doesn't black out, he doesn't get overwhelmed by adrenaline or fear. No, he sees every second of the rocks coming down around them and he grabs Jak roughly, shoves him to the ground and bows over his head, some directive written into the core of his being telling him to keep this chunk of meat alive, priority one. He's too small to cover Jak's entire body but he's got most of his torso and his head, and by sheer luck the floor caves in also.

They land hard, KG-001 just barely catches himself so his intention to shield doesn't end up crushing Jak's skull and he rolls to the side as the rocks crunch above their heads, sealing the exit. They're in some kind of pocket; water and sludge probably existed in this air bubble once, filling it up before seeping out and leaving the ground beneath his fingers squishy and slippery. The air stinks and is unmoving. They're trapped, for the moment.

"Fucking great," KG-001 growls, hoping that Jak isn't still some rampaging Dark monster down in here. If he's got no targets and he's still searching for blood, then KG-001 is gonna be next on his list. "Hey. Freak. You alive over there?" KG-001's eyes glow in the darkness of the room, two points of neon pink in an otherwise lightless void.

[shadesofeco]

The next few seconds are a blur for Jak, a cacophony of thundering rock and dizzying confusion as the ground opens up beneath them and hurls them hundreds of feet underground. He's dimly aware of KG-001 doing something to him but then there's just pain. Slowly the world comes back into focus -- or it would if it weren't pitch black in here -- and he gasps as he finally catches his breath again.

"Don't call me 'freak'," Jak groans, coughing out a lungful of dust. His claws are gone, the Dark Eco already expended, slinking back into his internal stores like some kind of animal biding its time.

Closing his eyes, he takes stock. Bruised ribs, maybe cracked, some cuts across his back, a few bruises here and there. Nothing he hasn't dealt with before, but not really ideal if they're caught in a cave-in. Still, he's probably got enough juice to heal himself if he needs to. Squinting, he looks over at KG-001. "You see in the dark?"

[ddddropthebass]

KG-001 rolls his eyes. That was pretty much an order though, so he strikes the word from his vocabulary. "Obviously. Shut up, sit down and stay out of my way. I'm going to look around for an exit." He can't see one and it'd be suicide to try the rocks above or blast a way out. He's going to have to rely on a more delicate touch. Not exactly his forte.