Vacation or War-Endgame
Chapter Fifty Nine-Recalibrate

Daxter hadn't wasted a second once the door to the gun course was open and he had Tess in sight; with a leap he was on the floor and bounding towards the blond woman with a jubilant grin on his fuzzy face. Loor found herself grinning as well; she hadn't realized just how much Daxter must have missed her. He seemed like a flirt, but there were clearly some real feelings going on here. Tess, reacting to the sound of the door opening, lifted her head from whatever she was currently doing at some kind of wall-mounted work bench to see the new arrivals... and break into a smile of her own. "Daxter!" She almost shouted while kneeling down to receive the ottsel in a hug, picking him up in both arms to snuggle him. "Oooo... did that mean old desert burn your itty bitty paws?" She cooed. Daxter seemed to enjoy the treatment at first, before he noticed Loor and Jak bringing up the rear and snickering at him.

"H-hey Tess, baby," His protest did not sound particularly resolute, though it got her to loosen her hands. "Don't crusha-the-merchandise." He said while hopping back down to the ground and turning to look up at her. "How's biz?"

"I'm designing new guns to help out the war effort." She answered, baby blue eyes sweeping around and antiquating herself with the fact that they were back.

"Jeez... first an underground agent, a spy, a barmaid, and now a gun-slinging maiden." Loor snickered, looking down at Dax. "Guess it's good to have someone who can keep up with you, eh Dax?"

"Loor!" Tess's eyes widened in surprise. "The underground... you remember?"

"Yeah." She smiled at the blondie while putting her hands behind her head, as if she meant to lounge on thin air. "Fully functional and ready to keep fighting. So, you make guns now? Anything we can use?"

"You bet." Tess went back to the work bench to pick up what she'd been working on. From the basic look it was another mod for the morph gun, but one that added a lot of bulk. It was almost too long for Tess to hold properly. "I just finished this new gun. It sports a multi-port, large-bore, gyro-burst launcher with blow-back breech assist, using full-jacket eco-depleted armor-piercing slugs and a continuous kill zone scanner for tight groupings at a high-cycle rate of fire..." Her eyes had narrowed through her explanation as she cocked the weapon, a smile taking up on her pretty face that was dangerous. Swept up in the moment, she blinked and giggled at herself when she caught sight of the shocked looks she was getting from both Jak and Loor. "Hehe... it's a hobby." Was all she had to say in her defense.

Daxter made his way back up to Jak's shoulder as he finally smiled in return at the woman and reached out to take the new weapon, but she stepped back and hefted it a little as if she meant to turn it on him. "Not so fast!" She taunted, sounding mischievous now and shifting the weapon to rest in one hand and on her hip to reach a hand out to Daxter. "First you have to prove you can protect my little schunuckums in the new gun course." After giving Daxter a brief stroke under the chin she jerked her thumb towards the heavy door that would lead to the practice range. "Go on, Jakkie-boy, unless you think you can't handle it. I've modified the program a bit, so all your old scores have been cleared from the system. You'll have to beat Torn's marks for me to trust you with this one."

Loor watched as Daxter practically melted at Tess's touch, looking completely smitten and not even noticing that his partner was glaring daggers at him. "This won't take long." Jak huffed, pulling the blaster from his back and moving for the door. Still, he paused in route and pulled something else from the leather case that hung on his back. "Oh, Tess, see what you can make of this? We found it on our way in." With a toss he passed over the piece of scrap metal he'd picked up after they'd finished off the precursor robot, Tess catching it in her free hand as the boys vanished beyond the blast doors.

"That was quite a display." Loor snickered.

"It is so good not to be doing spy work anymore." Tess gushed while putting her new gun back on the work bench and taking a look at what Jak had given to her. "When I was working with Krew I had to keep in character; it sucks pretending to be a bimbo." Her eyes flashed up at Loor, a smirk picking up. "Don't tell me I had you fooled too?"

"I won't lie to ya." Loor put her hands up, feeling a little ashamed. She was always advocating not judging a book by its cover, but she had certainly judged Tess. "I like you better this way though. Nice to know you can play a little hard-ball."

"What is this thing?" Tess asked while reaching back to her work bench and retrieving a tool. "Looks like some kind of laser module but..."

"We found under the city." Loor answered. "Broken off from some old precursor automaton. Jak must have thought we could use it somehow."

"Yeah, I just have to alter the connection." She agreed. "Shouldn't be too tough, though. So," She set that aside, clearing her hand and coming closer. "You wanna tell me about that new piece of hardware on your back? I remember Daxie complaining about how you were so stubborn about carrying a gun, and now it looks like you've picked up some heavy machinery."

"A tough gun for tough work." Loor answered while stretching her arms to lift the thing out of its holster. "I scavenged it out in the wasteland... the previous owner wasn't going to be using it anymore. 'Course, you can't ask for directions from a dead man. I don't know the first thing about it, aside from firing it. It's got more kick than I wanna talk about, and as far as I can tell it's out of ammo." She pulled it to settle on her shoulder, though she did so gingerly. All bones involved were still sore from the last round they'd gone.

"Looks like someone's homemade custom job." Tess's hands brushed along the surfaces while circling around to see the weapon from various angles. "Defiantly made for someone a bit bigger and beefier than you, no offense."

"None taken." She sighed; she'd come to terms with the fact that she was a small person a while ago. "Think you could pad this thing up for me? Just something to eat up some of the shock, or the damn thing is gonna dislocate my shoulder."

"I could get you set up with a classic peace maker instead." Tess pointed out while gently taking the weapon from Loor's shoulder, flipping it over to inspect the curved recess that had made Loor assume the weapon was meant to rest on one's shoulder. "Wait... no, that's different... this thing does more than an ionized blast?"

"As far as I can tell, yeah. It's like fire from a peace maker but it flies straight and explodes just a moment after impact. It may do a number on me, but I like it. Think you could modify it to fit me a little better?"

"Just a moment- ah!" Tess had turned the weapon once again, the head of the gun facing the floor as she pressed on a square piece the size of a large man's palm sticking out of the butt end. With a good whack it clicked and came further out of the rear of the gun, exposing some of the inner workings as Tess pulled it the rest of the way out. "Ingenious; whoever put this together really had practicality in mind. Here, this is your baby, come and take a look." The section she was pulling out of the gun was soon free, and she held it out for Loor to take while eying the space left behind within.

Loor found herself holding a rectangle of metal the size of a car battery, though thankfully a bit lighter. The main structure was a metal framework around several spaces that held various types of ammo cartridges she'd seen before... all of which were currently empty, and needed to be removed. In pulling out the dead ammo packs, she found the gun used a grand total of three different types of common ammunition; a combination of yellow, probably giving the shot its straight flight-path, purple for the ionized shot, and finally a red cartridge that most likely provided the extra boom. Loor had ended up pulling out a half dozen yellow clips, two red rounds, and one purple ball. "Jeez... was that guy hunting wasteland metal heads on a daily basis?"

"You see some great innovation whenever someone brings back weapons from the wasteland." Tess said, a wide smile on her face.

"Innovation. Right." Loor remembered when innovation, to her, meant new ways of producing energy or making the world more nature-friendly. It was almost funny how different her life was now. "Innovation is inventing a gun so violent you can't fire it inside."

"Is that a challenge?" Tess asked with a giggle, looking over her shoulder. "I'm bettin' this place could take it. I'm sure you could use a run on the gun-course too, missy. Your old scores are still in the databank, and I gotta say, I'm not impressed."

"She's what?"

"Holding my big gun hostage until I improve my scores on the gun course." Loor was pouting, her back feeling incredibly light after carting around the big boom stick for so long. "If I improve enough to make her happy, she'll pad the cradle and give it back to me." Her eyes tracked over to Daxter, who seemed to be in a world all his own as they made their way back to the Naughty Ottsel with the intent of reporting in to Torn and finding out what was next. The fact that his girlfriend was being hard on her didn't seem to bother him much more than Tess using her latest mod as a carrot in front of Jak's nose had. Granted, Jak had been able to meet her expectations with relative ease, and had already loaded the latest mod onto his back, as well as the modified piece from the precursor wreckage.

Loor, on the other hand, seriously doubted her abilities to measure up.

"It's a good way to make you practice." Jak pointed out, not showing much pity for her after the initial reaction. "Assuming we're not all dead in the next few days, we might find an extra second or two to spend working on it."

"Middle of a war-zone, and I've gotta worry about shooting practice?" She shook her head, hooking her thumbs on her belt with no pockets to stuff her hands into. "Thirteen cents says we're gonna run into something that the big boom-stick would have been really useful against while I don't have it."

"Quit whining." Jak advised with a chuckle and a slug to the shoulder, trying to get her to straighten up and look alive as they neared the Naught Ottsel. "You're the melee expert, remember?"

She shot him a look; he was all pleased with himself after getting his new toys. Something in his expression made her feel like he was saying she didn't need to worry about shooting with all the different stuff he was packing. Rolling her eyes, she returned the slug and scoffed. "Expert. Right. Says the guy who I still can't consistently pin."

He shrugged, the three of them arriving at the Ottsel's door step and slipping into the bar turned southern HQ. Torn was inside, intent on his giant computer in the middle of the room, seeming to be working hard on making something work. Head down, punching at buttons to try and adjust something, projectors within the computer fired up to create a fuzzy holographic image of someone's head that slowly focused the more Torn worked at it. "Ashelin?" He quested, doubtlessly talking into some sort of microphone while a super-size of Ashelin's face took shape in the hologram. "Ashelin, this is Torn. Jak and Loor are back in the city."

"Jeez... It's like that little thing we saw in the wasteland, super-sized." Loor muttered, watching as the moment Ashelin's image was properly captured it swayed and turned to look about the room, soon locating the newly returned trouble-trio.

"Jak?" Ashelin didn't bother to address Loor, more focused on the actual ring-leader of the show. Fair enough, Loor considered... but for some reason it still kinda stung. "I know I could count on you."

Torn wore a grin, putting a hand on his hip and straightening up from the computer. "That new KG leader is probably pissing in his-"

Ashelin's image suddenly broke up, the expression on the woman's projected face turning to a level of shock as she opened her mouth to say something but was cut off.

"Wait!" Torn returned to the controls, trying to figure out what was happening. "Someone's jamming the signal... I think-"

There was nothing but fuzz for a moment, but the image soon recompiled into a different face. One that, though broken, Jak, Daxter, and Loor had all seen before. On that damaged communicator, on the sands of the wasteland, they had seen this unclearly projected face. Now, with a sharp image, Jak was the first to identify the face that grinned at them.

"Errol!" He shouted, taking a step forward as if he meant to intimidate a man who wasn't even in the room... and who was arguably no longer a man.

Loor was shocked, when she thought nothing could shock her anymore. She remembered Errol too well as her tormentor, as a man who had gotten just a little too close to her otherworldly origins, and a man who had died at the class one races. Now she saw his face yet again, and even projected she could detect something very wrong with it; it was half gone. One half was exactly as she remembered it, from the smug sneer to the aggressive gaze of his eyes, but the other half appeared to be ripped away. Instead of exposed bones, however, machinery covered his losses and tried to imitate the expressions the missing half of his face would usually form. Upon his name being shouted at him, he laughed, his voice given a robotic and tinny sound.

"I live!" He proclaimed, doubtless that he'd shocked everyone in the room. "Still fighting for the weak link, eh Jak? And Loor! Our little outsider! Are things still going according to plan?" He laughed, a menacing and ugly thing with the tinny quality that had been added to his voice. "I've had a few 'enhancements' since we last met. Even the metal heads have their biological weaknesses. But me? I'm pure metal!"

"Metal...?" Loor blinked, trying to shake away the surprise of it all and better identifying what she was looking at. She wasn't looking at a human face with a mechanical half, she was looking at a mechanical face with skin grafted over the top. Disgusted and disturbed, she soon found herself taking a step forward the same as Jak had, desperate to put on some show of force. "Abomination!"

"You'd think that, wouldn't you, Loor? I'd love to meet you again, and introduce you to some new friends I've made... Why, now that I think about it, it's our little game of hide and seek all over again! Catch me, if you can."

The connection broke, fuzzing out and, instead of returning to Ashelin's face, came back together to show that Samos was also in on this communication. "We must unite our forces, or we're through! You've got to reach us!"

Ashelin's face appeared again a second after, beginning to make Loor dizzy with the quick changes. "We need you to break through and link up with us before it's too late." She re-iterated. "The KG robots are growing stronger. That floating war factory of theirs is spitting out more robots every day."

Torn nodded, being the man on the ground and thus the one to make plans. The communication ended the moment Ashelin was done talking, and Torn had his complete attention back on his field team. "We need to assault the KG front. If we can break through their defenses, we may be able to get back to HQ and link up." Torn then offered them a smile. "Care to make some noise?"

"We're always up for a little rumble, eh guys?" Jak asked while bumping up the shoulder Daxter rode on. Even the ottsel looked psyched for this one, dangerous grins getting traded all around.

"Fish in a barrel, baby!" Daxter boasted. "Fish in a barrel."

Eyes turned to Loor, who still wasn't taking the sight of Errol, alive, and an twisted mockery of science, too terribly well. "How did he...? How is he...?" She muttered, a hand going to her head as she asked the questions that fed her shock. "He claims mechanical, but he's exactly the same! Voice, the way he talks, his idea of self..."

Daxter made the hop over to Loor's shoulder, grabbing her head by the goggles and giving her a shake. "Honey, you with us here? We've got a war in the way before we can find out anything."

"Actually." Torn broke in. "Our first order of business is to punch through a blockade that's been set up at the south end of the industrial section. Jak, Daxter, you should be able to handle that on your own. Loor, Tess called ahead. Says she thinks she could use a little work before I toss you back onto the field like old times."

"What?" Loor felt herself partially jarred. Go through the wasteland and still no one trusts me to aim straight down the sights. "I mean... ugh... yeah, alright. I'll get moving."

"We'll meet up later." Jak encouraged as Daxter hopped back over, taking his usual spot. "Be careful; the gun-course actually shoots back now."

"It what..?" Loor shook her head. What in the world did Tess think she was doing? Someone had left that lady alone for too long. "... right. You too. Y'know, active war zone. Where everything shoots back."

The Author's Corner

I'm not even going to try and explain my absence. To put it simply, fanfiction is something I do for my enjoyment. This story is something I write because I enjoy it. But when I was stressing over every fucking update, it wasn't fun anymore. So no more stress. No more forcing myself. You guys are getting this shit for fucking free, I don't owe you anything. It'll update when it fucking updates, and not a nanosecond sooner.

Onwards!

-Loor