A/N: Hello, readers. So...why am I starting another fanfic when I've got three unfinished ones staring at me forlornly? I just can't get Jak and Daxter out of my head. I love them dearly and there's not enough fanfiction out here! This was originally just a sort of rewrite of TPL with a twist, but as I was writing it sort of...grew...and mutated...and now it just won't stop. If I have my way, this wll only be the first part of a trilogy based on the original trilogy. I hope you like it!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Jak and Daxter, or any of the other colorful characters and places and...thingamabobbits created by Naughty Dog. I'm not making any money off of this. If any dialogue seems eerily familiar, it's because it's taken from the game.

Jak and Daxter: A Twist of Fate
by Jam

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 was 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 the boat…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 his 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 toward the hazy image of Sandover Village in the distance, 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 eager 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 caused 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 a 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 doom 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 fifteen 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 all Jak saw was a blur of colors 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 peered 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 white 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 now 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 wasn't exactly 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 bounded 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.

I have the first 3-5 chapters already done, so I'll post them every Thursday. Please lemme know what you think about the story! I value your opinions.