The Curator Of Souls

Chapter 1: Why this job?

 
      Daxter's light went out once again plunging him into  pitch darkness. Taking a moment to curse his luck, he then attempted to revive the light with the most technical solution he could think of, smacking it with his palm. 
 
     Unfortunately, he still sat in the darkness, realizing that his flashlight probably wasn’t going to come back on. 

     He drew his laser rifle and flipped on the led light on it. It wasn’t the brightest of lights, but it was better than the darkness. 
  
“When an old man approaches us about a ‘hidden treasure,’ can we just ignore him?” Daxter spoke placing his finger on the mic button set into his helm. 
  
“Seriously, I’m beginning to think you do this mercenary gig cause you hate adventure and exploring,” the familiar voice of his partner in crime Aurora echoed off the warehouse walls.
  
“Just because that was in the old man’s contract, doesn’t means we have to go poking around an old cave filled with rusty machines, like seriously this probably isn’t safe.”
  
“You’re such a stick in the mud, Dax. The old man is offering six grand in credits per hard drive we find-" the radio crackled, cutting out.
  
“I guess the credits would make me feel better if we had any hard drives at all.” He mused to the empty radio line. 

Aurora and Daxter had been on the same strike team for around 3 years now and this wasn’t an anomaly as far as their gigs went. One time, they ended up delving through caves and picking up actual feces because it was “more exciting” than guard duty. 

He sighed, at least sometimes she was right. They lived comfortably for a while, usually after something catastrophic to their health. To be frank, Daxter was beginning to wonder if one of these times they wouldn’t come back. He shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind and snapped back into the present moment. 
  
He remembered the old man's words, "Don't get distracted by thoughts in that place. If you do, simply repeat this affirmation to yourself, ‘I am in the present moment and I shall stay here.’” He paused for a moment then creaked out, "That place has crushed adventurers before and if given the chance, I'm sure it'd delight in the opportunity once more." 
  
The words made him shiver and even though it felt extremely ridiculous, he repeated the affirmation, moving into the next room of the old run-down factory. He wanted to be the one to find the most hard drives. Aurora hated being beat at anything and would let him talk her into guard duty if he bought her a new gun. Hers was old and prone to jamming; Daxter had almost saved up enough credits to do so. If he could just find some of those drives...
  
The next door was sealed shut and Daxter rolled his eyes, pulling a detonation charge from the pack on the back of his powered suit.

 Chucking it at the base of the door, he clicked the charge button. The great thing about power armor is it could withstand a blast like that, granted it was charged. The bad thing was that you had to make sure you had enough juice to make it through. 

Daxter's suit was custom made by a friend of his and had a built-in nuclear generator capsule, no bigger than his palm. The device was safe from stray fire and encased in vibranium. It was pretty safe from rupturing and therefore able to sustain tons of damage to his shields without much strain. 
  
The door flew open and pinballed around a hallway a moment before resting. Daxter nodded and made his way through the doorway pausing when he started to hear a rumbling noise. 
  
"Daxter, what did you just do?" Aurora's panicked voice came crackling through.
  
"I just used one of the breaching charges Moe gave us on a locked door; worked like a charm." 
  
"And I missed the explosion? You've deeply upset me, Daxter," she replied. 
  
"Wait, I did-" Daxter began. 
  
"No speaky, this is a sad, sad day" she cried dramatically.
  
"You're so dramatic, you know you have three of these charges too? I wouldn't use them though; the structural integrity doesn't seem the bes-" A low rumbling cut him off and he sighed. He shouldn’t have said anything about the charges.
  
The rumbling started to get more violent and Daxter started scanning for somewhere to take cover in the potentially collapsing building. He almost didn't see the tidal wave of water rushing down the hallway until it had submerged him. He was almost thrown off his feet and frantically fumbled for the airlock filter button on his wrist, doing his best to hold his breath without drowning.

 Meanwhile his powered suit cleared out all the water that had just been flooded into its system. Once he could breathe again, he jammed his finger on the comms button.
  
"You almost drowned me," he began, anger in his voice.
  
"But did you die though?" She shot back.
  
"I swear, you make it hard to tell if you like me sometimes," he panted.
  
"Ew! No, gross, boys have cooties. Everyone knows that," she sneered. "Hey if you're done being a boner killer, could you be a doll and switch the fluid manipulator valve to the open position?" She said as a blue ping popped up on Daxter's heads up display. 
  
"You want me," He started 
"Yes." 
"To go up there," he said pointing 
"Yes." 
"Against the current," he said his he said letting his arm be pinned by the current. 
"Yes." 
"Underwater," he said sighing 
"Yes." 
"and repair something?" he spat 
"Yes." 
"Isn't that your job?" he poked hopefully.
  
"Oh, quit being a baby. I'll walk you through it, it's so simple even a monkey like you can figure it out" 
  
"That one was low." he mused.
  
"Like your IQ, monkey boy" she finished, the radio crackling out.
  
He looked at the ping loathingly. Aurora had gotten him into the thick of things yet again. Pushing himself up to his feet, he fought the current, aided in part by his suit, but using his strength nonetheless.

       He reached the room where the ping was showing and was almost caught off guard by a man-sized rock that missed him by inches.
       Once inside the room, the liquid gave way and wasn't so forceful. He found himself in some room full of command consoles that were displaying a flash flooding warning. 
  
       He made his way to where the water was escaping finding that it was two pipes that had come loose.  Grabbing them, Daxter shoved them together raising his hand a safe distance away, making a fist so his plasma blade would extend.

       The blade was short and akin to a fist blade extending to just a foot and a half past his fist. It glimmered in the blackness as he heated up the two pipes to seal the leak.
        It was a shoddy weld and would have been much better with an actual plasma welder, but it was just going to have to do for now. 
  
       Once that was done, he looked at the screens in the room as they started to flash, "Press space to switch fluid manipulator valve to open position." He almost scoffed.
      Perhaps she wasn't lying and it was going to be simple after all. He pressed the space bar on the console and watched with amazement as the loading bar flew across and then another box popped up displaying that the fluid was being flushed. 
  
"I guess you weren’t lying about it being simple" Daxter joked over the comms. 
  
"See, positive mindset! Just gotta put yourself in the zone of winning" Aurora's reply came.
  
"Do you have to be so weird?" He mused as another box popped up displaying that the fluid was being rerouted. 
  
"Did you happen to get a scan of that fluid stuff?" Aurora poked "I wanna know what it is." 
  
"The HUD says it's a lubricant of some sort?" He said scanning the internet window his HUD had popped up.

        Movement on the console made him snap his attention back to the main monitor, hundreds of windows had started popping up and the progress bars started flying to the end. He took a step back and opened comms again. 
  
"Uhhh Aurora?" he asked 
  
"What is it now Daxter" her voice came through distorted.
  
"The console is doing a lot of things by itself, is that normal?" he asked to the radio static, no reply... 
  
Once all the bars were full a big window with a bar appeared titled (CuratorOfSouls.exe) the bar took only a moment to fly to the right side of the screen, then everything in the room went dark and everything was quiet.