Jak and Daxter trade baffled looks.

"I don't know much about the Precursors," Jak says.

"...maybe there is time travel going on and I am supposed to speak with you in a few hundred years or something, that seems like par for the course of this place. I assume I'm not supposed to talk to you when you're a small child..."

Jak frowns.

"The oracle is pretty wacko," Daxter agrees, "and it does say weird stuff about the Precursors. Doesn't it, Jak?"

Jak shrugs. "What exactly did it say?"

Cam reads out his transcript of the conversation starting from "we would handle first contact differently now".

They trade baffled looks again.

"We're from the future," Jak says, "that must be what 'was before his birth' means. But the rest of it..."

"It's gonna be another 'beware the dark light', isn't it," Daxter says bitterly. "You think you know what it's talking about but no! It's something completely different! And useless, don't forget useless."

"It said 'I'. I've talked with that oracle twice - unless it's one of the ones from the past - it hired me to kill metal heads but I don't know what that has to do with first contact."

"Well, it's not encouraging that it hired you to kill metal heads because it's trying to convince me that it can leave them alone going forward! Beware the dark light?"

Daxter glances at Jak, who nods slightly.

"Oh, oh, there's a story behind that one," Daxter says. "So Jak and I went to Misty Island a couple y... uh, centuries back - spying on the lurkers. They were having this meeting about how they were gonna attack the village later. Now, they may say discretion is the better part of valor, but valor is also the better part of valor, so we poked around a little more while we were there. And we found this huge vat filled with dark eco. Just - completely huge. You could go for a swim in it! But, word to the wise, don't. Anyway, the lurkers found us, and Jak and I stood our ground, but in the battle, I was knocked back into the pool. And when I came out? I was conveniently travel-sized and orange.

"So we were on our way north to try to convince Gol to change me back when we met this oracle, and it says..." Daxter doesn't so much mimic the oracle's voice as mock it: "'Beware the dark light, for it has twisted the fate of one of you.' And I'm thinking, 'wow! Couldn't you have told me that last week?' Well, guess what. Then we came here. And the second we set foot in Haven City, the guys in red came after Jak, too many to fight all at once, armed and armored while we were bare-handed and flat-footed. Then they took Jak away to do experiments and now he has sparkly dark powers and the oracle has leverage. 'Cause, see, Jak needs help controlling his neat new powers, and the oracle can help him. For a price. Basically what I'm saying is we thought the warning was just useless, but, surprise! Turns out it's useless and insulting."

"Yikes. I wonder if that's a side effect of using time travel to generate advice or if it's just like that."

"Dunno, but don't listen to it."

"You said you didn't want it to kill metal heads," Jak says. "Why not?"

"...they're people?"

He laughs. "So was Praxis."

"I mean, the metal heads absolutely have a body count, but they wanna fuck off and live somewhere else, they don't even like it here."

"They sound just like you and me," Daxter says in a mocking singsong.

Jak frowns deeply. "I think it wants me to talk you out of that. Because I need to kill eighteen more metal heads before it'll teach me anything else. But - fine. There's no reason they shouldn't run away if they want to."

"It might be willing to teach you more now that peace with the metal heads is a requirement for my help with its stuff."

"What stuff are you helping it with?"

"There's an egg it wants hatched."

"And you're suspicious of it because, what, it might not play nicely with the metal heads since it works for the Precursors and they're full of dark - Oh. That's why it sent you here. Because it still talks to me and I'm full of dark eco too."

"I guess that's a reason. The dark eco did not, uh, quote unquote turn you evil?"

He laughs evilly. "Depends who you ask."

"I'm asking you."

"He's fine," Daxter says.

"...Daxter came back for me. Broke into the fortress, found me something normal to wear, told me how much things cost now. When I woke up with him sitting on me I..."

Daxter starts to say something.

"Don't, okay? I - tried to kill him."

"Just a little case of mistaken identity!"

"It's not better that I didn't bother to figure out who you were first. So. That's my answer."

"So you - were affected but not in the sense that you endorse the effects?"

"I don't know." He says this very softly, like it's an even more terrible admission than the last thing.

"Wow, that's rough."

"...Yeah." Very slight smile. "The oracle doesn't - get angry or afraid or talk like I got taken over by a monster. It just teaches me how to use my powers and how to... not have more accidents like the one I told you about."