Disclaimer: At this point I'm pretty much just trying to see how many balls I can get in the air at once. This idea got into my head and refused to go away. Named after Pat Benatar's Invincible because I'm pretentious like that, and also the song was stuck in my head as well as the idea. This fic looks like it's gonna be a hell of a ride. It's already got me and won't let go. Probably has some MSTable qualities due to the subject matter. I'm okay with that, I actually love MSTs and have laughed my head off at MSTs of my own fics before, just ask permission if anyone wants to try it. And link me to it. Definitely link me to it.

This is only the prologue for now. I have more written, but I want to see how well the fic is received before I start posting. (Mind, I'll post even if no one is reading it, 'cause I'm like that).

EDIT: Just wanted to make it clear, since I realised it wasn't- this is a prologue. The main characters will be Jak and Daxter and they'll show up really fast. There'll probably be a few OCs down the road 'cause I'll run out of characters at one point otherwise, but I'll be trying to keep it almost entirely game characters, and the OCs that do show up will have minor parts.

Invincible

Prologue

The world is at war with itself.

The ruins of Haven City are the centre that the endless fighting orbits around. The war started there. It was small things at first; the walls were crumbling, the metalheads began to sneak in, first one by one and then in greater numbers. The council did nothing, secure in the knowledge that they were buffered by the slums.

Within days all that was left of the poorest part of the city was the Water Slums. Most of the metalheads couldn't swim, and the few that could were easily dispatched by the civilians that had retreated to the Water Slums when their homes were overrun. The city was divided into three major sectors- the Water Slums, the Inner City, and the old slums which were collectively renamed Dead Town.

The new generation of children, the vast majority of them orphaned by metalhead attacks, found themselves growing up on the streets of Dead Town. The weaker elves began to die off. Only those who were quick enough or strong enough or smart enough or a combination of the three survived, scratching out a living either in the ruined sections of the city or far outside the walls in the few villages that survived in the wastes. Shelters sprang up and died. Safe havens were formed, became overcrowded and useless, and were forgotten again.

The metalkids, as they came to be called, created their own society full of intricacy and intrigue. Those who lived, thrived as they ran wild. Very few of them had any illusions about living to adulthood- even now there is graffiti all over the walls of Dead Town that says simply Fight forever. The motto is an accurate summary of a metalkid's life- if ever they stop fighting, they will die. There is no question of it.

While the rest of the city declined rapidly, the council members continued to rule safely from the palace in the heart of the city, buffered by Dead Town and the metalkids that lived there.

Then the Industrial District fell to the metalheads.

That was close enough to shattering their fragile delusion of safety that the council began to rally. An elite force was trained to protect the Inner City. It was the responsibility of the Krimzon Guards to make sure the metalheads- and, for that matter, the metalkids too- stayed outside the Inner City safe zone. Haven Hospital was opened at the edge of Dead Town and the healers it trained either found a place in the city or left to chance the wastes, hoping to reach one of the remaining villages. Parts of Dead Town began to revive. Hotels and bars opened. The quality was never anything but terrible, but most elves were willing to brave it for the feel of camaraderie the places evoked and for the modicum of safety they provided.

Haven had a brief period of stability. The ruins were not reclaimed, but no more of the city was lost. The metalkids, unwelcome in the Inner City, forged their own homes from the ashes of their old ones. The KG were able to protect the Inner City and eventually even to hold open a route to the nearer wasteland villages. A man who called himself Baron Praxis emerged as the leader of the council. Once established, he began to look for ways to regain the lost parts of the city and even to recapture the wasteland.

In the end, it was the spectacular failure of the Baron's Dark Warrior program that cost them even the heart of Haven.

All of the experiments had been flawed. One, the precursor to the Dark Warrior program, had not been badly flawed and would still have been an acceptable fighting force- but that single subject had somehow been lost in the early days of the program.

The flawed experiments escaped. Destroying Haven Hospital, they flooded the city, bonded with the metalheads and quickly began to attack all elves on sight. The few elves not killed outright by the dark eco the Dark Warriors used were warped by it, effectively becoming lesser Dark Warriors themselves.

The entire city was in ruins. The Krimzon Guard were already a distant memory; nearly all of them were dead or had become Warriors. Most of the civilians left were without hope, a great many of them spending all their time huddled in their homes waiting to die. Some of them left to try and make it to the outlying villages that were rumoured both to still exist and to be defensible rallying points.

A handful of elves became rebels, fighting stubbornly against the metalheads and Dark Warriors, hoping that someday they could take their city back. The rebellion took metalkids and civilians, the few former KG left, and even a few members of the old council- almost anyone still willing and able to fight joined the rebels.

The enemy is vast and mindless, comprised of an endless stream of metalheads, the results of the old regime's experiments gone horribly wrong, and the dying remains of the old regime itself. The enemy is armed with claws and fangs and steel, dark eco, and all the weaponry that was abandoned when the city finally fell to the wasteland.

The rebels are few and scattered. They have only a severely limited number of ancient firearms, a single rescued zoomer, their fists and their feet and their wits and each other.

Their main hope lies in two young boys.

One of them is a metalkid who had gone to live outside the city during the stable period and so survived the final attack.

The other is the first subject of the flawed experiments, the only one who has yet to be entirely overtaken by the dark eco.

They're still going to win.

Fight forever or die- in the world as they know it, there is no other option.

This is how the fight began.

Guardian: I suspect I have a problem with authority. ShinobiCyrus is doing a wonderful job of betaing this, by the by. Go bug him and read his stuff.