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radioactivepeasant · 4 days

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Free Day Thursday:

"Responsible Adults", the sequel: Jak tries to do a regular Jak Stunt and is shocked that it doesn't go over well

(Roughly a week after this one ends. Long post warning, as most of these are lol)

Night terrors were not an uncommon experience for Jak. They may not have been his nightly companions anymore, but when he did have them, they were intense. He woke up in a corner of his room, wedged beneath the sink. There was a vague sense that he was taking cover from something, or someone.

Blessedly, he remembered no details of the nightmare. But the terror still sent his guts quivering the way they had in the prison. Huddled under the cot both for warmth and silently praying the boots wouldn't stop at his door. That he wouldn't end up Tyber's new punching bag when he got bored of the old man in the cell above Jak's.

Tyber is dead. Errol is dead. Praxis is dead. I watched them die.

Jak repeated the words like a mantra until he could move his limbs again. He crawled out from beneath the sink, but the lingering fear made his room feel claustrophobic. Smaller than it really was.

At least he hadn't woken Daxter this time.

Jak put on his boots, but didn't bother getting fully dressed. He didn't even know what time it was. Why bother if the doctor and the king guy were just going to nag him about being sleep-deprived anyway?

It must have been early morning, before dawn; the moon had vanished and people were outside doing repair work on houses and fog-catchers.

Early morning was the best time to get any outdoor work done in Spargus. A small girl led a flock of caprids out of the stables and towards one of the other districts to graze on the cactus there, and a gang of trainees only a little older than Jak were taking advantage of the temperature to do an endurance run around the city.

Personally, Jak didn't see the good of such things. You learned to be fast enough or smart enough to escape your enemies, or you didn't. He'd learned through life and death experience, not a footrace with no winners.

"Easy with the straps there!" A stocky man backed into Jak, calling up to a team of three people.

"Ope-! Scuse me there, pipsqueak." The Wastelander stepped to the side as if Jak was barely worth noticing.

"Howland, that thing ain't cinched tight enough!"

They seemed to be trying to remove a corroded beam from the supports of one of the multi dwelling houses. It was already leaning at a precarious angle, as big around as a grown man. If that beam came down the wrong way, it would take a lot of the adobe structure -- and probably a lot of people -- with it.

"It's fine, Daru!" Howland complained, "I just cinched it!"

"Well cinch it again! That sucker’s leanin'!"

Jak frowned, but let his curiosity wash away the dregs of the night terrors.

"What's wrong with it?"

The unofficial foreman tugged at a bushy red mustache and shook his head. "Don't rightly know yet. Could just be age. Sand storms and salt air will do a number on this kind of metal after a while."

Jak wondered if that had anything to do with Sandover using wood and stone almost exclusively. He was about to ask why it had been anchored to a mud wall when there was a loud metallic clang. The last bracket holding the beam snapped under the weight, and the straps weren't enough to hold it.

Jak didn't remember moving. But then he was there, with the beam on his shoulders and the foreman on the ground, having narrowly avoided being crushed to death. Cold metal dug into his hands, pressed down against his head, and Jak knew that by rights he should've been dead.

There was a thrill of revulsion in his chest when he reluctantly acknowledged that the only reason he was standing right now was that the dark eco experiments had lengthened his muscle strands to twice the size of a normal hu'men's. It wasn't just in his dark form. That element of...unnatural...was just with him. Every moment.

"Frith! Oh my- HOWLAND! GET DOWN HERE!" Daru roared, "YOU COULDA KILLED SOMEBODY!"

"I got it," Jak said through gritted teeth. "Is there a place to put this thing down?"

"Not yet," Howland admitted as he shimmied down a ladder.

"We were going to cut it into pieces once it was secure, transport it that way to be recycled."

Jak craned his neck, but the motion jarred the beam. Hastily, he adjusted his grip.

"What's- What's around me?"

"Too much," said Daru grimly. "Just- Hold on, kid."

He winced at the boy's flat stare.

"Er...no pun intended. We're gonna, gonna get you out from under there, I promise!"

"Get it cut up first," Jak grunted, "And you won't have to worry about getting me out."

"And what if your hands get sweaty, huh?" Daru demanded, "Fat chance, little man! We're going to find something to hold this up!"

The other two men hurried down from the roof with saws in hand.

Oh gods. Handsaws. This was going to take a while.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Honestly, Damas should have been expecting trouble when he didn't start his day with a free heart attack after seeing eyeshine in the kitchen. The kid was diametrically opposed to the concept of sleep, so he wouldn't have been in bed. If he was off his routine -- and by now Damas had learned to dread something interrupting the kid's self-imposed routine -- then there was probably going to be trouble later.

When he refilled the fuel in the Beacon, fed the birds, and actually had a cup of coffee uninterrupted, he was suspicious.

When the sun rose and there were no echoes of truncated curses in the halls from guards running into Jak, he started to wonder if the kid had decided to work outside. Unusual, but as long as he didn't do anything that would make Dr. Petros yell at them both, more power to him.

But when the talking ottsel showed up in the throne room about an hour after dawn, frantically demanding to know where Jak was, Damas was concerned.

Those two were attached at the hip! Jak wouldn't have gone to look for work without Daxter.

There was a small crowd forming by the time Damas stepped outside. People were shouting encouragements, or conflicting advice about pulleys and snatchblocks. Had something fallen? Damas hadn't heard any impacts. As he began to pick his way through the crowd, the shouts took on new meaning.

"He's slipping! Somebody get under there!"

"How many more hands do you want? There's ten people holding the beam up!"

"Why won't he just let go?!"

"Standing this long, maybe his arms locked up-?"

A beam? People holding a beam-?

An accident. There'd been an accident and night watch hadn't caught it.

Thoughts of crushed citizens and mangled houses circled Damas’s imagination as he pushed through the rest of the crowd, close enough to hear the rasp of handsaws and the buzz of a lone angle grinder.

"Get the cart back in!" Someone yelled, "Next piece is almost off!"

From the looks of things, a crew of four had reduced a two-story high support beam by a third.

Ten Wastelanders were beneath the colossal pole, hands and shoulders braced against the metal as it shrieked and groaned. If even one of them slipped-!

Damas threw down his staff without thinking to join them, racing to catch the end beginning to slide.

"What happened?" he demanded, straining with the others to keep it from crushing the houses and themselves.

"Tie straps broke!" a man three people down called back, "If it weren't for the kid, it woulda come down right through the roofs of a couple houses!"

Kid?

Oh gods don't tell me...

Jak was standing in the very center of the line. His arms trembled, and sweat poured down his face. He didn't seem to hear anything happening around him, too focused on keeping his grip. He was beginning to pale.

"What's he doing here?!"

"Dunno!" A woman to the left answered. "He was already there when me and the girls showed up, but that was two hours ago."

"Hours?!"

Jak had been out here for hours, trapped, and Damas had been none the wiser?

"Why hasn't anyone gotten him out yet?!"

"We tried! The poor kid froze up!"

Damas gritted his teeth and pushed away images of the kid standing alone under that crushing weight for hours until help had woken up.

"Get a truck and winch out of the pit!" He ordered, "Forget damage to the streets, we'll fix it later! I want this thing taken care of now."

It took a full twenty minutes to get the Dozer through the narrow streets of the tower district. By that time, those who had been holding the beam first had cycled out for fresh arms to allow for water and eco. All except Jak. He'd accepted some water that someone poured into his mouth earlier, but still seemed to be unable to let go. He was at the fulcrum point, he insisted, and he wasn't going to let it tip. (Not that he thought he'd actually be able to move at this point.)

Fifteen people attached pulleys and cables to the beam from above, careful not to dislodge the hands of those below. When the cables had all been hooked to the Dozer's winch, the weight began, at last, to lessen.

There was a ragged cheer from the assembled Wastelanders as the end of the beam tipped up and the rescuers eased the other end to the ground. There would be extensive damage to infrastructure to deal with. But nobody had died, and there were no major injuries, and Damas would count that as a victory. Shaking out aching arms, he hurried to the center of the line, where someone was physically holding Jak upright. Damas took hold of the boy's stiff arms carefully.

"It's gone," he said, easing the limbs down, "It's gone, let go, Jak. Come on, you're done."

The kid made a sound, a soft rasping whine that might’ve been words. Then he collapsed.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When the world drifted back into focus, Jak didn't know where he was. The smell of eco lingered around him, confusing the other scents that could have identified his location. He couldn't move his arms. Why couldn't he move his arms?!

It took a massive effort just to pry his eyelids up. Jak’s breath caught harshly between his teeth as he forced himself onto his side.

Well, that explained the lack of mobility in his arms. He ached like he'd been fighting beyond his limits again. The injection sites would be agitated again, he knew without looking. The pain radiated from his shoulders to his fingertips, skin, muscle, and bone.

The room was a blur. Brown and yellow slowly settled into more colors, ending in something either white or pale blue in front of his nose. The longer he stared at it, the more detail he could see. Pills of thread, clinging to loosely woven fabric. The texture and shape of the warp and weft shifted as he tried to move his hand.

He hissed in pain.

"Well that's what happens when you try to make a career as a load-bearing wall."

Jak tensed. Not alone. Not with Daxter.

Biting down on the pain, he dug his fingers into the pallet beneath him and forced himself upright.

This wasn't the hospital -- small blessings -- but it wasn't his room either. There was a low wooden bedframe on a wall a few feet away, on the other side of some kind of half partition full of plants.

"Where...?"

"Well you're about to think of it as prison," Damas answered from the opposite direction.

He was sitting at a table, hunched over a cup of coffee. The empty pot beside him was a story of its own.

"By the way, you're grounded."

"What?!" Jak sputtered. He started to get up, but fell back onto the pallet with a grunt of pain.

"Like rot!"

Damas glanced back over his shoulder. "Take it up with the doctor. He put you on bedrest, not me. Better yet, blame your own self! You could've let go at any time once the rest of the district turned up to help!"

"The whole...district?"

Jak blinked.

"I don't...remember that..."

Damas sighed and peered into into his mug.

"You've been sleeping most of the day, I'm not surprised. Even with the eco you'll probably be sore for a while."

"How -- ow! -- long was I out there?"

Jak cringed at the look in Damas’s eyes when the man turned around fully.

"Four. Hours. Four hours! Why didn't you let go when others arrived?!"

Was this a trick question? It had to be a trick question.

"Be...cause...I'm not supposed to let other people get hurt?" Jak answered with slow confusion.

Damas stared in complete silence for several seconds. Then,

"You're insane. My foster-son is insane. That's insane! In what world is "throw the youngest under the pillar" a rational solution?!"

"Uh. Haven?" Jak muttered peevishly. He tried to sit up again. "Look, just. Tell me which way my room is and I'll get out of your hair."

Damas pushed his chair back with a scraping sound.

"Mn. No. What part of "bed rest" didn't you hear?"

In brusque motions, he knelt and pulled the blanket back over Jak.

"You are not to do anything even mildly strenuous, or Petros will strangle me. And since I apparently can't trust you not to willingly walk into harm's way unsupervised, you get to camp out in here, and I get to work from home for the next few days to make sure you don't go try to lift a car or something!"

Jak was appalled. "You can't do that!"

Dry as dust, Damas retorted, "First of all, I'm king. Secondly, I'm your legal guardian. Yes I can."

Jak groaned in frustration.

"Where's Daxter?"

"Not grounded."

"Oh come on!"

#jak: but i did this kind of thing in haven all the time!#damas is developing new gray hairs every time the kid says something about haven #fic prompts #writing prompts #jak and daxter #dadmas #king damas #free day Thursday #snippets #this universe of stressed dad damas i generally file under the title “Relearning Childhood”#because Jak is one of only 50 minors in the entire city and they're a lot more strict about age-appropriate chores than Haven #Daxter will absolutely rub it in Jak’s face that he's not grounded. because he is Mad at Jak for pulling a stunt like this without him #oh just wait Damas. It gets so much worse.

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radioactivepeasant · 1 month

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Snippet (or chapter?) Thursday

Viper: Exodus

Jak, now a captain in Spargus's infiltration division, has been gathering people who have helped them in the past, and Daxter has convinced whole sections of the slums to trust the Wastelanders over the Grand Council. (LONG post warning, it's basically a whole chapter)

240 people crowded around the narrow road in front of the Naughty Ottsel, murmuring nervously to each other. They had been slowly preparing for this night for weeks -- hardly enough time to uproot an entire life. But then, many of them had been uprooted already. Many carried young children, only recently reunited with their families after Praxis's mass kidnapping orders during his hunt for Mar. They varied between terrified silence and hungry wailing as the people waited for their chosen leader to arrive.

It had been a difficult, and at times acrimonious, task choosing someone to lead them once beyond the walls for good. Fifty people had withdrawn from the evacuation entirely when a Lurker was ultimately chosen. But Brutter had lived among the people of the Water Slums for years. They knew him. They trusted him.

His deputy, the blonde barmaid from the pub, seemed like an odd choice at first. But as preparations progressed, it became clear that Tess had a way with people -- and with weapons. Her confidence put them all at ease.

The murmurs quieted when Tess appeared with Brutter, Jak, and Daxter. More people gathered in the pub doorway behind them to watch, but it was clear that they were on team "leaving Haven is mutiny or cowardice".

"This is everyone?" Brutter called, furrowing his fuzzy brow. "Water Slum friends?"

"Here!" One of his former neighbors called, waving from a section of the crowd.

"Good! Saltpeter Row?"

The inhabitants of the row houses made varying sounds of acknowledgement, and Brutter nodded, continuing to call out the names of streets who had agreed to join the secession.

"Morgan street!"

"Redcap Row!"

"Shark Flats!"

"4th Street!"

Only a few groups were unaccounted for in the end, though this wasn't as much of a surprise as expected. They'd known from the beginning that some would probably back out when it was time to go. Better the devil they knew than the one they didn't. But everyone else had shown up.

They shuffled restlessly, meager belongings in carts or on their backs, and waited to find out what was going to happen. Surely they weren't all going to walk to the abandoned temple!

Brutter nodded to Jak, and the boy stepped forward and raised his voice.

"Okay! Here's what's going to happen! Anyone with small kids or trouble walking is going to take the air train to the foot of the mountains. The Babak are waiting with balloons to get you to the temple. It's going to take a few trips, so don't crowd. You'll all get there, I promise."

Daxter took over as soon as Jak finished.

"Everybody else: we're formin' a convoy of four groups! If you know how to fight, yer on the outside of the column. If you don't, stay in the middle! We're gonna stop for breaks sometimes, but we're hiking straight through the Industrial Sector, folks. It's gonna be a good hour or two before we get everyone into the Power Station teleport ring."

Jak nodded and pointed left in the direction they'd be heading. "Tess will be leading Group 1 with the gyro-burster to clear out any threats ahead of us. Jinx is taking Group 2. Group 3, you're with Mogg and Grim. Everyone else, you're with me. For now, everyone with kids move to the right."

The shuffle was tedious, and it was close to ten minutes before everyone was divided into the five groups. The thirty-five people with elderly, children, and mobility issues huddled together as the rest split into crowds of roughly fifty each. Even fifty civilians was a massive number to protect from Deathbots and metalheads. Tess and Jak shot each other grim looks, each worrying about the same thing:

How many people were they going to lose on their way to the power station?

"I'm coming too!"

Jak turned to see Keira pulling her arm free of Samos's grip. His heart leapt: he'd hoped against hope that she would flee the city with them. That she would wrench herself out from under the sage's thumb.

"Keira, no!" Samos gasped, "This is madness!”

He turned a stern look to Jak. "This has gone too far, Jak! You are out of control!"

"Out of your control," Daxter corrected sharply, "That's what you mean, right?"

"You're leading these people to their deaths! I will not allow my daughter to be one of them!" Samos snapped.

Jak felt nerves crawl up his throat. He wanted to vomit. It didn't matter how confident he was as a Captain of Spargus, Samos had programmed his behavior for years and standing up to him was hard.

He swallowed back bile and cleared the trepidation from his throat.

"You didn't have a problem sending someone else's kid into hell for your own gain. You're not doing yourself any favors by waiting until now to have a problem with it."

Keira gestured to him. "See? Thank you, Jak."

"Keira, that's enough," said Samos sternly, "I know it seems harsh to you, but someday you will understand that I am simply doing what is best for you!"

"No, I'm doing what's best for me," Keira retorted, "I'm *helping people."*

"Keira, I forbid you to step out that door!" the sage cried in a panic.

Keira swung a bag up onto her shoulder.

"I'm no good to anyone in a gilded cage, kept out of danger. And you have no right to fight about it after what you put the boys through."

"Of course I have a right! You're my daughter!"

Keira set her jaw. She closed her eyes and took in a long, shaky breath. Then she stepped out the door.

"Goodbye, Daddy."

Tess squeezed her shoulder as she passed them to gather her platoon. "Hang in there, kiddo," she murmured.

Brutter also eyed her with sympathy as he followed.

"Let us go, friends!" He loudly croaked, "Before we are losing the moonlight!"

Jak frowned thoughtfully. "You got a gun?" he asked Keira quietly.

She shook her head, still trembling with the same adrenaline he felt.

"N-no. But I've got some EMP grenades I've been working on. In case of bots."

Jak's eyebrows rose, and he grinned. "Can't wait to see 'em."

"Yeah well. You probably won't have to.”

÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷

Two days after the exodus

"I hooked the generator up to the temple, so we should have working shields in a day or two." Keira collapsed onto the ledge beside Jak, utterly exhausted.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and dropped an impulsive kiss onto the crown of her head. "You're a miracle worker, you know that?"

The butterflies in Keira's stomach made an unwelcome encore appearance, beating their little wings to fan heat up into her cheeks. She liked this new Jak. He was more open with his feelings. Braver about touch. But Precursors if it wasn't an adjustment!

Still. She needed the comfort just now. Keira had just uprooted…everything, for the second time in her young life. She'd walked away from her own father, and no matter how justified she knew it was, it still hurt. She felt small, and lost, in a world far too large for her. Had she really stopped to fully count the cost of joining the formation of the refugee village?

Yes. She had. Keira forced her mind away from the betrayal in her father's eyes, back to the joy that was in Jak’s eyes when he whispered to her that he'd found freedom.

"I don't feel like a miracle worker," she confessed after a few minutes, "I feel like a fraud. I'm- I'm just shy of completely overwhelmed. We have almost nothing, and if Haven decides they don't like us being up here, I don't know how long my shields will even work. Why are they looking to me for all the solutions? Why not Brutter, or Tess?"

Jak made a sympathetic noise. "Yeah...I know how that feels. But apparently sixteen is "too young" to be carrying that kind of responsibility on your shoulders. So. I dunno, take it easy on yourself, I guess?"

Keira rested her head on Jak’s shoulder with a soft hmph, and noted with some amusement that she could *hear* how fast his heart was beating. Lucky for them Jak had already been in battle that day, clearing out the last metalheads, and had no more eco to react to the adrenaline. Dark Jak was much more snuggly than regular Jak, and much denser in mass, which made it fairly problematic if he happened to doze off while resting against her.

“Kee, I-”

Jak swallowed hard.

“I have to- we need- Mountain Clan is going to join the Wasteland Federation. You- everyone is going to have to get used to a new set of laws. A new. A new king.”

Keira winced. She'd had enough of overbearing authority figures.

“It's going to be…interesting,” she said begrudgingly.

“I have to report to him.” Jak sounded like he was trying to sound her out, gauge her reaction.

“I was going to call him tonight, actually. I just…I guess, don't freak out if he…when he gets here.”

Here? Keira sat up to look Jak in the eye.

“This king person is coming here?”

The buzz of the crickets down the slope seemed to rise, drowning out her thoughts. In a way, she'd known it had to be coming. Jak and Daxter wouldn't have been so insistent on evacuation if there wasn't actually a war coming. It just hadn't felt real.

She looked down at the tents and rudimentary huts their people -- Precursors, she had people now -- had spent the last two days setting up along the hill. So many people who couldn't fight, or wouldn't. If the Wastelanders really were a warrior people, would this king even accept them?

“He has to, Keira. Even if Haven hadn't-” Jak tensed, and a low anger rippled below his words. “Even if they hadn't tried to assassinate him, Damas would still have to come out here. He's the current head of the Federation, and all clans have to send representatives when someone threatens the whole.”

Leave it to Jak to speak of someone with that much power as casually as he spoke about Daxter.

“You all just call him by his name?”

Jak shrugged, and the grin he offered was a little sheepish. “Not to his face. Unless you're me, or Sig. Daxter could, he just likes to call him Spikes or King Lunatic instead. Damas doesn't mind.”

“Spikes?” Keira felt her eyebrows go up. "King Lunatic?!"

“You'll see when he gets here.”

Jak was entirely too calm about that. Keira grimaced, but reasoned that if he was more relaxed now than he was when talking about Ashelin or Samos, that had to be a promising sign, right?

“He um. He sounds…tough,” the girl said, gingerly searching for words. “Is…Is he-”

Keira gave up beating about the bush and decided to just ask the question honestly.

“Jak, you talk about him like you actually trust him. Do you?”

“With my life,” Jak answered, simply and openly.

“And I'd trust him with all of those people down there, more importantly. I'd trust him with Daxter’s life. With yours.”

What could she say to that? Even when they'd been little kids, when they had foolishly trusted Samos to have their best interests at heart, Jak hadn't trusted him around Daxter. And after the…the prison, Daxter was probably the only person Jak truly trusted. For some warrior king of a nation of Sigs to have earned Jak's faith so completely was hard to believe. Almost as hard to take as the respect in Jak’s voice when he so much as mentioned this man.

Who was this King Damas, and what had he done to make Jak of all people so devoted to him and his cause? And more importantly in Keira's mind, did he deserve Jak's loyalty?

“You look up to this guy,” she realized.

And Jak laughed. He rubbed the back of his neck, and looked embarrassed, and laughed.

“Yeah…I mean, I…yeah…he's kind of my hero.”

He covered his face abruptly as his ears burned scarlet.

“Don't you dare tell him I said that.”

“Oh right, because I'd totally get a chance to have a casual conversation with a king and squeal on you.” Keira rolled her eyes.

“If he's as cool as you think he is, maybe he already knows, anyway.”

“No!” Jak groaned, “Don't say that, I have an image to keep up!”

Keira cracked a smile and settled her head back onto Jak’s shoulder. His arm slipped around her waist, and she felt his cheek rest against her hair. An innocent closeness neither of them had felt in too many years, shared for a moment at the beginning of something new and a little frightening.

“When do you think your king will get here?”

Jak grinned into Keira's hair. She'd stopped calling Damas “this king”. The simple acknowledgement of how important he was to Jak felt a lot more validating than he'd anticipated.

“If I call him tonight, I'd say tomorrow evening at the latest. It's only about five hours from here to home by air train.”

Considering the commotion at dawn, when some hut building efforts were abandoned in favor of clearing a landing strip, Keira had her suspicions that the Wastelanders were already on their way before Jak ever placed that hushed and enthusiastic call.

“Clear the field!” Grim waved his arms wildly, scattering refugees into tents and back onto the rope bridge the Babak had built into the temple. “Make some room, everybody!”

Jak was out of his tent with Daxter on his shoulder before the craft had even begun its final approach. He darted to the edge of the makeshift runway and just waited. Brutter opened the door of his hut with a surprised croak, and Tess was already loosening her gun in her holster. Just in case.

There was a pit in Keira's stomach as she joined the people watching the air train land. This was it. Judgement Day.

Out of the air train seven heavily armored Wastelanders practically sauntered, six taking guard positions in a semicircle while the seventh strolled right up to where Jak stood ramrod straight.

It was unnatural, seeing Jak like that. Even more so seeing Daxter in the same attentive posture on his shoulder. Keira watched them nervously for cues.

Jak spoke about the leader of the Wastelander Federation like he was this great hero. Like he idolized the man. Keira suspected she'd get a better read on this new authority figure by observing how he spoke to the boys -- if he spoke to them directly at all.

The king of the desert was an imposing man wielding an elaborate staff. He didn't look like the type to suffer fools gladly. Keira watched his eyes sweep across the huts and lean-tos covering the slopes leading to the temple. They had already constructed fifteen small houses in the style of Sandover Village, and Vin and Keira had just finished setting up a basic eco grid for power. Was it good enough?

"By the forges boys!" The Wasteland king suddenly laughed aloud. "When you said you could find allies in the city, I thought you meant five or six, not an entire village!"

He clapped a hand to Jak’s unoccupied shoulder in a gesture Keira recognized -- with her share of bittersweet longing -- as pride.

"Welcome to Mountain Clan, sir," Jak answered, just as proud.

So. Jak wasn't exaggerating his admiration for this man. Not that Keira had thought he would. Jak wasn't prone to exaggeration and hyperbole. And while he still stood smartly at attention, if Keira looked closely she could see her friend practically vibrating with excitement. He behaved like a soldier -- the soldier Haven always wanted but could never have -- and yet at the same time he reminded Keira of nothing as much as a little boy whose parent had finally come home from a long journey.

That thought stuck in her mind as Brutter and Tess approached.

To her shock -- and the shock of the boys -- the Babak let out a jubilant cry when he recognized the man in armor.

"Brother Damas!" he trumpeted, catching the attention of the other Lurkers helping in the new village.

"Brother Damas lives! Our hearts are full!"

Damas looked taken aback for a moment, then a smile creased his weatherbeaten face and he reached out to clasp Brutter's forearm.

"You-! I remember you! It's been a long time, Bluefeather."

"Too long," Brutter croaked.

"Are your people safe?" Damas frowned. "I'm- I'm sorry. One operative wasn't enough to help free them. It was a poor repayment for the way you supported my family during the coup."

Sadly, the Babak leader shook his head. "We Lurkers were not saving your friends, Brother. We could not stop the executing after you exiled. Always my elders feel they failed you."

Damas squeezed the Lurker's thick forearm with an earnest expression. "You failed no one, Brother. Welcome to the Federation."

Beside them, Jak's face went from confusion to wonder to a barely restrained glee. Damas had organized the abolition efforts? That meant Jak had been working for Damas long before he ever heard the man's name! He exchanged excited looks with Daxter. This went beyond best case scenario for them. Their honorary tribe and their adopted people were now united.

"Now then!" Damas turned on his heel to raise an amused eyebrow at Jak.

"I've been getting extremely detailed reports from you, Captain. Come! Walk me through what you're doing up here!"

Jak practically scrambled to follow him, an almost silly grin stamped across his face. It made Keira's heart ache to realize she hadn't seen that smile since Sandover. Brutter broke into her thoughts with a gurgling chuckle.

"Once king, always king," he said fondly. "Brutter did not know he had offspring! Jak is very good son. Very loyal."

Keira jolted. "Offspring?! What do you mean?!"

Brutter looked confused, as though he thought his observation was obvious.

#writing prompts #fic prompts #jak and daxter #dadmas #king damas #jak and daxter au #viper au #keira hagai #jnd tess #jnd brutter #brutter is a gem and he gets to lead a whole Wastelander clan now #in this house we hold Samos accountable for Very Sketchy Choices and overall nastiness #when Damas says detailed he means Jak's sent like twenty pages of every tiny observation including whether he saw any animals that day #60% of his report is useless but Damas thinks its funny that he's taking his job so seriously so he kept all of it #yeah after this Keira gets the courage to talk to Damas alone about the time loop and There Are Emotions #long post #fic chapter #free day Thursday

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