Nobody Panic!

Adventures in fandom and creative writing Here, you'll find a lot of fandom-related posts...and a heck of a lot of writing. So much writing. I do writing prompts once or twice a week on average. Currently in my annual Jak and Daxter Nostalgia Phase.

[radioactivepeasant]

Spargus is Haunted: Master Post/Table of Contents

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. Epilogue 1. Epilogue 2

And bonus, something I doodled for this au early on (ignore the typing, it was done on stationary)

Damas: "Don't you sass me, pipsqueak."

Jak: "I know, "Dad"."

Snake: "send help"

[monsterboyjunction]

Saw a post and decided to fix it ^^

[weevilwoodpecker]

i always reblog pro wasp propaganda to spite my phobia

[the-haiku-bot]

i always reblog

pro wasp propaganda to

spite my phobia

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[radioactivepeasant]

There's a kiddo in my family who loves wasps (well, loves almost all the creatures most adults dismiss as "unlovable", because from the beginning their parents never cast insects as good or bad, they Just Are)

When this kid found one at the end of its natural lifespan on their back porch, they and their younger sibling sat their and talked softly to her, telling her that she was a good bug and everything was going to be okay before helping me move her to the marigold patch so she could spend the rest of her life somewhere more comfortable than concrete 😭

There are wasps in that backyard, that kid has never been stung. They have put out sugar water during hot summers sometimes specifically for the backyard wasps and the side yard honeybees, and I'm pretty sure the successive wasps are learning Kiddo's face as a result.

[radioactivepeasant]

Monday Snippets: The Plunge

PREV

(Last time, Jak got his first amulet because Leon and Damas shamelessly bribed him with Arena access to cooperate with his recovery plan)

Jak had expected his stay in C-Ward being extended after his Arena trial, but that didn't mean he was happy about it. A deal was a deal, and he was back to choking down nasty slurries of whey protein. But now, the Bureau social worker from Ward 2, Rezzik, was constantly sticking his nose in to yap about "youth-appropriate therapy". And Damas didn't visit much in the following days. The appearance of several new people in the C-Ward dormitory meant there'd been some kind of skirmish out there, beyond the walls. Damas was evidently very busy with the cleanup.

Jak told himself he didn't care. He understood that kind of workload only too well.

But Damas was one of the only people he'd met so far who understood what went on in Jak’s head. And he was the first one to treat the dark form like a weapon in Jak's arsenal and not someone else's. Despite himself, Jak was a bit surly.

"Jak, come on, out of bed." The nurse sounded like Jak felt.

"We have to weigh y-"

"I can do it myself," Jak said irritably.

He hated this part of the daily routine.

Step on a scale. Look at numbers. Watch the nurse scowl again and write on the stupid clipboard.

"I'm sure you can," Becca drawled, "less sure that you actually will."

"Well if you're going to be an asshole about it-" Jak retorted, just shy of threatening.

Leon wasn't in the dormitory today. They both knew that meant if Jak dug in his heels, they were in for a long fight.

"Fine!" The nurse stood back and handed him the clipboard. "Write the number down there. And don't even think about fudging the numbers, kid. We'll know."

"Yeah yeah." Jak snatched the clipboard and stomped into the washroom to use the scale.

The number hadn't gone up since the day before. But Jak supposed on the other hand that it hadn't gone down, either. That wasn't as bad as it could be.

He handed the board to the nurse and sorted through the cubbies by the door for his sandals.

"And you are going...where? Exactly?" she sighed.

"Public armory." Jak slung his headphones around his neck with a bored look. "Cody said he'd help me get an ammunition bag."

"Oh," said Becca, "I see. You want me dead."

Jak rolled his eyes. Becca followed him.

"You want Rezzik to find out you're not resting so he can get the Department of Foundlings and Minors to fine everybody!"

"Well Rezzik doesn't have to know, does he?" Jak said pointedly.

The nurse beeped in dramatic outrage. "Awful!" she gasped, pointing, "Awful child! If I get in trouble for this, I'm not helping you when Leon makes you eat with everybody else."

Jak made a face. He hated the noise of the central mess hall.

"Well he can't make me do that if he can't catch me."

"Don't you dare."

"Later, Becca."

It was a little mean, but he was sick of her and the others barging into his space every day.

At least it wasn't every hour like Ward 2.

He still took the stairs down a little faster than recommended. Just in case Becca ratted him out.

He'd told Cody he was going to be there by seven, and unfortunately the last few months had made him very aware of punctuality.

The lanky warrior was waiting near the stables with a wry grin. Jak ignored him. So he was still in hospital scrubs. What did they want from him?! He didn't have other clothes anymore!

"Okay. Next thing after the armory, we gotta go to the market, kid," Cody laughed, "the Muse Spot print don't flatter you at all."

Jak looked down at the cartoon Muse covering his tunic, then back up.

"If some completely unforeseen and not at all premeditated tragedy were to befall this tunic, I wouldn't be sad about it," he said.

Cody's laugh pitched a little higher.

"Okay okay. I'll see what I can do, junior. C'mon."

The Arena complex still impressed Jak. You wouldn't think from the outside that it could hold so many vital parts of the community. Armory, barracks, proving ground-

Jak very deliberately kept Cody between himself and the junction in the hall that led down to the hospital.

"I get it."

Cody elbowed him.

"Ain't my favorite place, either. Hey, at least Ward Two is usually pretty empty. You didn't have to wait for someone to see ya."

Jak shuddered.

"Yeah I'd take the wait times over being the star lab rat. Had enough of that in Haven."

Cody, mercifully, didn't ask questions.

Jak knew the brass around here still wanted to know what Haven had done to him, if they'd done it to any of Damas’s agents who went missing in the city. But he'd barely gotten through the narration and acceptance portion of working through everything that happened in Sandover. Tam wasn't rushing him. Baby steps were still steps forward, after all.

Jak had gotten as far as the first week in the Program. He needed a break.

"You visited the dorms yet?" Cody asked casually as he steered them through the left of the t-junction — not towards the armory.

"Nah. Doesn't feel like there's much point right now, y'know?"

Jak shrugged.

"The DFM isn't going to let me go any time soon. Especially not now that they've seen me...change."

*-people say you get angry and just...change-"

The Wastelander made a sympathetic grunt.

"For what it's worth," he offered, "Probably half the kids in the foundling barracks live with c-ptsd. Hells, Echo still has days when the memories hit too hard — you know that, you saw some of the screamin' meemies. Trust me, kid: turning into the personification of "hangry" is not the worst way to cope and the DFM knows it."

The words were meant to be encouraging, and Jak could appreciate the intent. But it hurt. The playful nickname sounded so much like something Daxter would've said.

Where are you, Dax? Did you get back to Haven safe? You're smart, you have to find me.

Jak began to suspect that Cody had ulterior motives when he spotted several heavily armed Wastelanders hanging around the halls. Unlike most Spargans, their armor matched almost exactly, and each had their faces obscured with thick paint in alternating black, yellow, and turquoise patterns.

Jak had glimpsed them once when he'd ended up staying upstairs long enough to be sent to the upper mess hall. (Which was much quieter than the one for the middle three floors.)

"Uh." Jak narrowed his eyes. "Something going on?"

Cody waggled his eyebrows idiotically.

"You'll find out."

"Oh that's not ominous at all, is it?" Jak couldn't help grinning back despite the ache in his chest.

"Shh!"

Now Cody held a finger to his lips and took them further up the noticeable detour from the armory to the spectator stands of the Arena.

"Keep your voice down and stay low. If the Ten catch us, we're dead meat."

Jak ducked and followed the man down into one of the lower levels of seats. He wasn't that surprised to find Dex there already. The quadruplets were rarely alone. If one brother was present, it was a good bet at least one other was nearby.

"Are the Ten the ones with the paint?" Jak whispered.

"Honor guard, yeah." Cody pointed slightly to one Jak hadn't even seen.

"Anytime the king's out'n'about, so are the Ten. Usually on the roofs, cos he gets annoyed when they hover. Says it makes him look like he can't fight his own battles."

"I'm pretty sure their job is to protect everybody else more than him half the time," snorted Dex.

He scooted over a bit and waved Jak forward.

"C'mere, biter. You don't wanna miss this."

The Arena was set to the same training course they'd used for Jak's preliminary trial — with one or two differences.

The training dummies had been replaced by living people, all armed.

Gouts of flame now fired off randomly from different walls.

And the person about to step onto the course was Damas.

"Aw Frith, he's doing a Gauntlet run!" Cody whispered.

Jak pointed to the people hiding in the course. "Is he going to kill them?"

Dex stifled a laugh, Cody shook his head.

"Nah, kid, those are Rangers! Takes somethin' closer to a metalpede to take a Ranger down."

"Sh!" Dex elbowed him.

The timer buzzed, and Damas was a blur of motion. The only weapon he carried was a simple wooden staff. A Ranger swung up from beneath one platform, carrying two wooden spikes of some kind about the length of a forearm. They impacted on the staff with a crack that could be heard all the way in the stands.

Jak would have thought having two small weapons would be an advantage over one long stick. But Damas moved so fast, countering nearly every blow before sending the Ranger crashing into the wall.

He barely stopped long enough to plant the butt of the staff and launch himself to the next platform.

Jak had never seen anyone move like that -- not even Sig! Part of him was completely in awe as he watched an absolutely brutal sparring match unfold. Those Rangers weren't even in the vicinity of holding back. Each one fought like they had their own dark warrior they were unleashing, leaping between scaffolds as lightly as the birds their face paint was evidently meant to represent.

Thrush. Shrike. Hummingbird. Kestrel. Nightjar. Batfinch. Falcon. The brothers did their best to point out each one as they came into view.

Honestly, Jak only heard every other word. He was spellbound, watching Wastelanders fighting with a strength and speed he'd previously believed only channelers to be capable of. He'd been strong like that once, before Haven. Before the dark eco seeped into his bone marrow. Jak remembered putting enough power in one small punch to explode a scarecrow.

He also remembered using that power on Lurkers, under the Acherons' spell.

Jak didn't want to think about Sandover anymore.

"This is insane," Jak breathed as he watched Damas take on two at once.

"Damas is probably one of the toughest men in the Wastelands," Dex said knowingly. "Rumor has it he's been fightin' since he was twelve years old."

"Well so've I and I'm not that strong yet!" Jak said without thinking.

Dex shared an uneasy glance with his brother. That sounded like a rabbit hole he wasn't prepared to stick his arm into. Still. Was Haven really that bad? Kids started self-defense at eight in Spargus, play weapons at ten, and first training guns at fourteen. There were rules before Atys, reinstated after Atys. Traditions. Structure. Actual combat before even hitting puberty sounded like a recipe for tragedy.

"In your defense," Cody said awkwardly, "You ain't lived near as long as Damas has. You keep training and you might hit that level eventually."

Jak's eyes were still glued to the Arena.

"Rot, these guys could probably take my dark form in a fight. Frith, Damas could beat my dark form in a fight. I wish Daxter could see this."

Daxter would probably be incredibly nervous. Maybe even have some nightmares. But eventually he'd circle around to the admiration Jak felt.

"What do Rangers do?" he whispered.

"Elite Scouts," Dex replied, "If we ain't at war, they're search-and-rescue or search-and-destroy. They go into the caves and volcanoes before anyone else to set up safety barriers for monks. When the Marauders get shirty, though? Every one of the Birds commands a strike team of their own. If Damas needs something recovered, hunted down, or destroyed overnight, he sends the Rangers."

That sounded, to Jak, like a full team of Sigs.

Which was objectively cool.

The air shifted, just the slightest bit. Someone was in the balcony above them. Cody froze, evidently sensing the same thing Jak did. As silently as he could, the man eased out of his seat, followed by his brother.

"Come on," he signed to Jak, "Gotta go before we're caught in here."

"Just a minute!" Jak didn't want to leave yet.

"No time! We gotta get back down to the armory and act natural!"

With one last look at Damas -- still shooting through the course at an almost inhu'men speed -- Jak reluctantly scurried after Dex and Cody. They didn't breathe easy until they were down in the armory, two minutes' walk from the stands.

They'd gotten away with it.

Probably.

"Tell me more about the Rangers," Jak demanded.

He grabbed an unused ammunition pouch at random to clip to his belt, and belatedly realized he didn't have a belt to clip it to.

"What do they do? How strong are they? Are they the only ones who train with Damas, or are there others?"

"Uh. I. Can answer one of those," Cody admitted.

"What about Damas? How many battles has he fought? How fast is he? Oh rot if he finds out I ditched the nurse, he's gonna find out we were here- friiiiiith why's he even bother showing up in C-Ward if he could be doing this?"

Having been accustomed to Jak as either eerily silent or prone to short bursts of rage, neither Dex nor Cody quite knew what to make of the almost starstruck glint in the kid's eyes. It was warranted, in their opinion: Damas was nearly a living legend in Spargus.

It was just funny that the king had popped in periodically to check on the kid personally and Jak was only just now understanding what a big deal that was by the look of things.

"Do you wanna try to get to the market to ditch the scrubs?" Cody asked, "or do we make a break for it and act like nothing happened?"

"Give me two of your Scatter rounds and I'll get you a better tunic, at least," offered Dex.

Jak accepted the trade readily.

"Blue if they got it, white if they don't. No red."

"No red?"

"Ever."

The scarf was pushing it in Haven as it was. But it helped hide his face sometimes, and it was all that kept him and Daxter warm on the nights when they couldn't get to a safe house, so he'd left it alone. Now he didn't have it anymore — it was being kept as "evidence", apparently — and he...kind of didn't want it back.

"Right. Blue. I'll getcha a bandana or something too if I find one."

"Thanks, Dex."

Jak handed him the ammunition.

"Gotta run. I think I've got fifty minutes before they try to make me drink the protein slop."

Cody narrowed his eyes.

"You know Leon's gonna know you went outside," he said, gesturing to the dust on Jak’s scrubs.

"Yeah, but if I'm back inside before weigh-in, he can't do anything about it. Besides. Rezzik made a stink about "age-youth-appropriate therapy" and now Chiron wants me to spend some time in the market this week."

"Oh no," Dex laughed, "Booth duty!"

Jak flashed a grim smile.

"Hey, you take the escapes where you can get 'em."

The brothers glanced at each other again, and Cody let out a slow breath.

"...yeah. True enough. Take care, runt."

[radioactivepeasant]

Practicing using multiply layers for metallic surfaces with OC Kaz

(He started as a doll customizing project where I threw a bunch of leftover elements together lol then he became the older brother to my Fake Videogame Protagonist, Ion. Also the final boss for Ion's adventure, because the antagonist they accidentally released wouldn't have gotten loose if Ion hadn't been messing with their big brother's stuff 🤣)

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippets: The Plunge au

(Used to do these more on Thursdays but my work schedule changed lol)

PREV

(Previously: the recovery ward is in survival mode trying to make Jak comply with his recovery plan, Jak got an IEP, and Damas overruled protocol to get Jak into the Arena early as an incentive to cooperative with the doctor)

It was one of the simple courses: agility under pressure. Jak would have a set number of seconds to reach the top of a wooden climbing rig the matter-formers had set up -- over open magma. That was standard for every candidate tapped for warrior potential.

It was the second part of the test Damas wasn't sure about.

Traditionally, when a candidate received their modular gun, they would face other candidates in sort of a survival-of-the-fittest brawl. It was only Scattergun ammunition, fatalities were relatively rare.

But Jak was a special case.

Not only was he at least a year too young for this, his recovery team strongly suspected that he was a recovering child soldier. Even Clay was uncomfortable with the idea of tossing him into the middle of a war game without a heads-up, and he was the most fighting-obsessed guard in the Arena.

Before they let him out into the ring, Damas took Jak aside to discuss the trial with him.

"This is just the pre-Trial," he reminded him, "No combat. If you feel like you can handle the actual Trial after this, we can look at our options."

"Cody said people die in these if they don't take it seriously."

Jak fastened a pauldron over his left shoulder and did his best not to dwell on the empty space it represented.

"You make 'em fight each other?"

"Yeah." Damas reached over and refastened the strap more securely. "But they know that going in. And the first one is non-lethal unless you don't avoid the magma."

"What about the other ones?" Jak challenged.

It varied. Second trial meant the cadet was cleared to use Blaster ammunition. Which meant going into live-fire situations beyond the walls. Damas didn't completely support his people going against each other in fights to the death. It sort of contradicted the "survival" part of "strength and survival above all". If there was going to be a dedicated death-fight, it was usually the third trial, and the opponent was someone who had been sentenced to a literal trial by combat. But there was no guarantee of enough Spargans committing serious crimes to allow for that kind of battle trial.

The solution was...imperfect at best. But in the Wastelands, it was a better compromise than most. Either Damas used it as a test of nerve, to see whether the scout could stand up against bad orders, or he brought in Marauders.

The Marauders loved battle.

They loved it a little too much.

It made sense: their patron Precursor was the Axemaker, goddess of combat and weapon-making.

The result of this was that despite their deep disdain for the pre-existing Sparga and Thoris cultures, the Marauders would occasionally come to the gates demanding entry into the Arena for one of three reasons.

Either they wanted to earn the right to learn the art of creating gunstaffs, to honor their goddess,

They wanted to win glory in the ring by survival or by death, to honor their goddess,

Or they wanted out of their colony.

The latter fought with twice the ferocity of their brethren. They had nothing to lose and a better life to gain. It took Marauder cadets longer to integrate once adopted into the Spargan people, but they often turned out to be the fiercest protectors of their new home.

Under no circumstances was Damas going to let Jak fight someone from that group when his time came.

"There's usually Marauders in the other trials," Damas finally told Jak. "Once in a while, we're able to catch some metalheads before some idiot blows them to pieces. But it's difficult to guarantee that kind of trial. Because usually some idiot blows them to pieces."

"Fair enough," Jak decided.

He looked, Damas thought, a little apprehensive.

"Nervous?" he asked.

"No!" Jak stiffened. "No. I'm just...I'm not going to be at full strength. Just...wondering what that's going to look like."

It was the little wince when he said it that Damas would later blame. It made him look younger. It reminded Damas too much of Mar.

Before he could second-guess the wisdom of the action, he'd wrapped an arm around Jak’s shoulders.

"Hey," he said gently, "No one here knows what you look like at full strength. The only person who would criticize you about it is yourself, and I know Tam has been on your case about that."

"Unless I completely fail this, and they put me back in Ward 2." Jak shuddered.

"You'll be fine." Damas let go with a playful smack to the arm. "I'll be watching the whole time."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?!"*

Jak gave him a dramatic -- and completely genuine -- expression of dismay.

Nevertheless, he soon found himself on an antigrav platform being lowered to the wooden construct. The magma below sent a wave of heat over him, almost a physical push in its intensity.

If he closed his eyes, just for a moment, he could almost pretend it was Magma Gorge.

Almost pretend his life had never imploded.

That poor, stupid, naive kid in Sandover could never have dreamed that this was where his path would lead.

From cartwheeling across the beach with his best friend, to a lab rat in the depths of hell, and now alone in a city of warriors, trying to prove himself worthy of being one of them.

When he opened his eyes, Jak counted roughly five platforms in the general shape of buildings or scaffolding. There were little points of light within the shapes that he could barely make out. What were those?

"What you are looking at is the Arena training course."

Damas’s amplified voice came from right behind Jak, startling him.

He turned to find that his floating platform was only a few yards from a balcony lit by two braziers. Damas sat between them on an uncomfortable looking stone chair.

"Okay?" Jak called up, "What's the target?"

Damas pointed.

"There are 34 orbs of light eco in the construct. Your job is to find them all before time runs out."

"Wait, seriously?" Jak turned to peer into the structures. "You have light eco just. Out there?"

"It's the Arena of Death, son," Damas replied, accompanied by laughter from the stands, "That sort of requires having a method of resuscitation onhand."*

That seemed perfectly logical to Jak. Also took some of the fear out of a death ring when you knew they planned to pull you back in before your soul could fully eject from your body.

"There are training dummies scattered throughout. You're not required to destroy them, but it does add to your overall score."

Jak shook out his arms and, despite himself, a small grin started to push through the flatness of his normal expression.

He had done nothing worth producing adrenaline in months. He desperately needed to move. To run. And this looked just about adequate to satisfy that need.

"Ready when you are," he called up.

Damas met his grin with a smirk of his own.

"That's the spirit. Your time starts now."

Jak's stamina had suffered from forced inactivity. A year ago, he would have been able to leap straight to the third platform in one jump, no ladder required. But to his everlasting irritation, he knew that if he started out with that, he'd have no strength to continue later.

But on the bright side, the bits of light eco restored his energy.

His muscles burned. They shouldn't have, this was less strenuous than outrunning Krimzon Guards on Haven's streets. Still, he kept moving. He let his mind drift, and instinct took over.

Kick off the wall, catch the edge of the next platform.

Smash through a weak point to collect four hidden orbs.

Swing across the gap.

Moving platform.

Ledge.

There was nothing but adrenaline. He had a clear goal, he had the entire course to himself, and he apparently had an entire 42 seconds left.

The last orb left him buzzing, just shy of unbalanced in his core.

Jak catapulted onto the last moving pad, and up onto the antigrav platform fixed in place before the dais.

He needed to keep moving. If he stopped now, his muscles would have time to cramp and settle.

"Was that it?"

Jak didn't care if he sounded a little disappointed.

Damas actually laughed at this.

"Not bad, kid, you completed the course in a minute and fifteen seconds! What's that face, hm? It wasn't challenging?"

"Well, no, I mean it sort of was," Jak hedged, "It's just..."

He had no idea how to express himself without sounding like a complete lunatic.

"It's just that you're not ready to come in yet, right?"

Ah. Jak had forgotten that this whole city was apparently populated by fellow lunatics.

He did feel a little like a child, begging for just five more minutes to play outside before he had to go in. But maybe if he wore himself out enough, the insomnia wouldn't have time to catch him tonight.

"Can we keep going?"

The king was sympathetic, but not initially supportive.

"I don't know about that. There's a first battle trial happening in five minutes, kid."

Combat. Against other hu'mens.

Jak thought of armor -- blue, crimson, they were all the same -- and his stomach churned.

But the war was always going to find you again anyway, he reasoned, At least you could get a weapon out of this.

"I can do it. It's just scatter rounds, right?"

Damas hesitated. He made a small gesture, and a few people appeared as if from nowhere to whisper with him for a moment. He didn't seem completely happy with the outcome of the brief counsel, but carried on regardless. Standing, he scooped up a modular gun from beside the throne.

Jak's fingers itched to feel the weight of the stock and barrel again.

"Okay, kid. But don't say I didn't warn you."

He tossed the gun across the gap and Jak caught it easily.

The familiar heft grounded him. It was like a missing piece had settled back into place. Maybe that was why Sig always said a morph gun was an extension of its wielder.

"Reset the matter-formers."

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Jak couldn't hold the transformation back this time.

He'd tried, he'd truly tried not to transform. This was supposed to be a non-lethal trial! If he couldn't control his darker half, if they saw what kind of monster he was-!

Jak heard the gasps in the stands. Some screams.

Nononono please c'mon not now-!

From the balcony, Damas seemed to sense his panic. He stood with a jerk, and as Jak's eyes snapped to black, he made one clear sign.

Breathe.

The siren went off, giving everyone advance warning of the magma about to rise through the octagonal grate beneath them.

Honestly, if he hadn't been in strictly fight or flight, Jak would have wondered what kind of metal they had that could withstand the heat. Magma was the one thing that could melt Precursor metal! What was this, then?

Dark Jak didn't care about architectural questions at the moment, however.

He crouched on the half-cover wall and slid the gun into the empty holster on his back.

Now he knew why that was part of the pauldron harness.

Not enough ammunition to go around. Fine. He didn't need it.

No killing.

He dragged the intention up over the shouting of his impulsive thoughts.

You are not a weapon. Figure it out yourself.

The magma receded, and the other six combatants eyed him warily.

The four that had already been shot down had been dragged up into the staging area before the magma timer went off.

Dark Jak just had to restrain himself enough to keep from flinging men into the molten rock.

Man on the left raising gun, grip is weak. He's tired. Man behind him has a clear shot, but he's focusing on me instead.

He had enough in him for maybe four hits. Dark Bomb was out of the question.

Jak shot forward almost too quickly to be seen. A swipe of his claws sent the first gunner tumbling across the grate with bloody furrows across his arm and chest.

The shockwave hit Jak hard, throwing him into the side of one of the cover walls.

Something cracked.

Hopefully the wall and not his spine. Because as Dark Jak, he wasn't the best at feeling pain and handling injury.

Shaking his head to clear away the momentary dizziness, he barely had time to catch someone else's wrists. It had been bold to charge him. This close to the magma it would be the work of a moment to-

No!

The magma was right there-

No. Killing.

Dark Jak snarled. He swung his attacker bodily over the edge of the platform for just an instant before using the momentum to fling him across the octagon and into the escape ladder with a crash. Just enough to let him understand how close to death he'd been.

The one who shot him had just fired two rounds at the other three remaining candidates. He was priming the gun for another shot at Jak.

This time Jak was ready.

Unfortunately, his darker side was still running the show, which meant decidedly less impulse control.

When the shockwave burst across the Arena, he held out both hands. The force jammed his wrists, bent several fingers further back than they were intended to go. But. The red eco in the shot sank into his skin to join the bubbling cocktail of colors that made up dark eco.

Heedless of his broken fingers, Dark Jak snarled and flung the energy straight back in one catastrophic smash of a blow.

The shooter tumbled off the edge.

Frith-!

The dark eco was pulling back into his core. Pain radiated across his arms and chest. But Jak ignored it to use the last of his dark eco to dive forward and catch his opponent by the back of the neck seconds before he hit the lava.

He was barely able to haul the both of them back up, and once he had, he collapsed.

"Sor- sorry," he huffed, patting the downed man's shoulder.

Then he'd swung himself back up to his feet and pulled the gun back out again.

His muscles burned. Using the dark form expanded too much stamina without other eco onhand to replenish it. Pulling the trigger with a fractured finger was a problem of its own, but he ignored it.

Just three more people, unless they called the match there.

The remaining minutes were a blur.

It was easy to fall back on his experience from Haven. A little too easy, in his opinion.

That sat strangely on his brain as he pulled himself up onto the cover wall to wait out the magma again.

He was a soldier. Not willingly, but it was the mold they had broken and crushed him up to fit into, and he couldn't escape it. And combat was so much a part of daily life for these people that job orientation doubled as entertainment. But all the same, he didn't like how natural it felt to move between blocks, exchanging fire and taking cover.

It's not lethal if I only fire once. I won't kill them if I only fire once.

He repeated it in his mind until it drowned out even the pain in his hands.

And then it was over. Two people besides Jak were still standing. Everyone else had been dragged off the field and up the ladders. The cover walls sank back into the grating, and a loud buzzer sounded. It was almost inaudible over the deafening roar of the crowd.

"Well look at that, no fatalities this month!"

Damas had to raise his voice to be heard, even with the amplification.

"With three left standing, no less! I'm impressed, gentlemen."

The floating platforms lowered to bring Jak and the two candidates up to the edge of the balcony once more. All three were somewhat the worse for wear, and completely exhausted. Damas stood and moved to the edge of the balcony to face them.

"These," he said, holding up three pieces of curved metal, "Are war amulets. Proof that you took your first Trial and emerged victorious. If you earn two more, you will be granted full citizenship in Spargus."

He leaned dangerously far over the gap to toss the amulets to each of them.

"Within the city census, you are now counted as cadets. Probationary citizens, in a sense. You can't vote yet, or choose the work you're assigned, but you are both subject to the same laws and entitled to the same protections as full citizens."

Something shifted in Jak’s periphery and he got the uncanny feeling that he was being watched. He turned his head and locked eyes with a face not much older than his own. They stood in a small alcove just below the king's balcony, glaring from behind dramatic face paint.

In an instant, a sharp pain lanced through Jak’s skull. He gripped his temple, grimacing, until the ringing in his ears subsided.

Damas was looking at him with concern. He cleared his throat and continued.

"Here, also, is a gate pass. You are free to come and go as you wish. But be warned that the Arena is only a small, controlled example of what lies in the Wastelands. Beyond the walls, there is no true shelter between us and the canyons."

Jak was honestly a bit surprised that he got a gate pass as well. He'd figured the doctors would've vetoed anything that might let him escape. Even if it was just for a day.

"Get some eco, rest up before you start trying to take on jobs," Damas advised, "Your second trial won't be for at least a month -- except for you, Jak. This was a one-time special dispensation for you. You get to wait until you're eighteen to take your next one."

"Oof," remarked the thin, scarred young man beside Jak. "Long time to wait, huh, animal-man?"

Jak stiffened.

Animal?

Bile crept up his throat. His pulse thundered in his ears as blood rushed to his head.

He wasn't an animal.

He wasn't some...mindless beast, no matter what the KG propaganda reels said. No matter what they called him in the prison.

I'm a person. I'm a person.

Damas’s interruption was quick enough to seem almost like he was replying to Moln.

"It takes courage to channel dark eco willingly. To have such a grasp of the eco of change that you can metamorphose yourself is no less impressive."

He wouldn't say that if he knew how that dark eco had come to be part of Jak's core. He wouldn't say that if he knew how many people Jak had killed with his bare hands.

The three victors were ushered into one of the same exit tunnels the wounded had been taken through. There were medpacks and clean bandages waiting, just enough to serve as first aid.

Dr. Petros was also waiting. And he did not look happy.

"Aw balls," Jak muttered under his breath.

* featuring, for the heck of it, a Watsonian solution for all the times you restart an Arena trial after a game-over: those light orbs they keep around. All battles are to the death because they figure they can just resuscitate the combatants anyway. It's the risk of hitting the window where it takes too long for someone to get there with eco that puts the thrill in it for most participants. When you have light eco coming out of the ground on the reg, and you're already fighting the desert every day, even deadly combat becomes a kind of extreme sport I guess

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippets: The Plunge au

PREV

(Takes place about a week or two after the last bit)

The boy had those headphones on again. It seemed to be the only way he could interact with medical personnel these days. Tam had indicated in the four week progress report that music had provided something of a breakthrough for their enigmatic castaway in coping with disregulated emotions, and now he retreated into it whenever his stress rose above a certain level. This had advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, the boy's mental health had taken a drastic and visible upswing. But on the other hand, he was also putting on the headphones when someone so much as asked a question he didn't want to think about.

They were still no closer to finding out the truth behind how much Praxis had been doing in his prison labs, nor whether any of the agents that never reported back from Haven had been present in that terrible place. The Guard — who was no closer to being ready for the Arena and seemed to be making use of that fact — claimed ignorance at every turn. It was all "the Council doesn't tell us about Praxis's classified projects" and "I didn't know he'd made an eco freak until he started slaughtering Guards in the streets".

And the boy simply refused to talk about it.

Tam insisted he wouldn't be ready for trauma narration and acceptance for at minimum another week.

Damas stood in the ward hall, just out of sight of the occupants of C-Ward's dormitory. He watched Jak endure a heel-stick -- one of the accommodations by Leon to avoid the ptsd triggers -- with eyes squeezed shut and headphones clamped to his ears. Nothing about the vulnerable posture even suggested the monster the guard had claimed he was. Damas may have sensed hints of dark eco building back up around him now and then, but nothing he couldn't balance out with regular exposure to light eco.

Even having seen Jak partially transformed, the boy was hardly what Damas would have classified as an "eco freak".

It was a thought unworthy of a good Wastelander, but Damas found himself hoping that when Macon was released, he didn't make it through his first Arena trial. He had no desire to deal with such an unpleasant person.

He didn't think Jak wanted to see him again, either.

The nurse set down another of the protein mixtures that the boy hated so much and sternly warned him not to leave half of it behind this time. As if that wasn't going to just make him more stubborn!

Jak, naturally, pretended not to hear Becca.

Damas intervened when he heard Becca becoming audibly frustrated. He cleared his throat and gestured towards the door in a polite dismissal.

"I'll take it from here, thank you."

Jak wasn't impressed. He still had little thought for kings and thrones. Pointedly ignoring Damas’s presence, Jak rested folded arms on his drawn-up knees and closed his eyes. If Damas strained his ears, he could just barely make out Jak humming under his breath. He'd almost memorized that entire guitar sonata. An impressive feat in and of itself. Even so-

"We can probably find you some other music chips if you get tired of that one."

"I like this one," Jak grunted after a moment.

Well, he was answering today. That was a good sign.

Damas pushed the hated pink drink towards him somewhat unceremoniously.

"I know, no one likes these. But you need to keep the electrolytes and glucose balanced, and you need the protein."

"Rather eat shoe leather."

It would have been counterproductive to laugh, but Damas was sorely tempted.

"Well if you've ever had to eat the trail rations Sig makes, you probably already know what that tastes like."

Jak actually cracked a smile at that.

"It's not great," he admitted. "Usually he just stole pub food for us. Also not great, but at least you could chew it."

Damas was surprised that the boy was willingly talking to him about Sig. Thus far he'd been tight-lipped and tighter-fisted about anything to do with the beacon and how he'd gotten to the desert. Damas decided not to call attention to it, lest Jak clam up again.

"Well," he said, taking on an air of nonchalance, "You'll never get to see what the matter-formers in the Arena are capable of if you can't get up to a healthy weight."

Jak narrowed his eyes.

"What matter-formers?"

The king flashed a sharp grin. "What, did you think I made everyone do trials on flat sand? Bunch of gladiator battles?"

Jak waved a hand from side to side. So-so. He'd somewhat assumed the quadruplets were just talking up a plain old gladiator ring.

"No no no, think more creatively," Damas scoffed. "Wasteland terrain is only flat in the badlands. Moving platforms -- not as soft as sand dunes, but close enough -- obstacle courses, lava-"

Jak's head shot up. "Lava?!"

"Mhm." Damas folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "If you keep up with your nutrition plan enough to get out of here and earn a gate pass, lava is going to be an issue more often than you'd think. Tends to happen when your island formed over a volcano."

The boy looked...a little too interested.

"Is it active?"

"No, thankfully. The monks hundreds of years ago built structures inside to alleviate pressure and halt eruptions. But that magma didn't go anywhere -- except through underground passages to a few calderas."

"Probably more self-contained than flying over a magma gorge then," Jak mused, missing Damas’s jolt. "Sounds like a Babak village."

Every word out of this kid's mouth just added to the riddles to untangle. How did he know what a Babak village looked like? And he'd called them by their proper name, not Lurkers.

"And you've been to one of those villages, have you?" Damas asked.

Jak barely nodded. "Sure, couple times. Me and Daxter, we're not registered members of the Bluefeather band, but they act like we are."

Well. There was another reason Haven probably wanted him dead. Damas studied him in silence, chin propped on his fist. The weight of his gaze left the boy fidgety and uncomfortable. Finally he met the stare head-on.

"What."

"You're part of the abolitionist movement."

It was not said as an accusation, nor as a question. Damas said it as a simple statement of fact.

The bewildered face the boy pulled was nearly comical in its elasticity.

"How'd you figure?"

Damas shifted his weight comfortably and raised his eyebrows.

"The Babak do not share their clan names with hu'mens -- drink your protein, Jak, you're stalling -- and they certainly don't take them to their villages. Not unless that person has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that they can be trusted. For a hu'men to earn that distinction, you'd have to accomplish some great work on their behalf. Hence my suspicion."

Jak gave him a look of equal scrutiny as he begrudgingly swallowed some of the artificially flavored liquid. He made a face and shuddered.

"Gah. They couldn't put this stuff in coffee or something?"

"I suspect they fear the idea of you on caffeine."

Jak almost cracked a grin. "They should."

Then he raised a hand to point at Damas.

"You helped them too."

"Hm?"

"The Babak." Jak gave him a shrewd, knowing stare. "You helped them too, or you wouldn't know any of that."

The grin was out before he could even consider being serious. Damas smiled down at Jak ruefully.

"It was never enough, but I did what I could when I was your age. Cleared out some roads out of the city from under the north agricultural sector. You could see me coming and going from the stadium, so how the Guard didn't catch me in the act I'll never know unless there were some choosing to look the other way."

"I actually used some of those!"

"Did you!"

Damas couldn't help feeling a little pride.

"Then I am glad my work was of some use to you."

Jak's enthusiasm popped like a balloon when Dr. Leon entered the dormitory and laid eyes on the single most infuriating patient he'd dealt with in all his years: Damas of Spargus.

"You."

"He has diplomatic immunity," Jak said flatly.

By his bewildered expression, Leon could tell Damas didn't know what that meant any more than he did.

"Yeah, I question that immunity since he's a month late on vaccinations."

"I've been busy," Damas grumbled.

"Very convenient for you."

Jak held up the bottle threateningly.

"If the needle comes out, the bottle goes in the trash."

Both men's eyes widened.

Damas leaned down, harshly whispering,

"Are you seriously trying to blackmail the doctor, kid?"

Leon did not negotiate with blackmailers.

"If you drop below sixth percentile again, you'll wind up right back in Ward 2 again," he said calmly.

"And who do you think Nurse Tansy is going to blame for it?" Jak countered.

...Leon negotiated with some blackmailers.

"Counteroffer," he said archly, "The shot-dodger in chief reports to the clinic for the white flu vaccine by no later than tomorrow evening, and you can skip the shakes for one day."

"So do I get a say in this?" Damas asked, "or-?"

"No."

"Not really."

"Ah." Damas wrinkled his nose. "Lovely."

"What is white flu, actually?" Jak asked, "Why's he need a shot for it?"

The doctor looked at him with a muted exasperation. He pointed to a poster near the door -- an enlarged copy of a handwritten notice.

"It's right there, you didn't read it?"

In the span of a single second, Jak's entire face went blank.

Not the reaction either man had anticipated.

It was a carefully controlled non-reaction, like he was trying to feel nothing.

Rot.

The doctor sighed in a very put-upon manner.

"It's the handwriting, isn't it? Rot, my wife is going to be absolutely insufferable when I have to pay for an actual print."

The handwriting was large. Clear block glyphs, no ligature-writing or slants. In fact, it was more legible than Damas’s own writing, and he was responsible for keeping the minutes in senate meetings!

He knew it, and Leon knew it.

But Jak didn't.

What kind of life had he led before Praxis had him kidnapped? Could he read at all?

Leon cleared his throat. "Rather than wait for replacement posters: white flu is a viral infection of the nose, throat, and lungs. It is extremely contagious. And if you've never had the vaccine, it can be deadly. You had yours administered upon entry to the hospital, all newcomers do. King Damas, on the other hand, was supposed to voluntarily get his last month."

The boy was still closed-off. Damas needed a way through that wall he'd put up.

He'd given up pretending he didn't monitor the boy's recovery closely. Jak was still A Political Situation to some of his government, given that his story was thus far inextricable from intel the Gilas had been gathering on Haven. But Damas’s investment had become rather more personal. The kid was technically under his roof, anyway. Perhaps he could try -- just try, and see if Jak responded well -- to take a little more active of a role in his recovery and integration into the city.

"Alright, alright," he said begrudgingly. "I'll do the shot tomorrow. The kid can skip the liquid chalk."

"Or you could get it over with now."

Well, at least it wasn't interrupting his schedule if he did it now. He hated taking time out of his work to go get checkups. He had too much to do!

"Fine, fine," Damas sighed, "Get it over with, then."

Leon nodded sharply. "Wise choice. I'll be back."

Jak relaxed just barely when the man left. Damas pushed a curtain aside to take a seat on the unoccupied bed adjacent to Jak's. The kid was looking at the poster with the same face he wore when he was trying not to show emotions he considered too vulnerable.

"Which language are you used to?"

Jak jumped and looked at him a little nervously. Damas wasn't even slightly bothered.

"You sign, fluently. SparSign has a completely different grammar system than Curiash. I was just wondering which one was your first language."

"I can read!" Jak responded hotly.

Damas raised his hands. "Well I didn't say you couldn't! I just asked what language you usually read in!"

For three awkward minutes, Jak refused to answer. He put the headphones back on and glared at the floor.

One step forward, two steps back.

"Shorthand," he said abruptly.

"You read Curiash shorthand?"

"Curian shorthand. The really old glyphs."

Despite the situation, Damas was a little impressed. Nobody taught shorthand these days.

"Been a while since I met anyone who could do that."

Deciding that it couldn't hurt to feed the kid's bruised ego just a little, he added, "I suppose, to be fair, that I don't know many people who can memorize a sonata in only two weeks, either."

When Leon returned with the vaccine, Damas took it without reaction. Given Jak's scars, it was better not to make a big deal out of shots.

"You know, if you wanted to pick up writing in some other languages, I can think of a few people who enjoy teaching," Damas remarked.

Jak grimaced. "They wouldn't enjoy teaching me."

"Bold assumption, but alright." Damas shook out his right arm, rolled his eyes, and dutifully presented his left for one of the other vaccines he'd forgotten about. This hadn't been part of the deal, Leon was striking while the iron was hot.

"Still going to need to get someone to teach you though. You're still in the age range for compulsory education in Spargus and I really don't think you'd appreciate getting dropped in a class full of unhinged teenage Wastelanders in the middle of the school year."

"What kind of "compulsory education"?"

Jak was tensed again.

Leon answered in Damas’s place.

"Mathematics, history, very basic science and technology, and language arts, primarily. The sorts of things that keep a Wastelander from getting swindled out on jobs."

Jak's cringe deepened. Damas guessed the kid had been swindled a time or two.

"There are arts too," he grumbled at Leon, "We're not barbarians."

"Arts fall under the history classes."

"That doesn't make any sense at all. It's a subject of its own!"

The doctor waved a dismissive hand.

"Well what am I supposed to do about that? I'm a doctor, not the department of education!"

"Oh who asked you," Damas huffed.

______________________________________

Finding a tutor for the boy was not as simple as process as Damas had hoped. Pick someone impatient or sarcastic, and they could lose any progress they'd made with Jak. Pick someone shy, and it might seem like they didn't know what they were talking about. Leilani had a roster of candidates for Damas to look through -- and the Bureau had a few too many questions about his involvement. Damas hadn't even known Spargus had that many remedial tutors.

Ultimately, Damas chose someone from the division that handled children and adolescents rescued from Marauder labor camps. While the circumstances weren't exactly the same, that department of Leilani's staff at least knew how to handle complex trauma.

By all accounts, Chiron made an...okay first impression on Jak. He hadn't gotten more than a couple words out of the kid, but his fluency in SparSign had at least piqued Jak’s interest a little.

That was another enigma about the boy.

He spoke a Wastelander dialect, but behaved as though he knew nothing about Spargus.

The initial assessment wasn't as dismal as Damas had been afraid of.

The boy could barely read Curiash, he couldn't write at all. As expected, he knew nothing of Spargan history. But neither did he know much about mainland history. On the other hand, his grasp of math wasn't behind his peers at all. It might not have been in the same branch of mathematics other teens were usually learning in his year group -- geometry and cartography over calculus -- but he was quick with his answers.

"He's had terrible teachers," Chiron reported. "Absolute incompetents gave him a terrible perfectionist streak. Kid thinks he's stupid because he can't immediately understand something he's never studied."

More uphill battles.

Well, Damas was already in too deep. The kid had at least one more month in C-Ward before the Bureau would consider him for a barracks placement. That made him more Damas’s responsibility than anyone else's.

"Alright. Let me know what he needs and I'll try to get it to you."

Chiron nodded.

"We'll start small. Kids' books. The Glub in the Tub is a decent reading primer."

More than just a "decent" primer, evidently.

Jak had a reasonable grasp of sight words by the end of the week. Grammar? That was going to take a while. But he seemed to respond well to encouragement.

Within the month, he was reading on his own. It wasn't perfect, but he was self-motivated.

Chiron started asking for harder materials.

Geography. Children's history books. World maps.

His test scores were still abysmally low, but Damas didn't understand how that could be when the kid seemed to have a near photographic memory. What were they missing?

Brother Tam was the one to figure it out.

He'd been working through Jak’s story, little by little. Jak was reticent. The only things he was willing to talk about were his experiences in Haven, and even then it was clear that he was holding information back. Tam was confident that he'd come to a place eventually where he felt safe enough to talk about it, and so he never pried.

It helped Jak trust him. The kid actually looked forward to his rambling walks through the tower with Tam in the evenings.

"Oof, these stairs are always colder than I'm expecting," Tam had remarked on one of the evenings.

"It's 'cause the water," Jak had responded unexpectedly.

"Oh? How's that?"

And Jak had seemed so unbothered as he skipped a few steps.

"Throne room's up there, pipes are in the walls. Water's a better thermal conductor than air."

He hadn't been thinking about it, he'd just repeated what he'd read. It had given Tam an idea. As he followed Jak between levels, he'd started periodically asking questions.

"How does that work, anyway?"

"Do you know how many years it took to carve the citadel into the cliff?"

"How much water do you suppose gets filtered through the throne room water wheels a day?"

And Jak had answered every single one. His answers weren't always fully correct, but he was relaxed, and even a little confident.

Jak needed verbal tests. Not written ones.

The revelation had been a bit of a game changer for Chiron. Jak's assessments took an almost overnight leap from 50% accuracy to 85% accuracy. And all they'd needed to do that whole time was adjust the method to suit the student better.

Jak, for his part, appreciated the distraction from his situation.

He couldn't leave. He didn't know where any of his friends were. He had lost muscle mass. But when Chiron showed up with more of those flimsy books, he could pretend he was somewhere else for a while.

He'd always been told to stick to fighting. To leave the thinking to people like Samos. That he was all muscle and no brain. And yet here he was, actually learning. And the people here actually believed he was capable of learning!*

And Jak...

Jak actually liked knowing new things.

Sure, he was no genius, and he never would be. But he liked learning. And he was good at memorizing things. It had been a survival tactic in Haven. He'd never expected it to apply to something that normal people got to do.

He didn't like all the tests. A quiz every other day felt superfluous. (Chiron's own fault for teaching Jak that word, he was absolutely using it against his teacher whenever possible.) And not every day was a good day.

Sometimes the memories were too close for other subjects to distract him.

Sometimes his hands hurt and he didn't want to practice writing.

Sometimes he was just...angry. Without a real reason or trigger.

He knew he was risking that foundling bureau keeping him longer if they thought he wasn't complying with the mandatory counseling. But he couldn't just turn that anger off like a switch.

He knew six weeks in that he'd been pushing it a little too often when Damas showed up with Chiron.

"Chiron told me you've been having a rough time with the nurses today," the king said calmly.

"Chiron needs to mind his own business," Jak retorted.

Damas was not impressed.

"He is, hotshot. You're his student."

When Jak didn't respond, he folded his arms.

"And, as much as you hate it, it's the nurses' business too."

Jak scowled and, ignoring protests, stood up on the cot to hoist himself up into the windowsill several feet above him.

"Yeah? For what?"

"Excuse me?"

Frustrated, Jak glared out the window.

"What's your end game here? Can't fight for anybody if I'm locked up here. So unless you people are running tests I don't know about-"

"You know rotting well no one is permitted to run tests without your permission."

"Permission?"

Jak scoffed.

"Why bother? It's not like I'm ever getting out of here. Can't fight back, there's nowhere to go."

Ah. One of those days.

Damas supposed he could've taken the boy to task over his attitude. Or he could've just let him sit with it. But he was not without sympathy for the frustration Jak had to be feeling.

"You will need some physical therapy before they release you at this rate," he acknowledged. "We should probably find out where your strength level is right now, shouldn't we."

Jak looked down from the window and narrowed his eyes.

"I don't trust that," he said, pointing. "What do you want?"

Oh, Dr. Goad was going to murder him for this. Ironically, Leon would probably be the only one in Damas’s corner this time.

"I'm offering a deal," he said. "You cooperate with the recovery plan as best you can this week, and in exchange, I'll let you do a pre-Trial assessment in the Arena."

"You'll what?!"

Chiron fairly trumpeted his outrage. "You can't just-! He's too young for that! The Bureau will have our heads!"

"I can make a one-time exception," Damas said, hiding his own second-guessing well. "Consider it an executive decision. Most of his peers have their own gate passes, or will by the end of the year. Look, if we want him to get outside occasionally, we're going to have to make some compromises."

Dr. Goad was going to murder him. Entirely possible that Dr. Petros would help.

But Damas had established as soon as Mar started teething that he was not above shameless bribery.

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippets: The Plunge

PREV

A short continuation, but an important one for later

It was one of the Loud Days again. When the guys at the other end of the recovery ward had their brothers over. Jak never knew if he was uncomfortable with their presence, or if he considered them safety in numbers. They took him out of the dormitory to weigh him, like every morning, which was a terror of its own. But sometimes Jak almost thought if he were to scream, the two non-patient brothers would run in just to see what the commotion was.

They were annoying sometimes, but at the moment he was considering them insurance.

He'd figured at first that they barely registered his presence. Just some glaring problem patient they could tune out.

But then the oldest of the quadruplets asked if he wanted any of the extra food they brought their brothers, "to piss off old Sawbones".

He'd accepted hesitantly, and that seemed to open a door.

They didn't have conversations, not directly, but the four spoke so that Jak could hear them. They indirectly included him in small ways — Jak was beginning to wonder if that food really had been "extra", or if it had been brought deliberately out of some kind of solidarity.

Solidarity. Yes, that's what it was.

It felt like the occasions when members of the Underground actually treated him like one of them and not a disposable weapon.

He wouldn't have called the brothers friends, but he was growing to appreciate their company.

Apparently, they didn't hate him, either, considering what they'd just given him.

Headphones.

Jak looked down at the cheap plastic and metal in his hands. The shiny blue paint would scratch off easily. And it wasn't likely to work outside of a certain distance from the talk-box. But it was a gift. A true gift, not an investment with strings attached for once. The brothers had given it to him because they could.

"Hey, easy, li'l biter," Cody said kindly, "If you start cryin' again, Dex here is gonna start blubberin, and when he cries he sounds like a beached whale!"

Dex punched Cody in the side. Echo helped.

Fox ignored all of them to hold out a small chip to Jak.

"It's not the best quality, but you stick that in your talk-box and then it plays music over the headphones. I think it's all guitar and harp, but there might be some flute on there. It wasn't labeled at the market."

When Jak had first gotten to know Sig, he'd assumed that the man was a singular individual. That his kindness in a city like Haven was a one-off. A fluke that couldn't be duplicated in other individuals. The world was hard, and cold, and mean. Innocence was hard to come by and harder to keep. Even if he had never left Sandover, Jak had already been past the point of a fully clean conscience. But Sig, Sig lived like he was a law unto himself. He functioned by a code, and by gods he'd tried his best to impart that code to Jak and Daxter.

At every turn, the city of Haven confirmed Jak's beliefs. Wretched souls at the bottom of the pit, clawing and grasping for the means to just survive the day while the privileged few looked down on them from the top of the heap like vultures. Jak broke the rules: Jak climbed out of the pit. And once he'd started gaining notoriety, the other wretches down below began to realize that escape was possible. They could assert themselves. There were more of them than the Council.

So obviously, Jak had to die. And the city shut its eyes and returned to its pit because the world was cold. The one exception to that world was Sig, and Haven made sure he and Daxter couldn't save Jak.

And yet.

And yet here in one of the harshest environments on this side of the world, there was kindness. Generosity. Jak didn't understand.

These people, even the elders, were warriors. Soldiers. A military class, in a brutally pragmatic city, ruled by a warlord who did not suffer fools gladly. And despite their clear superiority in training and combat, despite the power every single one of them had over Jak, they chose compassion.

It wasn't soft. Sometimes it wasn't kind. Often it was very unpleasant so far. But they'd scraped him off the ground and decided that they were going to put him back together come hell or high water. And now these visits from Brother Tam, and the things his "roommates" did-

Echo bringing more food than Cody and Dex needed and pretending it was an accident so that Jak had something other than the chalky protein drinks.

Dex interrupting a panic attack by teaching Jak new curse words in sign.

Someone changing the sheets on his cot every time he left to wander.

"I- you- why did you do this?"

Sometimes it reminded him of Sandover, when they'd still treated him like a child and not a tool for procuring orbs. But more often it reminded him of Sig. These were Wastelanders, like Sig. Was this desert community where he had learned that code? Even with how ready to kill these people were?

Jak looked up from the headphones.

"You don't even know me."

"And our stay's almost up," Cody added. He scratched his stubbly head and shrugged. "Sometimes the quiet's worse. When there's others, you can at least pretend you're in the youth barracks. But once we leave- well, we thought you could use something to drown out the silence."

"I mean, we kind of know you," Fox answered idly, "You been here two weeks with our idiots."

"I don't know what youth barracks are. Just that some bureau says I can't live there until Tam clears me."

It wasn't the first time someone had mentioned youth barracks. Did this city take kids to live and train as soldiers? He couldn't tell if that was at odds with what he'd experienced so far or not.

Cody blinked, and Dex held out a hand.

Echo rolled his eyes. "Youth barracks are just where kids old enough for training squads live one or two weeks out of the month. Well, except the ones without family to go back to, or whose families suck, they're there year-round."

"Pay up. Told you he was new."

That was likely where Jak would end up. If they ever let him leave this tower, anyway.

The four brothers exchanged glances, then looked back at him.

"Who are you fighting?"

Stiff and uncomfortable, Jak gestured to Echo's armor.

"What, like, right now? What do you mean?"

"All the soldiers. Training kids. Barracks. Who are you at war with?"

There was an awkward silence, as though Jak had asked something incredibly strange. The quadruplets poked at each other by turns as if trying to foist the burden of explaining off onto another. Cody seemed to come out on the losing end.

"Uh...the desert, I guess?"

The thin man made a face. "Yop. After Damas overthrew the bloody scumbag who had the Arena built, he changed the rules to give it a purpose."

"The desert."

"A purpose besides bloodsport," Fox grumbled.

"Well, there's a little bloodsport."

"Bloodsport is killin' without a purpose!" Fox argued.

"It's four different sports, people end up losing some blood, that's a blood-sport!" Cody retorted.

"Can't," Cody answered smugly, "You ain't got no hairs to split."

"Don't split hairs," Fox huffed.

Dex reached over to knock the pair's heads together without expression.

"That...makes sense, I guess," Jak allowed, if a little grudgingly.

"Short version," he sighed, "when it's not being used for Raidball, Asocc, or community events, the Arena simulates the main dangers you run into outside the walls. If newcomers want to get gate passes -- or jobs around here -- first they have to prove to the king that they can survive out there. No safety nets: if you slip up, you get injured or you die. So citizens start training early."

but I'm not a citizen. I'm a charity case at best and a prisoner at worst. Will they make me enter this Arena?

Jak slid the headphones over his ears and tuned out the brothers as they began to playfully bicker again. The padded circles weren't the most comfortable, but that was a small matter.

It was far more elaborate than the simple tunes he'd grown up hearing. Long, difficult measures meant to showcase the skill of the person playing some kind of stringed instrument -- if it was a guitar, it wasn't like the screeching things Jak heard on the saloon radio.

It did take some doing to get the chip into the rudimentary talk-box. It had been assigned to him as soon as Dr. Leon realized Jak was going to wander whether he liked it or not, and it was clearly a bare-minimum kind of device. But once it was in, a muffled melody crackled through the headphones and into his ears.

Spellbound, Jak sat at the end of his cot, hands over the earpieces. It sounded like-

The slopes on the way to the mountain temple came to mind. The song had no words, nothing to even hint at mountains. So why did it form a picture in his head? Had music ever done that for him before?

What did it sound like? Not something he'd heard before, but something it made him think of.

Jak blinked startled.

Jak was still sitting there, wide-eyed and silent, when they brought the protein shake. He barely acknowledged the nurse's presence at all. When Brother Tam made his afternoon visit, Jak was in his own little world. He rolled the protein bottle back and forth between his palms -- it was actually half empty.

"Oh. Hello, friend!" Tam smiled at him. "What's that you've got?"

Self-conscious now, Jak slid the headphones off and shifted his weight. He looked down at the protein bottle and made a face.

"Um. Uh it's-"

"Ugh, gross."

Tam stifled a chuckle. "It's quite a texture, isn't it? You know, It's funny that they've never found a way to take the chalkiness out. They tasted like that when I was a boy too."

"S'like prison food," Jak grumbled. "Less lumpy. Still chalk."

Jak gave him a dirty look.

The former monk's brows lifted. "Oh dear. Would you like me to have a word with Dr. Leon about other options?"

"Well now you sound like the king," Tam chuckled. "Leon is a strict man, yes. But he has to deal with Wastelanders, friend. The most obstinate people on the planet. But he doesn't go out of his way to make people miserable, I promise."

"No. He'll make up something worse."

Jak rolled his eyes.

But he was in a better mood than usual. He didn't immediately remind Tam that all his experience suggested that adults were never that trustworthy. He forced another sip down and shuddered.

Jak shrugged noncommittally. He wouldn't get his hopes up.

"Maybe we should try foods with high protein in them," Tam suggested. "I'll bring some next time."

The boy's eyes darted to the men at the other end of the room.

"What are those?" Tam asked, gesturing again to the headphones.

"They um. Gave them to me. For when it's too loud in my head."

"Oh!" The man's eyes crinkled at the corners with warmth.

He looked up, meeting Cody's eyes.

Cody shrugged with half a smile.

Thank you, he mouthed.

This, this was what Jak needed. Random acts of kindness from people with nothing to gain from it, just to remind the boy that he too was hu'men, that he too deserved more than just base survival.

It was a pity the brothers would be leaving soon. Tam wondered if he could convince them to visit Jak after their release. They were neither staff nor authority figures, after all. Jak was, even if just incrementally, a little more open with them.

It was a hopeful sign for the File.

[radioactivepeasant]

Apparently it's been two years since the last time I updated Faulty Info?

The "chaos writing" method has some drawbacks 😅

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43275193/chapters/230188111

Nevertheless! Next chapter is up!

[radioactivepeasant]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43275193/chapters/230758926

NEXT CHAPTER FINALLY

[i-lavabean]

[radioactivepeasant]

Apparently it's been two years since the last time I updated Faulty Info?

The "chaos writing" method has some drawbacks 😅

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43275193/chapters/230188111

Nevertheless! Next chapter is up!

[i-lavabean]

Drawing is weird because sometimes you can spend hours on something getting every detail right and sometimes you scribble something in thirty seconds and accidentally create a new favorite little guy

[i-lavabean]

Behold. A Friend

[radioactivepeasant]

Had an idea of Dark Jak with a poncho and a filtration mask that he definitely has for missions and not because he and Keira were repainting another zoomer you definitely can't prove used to belong to Veger.

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippets: Free Day Friday

(now that the notes app actually lets me copy text again 😅)

PREV

(Jak's been in recovery in Spargus for a month, and they've finally gotten him to where he instinctively feels safe enough for an unpleasantly necessary catharsis. When I first wrote this part two-ish years ago, it was longer, but there wasn't a good transition between scenes that satisfied me, so I'm breaking it into two parts lol)

Damas was less surprised than he thought he'd be when he received a message that week inquiring as to whether his busy schedule might permit a visit to the Convalescence Ward -- or whether one of its inmates might be given a temporary pass to visit him.

The enigmatic boy was in the midst of a kind of dark night of the soul. If the ever-growing folder was to be taken as any indication of past patterns, this could very well have been the first time in many years his body was being allowed to fully recover. Which meant an idle mind unbothered by the pressing needs of fight and flight. The aftermaths of many battles could haunt a man during those times.

Jak had more to haunt him than most.

The Guard had been...slightly more cooperative the last time Damas interrogated him. And he'd had nothing kind to say about the young rebel who supposedly delivered his city from its tyrants. Macon was mostly silent on the topic of Jak, but enough was said to let Damas read between the lines.

As they'd suspected, Jak was a survivor of multiple war crimes. And he hadn't even grown his wisdom teeth yet.

Some alterations were made to the standard procedure around his recovery plan once they had a slightly clearer picture of what he'd endured before. And the kid had been surprised by the accommodations. Surprised that they would've been done sooner if he'd asked for them.

He was not used to being treated like an actual kid.

He was not used to being treated like what he wanted or needed mattered. In fact, it seemed more like he was accustomed to not saying when he needed something because it would guarantee the exact opposite effect.

It was hardly surprising, then, that when given time to reflect, the boy would have a great many inner demons to face.

And given Jak's status as an unaccompanied minor foundling, it was as much Damas’s responsibility as everyone else's to help him find his way. Especially if the Bureau had no immediate plans to release him to barracks' custody.

Brother Tam believed music was having a positive effect on the patient — unsurprising, Brother Tam was a strong supporter of using creative outlets to deal with stress or strong emotions.

Damas didn't share his music, generally. He didn't mind if people overheard, but he did not play for audiences. Those days were long over. When he played the lyre, it was for the benefit of his own soul and no other's.

But for a young man -- a kid, honestly -- suffering as badly as he once had,

Well.

That wasn't so terrible of a sacrifice to make.

It wasn't Tam who brought the boy to the eleventh floor of the citadel. Jak stood in sullen silence, projecting hostility like a shield, just behind one of the Convalescence Ward's security staff. The boy's eyes were red again. Whether from tears or lack of sleep, Damas didn't know.

"Thank you," Damas said to the guard, and nodded to the stairs. "You can go."

The Wastelander glanced at Jak, clearly skeptical of leaving him alone on a high-security floor. Damas cleared his throat, and the guard quickly stepped out of the landing.

"Don't give him any trouble, pipsqueak," he warned Jak. He continued to eye the kid with veiled suspicion until he was out of sight.

After six different worker's comp filings in Ward Two, Jak had gotten himself a little bit of a reputation.

Damas folded his hands behind his back and observed the teenager for several seconds.

"Need somewhere to vent?" he asked after a moment.

Jak's shoulders hunched.

"Not gonna talk about it. Tired of talking."

It had very quickly become obvious that Jak held very little stock in hierarchy. He spoke to everyone the same way, whether they were a king or a stray dogat. At first, it had been a source of great irritation to Damas. He'd reigned fourteen years in this unforgiving wasteland, and his reputation was well earned...to everyone except this impudent child that fell from the sky. Being addressed as an annoying peer by the boy had been a bit insulting for a while.

Now it was beginning to grow on him. It was akin to the honest simplicity of someone raised in the country. Almost a naivety -- although such a word felt wrong to apply to Jak after how much he'd endured.

"Well I hadn't planned on having any long conversations tonight either," Damas said to the boy, "so you're in good company."

Jak clung to his poorly constructed mask of anger until the door to Damas’s quarter locked behind them. In the privacy of the sitting room, the fight went out of the boy at a jarring speed.

"When do your eyes go back to normal?"

Damas paused with his hand on the door still.

"I don't follow."

Brusquely, Jak gestured to his reddened eyes.

"You know what it's like. So when do your eyes stop hurting? When does your body stop doing...this?"

Ah.

"When," Damas said hesitantly, "when there are no more tears to cry, I'm afraid. Catharsis is a messy business."

The answer clearly wasn't the one the boy had hoped for. A bit downcast, he rubbed his eyes.

"...when do people stop asking you what's wrong?"

Damas blinked. "You're in a recovery ward, son. That's part of their job."

"It's not nurses." Jak hunched his shoulders and continued to stand awkwardly, stiffly, at the edge of the sitting room.

"It's the four guys on the other end of the room."

Four?

"There are only supposed to be two other patients right now," Damas said with a frown. "Who got hurt this time?"

Those hunched shoulders lifted in a listless shrug.

"Nobody. Their brothers keep coming in to bug 'em. And me."

Ah. Yes, that sounded more accurate for Wastelanders.

"And you need space so you can hear yourself think?" offered Damas, giving him a way out without having to talk about his inner turmoil.

He stepped back and waved to the couch.

"Come on then, it's no good just standing there, boy."

Jak was reluctant to follow. But he eased around the stocky furniture, never turning his back on Damas for a moment.

That put his eyes on uncomfortable display.

Reddened and inflamed they might've been, but he knew that shade of blue just a little too well. And he knew the shape of the socket around them.

They were too close to his own eyes.

By what trick or coincidence of blood do you exist, little one?

Jak looked exhausted. He hadn't come to a point of acceptance about all that he'd endured yet, if Damas were to guess. Honestly, he would probably never be fully "over it." Even when he'd cried every last tear and been left hollow, the scars remained. Damas had days when his duties were all that kept him moving. When the emptiness of the chambers crushed his lungs. Two years lessened the pain from the shadow of death to something survivable.

"....when do the nightmares stop?"

Damas’s face did not betray his emotions, but inside he was wincing.

From everything he'd heard, for the kid to have even asked the question at all was a drastic departure from his usual hostility. Whatever Tam was doing, it was apparently working. He wasn't at rock bottom, but he was close enough to see the rocks.

"I can't answer that, kid," Damas sighed. "It's- sometimes they don't stop. They just get...they turn into regular nightmares. Stupid ones. Takes time though. And allies."

The boy made a bitter sound and drew his knees to his chest.

"Yeah well. They didn't throw mine out with me. I don't...know where he is."

His voice grew softer.

"I don't even know if he's alive."

Ah, there were the signs of suppressed tears. The boy's body was trying to cue him to release stress but he wasn't allowing it.

Something was wrong.

Not in the general sense. Just looking at the foundling, Damas knew something wasn't right. His skin was pale -- unnaturally so. His hair was pale. Damas heard soft clicks, pops-

Gods and Precursors it was his skeleton.

The instant he saw blackened bone rising from between loose braids, Damas’s heart sank.

The boy might have escaped the experiments, but it left him with more than just physical and psychological scars.

Would the horns dominate his skull like the second body they'd found?

Or would his limbs wither like the fourth?

Damas remembered the sixth, fingers nothing but exposed bone sharpened into hooked claws.

No. No, he wasn't going to sit and find out.

Jak was spiraling. There was enough in his body to create eco without falling into ketosis. There was enough that he couldn't hold back a transformation any more.

Would they put him in solitary once they realized the KG was right about him?

A cage?

An operating theater?

A morgue?

Cold hands clamped around the sides of his head and he snarled. It wasn't anger. He was angry so often, but that wasn't what had triggered the shift.

It was fear.

Fear for Daxter, left alone on that air train with Veger and Ashelin.

The cold seeped through his temples, wrapping around his skull to force its way inside. Instinctively, Jak struggled. His movements and thoughts seemed slowed, like time wasn't working correctly. Like a thick gel covered his brain.

"Stop fighting it. You're out of balance."

Damas was behind the couch. Those were his hands wrapped around Jak’s skull.

"Find your current, boy."

Balance? Current-?

Eco.

Light eco.

But he wasn't hurt?

It felt wrong. It felt so wrong. Like it had stopped time. His breaths were too far apart. His eyes refused to blink.

"Come on. Come on, kid, you can do this."

There was a strain in Damas’s voice. Jak didn't know what it meant.

"Don't shield your core. Let it do its job."

Two years of excruciating pain had taught Jak to automatically resist any eco he didn't consciously channel himself. It took a full fifty seconds to muscle past instinct and let the light eco travel down his spinal cord to the eco core.

The pain subsided, the cold dissipated. The panic remained.

Damas let out a relieved breath.

"Good man," he said wearily. "Alright, we're alright."

Jak's hands were brown again. He turned them over to look at the inch-wide scarred patch across the back of the left. In his periphery, Damas appeared to drop to the seat on the other end of the couch. His legs were shaking. Why were his legs shaking?

"Haven't had to siphon out of my own core in a while," the king grunted, "I'm out of practice. I'm just- just going to rest for a minute."

He reached for something under the couch. Jak didn't look up. He heard the sound of rustling canvas, and a zipper, but he was overdrawn. Exhausted in body and mind.

Daxter I'm so sorry-! I should have grabbed you. I could've kept you from hitting the ground, I know I could've. I failed, I failed, I'm sorry!

He missed the first two notes, low and quick. Then a third, higher and easier to hear, began to break through the fog. It felt like a thread -- like the silk ball Mother Spider gave the hu'men girl in the only fairytale Uncle knew start to finish. Meant to tether her to the living even when she had to go down among the Forgotten to retrieve the stolen sun.

Jak followed the thread back to his body. He was breathing. He was reasonably whole. He could leave if he wanted to.

Jak repeated this to himself again and again as the musical phrase repeated.

Damas seemed to have forgotten his guest even existed. He was huddled in the corner of the couch, staring at nothing as his fingers moved along the lyre like they possessed a mind of their own.

The tune was familiar. He'd heard it somewhere in Haven before, but he couldn't place it. There was something melancholy about it that felt appropriate.

For one absurd moment, Jak wished he could gather the notes out of the air and weave them into a band he could wear around his head. That way he could listen to the instrument whenever he needed it.

There was so little music in Haven.

"Usually I just go shoot something," Damas said unexpectedly. "But I can't always do that. So."

He paused to slightly lift the lyre.

"It gets me out of my head when I can't do anything else."

Then, meaningfully,

"It helps with the nightmares."

Jak hunched over, fingers laced together with white knuckles.

"You...turned it off."

Damas cycled through a breath.

"...yeah. Has it happened before?"

"I-" Jak curled further inward. "A- a lot. In Haven. The guard probably told you."

After a moment, the lyre began again.

"I won't tell anyone," said Damas placidly. "Seems like a useful secret to have up your sleeve in a fight."

Useful? The dark form? Useful for destroying things, maybe.

Why were Wastelanders so...

Jak didn't know what to call them. They were not soft. But compared to Haven?

"Brother Tam will probably come looking for me if I don't go back," he mumbled after the melody had changed twice.

"How many sessions are you up to now?"

Jak would've glared if he'd had even a little energy for it.

"I dunno. Leon makes me talk to him every day."

Damas did the glaring for him.

"Leon thinks everyone in the world should be as miserable and humorless as he is."

He shrugged. "But until Tam makes an appearance, you can stay if you like."

He pretended he was playing to settle his own nerves.

But he suspected the boy knew it was for him as well as Damas did.

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippets Thursday: The Plunge

Follow-up to THIS

In which Jak has been dealing with both how normal doctors work and being held accountable for choosing violence when other options were available. He isn't enjoying it. Brother Tam (monk oc inspired by Mister Rogers) is doing his best here

TW for discussions of mental health and mentioned use of sedatives in the context of preventing a patient from harming themselves or others. It's an angsty chapter,but necessary for Jak to start letting himself heal 😭

By the time Dr. Goad approved moving Jak, he'd been in Ward Two for four weeks.

For a month.

A month of hourly checks and pain medication and people touching him, his bandages. A month without privacy, or more than the barest shreds of autonomy.

The smell of antiseptic made him sick, but he couldn't get away from it.

It didn't hurt to get up and move anymore, but he wasn't allowed to leave.

And now there were security guards outside his room.

It was their own fault, they shouldn't have tried checking vitals without waking him up first. Jak wasn't sorry for attacking Berto. He wasn't sorry for attacking any of them.

He'd do it again if it meant getting out, avoiding the slop that was supposed to fix his poor nutrition, allegedly.

He'd heard some of the staff talking about moving him to "Phoenix Block" if he continued to be violent. The high-security wing of the "children's hospital", supposedly, where the hourly checks were closer to every twenty minutes, and all the doors required passkeys to open.

Jak knew prison when he heard it.

He was getting out of here. He didn't want to have to kill anyone, but if that's what it took to get away, he'd do it.

When Dr. Goad woke him up on the thirty-second day in Spargus and told him to get dressed, told him he was being transferred to "Convalesence Ward" in a separate facility entirely, he thought maybe it was a reprieve. That he wouldn't need to kill anyone after all.

He'd made the minimum weight requirement to be allowed to leave the immediate supervision of the pediatricians, he was told, but that it was in his best interests not to deliberately antagonize the head of C-Ward, Dr. Leon.

"If you attack him, he will defend himself and you will not like it," Goad warned as she handed him a small canvas bag with a copy of his treatment plan in it. "You're also going to start speaking to one of our counselors-"

"Good luck with that," Jak hissed.

As usual, Goad wasn't fazed.

"The Foundling Bureau has determined that you must complete minimum twelve anger management sessions if you want them to even consider moving you to the youth barracks with your peers."

"And I'm supposed to care what some Bureau wants because-?"

"Because you're a Foundling, kid. That means you're a ward of the state until you're twenty-one. The state handles cost of living, education, medical bills etc. But they also get to make the call on when you're ready to be integrated into the rest of the city."

Goad nudged his shoulder.

"Let's go. Stick with your treatment plan, don't try to kill anyone, and maybe you'll be earning your gate pass before Rainfall."

The first week in C-Ward was a nightmare.

No walls, just curtains between two rows of beds. No lock on the door. Jak could see armed men walking that hall every hour. The one with the glass eye definitely didn't like him.

Probably because Jak headbutted him and broke his nose. Served him right for getting so close.

Dr. Leon was not a "pediatrician." He got all the stubborn adult patients, and he coddled no one, especially not "upstarts with too much punch in their system." A battle of wills always ended in Leon's favor. Always. Violence resulting in deliberate injury was not tolerated. Doing something that could cause harm to himself or staff meant sedation, since he'd been promised that no restraints were to be used except as an absolute last resort.

Jak had learned after two involuntary sedations not to try to kill him. He had eyes on the back of his head, always seemed to know when Jak was about to strike.

He also had an unholy level of patience for outlasting defiant patients. And he wouldn't leave unless Jak drank the disgusting protein mix. If he wanted what little privacy the curtains provided, he had to take the formulated mixture.

Jak hated it. And he was pretty sure he hated Leon, too.

They didn't make him stay in bed if he couldn't sleep at least. And they'd told him at the outset that they wouldn't sedate him at night unless he requested it — and he never would. At least Jak could say that about this tower. They just made him go with someone if he wandered, allegedly so he wouldn't get lost.

Usually it was the man with the faded red blotch on his forehead. Brother Tam. The '"mandatory counselor". He'd showed up the day Jak threw the protein bottle at Leon's nurse.

Leon wouldn't let Jak leave the room until he'd cleaned up the mess.

Jak wished he'd thrown the bottle at Leon.

But Brother Tam didn't snap or scold. He sat down on the floor and gently asked Jak to hand him a towel. He just...talked, about things that had nothing to do with the situation.

Jak wouldn't have even considered touching the rag, just to spite Leon. But he didn't like the idea of a little old man cleaning his mess. That wasn't how the world worked.

Tam didn't gloat, or even say a word about his acquiescence. He asked instead if Jak wanted to go exploring with him to find the laundry chute.

Jak didn't know what to make of Brother Tam. He spoke to Jak like he was a young child, and that was infuriating. But he'd started bringing bribes for not getting into fights, and he had all these weird ideas about self-worth that made Jak feel a little bad about getting angry with him.

It was one of the nights when sleep wasn't coming to him. Leon had left the ward already, and Jak didn't care enough to even feel relieved.

Tam found him sitting in the hallway outside the ward dormitory, looping a bit of string around and around his fingers. Too tightly, but he needed that sense of compression. He needed grounding at the moment.

"Good evening, friend."

The elderly man smiled down at him.

"You look like you have a lot of thoughts tonight. I find that when I have too many thoughts to sleep, it helps to take a walk. Do you want to take a walk with me?"

Jak shrugged. He didn't really "want" to do anything. But he didn't...didn't not want to do anything, either. He couldn't explain the sensation. Tam reached into the tote bag he always carried and brought out that stupid cardboard circle with the seven colors on it. Emotion spinner, he called it. Each color represented a different feeling. Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, excited -- that one never got used -- confused, and one vaguely the color of oatmeal that Brother Tam referred to as "the blah."

"How are you feeling tonight, friend?" Tam asked.

Jak waited a few minutes before cooperating. He always did. So far, Tam was a lot more patient than some of the hospital nurses. Definitely gave him his space more than Leon.

Jak needed a couple more instances before he could say with any confidence that this wasn't an act.

After a moment, Jak pointed to the oatmeal colored triangle.

He didn't really feel anything right now. Just sort of numb to everything.

Tam nodded as if this made perfect sense.

"There's nothing wrong with feeling that way," he assured Jak, "Sometimes when we've been hurt very badly for a long time, it's hard for our brains to make the right amounts of chemicals that make us feel happy or excited about things. They've been more focused on survival. But that's okay!"

He reached out to offer Jak a hand up. As always, Jak brushed him off to haul himself to his feet. He needed to know he could still do it himself.

"After the last couple days I think we've explored all the way to the ground floor on this side of the citadel," Tam said as if he hadn't noticed, "Shall we try going up a few floors tonight?"

Jak shrugged. He didn't have an opinion one way or another.

Tam kept up a steady stream of talk in a low, soothing voice as they walked. Nothing of importance, just comments about architecture, counting the number of stairs they walked as if he were a child, the same thing as always.

The difference came when they'd reached the huge open chasm that supposedly led to the very top of the tower. There was a sound coming from one of the floors above them, something Jak would not have expected in a million years.

Music.

Not the tinny, garbled voices on the radio in the saloon, or like when Tess hummed, or even his own whistling in happier times. This was an instrument. Not a recording, it was real. Jak could hear the deep notes of strings being plucked and stilled in a familiar melody. If he remembered it, Jak supposed the song must have been very old indeed.

*A Stillness in the Rain". That's what the song was called. And Jak-

Jak remembered.

He remembered Uncle teaching him to play the first four notes on his lumpy clay ocarina -- it was all it was capable of.

Brother Tam seemed to realize Jak wasn't with him and turned to find him frozen on the steps, head tilted back and listening. The old monk cocked his ears in the same direction until he too picked up the sound. A warmth spread across his face as he returned to stand with Jak.

"It's the king," he said softly. "It has been...years, since the last time he played."

"Harp?" Jak asked -- signed, lest he miss a single note.

"A lyre, I think," Tam answered. "I'm glad to hear it again. Music is a balm to a troubled soul."

"He forgot a measure," Jak said in observation. He wasn't really talking to Tam so much as just signing his stream of consciousness.

"That's alright. That part's hard."

"Oh?" The monk turned to more fully face him, a sparkle in his brown eyes.

"I didn't know you knew this song, friend."

"Uncle taught me."

Uncle wasn't much of a musician, but he thought it important to pass on the traditional folk songs of the Hill Country, where he'd grown up.

Was there any Hill Country left now, after the Metalhead Wars?

The metalheads...

Jak had never stopped to think about it -- rather, he'd deliberately avoided thinking about it -- but Sandover was the epicenter of the original invasion. None of the villagers could fight, they'd just used Jak for that! They were old!

They were dead.

All of them. Every single person he'd ever known growing up. Every inhabitant of the coastal villages was long, long dead.

I didn't say goodbye.

Somehow, that was the thought he kept circling around to, again and again.

I didn't get to tell Uncle goodbye.

I never got the chance-

He died without ever knowing what happened to me.

Sandover was gone.

Home was gone.

His childhood was gone.

"For the greater good."

All Jak had to show for that "greater good" was a handful of ruined huts and a melody. Did anyone even know the words anymore?

Jak's chest burned. His throat felt clogged. Tight. He had to move. Escape. If he didn't get out, he was going to-

The first hiccuping breath was soft enough to escape notice at first.

Not the second.

Nor the third.

He couldn't breathe through his nose, his face was hot- it was like having a fever.

Fitting, he felt sick.

Tam was talking to him, calling his name- it didn't matter. Jak couldn't focus on that at the moment and he wouldn't have cared if he could.

Haven had taken more from Jak than just his innocence and his freedom.

They took his home. They took Daxter when they threw Jak away.

Jak had nothing.

He didn't even have the clothes on his back anymore. Precursors only knew what had happened to those.

A heaving sob shook his entire body -- he was going to throw up, he knew he was going to throw up -- he couldn't see.

At some point he must have backed against the wall, because he remembered sliding down to sit on the stairs, just so he wouldn't topple off into the chasm.

Palms pressed against his eyes, teeth gritted uselessly against the next tremor to rock him.

Jak cried as he had not cried since he was a very small child. It was near silent then, too. Silence was safety.

But he couldn't manage complete silence this time. Hot tears burned against his palms, mucus clogged his nose and ran down his upper lip. It was ugly, and painful.

Like becoming his darker form.

An inane thought passed through his mind, a half-formed comparison of dark eco to grief that he never completed.

"Jak, are you hurting, friend?" asked Brother Tam. He sat down on the step just above Jak and placed his wrinkled hand on Jak’s shoulder.

"I'm very sorry that you're hurting right now. But it's good that you can cry. That sounds strange, doesn't it? But it's true."

"Uncle's dead."

His hands shook, slurring some of his words.

"Everyone's dead. I never got to say goodbye."

Tam made a noise of understanding. "You lost your family?"

"Not lost." Jak raised his eyes, but could barely make out the monk's shape.

What a stupid oversimplification. Lost, like they'd vanished at sea. No, Jak knew exactly what had happened to them. Samos took him through that bloody Rift Gate and left them to die.

Rationally, he knew they would have died too if they'd stayed. But knowing that Samos knew all along who was waiting on the other side did not incline him to be charitable.

"Haven destroys everything good. Why-"

Why do they hate me so much?

Why was nothing I did ever good enough for any of them? I tried so hard!

Hands went back to his face, hiding eyes stained scarlet. His kaftan sleeves were soaked, a mess of tears and snot. He gripped a handful of his own hair, desperate to ground himself.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

An authoritative voice rang out above them.

"...oh, excuse us, sire. I don't suppose you have any water with you?" asked Tam placidly.

Heavy boots thudded down the stone stairs, echoing off the chasm walls over Jak's quiet, hiccuping sobs.

"What's wrong with him?" Damas demanded, "Is he hurt?"

Brother Tam folded his hands and shook his head.

"I don't think this is a wound recently given, sire. I think Jak may be acknowledging wounds he received a long time ago."

Jak curled into himself, as if he could hide from the men. He couldn't think beyond the oily black sorrow. He had to expel it. Vomit it out before it could choke him.

Tam stood and turned a very serious gaze to the king. He gestured upwards towards the floor Damas had come down from.

"Young Jak heard the song you were playing. He told me his uncle once taught him that melody, too."

The monk winced sympathetically.

"His uncle was killed, I think. And his community, by the sound of it."

Some of the tension eased in Damas’s shoulders, leaving them to bow under an empathetic weight.

"Did he lose all of his family? Has he no parents?"

Tam raised a hand. "I wouldn't ask just now, my lord. Some things a man's just got to process on his own time. This young man's been fighting for an awfully long time. Go ahead and let him cry himself out. It'll be good for him."

"Good for him? He sounds like he's going to throw up!" Damas protested.

"That's why I asked for water."

With a mildly chagrined expression, Damas unhooked a flask from his belt and held it out.

"Not much, I'm afraid."

Tam knelt and tapped Jak's shoulder.

"Jak? Do you think you can drink some water?"

Jak pulled away and shook his head. Just leave him! Just- Just let him be!

Damas took a step down and nodded meaningfully to the boy.

"This isn't the appropriate place to deal with this. Bring him up to my chambers."

The tide had ebbed for the moment when Tam pulled Jak to his feet and led him upstairs. His head ached, and his eyes throbbed, and that catch in his chest told him this was not over. Five years he'd gone without shedding a single tear and now he couldn't make them stop. He hated it. He hated himself. He must have looked so pathetic!

The room they took him to was dimly lit, and Jak didn't bother looking beyond the flagstone floor and a few patterned rugs. A stronger hand than Tam's took hold of his arm and pulled him across the room to a battered settee that had likely been green at some point. Damas barely had to push to get him to collapse onto the couch. Jak stared blankly at the floor with hollow red eyes. The violence of the tears had inflamed the blood vessels in his sclera badly.

Damas walked away, leaving Jak in a kind of limbo between the waves of repressed pain and grief striking him. Tam took his place, easing down beside him.

"Lord Damas hoped you might feel a little bit safer in here," he explained.

"I know this is hard, and I think this will probably be hard for you for a good while. But you're not alone, you've got Dr. Leon in C-Ward, and you've got me, and the king-"

"Don't put Leon in that list, he's terrible," Damas interrupted.

"Only if you avoid scheduled health examinations, sire."

"He's terrible," Damas said again.

Jak jumped when something cold and wet was draped over his hand.

"Wash your face," Damas said gruffly. He nodded to the cloth. "And hold that against your eyes until it isn't cold anymore."

Hesitantly, Jak did as he was told. His skin chafed against it, but it was a kind of relief. Faintly, he could hear the sounds of a whispered disagreement between Damas and Tam. That was almost enough to make him curious, but not quite. Tam, oddly, did not win the disagreement. There was a note of disapproval in his gentle voice when he announced that he would just be in the other room.

Jak focused all his attention on stifling the tears, ruthlessly forcing them back into their box. He was showing weakness. He was showing that he could be broken. It had to stop.

"Did they take everyone?"

The sudden question startled him, but he managed not to visibly jolt. When he raised his head slightly, he found Damas sitting across from him, elbows resting on his knees. Upon making eye contact, the king asked another question.

"You didn't get the chance for closure, did you?"

How could he know that? How could some warlord king know anything about grief?

When Damas spoke again, he sounded as though he were talking to himself more than Jak.

"It happens so fast. One moment you have a- a home. It's not perfect. Some of it is harsh and cold. But it's the only thing you've ever known. And then one day you blink and home is gone. One day you blink and there are people you trusted abandoning you in hell."

Jak's head shot the rest of the way up.

"Why do you know that?!"

Damas gave him a grim smile. Not so much sympathy as understanding.

"Many Wastelanders' stories begin the same way, my friend. Mine does."

Then he leaned forward, clearly struggling to find the right words.

"You're not...not alone."

He made a sound that might've been a bitter laugh.

"No one in Spargus is. We're the forgotten ones, we kind of have to stick together. No one else is going to watch our backs."

NEXT

[i-lavabean]

Bode Akuna

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Pokemonday

The Phantump had been watching them for a while. Every time they glanced at it, the little Ghost-type would dart behind a bush or tree.

Rue adjusted her backpack and shrugged. Most of the wild Pokemon around Anville Town either left humans alone, or gravitated towards young Trainers who were clearly looking for partners. Adults with careers that did not involve battling didn't seem to interest the wild Pokemon who had become accustomed to them. Seeing as she worked in the Pokemart, Rue figured the Phantump would have figured out by now that attaching itself to her would not lead to a life of travel.

But the Phantump didn't go away.

Rue's partner wasn't reacting as if the Phantump wanted to battle. Of course, Bonsai was a seven foot Rillaboom, and tended not to feel threatened by most of the smaller Pokemon in the woods. But when Rue looked more closely, the expression in Bonsai's eyes was not indifference, but curiosity.

Rue put down her basket of pechaberries and glanced over her shoulder. As expected, the Phantump squeaked and dropped out of sight.

"What do you think, bud?" Rue asked her partner.

Bonsai sat down with a heavy thud and, after a moment's contemplation, answered with the Unova Sign Language for "baby".

(Rue's mother had always insisted on treating her daughter and her Pokemon equally. If Rue went to school, Bonsai went to school. If Rue got an allowance, Bonsai did too. She'd worked very hard to teach the Grookey to talk, like a Meowth she'd once seen. After some trial and error, they'd learned that Bonsai took to USL more quickly than other languages they'd tried.)

"Yeah...a baby..." Rue answered faintly.

She knew the stories about how Phantumps were formed. And she knew these woods had claimed their share of victims over the decades. Rue wasn't sure she wanted to follow the Phantump anywhere. You never knew if that was going to lead to old caution tape and a forensics team, or getting terribly lost.

"Baby come home," Bonsai decided.

That shook Rue out of her thoughts. "Wait, what? Bud, bud no."

"Baby come HOME." Bonsai's hands brooked no argument.

The Rillaboom grunted and stood up, then shuffled toward the bushes. He held his hands out, making gentle huffing sounds as he tried to lure the Phantump out. It must have piqued the Phantump's curiosity, because a little wooden mask peeped out of a bush and made an inquiring trill. Bonsai scooped the Ghost-type up triumphantly and held it under the arms to show his human partner.

The Phantump didn't seem panicked, or agitated in any way. In fact, it almost seemed like it had gotten what it wanted.

Rue scratched her head and stared at the little Pokemon. "Were you just shy or something?"

In response, the Phantump covered its eyes and then pulled its stubby hands away with a cheerful squeal. Rue couldn't help cooing a little at the display. Geez, she was as bad as Bonsai about cute things.

"You were playing peekaboo?"

The Phantump nodded, pleased that someone finally understood. None of the other Pokemon in the woods ever wanted to play with it. It trilled and clapped its tiny hands. Finally! Someone to play with!

Rue took the Phantump from Bonsai and tickled its shadowy body. "Well, okay. I think we can stay and play for a little while. But once the sun starts going down, we have to go home."

She'd barely finished the last word before the Phantump let out a dismayed wail and clung to her shirt. When several gentle attempts did not dislodge the little thing, Rue sent a helpless look at her partner.

Bonsai looked unreasonably smug. He signed, "Baby come home," with an air of finality.

Rue sighed. "Yeah, I guess so."

Little did she know that the Phantump later known as Coda was only the first of her Rillaboom's sudden spree of adopting unattended baby Pokemon.

[radioactivepeasant]

Nfjsjfiahsg I forgot about this

[radioactivepeasant]

Sometimes Chris makes questionable parenting choices 😅

(Chris and Micah — and baby Nihilo — are ocs I created 11 years ago. Micah is also a shapeshifter, but can only turn into one other thing that is most definitely not a collectible plushie, and he's judging Chris right now as if he's never convinced the baby to turn into something weird either)