Been thinking Too Much (TM) about Jak and Daxter on Main and having Completely Normal emotional reactions. And did a lot of thinking about other characters seeing Dark Jak for the first time and how uncontrollable it really is.
Thought about what if Sig was the first person to see Dark Jak in action. Maybe started writing a little something. We'll see how far it goes. Might be a whole story one day. Right now it's a slightly cleaned up first draft.
Gonna give a content warning for Graphic Descriptions of Violence and Physical Trauma and Discomfort (coming out of Dark Mode is a lot worse for Jak than the games showed)
That first mission to hunt Metalheads at the pumping station doesn't go exactly according to plan.
Enjoy!
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From the corner of his eye, Sig saw Jak take the head off one of the grunts with a pointblank shot. The kid winced as he was showered with tainted metal head blood. Gross, but he would survive. Jak was holding his own just fine. Having an extra set of eyes on a swivel on his shoulder didn't hurt either.
That was all the thought he could spare, as he had his own wave of metal heads and aggressive creatures to deal with. Jak was watching his six, he'd watch the kid's.
Sig lifted his rifle and fired, staying aware of his surroundings but focusing on getting the best shot. Jak's scatter gun wouldn't do much against the armored grunts, not efficiently. And they were too small to waste any of Peacie's ammo on them. A well-placed shot or two with a blaster would go right between the armor plates and take them down.
His focus broke when a cry that was half-strangled agony and half -animal snarl rang out.
"Jak?" He snapped around to look, half afraid to find the kid in the jaws of a metalhead.
Jak had dropped his gun. He bowed over and gripping at himself as if in deep pain.
A gutshot?
Metalheads were pressing in towards the kid. Sig took one down and his distraction was rewarded with claws in his back and teeth snapping at his neck armor.
He flipped the metalhead over his shoulders and took it out with a single shot to the skull. Firing quickly he picked off the other monsters that were running up to swamp him. He backed up slowly until the back of his heels hit something solid and limp on the ground. Jak had gone down.
Damnit.
Sig heard that howl again. Then the meaty collision of bodies. Daxter was shouting something.
He turned to look over his shoulder. His blood froze and he nearly swung his gun around even as more metalheads were racing right towards him.
Something new had joined the fray. Smaller than the metalheads, fast, vicious. It leapt at them, striking with sharp claws.
Sig couldn’t begin to guess what the fuck that thing was, but it wasn’t trying to kill him. Yet.
More immediate threats first.
He kept an eye on the new monster in flashes of spare concentration. Waiting for the moment it turned its attention to him.
It was ghastly pale, gray and purplish like an eco-poisoned corpse. It leapt at the metalheads, sinking claws between armor plates and fangs into exposed flesh. Opening great wounds, tearing out chunks of sinewy muscle.
It broke bone and armor with a strength unexpected in its compact frame.
Sig shot the last metalhead and snapped around, leveling his gun at the new monster. It was finishing off its final kill.
They were the last two things standing on the beach.
The thing smelled like acrid blood and reptilian musk and ozone. Dark Eco.
Sig knew a metalhead when he smelled one.
He locked onto the monster, calculating the best places to shoot to cripple it, where to hit to kill it. It would move fast, he would have to shoot faster.
And then details started registering.
Horns curving up from a mane of white hair. Talons, fangs; bloodied. Soulless obsidian eyes. A blue tunic, white pants. A streak of orange on the shoulder, hands tugging back on the horns as if steering.
He looked down at the body he'd been protecting. A headless metalhead.
Daxter watched him, tense, wary. Speaking in that things ear in a low murmur.
Jak (?) stood there, panting to catch his breath, frozen in a readied pose, staring unblinking at the gun. Ready to spring at Sig the instant he let his guard down.
Sig considered it for a long moment. He hadn't survived this long by being stupid.
“Oh, fuck it.” He swore under his breath.
He engaged the safety. The rifle powered down.
Daxter sighed audibly in relief.
Xx
Jak tasted blood in his mouth. Bile and ozone in the back of his throat. The pain of his horns and claws retracting was excruciating – skin splitting, bones restructuring. Acid pumped through his veins. He clutched at his skull to keep it from bursting apart.
Cold damp sand came into focus just in time for him to stagger a few steps and retch.
He vomited up bile and stomach acid, the remains of his meager breakfast, his canteen of water, fetid metalhead blood leeched of eco but still a poisonous purple, his own blood red and fresh, and when those were expelled, a thick, black tar-like substance that choked him.
The spasms continued for a long minute even after there was nothing left, wracking him with continuous pain as if it might expel what the Baron did to him. As if the monster could be thrown up like a bad meal.
Jak coughing dryly, trying to gather enough breath and saliva to clear the taste from his mouth, to weakly spit out one remaining gob of tar.
His legs gave out, muscles weak and burning, trembling with the effort of just holding his bones together.
That was the worst it had ever been. He only remembered flashes, sensations, his body moving in ways it was not meant to, doing things he was not meant to.
Heavy footsteps approached.
Jak looked up at Sig. The Wastelander loomed. His gun ready in his hands.
But the person said they found my fic through a recommendation and even tho i Know that statistically is possible every time the concept of someone reccing a story i wrote or coming back to reread one I just go
Like. Sure it's a thing that happens. But a thing that happens to ME???
Y'all want some more Sig and Jak after shit goes sideways at the Pumping station?
(Trying not to just share the whole thing right now as it's still partially in draft form. but it's only like 3k long, so even when it does get posted you'll have seen most of it already lmao)
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When he turned back to the kids, Jak was sitting upright again, hunched over in an exhausted slump, but he was upright. Talking with Daxter, if the ottsel’s occasional beats of silence meant anything. They fell silent when he approached. Jak glowered up at him, his muscles tensed to make a break for it. The canteen was empty, sitting sideways on the rock.
Good.
Sig pulled a little pouch from a pocket on his belt and offered it to the kid.
Jak eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”
“Mostly sugar, vitamins, electrolytes, caffeine, some protein. Bit gooey, but it’ll get you back on your feet.”
“I don’t need it.” Jak turned away from the offering.
Sig scoffed. “Yeah, cuz you’re getting back to the city on your own two feet.”
“I will!” Jak snapped.
“Before dark?”
Jak did not deign to respond with anything more than a scowl.
Daxter took the offered pouch, twisted off the cap, and gave it a cautious sniff and lick. “It’s orange flavor.” He waggled the open pouch temptingly under Jak’s nose.
“Look, cherry, if I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t use poison.” Sig finished with a shrug. Then he parked himself on the rock, took a cloth from his pocket, and began wiping down his gun.
They sat in silence for a long while. Sig smelled the faint scent of heavily processed orange and smiled slightly. Kid looked like he would have dropped dead before he made it a hundred yards, at least now he’d get back to the city and hopefully into whatever safe bolt hole the two of them returned to.
Jak broke the silence only after Sig had finished cleaning the Peace Maker and had moved on to cleaning his knife. “Why didn’t you?”
*rings the dinner bell* Y'all, come get your angst!
Polished up my little Sig's first encounter with Dark Jak fic. I hope you like it.
Jak's first hunting trip with Sig outside the city walls doesn't go exactly according to plan. Turns out keeping a lid on the dark monster inside you is harder when your life is in danger.
His legs gave out, muscles weak and burning, trembling with the effort of just holding his bones together.
That was the worst it had ever been. He only remembered flashes, sensations, his body moving in ways it was not meant to. Doing things he was not meant to.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Nobody was supposed to see… to know. It wasn’t just a secret, it was a death sentence. If anyone ever found out –
Heavy footsteps approached.
Jak looked up at Sig. The Wastelander loomed. His gun ready in his hands.
Jak bowed his head, waiting for the killing blow.
He didn't have the strength to run.
Sig would make it quick, at least.
I finally got around to cleaning up and posting that Gollum-centric Daemons AU I've been poking at since like December. It's not as finished as I would usually prefer, but it's as finished as it's gonna get I think. (and I'm trying to re-teach myself that not every fic has to be a huge long story. sometimes they can just be one or two scenes.)
Anyways, enjoy the fruits of my being Temporarily Unwell about a concept and chewing on a lot of drywall in the process.
We Are Lost, We Can Never Go Home
She's always been there with him. His shadow, his partner in crime, his other half, his precious daemon.
Even when something else replaces her. She stays.
She dove into the water after Deagol.
When the big fish pulled him out of the boat, they were quicker to react. Dimwitted Deagol would drown, refusing to let go of the fishing pole. Her sharp teeth might cut the line before he was pulled too far.
But something caught her eye as she swam after their friend. A glint of gold. Something shining in the riverbed. She redirected her course, paws reaching for it. What a pretty little treasure to bring back to Smeagol. He so did love trinkets.
But before she could grab it, a hand reached over, taking up the shining thing and a fist full of silt and gravel.
Deagol coughed and spluttered on the grassy bank. His daemon fluttered anxiously about his head.
She whispered into Smeagol’s ear, as he hurried to his friend’s side. “He grabbed something. It’s ours. I saw it first!”
Deagol already seemed to have forgotten his near drowning – a tale which he gladly would have shared for a free drink or two when they returned home – in favor of the shining trinket. He cradled it in his palm, tenderly brushing the mud from its surface. Even his daemon has stilled, perched on his fingers to look at the treasure.
It was a ring. Golden and shining. Simple and beautiful.
Smeagol did not need his daemon’s claws dug into his shoulders to speak. “Give that to us, Daegol my love.”
From now on, all writing posts, fic updates, new chapters, ask box games, prompt fills, and such will be done on @thebeckster
If you want to keep up with my writing and my fanfics, PLEASE follow the new blog!
Tag games, ask box games, and writing prompts will be answered there as well. I know it's gonna take more than one or two posts to undo Years of muscle memory when tagging things, just don't be alarmed when the Beckster blog replies instead of my main blog.
So yeah. Follow @thebeckster now for my writing. I promise I'm done mass reblogging old posts from myself. Your dashboard won't be completely unnavigable now 😉
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I'm a few days late, but I finally got a chance to edit my entry for teh @love-bokumono-fics Casual Prompt for last month.
The prompt was Songfics, and since I've recently been entertaining myself with Dark Empress Frey AUs, and also the song Tongues & Teeth by The Crane Wives the two of them came together in a lovey, intense dark chocolate indulgence.
I had fun with this one, digging into some deeply unhealthy relationships. Cheers!
Tongues & Teeth; M; Frey/Forte, Frey/Arthur.
To be Empress is to be lonely.
Forte watches the walls build, brick by brick. For Frey’s own good, she even helps lay a few. She helps build the persona, encourages the Hunter Wolf Empress to come forth.
Frey disappears into a cloister of her own making. To be Frey is to be vulnerable, gullible, underestimated. To be the Empress is to be respected, powerful, feared.
Frey struggles to connect with anyone on a personal level. Frey becomes painfully isolated.
The Empress covers it well with biting wit and acerbic moods.
The Empress brings warm bodies into her bed. She devours them like a ravenous wolf among lambs.
Forte tells herself she does not envy the lambs.
The Empress has never so much as bared her teeth at her loyal Knight.
Combines this month's prompt, First Kiss, with the homework I assigned on the fic blog, and did a Seven Sentence Story.
Had the vague idea of doing something with Henry and Lisette, and then my brain said "What if asexual?" and here we are!
Enjoy!
(It's even short enough I can just share the whole thing)
They saved their first kiss for their wedding because Lisette was enamored with the fairy-tale romance of it all and Henry wasn’t all that interested in kissing in the first place.
People asked, hiding gossipy curiosity behind a thin veil of concern, how could you marry without kissing first, what if you find out you don’t like kissing each other, what if you don’t fit well together?
They didn’t, couldn’t, understand that there was more to their love, more to a marriage, than kissing, than physical attraction and marriage-beds.
It didn’t matter if they understood, and Henry certainly didn’t owe them an explanation of the finer details of his sexuality. Lisette understood him better than anyone else ever had. That was all he needed.
And as he watched his beautiful bride walk down the aisle, in a gown fit for a princess, as they exchanged vows and rings, as he leaned in and tenderly planted his lips upon hers, Henry knew he was going to be happy for all the days of his life, so long as Lisette was with him – kisses or not.
