When Kor runs into the Rift Gate, there's an explosion of time and eco energy. There are Consequences.
(Yes its quite scribbly. I thought it suited the silliness of the idea)
Resulting in:
Will it reverse eventually? They don't know, but Tess certainly doesn't mind the transformation, Samos is losing his mind, and Jak has bitten four people already.
By way of poll, we're back to the Gremlinverse. Damas is now actively involving himself in The Haven Situation
Damas secured the cloth around his head, tightening it over his crown. Just because the Baron was dead, didn’t mean his supporters were. The council that ruled the day to day matters of the city still wanted their previous king dead, last Damas had heard. If they were to discover that not one but three members of the House of Mar lived, they'd be livid.
Securing the turban with a pin, Damas turned to pick up his scarf and froze.
The other Mar -- the one calling himself Jak -- stood in the doorway, watching him. Now that he'd been noticed, the little boy tensed up.
"Uh-"
That was all Damas managed to get out before the child bolted.
"No wait-!"
By the time he'd rounded the corner, Jak was nowhere to be seen. With no one there to witness, Damas didn’t mind letting his shoulders fall. Mar remembered him, Mar was safe and happy and alive. That was more than he could have hoped for already. But the way this second child flinched away from touch and wouldn't trust more than three people-
It ate away at him. It burrowed into Damas’s heart like a thorn and jabbed deeper with every mistrustful look Jak cast at the world around him.
Sig said this boy had been older before. Something to do with a Precursor -- what a week it had been if that wasn't the most unbelievable part of the sentence -- trying to undo some horrible thing Praxis had done to him. Something about a perversion of time and space: doubling a child and forcing him to grow up unnaturally quickly to become a soldier. Or, that was the gist of what Sig had picked up. It did explain a lot of the boy’s reactions. But to know that someone had done this evil thing to Mar -- even if it was not the same Mar he had delivered and cradled from birth -- filled Damas with a rage that threatened to undo all his efforts to present a non-threatening front.
Praxis was dead, and that was as great an injustice as what had befallen his son. Or sons, rather.
Yet the elder boy, the one Sig was so fond of, he said that he and Jak had been there to watch to life flicker out of Praxis's eyes. They'd stood there dispassionately, listened to his death rattle, and then moved on to dismantle his ultimate weapon, irreverently tossing pieces of it onto his corpse. There was a kind of vindication in that. It still stung that Damas could not have avenged his children himself, but at least Jak had been able to see his enemy brought low.
The sound of a muffled argument down the stairs drew Damas’s attention. He crept down the stairs, deftly avoiding the spots the children had already demonstrated to be creaky. As he drew closer to the back of the bar, Damas identified one of the irate voices as Jak’s.
"-suddenly I've outlived my usefulness, is that it?"
"Stop putting words in my mouth, Jak!"
That one sounded familiar. And irritating.
"You know better than anyone that destiny comes for us whether we're ready or not. But in your...current state...it is better for you to prepare to face that destiny. Leave the ridiculous dangers for when you get some power back."
Damas peered around the edge of the doorway and glimpsed Jak baring his teeth and a short, mossy green man with a hefty piece of wood in his hair.
"There it is. It's always about power, isn't it? Gotta make me a super-soldier again so you don't have to do your own work. I knew you hadn't just spontaneously grown a conscience," Jak said bitterly.
"That's the dark eco talking," the tree stump man said condescendingly. "I told you, you need to learn control, and discipline! But no, no one ever listens to old Samos. He's only-"
Jak interrupted him, scurrying to cut off his approach. "You come near the kid and I'll show you just how "controlled" the eco is. The Precursors erased all the experiments -- too bad for you -- and most of my impulse control."
He balled up his fists and took a ready stance.
"Hand to the Oracles, I will channel a fireball straight into your unmentionables if you say a word to Mar or Daxter."
Damas had heard enough. He stepped down out of the wide stairwell with a noticeable thump and squared his shoulders. As expected, both the two arguers and the girl at the bar flinched or twitched at his sudden appearance.
"Is there a problem here?" Damas asked calmly.
He looked around the mostly empty pub and frowned.
"Where's the gangly boy?"
"He left me behind!" Jak snapped, then retreated into a shadowed booth. To sulk, apparently.
The girl cringed. "There's...Commander Torn sent Daxter out to the North Agriculture sector to deal with some metalheads trying to nest down there. Jak was all ready to go, but they kept giving him the run around."
She aimed a skeptical frown at the little green man. "Samos was pretty insistent that Jak stay and train his channeling, but I'm pretty sure Jak is already an expert. He got shorter, not less skilled."
Damas rubbed his chin. "And Jak and Daxter...they are not often apart, are they?"
Samos made a rude noise. "That little weasel's been riding Jak’s coattails since they were sprouts. He's the sidekick."
"He's my brother!" Jak snarled, coming partway out of the booth.
"And he's a better man than you'll ever be!"
The girl tensed and leaned clenched fists on the bartop. "Mr. Hagai, I've just about had enough of your attitude. What is your deal, dude? I swear, you're physically incapable of seeing Daxter without becoming verbally abusive."
Samos rolled his eyes. How airheaded did this girl have to be to have been taken in by Daxter's wild stories? It didn't bode well for the protection and guidance of Jak's younger self while they scrambled to put the Time Map back together.
"When you're older, and maybe wiser, you'll understand why I have to be tough on them. I don't expect a bunch of kids to know what's best for them."
"Wow." The girl curled her lip at the sage. "Yikes."
"Don't bother with him, Tess," Jak grumbled from the booth. "Getting Samos to say something nice is like talking to a rock."
Damas filed the name away in his head and realized he'd gotten her mixed up with the other blonde that hung around the bar.
Tess was the teenager with the creative weapons, Jinx was the grown man. Not the other way around.
Tess turned towards the corner where Jak had sequestered himself. "Has he ever apologized for any of that?"
"Uh, no. That would require convincing him that he's wrong."
"Mm. That's about what I figured." Tess shook her head and leveled a dirty look at Samos. "Jak, lemme tell you something my mama told me when I was little: never trust an adult who refuses to apologize to a child."
"Oh for taproots' sakes. Daxter isn't a child!" Samos argued.
"He's seventeen!" Tess answered sharply, "And you guys sent him out there without his backup!"
Damas held up his hands as if holding both of them back. "Alright. I've heard enough. Hagai: leave."
Samos turned to squint up at him. "And you are...who, exactly?"
Damas raised an eyebrow in silence and waited for the crabby little man to connect the dots. He turned a gratifying shade of gray when the realization hit him, but Damas wasn't in the mood to answer any questions. He stepped around the bar and crossed the room in two great strides. Taking hold of the sputtering sage's arm, he continued on to the door. As it opened, he swung back his arm and in one fluid motion he flung Samos out onto the street.
"Out," he said firmly.
"I-! You-! I've- why I've never been so insulted!" Samos gasped.
"How lucky for you to have a new experience, then," Damas answered dryly. Then his face hardened.
"I don't know who you think you are, but your meddling is not welcome in my family. And you can tell that Guard commander and the Praxis girl the same thing."
He didn't wait for an answer.
Damas stepped back and keyed the door shut with a smack against the palm pad. Rotting sage. Hagai's grandfather hadn't been nearly so insufferable! Samos seemed to have the idea that he was the main character of some epic tale, somehow.
"Ugh. Thanks for that," sighed Tess. "Usually the old stump's daughter keeps him in line, but she's been busy putting together the fundraiser Reconstruction Race in Main Town. Not easy when you're no longer tall enough to reach your tool bench."
The girl massaged her temples. "Hand to the Oracles, I'm this close to making a rule that Samos can't be in here without a chaperone."
Damas took a seat at the bar and, on a whim, passed a small metalbug gem to her. She took it, smiled softly at the way it reflected the light, and slipped it into a drawer.
"Right, back to business. What can I get ya?"
"Not for me," Damas waved a hand. "Compensation for having to deal with that sort of person. And..."
He looked away.
"And as thanks. For having their backs."
He didn't specify who "they" were, but he didn't have to.
Tess’s face fell a little, and she propped her chin up on her hands. "This whole situation is making everyone act like they've lost their minds," she confessed. "Jak and I have run three different Council Guards out of here at gunpoint already, and I'm pretty sure my apartment is under surveillance."
"Why is there a Council at all? Aren't those Praxis supporters?"
Damas blinked, and suppressed a start upon realizing that Jak had crept out of the booth and was standing at the edge of the bar, scowling. He was only a few feet from Damas now, and Damas kept still. No point startling the boy back into the shadows again.
"Well, according to Torn, we can't just imprison the old regime and start over, or we're the same as Praxis," Tess answered. "Still, you'd think he'd do something to keep you and Mar out of the middle of the power struggles."
Jak scoffed. "You'd think. But this is the guy who sold Mar out when the Baron threatened Ashelin."
Tess went very still, just as Damas stiffened. A coldness flooded the girl's face, and she turned slowly to look at Jak.
"Torn did what?"
Jak gripped the counter edge tightly. "And Samos and Kor. Remember when Dax and me busted you guys out of prison? It was Torn’s fault."
For a long time, Tess didn't say anything. She kept an impressive rein on her facial expression, but Damas could see a wealth of pain in the girl's eyes. Anger, shock, horror and betrayal- all too familiar to the former king of Haven. Then she slumped and closed her eyes.
"After the kinds of things I've seen as a spy, I don't know why I'm still shocked," she said in a shaking voice. Wiping her eyes quickly, she cleared her throat. "Gods, maybe Sig was right, Jak. We should've just left when he offered us the out."
Jak slipped around the bar to lean against her in an awkward attempt at comfort. "We couldn't. We didn't have Mar back yet. Daxter says it's their fault, not ours."
"Yeah." Tess dropped an arm around Jak’s shoulder. "I guess."
"If Dax wasn't attached to this place, I'd say we should just go," Jak suggested. "Grab Mar, grab Chopper, and just go."
With a faint smile, Tess nudged him. "Maybe we can convince him to open a sister location somewhere that wasn't just overrun by metalheads. You know he only likes this building because we "inherited" all of Krew's booze and didn't have to actually buy the supplies."
Up to now, Jak had been giving Sig excuses for staying in the city -- some because he didn't trust Damas yet, others for Daxter's sake. This was the first indication he'd given in Damas’s presence that he wanted to leave Haven. If ever there was a chance to convince the boy to go to Spargus, this was it.
Damas stood and stretched his spine with a grunt.
"Alright then."
"Alright then?" Jak echoed, squinting at him warily.
The king shook out his arms. "Keep an eye on your little brother, will you? I shouldn't be gone more than two hours."
Jak wrinkled his nose and looked vaguely concerned. "Where are you going?"
"To retrieve Daxter," Damas replied. "If you truly wish to leave Haven, the middle of a regime change is a good time to do so. Especially if they're already trying to put you under surveillance."
Abruptly, the guarded look Jak had been wearing since his arrival faded. He looked unsure, suddenly.
"You're...gonna help him?"
Damas flashed a brief smile. "Considering he's been keeping up with you all these years, I'm sure he has the situation in hand. But another blade in the fight never hurts."
"Oh," said Jak quietly. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, then closed it again. He nodded sharply, and took a breath.
"Uh...watch your back out there."
"I will, son." Damas returned the nod. "I suggest locking up until I come back, if the place really is being watched. Don't let anyone in."
"Good plan." Tess let go of Jak and fished a keycard out from under the bar. "I'll lock up and we'll post watch in the stairwell. Jak, you go get Pow-Pow out of my gun safe."
"I don't need the smaller gun!" Jak protested.
"It's for me, doofus!" Tess retorted, "You think I'm letting you or Mar put your grubby hands on my custom baby?"
"Oh. Nevermind." Sheepishly, Jak took the keycard and darted up the stairs.
Tess looked back at Damas. "You're really going to get all of us out?" She folded her arms. "Or just the boys?"
"Sig might shoot me if I leave you behind," Damas joked dryly. "If he offered you a way out, it means he's sponsoring you for citizenship."
Growing serious again, he added, "Call me if anyone tries to get in."
"I'd worry more about Jak getting out."
"Well," Damas sighed, "at least that hasn't changed since he was little.
Tess bustled around the bar, holding up an article of clothing from a plastic bag now and then. She nodded, choosing a long yellow tunic thing and tossed it to Jak.
"Here. About time you had some clean clothes -- Daxxie, you change too. We both know Jak has never washed that shirt."
Jak grumbled, but put the shirt on. It didn't chafe the way his blue one had. But then, he didn't have the scars and dark eco hypersensitive spots anymore. Sure, he'd lost a lot of his physical strength, but if that was the tradeoff for living in a body the Dark Warrior Program had never touched, so be it.
Jak’s smaller counterpart reached out to tug Tess's sleeve as she passed. He pointed at himself when she turned, and made three distinct shapes with his fingers. Behind the bar, Daxter made a sound of recognition.
"Mar?" He asked, "You want us to call you Mar?"
Jak grimaced. After all that nonsense about them being the Heir of Mar, he supposed it made sense for the name to stick in the kid’s head. It wasn't what he would've picked though. So far that name had brought nothing but trouble.
"If we get in trouble because you picked that name, don't blame me," he huffed.
Huh. So that was what his voice had sounded like when he was small. Weird.
The newly-christened Mar wrinkled his nose. "I was already Mar! You picked the new name, not me!"
"Huh? No way! I'd remember if I had a name like that!"
Mar shook his head, and even kicked at Jak’s shin for emphasis. "Nuh-uh! You don't even remember Daddy! You forgot Daddy, and me, and your name- except I guess I forgot you too a little bit."
Bewildered, Jak looked to Daxter just as someone entered the bar. "We have a dad?"
A crash made them all jump and whirl towards the entrance. The head of a metalpede lay where Sig had dropped it, and the man was staring at Jak and Mar like he'd seen a ghost.
Jak always knew when he was being stared at. He'd developed a sense for it out of necessity in the Fortress; knowing when unfriendly eyes were on him was sometimes all that stood between him and another beating. It made his skin prickle, and his heart race. It wasn’t just his imagination: the dozen or so Wastelanders in the vehicle pit were openly gawking at them as they climbed out of the buggy.
It's Mar they're staring at, Jak tried to reassure himself. Not me. They aren't staring at me.
A thin arm slipped around his shoulders, and Jak looked up quickly. Daxter walked beside him, eyes darting back and forth rapidly. To anyone else, the gesture would have seemed protective -- and in part, it was. But Jak knew that Daxter was seeking reassurance as much as he was. They were strangers in a strange city, and lacked the easy confidence with which Tess approached the Wastelanders.
Tess sauntered boldly alongside Sig with the crocadog at her heels, eagerly pointing at one thing then another to ask questions. From the moment she'd spotted a woman wielding a weapon that was part staff, part morph gun, there had been a spark in her eye that only grew brighter.
"What's the rate of fire on it?" Tess asked.
Sig smirked indulgently. "Go ask her yourself, cherry. Each gunstaff is custom."
With an excited squeal, Tess ducked under Sig’s outstretched arm to approach the woman. Her bubbly greeting was received with a guarded and not very friendly response, but this didn't dim her enthusiasm in the slightest. She was more than used to such attitudes in the saloon.
"Oh. My. Blob." Tess hopped like a child with a crush. "Is that blowback breech assist? How'd you work that into such a sleek design?"
Some of the warrior's suspicious demeanor eased. Weapons talk? From a city kid?
She glanced up at Sig and Damas with a raised brow.
"Civvy candidate or temp worker?" she asked bluntly.
"Sponsored candidate," Sig answered. "The kid's got a thing for gunsmithing."
He waved a hand in their direction.
"Tess, this is Zara. Zara, Tess."
"Sponsored, huh?"
With a cocky smile, Zara gestured to Tess with her chin.
"Tell you what, Sunshine, you bring me a battle amulet and I'll show you how to make your own gunstaff."
"Bet on it!" Tess chirped. She waved and all but skipped back to the main group.
"Um...do...do you know how to get a battle amulet? Or where?" Daxter asked her quietly.
Tess shrugged. "Nah, but I'll figure it out. I always do."
"That's true," Daxter mused.
His freckled face darkened to crimson as Tess slipped her hand into his and laced their fingers together. On his other side, Jak shot him a wicked grin. Before, Daxter had never really had to worry about people seeing him blush. The bright orange fur covering his body had camouflaged it, giving him an abnormally good poker face. Now, of course, he was right back to wearing his heart on his sleeve again. And right now, that heart was pounding fit to burst.
He had no idea what Tess saw in him, really. He was just the goofy sidekick, making up exploits for even a crumb of attention. Maybe she liked storytellers or something. She certainly liked his freckles. For a moment, Daxter almost wished Jak's "uncle" could be there so that he could see the "little, annoying, miserably ugly one" walking hand in hand with an absolutely dynamite girl.
The memory sat sour in his stomach, barely tempered by remembering the disgust on Jak’s face when his guardian prattled on with his insults. Jak used to try so hard to make himself speak out loud whenever people would say things like that to Daxter. He would get so angry, and then ever more frustrated when his voice wouldn't obey him and the rebuke stayed lodged in his throat.
That had always made Daxter feel both better and worse, somehow. Knowing that Jak was always ready to stand up for him made everything bearable. But knowing the depths of Jak's frustration, being unable to make the adults stop, and how powerless it made him feel-
Well. Daxter hated seeing Jak upset. He always had.
The thought drew his mind back to the present, and he discreetly checked Jak to gauge his mood. The smaller boy was tense, walking in a state of hypervigilance. He kept his eyes on Damas’s broad back -- and the top of Mar’s curly head by extension -- as they moved from the circular garages to an inner gate into the city. Beyond it, houses lay stacked in piles of sandstone, adobe, and sheet metal in asymmetrical clumps interrupted by dusty streets. Laundry criss-crossed the alleys from upper storey windows like flags -- much of it in earth-tones, ostensibly for desert camouflage, but Daxter could spot more than a few items in lively yellows and blues.
"So uh..." Daxter cleared his throat to rid himself of the awkward squeak -- he couldn't help it after having fought alongside Damas. The man was just plain intimidating!
"Which um, which house is yours?"
Damas juggled Mar a little higher. "Well, Mar? Do you remember the way home?" he asked.
With a wide smile, Mar pointed to the armored tower that loomed over the rest of the city. The one they had taken for just a beacon.
Daxter was pretty sure Jak's eye was twitching.
"That's your house?!" he sputtered.
"Oooooof course it is," Jak sighed. "Nobody in this family is normal, apparently."
"And don't you forget it," Damas answered placidly.
"Normal is for city-slickers, anyway," Sig added, tousling Jak's hair as he strode past.
Crowding into the small elevator at the base of the tower was not an especially enjoyable experience for anyone. Sig was backed against the side rail, Daxter was having doubts about structural integrity, and all Jak could see was a forest of elbows in his face. He suspected that this was how Daxter had been seeing the world for the last two years. It was definitely how Mar saw things when not being carried. But currently Mar was free of the elbow parade, up in Damas’s arms, enviably unsquished. Of course, Jak wasn't going to ask someone to pick him up. He'd just stay with the elbows, thanks.
"There's only one way in and out of the tower?" Tess asked, glancing around. "Isn't that a tactical hazard?"
Sig shrugged, having never really put much thought into it. He didn't live there, after all. Damas, however, acknowledged the observation with a half smile.
"Well," he said, "There's only one way in and out to the public."
Tess raised her eyebrows. "Ah. Fair enough."
When the elevator locked into place at the top of the shaft, everyone under eighteen abruptly lost their senses.
The throne room was filled with water.
Streams, pools, even trickles dropping from the ceiling here and there. Homemade thickets of date palms around the edges of the chamber added to the feeling of an indoor oasis. In the desert, that made for a truly intimidating show of wealth and power.
There was a purpose to the display, however -- as Damas had learned shortly after coming to power. The looming statue of a Precursor Oracle to the right of the dais was hollow: a facade to hold pipes that ran through a filtration system that filled much of the interior of the tower. Water was drawn from the ocean below, passed through several filtration rooms, then sent out of the base of the statue and onto a massive water wheel behind the dais. From there, the well-filtered water was sent back through pipes and into the city. The runoff flowed through the pools and streams of the throne room to power generators under the floor.
Jak stared at the rocks and damp sand coating the floor. So that really had been a memory! He'd been taught to swim here, in another life. An impulse seized him, and he kicked off his oversized boots the second he'd squirmed between the elbows to exit the lift. The stones were pleasantly warm against his bare feet, and the sand was cool and wet. The motion of the water thrummed with unrefined blue eco potential, resonating in Jak’s blood in a way that made it impossible to stand still. How he would have liked to take the jet board over that water wheel!
"This place is awesome!" Daxter gasped behind him.
Damas looked just a little smug. "We've worked hard to make it so."
In his arms, Mar began to squirm restlessly -- no doubt sensing the eco of motion just as Jak did.
"Swim! Go swim, Daddy!"
"After you say hello to your mother," Damas admonished. "She hasn't seen you in a very long time, little one."
"Damas?"
A woman's voice cut through the sound of the water like a bell, and everyone paused.
A pathway of stepping stones cut through the pools, leading to a raised dais framed by the water wheel. Torchlit pillars on either side were emblazoned with the spiral design that Jak would later learn was the symbol of the desert Wastelanders, meant to signify the wind. There was a dark-skinned woman in blue standing beside one of the pillars, with her hand resting against the wind-spiral carving. And judging by the shriek that tore out of Mar, the lady was exactly who Jak thought she was.
"Mm-a!"
Damas set Mar down on the walkway and watched with a soft expression as the tiny boy raced across the stone to fling his arms around the short woman's thick waist. Phobos tried her best to restrain a soft sob, successfully relegating it to a hiccuping gasp. Then she fell to her knees to scoop Mar into her arms, rocking back and forth where she knelt.
"My baby-!" she choked, and buried her face in his hair for a moment before turning to cover his round cheeks in kisses.
Mar giggled and pushed at her lips. "Nooo! Smoochy-monster!"
Behind him, Jak heard Sig numbly mumble, "Precursors. He remembers the Smoochy-monster game?"
"The what?" Daxter whispered to Tess.
Tess shrugged. It seemed straightforward enough to her.
Proudly, Mar leaned back in his mother's arms to point to himself.
"Mommy, I am so big now! I'm big enough to swim all by myself!"
"He isn't," Tess interjected, "Don't let him fool you."
Phobos quickly wiped her eyes -- red and watery though they remained -- and pulled Mar close again. Sitting cross-legged on the stone, she folded herself around her son, either laughing, weeping, or both.
"Baby, I missed you so much! I knew Uncle Sig would find you, I knew it!"
Open-mouthed, Mar looked back at Sig. "How'd you know that?"
Phobos's lips wobbled as she tried to smile around another sob. "Call- call it a mother's intuition. Or call it faith."
Jak startled when a hand fell on his shoulder. Apologetically, Damas let go, but stayed close.
"We never gave up, you know," he said quietly, and somehow Jak knew the words were for him and not his small counterpart. "We never stopped searching for you."
Surrounded by uncomfortable emotions, Jak blurted out the nagging fear that had plagued him from the moment they set foot in the city, "If I'd been sixteen, would you still say that? Would you still look if I wasn't small and...and cute?"
That was not an easy question to answer. And Jak knew it wasn't really fair -- Damas had never seen him in the sixteen-ish year old shape, how was he supposed to answer? But the dark eco in his blood curled around that anxiety and worried at it like a cat, batting it around and howling until the rest of him conceded that there was a problem. Tentatively, Jak looked back at Damas, about to tell him he didn't have to answer that.
He didn’t want to know anyways, he told himself. Damas had been unusually kind to him, and he didn't want to ruin that image.
Damas didn’t answer the question. Instead, he frowned down at Jak and asked, "Why would that change anything? I would still be finding a second son I didn't know I could hope for, regardless of how tall he'd gotten."
Jak turned his head again quickly, hoping to hide his emotions from the man. "But-" he said thickly, barely audible over Phobos's sobs, muffled though they were, "I wasn't....I was a freak. I turned into something...else, whenever I got angry!"
Damas made a thoughtful hum behind him, then sighed heavily. "Forgive me if I sound flippant, but without having witnessed that for myself, I can't help thinking that just sounds like puberty. I wasn't the most lovable individual from fourteen to sixteen either."
Jak felt him tense slightly.
"In fact," the man muttered, suddenly even more awkward, "I recall a...large quantity of traffic incidents caused during that period."
Something about the image of the intimidating warrior accidentally scraping against walls and knocking into other drivers in a zoomer struck Jak as funny. He couldn't picture Damas as a teenager -- in his mind he just saw himself with Damas’s rather unusual hair. It was decidedly bizarre -- Daxter would have called it a "cursed image" -- and despite himself, Jak found himself snorting in amusement.
"How many zoomers have you totaled?" he asked.
Damas moved to crouch beside him with a mischievous smirk. "Accidentally, or deliberately?"
"Yes."
Glancing back at Sig, Tess, and Daxter, all of whom seemed too uncomfortable witnessing the emotional reunion to notice, Damas leaned in and whispered to Jak, "One hundred and fifteen."
Jak blinked. "You're a bad driver," he said without thinking.
Damas flushed slightly as he managed to suppress a laugh into a hissing wheeze.
"Hey!" he gently jostled the boy's arm. "Only some of those were accidents!"
"Then you're a bad driver on purpose."
"And I suppose you have a spotless driving record, little man?"
Jak puffed up indignantly and jostled Damas back. "You had somebody to teach you how to drive. I figured it out all by myself and still won the Memorial Stadium Cup."
"The death race?" Damas wrinkled his nose. "I hope that was when you were...taller."
