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radioactivepeasant · 1 month ago

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Surprise Sunday Snippet (Part 2)

Continued from HERE (long long post lol)

Nobody ever checked the rooftops. Jak allowed himself a sharp grin as he watched Wastelanders hurrying down the street. Guarding Damas, if he were to guess. That'd slow him down.

Perfect.

He took a running start, and launched to the next roof. Daxter muffled a scream in Jak’s scarf and hung on for dear life.

"Why are we doing this again?!" he hissed.

"Tactics."

Jak dropped to slide under a billboard, popped back up and kept running.

"I'm going to find every passage in and out of this hellhole. And then thats the end of the metalhead problem, and we can breathe for once."

"Uh-huh." Daxter ducked instinctively when Jak used a support beam like a parallel bar and swung down to a fire escape. "And the fact that King Scaryman won last time doesn't worry us because-?"

"That was a fluke!"

Jak dropped to the street. Almost to the stadium.

"I had to swim! It slowed me down!"

Daxter wasn't so sure about that.

And it turned out he was right to be skeptical of their chances. A left turn was blocked by two Wastelanders who spotted them and raised an alarmed shout. When Jak backtracked, there were Wastelanders to the right as well. Jak cursed and kept going straight. That wasn't as efficient a road: too narrow, no alleys to turn off into if he needed a quick escape. Keira's garage was at the complete opposite end of the row!

And then Damas dropped from nowhere to land in front of him, blocking their path.

He'd come from overhead. The stadium.

"Frithrottit," Jak muttered under his breath as he skidded to a halt.

"I believe this is the end of the road, son." Damas’s smile had no business being that ominous.

"I told you. I know every passage in the city."

Armored feet running up behind them made Jak whirl on instinct, ready for a fight. Instead of KG, he saw the Wastelanders from earlier, out of breath and leaning on their gunstaffs.

"Can you-" puffed the woman at the front, "Can you guys just go to a gym like normal city folk?"

"That would rather defeat the purpose of the exercise," Damas replied with an amused tilt of his brow.

"Dear Volcan just take the kid fishing or something! The air here is way too polluted for running!"

Damas snorted. "I'll warn you next time."

Then he folded his hands behind his back and turned an expectant look on Jak and Daxter. The boy made a frustrated growl, but he had set the rules and he couldn't change them now. Scowling a little, Jak raised his hands in defeat.

"Fine, where do you want to talk?"

It was probably for the best that he didn't see the knowing grins his petulant tone caused behind him.

"Bleachers seems open enough," Damas offered. "You'll be able to see anyone coming in advance."

Jak paused. Damas had thought ahead about the few triggers he'd learned about so far. He'd gotten used to that from the Morgues, but no one else. His scowl softened into more of a thoughtful frown, and he studied Damas for a moment as though he were a puzzle.

"...okay," he said after a moment.

It was strange to be in the stands rather than on the track. Jak followed Damas with his hands in his pockets, glancing around periodically. There weren't any guards up here. No civilians noticeable either.

Damas took a seat in one of the rows and glanced expectantly at Jak and Daxter. He didn't seem too surprised when Jak chose a row slightly above his.

"Alright," Damas said, "We have...an hour-ish. Any questions you've got, I'll do my best to answer succinctly."

Jak blinked.

"Wait, I'm asking the questions?"

That wasn't how he'd expected this to go. He'd figured losing the race would mean being subjected to all manner of questions about his existence and what had happened to him.

Damas folded his arms comfortably and gave a smile that didn't really reach his eyes.

"We're having a conversation, not an interrogation. That does tend to imply more than one party talking."

"Oh."

Suddenly a little sheepish, Jak pondered his options.

"Y'know what, fair enough."

(Four days after this)

The mock hunt was a little different this time. Not a race this time, hunter and quarry. Jak and Daxter got fifteen minutes' headstart, but after that, the gloves were off. Jak knew two new secret passages in Haven. Damas, he unfortunately had to concede, knew all of them.

Jak kicked the zoomer into high gear and cut a turn much too tight. Daxter dug his claws into Jak's shoulder with a high-pitched yelp.

"I love you, pal, but next time you wanna include me in some father-son bonding, don't!"

Jak gritted his teeth. "He's not my-"

Daxter rapped on the side of his head with tiny knuckles.

"Denial Town, paging Denial Town, please extradite Jak the Skeptic."

He avoided Jak's poorly-aimed smack by scurrying to the other shoulder.

"Pal, you got the same scowl, first off. He's definitely proved he used to be head honcho around here-"

"So? It doesn't make him my father!" Jak shot through the Industrial Sector before doubling back up another street. "He could be a- a cousin or something, we don't know!"

"Dude. You just found out you still got kinfolk and you're hoping you don't? I don't get it."

Jak set the zoomer on a straight shot down an alley and leaped off the back of it to a fire escape. He didn't answer Daxter for several minutes, hopping roof to roof. After taking a moment to catch his breath behind a neon sign, he couldn't avoid the flat stare anymore.

"Okay, okay-! Look, the only- the only fathers I've ever seen were Samos, Praxis, and Bruno. The only one who I still trust is the baker, man. I don't know where this guy is gonna fall on that line."

Daxter considered this.

"...the old lady used ta nanny Spikes or somethin', right? You said he and baker-man both mind their p's and q's around her. So he's got that goin' for him at least."

"Yeah, but even you mind your p's and q's around Abuela," Jak argued, "And don't call her "old lady", I swear she has ears everywhere."

He knew he was in denial. But he couldn't let go yet. Jak had spent the last two and a half years being betrayed by nearly every authority figure in his life. The Morgues didn't count, they didn't try to be any kind of authority. Sig didn't count either, he was just Sig! But this guy, this guy was a warlord. Formerly king of Haven. Jak didn't want to let his guard down and get dragged right back into the frontlines because of "mystical whoo crap", as Pecker put it.

Damas had been putting in the work to make up for their...tense...first impressions, Jak could give him that. And he'd had all the posters requesting information on his whereabouts taken down, which took a lot of the pressure off Jak. But after Kor -- after Krew and Torn and Samos -- he just wasn't ready to believe the man had nothing to hide. Jak didn't mind being more friendly with him, he would go as far as to say he was disappointed when they weren't able to do their mock hunts. But he wasn't ready to acknowledge that he might have a father when he had only a vague idea of what fathers were supposed to be like.

"Okay, we're cutting through the Tomb next. He hasn't come in there yet." Jak glanced back over his shoulder and cursed. "Gah! Rot, how'd he catch up?!"

Damas was already at the far end of the street, walking with the confidence of a man who knew exactly where they were.

Maybe the Tomb wasn't a good idea. If Damas caught up enough to see them go through the hold Praxis smashed into the back, he'd find the base camp the two had made in the music puzzle chamber.

"Crap. Uh-"

Jak looked around.

"Skip the Tomb. Stadium."

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

Keira had been doing her best to stay out of all this....this.

When Ashelin asked if she'd seen Jak since the Nest was destroyed, she shrugged and said she'd left before he did.

When her father asked her to contact Jak, she shrugged and said he wasn't answering his talk-box.

Both of these things were true. But she didn't mention that she knew they'd swapped talk-boxes with a random stranger to throw the Underground off their scent.

When Wastelanders showed up to ask if she knew where Samos was, she shrugged and asked if they could tell him to come by her apartment and pick up some of her tools.

They knew she was dodging questions, but they left her alone. Mostly.

They had been hanging around her stadium a lot lately, which made testing her racing zoomers a little awkward. Especially when they wanted to ask a million questions about the specs after she was done. Sometimes in the middle of fending off nosy race enthusiasts, Keira would glimpse Jak booking it down an alley or through the upper bleachers with that warlord from the news either a little ahead of him, or close on his heels. She didn't know what that was about, but no one was shooting and no one was using a dark eco form, so she assumed it was reasonably logical.

That was a lie.

Keira was one of the Sandover Trio and she knew well and good that not one of them did things because they were reasonable or logical.

Which was why she supposed she wasn't terribly surprised when Jak appeared, darting into her garage like the devil was after him.

Keira immediately took exception to being involved in...whatever Jak had been up to since going to ground.

"Noooope nope. Don't you drag me into this."

Jak gave her the pleading look that used to work when they were little.

"Come on, just for a minute?"

Keira eyed him, then Daxter, with increasing skepticism. She'd hidden them from KG in her garage before, no regrets. But there was usually some level of collateral damage.

"Uh-huh," she drawled. "And then you're gonna bust my tool bench again?"

Jak wilted comically.

"That was one time! You said you weren't mad anymore!"

His defense was cut short with a squeak as he went ducking behind the curtain. Unsurprisingly, the Wastelanders showed up not even a minute later with the warlord her dad was so scared of. Damas, she thought Tess called him. He was an intimidating sight to be sure, but his deadly look was tempered considerably by the humor crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"Good afternoon," he said, eyes twinkling.

"I don't suppose you've seen my son today?"

Oh for Precursors' sake. Keira felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. She pasted on her Customer Service Smile anyway.

"And that would be...?"

The look of amusement did not fade. If anything, he looked and sounded closer to laughter than before as he tilted his head, trying to see around her.

"You would know him as Jak."

I'm gonna kill him.

Keira inhaled slowly with a marvelous affectation of calm, and smiled brightly.

"...excuse me for a second."

The Wastelanders stood at the door of her garage, exchanging looks ranging from knowing to alarmed when the garage suddenly rang with the girl's shout.

"What the Frith, Jak! You didn't tell me the guy was your dad!"

Immediately, the boy in question yelped in palpable offense.

"DUDE!"

"Not cool, Kee!" Daxter's voice echoed after him, "You can't throw a guy under the zoomer like that!

Damas broke into a laugh that wasn't nearly as menacing as his appearance would suggest.

"Oh, there he is."

He leaned further into the garage.

"Found you, Jak."

"Doesn't count! Keira sold me out!" Jak shouted back.

"And you have to catch me, not find me!"

"Still finding every possible loophole," Damas scoffed. "Well that hasn't changed from when you were little."

He turned to Keira with a conciliatory half bow. "May I?"

Keira stepped aside and shrugged. "Don't touch my tools or my gear. You break it, you bought it. Ask Jak."

"It was one time!" Jak protested, but the decreased vehemence suggested he was embarrassed about it.

#fic prompts #writing prompts #jak and daxter #king damas #dadmas #father's day #Jak's in denial and he knows it #frankly everyone knows it #keira hagai #Keira has Jak's back for almost everything except this #House of Mar does father-son bonding through parkour races because they were left unsupervised

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