#Gremlinverse au

[radioactivepeasant]

This Week's Prompt Poll

Tis the Season for Shenanigans

[waratah-moon]

Dad Eddie x daughter Because I feel like it's super cute 😭 but then having a swear Jar so everytime Eddie Swear he has to put money in the jar😭pls he would do fail it so badly lol! And the reader is just Saying their head 😭as the daughter is dancing around because she happy about it!

This is too cute... 🎂 join my birthday week celebration! 🎂 masterlist / send me a message

"Shit, fuck, shit," Eddie cried, coffee staining the front of his teeshirt, his coveralls tied around his waist. He had taken a sip out of his thermos, only for the lip to be broken.

"That's $3 in the jar!" Indie called from the dining room table where she was munching on toast.

"I told you it was broken," you sighed, handing him a dish towel. "Are you alright?"

"'mfine, wasn't that hot." He dabbed the front of his teeshirt. "Need a new one."

"Swear jar, daddy!" Indie called again after no one had responded to her.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it Gremlin," Eddie called back, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket, placing three more bills in the already overflowing coffee jar. "When did she get so greedy?"

"When she started saving up for Six Flags."

-

btw dad!eddie in my gremlinverse is a mechanic when he finishes highschool... I seem to have a lot of lore surrounding my AUs lol, maybe I'll do a page explaining it all. Full length gremlin fic is a WIP

[dahtwitchi]

@donkoogrr wondered if I ever drew Uchiha Ahmya as gremlin, and about the madness of bad blue/gardenverse being also a gremlinverse. Which means I finally drew Kagami too. 

Gremlins stem from @sloaners irrestable gremlinverse, here applied to gardenverse, that is a possible future of bad blue.

on ao3

[radioactivepeasant]

A new au merely for the sake of chaos:

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.

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippet Monday: Gremlinverse

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."

"Hey!"

[radioactivepeasant]

A follow-up to this cracky post

"Well we can't call you both Jak."

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.

"What the-?!"

[radioactivepeasant]

This Week's Prompt Poll:

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Gremlinverse

(Brief warning for mention of Past Samos being ignorant bordering on ableist -- early 2000s writing really did not do him any favors -- and getting walloped for it)

The drive across the desert had not been a silent one. Between Tess pointing out every animal they saw to Mar, and Daxter trying to convince Sig that he knew how to drive and should totally get a turn at the wheel, Damas was amazed he could hear himself think. One of the little ones stood up in his periphery, sending a little spike of panic through him. Before the child could either topple over the side or get his sticky fingers on the gear shift, Damas scooped him up on instinct and set him on his knee.

Belatedly, he realized it was not the Mar he'd assumed it was.

"Ah-" Damas cringed. "Sorry, wrong kid."

He let go and Jak quickly slid down into the space beside him.

"We'll pretend that didn't happen," Jak answered.

"Agreed."

Jak cleared his throat of embarrassment. "Tess has Mar pretty well trapped back there, anyway. He's not getting out of his seat."

Damas raised a brow. "You got out of yours."

"So?"

"So Mar is you, and you are Mar." Damas glanced back at his toddler with suspicion. "Now that he's seen you do it, it's only a matter of time before he figures it out."

Jak looked like he was going to deny this, but then he made a conciliatory face.

"Okay, yeah, he kind of is an escape artist. You'd think he wouldn't be able to get that far on stubby little legs, and yet."

"And yet," Damas agreed. He paused, and leaned back to study Jak’s face.

"Do you have a scar under your left eyebrow?"

"That," said Jak, "is weirdly specific. Why?"

"Mar's first Escape was launching himself out of his cradle at ten months old," Damas said with a grimace. "Predictably, he landed square on his head and screamed bloody murder."

He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head.

"Scared me half to death."

Jak touched two fingers to the place on his forehead where the eyebrow grew unevenly.

"Do you think the Before Damas was scared, too?"

Damas looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well," he said slowly, "if I am him, and he was me, then I'd say he must have been."

Jak peered out at the dunes around him and casually remarked, "One time back in Sandover Samos asked if I didn't talk because I got a head injury, and the fisherman boxed his ears real hard."

"As well he should have!" Damas growled. "Idiot sage. Didn't he know how to recognize a different dialect of signing?!"

Jak shrugged. "For once, he wasn't trying to be mean, that's the funny part. He was trying to figure out where the scar came from and he let that slip."

The boy gave a grim smile wholly out of place on such a young face.

"Boy, he never did that again. He found something new to belittle me about every week, but when it came to me not using my voice, he learned to keep his big mouth shut."

"I think," said Damas, "I think I would have liked to meet that fisherman."

"His name was Ollie." The grim look softened into a more nostalgic one. "He was one of the only ones who was always nice to Daxter. He'd offered Dax a place under his roof a couple times, but Ollie also had breath that could kill plants at short range. Probably because of the fish he ate raw. He didn't believe in cookstoves."

Damas thought of Kleiver, who had similar thoughts on oral hygiene. He made a face.

"That doesn't sound like an environment your friend would enjoy. He's quite serious about health and cleanliness, isn't he?"

"Well one of us has to be!" Daxter interrupted.

Jak turned around and stuck his tongue out at him.

"Oh, what are you, five?"

"Why don't you come down here and say that to my face, huh, Bigfoot?"

Sig rolled his eye. "Do I need to separate you two?"

Both boys paused and looked confused.

"Why?" asked Daxter, "This is normal!"

"Yeah," Jak added, "I get two years of payback for him always callin' me Bigfoot, and he gets to make short jokes. Fair is fair."

Sig cringed, and Damas fixed him with a look.

"Your impudent past has come calling," he said dryly.

"Oh, so when they're being goblins it's my impudent past, right." Sig shook his head and swerved around a tight cluster of desert sheoak trees.

"I could say something about that, y'know."

"You could, but you won't."

"Won't I?" Now Sig had a smug little grin on, one that matched Daxter too well to mean anything but mischief.

Surprisingly, Damas matched the challenging tone with a wry smile of his own.

"No indeed, you will not. Because that would entail admitting to certain exploits we both agreed never to mention again."

The buggy slowed, and Sig leaned an elbow on the console. "What, this isn't you mentioning it right now?"

The wry grin widened into a crocadog smile. "Keep pushing, you'll find out."

Tess giggled and shifted little Mar on her lap. "Uh-oh, it's double trouble!" she joked.

Mar wrinkled his nose and looked baffled. "What's funny?" he asked, "Are they fightin'?"

Tess wasn't fluent yet in reproducing the signing dialect the boys used, but practicing with Daxter got her far enough to understand most of the things Mar said.

"Just pretend fighting, the same way Jak and Daxxie do," she reassured him, "See? They're smiling! They're doing that silly grown-up thing where we have to see who can look the most serious while playing."

Mar relaxed. "Jak-jak is good at that game!" he observed innocently.

Then he perked up and pointed to a glow on the horizon.

"Look look!"

Damas looked back, and his whole face softened when he saw the excited gleam in Mar's eyes.

"You see the Lighthouse?" he asked.

"Almost home!" Mar answered, hands animated enough to be a shout.

"Almost home!" Damas echoed aloud. "Are you ready to see Mommy?"

"Mmm-a!" Mar croaked, flinging his arms into the air.

Jak turned around to lean over the back of the seat, pillowing his cheek on his arms.

"What's she like, anyway?"

Mar blinked, stumped. What kind of question was that? Mommy was, well, Mommy! Didn't Jak-jak remember?

"She goes swimming, and paints stuff," he said confidently, "And she likes sandwiches."

Damas turned his head quickly to disguise a snort of laughter as a cough. Of all the things to remember-!

Phobos didn't actually like sandwiches all that much. But as a two year old, it was the only food Mar could be trusted to handle on his own. He had made "sandwiches" for his mother to take onto her boat with her often enough for it to stick in his memory, clearly. And Phobos, of course, didn't want to discourage his burgeoning kitchen endeavors, or his wholehearted gestures of affection. There had been more than one week where all Phobos had for breakfast was two pieces of flatbread with tomango paste and three pieces of cereal stuck to it.

The face that Tess made above Mar's head, a grimace aimed at Daxter, indicated that the young rebels had also sampled Mar's version of sandwiches at some point. Evidently his choice of ingredients had not improved in the two years he had been gone. Nevertheless, Damas had promised himself many times that he'd choke down any nasty sandwich his son offered if he only could see him again.

"Sandwiches?" Jak asked Mar, looking dubious. "Uh...okay, if you say so."

He slid back around to face the windshield.

"Probably shouldn't have asked the toddler," he muttered.

Sig grinned and shook his head. "Don't worry about it, cherry. She's...she's a lot like you, actually. No nonsense, loves exploring, used to climb everything, especially if you told her not to-"

"Hey!"

"Well you do, kid." Sig accelerated to cut across a sandbar in the middle of a lush, green, riverbank. Water splashed up, almost as high as the doors as he guided the vehicle through a shallow place in the Cacomiztli River.

"And so did she, when we were kids. Heh. She used to get my cousins into so much trouble."

"Yeah," Daxter said, finally dropping back into his own seat, "That sounds like Jak."

A pair of eyes appeared over the edge of the roll cage, narrowed at Daxter.

"Dax-" he warned.

Daxter, predictably, did not heed the warning whatsoever.

"Hey, Sig, ask Jak what he did on his ninth birthday."

Jak hissed for all the world like a caracal.

"Daxter, I swear by my tiny little hands, I will end you!"

"You can't reach," Daxter teased.

"Wanna bet?" Jak jumped up, about to launch himself at his friend's head.

"Hey!" Sig leaned out of the way of a small, sharp, elbow. "Park your carcass! I'm driving here!"

Damas hooked an arm around Jak’s middle and pulled him back down onto the center console he'd made his seat. That arm stayed across Jak's torso like a makeshift seatbelt, to the boy's exasperation.

"Next person to get out of their seat is washing the garages when we get home. You can go back to killing each other after we shut off the engine!"

He paused, then scoffed. "Ah. I've become that parent."

Having started out with only Mar, Damas had never anticipated becoming like the Wastelanders who had to spend half their oasis trips dealing with offspring practicing for their Arena trials on each other in the back of the buggy.

Tess cackled. "Oh Daxxie, your face! Don't worry, babe. I'd help you if you had to wash a garage. A little."

"I wouldn't," Mar added bluntly.

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Snippets: Free Day Thursday

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.

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Snippet Thursday

We return to the Gremlinverse, a bit after Daxter has been rescued because I'm not done with that part yet. Long post incoming.

"Jak?" Damas paused in the hold of the air train and looked down with confusion. "...what are you doing?"

The boy sat with his eyes tightly shut, face scrunched up in concentration. In his hands he held Damas’s staff.

"I'm trying to remember something," he grunted.

A pang spasmed through Damas’s heart, and he winced. Jak's memories -- or lack thereof -- seemed to be becoming an increasing source of insecurity to him.

Taking care to broadcast his movements, Damas crossed the hold to sit beside the boy on the bench seat.

"Don't try to force them," he cautioned, "Let your memories flow at their own pace."

Jak opened his eyes and scoffed. "Why can't I do this?! Mar can remember, so why can't I?!"

He wanted so badly to have the same connections as Mar. To be able to point to a specific place and say "this is where my people are". To have someone who didn't see him as a burden and investment to be pawned off on others -- someone who actually wanted to claim him as their own.

And even if he did unearth some memories, Jak feared the distance he felt from them. Even if he were to remember his parents, even if Damas proved to be someone he actually recalled, would Jak still have any emotional connection to him?

What if he was no longer capable of loving like Mar did?

Unaware of the hurricane brewing in the boy beside him, Damas laced his fingers together under his chin and blew out a breath.

"Mar is...for him, there are only two years between him and his memories. For you, there are twelve. That is a long time, Jak, and your other experiences have buried them. Sometimes, as we get older, our early memories come to us in flashes. But it's not your fault if they don't."

Moving slowly and steadily, he laid a hand on the crown of Jak's head.

"You are still you, with or without those fragments. And you will always have a place with us."

Jak's fingers tightened on the haft of the staff until his knuckles stood out, starkly white against rosy brown. For several seconds, he did not speak. But he didn’t shrug off Damas’s hand, either.

After nearly a minute had passed, Jak turned to look up at the king with haunted eyes.

"I had them sometimes. The flashes, I mean." He swallowed hard. "But...I don't know if they're real. I made up so many things in that prison, just to stay sane. How do I know I didn't just make these memories up?"

Damas smiled at him. It was a bittersweet expression, but hope hovered at the corners.

"Well," he said softly, "why don't you tell me about them? I may share some of those memories, if they took place before your kidnapping."

Jak quailed. "But what if they're not real?"

There wasn't a good answer to that, and they both knew it. Though he wracked his brain for something that wouldn't sound dismissive of Jak's traumatic amnesia, Damas was left with few options.

"Perhaps," he said carefully, "You can think of them as things you want to do, rather than things you have already done? If there are any memories that don't match, I see no reason you can't make them real."

It wasn't much comfort to Jak, but he appreciated the effort. Damas was trying. He'd been trying, since the moment he walked into the Naughty Ottsel. The least Jak could do was try as well. He resisted the childish impulse to lean against Damas’s side -- he wasn't ready for that yet, no matter how much he might wish to be -- and tried to work up his nerve. Twice he opened his mouth and shut it again, and the third time he managed some stumbling, stammering sounds that trailed off into silence. Damas didn’t push him to try again; he waited as patiently as Daxter always had.

Finally, Jak felt like he could force the words out without immediately thinking of the worse memories surrounding the snippets of what might have been his past. He swallowed hard three times, and brought the staff closer to his chest as if it were a favored toy.

"I...sometimes see this...rock. This...this really big rock. There's paint on my hands and I'm really happy about something. I'm not sure what I'm doing."

He glanced nervously up at Damas.

The king leaned back against the hull and stroked his chin. "Big rock..." he murmured, "And you said there was paint? Was it all over your hands, or only in spots?"

Jak squinted as he tried to grasp at the memory. "Uh...I'm not sure. There was a lot though. Kind of blue-ish."

"Ah!" Damas snapped his fingers. "I think I know what that was."

Shocked, Jak twisted on the bench to face him fully. "You do?!"

Damas nodded, and Jak thought he looked wistful.

"There's a couple different boulders around the city that children like to make marks on. Sometimes, when your mother and I had a lot of work to do, some of the teenagers would take you out to play. More than once you came home covered in paint."

He smiled softly.

"You followed those kids everywhere. They...they took it hard when you were taken."

Jak thought of Mar, tagging along at his heels when he was in his older body. "That tracks, I guess."

So that had been a real memory, then. That meant he couldn't immediately dismiss the others as figments of his imagination, either! Emboldened by this knowledge, Jak reached for a memory that used to drive him -- and his adoptive uncle -- crazy back in Sandover.

"Okay, okay. Um...ah this is going to sound really stupid."

"Fire away," Damas retorted.

Jak made a face. "Okay...uh...it's a polka-dot crocadog toy that smells like polished leather. I think its name was Poppy Croc."

At this, Damas physically jolted. His head whipped down with an incredulous expression.

"You still remember Poppy Croc?" he asked in surprise, "After all this time?"

"Ohhh." Jak leaned forward. "Well, I guess that's why Uncle never knew what I was talking about. I thought he gave it to me and I lost it or something."

"It's still in the nursery," Damas replied, still sounding mildly stunned. "I don't know if Mar will share it though."

Grimacing, Jak waved the idea off. "I'm too old for toys."

He sounded like he was repeating something that someone else had told him.

"Anyway, what kind of name is Poppy Croc?"

"You couldn't pronounce polka-dot," Damas answered dryly.

With a thump, the air train hit a pocket of turbulence. Across the hold, Sig opened his eye and grumbled, then readjusted his grip on Mar. The preschooler slept like a rock, completely unaware of the rough air their transport flew through.

Jak watched them for a second, then returned his attention to Damas.

"So...the paint rock was real, and the stuffed animal was real. That's...more than I expected."

"An encouraging sign," Damas said.

"Maybe."

Jak twisted his grip on the staff.

"What about- okay it's...not a good memory. I think it's real, because I don't know why I would make up a scenario of being so upset about someone leaving that I cried until I threw up. I don't even know who it was! I just...really didn't want them to go."

Damas visibly winced at that. For several seconds he was quiet. Then he sighed heavily.

"I...remember that."

"Oh. Uh...Why was I crying so hard?" Jak squirmed a little in his seat.

The words seemed to stick in Damas’s throat for a moment. Then he frowned.

"Your- your mother is a deep-sea angler. She helps provide a massive portion of the city's everyday diet. But- well, every now and then she has to be out at sea overnight."

This was the first time there had been any talk of mothers. Jak's spine stiffened and he latched onto the present tense "is". He -- or rather, Mar -- still had a mother. A mother! What was that like? Neither he, nor Daxter, nor even Keira had ever had one growing up.

"Does she um- does she know about-"

Jak motioned to himself, and then to Mar.

"Aye." Damas tugged at his short beard. "She's steward of the throne in my few absences from the city when Sig isn't present. That's why I was able to infiltrate Haven at all."

Abruptly, he let out a sheepish chuckle.

"She hates it when that happens. And honestly, it was as much her right to come for you and Mar as it was mine. But I know secret ways into the city that she does not, so it fell to me."

"So I- I really did throw a fit until I puked over her going to work?" Jak cringed. "Daxter can not know about this."

Damas leaned back and folded his arms across his broad chest. "You could hardly be blamed. You adored your mother."

"Will I still love her?" Jak wondered.

When Damas flinched, he realized to his horror that he'd voiced the thought aloud.

The king -- his maybe-father -- was silent for a long time after that. And when he did speak again, there was a roughness to his voice that spoke of uncomfortable amounts of emotion.

"Love is-" he cleared his throat. "Love is an action, young one. It is not a possession to be lost or won. It's something we choose to do, though we all show it different ways. But it has to grow; you can't just turn love off and on like a switch."

He tipped back his head and loosed another sigh. "I...certainly hope that you and your friends will grow to care about us and our city-"

"I probably will. I get attached too quickly when people don't treat me like garbage," Jak interrupted with a kind of resigned nonchalance. "That's why I trusted the guy who ended up being the metalhead Swarm King."

Damas’s cheek twitched noticeably at the mention of Kor, but he gamely attempted to finish his thought.

"-but I will hold no expectations over you. You are not required to address us as your mother and father if you do not see us as such. And we will do our best not to hold you back on account of your stature."

He paused.

"Well, you will not be permitted to enter the Arena and earn a gate pass, but that would have been the case regardless of which body you inhabited. It is forbidden for anyone under the age of eighteen to enter the Arena of Death."

"The Arena of what?!"

Jak let go of the staff with a clatter.

"Why do you even have that?!"

Across from them, Sig snorted, badly stifling his laughter. Noticeably, he did not come to Damas’s aid. Instead, he settled more comfortably in his seat and raised his brows expectantly.

Aiming a dirty look at Sig, Damas did his best to explain.

"Before I was king, it was a strictly gladiatorial arena meant for pure bloodsport. Now we use it to determine citizen candidates' merit as warriors."

"By making them kill each other?" Jak did not look impressed.

"Not other candidates, except in cases when someone has a score to settle." Damas waved a hand and realized that this didn't sound much better.

"It's- alright, look: out in the desert there are many dangers, but you can boil them down to three: ambush by Marauders, dangerous environmental elements, and metalheads. If you want a gate pass out of the city, first you have to prove you can handle those dangers in a controlled environment."

"Still sounds weird to me," Jak grumbled.

He scooted just the tiniest bit closer -- pretending not to notice he was doing so -- and tapped his fingers together.

"Alright, this one I know has to be made up: a river inside a house."

Damas’s smile returned in full force. "Four for four, that's right, too."

"What?" Jak blinked. "No it's not!"

"Yes it is!" Damas smirked at him. "My throne room is an indoor oasis. That's where your mother taught you to swim."

"Mar can already swim?" Jak looked over at the sleeping child and pulled a wry face.

"Good thing we never took him with us to the waterfront. He would've given Dax a heart attack."

Then he leaned back -- ignoring the brush of his shoulder against Damas’s side -- and tugged at his lip. "I know there are more flashes. Little broken maybe-memories. But they're like...textures. Smells. There's probably other detailed ones, but I can't remember."

He shrugged.

"I...didn't actually expect any of them to be real, I-"

He cut himself off and looked away, suddenly keenly aware that his control of his emotions was not the same as it had been before the young Precursor's "blessing". He didn't have a name for what he was feeling at the moment, but it was big, and confusing. He had confirmation that he'd had a life before Sandover -- and it was incredibly validating, he wouldn't deny it -- but he was...sad? But at the same time excited? He was afraid to let his guard down and possibly be rejected yet again, and yet he was relieved to have identifiable common ground with Mar's father.

He wanted a father, but he was afraid of having one turn out like Praxis or Samos. He wanted a mother, but he feared disappointing her with his altered nature.

"Um...what about thunderstorms? I think of music when I think of thunderstorms, but that might be something from back in Sandover," Jak said in an effort to distract himself.

"Hm." Damas shook his head. "We didn't have many thunderstorms in Spargus when you were a toddler; you were born during a dry spell. That must've been the coastal village, then."

He tightened one of his bracers and quirked his lips to one side.

"We're nearing summer now. We won't see much rainfall -- if any at all -- until harvest season. Just a lot of damp fog."

Jak wouldn't admit it out loud, but he hated foggy weather. Too dangerous to go out on the water, or exploring. And at night, everything hid from view and he could feel the eyes on him everywhere. It just felt clammy and wrong. He only went out in the fog in Haven when Daxter was with him. Daxter's eyes had been better suited to the low light as an ottsel then. They probably weren't anymore.

As if on cue, Daxter dropped down the ladder to the cockpit with a thunk, wearing a goofy smile. By his flushed face and the pink smears on his lips, Jak had a pretty good idea of why he and Tess had been hiding out up there. That poor pilot, stuck listening to them make out! Jak grimaced, and Damas looked amused.

For his part, Daxter hung from the ladder, humming snatches of showtunes in a dreamy, distracted kind of way. It was not, Jak realized, wholly dissimilar to that time he'd gotten into Krew's booze stash.

Damas shook his head, but his eyes twinkled.

"Sig," he said pointedly, "Go get your boy before he daydreams his way straight out of the hatch."

Sig laughed heartily and reached out to snag Daxter's sleeve as he stumbled past. "First kiss is a doozy, huh, kid?"

"Uh-huh," Daxter sighed happily.

Jak snorted. "Hey loverboy, are we over the water yet?"

Daxter blinked slowly, then flushed and cleared his throat. "Ahem! Er, we're about five minutes from the southwest edge of the Wasteland island. The pilot said he'd drop us at a temple or something?"

"Precursor monastery," Sig confirmed, "Anybody traveling to the mainland leaves a vehicle up there if they're smart. It's suicide to walk all the way home."

"How did you hear anything the pilot said over you and Tess trying to glue your faces together?" Jak teased.

Daxter sank onto the bench beside Sig and Mar. "You'll understand when you're older," he retorted.

"I am older," Jak answered primly, "And I don't think I want to understand anymore."

Damas conspicuously turned to the side and made a valiant attempt at disguising a laugh as a fit of coughing.

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

As per the poll Tuesday, we've got Gremlinverse (delayed to noon because of errands I had to run) shenanigans: specifically Jak discovering disadvantages to his new size.

At first, Jak had enjoyed the Underground's reaction to his new stature. He was used to being underestimated, but when what seemed to be a ten year old kid blew up a deathbot, their reactions were so much funnier. They were nicer to him, too. Well, that might’ve been because they were patronizing him. That's what Daxter seemed to think. Tess, on the other hand, was sure that it was more about guilt.

Seeing their tank so much smaller and more vulnerable, she insisted, was a wakeup call. It meant they had to come to terms with the fact that they'd repeatedly endangered the very people the Underground had been supposed to protect.

Jak thought it was a nice sentiment, but unlikely. After all, Torn hadn't thought twice before giving up little Mar’s location to Praxis when he thought Ashelin's life was on the line.

Besides, he didn't need hollow contrition. "We're sorry" was easy to say, but meaningless if they were still treating him like a glorified errand boy.

They hadn’t sent him on any real missions since he'd come back from the Nest, but that may have been because Sig was watching them like a glinthawk, just waiting for one of them to cross a line. But that brought Jak to a new problem: the longer he hung around headquarters, the more they started treating him like an actual kid.

He had almost seventeen-

Okay, that wasn't true. He had twelve years of memories and experience. Just because his body was small and his emotions were big didn't mean he suddenly didn't understand anything! And it certainly did not mean he required assistance getting up onto taller objects!

The first time it happened involved Jak dangling from the Underground leader’s grip. He glared, looking like he wanted to rip Torn's hair out. Coincidentally, Torn also looked like he wanted to rip Torn’s hair out.

"What, so Mar and Daxter can sit on your nasty table, but I'm not allowed?" Jak challenged.

"First of all-" Torn closed his eyes and took a calming breath. "Mar is a toddler and he was getting underfoot. Daxter was a rat and you would've stabbed me if I'd thrown him off the table."

From the spartan bunks along the wall, Daxter snorted and looked up from trying to remember how shoelaces worked.

"Well, he got an accurate read on that, at least."

Jak folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. It was actually a very endearing expression, but Torn had been around him too long to be swayed by it.

"Well you're the one who made me work for you guys, and technically I wouldn't have shrunk if you hadn't betrayed us to Praxis, so if I climb on stuff you're just going to have to deal with it."

Torn lifted Jak a little higher with a frosty look. "Watch it, brat. You cause trouble on purpose and I might just put you in the Junior Freedom League to straighten you out."

Clearly, this was the wrong thing to say.

The next thing Daxter knew, Torn had dropped Jak with a high-pitched wheeze of pain. The former KG was doubled over and in clear distress, and Jak was on the table again. The former ottsel shook his head and went back to fighting with the boot laces.

"Brutal," he commented, "but not unprovoked."

The next time someone tried to pick him up without permission, it was Brutter.

Compared to Torn, Jak was far more forgiving with Brutter. Most likely because Brutter had treated him like an equal from the very beginning, and even now acted as though nothing had changed. So when Daxter brought Jak with him to do a little pro bono pest control on Brutter's fishing boat, the Lurker hadn't had any objections to letting Jak crawl through the vents with the plasma swatter. (Jak could tell why Daxter liked the swatter so much. It made a really fun splat when hitting metalbugs.)

He'd chased the pests from one end of the cabin to the other, filling his pockets with metalbug gems as he went. Under normal circumstances they would have been Daxter's pay, but Jak was the one crawling through the dusty vents. If Dax wanted them, he'd have to come take them.

Almost unrecognizable with dust and bits of metalbug exoskeleton, Jak had finally crawled out and bumped into Brutter's leg. As if on instinct, Brutter reached down without looking and scooped Jak up off the floor.

"Hey!" Jak yelped.

Brutter's eyes snapped down to the filthy kid he was holding under the arms, and he blinked twice before letting out a loud hoot of laughter.

"Brother Jak!" he laughed, setting him down, "You not little baby Babak! You big kid! I forgot we not home with tribe for a moment."

He took off his glasses and wiped them on his coat, then squinted at Jak again.

"Oh, Jak really is that dirty. Was not imagining baby Babak hair then."

Jak rolled his eyes. "Yeah yeah. No charge for the extra vent cleaning as long as you don't tell Daxter about this."

"My lips are sealing, Brother Jak," said Brutter agreeably. He stepped back and obligingly did not cough when Jak sent up a cloud of dust and lint while brushing himself off.

"Many thanks for stopping to help with buggy pests! I am not wanting to drag you two away from hero business."

Jak flashed a genuine smile at Brutter. "Hey, we can always make room in the schedule for a brother. That's what a tribe is for, right?"

Brutter laughed again. "Ah! Brother Jak and Orangey Pal should have been born Babak. Already you have the heart of one."

Jak’s smile widened. "Really? Uh, th- thanks, Brutter."

Alright. The rest of Haven's current leadership could go kick rocks, but "Captain" Brutter was okay. He still went out of his way to make Jak feel accepted.

Daxter's voice echoed up the hall as he made his way in from the deck.

"Found the problem! One of these fish swallowed a metalbug egg."

He dragged the offending carp behind him, wrinkling his nose the whole way. Between thumb and forefinger he held the split fish carcass out towards Brutter.

"Ugh," he gagged, "Now I gotta sweep the whole harbor and make sure there's no submerged nests. That's disgusting."

He glanced up and blanched.

"Speaking of disgusting: Jak! What happened to you?!"

Jak didn't think he was that dirty.

Daxter did not agree.

And unfortunately, Daxter was now bigger than Jak.

When they got back to the newly christened Naughty Ottsel and Daxter threatened "tub or dish pit sink", Jak remembered that being the smaller one came with some distinct disadvantages.

And that this was most likely karma coming back to bite him for all the times he'd (literally) dragged Daxter into his reckless exploration.

"Dax-" Jak ducked and slid behind a table. "Look, I'll just rinse off in the bay. It's fine."

"Fine?!" Daxter sputtered, "You're a walking health code violation! Hey-! Get your metalbug guts-coated hands off my tables! I have to sanitize those now!"

Tess watched with some amusement from behind the bar. "Hon, you're gonna need a real bath eventually. You have the kind of hair that requires regular maintenance if you don't want it to break."

Sitting on the counter, Mar waved a pudgy hand in front of his face. "Jak stinky," he agreed.

"Traitor!" Jak hissed from under the table.

That was all the distraction Daxter needed. The gangly teen stooped down and seized Jak by the ankle. What commenced was a skirmish that rivaled the fights Krew used to host in the Hip-hog's boxing ring. Chairs were knocked over, paintings fell from walls, and at least one table was overturned.

Mar watched with interest as Jak dodged and squirmed and overall did an excellent impression of a fluid. When the insults started getting particularly creative, Tess sighed and leaned forward to cover Mar's ears.

Several patrons entered, only to take one look at the two boys tussling amid upended chairs and immediately back out again.

"Sig!" Daxter hollered at the next person to enter the bar, "Sig, gimme a hand before he contaminates the whole establishment!"

Jak slid out of Daxter's grip and made for the door. "Don't you dare, Sig!"

Concerned, the Wastelander shut the door and turned to Tess for an explanation.

"It's Wash Day," she said with a shrug.

"Ah." Sig narrowed his eye. "What kind of product you got?"

"Um...I've got a hydrating brand from uptown," Tess answered, "And I have a little bit of that hair mask you use, but there's not much left."

"That's not bad." He snorted. "I thought you were gonna say bar soap with the way he's flippin' out."

Sig set down his Peacemaker and waded into the fray. He caught Jak by the back of the shirt and hefted him up under one arm like the world's angriest suitcase. Before Daxter had time to thank him, he'd been hoisted up by the scruff of the neck.

"Well cherry, if your plan was to take Daxter down with you, you've certainly managed," Sig said dryly. "Now you both need a wash."

Tess pushed off the counter. "I'm gonna go run a bubble bath. It'll do you good."

"No!" Jak kicked and squirmed, but Sig’s grip held firm. "I'm not a little kid! Nobody is bathing me! Besides, they're just gonna send me out to crawl through sewers again or something anyway. What's the point?!"

When he looked up, Sig was scowling.

"They better not send you back out today," Sig threatened. "I got some Wastelander friends coming by to make sure you and Mar are okay. If you aren't there when they turn up, they're liable to turn the city upside down looking for you."

Jak stopped squirming. "Huh?" He wrinkled his nose. "Why me? What do they want me to do?"

Sig took the moment of peace to hurry up the stairs behind the bar to Tess’s apartment. Gooseberry scented soap already drifted in occasional bubbles from the tiny bathroom.

"Well, most likely they're gonna want you to go home with them." Sig glanced down at Jak and prayed the spitfire would take it well. "It's where Mar was born. We were thinking you could stay for a while, y'know? There's room for you both."

Tess poked her head out of the bathroom. "Hey, sorry, but we've got kind of a bubble apocalypse in here. Mar got a little excited with the soap bottle."

Mar was not the slightest bit sorry.

With a snort, Sig finally set the boys down. "You see the state of these two? What can it hurt?"

Tess grimaced. "Yeah...you guys leave your clothes in my shower before you get in the tub, okay? I'll put out something clean you can change into."

Daxter nudged Jak. "You first, squirt."

Jak leveled a chilling glare at him. "Just so you know, I am going to use up all the hot water."

"This is why we use hot springs baths in Spargus," Sig sighed. "We don't have to bother with who gets the hot water. Jak, rinse your hair real good and when you get out I'll show you how to wash it without drying it out."

"Uh...it's supposed to dry out?" Jak raised an eyebrow at Sig. "That's what happens after you get out of water?"

Sig drew a hand down his face and groaned something that sounded like "Damas owes me for this", but they couldn’t be sure.

[radioactivepeasant]

This Week's Prompt Poll

[radioactivepeasant]

Keira has now joined the Gremlinverse au, simply because brain said "You know what would be funny? If we gave Samos an absolute conniption fit by having Keira also a recipient of the baby Precursor's attempted blessing."

So here she is, covered in engine grease

[radioactivepeasant]

This Week's Snippet Poll

For the Thursday Snippet, we've got a few options. The poll will go for a full week, because the one with the most votes by this Thursday will be this week's snippet, but the overall winner, if different, will be next Thursday's star.

[radioactivepeasant]

"Oh, so when Mar throws stuff it's "cute" and "just a tantrum", but if I throw something it's "property damage" and "run for your lives"?"

"Bud, you have the strength of a grown adult."

"Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?"

(A Gremlinverse screencap edit)

[radioactivepeasant]

This Week's Prompt Poll (because I can't decide)