#do metalheads have blood or is it just dark eco and oil or something???

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

Returning once again to the Demolition Trio au, jumping a few minutes into the final boss battle. Whether or not I add the lead-up to this moment when I eventually cross-post this to AO3 will depend entirely on whether I can decide how to write an entire raiding party's worth of fighters. Might have to go back to dnd rolls like we did in the Violence in the Library days.

Previous Parts: 0, 1-2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Jak was tiring. He fought with all the ferocity he carried into the Arena, but Damas could see the slight tremble in his arms. He hoped that Kor hadn't noticed yet.

For now, enough dark eco coursed through his son's veins to nullify the majority of the hits he was taking -- blows that would likely have bisected an average human. But his reserves of dark eco couldn't last forever, and Kor knew it as well as they did.

He was just waiting Jak out.

Damas gritted his teeth and checked the Peacemaker.

Nearly charged -- but could he risk firing with Jak so close? The dark eco blast could potentially power him up, but it was more likely to half kill him.

Steady. Find your target.

The rat -- the boy, rather -- scrambled up his back to perch on his shoulder, trembling with a combination of nerves and exhaustion.

"I'm outta grenades, kingy," Daxter squeaked. "And your buddies aren't through the nest yet! Is that thing ready?! Jak's flaggin!"

"Can he handle an indirect hit from a Peacemaker?" asked Damas tersely.

"Absolutely not!" Daxter cried, sounding outraged. Little claws dug into his shoulder to punctuate his indignation.

"Then no, it's not ready. The blast radius will be too wide if I fire now."

Damas tensed, eyes tracking his son's movements.

"Can you hold the gun steady on your own?"

The ottsel slipped down off of his shoulder and chewed his lip. "I uh, y- yeah! I can do that!"

He didn't sound as sure of himself as he usually did. But Damas couldn't afford to wait. He propped the Peacemaker up on the rubble and crouched to aim. With his free hand, he dragged Daxter close.

"You keep those crosshairs on the center of mass. You don't nudge the gun. You don't jiggle the gun. You don't breathe on the gun. If the aim goes off even a little, it will kill us. When the charge is finished, you holler, and shoot before Kor has a chance to react. Understand?"

Daxter's eyes were wide as saucers. "S- sure! No pressure..."

Damas wasted no more time. Jak's morph gun lay forgotten between the carcasses of four Metalheads that had made a futile attempt to hinder him. Damas snatched it up and set it to Vulcan.

"Jak! Move his head!" He ordered.

There was a wound there under the chin, a lucky hit Jak had managed early in the fight.

"Forget the skull gem, focus on the weakened parts!"

Jak clung to Kor's head with the tenacity of a Dust Demon viper. He snarled and buried his claws deep into the exposed wire and tissue of the Metalhead leader's crest as Kor tried to shake him off. It wasn't going to be that easy.

"Go back!" Jak growled, sparing a fraction of a second to look down at Damas.

"Not without you." Damas's tone brooked no argument, but Jak still made an effort.

"You can't leave Mar! Get out while you can!"

Kor laughed: a harsh, ugly sound that threatened to rattle the stones. "Yes, run, little king. Just like you did before!"

He scuttled towards Damas, reaching down.

"Run run, so I can experience the joy of catching you like I did the last time we were here. Oh! How you both screamed when I tore your limbs off in front of your son! I'm looking forward to hearing those screams again."

"Counteroffer: I walk out of here with my son and you die screaming!" Damas shot back, and unloaded a full Vulcan clip into the small wound under Kor's chin.

It was lucky that the pain kept Kor focused on the king in that moment, because that was the moment Jak finally lost his hold on the dark eco. For an instant, Damas was looking into vivid blue eyes, the very same shade as Mar's. Jak stared at him in naked shock, and the tiniest spark of hope, for no more than a heartbeat, but it felt to him like it must have been minutes long.

He knows! A tightness in Damas's chest began to unwind at last. Or at least he suspects...

Damas met his eyes and nodded, barely noticeably, in an upward direction. A trickle of relief eased the muscles in his jaw when Jak nodded back. The boy steeled himself, then brought both fists down on Kor's skull gem with an audible crack. With a howl of rage and pain, Kor threw his head back to dislodge his attacker, leaving his neck open.

Jak hit the wall with a sickening thud and slid to the cave floor.

Damas felt his heart stutter in his chest.

Jak-!

"Jak!" Daxter echoed the king’s internal cry with a tinge of panic in his high-pitched voice.

"H- Hang on, buddy! I got you!"

Kor began to shift his considerable bulk to find Jak before the boy could recover. Damas couldn't let that happen. He opened fire on the dripping wound at Kor's throat and shouted hoarsely over his shoulder, "Shoot him! Now!"

"Are- are you c- clear?!" the ottsel sputtered.

"Now!"

Thankfully, the ottsel didn't ask twice. The concentrated fire of the Vulcan and the Peacemaker slammed into the metalhead's throat with the combined power of plasma bolts and blue and dark eco. Kor collapsed with a scream that left their ears ringing. He writhed in pain across the floor, shaking the walls and painting the stone with thick black blood.

Damas took the opportunity to run to Jak, who still lay slumped against the wall. Heart in his throat, he lay two fingers against Jak’s neck, searching for a pulse.

There.

His shoulders dropped as the trickle of relief became a flood.

He's alive-!

"Jak?" Damas shook his son's shoulder as gently as he could manage. "Can you hear me?"

Considering Kor's howls, he wasn't so sure Jak could.

Jak furrowed his brow in pain, and forced his eyes open a fraction. Damas let go to sign so that he didn't have to shout to be heard.

"Can you stand?"

The boy blinked to clear his vision and, after a moment’s delay, forced his arm up to grip the wall behind him. Breath hissed between his teeth as he dragged himself upright. Damas caught his elbow to steady him.

"Easy, easy."

He was out of medpacks. It was risky, but there were few options left to him.  Transferring eco from one person to another without an external source to draw from was inefficient at best and downright dangerous without a knowledge of channeling. Regardless, Damas reached within for the last traces of the light eco he'd absorbed before leaving the monastery.

Echoes of gunfire, at last, began to establish themselves over Kor's roaring as Damas pressed his hands to Jak’s temples and willed the light eco into his body. The raiding party was finally catching up. This would be his only opportunity to heal Jak without immediately becoming a target.

As Jak’s eyes cleared, they widened. He knew what Damas was doing. He could feel the eco flowing, righting the worst of the damage. But he didn’t understand how it was happening. He wasn't stealing eco from the man, drawing on his reserves like he'd done in prison to survive No, this eco was being pushed into him. Was his- was Mar's father a sage?

He's your father, he said so, said so, said so-

echoed around his aching skull. But what if it had been a slip of the tongue? Kor couldn't have been telling the truth! He couldn't have witnessed this battle before!

"Just a little longer, son," Damas broke in over his disjointed thoughts, "We've almost got him. One more push, okay? We can do this."

He tightened his fingers against the sides of Jak's head for an instant, and gave him a wavering smile.

"It's alright. I'm sorry I didn't bring it up before, Jak. I'd wanted to wait until you...you trusted me. We'll talk about it when we get home, alright? Mar is waiting for us."

Until he trusted him?

Had Damas known what Kor was talking about?

In the midst of the chaos, as the rest of the raiding party finally broke through, Jak steeled his nerves and wondered why asking a simple question scared him more than fighting Kor.

"Is it true, what he said?" he rasped, "Did you -- a...another you -- die putting me in the portal?"

Damas stepped back and handed Jak the morph gun. "Well. I think I- he- must've," he grunted, looking a little uncomfortable, "or I wouldn't have the two of you now."

He cleared his throat and scanned the rubble for his own weapon. "Come on, then. Let's end this, once and for all."

Jak's head was spinning, and it had nothing to do with the impact of hitting the nest wall.

Damas wasn't denying what Kor had said. Which meant-

Which means I...used to be Mar. Or...or another version of Mar. And Kor...killed my father and followed me through the Rift Gate. I brought him to this world. This is my fault!

He had to fix this. For the Damas he'd never had the chance to know. For Vin, for Sig, for everyone who had been lost over the centuries to metalheads from the moment Samos got him to open that stupid, stupid Rift Gate.

"...Yeah," Jak said hoarsely, and chambered a Vulcan round. "Let's finish this."