#Damas: 'oh dang. haven threw away some perfectly good kids! Welp. Not enough of these in Spargus anyway. Ours now.'

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

We return once more to the Meddling Mar au, in which Jak’s childhood self and the Explorer uncle messed with the time map and got back to Haven after only 5 years had passed. Now we move from the end of Jak 2 to the beginning of Jak 3

Jak didn’t struggle when they came to arrest him.

He didn't fight back when he was handcuffed and dragged into an air train, even though he could have slaughtered every one of them in a second.

He didn't even protest. He was in shock.

Everything he'd been through, everything this city had subjected him to, and now they were throwing him away.

He'd been taken from whatever poor fools brought him into this world, kept under Samos’s thumb as their weapon in training. Handed over to Errol to be tortured into their perfect monster. Sent into battle before he was even physically mature. And now that Kor was dead and the Precursor Stone was beyond their reach, Jak had outlived his usefulness. Even Samos seemed to think so, keeping silent during the sham trial.

Of course, Jak had also wondered if that was retribution for his defiance of the old man.

How long he stood in the hold, glazed over and shell-shocked, he couldn't guess. What finally broke him free of his trance was a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. Discreetly, Jak shifted his stance to give him a better look. That couldn't have been who he thought he'd seen!

In the very back of the hold, near the hatch to the cockpit, two crates full of emergency supplies were kept locked to the floor. Most air trains had them -- one in case of a water landing, one in case of crashes. A small, round face peeped out from behind the crates, locked eyes with Jak, and ducked down again.

It took every ounce of Jak’s self-control to keep from stiffening.

Mar?!

[[MORE]]

What could have possessed him to stow away?!

Wherever they were going, Jak hoped there would be a place for Mar to escape-

The ramp lowered, and Jak's heart sank.

The sun was rising over a dusty expanse of nothing. This was dry desert, with barely a hint of life outside the perversely vibrant cactus dotting the horizon. Already heat shimmered between uneven towers of rock, like a portal between sweeping dunes and hard scrublands. Jak stared into this gateway to hell and understood then why they'd pulled him from his hammock in the middle of the night. This wasn't actually a banishment. This was an execution.

Ashelin shot him a worried look as he was dragged from the ship into the rising heat, but she said nothing. Jak locked eyes with her, ignoring Count Veger's smug reading of his "sentence".

Please- he tried his hardest to convey without a sound, Don't let him do this.

"This is a death sentence and you know it," Ashelin spat, "At least have the guts to admit to that."

"Your protests were overruled!" Veger looked far too smug. "This dark eco filled...thing is far too dangerous to run free."

He flapped a hand at the guards holding Jak.

"Drop the cargo!"

"Overruled by who?!" Daxter demanded, interrupting what promised to be an overly verbose protest from Pecker. "We want a recount!"

The count turned with a sneer. "Oh? I see you wish to join him?"

Predictably, Pecker immediately backpedaled. Jak tuned out his patronizing suggestion to "drink lots of water" -- did the birdbrain see any water around here?! -- and made urgent eye contact with Daxter.

"Go back to the city, Dax," he said sharply.

Don't die out here with me. I've gotten you into enough trouble. Don't leave Mar alone.

Ashelin wouldn't meet his eyes as she released the handcuffs.

"I'm sorry," she said half-heartedly, "The council is far too powerful. There's nothing I-"

She looked away, clearly embarrassed by her own meager apology.

"I know," Jak answered dully.

Can't overrule an entire city if they all want me dead.

He blinked and looked down as something was pressed into his hand. It was a beacon of some kind, already activated and flashing. What was-?

She's...trying to help me?

"You just stay alive," Ashelin said brusquely, "That's an order. Someone will find you, I promise."

She took a step back, then reluctantly turned back to the shuttle.

"Oh, and don't worry about the poor little Heir you've been dragging around," Veger purred, looking down his short nose at Jak.

"Freed from your deplorable influence, he'll be able to meet his full potential under my tutelage."

Jak tensed.

That's what this was about.

It wasn’t about him!

Well, it was. The other him.

Veger was after Mar.

Mar wouldn't be safe in the city if he went back.

Jak’s eyes flicked from Veger to Ashelin to Mar, and then to Daxter. He saw understanding in his best friend's eyes. Daxter understood the risks too. The ottsel was going to have to be ready to fight the instant they made it back to Haven.

Keeping his hands low, and his movements small, Jak spelled out take the kid to Sig. Stay safe.

The ramp began to rise up as the engines roared to life, and Jak pulled his scarf up to block the plumes of dust raised by the turbines. He heard a cry, then several more shouts; surprise, indignation, or anger, he couldn't tell. A small hand slipped into his own, and then he was being pulled towards the rock turrets.

"Don't look back!" Daxter's voice rang shrilly in his ear as a familiar weight landed on Jak’s shoulder. "Junior jumped out before I could stop him! Run! Run before Velcro turns that ship around!"

"This is madness!" The unwelcome voice of Pecker grated on Jak’s ears. "What are you doing?!"

Relief was overpowered by anger in that moment. That stupid kid! If he'd just kept his head down and stayed hidden, he and Daxter could've had a chance to escape! Now all four of them were going to die if they didn't find water and shelter!

Jak darted through the space between the rocks -- the one he'd thought of as the gateway to hell -- and pulled Mar to the side with him.

Mirages shimmered across an expanse of rocky soil and cactus plants-

"Ay! I told you not to touch that, my love! Look at your finger-"

Jak blinked, and the memory dissipated like smoke. Where had he heard that before? There weren't plants like this in Haven. And while there were plenty of thorny growths in Sandover, the phrasing didn't sound like anyone Jak had known.

Beside him, Mar held up a hand, fingers splayed, and squinted at it as if trying to read it. He tilted his head, then frowned and dropped his hand.

"Can't see the lighthouse," he said with a dejected look.

"Lighthouse? What lighthouse?" Daxter asked.

The little boy shrugged expressively. "Don't know. I know there's a lighthouse in the Wasteland that's supposed to save travelers, but I don’t know where it is."

Well, a lighthouse meant a lighthouse keeper, and that meant shelter. It was better than wandering aimlessly under an unforgiving sun until their legs gave out, anyway.

The boys picked their way between haphazard piles of red rock and scrubby bushes, seeking shade. Now and then, Daxter stopped to try to scrape dew off the leaves, but it was barely enough to wet their tongues.

All the while, the hum of the air train grew louder.

They needed to hide.

Jak scanned the rocks with gritted teeth, silently praying that one would have a cave or recess. There wasn't enough dark eco in his body to transform: if he had to make a hole in the rocks, he'd have to do it under his regular power. But not here. They were too close to the air train.

"Pecker," he said sharply, "Fly up."

"And let them -- raaawk! -- spot me? No thank you!" the moncaw snapped.

Jak picked up the bird hybrid and bodily tossed him into the air.

"Fly. Up." He glared at him. "Look for shelter, or anything that looks like people live there. If the air train is far enough away, we'll run for the next rock tower."

Daxter frowned. "We won't be able to do that for long," he warned. "Remember how tired we got just crossing the magma gorge back in Sandover? I got a feeling this heat is gonna really take it out of us."

Already sweat rolled down their necks, taking precious moisture from their bodies. Jak slipped his goggles down around his neck and unwrapped his scarf. Every fiber of his body told him that he was going to regret this decision, but what choice did he have? When the full length of the cloth had been shaken out -- some two feet in all -- he draped it unceremoniously over Mar's head.

"Cover up. That's about the only shade you're going to get out here."

Mar wound the scarf around his neck and face twice, but the excess still fluttered down over his chest. Just as well. That was more of him to be slightly shielded from the sun. Mar wrinkled his nose and gagged behind the scarf.

"Smells gross," he complained.

Jak ignored him and set about tying his hair up into a makeshift knot on top of his skull. If he could keep it off his neck, his body might be able to cool off a little more efficiently, but he couldn’t guarantee it. When finished, he set his goggles back in place and scanned the horizon with them.

We're on our own, now.

#fic prompts #writing prompts #jak and daxter #free day thursday #jak and daxter mar #jak and daxter au #meddling mar au #jak 3 #jak 3 rewrite #their introduction to Spargus goes a lot more smoothly this time. Mar's presence makes it obvious to Damas that these are a bunch of kids #Damas: 'oh dang. haven threw away some perfectly good kids! Welp. Not enough of these in Spargus anyway. Ours now.'