High School sucks. Well, not really, but I've really gotten myself loaded with homework this time. I don't have the time to spend on fanfictions that I used to, but don't worry, I will continue to update.

Thanks to Corad for her awesome beta reading, we all know just how error filled this would be if she didn't read for me.

I own nothing but Karn, Ripp, and Marten.

“Right, get on cherries,” Sig said, encouraging Jak, Karn and Keira towards the open door of the transport. “This one’s ours, the last one outta here.”

Jak hesitated, “Sig, I don’t get it. Why aren’t we staying to fight?”

The wasteland king gave Jak a rather forceful shove in the back with his peacemaker, “I already told you, now get your skinny ass on that transport.”

Jak reluctantly followed Karn up the ramp, casting one last look at the desert scenery; Sig wasn’t far behind. ‘Marten, I’ll kill you,’ he thought bitterly, ‘You’re going to pay for anything you do to my father’s city. Either of them.’ The teen sat down next to Karn as the airship closed the door and took off.

The wasteland boy turned his grey eyes up to meet Jak’s blue ones. “I’m scared Jak, what’s going to happen? Why do the marauders hate us so much?”

Jak could think of a few reasons, but he knew Karn wouldn’t understand any of them. “People hate things they don’t understand. Wastelanders and marauders just don’t mix.” Out of the corner of his eye Jak could see Keira giving the side of his face a strange look. He turned his head to look at her. “What?” he demanded, slightly harsher than he’d meant to.

For a moment Keira looked taken aback, but she composed herself and walked across the transport to Jak, “There’s something on your neck, turn your head again.”

Jak sighed and turned his head, rolling his eyes; Karn smiled. Jak allowed Keira a few moments before asking, “Are you quite done?”

“Oh be quiet! Jak, why is there an injection mark on your neck? What have you been doing?”

Jak twisted his head out of her grasp, “I haven’t been doing anything! It was those damn marauders, them and their Mar-forsaken leader!” Jak jolted to his feet. “I’m going to make him pay,” anger rippled over Jak’s features and Keira took a staggering step back.

“Jak, calm down, you don’t want to lose control in here,” Keira said, stepping forward again and laying her hand on Jak’s arm.

Jak felt surprised by this, but he suddenly remembered that she knew nothing about the loss of his eco powers; he intended it to stay that way, at least for the moment. “You’re right,” he sat down again, “I just hate those bastards so much.’

“Jak! Watch your language!” Keira scolded gesturing to Karn.

Karn snickered, after growing up in the wasteland he already had developed a colorful vocabulary of his own.

Jak crossed his arms over his chest, “I’ll say whatever the hell I damn well want to,” he said, a look of smug superiority on his face.

Keira sighed, “You’re hopeless,” and with that she went to go sit down again.

About twenty minutes later the airship jolted and began its decent coming to land a few moments later. The back opened out and Karn ran down into the arms of his waiting mother.

Cyri’s relief was obvious, “Thank goodness you’re alright, I was so worried about you,” she released her son and her eyes widened in surprise as she spied Jak. “How did you get here?” she asked the teen, suddenly very confused. “We were told that the marauders-“

Jak cut Cyri off, “I escaped,” he said simply and shrugged like it was no big deal. The leg that Marten had shot chose that moment to throb painfully and Jak’s teeth clenched together as his hand moved to grip the wound.

“Jak!” Karn cried, seeing the warrior’s grimace.

Keira was beside Jak in an instant, “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing,” Jak lied, his teeth still clenched. He didn’t look at her; he couldn’t cause her to worry more.

Keira was about to say something when a bright orange object came shooting through the crowd of wastelanders and landed on Jak’s shoulder.

“Jak! What are you doing here?” Daxter asked from his normal place on Jak’s shoulder. Without waiting for an answer the ottsel shouted, “Hey! Tattooed Wonder! That’s some information source you’ve got! No wonder the underground had such a hard time fighting the Baron, Jak’s right here you MORON!”

Torn’s retort of “You’re dead rat!” was heard clearly above the general drone of voices caused by the large group of wastelanders. This threat was followed by none other than the commander himself, elbowing his way through the wasteland refugees. Torn stopped dead as he saw Jak, “What the hell are you doing here? Sig said-“

For the second time in five minutes Jak interrupted someone, “I escaped, or at least that’s the condensed version anyway,” coughs sparked for no apparent reason and Jak felt a warm, wet liquid fill his mouth. Jak spat out the blood, wishing he knew what was wrong with him.

“Whoa! Jak, what happened?” Daxter cried. Torn voiced his own version of the question though his was slightly less appropriate for the nearby Karn to hear, as, in all likelihood, it taught the boy a new curse word.

“It’s sort of a long story, “Jak said, scratching the back of his neck.

Torn rolled his eyes, “It always is,” he muttered in annoyance. “Why does nothing make sense anymore?” No on tried to answer him. Torn looked up at Sig, “You guys the last ones out of there?”

The wasteland king nodded, “Sure are cherry, what’s the plan?”

“Outdated,” the former Krimson Guard replied, “Most of it was based on getting Jak outta there, but seeing as that’s no longer required,” Torn trailed off, it was clear he was attempting to come up with a new strategy. “Jak, I think you should go see the Shadow about that, uh, condition, you seem to have acquired. Something’s telling me that the marauders are going to be really pissed about losing you. If they attack us, which I’m also assuming they will be, it wouldn’t be good if our top fighter was missing from the scene.”

Jak nodded, Torn was making sense. Keira however, seemed annoyed by Torn’s comments to say the least. “Is that all Jak is to you? A fighter?” she demanded angrily, “You just see him as a means for achieving your own goals, don’t you?”

Torn appeared taken aback by the mechanic’s sudden onslaught of angry questions, but he held his ground. “From what I’ve heard, you weren’t much help when he was hunting down power cells for you,” the commander gave Keira a scrutinizing look. “You can’t honestly tell me that’s not using him as a means for achieving your own goals.” Without giving Keira a chance to reply Torn turned and started to walk away, “I don’t have time to waste arguing. Go talk to the Shadow; see what he can do about that coughing.”

Keira glared at Torn’s back and he must have been able to tell he was being watched because his shoulders twitched a couple times. “He’s such a jerk,” she hissed before rounding on Jak, “How did he know about the power cells?”

Jak stepped away from her, “It’s not like I’ve never talked to him before; your father’s probably told him a fair bit as well. Tell me Keira, did Erol know about that whole little adventure?”

Keira’s cheeks flushed red, “That’s got nothing to do with anything! Don’t try to drag Erol into this!”

“You’re defending him? Even after what he did? What he tried to do? He really did a number on you, didn’t he? I don’t know why-“ Jak’s sentence choked to a halt and he doubled over coughing violently. Blood sprayed onto his hand and Keira cried out.

“Jak!” her anger melted immediately, giving way to concern as she saw the crimson liquid staining his palm. Keira reached out to Jak, but he brushed her off; his blue eyes smoldered with fury at Keira’s hypocrisy.

He said nothing; the fact that Keira would still stick up for Erol irked him to no end. Wiping the excess blood from his mouth Jak straightened, deciding to take Torn’s advice and go see Samos.

The warrior walked into the control room of the Freedom League Headquarters; it was deserted. It was also strange to see it so empty. Daxter let out a low whistle from his vantage point on Jak’s shoulder.

“Wow, this place is emptier than my bar on a Sunday morning. Someone could hack into the computers and you’d never know until it was too late,” the ottsel suddenly got a very mischievous look in his eyes. “Boy, that’d really get ol’ Torn’s tattoos in a twist, wouldn’t it?”

Jak rolled his eyes, “Don’t try it Dax. Something tells me with everything he’s got going on, he’d probably neuter you on the spot.”

Daxter gulped, “I see your point. So, where’s old green stuff?”

Jak shrugged, looking around, “He’ll probably show up in a while.”

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Samos wandered into the control room. The green sage gave a start when he saw Jak and Daxter, “Jak! Daxter! What the blazes are you two doing here?”

“Well actually,” Jak began, “We’re here to see you.”

“Torn, what do you mean 'Jak is here'? We both know he was captured by the marauders,” Ashelin stared at Torn as though he’d just proclaimed yakows could fly.

“No, he’s here, he escaped. Honestly, this is Jak we’re talking about, remember? He can escape anything.”

“What’s you point? We can’t send the wastelanders back to Spargus just because Jak’s miraculously here again.” Ashelin crossed her arms, “Having Jak here does little to change the actual situation.”

Torn shook his head, “It does change things. The marauders are going to know where he went and they won’t be happy about losing him. Unless of course, they purposely let him escape so they could have an excuse to attack Haven. From what I know about the marauders, which is a limited amount, killing Jak is going to be their top priority followed by eradicating the wastelanders. No doubt they’ve been watching Spargus and know that it’s been evacuated. Assuming they know that the refugees came here, Haven should be their next target.”

Ashelin blinked, “That makes no sense, why bother with Haven? Besides, I thought the marauders were supposed to be fairly stupid and unreasonable, what makes you think that they’d come up with a plan this elaborate?”

Torn shrugged, “Nothing, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not capable of it. If they’re as unreasonable as you think, how do you explain the fact that Spargus was given twenty-four hours to evacuate?” Torn shook his head, “No, we’ve played right into their hands. Let’s assume for the moment that they’re doing this because of some grudge against Damas; he was the ruler of both cities and it would also explain their infatuation with Jak. They’re going for a ‘two birds with one stone’ tactic. They’ve got us right were they want us.”

Ashelin looked lost, “Torn, you’re basing a lot of this on assumptions you just made up, how can you possibly think that this could even be close to accurate? What’s gotten into you?”

Torn almost looked surprised, “Nothing’s gotten into me, I’m just trying to come up with a plan, and to come up with an effective plan you need to have a general idea of your enemy’s motive. Since I’m lacking their motive, I’m attempting to figure out what they could possibly be doing. Let’s say I’m way off, we’ll still have a plan that should be able to be adapted to whatever they throw at us.”

“That still doesn’t explain why they’d want to go after Haven,” Ashelin was getting more confused with everything Torn was telling her. “I think you’re over-thinking this.”

“Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not, I don’t know,” Torn shrugged, it had been a long time since he’d come up with a plan this way. “It affects Haven because Haven was ruled by Damas. Going back to the idea that the marauders are trying to settle a grudge against him would mean that they want to level both Haven and Spargus. With the refugees here, they can wipe out the populations of both all in one go. They wanted us to be in Haven because of the size, it’s multiple times larger than Spargus and that means well have a harder time defending it from attack because of how much more area we have to cover. It also increases the risk of our side taking civilian casualties, which are always something that anyone in their right mind wants to avoid happening to their side. The marauders, hopefully, will think that we have no idea about a planned assault on Haven and therefore they’ll be expecting us to be unprepared.”

Ashelin shook her head, “I don’t know if it’s me, or if you’ve actually stopped making sense. Just give me the freaking conclusion you’ve obviously come to.”

“Okay then, the marauders are going to flatten Spargus then come here and launch a full scale assault on us.”

Ashelin’s expression was unreadable, “How the hell did you- forget it. I don’t want to know. But if you’re right and you actually used that insane thought process, I think I’ll have to slap you.”

Torn smirked, “Even if I turn out to be wrong, it never hurts to be prepared. The fact that you actually let me go on that long is kind of amazing though.”

“From now on, Commander, just give me the condensed versions,” Ashelin said a slight teasing note to her voice.

“Fine with me, Governess,” Torn replied, before giving Ashelin a quick kiss. “See you later.”

Samos looked at Jak thoughtfully, “I’ve determined the cause of your seemingly random coughing fits. It would appear that whatever it was the marauders injected you with has greatly damaged you internally. The only solution to it that I can see is attempting to use my powers to heal you.”

“No!” Jak put up his hand as though he was warning Samos against coming closer. “That won’t help. How long can I last this way?”

“Jak are you crazy?! You don’t want to live coughing up blood for the rest of your life, do you?” Daxter cried. “How do you know it won’t help?”

“Yes, I’d like to know that myself,” Samos said. “If you’d care to expand, it may reveal a way for us to treat you.”

Jak was about to answer when Daxter interrupted again, “If you don’t trust old green stuff to do it, do it yourself, ‘Glow boy’ ought to be able to help you,”

Jak sighed, “That, Dax, is the problem. Eco doesn’t help me, in fact, it makes things worse, whatever they did to me; I can’t handle eco anymore. Even green eco only manages to make it worse. If using eco is the only way you can think of then I’m stuck this way. How long can I live like this?”

Samos looked at Jak with grave seriousness, “While there are many factors I can’t be sure about, my best guess would be six months, if you take it easy.”

“And if I don’t?” Jak asked, dreading the answer.

“Considerably less.”

“I want a second opinion!” Daxter shouted, “One that won’t make it so my best friend’s going to die in less than six months!”

Jak ignored Daxter, “Considerably less means what?”

“A couple of weeks, Jak my boy. I’m sorry about this, but without using eco I’m afraid this is terminal, I can’t help you.”

Jak nodded slowly, while Daxter continued to rant completely ignored in the background.

So, what did you think of that development? And what about Torn's insane logic? That part was actually a pain to write, it was fun though, I just had trouble actually making Torn make sense, so honestly, I don't know if he did...

Any comments or critiques you'd like to make are much appreciated.