This just wasn't his day.

It started out swell with a stab of headache to wake him up.

After a cup of coffee – heart attack strong – Torn was returning to a relatively pain-free state. Then he spotted the kid passed out in one of the bunks.

Fetching a glass of water, Torn had every intention of rudely awakening the brat.

Until he saw the myriad of scars clinging to Jak's exposed back.

Seriously? What the hell? How had he never noticed that before?

With a sigh he changed his plan.

The commander poked the kid awake and offered him the glass.

It did wake Jak up at once, he hadn't seen anyone this fast in a while.

And then came the weird stuff: as he saw Jak bent over the toilet, his hand suddenly shot out on instinct to preserve the green-head's hair.

Damnit! He even made a sandwich for the kid! Paranoid little brat looked at it as if it was poisonous.

While Jak was eating, Torn felt an uncomfortable silence settle over the HQ. Somehow he couldn't do anything else but stare at the same spot on the wall to avoid looking at the renegade.

At the very least it was actually pretty early in the day, so with a little luck the sun'd be strong enough today to make everything accessible again.

He didn't like all this waiting, being stuck here and not knowing what the hell was going on out there. A few men still had to come in with important information, some had already been late before the snow-out.

Plus his most important asset was stuck as well, the only way to reach farther than HQ was his communicator.

Ah the irony, he was just so thankful Daxter wasn't here, Torn hadn't realized how much silence the rat filled, he'd never really noticed the simple fact that Jak hardly spoke.

Jak, right on cue, roughly intoned some stupid question.

With a sigh he ushered Jak to the roof, where –hopefully- the transmission would be restored.

Standing in the almost knee-deep snow, Torn sighed at the beautiful sight of Haven. These snowstorms weren't uncommon, so he knew what he was dealing with.

A small sound drew his eyes to Jak. That's when in the Marhonest first time in his life he saw Jak smile. Really smile.

It was rather a shock.

Though more shocking was that something stirred in Torn's gut. It wasn't the sign of nausea, rather a faint, disturbing tickle that spread trough him.

Great, now he was nauseated.

The communicator was against him as well. Damning the thing to hell and back, he tried getting the kid inside.

That's when things turned sour very suddenly. His eyes almost popped out of his skull when he saw the huge black horns growing out of white hair. And those claws!

Suddenly the reports from his men didn't seem so exaggerated.

Purple lightning danced around Jak, was that dark eco? He'd witnessed first hand the amazing ability to just absorb eco and use it's energy.

So the commander tried calming Jak down.

Which landed him in the very confusing situation of Jak pinning him to a door and to be honest, it was pure shock which belated his reaction-punch. It had nothing to do with the thrill that went trough him.

Jak's head snapped to the side as Torn suddenly remembered he was dealing with a far more powerful creature than before.

Astonishingly, a low laugh rumbled from Dark Jak.

Lightning was crackling the air as the demon stood up and started advancing towards him, black orbs intent on the commander.

As Torn had thought, this just wasn't his day, for once he wished he'd just stayed in bed that morning.

Suddenly Dark's nose twitched and he stopped, turning his head and inhaling very deeply.

"No…"

With that last word Dark took of towards another roof, throwing snow everywhere. The commander pursued him immediately, though with some difficulty. He had to know what the kid was going to do.

After following the path that Dark had handily ploughed for him, he could see dark smoke in the distance.

But a fire? In this snow?

He arrived at the burning building and took to the streets to asses the situation.

Furniture and random householdthings were scattered around, hastily saved from the fire and strewn around where there was place.

Several people were sitting amidst the chaos, stunned and soot-ridden.

Others were throwing buckets of snow at the roaring fire, not really doing much.

Where the hell had Jak gone?

A loud crash coming from the burning building answered his question. Jak crashed trough the front door, holding a little girl to his chest.

Dark roared furiously at the other people around him, lightening drawing paths in the snow. To Torn's astonishment, the girl clutched at Jak as if he was her last lifeline.

Complete panic broke out, people scrambling to get out of the beast's way, yelling and screaming.

That's when Dark suddenly hunched in on himself, looking hurt.

Torn again, realized too late that he was already moving to help Jak.

When he tried taking the girl out of Jak's hands, he got a face full of teeth and an angry growl that made the hairs on his arms stand upright.

"Oh, don't be such a whiner, you really think I would hurt a little girl?" At least the commander hoped he sounded confident.

Dark's eyes seemingly relaxed a little, as if just recognizing the commander. The kid's eyes widened a fraction and he looked down at the girl.

"Are you alright?" Dark -surprisingly enough- asked in a rough voice.

Obviously shaken, the little blonde in his arms nodded hesitantly.

With a big sigh, Dark relaxed and all colour returned to Jak, the green of his hair looking vivid in contrast to Dark's bone-white locks. Horns retreated and his fingernails returned to normal length. Then he collapsed.

"Shit, Jak!"

The redhead jumped forward as he deftly caught the two before they hit the snow. It would be deadly if they got wet now, HQ was a long way of from here.

Looking around, he spotted a lone two-seater zoomer and, putting the girl on the ground, he hauled Jak up over his shoulder. By Mar, the kid weighted a freaking ton!

With a groan, he dumped the kid in the passenger seat, after which he put the girl in next to the knocked out renegade, best to take her with them, if Dark showed such abnormal interest in the girl, something was going on.

He took the driver seat and began the cold drive back to HQ, which-thankfully- only took a few minutes and they hurried inside, Torn again carrying Jak.

The warmth of the map-room blasted in their face and the commander was quick to drop off the still unconscious Jak on a bunk where he deftly put a small mountain of blankets on top of him.

This protective streak he was having towards the kid was getting a bit ridiculous, thankfully Jak didn't notice it was uncharacteristic for the commander.

He turned towards the girl and wrapped another blanket around her little frame, noticing her once nice clothing and her small form. She looked twelve but was probably closer to fourteen.

She had blonde hair and sharp ears.

"I am Torn, what is your name?" He started out gently.

"I'm… I'm Lisa?" She almost whimpered as she withdrew a bit from the commander.

"Shhh, don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you, do you know where your mother could be?"

Her face screwed up and she started crying, loudly.