Jak took the lift up to Damas's audience chamber, wiping the sweat from his face and mostly ignoring Daxter's chatter. Though he'd adapted to the desert conditions in and around Spargus, he'd also spent the entire morning in Kleiver's coastal turret, firing on the inbound Metal Heads and other assorted hazards of the ocean and generally practicing his shooting. Kleiver had shown up to harass Jak sometime in the middle of it, but when he saw the turret's record of Jak's hits during that timed cycle, he left with only a mildly biting exchange of insults. Apparently he didn't take well to not being the tall poppy on the gun any more, especially when it was a far distance.

Immediately as the lift doors opened, Daxter dove into the water pool, declaring his love of water along the way, something he always did.

Damas, who had been conferring with Sig, looked away briefly from his old Wastelander friend's face to see who'd arrived. Sig also turned to look but didn't stop his report of city affairs.

Jak waited patiently, watching his friend Daxter swim around, until he heard Damas say, "Very good, Sig. Have those artifacts from that last storm delivered to the monks. That is all for today."

"I heard the monks finally recognized your broken leg as healed," Sig said in a lighter tone, no longer acting the regent.

"Yes. I will soon be returning in full capacity and you won't have to run the city for me."

"That is good news. I'll go see about those artifacts." Sig took his leave of the King. "Hey, chili pepper!" he addressed Daxter, who was busily enjoying the water. "How's the Peacemaker, Jak?"

"The marauders that attacked me three days ago thought it worked great," Jak said with a predatory grin.

Sig just laughed and continued to the lift and down, out of the palace.

"Hello Jak!" Damas greeted as his son finally approached. "How was the turret today?" Jak had told Damas upon leaving that morning that he'd be out training on Kleiver's old post.

"It was good today. I beat my old top score from last month. Kleiver came around, but he saw my score and didn't have much to say."

"Ha!" Damas's tone of voice changed. "I've been thinking on old times, back when I still had you with me, and I remembered that you had a pet. A crocodog, though I can't remember his name, that only liked you for some reason. What happened to him?"

"The crocodog? I can't remember his name either, but I had him for a few more years in Sandover where I lived in the past. I remember that the past me took him through the time rift, but I don't remember too much else. He found a mate and had puppies at some point, though, because whenever I would go to the beach there'd be crocodogs in front of some of the houses. They all hated me, of course. Whenever Samos made me go to his green eco collectors to unblock the vents, I'd have to run past the crocodogs to get to them."

"You must have learned to run fast," Damas laughed, "to outrun them as a young boy. Though, you always had been a quick one, son. You'd chase after the monks' blue eco toys whenever they let you play with them. Sometimes you'd even catch them, if the monks didn't come and retrieve the things first."

"Blue eco toys?"

"Yeah. They were some artifacts found in the desert. They contained blue eco, but it was sealed and the monks couldn't even get to it. So they let my young son play with them. You would always run faster when you had one..."

"It's probably because I was channeling some of the blue eco inside. In Sandover and other places in the past, there were open blue eco vents, or just random clusters of it laying around. I could pick some up, or stand over a vent, and channel a bunch of blue eco, using it to run faster or activate high-jump pads, even to use some precursor technology like moving platforms or doors. I'd be a magnet for precursor orbs, too."

"Channeling eco, hm? That is a rare skill indeed. Some of the monks here can do it, but none of them have an affinity as strong as yours."

"It's probably the reason why I survived the dark eco experiments," Jak said in a darker tone. "I could channel eco like no one else could, so I channeled the dark eco too."

"Leave those unwelcome thoughts, Jak. You can channel light eco too; I know from personal experience, remember?"

"Hey, you could channel it a little bit, too. And you weren't even conscious then."

"It is said to be a gift of Mar's descendants, to have an affinity for channeling eco. Our ancestors were said to have powers, though that would of course be because of the eco that they could channel. The ability steadily weakened in our family, though for you it apparently came back strongly."

"Hey, yeah!" Daxter, who had been eavesdropping, came over, still dripping wet. He shook his fur out, splattering Jak and Damas with droplets of water and fluffing out his fur. "Back in Sandover, we went to Misty Island once, and we found some weird precursor thing. Jak touched it and it activated, cause apparently he's so good that he doesn't even need to channel eco to activate stuff. Then he threw it at a lurker that ambushed us and it exploded, knocking Jak into me and me into a tub of dark eco! I popped back out short, orange, and fuzzy thanks to this guy." Daxter used to be bitter about that, but it became a joke that he'd harass Jak with. Then he discovered that he was a precursor and shortly after that finally acquired pants.

"You used to be normal?" Damas said, slightly surprised.

Daxter, of course, took it just a bit differently. "Of course I used to be normal, Sand King!" Ever since Daxter had referred to Damas as the Sand King that one time, he'd continued to use the title on occasion. "How else would I have gotten to miss pants to much?" Daxter then stared down lovingly at his pants and sighed, "Ah, pants. Wonderful, wonderful pants."

Damas looked to Jak with a question in his eyes. "Ever since he fell in that dark eco, he complained about not getting to wear pants any more. And underwear, too, sometimes."

"Hey, Jak, let's tell his King-ly-ness here about our first adventure! It was, of course, all about me," Daxter piped up again.

"It actually was, originally. We--Daxter and I mainly but Samos and Keira would help, too--were on a quest to get Daxter changed back."

"Please tell me of your adventures, my son."

Jak never got the chance to start. Needing no further prompting, Daxter, jumping up to the arm of Damas's throne, took the spotlight and leapt into full story-telling mode, recalling their entire first adventure. Jak would contribute to the tale as well, usually to correct Daxter when he was embellishing the story too much, but he left the main narration to his friend.