"I can, I am, and if you don't read the note people will die."

Jak takes the note and leaves, with Daxter riding on his shoulder.

And Torn arranges things so he can write significantly longer notes than that.

"Now. Back up and tell me what you did, what you said to the metal heads, and what they said to you."

"I don't have a perfect memory. I introduced myself... they tried to convince me to go into a cave with them, I declined... they said they wanted the Precursor Stone because it will hatch into an enemy, that they are as I am accidentally on this planet having originated on another... at some point they got their leader on some kind of communication device..."

Torn is not even trying at all to avoid looking surprised. "What did you say to get them talking about that?"

"About which, the Precursor Stone? I mentioned I had read in a book that they seemed to want it. I don't believe I was pressing them particularly hard."

"What did their leader say?"

"Uh, I talked them into a two week armistice... I'm finding that in my memory I can't clearly sort out what I learned from the leader specifically and what I learned from the rest of them, I wasn't looking at any of them and had no good way to set up an inkwell and take notes."

At the information about the armistice, Torn makes an expression that would be raising his eyebrows if he had eyebrows, and at the end of all that he just nods. "Did the baron send you to talk to them?"

"No, I haven't met the man. He reminds me of... people."

Torn nods at that too. "Tell me more about the metal heads agreeing to an armistice."

"I said that if I were trying to talk the city around to a peace it would somewhat undermine my efforts for the metal heads to be actively attacking while I did that and they said they could give me two weeks, though it sounded like there was some complication they didn't choose to disclose."

"So let me get this straight. You came to Haven City a few days ago and introduced yourself by giving away free food. Then for some reason you decided we should make peace with the metal heads, so you went and asked the metal heads about it and they gave you two weeks to get us to agree to some terms you haven't told me yet. And they told you that within the next two weeks, the person who'd need to sign off on a peace treaty would be the Shadow."

"...I don't think I came away with the belief that the Shadow would necessarily have to sign off, just that he'd be a good person to talk to. I also don't have an entire treaty hammered out, though they were very firm on specifically wanting the Precursor Stone and I might need to pray about that if it's the sort of thing that might hatch."

"So you asked 'can't we all be friends?' and they said 'maybe if you give us the Precursor stone, but the baron won't do it so talk to the rebels.' That about right?"

"...it would not be drastically misleading to summarize it that way. They also mentioned the baron had turned off the water to this area so I distributed some."

Torn smiles slightly. "How would it be less-than-drastically misleading?"

"I do not have friendship per se as an agenda item."

"What do you have instead?"

"Just peace. If I were powerful enough to bring all the metal heads somewhere else I'd do that."

"Want to know what the Shadow is fighting for?" Torn asks. He sounds less viciously annoyed than he has so far this entire conversation, which is still not all the way to a normal politely conversational tone.

He kind of sounds like a Hellknight, off and on, which is obscurely comforting. One of them once told Blai he should have been a Hellknight. "Please."

"For the kids to grow up someplace where they can see trees and breathe clean air and... a place where if they get curious about something and try to find out more they won't be arrested just because the truth is embarrassing to the government, and where - they won't be good. Because people aren't good. But they should grow up someplace that won't make them worse."

"I think I'm doctrinally obliged to disagree with you about whether people are good but cannot at this moment defend that very well."

"Never heard anyone seriously try to tell me people were good before."