A/N: This is another chapter written a long, long time ago. This is the last complete chapter that I've had saved on my harddrive. After this, the story may never continue. I don't know.

---

When the Rain Falls, Children Hide Away Indoors

Chapter Three

At the Mercy of the Stars

---

It is always a battle inside our minds while we ferociously debate over who is worth our trust. I cannot bring myself to trust anyone; Jak, who has several earthly attachments, refuses to give them up; and my brother, the youngest of the three of us, remains undecided, his voice small and his opinions kept private. Trust, perhaps the greatest of gifts a person could bestow on another, is never really complete and utter trust. Even in the strongest of bonds, there is always some hesitation; even among the best of friends there is bitter skepticism that could lead to a falling-out of the close relations present previously.

Friends are hardly ones to be trusted, but for Jak, it is impossible not to trust them. His friends and loved ones are what he lives for now; they are the people who keep him sane.

---

Jak exited Onin’s canvas tent, ducking through the tent flap as it fell uselessly behind him, swinging a little in the chilly breeze. It was late, late night; or rather, early, early morning. Darkness still reigned supreme over the sky and the stars stared him down, each a strange, bright eye that both condescended and revered him. As Jak stared up into the sky, he realized he had many things to ponder over. The visit only resulted in more questions than answers or anything minutely resembling that.

As he gazed distantly at the burning green star that always graced the skies above Haven City and the Wasteland, his vision blurred into a terrifying white flash. As Jak tried to look around, he only felt emptiness within this horrid white place. Everything was too white; there was no color, no feeling to anything in this world he now saw.

Look closer, advised his alter ego contemptuously. Jak’s strained his eyes, fighting the white blur. He began to see that the place was not an endless expanse of nothing, but rather thousands of millions of tiny white spheres, each suspended in midair both above and below Jak, so that it appeared that he wasn’t standing on any sort of ground.

One particularly bright sphere sparkled a bit, seemed to call to him. It was as if he had forgotten the other floating spheres around him, and that only the particular sphere was anything special; for, emanating from its core, was life and color, the familiar perceptions that yet seemed so foreign, so alien, so forgotten to Jak.

He clasped his hand around the sphere, felt a sort of upturning in his stomach, and blinked his eyes as another blinding flash lit up the world conjured in his vision. The drab, dull colors of metal and smog and blinking streetlights greeted Jak as he crash-landed back in what seemed to be his home of Haven City. Something was oddly different, though.

It was nearly sunrise, the streaks of sunlight blurring his sight as he tried to focus. First the far distant details became clear: the looming mountains of the Icelands far beyond Haven City’s walls; the smog-covered sky that filtered the sunlight and cast unnatural colors among the sky; the high, thick walls, both protective and imprisoning. After that, the murky water of the Water Slums greeted him drearily, but the water’s color was not familiar; something was wrong. The water seemed darker, as though something was mixed with it. As his vision cleared more and more, he began to see the planks that made the walkways over the murky water. Many of the wooden boards were broken, splintered in the middle or floating in the water beneath. Other ones bore scuffmarks of heavy feet moving fast and charred traces of explosives and gunshots gone awry from their targets. It was when he finally saw the blood-drenched carcass of a once living Havenite that he began to understand. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The corpse before him was a gruesome sight. Bullet holes the width of two of Jak’s fingers burrowed in the corpse's body: two in the victim’s head, one at his neck, three in his gut, and one on the left leg. Tattered holes in his clothing seeped out dark red blood, dirtying the wooden planks underneath him. Some of the blood dripped slowly down in the murky Water Slums water, staining the surface in dark, ominous ripples.

But it didn’t end there: it appeared that, as well as being shot at, the victim had also suffered close combat. A slice ran across his lip and down to his chin, dribbling blood carelessly down his neck. And, finally, a huge, gaping would in his chest where his heart ought to be. Organs were shredded to pieces; his heart lay torn in three beside him on the wooden walkway. His clothes where shredded to pieces. He had been left carelessly, a corpse with a funeral where hungry crows and vultures were the only guests.

Jak swiveled around and stared, horrified. At least a dozen other Havenites had suffered similar fates as the victim at Jak’s feet. Some houses were burned completely down; others smoldered, smoke billowing away in the wind; and still others were utterly ransacked and torn apart.

The scene was terrifying and very gory; Jak was accustomed to the carnage of war, but never had he seen a slaughter so horrible as this. He collapsed to his knees on the boardwalk, thrust his head over the edge of the wooden walkway, and emptied his stomach’s contents into the already-soiled water below.

The city will die, hissed the being inside of him.

Damn you! Jak cursed. I will save this city’s people, even if it takes my life. I have seen enough death for a lifetime.

The vow was sound, solid, serious; there was no sense of self-doubt in it, even in Jak’s mentally- and emotionally-weakened state.

I have to find Torn and the others, Jak thought to himself. I have to help the city.

The stars were not cruel; they showed mercy and allowed him to slowly dissipate from the nightmarish vision back into the white, sphere-filled world. But now the spheres glowed softly. They were not the blinding, fearsome color they had been before. As Jak looked around wearily, he started to notice some color just rimmed outside the spheres: some were tinted blue, others red, still others yellow. One particularly large one was rimmed in a light green hue. Jak instinctively reached for it, felt his body being turned in upon itself, his vision flashing. As he opened his eyes again, he was standing outside Onin’s tent, still staring up at the green star that twinkled brighter than all the other stars in the early morning sky.

How strange, mused another voice in Jak’s head. The voice was not malicious as Dark’s was; it was young and curious, yet soft-spoken. The stars are truly beautiful.

Stars? How peculiar. Jak chided himself; he had better things to be thinking about. Rayn was in Haven City, attacking people, probably targeting his friends, aiming to kill them. He had to warn them. He refused to let them die at the hands of a double-crosser.

Grabbing the zoomer he had ridden on the way to Onin’s canvas dwelling of mysticism and other such mysteries, he hopped on, clenching the handles, his legs pressed against the sleek, painted metal. He lowered his head, revved the engine, and tore off as fast as the small hovering vehicle would let him. Speed was of the essence; lives hung in the balance. There was no time to pray or hope, only time to act.

As he tore wildly through the streets of the ever-cursed Haven City, he swore at himself and his utter idiocy. Why hadn’t he gone immediately to warn his friends? Rather, he had let his subconscious take control of his body, and that had directed him to Onin. And Onin had given him the strangest fortune. It was a riddle more than anything, a puzzle that made absolutely no sense when first heard, but, when thought of in hindsight, was perfectly sensible.

A golden sea, he wondered silently to himself. I don’t know any golden seas.

His eyes were closed and his face contemplative when he first felt the impact. Instinctively, he leaned back, away from the smashing metal of the zoomer that collided with the wall of the Slum building. Ignoring the terrible screeching sounds like those of an exploding Blast Bot, he leaped from the crashing vehicle and landed hard on his back. The air blew out of his lungs and he struggled to gulp in as much air as he could, trying to get oxygen flowing back through his veins so he could run like hell. But it was not enough and, as the explosion burned the left side of his collapsed body, he writhed; he felt a great wash of pain crush him like a waterfall, and then felt nothing more as the world faded to black.

---

He felt a small something crawling on his chest, his tunic only half-covering his body, for the rest had been burned off. The something’s padded feet thumped against him as the thing took a step forward towards his neck and face. He felt the creature hesitate for a moment; then, its furry paws pressed against his cheeks, the short hairs prickling his skin.

“Jak, buddy, you there?” bellowed the creature on his chest. The voice was loud and obnoxious, and it made his ears pulse heavily with blood, a dull pounding lingering in the back of his skull.

“Mmphm,” Jak muttered incomprehensibly, shifting slightly to find a more comfortable position.

Almost as if on cue, he felt his left body sear in white-hot pain. Reflexively, Jak shot up, grunting loudly. The creature that had previously been on his chest was flung unceremoniously onto Jak’s legs from the force.

Jak’s vision cleared, and he spotted the orange ottsel on his lap, ranting angrily about Jak’s stupidity and inability to take care of himself.

“Look at you, Jak, you’re all burned up. Good thing I found you, though. Look at those burns. Eeeew. But now I have to carry you back, and without a Zoomer! You put me through too much! You should be so grateful. Where would you be without me, Jak? Oh, yeah, unconscious and bleeding to death in some alley in the Slums.” Daxter smiled wryly at Jak, but it was a quick flash of a grin, and then the ottsel was all business. “Come on Jak, you think you can walk? Do you have your communicator? Maybe we can call Keira or something.”

Jak shook his head slowly, wincing suddenly as the full onslaught of the burn sent a strange pang of pain as if Jak was in the middle of an explosion. Not two seconds had passed, but he was lying on the ground on his side, coughing and spluttering, tears of sheer agony sneaking out of the corners of his well-guarded eyes. His flesh was red and raw and searing; his vision had become a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, most unfamiliar.

“Jak, stay with me! You okay?” Daxter’s voice came ringing clearly in Jak’s ears, like a loud siren or an unwelcome wake-up call.

“Yes,” Jak barely croaked out between coughs.

“You aren’t well. You aren’t okay at all. You started convulsing on me, Jak. Convulsing!”

Jak moaned in response.

“Hang in there, let me find a Zoomer—ones’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

Jak lay on the harsh, cold ground for an unknown lapse of time. It could’ve been hours or minutes when Jak heard Daxter return, the warm hum of a Zoomer engine accompanying his ottsel friend’s concerned voice.

He heard the turn of a key and the response of the engine of the Zoomer: it shut off completely and, with much encouragement and stomping and jumping on Daxter’s part, it slammed hard on the metal ground, echoing with a harsh grating sound. Now, Jak’s vision was still distorted; he could barely make out an orange blur approaching him.

“Jak,” began the orange blur, “you’re going to have to help me a bit because, as strong as I naturally am—” Jak couldn’t help but manage a weak laugh at his friend’s cockiness even in so dire a situation—“an ottsel can only lift so much. C’mon, lift up a little bit—”

Jak felt Daxter gently tugging at his arm, lifting up his upper torso and heaving it into what Jak now could tell was a two-seater Zoomer. Using his other arm, Jak grabbed lightly at the edge of the car and heaved as much as he dared. He felt a ripping sensation in his arm, but he managed to haul himself into the two-seater. It was all he managed, though, before he lost all sense of consciousness and slipped into a half-sleep, half-coma state where he had no more worries.

---

Here: is here where we are destined? Have we come here at the Little One’s paw?

Wait. No. I don’t believe it is. Our betrayal is yet at hand, as nonexistent as our redemption.

This blackness, this inability to perceive self, this feeling of a sort of peace—this is not it. This is not the Little One’s doing.

This is not our end, not the place we will go once the end comes. Here is only a sky, a black sky of nothingness.

This place is no golden sea.