A/N: Since I'm lacking in the way of inspiration for more chapters at the moment (and since school scarcely gives me the time to write even if I was inspired), I have decided to go back and edit this little story of mine. That means fixing verb tenses and typos, deleting rambling notes, revamping the vocabulary and fixing a certain plot hole I don't think anyone caught. (If you did catch it, PM me. I assure you, I will be shocked!)

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the title Jak and Daxter. Naughty Dog does!

Enjoy! And please R&R.

Part One: Chapter 1: Before the Beginning

Birthdays have never been all that exciting in my family. But when you do not have much, you learn to appreciate what you have.

For instance: I did not have parents. They were both killed by Metal Head monsters when I was little. But I did have two older brothers that loved and took care of me. Even though we had next to no money, the two of them had worked to prepare a birthday celebration for me, their younger sister.

I saw the decorations when I came home that day. Well, they were relatively modest decorations, but I figured it was the thought that counted. There was a small cake with a mostly burnt out candle in the center of the table. Wild flowers had been placed in an old, cracked vase on the counter to my left. A couple of badly-wrapped presents sat on the floor next to the far wall.

In short, my brothers had gone all-out.

"Erol? Lex? Anyone home?" I called into the emptiness, not expecting either of my brothers to answer. But to my surprise, I heard footsteps coming from the hallway.

"Shae? You're back already?" Erol's voice inquired, and a moment later he appeared in the main room. I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

"Happy twelfth Birthday!" he said cheerfully, and came over to hug me. I returned the hug and thanked him thoroughly. I liked this Erol more than the working one.

Erol was the oldest of the three of us, being twenty. When our parents died, he had to step up and be the family leader, and did a pretty good job of it in my opinion. He had joined the Krimzon Guard at the minimum age for new recruits, and had not stopped working since. It was the only way to keep a roof over our heads. But now, four years later, he was a much respected Officer. He worked extremely hard just to provide for us, and I was thankful for a brother like that.

On the other hand, I did not like the fact that in order to do so, he had to become a different person. The Erol I knew was caring and cheerful. Contrary to the KG Erol, who was strict, merciless and mean. I liked that I had the opportunity to see his good side at home. But I feared the day that he would come home as the same person he was at work.

"Is Lex home?" I asked him after he released me.

"No, he has a late shift tonight." He answered as he headed off to work on something in the kitchen. "But I thought we could wait for him before we started the celebration."

"Sounds good," I told him as I followed his lead and began to occupy myself in the small kitchen, "but you guys really didn't have to do that. I mean, it's just one more year."

"Of course we had to do something!" He replied incredulously. "It's your birthday, Shae."

"So? Food is more important."

Erol sighed, and turned around to face me. "It's important to us. We all have very hard lives, but we shouldn't. Especially not you. You're too young to worry about the things you do, and to live in the way that you do. How many kids do you see in the Slums?" He asked rhetorically.

I mirrored the defeated sigh. "Not many."

"Exactly. So you deserve to have a bit of fun, particularly on your birthday. Get it?" He asked.

"Got it." I responded animatedly.

"Good." He finalized, and we both laughed at our little joke. "Get it, got it, good" was something we had made up a while ago, and we had enjoyed using it ever since. We both settled back into our work; Erol foraging for something suitable to eat, me gathering dishes.

"Did I hear it was someone's birthday?" called a cheerful voice from the door suddenly, causing the two of us to look up from our work. Erol just smiled and turned back, but I hastily set the plates on the counter and ran to the door to greet my second brother with another embrace.

Lex was sixteen years old, which meant four years younger than Erol, but he the two were practically mirror images. They had the same fiery, orange hair and golden eye-colour. Their faces matched too, with the sharp, alert eyes and angular features. I suppose I look like them too, in that sense. I had the same features and hair, despite the fact that my hair was longer and did not stick up like theirs. My eyes are the same colour, too, but I have always believed them to be more brown than gold, despite what others told me.

Lex was wearing the standard KG uniform – minus the helmet and goggles – consisting of a grey and brown shirt and pants, red armour and accents, and heavy duty black combat boots. It was not the nicest uniform, and it took from my excitement to become a KG later. But Lex had promised we would find one that fit me. Unfortunately, he had to remain with one that was notably over-sized.

He had officially joined the Guard just this year; once again, at minimum age. There simply was not enough money to support three orphaned kids. At least KG got some food provided during the day, but unfortunately, they could not bring any home. Lex and Erol had tried on many occasions, but there was no way to sugar-coat it. I was not going to eat as well until I was old enough to join myself. That was likely one of the reasons they worked so hard to do things like this.

But I would not let them give me more to eat on a regular day. They worked for their rewards, no matter how insignificant those rewards turned out to be. And I was not about to let them take the short end of the stick for me. I spent the days with friends, doing whatever inclined me at the moment. They spent the day serving the city as under-paid, under-privileged guards. It was not hard to see who had it worse.

"Yeah, Lex, you're right." I said.

"Great!" He said enthusiastically. "Because it would've been weird if I was wrong. . . ."

I laughed. Lex was always making jokes, even through the toughest of times. It was one of the many things I admired about my big brother. Sure, Erol was a great role model too, but something was off. I could not tell you what that "something" was for my life, but it was there. With Lex, not so much. I just loved his carefree laugh and warm smile – even though he had to work for a living.

I sidestepped and let Lex pass by me into the kitchen. I heard my two brothers give each other a warm greeting, but since neither said anything to me after that I decided to head to my room.

I had been in the Garden Section of the City earlier, and it was virtually impossible for me to come out of there without mud all over my clothes. I quickly changed into something different, but I saved my nicer outfits for my courses the next day. The few kids who live in the Slums have very irregular timetables; we might have a full day, then a half day, then a day with no class at all, followed by a day with only one or two classes, and another day without class. But we were fortunate to even be allowed to go to school in the first place, regardless of our schedule. These were the Slums, where the motto was "Take what you can get and don't ask questions."

That is another reason the KG would get so many applications from this area – they offered food, shelter and better education if you wanted it. And most of us wanted it.

The KG had recently started a "Junior League" in addition to the regular Guard faction. It did not offer as much, and it was hard work, but it was supposed to be worth it. Although it still did not offer much in the way of food, you could get a solid twenty hours of schooling per week, and it gave you experience and favour when you finally did reach sixteen. You did have to train, though, and quite arduously at that. The Krimzon Guard Junior League was no walk in the park – but I needed it, and that was all that counted.

Of course, I still had to be thirteen to get in. One more year to go.

I looked in the small mirror and realized more than my clothes needed to be cleaned. My loose orange hair was wet and sticky at the ends, and I had to work through it for a few minutes to disentangle some small bits of leaves and sticks from it. I promised myself that the next time I visited the Gardens I would tie my hair back. After a brush had been run violently through the orange mess, I set about scrapping the grime and dirt off my face and long ears.

A few minutes later, Lex called me to dinner from down the hallway. I quickly stood and crossed the room. Halfway out the door I halted abruptly and grabbed my camera just as an after-thought. Regrettably, I had taken very few photographs in my life, and the time intervals between them were quite significant. It could not matter less to me, though, because it merely renewed the thrill of taking them when I remembered.

The meal passed in silence on my part. Lex and Erol chatted quietly about KG business between bites, even though there were so few of them. Dinnertime was over before it should have been, but thankfully we got to move on to dessert this evening. We had a quick laugh when the candle would not light, and we had to skip that part of the ceremony.

The cake was essentially bread with some long-expired fruit baked into it, and the icing had a sickly-sweet fruity flavour. All that laid aside, it was all right. I reckoned we were able to afford it because it was a substandard the baker had just been waiting for someone desperate to take off their hands. We ate it happily anyways, because we were exactly that desperate, I suspect. And the sweet flavour was a nice alteration from the plain, bitter taste of the majority of food we consumed.

Then I got to open the presents. I was quite excited in spite of myself. Even if they were not the most extravagant or expensive gifts, I just enjoyed the thrill of opening them.

Erol's was some new hair ribbons. Obviously, he noted the bits and pieces that got caught in my hair more and more often. I had a good laugh at that, and thanked him nicely.

Our neighbours had baked some little cookies and crackers, and had bundled some up for me. I loved the little snacks, but I made sure Erol and Lex ate some too. All three of us were fans of the realistic sugary taste (as opposed to the cake. . .).

Finally, Lex had found a cool blue eco rock near the Port, and decided to donate it to my trinket collection. I gathered interesting rocks, plants, knick-knacks, anything I deemed to be interesting. Especially items that used eco. Even though I was surrounded by the unreal, inexplicable matter anywhere I went, it never ceased to amaze me. The way it held shape in one form, but floated everywhere in another. It was, in a way, the perfect balance between solid, liquid and gas form; it was none and all of them at once – completely extraordinary.

"Thanks, Lex," I said, still marvelling over the twisting electric blue patterns that appeared alive within the rock.

"Hey, no problem, sis!" He said. "I know you like them, so what better person to keep it?"

"Thanks. And thank you again, Erol." I said, not neglecting my other brother. "I will put those to good use!"

He smiled half-heartedly. "It's not much. I wish we could get more, but. . . ." He trailed off.

"Hey, come on, it's not your fault that that stupid Commander Torn guy won't give you a shot!" I encouraged.

"Yeah, bro, no one in their right mind can avoid promoting you much longer!" Lex said in his slang-full voice. I would never get over his "teenager" way of talking.

Erol just pressed his lips together in a poor excuse for a grin. When he did that, it just meant he was thinking intensively. It was rubbing off from that serious side of his personality. And I did not like it. Not that he had to be smiling and laughing every second, but his disheartened moments were becoming more and more common.

I knew there was something going on behind the look and words, but I was not going to go there. Not at the moment. Instead, I thought I would try to lift the suddenly downcast atmosphere.

"Hey, how about we take a picture?" I suggested. Both of my brothers immediately objected to this new idea – but at least the mood was different. "Aww, come on, guys," I said, and immune to their protests, grabbed the camera and set it up. Or, at least, I tried to.

"Umm… help?" I asked tentatively. My request was met by an eye-rolling Lex who came to assist me in finding the timer button. The three of us may have had different talents, but none of those included programming; or anything to do with technology, for that matter. (Maybe it was better we lived disconnected from all of that. . .).

After five minute's fiddling with the device, we finally found a combination of switches that made the camera start to beep repetitively. Assuming we had done something right, we rushed to get in the picture before it set off. Thankfully, our awkward scramble through the small room got Erol to laugh, and the picture ended up quite nice, despite the fact that none of us were very photogenic. I later added it to my photo-book.

Life was hard. There was no avoiding that. But I could try and make the best of it. I had friends, a family, and a life. A hard one, no doubt. But at the end of the day, things could be much worse. I had few things, but I was happy with what I did have.

Life was good. That was a better way to put it.

I thought things would stay that way forever.

I could not have been more wrong.

I bet you're thinking Erol is very OOC. That is for a reason. All will make sense in the next chapter…

Questions, comments, concerns, criticisms? The usual, if it's not too much to ask.

~Fishyicon