Mwahahaha! The return of "Know Your Myst Stars"! I'm back with another chapter. Sorry it took so long, had chapter upload issues and kept sending me errors. But now I'm back with a vengence, baby! And I still have only ONE REVIEWER. You want to know the truth? It's really beginning to annoy me. So, help a writer out… review her story… Please? It would mean ever so much to me.

Catherine stormed out on stage. Nobody makes fun of my man, nuh-uh! She thought angrily. No way, not in a thousand ages. And nobody makes fun of his friend, either. Defiantly, she plopped down into the solitary chair and yelled "Do your worst!"

"Oh, I will," said a voice. "Know your stars, know your stars, know your stars, know your stars, know your stars… Catherine… likes to pig out on cookies!"

"Hey! I do not!" Okay, this was not going to be easy. So, this guy wanted a fight? Well, then, Catherine would GIVE him a fight.

"I'm sure that you can't possibly come up with anything more insulting than that," she replied.

"You thought wrong. Catherine… Thinks that pickles are sexy!"

"What? And how in the worlds do you know my name?"

"I have my ways. Catherine… her real name is Sparky McBaddBatt!"

"That makes no sense!"

"It's better than your interpretation of the word 'Padlocks'."

"Well, excuse me for having a British accent!"

"You're from Riven. Why would you even have a British accent?"

Catherine was about to say something back, but decided to shut her mouth, since she had always wondered about that herself.

Suddenly, a clip began to play of Catherine saying 'Padlocks' in Myst III: Exile, only the clip had been slowed down so that the word was ridiculously long and drawn out.

"Hey!"

The voice snickered. "That's really hilarious."

"No it isn't!" Catherine protested. This was beginning to get ridiculous. What would this idiot do next? Put up a doctored photo of her and Gehn?

"Catherine… I took this photo of her secretly!"

Suddenly, a huge and clearly doctored photo of Catherine with her arm draped around Gehn was projected onto a screen behind her.

"What?!? I HATE that over-blown, self-gratuitous, know-it-all, idiot, god-complexed, stupid, poser, loser of a man Gehn! AND I AM NOT HIS GIRLFRIEND!!!!"

"Catherine… ooh, she's cheating on Atrus…"

"What? I am not!"

"… For Sirrus!"

"You pervert! That's my son!"

"Yeah, I know. And you're the pervert for going out with your own son!"

Catherine was about to make an angry retort, but thought better of it.

"Yeah. I thought so. Catherine… she likes to growl like a dog when she eats dinner!"

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

"Catherine… she doesn't make any sense!"

"Shut up!"

"Now you know Catherine… the nonsensical cheating pervert who says 'Padlocks' in a weird way!"

"Hey! I do not! You don't know me at all! And why did you make fun of Atrus?"

Suddenly, Atrus and the Stranger ran onto the stage, hoping to calm Catherine down a bit.

"Catherine," the Stranger said in as gentle a voice as she could, "You need to calm down a bit now."

"CALM DOWN?!?" The yelling was so loud that the entire building began to shake with the force of the sonic waves. "No way! I'm really mad now. That – that… imbecile – doctored a photo of me and your father! No way, he's going down, he is going down."

With this, Catherine turned primly on her heel and stomped offstage as the helpless friends watched.

"Well," Atrus sighed, "At least there's nobody else here that this guy can make fun of."

"Yeah," the Stranger agreed. "I shudder to think what might happen if somebody like, say, Sirrus or Achenar ended up here."

Meanwhile, on Tohmahna…

"She's not here? Where is she?"

They were getting nowhere. Yeesha was nowhere to be found, and this was obviously grating on Sirrus' already frazzled nerves.

Achenar stood by eagerly, waiting for his brother to snap. And Sirrus knew this. Which only made Achenar all the happier.

"Maybe," Achenar said sarcastically, "She went to Haven or Spire. Maybe you should go back there and look for her."

"Clever, dear brother, but not clever enough. Why don't you go over into that far corner over there, you know, the one waaaay over there, and work on your witty comments?"

"Sarcasm takes two, brother."

Nothing. Sirrus couldn't believe it. He'd finally gotten off of that blasted rock and he couldn't even get the revenge that he had been planning for ages, it seemed?

Angrily, he kicked a book on the floor.

Wait a minute.

A book?

On the floor?

Suddenly, things began to click together. Somehow, Atrus had known that Sirrus was coming and linked off somewhere. That would explain the locks on every door. That would explain why Yeesha was missing. Atrus and Catherine took her with them.

"Very clever," he said, a sinister grin spreading across his face. "Achenar! Get over here."

Sirrus lay the book on the kitchen table and opened it. There lay a moving image of a stage with a single, lonely chair on it.

"This is their safe place?" Achenar said quizzically. "But it's only an empty stage! I don't even see any seats."

"Don't judge a book by its cover, brother," Sirrus replied, tapping the cover of the book. "This Age could be full of booby traps, or it might be a trick image to a place far more secure."

"Or it might be a trap," Achenar pointed out.

Sirrus blinked and thought about what his brother had just said. Regrettably, Achenar was right.

"Very astute of you to notice that, brother. One of the few moments of intellect that you show. We'll leave it, then. They might be hiding and watching us as we speak."

"You mean the way I am right now?"

Sirrus' blood turned to ice. He knew that voice. He'd heard it plead to him as he trapped its owner. He'd listened to it speak about the owner's home Age as he nodded off in the middle of the discussion, his brain focused on scheming and not on the lesson at hand.

He turned from the book to see his own brother hiding behind him, cowering in fear.

And he slowly looked back to find himself face to face with Saavedro.

Saavedro's Point of View

Here they were.

My tormentors.

The horrible urchins who left me stranded on that lonely, forgotten world. That place called J'nanin.

I hated them. Every fiber of their beings. And I was ready to get rid of them once and for all.

The hammer came out, the hammer I said that I'd never use again.

"And how are my star pupils this evening?" I stepped forward, causing Sirrus to step back.

"N-no-now Saavedro, be reasonable!"

Another step forward.

"Reasonable? Why don't you tell me how reasonable it was to ruin my life!"

Step.

"I was stuck there for the Weaving knows how long, Sirrus! Why? Why did you hurt my family? Why?"

Step.

"It was only through someone else that I was saved. Someone who was kinder than you. Someone who saw through my anger."

One final step. The criminal was pinned to the wall, without escape.

"But who put me there in the first place? I was wrong to go after Atrus, I know that now. I should have come after you. You and your idiot brother."

"Hey!" Achenar shouted from the back of the room. I didn't bother to turn and go after him. He was much bigger than I was, and I wasn't about to mess with someone who would potentially hurt me.

The hammer was poised neatly near the side of Sirrus' temple, ready to strike. Ready to give the final blow.

Suddenly, a noise behind me startled me. A familiar noise.

The sound of linking.

Achenar was escaping!

Unfortunately, having been startled by the noise and my sudden realization, I let go of Sirrus, who kicked me hard in the shin. I stumbled and fell to the floor in agony as I watched Sirrus link into a book lying on a nearby kitchen table.

Enraged, I ran over to the open book and linked after the boys.

Then it hit me.

I had no way back.