It was early morning, and a dozen Freedom Fighters were standing to attention in the hangar, waiting for the arrival of commander Torn. They were part of a specially prepared scout force, and they had received orders to be ready for an important mission that lay ahead of them. The only sound throughout the room as they waited was the constant metallic hum of the Hellcat cruisers behind them, all prepped and ready for flying.

Then the doors at the end of the room slid open with a hiss, and Torn entered followed by the hero Jak, who would also be taking part in this mission, with Daxter on his shoulder as always.

Torn approached the waiting troops and walked up and down the line. "Men, you are some of the finest scouts in the Freedom League," he began. "That is why I have chosen you for this assignment. We are to embark on a journey far beyond the city limits, tracking an unknown signal, and it's uncertain what we may find. That's why you must all be prepared for the unexpected. Board your vehicles, and await my order for take-off."

The briefing was short and sweet, as was his style.

"Yes sir," the scouts said with a salute, and they all climbed into their Hellcats, two to each vehicle.

"Jak, you're with me on this one," Torn added, and the two of them boarded Torn's cruiser.

"Let's find out what this thing is," said Jak, feeling the pull of adventure and mystery once again.

Daxter, meanwhile, sat still and said nothing, much to Torn's approval.

"OK team, follow me," said Torn through his radio.

As they steadily lifted off the ground, the scouts below them began to do the same, one by one. Higher and higher they went, through the hatch in the ceiling and into the cloudy morning air, until they all zoomed off towards the north-western mountains. Beneath them the city half-slept. Torn looked out of his window quickly to check that all of his men were getting into formation behind him, and saw them arranging themselves into two lines of three, keeping straight and perfectly aligned.

"Ashelin, we're clear of the city," said Torn into his radio as the walls passed by beneath them.

Back in the command centre, Ashelin, who waited at the communications panels with a small team of technicians, received his message. "Roger that, Torn. Co-ordinates are heading your way now."

A few seconds later, the squadron received a set of digits on their screens, which were automatically implemented into their navigational systems. This was where they would be heading, straight to the very source of where the signal was detected.

"Thanks, Ashelin," said Torn. "Co-ordinates received, and we're moving ahead with the mission."

"I'll keep tabs on things from here," said Ashelin. "Keep me updated on your progress. Good luck, guys, and be careful."

"Thanks," said Jak. "See you later."

Torn led his scouts out over the city walls and approached the mountain range in the near distance.

"Alright team, we're heading through the mountains," Torn said. "Stay vigilant and follow my lead."

A light layer of low cloud was wrapped in between the large and dominating rock formations, obscuring their path. Torn switched on the headlights of his cruiser and his team stayed close behind, for the visibility was so foggy that if they fell back by only a few metres, Torn's cruiser would be lost from sight. Torn took it slowly as he sought out and carefully manoeuvred through the hidden gaps in the mountain range. From back in the city, the Freedom HQ Building watched them disappear into the gloom.

Jak kept a look out from his seat, and Daxter too was paying more attention than usual to the situation. He was still feeling awkward and embarrassed about what Jak had caught him doing yesterday, hence his uncharacteristic silence, and he hoped that Jak was not going to bring it up during the journey for his amusement. Fortunately for him, Jak had no intention of doing so, and had his head firmly in the mission.

There was little to see. The fog was thick and sometimes great rocky walls sprang up on them suddenly, causing the small fleet to detour and find another way around. But Torn knew there was a passage through these peaks, and it was his job to find it and guide his men safely through to the other side.

After slow and winding progress, the team of cruisers broke through the cloud and emerged in clear air above flatter land. This was the first time many of them had ever laid eyes on the other side of the mountains, but the view was neither rewarding nor attractive. The land beyond the mountains was bare and grey. Dark hills coated with thin, wilted grass rolled far to the horizon, and here and there, dead trees clung weakly into the dry soil, so frail that the slightest breeze might threaten to uproot them. It was a desolate, lifeless expanse of nothing, as far as the eye could see.

But it was very clear to everyone in the squadron, even this early into the journey, that no Metal Heads had ever been here, because they knew first-hand what Metal Head infestations looked like, having seen it happen to their own gardens back in Haven City. The Metal Heads would corrupt the lands they conquered into a dank swamp of poisonous acid and dark plant life, making it impossible for anything but themselves to thrive there. This barren land clearly did not exhibit the same qualities, for there was nothing at all left alive, nothing to sustain even a Metal Head.

For Torn, this opened up eerie new possibilities. He confided his thoughts to Jak, radio off so the other scouts would not hear. "Jak, this place has clearly not seen Metal Head activity, at least not for some time. If they didn't make that signal on the scanner, then it had to be something else."

Jak agreed ominously, but they still had far to go yet. Who knew what else they might find?

Torn got on his radio again and sent a transmission back to the city. "Ashelin, this is Torn. We've made it safely through the mountains. Can you still read us?"

Ashelin's reply came back slightly fuzzy. "Copy that, Torn. But we're getting some interference. The mountains must be partially blocking out our communications."

"We'll keep going," Torn continued. "We're over a vast wasteland now. It's completely dead. I'll update you when we come across something."

Then Daxter spoke quietly for the first time since the start of the flight. "Sheesh, I wouldn't want to live out here. This place gives me the creeps!"

Nobody else said anything, but they all silently agreed with him.

They flew on steadily, the deadlands passing by continuously beneath them, every new mile indistinguishable from the last. None of the pilots, save Jak and Daxter, had ever known such emptiness before, and the featureless plains made time feel much slower. But after what had to be at least an hour, the earth gradually became lighter until the land ended with a coastline of black rocks, all piled up like a natural sea wall at the shoreline of a vast ocean. The water was grey and stagnant, and no waves lapped against the hard shore. Small stains of vegetation also grew here, but they were withered and unhealthy, and as grey as the earth that held them. But still, the onboard computers directed the team further ahead, out over the flat, featureless waters.

"Team, halt here," Torn ordered, and the cruisers behind him slowed to a stop at the border of the ocean. A few of them looked back the way they had come, and the mountains looked like black teeth on the horizon, still blanketed in cloud.

"Ashelin, do you still read us?" Torn checked into his radio.

Ashelin's response came back even fainter than before. "I can only just hear you, Torn. Your transmission's getting weaker. What do you have to report?"

"We've reached the ocean," Torn replied, the great ocean that was just a story back in the city. "But our systems are telling us the source of the signal still lies far ahead. We've got to fly out over the water if we're going to find it."

"Over the water?" repeated Ashelin anxiously. Nobody in Haven's recorded history had ever crossed that vast boundary. This was a significant leap for the city and its exploration history, one that was daunting to take, leaving behind the homelands that were familiar.

"Affirmative," said Torn. "We'll keep going, but if this radio interference keeps up, we might fly out of contact soon."

There was a momentary pause from Ashelin. "OK, I trust you, but please be careful, Torn. And you too, Jak. You're heading into the unknown now. Just come back safely."

Daxter huffed when he did not get a mention. "What does she have against me?"

Torn led his squadron bravely onwards again. For the remainder of the journey, they flew over deep and dark water, heading further out from the lands they knew and towards their mysterious destination. The mountains and the coast behind them slipped away deceptively quickly. The ocean was quiet and still, and the water was so murky that they could not judge its depth or make out anything that might be even just beneath the surface. Jak looked down in thought. Could the signal have originated from something living down there? Some undiscovered denizen of the deep?

Nobody spoke while they were flying over the water, not daring to break the eerie, natural silence of the open ocean. Their flight controls revealed that there was still some distance to go yet, they were not even half way, but the further over the ocean they travelled, the less likely it seemed that Metal Heads were the cause of the signal. The figures on their dashboards counted down slowly, almost painfully with the suspense. Closer and closer they came, but still no change marked the ocean. No islands, no life, and no exit.

It continued in this way for what felt like an age of the earth. Then, long after the crew had stopped counting the distance, the control panels of every cruiser sounded a tone that meant they had arrived at their destination, and everyone was stirred back to attention. The vehicles automatically slowed to a halt in perfect synchrony, until they all hovered in their formation over the point on the earth where the co-ordinates had led them.

"We're here!" Daxter broke the long silence at last with his excitement, and he leapt up on the dashboard to look outside. "But… I don't see anything."

He was right. They had stopped right above an unremarkable spot in the ocean, no visible features around for miles in all directions. Even the mountains behind them had long disappeared into the haze of the horizon, and they were perfectly isolated in the middle of nowhere.

Torn tried to understand what this meant as everyone waited for his next orders. He had been sure they would find something here, some clue to what had caused that strange signal, some other landform at least. But there was absolutely nothing, nothing but unexplored water and sky. Had it really been some freak weather occurrence, or had whatever caused it moved on? If it was something living in the waters, they may never learn the truth.

"Torn?" Jak said, trying to get a response out of the commander.

But then, one of the scouts shouted out. "Sir! Down there!"

He was pointing down to the water directly beneath them. Something was down there, just below the surface of the dark water, shining with a weird green light. For a moment, everyone could do nothing but stare at it curiously, until Torn gave his order.

"Move down. Slowly."

As one unit, all the vehicles descended for a closer look, until they hovered just a few feet above the waves.

But then the object started moving. It floated upwards to break the surface of the water, as large as any of the cruisers, but everyone's curiosity was shattered when it was revealed to be nothing more than a bioluminescent jellyfish, round and shiny and wet like a huge beach ball that was lost at sea. Then it deflated itself without a sound and sank down beneath the waves once again, disappearing for good.

"That's it?" said Daxter, feeling highly let down. "We came all this way and all we found was a stupid jellyfish?"

"Looks like it, Dax," said Jak with despondency. This new adventure that had promised such intrigue had been all for nothing.

Nobody could believe it, especially Torn. This had been a chance for answers, but now that chance had slipped out of their hands and sunk into the sea like the world's most valuable bar of soap, never to be seen again. What an anticlimactic ending to such a long, tedious mission. Perhaps they would never know what made that signal, and though he didn't want to give up, there was nothing else he could think to do.

"Should we keep looking?" suggested Jak.

Torn looked all around him to the unpromising leagues of bare ocean on all sides of them, empty and featureless. "No. This is definitely the right spot, but whatever made that sound has obviously moved on. Let's head back home before we run out of fuel. There's no point in staying. It was a waste of time coming out here. Alright men, we're heading back to the city."

Everyone got back into their seats and prepared themselves to rise up, and as they re-ascended, Torn's feelings sank lower. He changed the dial on his radio and tried to send a message back to Ashelin to let her know that they were heading home again, but the only answer they received was blank static. They were too far away from the city, out of range of communication.

But then, something extraordinary happened. As fortune would have it, at this very moment of resignation, they unexpectedly found what they had been searching for, or rather, it found them.

Their ascent was forced to a halt as a bright flash of light suddenly tore the sky with a blast of harsh wind. It made everyone jump and momentarily dazzled them.

"Agh!" Jak grunted, shielding his face with an arm. "What the hell was that?"

Torn's eyes stung, but he blinked furiously to banish the painful gleam, his heart in his throat. He recognised that noise; it was the exact same sound he had heard on the recording. This was it! This was the signal they were tracking, and it was right on top of them! As his misty vision slowly restored itself, he could see something coming into focus through the pulsing colours and shapes. Hovering in front of them, where there had previously been empty air, were three silver aircraft. At first he thought he might be hallucinating, his senses deceived by that sudden flash, but everyone else could see them too.

"Uh... those aren't Metal Heads," said Jak slowly, still rubbing his eyes.

Daxter gulped and hid behind Jak's shoulder. "What are those things?"

They had a long, sleek shape and cockpits with blacked-out windows, two sets of wings along each side of them — one behind the other — and four cylindrical jet engines that shone with a green fire. Each had a huge fin on the back that pointed upwards, and from the front they looked like floating, metallic sharks, hovering perfectly still and glistening brilliantly in the daylight.

No one knew how to react. But then the three sinister vehicles descended slowly as one, until they were a few metres above and in front of the Hellcats, like they were coming in for a closer look at them, just as the Hellcats had done to the ocean a few minutes ago. Torn's instinct kicked in, sensing danger, and Jak noticed his hand slide up the steering column to rest a thumb upon the button that would activate the onboard weapons. But he held back, and they both took the risk in waiting.

"Orders, sir?" said several of the other pilots nervously, but Torn was momentarily frozen in anticipation, watching these strange aircraft coming closer.

Just before they drew too near, as Torn was about to press the button, they stopped and the window of the central one slowly retracted, revealing the pilot. He was wearing a dark helmet with a large black visor that covered the complete upper half of his face so that his eyes could not be seen. It gave him a sinister appearance, but then he stood up, revealing that he was wearing an equally black uniform which bore a silver emblem on the chest that none of the Hellcat pilots had ever seen before. In one hand he held a remote device, which he lifted to his mouth and spoke into, and his calm, inquisitive voice reverberated through the air.

"Greetings, blue travellers. My name is Rulo, captain of the Grey Wing of Idandi, and I offer you peaceful greetings. Who might you be?"

He lowered the device he had spoken into and raised the other hand outwards in a seemingly polite gesture of invitation, and waited. Onboard the lead cruiser, Torn and Jak looked at each other unsurely, until Jak prompted with a nod towards the mysterious visitors that Torn ought to make an answer. Torn quickly adapted, withdrew his hand from the fire button, and reached for his own radio and flicked a few switches so that his voice would project externally. He cleared his throat before speaking.

"My name is Torn," he announced, trying to put on a controlled and official-sounding voice, "And we are scouts of the Freedom League of Haven City."

He waited tensely for a response, unsure of what would happen next. The enigmatic pilot's expressions were unreadable beneath that black visor, but then he moved one leg onto the edge of his cockpit, and leant on his knee curiously. It seemed like he was studying them appraisingly, and for such an unexpected encounter, he seemed remarkably unfazed and relaxed, almost as if he knew he would find them here, and he displayed none of the apprehension or astonishment that they all felt.

"Haven City?" he said with intrigue, his voice as calm as before. "That is a name I do not know. Is that your homeland?"

Torn felt the pressure of another answer, while at the same time he tried to rapidly process this situation. In the end, all he could do was respond to the question, choosing his words carefully.

"Yes," he answered. "We have flown out here from Haven City tracking a signal we picked up recently."

Rulo's mouth fell open slightly, a hint of surprise and amusement on his lips. "That was probably us that you detected," he explained, now looking quite pleased. "My own scouts and I came to this area in the last few days, exploring the world for our city and searching for survivors of the Great War. It seems that we have found some."

"The Great War?"

Rulo explained, adjusting his position again. "Our city, Idandi, and all the neighbouring settlements, were long ago beset and destroyed by monsters of darkness with glowing skulls."

"The Metal Heads!" said Torn in realisation.

"Is that what you call them?" asked Rulo inquisitively. "We did not know their true name. They left only few survivors in our homeland, forcing us to flee and find shelter, and only recently have we become bold enough to come out from our long hiding and reclaim what was once ours, to find them all disappeared."

To the scouts of Haven, this opened a whole new page in their history books, maybe even an entire volume, and they listened with great interest. It appeared they were hovering face to face with representatives of another culture, another city that had also survived the Metal Head Wars. And they were advanced, obviously possessing at least the technology of teleportation.

Jak was intrigued, and Daxter stopped trembling and peeped his head out higher from behind his shoulder. However, in spite of their common enemy, Torn, as always, was mistrustful of strangers, and he figured he should start asking some questions of his own.

"How did you know we would be here when you appeared?" he asked.

"We did not," Rulo admitted. "We have been searching the world for survivors, as I said, for some time now, and you are the first that we have found. It seems that fortune and fate have had a hand in our meeting. But tell me, how did your Haven City fare during the Great War?"

Torn felt slightly derailed, for he had yet more questions he wanted answered and now another had been aimed at him. Nevertheless, he tried to be diplomatic, understanding that he spoke for Haven out here in these distant reaches far from home. They should continue reciprocating in this way, one question at a time, and if these strangers felt comfortable sharing their history, then maybe he ought to as well.

"The Metal Heads besieged us too," Torn explained, rolling with the unfolding conversation. "They never took our city, but we sustained heavy losses against them. We've been holding them off for generations, but we now believe that we've wiped out the vast majority of them at least, and they will pose no further threat to our part of the world."

Rulo seemed impressed, but remained calm and controlled as always. Before he could speak again, however, Torn quickly followed up with his next question.

"When was the last time you saw any Metal Heads in your part of the world?"

Rulo was unflustered, and answered respectfully. "We have encountered none since we came out of hiding, and we believed that they had finally chosen to leave our lands in peace. But it seems that we may have you to thank for this."

He paused briefly, and then continued. "Your strength and resolution is commendable. Anyone who fights these 'Metal Heads' as you call them is no enemy of ours, and I say we would make valuable allies. I propose that we unite, and work together to rebuild what we all once lost. I am sure there are many ways we could help each other."

This sounded almost too good to be true, and many in the Hellcats felt eager to accept. Even Torn felt swayed, for he was starting to identify with these enigmatic strangers as more about them was made known. But he needed more time, and Ashelin needed to know about this. The decision to accept them would be hers. If only she had been able to join them on this mission too, had her other duties not kept her back at the city, but as her first commander, Torn knew it was up to him to speak on her behalf.

"I see the benefits of an alliance," he said carefully. "We in Haven have remained cut off from the outside world by the Metal Heads, and the discovery of other survivors would be big news in the city. But before we can make a decision, we must first travel back there with this information."

"As must we to our homeland," said Rulo understandingly. "My superiors will desire to hear of our meeting as well, and will most certainly wish to come and see your Haven City. Perhaps our leaders can meet and learn of each other's histories, and officially commence our alliance. Then perhaps you may visit our homeland too."

Torn was slowly starting to become less doubtful, for this man seemed genuine and well-spoken. A strengthening bridge of mutual understanding was growing between them. These people had been through the same evils as they had, and he could not deny that such an alliance would be both useful and helpful.

"I'm sure our governor would be very interested to meet with your leaders too," he said.

"Very good," said Rulo with approval. "In that case, we shall be on our way with the message. But how should we find each other again, and where would we meet?"

This was a pertinent question, but a risky one. Did Torn really trust these friendly but mysterious strangers enough to hand over the location of Haven City? No. He did not feel enough mutual rapport for that yet. There was a lot more he wanted to know first. Until then, it was better that they met at least one more time on neutral ground, even if it did mean repeating the long flight all over again.

"We can meet here three days from now," Torn suggested. "By then, we'll have had a chance to explain and arrange everything back at Haven."

Rulo nodded and gave a promising smile. "So it is settled, then. We shall find each other again at this point in three days' time. I look forward to learning more about your city and its people."

The two commanders exchanged their final instructions and preparations amicably, and then in a flash, the three silver jets were gone. Once the blinding glare had subsided, the radios onboard the Hellcats burst into excited chatter as the scouts began discussing their momentous discovery.

In the lead cruiser, the mood was more subdued. Torn flicked his radio off and shared an ambivalent look with Jak. "Well, what did you make of that?"

Jak wrinkled his brow in thought, having not said a word during the exchange. "I don't know," he said carefully. He had a knack for sensing trouble and hostility, and right now his honed warning system was triggered. "That guy seemed a bit strange to me."

Daxter butted in. "Yeah! He looked like the kind of guy you do NOT want to be enemies with."

"I know," Torn answered. "I got that feeling too." He scratched his cheek. "Do you think he was telling the truth?"

Jak shrugged. "Maybe." But there was no way any of them could be sure.

Torn felt a stubborn seed of doubt growing in his mind, and it made him question himself. Had he acted justly and appropriately? If something went wrong with this, then he knew it would be his neck on the line. But he tried to settle himself with confidence. He had acted on the side of caution, and had done nothing that would place Haven City in danger.

"Come on. We've got to get back to Haven. Ashelin needs to hear of this. Let's go. Now."