Chapter 6

Soft, caresses, grass, and water. Trees that towered high above the world, shielding the ground from the sun. I remember the forest so easily. It's the first thing that always come to mind when I think of home. In a world that was so chaotic, the forest was a safe haven away from Haven. It was away from the death and the violence. I felt safe there. The way the trees moved and filled the air with their soft whispers, the way the butterflies brushed pass your face, looking for a safe place to land. Everything was perfect and calm.

I remember that I was always afraid to go to the forest. The reason was simple: I was afraid to fall in love with this place. I wanted to get home so much I didn't want to stop and think this place as a home. It frightened me to get attached. I didn't want that. The forest was peaceful, it was a home. I was just too blind to see that.

The forest alone was not the only thing I was blind about. The entire time I was there, I was convinced I was alone in the world. No one cared for a lost little girl like me. I look back at it now and I realize how utterly blind I was.

The day I left, I was with Jak and Daxter. They were right beside me, fighting beside me with no hesitation, watching my back. They were relying that I would return the favor. Instead, I left them for my own selfish leap of faith. I left Jak to fight by himself when he asked me to help him. I was truly blind to think no one would notice I was gone, to think I was all alone in the world.

What a sick, selfish fantasy I held in my head. To think that I could actually throw away their lives to fulfill something that could not have worked. I was just lucky it did.

But then, after all I put the people that cared for me through, after all that happened I regret everything. I want to go back. I want to live it all again, and would do just that in a heartbeat.

All the fear I had felt, all the times I had thought I was going to die… It was all worth it. My entire life, I had felt that my life was wasted on a place and time where I didn't belong. It would be worth it to go back and do it again because it had been the first time that I had actually felt alive. I didn't feel that each breath that left my body, and each new bit of oxygen wasn't a waste. The mere fact that I had to fight to keep each of those breaths made them worth the energy to take them.

All that time that I had been scared to become a part of that place, there was so many ways that it asked me to just relax. It offered me so many opportunities that I wish I hadn't ignored. There was so many callings, so many places for me to go. It gave exactly what I wanted and I ignored it because I was scared.

I was selfish and scared because I just wanted to go back to someplace familiar. My only problem is that one I got back home, I realized that my definition of 'home' had changed.

I realized that I had changed. I wasn't the same person anymore. My world, that I had fought tooth and nail to return to, wasn't all it was cracked up to be. At first, I tried to believe that I just saw things a little differently and things would settle back to normal. It was then I realized I didn't want it to go to normal; that I had been happy, and had thrown in away.

Precursora is my home. Like before, all I want is to go home. The only thing different is where home is.

/-/-/

The desert stretched out in front of him like sea of brown. The horizon was blurred by the receding sandstorm, leaving the sky above a clear as a crystal. Krow's bright grey eyes scanned the sandy expanse in front of him, trying to discern anything that had been uncovered in the sand.

The storm had just passed and the desert was finally safe for drivers. At least for the moment. Seeing nothing of interest from his vantage point, the wastelander pulled down his seedy goggles from their resting spot on his forehead and stood up in the car seat.

His eyes scanned the sky again, before spotting a glinting piece of metal gliding through the sky. Krow kept his eyes on it as he searched the passenger seat blindly for the mirror he carried. He found it and started signaling the flyer with it, shining the sun's reflection in that general direction.

The glider dove suddenly, making it's bird like shape more easy to see as it got closer to the earth. Krow put the reflective glass next to him and waved his massive arms as the glider flew closer.

In a sudden flair of blue exhaust flames, the glider burst directly over the car, almost in reach of the driver. It then rose back into the air again and circled above the car. Krow collapsed back into the seat and started the engine.

The glider dove again, this time the pilot facing the ground as it came up from a tailspin. The flying machine suddenly shot off toward the west with another gout of blue flames.

"Show offs," Krow remarked as he tore after the flyer. He followed it for several minutes, watching as it dove and twisted through the air. It dove one final time once they were on the same plain of vision then rose back up into the air, not bothering to stop until it was well out of sight. It didn't matter however; Krow could see what it was leading him to. He drove up next to the artifact and leaned out the roll cage to pick it up. It was triangle shaped and fit nicely in the palm of his hand. It was bronze, made of Precursor metal, warm to the touch and pulsing faintly.

The wasteland turned in his seat to put it in an armored box strapped to the back of his land vehicle. He sat back in his seat, noting a light explosion off back to the east. Probably a fellow wastelander getting into a tangle with some marauders.

He sat for a few moments, searching for another glider but they all seemed all seemed to be in other places. Krow started the car again in hopes that moving to another part of the desert would come to have more benefits. Just as he was about to take off, he saw a glider coming down evenly, which meant it was landing.

Glider pilots knew better than to land in the desert. The only reasons were if communication was vital as comm. devices didn't work on the gliders, or if the pilot or machine had been injured. Krow did a quick examination of the person and device and saw no obvious error, so he assumed it was the first option.

"What is it?" He asked as the glider touched down and pulled up a lever on the front of the device. The ground's man didn't know what the lever was for, he was never really one for the flyer's devices, preferring to keep his feet on the ground.

"Explosion in the east. Went to check it out, found a person."

"Dead?"

"Dunno, not moving."

"Anybody else in the area?"

"Nope, all up north keepin' the maries back. You the closest one to us." He pointed, squinting in the sunlight. "Just a little east, not far from where Vi found ya."

Krow settled into the seat of his car and drove it off into a spin then back in the direction he came from. The spin gave the pilot enough time to get airborne before the car had gotten away.

It was dangerous for the gliders to stay too close to the ground for too long. They were good targets for marauders, or the slang term 'maries.'

Krow watched the glider as it gained altitude and speed. The pilot, Zeljeko, maneuver the machine quickly, catching up to the ground vehicle easily, and leading him to the downed person.

Zel dove toward it then rose back into the sky again, disappearing. Krow had found the body easily, lying half buried in the sand, scorch marks across the ground. Half of the wastelander demanded he kill it and leave. Another part told him to find out who it was first.

He pulled himself out of the car and onto the sand, trying to look at the face of the person with getting to close. She was female, brown hair, strange clothing, and finger tips that glowed slightly.

He recognized her nearly immediately, running to the girl's side and picking her out of the sand.

"Tox," he called, trying to rouse the unconscious girl.

She twitched slightly, squinting up at him, her eyes glowing like her fingers. "Hey," she sighed. "I hope I'm not dreaming…" She then fell back into a sleep like state, again falling limp in his arms.

The wastelander pulled her up into his arms, carrying her back to the city.

XXX

Broken Wolf/D.R.M.