Yeah, another long wait. Sorry...

I just remembered that I need to get the races in here, so should I write a chapter for those next? Should I skip right to the second one?

"That can't be what it looks like."

Someone had spiked her cereal that morning and she was hallucinating. That was it; that had to be it. There was no other explanation, except for one she just couldn't believe.

Because if it was true, that would mean that all the decrepit, destitute, broken shells of buildings here, with the overwhelming stench of decomposing wood and dust and death, was...

Home. But it couldn't be, it just couldn't be home.

Home wasn't a ghost town, over-run with little acid-green goober lizards and Metal Heads. Home was where the heart was, a warm, cozy, safe, place where you talked and laughed with friends and beat your buck-toothed older brother to the bathroom in the morning and had sleepovers with your best friends and you didn't have to worry about anything worse than who left the toilet seat up or who ate the last cookie.

Home wasn't supposed to look like this. Wasn't supposed to look dead like this.

"Hey, you okay?" Phenric sounded concerned.

She didn't answer; she didn't trust herself to speak any more than she had. Instead she made her way across the debris-scattered ground to the pillar that stood between here and the two-story hut. She braced her hands against it and gave it an experimental push. The pillar didn't budge. Dezerae leaned on it, but that proved futile as well.

Shooting a glance at her gloved hands, she toyed with an idea... She'd been told, in no uncertain terms, to only use it in an emergency and only as a final resort. But her blaster pistols wouldn't make much more than a scratch and the noise would alert any Metal Heads that were in the area. Even if they were here to clear the remainder out, she didn't particularly enjoy the idea of coming face to face with one.

Dezerae had to know for sure. She needed to be certain.

"What are you doing?" Phenric asked as yellow light flickered over her fingers. "Torn said you weren't allowed to use that!"

"What Torn doesn't know won't hurt him," she replied. "You wouldn't tell on me, would you?" She tossed a grin over her shoulder before looking back to her self-appointed task, completely oblivious to the faint blush that appeared on the boy's cheeks.

"Well..." he trailed off. "N-no, I mean..." Phenric was cut off and spared the difficulty of answering by a bright flash of topaz-yellow eco and the cracking-crunch sound as the pillar lurched forward over the gap and Dezerae accidently lost control for a second, resulting in the force of the blast pushing her backwards and onto her backside.

"Ouch..." she groaned. But it wasn't the pain of falling that had her attention so much as the stinging she felt in her palms. Bringing them before her eyes, she noticed small abrasions riddling them, glowing yellow for a few brief moments before darkening to red and revealing reddish-pink patches on her palms. Eco-burns. They had been a fairly common occurence back in Sandover, though they'd mostly happened to Jak when he spent a little too much time playing in the Blue vents on the beach. Although, they very rarely happened to her, as back then, Yellow Eco wasn't very common there.

"Are you okay?" Phenric asked hurriedly, rushing over and helping to her feet. "What happened to your hands?"

"I'm fine," she assured him. "And I'm not one hundred percent sure what happened exactly, but I'm guessing the eco in my blood rushed to my hands so fast that when it burst out, it caused eco-burns in my hands. But I'm fine," she reiterated, purposely leaving out the fact that she felt a bit drained. She made a mental note to not do anything like that for a while as she shoved her hands in her jacket pockets to keep Phenric from staring at them.

The red-head moved robotically towards the hut, crossing the makeshift bridge without even thinking, heedless of Phenric telling her to be careful. Her blue eyes were trained on the crumbling building.

Making it across with little difficulty, she paused as she glanced at the wooden ramp leading up to what had been Samos' floor of the hut he'd shared with his daughter. Testing the stability with a booted foot, she cautiously stepped on it and when she didn't fall though, she judged it safe enough to continue, though she froze every time it creaked, or when a board moved under her.

And then the bitter scent of Dark Eco reached her nose, just as she approached the rotting doorway above. And when Dezerae stopped completely and listen, she heard the sound of something crawling around, though if she had to guess, she'd say it was coming from the ground floor.

"Dammit," the red-head muttered. Craning her head around to look at Phenric, who'd just arrived at the other end of the crude bridge, she called back as loud as she dared, "Watch your back, we're not alone!"

Phenric nodded, and without a word pulled a Scatter gun from pack on his shoulders. Meanwhile, Dezerae pulled her own bag off of her back and pulled out pieces of what appeared to be a Blaster rifle, quickly assembling the weapon with practiced fingers. All the while, she cast furtive glances around, unwilling to be caught off guard as she berated herself under her breath. She should've put it together the moment they were out of Haven City.

No helping that, now, Dezerae decided as the barrel of her gun clicked into place and she grabbed her ammunition and proceeded to lock and load. Listening carefully, she found that it sounded like the skittering of the spindly legs of a Stinger. Even if they were tiny and extremely easy to miss if one was looking for bigger fish to fry, their sting was still excuciating at best and deadly at worst.

Padding over the boards, Dezerae quickly scoured the top floor as a precaution, and couldn't help but notice how familiar and lifeless everything was. The color she remembered was long since faded, leaving depressing shades of gray and brown. As a faint breeze blew past, the straw that made up the roof made a rustling noise.

Confirming that the threat was not here, she stepped over an overturned stool and quickly moved down and joined Phenric, who seemed to have not found any Metal Heads yet, seeing as how she hadn't heard any gunshots.

He was facing the door when she entered, and stepping backwards, towards the remains of Keira's old Trans-Pad and Zoomer, which looked too far gone to be of use any more. Phenric's position allowed him to note Dezerae's entrance, but not the skittering little Dark Eco monster that was crawling in through the window.

"Duck!" she warned, aiming. The gunshot rang out, and before anybody could blink, the Metal Head was dead on the floor, carcass already disentigrating into Dark Eco.

"Close one," Phenric observed. Both he and Dezerae stayed as far away from the floating globs of purple goo as was possible. It was common knowledge that no normal person could survive contact. Perhaps Jak could, from what she'd seen, and maybe even Daxter. And Dezerae didn't even want to test her tolerance, now that she could suddenly channel Yellow. Phen tilted his head, apparently having heard something. "Sounds like that wasn't the only one."

Dezerae nodded, having also heard more skittering. "Yeah; stay alert."

They only found a handful of Stingers, although a Hose Head revealed itself and gave them a bit of trouble before slowing down enough to be shot in the neck and killed.

"Think we got 'em all?" Phen inquired, cautiously poking the barrel of his gun through a jagged gap in the bulbous Trans Pad, but finding no gem-headed menace.

Dezerae, who was busying herself by gathering up the fallen Skull gems, shrugged grunted. "If there were, they would've come at the smell of Dark Eco. The things have a strange curiosity in the death of others of their kind." Snatching one up from where it had tumbled behind an rusty abandoned toolbox, she watched as the electric light flickering through the jewel quickly die. The red-haired girl wrinkled her nose at the dark stench coming off of the thing, the only thing that decreased its value in black markets around Haven, before stuffing it in her bag with the rest.

"C'mon, it's getting dark," she stated, shouldering the bulging back. "I want to get back to the Hideout before curfew."

Once again, I'm so very sorry for the extremely unproffesional lateness of this update. I wouldn't be surprised if you all stopped reading.

In case I didn't state it up at the top, I own nothing. If I did own the games, I certaintly wouldn't have made the Lost Frontier. It completely butchered Jak and Dax's friendship.

So, anyways... Mind reviewing? If you want you can rant and rave at me for updating so erratically.