I dislike this new player. He doesn't follow any of our rules.

Yet, you've complained so often about our rules.

*******

He doesn't have a name, not yet anyway. It's lost somewhere out past the trees that tower over him and reach towards the dark skies.

He knows he should keep walking, keep looking for...but he's tired. The tree trunk presses solidly against him as he leans into it, the bark rough beneath his bare arm.

There are no stars. Like he has no name, the galaxy stretched out above him has no stars to define it. It's unsettling because there's something important he can't see. A place that he knows should be up there next to the smallest twinkle of absent starlight.

That thought barely even exists before a flicker draws his gaze back down. Light peeks out from behind the trees ahead. The trunk still presses solidly against him, but he can always lean his trembling body against another tree a bit closer to whatever is illuminating this nearly pitch-black forest. He's still looking for... He's still looking for his name after all, and maybe he can find it somewhere in the light ahead.

So he walks, one foot in front of the other past the towering trees. His legs don't quite work right, yet the woods drift smoothly past him as he stumbles his way forward.

When he passes the last set of trees blocking the source of the light from his eyes, he staggers to a stop. In front of him, the forest is gone. There is only emptiness right before his feet. Pitch black and as bottomless as the sky looming above him.

The light flickers ahead of him like an image cutting in and out of existence. Suspended in the blackness are the scattered remains of a spaceship. Jagged pieces hang in the air in frozen flight as the molten ruins of its engine core explode through its body. Whatever living space it had inside it is gone, torn open and swallowed up by the still fire.

"It wasn't supposed to end like that."

The voice beside him is not unexpected. Not in the way it should be. There shouldn't be a voice here in these woods. There hadn't been one in so long; so, he should be jolting, turning around and demanding to know the identity of this person.

He only looks to the side, frowning as he stares at the boy who isn't a boy anymore. The not-boy is taller now, taller than him. The height is wrong, more wrong than the deeper voice that outgrew their last conversation.

"But I guess it couldn't end any other way. Not after a crazy, reckless, ruthless order like that."

He's been waiting for this voice, maybe not as rueful as it sounds now, but he's still been waiting all this time. He remembers that now, the thought flickering in his head like the flames that should be flickering against the metal of the ship.

The man beside him stares steadily towards the ship. His gaze only shifts up when sparks of light suddenly appear far in the sky above. As their reflection glimmers off his eyes, the man's expression remains unreadable.

He follows the direction of the man's stare. The sparks above fall through the sky. Countless numbers of bright green shooting stars fill up the space above them and reach for the horizon. The bottomless blackness almost seems to rise up to meet them even as it stays lying in wait beneath their feet.

Unlike his name, somehow the number of stars easily surfaces in his thoughts. 17,000 lights fall through the night and bring an eerie brightness to the dark.

"Well, Tom, I guess it's been a while."

He looks back at the man, at Jake who is no longer a child. The small smile wobbles into existence on the other's face. Relief and longing clash with the trepidation that plague Jake's eyes.

He stares at the smiling Yeerk-Killer while the souls of thousands fall into the abyss.

There must be something showing through his eyes because that small smile falls away and the trepidation is swallowed up by incomprehensible disbelief.

"No..." Jake whispers.

He says nothing to Jake's denial, just stares with that inhuman blankness that only his kind can pull off.

"No." Jake steps forward, and anger devours disbelief in those hard eyes. "No, where is my brother? Where's Tom?"

He doesn't step back when Jake steps forward again. Instead, he breaks his gaze and turns around. The forest still looms before him even while the presence of the flickering lights behind him raises the hairs on the back of his neck.

"ANSWER ME! WHERE'S MY BROTHER? HE SHOULD BE HERE! WHERE IS HE?"

Hands grab at his shoulders and try to pull him back, but he breaks through because their grip is as insubstantial as the ghost they belong to.

It's so clear now. He's been going the wrong way. If he wanted to find his name, he needs to go back because that's where they left it, deep in the woods where no one could find him. It's probably still at that shack, buried in a shallow grave by a little girl who he hates a little less than the murderer trying to pull him back.

Temrash 114 ignores the screaming boy clinging to him. He simply walks forward, back the way he came as the darkness of the forest slides over him just like his name slips back into his head.

Behind the two of them, the dying lights stutter and fade before the bottomless darkness can swallow them whole.

*******

One piece for you and one piece for me. I'd say that's fair. Wouldn't you, Ellimist?

I suppose, Crayak. Far more fair than the tricks that intruder pulled at any rate.

Oh, I couldn't agree more.