Hello everyone out there on Fanfiction! I'd like to welcome you to the third and last book of the Vacation or War trilogy.

If you've just stumbled here now without seeing the other two books, I suggest you go back and check them out before reading here, or you're going to be quite confused. The first book is Vacation or War, second books is Vacation or War: Return. Happy reading!

If you're here fresh from the last chapter of book two, welcome! I hope you're excited to get back into Haven and Jak's adventures, as well as all the other disasters I've got planned for Jak, Daxter, and Loor. I can't think of anything else to say without giving out mild spoilers, so let us get started! Like usual my disclaimer will appear at the top, and then there will be the 'Author's Corner' at the bottom.

On

With

The

Fic!

OWTF!

I do not own Jak and Daxter, Jak 3, Haven city, or any other copy-written item mentioned in this work of fiction. While Loor is mine and the story is my intellectual property I am not making any money off of this work; is it exclusively for entertainment.

Vacation or War- Endgame
Chapter One- To Save A Life

Are we dead?

The question received no response, which almost seemed to validate the nature in which it was asked; fearful and lonely tones blocking out Lyra's usually melodic and malevolent voice. She'd been here since she escaped for those few exciting moments, here since she wasted all the eco in their system and, only now did she realize this, doomed them to death. She'd known it before, and now she knew it after, but in the moment all she'd cared about was freedom; being allowed to do as she wanted, kill who she wanted, and to experience the world for the fleeting seconds she could steal.

Lyra sat in an empty space that she assumed was within the mind that she and Loor shared, simply because she couldn't think of existing anywhere else. This was home, the place she stayed while she wasn't in the outside world, which was most of the time. Usually this place wasn't empty, though. Loor had made a room for them, full of pillows and blankets and soft things, things they both liked. Loor had made the room to be hers alone, decorated in dark green tones, her favorite, but Lyra's influence turned many of those blankets and pillows a deep violet.

The color of the eco that was her lifeblood.

Now there was no color; black and gray was all she could sense in this space. There may have been a hint of purple, far in the distance, but there was no way Lyra would be able to reach it if she decided to chase it; a step towards it seemed to take it two more steps away.

That and to chase the violet haze on the horizon would mean leaving Loor behind.

Lyra looked away from that far-off color, back to the gray floor, to where Loor was lying. Her form here was as it had always been; an expression of how she used to be. Once she'd been just a little girl of blond tones and short rounded ears, blue eyes and a young body. Things had long changed from that, but Loor wouldn't let go of her child-self in her mind; this is how she thought of herself. She was sprawled on the ground, as if she'd fallen, one arm curled around her head while the other was thrown out, reaching for something. She was dressed in a tunic of the same green tones that she loved so, tided and trimmed in Lyra's violet.

Lyra was robed as well, though her tunic was shorter and her sleeves were longer and wider, purple to base, tied and trimmed in Loor's green. They were mixed, always mixed, but Lyra had noticed several things in this place that disturbed her.

Loor had no colors of the moment. Her body and clothes appeared in monochrome; shades of gray that made her look like stone. Likewise, the green that appeared on Lyra's own clothes was also a dim shade of gray instead of vibrant and lively forest green. This put strange thoughts into Lyra's usually thoughtless mind, looking about and asking her question in a different way.

Are you dead...? She quested this time, the fear growing. She didn't like fear, but she did know it, more now than ever. She couldn't feel Loor anywhere. It was like the girl, her host, didn't exist.

Usually this would be a cause for joy, the animal had been trying to get rid of her since she began, but now she leaned down and nudged the body on the floor. She had assumed if Loor died, so would she. They were linked in life, thus bound in death. Existence trapped in her mind would end, and Lyra would either cease to be or become something new and independent.

But here was Loor's image, none of her presence, and Lyra was still alive and alone. Still alive, and still trapped, and alone. Where are you? I don't understand...

The animal paced around the body for hours, perhaps days, looking for answers. The purple haze on the horizon grew stronger and closer over time, eventually dying the gray floor a lovely shade of lavender instead of gray, but the darkness persisted and Loor gained no color from it. Her body remained gray, still as a statue.

Dead, Lyra realized. This image of Loor was a dead image of her. Not breathing, not moving, never waking, never stirring. Sleeping, but not. Sleeping, never to wake.

The darkness seemed to get more oppressive as the purple came closer, and Lyra wondered about it. She looked up at it; a black space that looked like an ever-morphing cloud of oil. If she got to her feet and reached for it she could come quite close to touching it, but not close enough. Her talons would not reach it, and even if she jumped she had the feeling that it would move to evade her.

Anyway, her base instinct to be free-willed, attacking as she pleased, was what had brought her here. She needed to think more about her actions, assuming she ever got out of this place and was ever able to act again.

She looked back to Loor's colorless body, stalking over and rolling the girl onto her back. The weight moved without resistance, and Lyra stared down at the girl's face. She could rip this body apart, she noted. What reason was there to keep it? It was dead, nothing to care for, just taking up space and tying her down here.

She readied talons to attack, but hesitated. She felt no pleasure from these thoughts. What point was there in ripping something that was already dead? Growling, she returned to her pacing, looking around and seeking some sort of change. This couldn't go on forever...

Could it?

The change eventually came, but it wasn't from the purple mist that was slowly thickening into an impenetrable fog. It came from the body. Lyra had been crouched next to it, her tail twitching now and then from the irritation of holding still. She avoided the fog, so her range for pacing became smaller and smaller as it drew in closer around herself and the corpse of her host.

Then the body, as it had been still all this time, moved. The movement was small, but Lyra noticed at once, looking down.

The eyes had opened, staring up like a doll. Unlike the rest, the eyes had color. Loor's blue eyes, striking against the grays, looked desperately up at the darkness.

And Lyra looked up, and growled softly as she saw a change had happened there too.

Another set of eyes, rather like Loor's but different. They were the eyes that Loor had in real life, beyond the image of herself as a child. They shined a deep green around the pupil, but the rims were rich violet. At first both sets of eyes only looked at each other, the child staring at her adult reality, the shadow of an adult staring down at her child-self.

Then the eyes in the darkness turned to Lyra. Only the eyes, no face to go with them, all Lyra knew was that she had the attention of the darkness, and it drew closer to the ground from where the eyes were. It morphed, changing gently until another part below the eyes began to push out and reach even further down.

Hesitantly, Lyra stood up and reached out, watching as the protrusion of black shivered and changed.

The darkness evaporated back, revealing a human hand that was a first gray, but gained proper color as Lyra's own hand came close to clasping it. The color seemed to race up into the darkness, the horrible cloud changing shape again, the area that was sagging down giving the suggestion of a woman trapped within it's expanse, reaching out for help.

It also effected Lyra. In a moment, in that blooming of peach skin, she felt Loor's presence again. She was there!

Trapped in the darkness.

Lyra reached now in earnest, aiming to take her hand and drag her out of the darkness, the fear banished by the fact that her host lived.

Contact was nearly made when the darkness rebelled, shifting and shaking, retaking the hand and snatching it up and away from Lyra's reach. Still the eyes existed, and watched in wide fear as the arm vanished and a single drop of the darkness broke away, falling to the ground.

It splattered like oil, hitting the floor near where Loor's body still remained, her child-body. Lyra hissed at it, watching it. There was something wrong, she could sense. Something dangerous.

Suddenly the splatter came back together, and then changed into something else. From a drop to a creature, it became a snake that darted towards the child-body, fangs ready for a strike.

Lyra yowled in protest, flashing out a hand to snatch up the creature and fling it into the darkness, her talons cutting it into five neat little pieces as it was launched from her grip. She didn't know what it was, but she could still sense it out there; it's pieces, still wriggling for life.

The darkness wanted them dead. Is had put Loor into pieces so she couldn't wake up, and left Lyra alone. Now it strove to destroy the body, so there would be no hope for life.

Lyra placed herself standing above the body, yowling and preparing herself. She would protect her host. Protect the body until the other half could find its way down from the darkness.

She looked back up at the darkness, to find the eyes that had looked at her. She still sensed Loor, trapped up in the caustic cloud, and eventually she found the eyes were still watching her, but there was fear and hesitation.

I'll protect you. I'll protect you until we can wake up.

The eyes shut slowly, as if to rest and build strength for the next attempt.

Just as Lyra had felt her fear, she could also feel her trust.

It had been slightly more than a month since Jak and Loor had returned to Haven city.

Not that anyone knew that they'd left, as loops through time tend to be difficult to explain, but Jak took the time to tell those who needed to know. Samos, particularly, who likely passed the knowledge on to Onin and Pecker. Daxter, of course, since Jak knew the ottsel would ask until someone told him something. Ashelin and Torn heard as much as they needed to, though that wasn't much beyond the treatment for Loor's affliction.

Loor had left, run away, really, to go back to her own time. Her home, eons in the past, in a time that didn't have eco.

After what the Baron had done to her upon her original arrival to Haven, that was a death sentence that Jak couldn't let her go through with. He went after her, full intent to drag her back whether she liked it or not.

And he had, and also gotten a little vacation out of it. He'd spent a week and some in Loor's sleepy time period, but even in the safest places things can go horribly wrong.

Lyra got free at the last moments. The transformation had been triggered by a fight between Loor and a long-time rival, emotions running high enough for the animal to get loose, wasting the eco that Loor had left in her system, using it up and nearly killing her.

But they'd gotten back in time, and Loor's body had been revitalized with eco before all of her major organs shut down. Her lungs, heart, and all other important bits were working fine weeks after the infusion, but there was just one problem.

Her brain was practically a flat line.

In the month since the initial treatment, Loor had been moved several times. First from the make-shift field hospital in the base of the place that was set up after Kor's defeat for those wounded fighting for the city, into one of the staterooms that had been modified for long-term care, then again when the actual hospital in Haven was cleaned up and open for patients. It wasn't until she was in an actual medical facility that they even took a read of her brain activity, since it was the only thing left to blame for her continued stasis, and the reading left Jak where he was at that very moment.

A month and some after he figured safe again, sitting at her bedside, a tight frown on his face as he was left with a choice.

Things were starting to happen again. It had only been a month since Kor's defeat, but the city was suffering metal bug infestations, metal heads sighted along the walls, and movement in the wastes. It looked as if the creatures were still organized, but that was all just rumors right now. Either way, new wounded were coming in every day; the hospital was busy with subway workers that had gotten chewed on by metal bugs, or wall-patrols that had fallen victim to groups of creatures they couldn't outrun in time.

The doctors didn't want a brain-dead patient taking up a bed and life support, not when that bed could go to someone else with a much better chance of survival. They had already considered her beyond help, only keeping her because Jak demanded it, but that wouldn't last much longer either.

But Jak had an idea. He'd come there today to sit by her bed as he always did, but today was with a different resolve. He'd made sure that Daxter didn't come with him this time, though he usually welcomed his friend's company. Not today.

Today he was either going to save Loor, or kill her himself. It all depended on whether or not his idea was right.

He'd made sure to shut the door behind himself. He didn't want anyone to see what he was about to do. He first sat in the chair next to the bed in the white hospital room, but then moved to sit on the edge of the bed, looking down at her.

She looked like she was sleeping; her face was peaceful and had healthy color. It looked like she'd wake if he just nudged her, but he knew better. He tired that a long time ago, and felt both stupid and horrible inside for it.

No, this had to do with the eco. Her body had come back when they fed it into her veins, though as her brain had faded so had the automatic function of her lungs, and the beat of her heart. She'd been attached to machines to force the function of these parts, despite the puzzlement of the doctors, because the organs themselves were perfectly healthy. He wanted to see her standing again, without a tube down her throat breathing for her and needles in her arms, feeding her.

She was better than that.

He put his hands to her head. His idea was a simple one; both he and Loor could adsorb eco, and when they did it sparked, arcing and shocking them a little bit. Loor's body may have come back, but her mind had not.

Jak's only idea was that it still needed the jolt. It needed a more violent application of energy to wake back up after being so close to death.

He'd taken on a pretty good charge himself before coming today, planning this moment since the doctors told him that they'd take her off life support if she didn't wake up soon.

He closed his eyes, reaching into himself. It was now or never. Restraining a full transformation while forcing the eco out of his body was something that was normally a little more difficult, but both sides of him were in agreement of what needed to be done here. The monster in him didn't want Loor to die either; he still wanted to fight her in a more proper setting and prove dominance.

Still, a low growl escaped him as he gave over most of his body to the change, energy sparking around and between his fingers as he endeavored to keep his mind. He had to stay at the wheel.

The purple sparks burned him and the pillow that Loor's head rested on, but several of them also sunk into her temples, making her twitch and the serene look on her face change to something pained and agitated. He almost lost it in a moment of hope, feeling her move next to him, watching her expression and searching for a clear sign that she just might wake up.

It didn't seem like it was going to be enough.

He gritted his teeth.

Now or never.

The rest of the energy came in a violent burst.

The Author's Corner

Hiiiiii! How is everyone? Yeah, this scene got a little bit bigger than I expected... Oh well! Meow!

See you guys next time around,

-Loor