Disclaimer: Star Fox © Nintendo. Original Content © Me (See A/N for exceptions)

Star Fox: Other World

Prologue: "Tell a Story"

I don't know if I'll ever get another chance to say this. Everything has gone wrong and after this, there may not be anyone else left. So, let me tell you a story...

An era ago, on a world that we came to know as Earth, there arose a sentient species known as Humanity, my kind. We came to invent incredible and advanced technologies that many only dreamed of. During the early ages of our time in the Universe, we often fought amongst ourselves for various reasons: Beliefs, Resources, Morals, Pride...

We built powerful weapons of mass destruction, which were used to terrifying effect. We almost annihilated ourselves in our various squabbles. However, it never came to pass, because of two events that came to be known as 'Last Bullet' and 'World Peace.' As a whole, we finally realized the key to our advancement and survival in the universe was cooperation, and thus May 14th came to be known as 'Last Bullet Day,' to mark the last time a gun was fired, before they were all either disassembled or stored away. May 17th, 'World Peace Day,' was the day that leaders from all over finally came together and wrote the Final Truce, a declaration calling ultimately for the disassembly of military weapons and forces.

The resources and research that was originally made for war went into more constructive projects, such as medicine, physics, and astronomy. Of these three branches came two of what many considered the penultimate results of their research, Nanotechnology and Teleportation.

With the nanites we built, we were able to bring about prime human physique as diseases, infections, and epidemics became obsolete fears, as Nanodoctors would provide vaccines for the immune system to recognize, and help fight off infection at its source. Even noninfectious diseases such as Alzheimer's and Cancer became distant memories of the past. We were also able to understand and help restore and preserve the ecosystems of our planet, to the point that we were able to design 'organic computers' consisting of Nanites bonded to cells that allowed us to discover that which we never could before.

With the discovery of teleportation, we revolutionized travel, constructing a portal network that gradually replaced the need for vehicular transportation altogether. Eventually, we made the brave decision to chart the stars in a new way, by actually visiting them. To do so, we needed a powerful teleporter capable of reaching into the depths of space, and to accommodate such requirements, the teleporter was constructed from resources obtained from the moons of our neighboring planets, as our own moon had cultural significance to us. We constructed what we later called the Lunar Gate, and with it, we planned to search throughout the Galaxy, for what, we weren't sure at the time, but the prospect was so exciting that few ever thought of a reason beyond the thrill of it.

When we tested the Lunar Gate, it shattered our Moon, Luna, which the Lunar Gate was named after. What followed was beyond what anyone could have predicted. We found the answer to what we thought was the Greatest Mystery of the Universe: Are We Alone? Many science fiction authors before then had predicted what our First Contact with alien life would look like, from a simple greeting to a war. But that wasn't how it went. Our First Contact was marked with a hug, as the medics would later report. An alien vessel with a group of beings we later came to know as the Cerinians on board, just trying to go on vacation when they were caught by their Orbital Gate. Our test run had linked the Lunar Gate with a pre-existing portal network spanning the Galaxy, built by civilizations like our own, most of them extinct, but a few were hardy enough to survive, such as Humanity and the Cerinians.

The story goes that when our researchers entered the vessel for research, they found a young, injured Cerinian child begging for help. So, we sent our medics in to tend to the alien child, and we recovered his parents, saving them from the brink of death. It was here that we discovered that the Red Cross, whether coincidence or not, was a symbol of healing among the Cerinians much like it was for us, and thus a quick, if initially unsteady, partnership between Cerinia and Earth was established. With their help, Humanity joined the Galactic neighborhood as fellow explorers, and in return, the Cerinians opened our eyes to new concepts that we had long dismissed as fantastical or absurd, building new laws and equations based on our research into magic and the soul. It came to the point that archaeologists from both sides began speculating that Cerinia and Earth had come into contact in the distant past, as evidenced by many polytheistic pantheons, many of which saw something of a revival in place of monotheism after this one speculation.

Of course, nothing great lasts forever, and it wasn't long before a group of bioterrorists got a hold of the source code controlling most of the nanites on Earth. They issued a threat that unless we severed ties with the Cerinians, then they would unleash a Nanovirus to kill all of us. We made the mistake of not taking the threat seriously, with many of us dismissing it as a cruel joke from the past. That one underestimate was what undid everything we had accomplished, as the very next day after the threat was issued, they unleashed the Nanovirus, causing anyone who wasn't able to fight off the viral code to succumb to drastic mutations that killed most of those infected. Those unlucky enough to survive that became uncontrolled, psychotic monsters that existed only to kill, transform, and spread. The few Cerinians who remained on Earth with us called them 'Aparoids.' The name came from ancient Cerinian texts describing shapeshifting monsters. We couldn't kill them, they were just too overwhelming, so we did the next best thing and contained them, constructing a force-field generator that quarantined the entire world.

It seemed that we faced extinction, but one of our scientists had an idea for how we could continue our kind elsewhere, and with some collaboration from the last Cerinians to make contact with us, they found a habitable star system to guide our Ark, loaded with the DNA of any and all remaining survivors, and any DNA that we could find that was still intact. Only, after we sent the Ark into the sky, we learned that a lone Aparoid had breached containment, and we couldn't stop it. But, we were able to slow it down, but at the cost of our Lunar Gate. And in the end, Containment failed...

"...The Aparoids assimilated the Quarantine Field Generator, disabled it, and migrated into space in pursuit of the Ark. ...To whoever finds this, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and be wary of the Aparoids, for they show no mercy and deserve no mercy..."

The video shut off and Fara turned to Saru, before tapping her ear-piece to speak to Miyu and Fay, "This is where you two went when you disappeared two months ago?"

Meanwhile, down on Sauria, lounging on a beach in Cape Claw, Miyu sighed, "Yeah. We went through a living Hell the few days we were there. And discovered the origin of the Aparoids, the invasion of which we somehow completely missed." She peeked over her sunglasses at Fay, who, under the sunbrella, had her nose buried in a novel she'd brought along. Fay glanced back at her, acknowledging her frustration, then returned her attention to the book. Pushing the sunglasses back over her eyes, she closed them and laid back down on the towel spread out under her.

"...Miyu. When you were on Earth, did you see anything worthwhile besides the Remnants that had supposedly made camp there?"

Miyu groaned, "No. And I won't go back to that world. There's something there, and I'm not going back there and waking it up. Right now, I am content to just lay here, basking in the sun, in my two-piece."

Saru finally decided to pipe up after a short period of silence, "Perhaps we should join them on the surface, Fara. I, for one, haven't gotten the chance to visit Sauria before."

Fara thought about it, "You know, now that I think about it... I think there's more to visiting Sauria than just an exotic vacation."

"Fara, you may be over-thinking this a bit. Just because this was the focal point of an averted crisis doesn't mean we're investigating it." Saru paused, "Besides, it's not like there's really anything to explore here that hasn't already been explored."

Fara got the hint, "Alright... Maybe some other time then. SADIE, keep the ship in orbit, never know when something might happen."

She glanced behind her at the gunmetal grey, vaguely skeleton-like robot. The green visor returned her stare as the oddly out-of-place female voice replied, "I will keep the engines warm."

Structurally Articulated Digital Information Entity v.17, a.k.a. SADIE-17, was responsible for maintaining the Livid Vixen's systems when the others weren't around. After Saru and Fara left the dreadnought for the surface of Sauria, SADIE retreated from the automaton she used for communicating on a face-to-face level to relax by herself. This 'relaxation' was a program designed to fine-tune her codes in various ways, combing for viruses and other malware, updates, so on. As she did, she got reminded that she had shows to record for the others. The instant she turned on the satellite, she picked up on a foreign signal with a certain signature that she was inclined to listen to.

"Alright, so there's no ulterior motives to visiting Sauria beyond trying to get me in a bathing suit?" Fara jokingly asked, prompting Miyu to flip her off. Fara's smile immediately faded, "Miyu, what's your problem? Is this about that trip to Fortuna? The Rebel?"

Miyu sighed and sat up, "Sorry... I've just..." She took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes, "I didn't mean to snap. Things have been tense lately. The fact that Fay and I found the graveyard of an ancient species hasn't helped matters very much."

Fay looked up from her book as Saru asked, "Not sleeping well?"

Miyu sighed, "Yeah, I guess you could say that." She pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her head on her knees, "If you count the occasional nightmare about that world as 'not sleeping well.'"

Fay slipped a bookmark into her book and asked her, "That one again?"

Fara and Saru gave them confused looks, prompting Miyu to tell them about the nightmares, "Recently, in the past couple weeks, I've started getting this recurring nightmare. In the nightmare, I'm back on Earth, and there is a large, circular, vault-like door that opens up and a bunch of corpses start pulling me into the vault. The vault door closes and I'm pushed into something that looks like an escape pod, but when the corpses close the pod, I just..." She tried to find a word for it, "...I stop. Not like I wake up from the nightmare, but like I somehow stop living while still being alive, like I can't breath or move or even look at anything. And after that, I usually wake up."

Fara was quite surprised, "Lyla above, Miyu! Why didn't you tell us about the nightmares?"

Miyu sighed, "I told Fay, but she's been having the same nightmare as well."

Fay felt somewhat ashamed when Fara turned her gaze to her. She broke eye contact with Fara and the group was left in silence for a few brief seconds, before she asked Miyu, "Have you noticed anything different about these last couple nightmares, Miyu?"

The latter's ears perked up, "What do you mean?"

"Like, things in the dream have somehow been... I dunno, clearer?"

"...I still don't understand what you mean."

Fay cleared her throat, "Well. Last night, when I had the nightmare, I could see lab coats and military uniforms on the corpses, and some of them weren't human. I also saw someone climbing out of the pod that they would shove me into." She took a deep breath, "I may be crazy for thinking this, but I think someone or something is trying to tell us something."

Fara's ears flattened against her head, "I doubt that's Lyla's work."

Saru decided to play mediator, "Perhaps we should go check this out? If there is not vault, then we can at least debunk the nightmares. Or, we could talk to a therapist about the nightmares. Or, since this 'Earth' planet seems so closely related to Cerinia, we might consider speaking with-"

Miyu interrupted him, "No. First off, I don't associate with Star Fox. Second, the team's had a falling-out last I heard. Third, do you know how much it costs for a therapist? How are we gonna pay for sessions with the money that we don't have at the moment? Finally, I've made it exceedingly clear that I'm not going back to Earth, and there is nothing that will make me return there."

A mechanical voice spoke to them through their com-links, "Pardon the interruption, but I suspect that this is important."

"What's wrong, SADIE?"

"I have intercepted a heavily encrypted message concealed in a tachyon signal. After running it through multiple decryption algorithms, I have uncovered a distress signal. The message mentions individuals 'in stasis' that are in apparent danger. The origin of the message appears to come from the same coordinates that match the coordinates received from the Orbital Gate that Miyu and Fay returned through two months ago."

That silenced any further arguing. Miyu turned to Fay, then to Fara and Saru, then asked SADIE, "Is it genuine?"

"I have performed a deep analysis of the code and see no evidence of spyware or other malicious codes. As I said before, the signal's origin also appears genuine. I should note that the signal was broadcast on a wide number of frequencies. I suspect that whoever sent it is in a truly dire situation at the moment."

Miyu recalled something that one of the Remnants that she had confronted while on Earth had said something about 'sleeping warriors.' She wondered if the Remnants weren't the only ones searching for any preserved weapons or soldiers. She stood up and addressed the team, "Alright, I know I just said nothing would get me to go back to Earth, but the circumstances have changed. If we're not the only ones who received the signal, we might not be the only ones to start looking for the sender." She crossed her arms, "We'll have to find the sender before someone dangerous does."

Fay's eyes widened, "You mean...?"

Miyu nodded, "We're going back to Earth."

A/N

→ Original Content (Lyla) used with permission. Credit goes to Tobias Umbra.

→ Despite the somewhat dark tone, I really, really enjoyed writing that intro.