If you don't want to hear my preface, skip the A/N. I'd recommend it though.

A/n : Well, it appears we have some serious AU going on here and I believe I owe everyone a brief description. The events of this take place a few years before the Lylat wars started and before Andross attacked anything. So basically before the official starfox timeline even starts. I've also reworked how Corneria functions making it more the homeland of a Colonial power and making it stronger and more expansive than it was portrayed in the canon story. I will have all major canon characters in here one way or another, but in the interest of not making this chapter 8000 words long you won't see a good portion fo them till Chp. 2, sorry about that.

Yeah, hopefully this story isn't too slow paced, I had to do some serious exposition and set the plot among other things so bear with me. I think it's interesting enough but that's hardly an unbiased claim. If you were really reading through this and thought "my god this is boring, this guys is just rambling" please inform me of such so I can make proper adjustments. I welcome any and all criticism with open arms. Except flaming or elitism, that just ain't cool.

Reuploaded (needed to fix a few major errors, the kind that make you lol hard when they are pointed out):

-Managed to misspell Cerinia as Cernia. Yeah...I'm a pro. That was a bitch to fix xD

-Little note: Krystal's telepathy/Cerinia being telepaths. It never actually says anywhere the Cerinia is full of telepaths. It could be a rare gift. How would a society of telepaths function? No one could hide the truth from anyone else, and that would never work out. It seems it is presumed they all are, but me saying they aren't is just as valid as saying they are because the Adventures manual never went either way, people just kind of assumed it.

Ok no more fuck ups this time, I can do this.

Also if you have any questions at all about anything or just want to talk PM me.

Peter Quincy stood with a group of five other humans at the corner of C and 10th streets. He was a boy of sixteen, average height, and had long, straight blonde hair. Waiting for the bus everyone was looking around nervously. And who wouldn't be nervous, this idea is ridiculous! A joint Human-Cornerian school? In the middle of the fucking DMZ nonetheless? Why the fuck did I sign up for this? It was then that he saw the large blue and white bus gliding down the street; it looked like it had been built yesterday it was so new. Blue buses? They were always yellow back on Earth. The bus pulled up to group of kids and the door swung open, revealing an Older, male, blue furred fox dressed in a white button up shirt and navy blue pants, a small cap to match the pants like police officer's back on earth wore, as the driver. What the hell's a bluefur doing driving our bus? At least he's a tame one, not one of those ghetto doesn't even know a steering wheel from a gear shifter! Disregarding his prejudice he climbed the steps into the bus right behind a pretty, young, blonde haired girl who appeared to be his age. He then heard someone whisper something behind him.

"At least there are some fine women here on Cernia; I was scared for a moment I'd have to do with a bluefur." Peter turned and found a boy staring back at him. He had shoulder length brown hair and wore a white wife-beater and a pair of blue jeans. Peter took a seat near the front, and the brown haired youth took the other seat. He was quick to get to the point,

"The names Johan, Lived and planned on living on Mars, I'm from Houston Colony, but got talked into signing up for this shitfest." Peter returned the greeting.

"I'm Peter, Family never left Earth, and I'm from Seattle. I want to say I did it for the adventure of leaving the planet but really I just wanted to get away from the parents, you know?"

"Yeah," Johan was nodding in agreement, "That's part of the reason this deal seemed so sweet. But can you believe it? We are actually going to school with those fucking Cornerians. But man, isn't it crazy out of the millions who signed up for this we actually got to be part of the thousand? I honestly didn't think I'd make it, only found out later it was random."

"I thought the same thing. I heard this is part propaganda, part-experiment. I suppose getting a bunch of perfect people all told to get a long wouldn't really tell anyone anything. I'd never really imagined myself here. I got coaxed into it by some friends, more as joke than anything." Peter paused for a moment before continuing, "Seriously Cerinia is the shithole of the Empire. We barely got this planet four years ago and only half of it at that. But whatever. So how did you like the starjump?"

"Oh man, I thought I was going to die. That was by far the weirdest thing I've ever experienced and uh…I've done some stuff, so I can say that with some certainty." Johan said talking quickly, Peter could tell he had never been on an Intersystem flight before, but neither had he.

"Yeah man, the jump was crazy. I hear it's the worst Jump, Cerinia is one of the farthest colonies from earth besides maybe Romeo and Juliet, and those two planets are way out there."

Peter was starting to like this Johan. He hadn't expected to make any friends this early on. The whole basis of this 'experiment' was to "heal the rift between our two great and mighty people" as the governor of Cerinia Major, the human controlled continent on Cerinia, had put it. The whole idea was to get a thousand kids from the Empire and put them in a school with a thousand kids from Corneria and her colonies. Now the school was another thing. It was in the middle of the DMZ. The DMZ: the Demilitarized Zone, a mile wide stretch of no man's land that was neutral land between Cernia Major, The larger, human controlled, continent and Cernia Minor the smaller, Cornerian controlled continent. The DMZ was established with the Treaty of Bohan, which was named after the Human controlled city closest to the DMZ, and was the treaty that ended the fighting. Well really not fighting, the war had been incredibly one sided. The only reason the humans stopped was because they'd conquered far too quickly, leaving behind massive swathes of rebellious land that were known to sabotage the war effort whenever possible. They also got beat pretty bad trying to cross the straight that linked Cerinia Major and Minor, it had been the one time Cornerian soldiers showed up en masse and the first time an overconfident human army had been beaten since the war started. The treaty set the border right on the narrowest part of the straight which was no wider than sixty kilometers.

Johan and Peter chatted about everything: music, girls, Cornerians, girls. The bus made an occasional stop which neither boy gave any heed to until one. The bus came to a stop and Peter tapped Johan on the shoulder when he saw a huge gaggle of Cerinians standing by the bus stop.

"The fuck…We getting held up by freedom fighters or something?" Peter asked turning to Johan.

"No man, didn't you hear? They had to admit a couple hundred Cerinians into the school for 'equality'." Johan said with a tone of minor disgust.

"Wow, that's bullshit. Fucking liberals and their equality bullshit. Cerinians aren't goddamn humans, just look at the Hole, that place is a fucking barnyard." Peter blurted out, actually having never seen a barnyard, but he could imagine it. The Cerinians started loading onto the bus, Peter still ranting about Cernians and then stopped. One of the Cerinians just seemed different in his mind; she had two steel rings in her tail and short blue hair that didn't come much past her neck. His first thought was beautiful but that was quickly suppressed. What the fuck are you thinking? She's a fucking animal. Peter snapped out of it almost as quickly as he'd gone in but the thought was still fresh in his mind. Johan didn't seem to notice. That or he'd understood what just happened and didn't want to bring it up. The duo rode the rest of the way in silence.

Fox sat looking at window at the ocean that stretched out endlessly right of the edge of the road. He could see the hundreds of small fishing boats out on the water like a bunch of wooden swans in a pond, all of them cautious not to stray over the border and be shot. Cerinia sure is a beautiful planet, but it doesn't compare to Corneria at all Fox sighed as he thought about his home. Well, it used to be his home. He was only a sixteen year old boy yet he'd lost both his parents in two years. He remembered back to when he was eleven and he'd received the news his dad had died fighting the human invaders on this very planet. He remembered six years ago when his mom serving as a nurse in the Cornerian Army had been killed when a human artillery barrage leveled the hospital she was working in. Fox let out another sigh; the planet was beautiful but was it worth that war? Was it worth both his parents' lives? Albeit losses to actual Cornerian soldiers had been light, most of them had stayed on Cerinia Minor to 'keep the peace'.

It was the Cerinians who had taken the worst beating. Corneria had always considered the Cerinians equals, worthy of every defense since discovering the planet on the far reaches of Cornerian exploration and knowledge forty years ago. But that hadn't stopped Corneria from drafting millions of Cerinians to defend the planet while all Corneria did was providing air support,(and piss ass poor air support at that), give them a few doctors and advisors, and give them money. 'Worthy of every assistance' his ass, Corneria threw millions of poorly trained Cerinians into a meat grinder. And they knew it. The Cerinians hadn't been virgins to war, Cerinia had been filled with industrial nations when Corneria discovered it. They had electricity, they had discovered flight, they had the earliest workings and understanding of electronics but no computers. They also had rifles, tanks and battleships which had but to good use on each other. And sadly, some of those weapons even fought against the humans, especially later in the war.

He heard the Cerinians who had been stuck on the human side of the planet after the Treaty were treated like shit. The war was still fresh in every Cornerians mind. Corneria had been virtually swimming in patriotism when the war broke out. What's better to make one feel a part of a great empire than 'defending' your colonies against hordes of uncivilized barbarians? Sadly, news of defeat after defeat and the humans leaping like frogs across Cerinia had quickly dampened their spirits. Yet they never sent any real help. His dad had died late in the war, but at that point it had stopped being a 'war' and had turned into a full retreat into Cerinia Minor. The few Cornerian forces on Cerinia Major were stretched too thin and too few. The Cerinians had never been trained or equipped properly and losses had been horrendous. By the time Fox's dad had died flying a air support at the siege of Lester the Cernians had taken a near 80% fatality rate losing forty five million soldiers to the war, tales of mass mutiny were common but such men were either killed by the humans who killed anything that moved and had fur or their own kind for desertion. It was hard for fox to imagine the desperation behind that decision. Yet Corneria never came to save them, and why should they enter a losing conflict to help one miserable, poorly developed colony? They only stopped the humans when they were massively overstretched at the Continental Divide, the straight between Major and Minor.

"Hey man you alright?" A familiar voice asked. Falco Lombardi has been one of Fox's best friends since he'd been a small pup. When the Cornerian Government asked for volunteers for this experiment Falco and Fox had signed up right away. Well, more like Falco signing them both up and Fox finding out later. James McCloud had been a legend on Corneria and more than a little bias had gone into the selection process. While the process was "random" the selection committee had been sure to put a few people they wanted in there. Namely the son of a Cornerian war hero. And so Falco and Fox were now on a big blue bus headed straight for the most dangerous place in the entire galaxy, The Cernian Major-Minor border, the DMZ, the Line through the Galaxy, the Human-Cornerian border, The Divide. It had many names and for good reason. Borders like this hadn't existed on Corneria or anywhere in her empire for a long time. It was a rude reminder of how the past eerily came back to haunt the future.

"Yeah, just thinking about all the ways this tri race school could go wrong. Why did they put it in the middle of the DMZ?" Fox responded turning to his friend. Falco shrugged,

"I guess it's symbolic."

"I suppose you're right, but I don't care how symbolic it is if war breaks out we'll be the first to know."

"Well let's just hope that the humans don't get to uppity."Falco replied and Fox thought about that. If anyone was going to start the war back up it was Corneria. Cornerians were furious about the war's outcome. It had nearly ended Minister Jung's hope of reelection. He was incredibly popular before the war but now his approval was at 40% and dropping now that he openly supported peace with the humans. Fox still couldn't understand how Cornerians had expected to win the war but keep their sons home at the same time. People always want things, but they are never willing to pay for them.

The bus noiselessly came to a stop and the doors swung open letting on a few more passengers. Fox and Falco were on the door side and Fox looked out the window noticing a little more than a few people getting on. A good ten people were milling about outside the door. These must be Cornerians who lived on Cerinia before the program. There are never these many people at a stop over at that compound the government has us off planet people living at. Fox's thoughts were cut short when a tall lynx climbed the steps into the bus. Her spotted tan fur was perfectly groomed and she wore a small gold earring in her ear. She was followed by a pretty poodle but Fox didn't pay nearly as attention to her, his eyes were transfixed with the lynx standing before him. The lynx and the poodle took one of the many open seats one forward and across the row from Fox and Falco. The moment lasted but a second but it was enough for Falco to notice.

Fox felt an elbow in his side, turning he was met by the "ohhh you like her don't you?" look Falco was all too adept at. Fox elbowed him back,

"Shut up." Fox grumbled which prompted a laugh from his avian friend.

"Come on man, I bet you could get her in your bed in a week." Falco declared boldly, and paused, happily noting the mortified look on Fox's face, "That is, if those uptight compound guards let her in."

"I doubt she's that kind of girl." Fox said sheepishly, still flustered by the directness of Falco's comment.

"You'll never know if you don't bother to find out." Falco replied his smile even larger then it was before as Fox's blush deepened even farther.

"Sometimes I don't even know why I'm your friend." Fox said, prompting a light punch on the shoulder from Falco who then spoke.

"C'mon man. You know you love me." Fox and Falco's bantering went back and forth all the way to school.

Krystal started down at the watery greenish soup her mother had made the night before, little pieces of fish floating alongside a few vegetables. I'm really sick of fish stew. She thought to herself but her stomach growled and she dug into it anyhow. It had been the staple of the household for awhile now, but hell, it's better than no stew. She was eating at a small wooden table designed to sit four that sat at the center of an even smaller kitchen that made the table seem huge. Krystal's father had left earlier that morning; he was part of Cerinian Auxiliary, the military force loyal to the humans that was the bulk of the garrison and police force on Cerinia. It had not been easy on Krystal's family, many Cerinians still held a burning hatred of the Humans, including Krystal's parents. In a way they were entitled to it, they'd lost three sons to the war, but Krystal had lost three brothers and she was fine, or at least more so than her parents. She could only vaguely remember one of them anyhow, the other two has moved out long, long ago. She couldn't hold it against her father for hating humans but being part of their army, good jobs were scarce and the economy had been pretty poor after the human occupation.

"Krystal honey, you ready for your first day?" Krystal's mom, Kreya, called out from the living room that was next to the kitchen the two connected by a doorless entry. The house the Sujik family lived in was a small wooden thing with sheet metal roof that got brutally hot during the day. A kitchen that doubled as a dining room, a living room with a few scattered mats to sit on to prevent one from getting their clothes dirty on the dirt floor poorly covered by wooden planks, and two bedrooms off to the side. The appliances were gas burning and refrigeration was nonexistent out here, luckily fresh fish came into the shanty town from the docks every day. The outhouse was out back in the small dirt lot behind the house. The Sujik's were lucky to live on the edges of the Hole where they were still connected to a power grid that worked a good 70% percent of the time. They owned a small TV and a radio. They were considered very wealthy by their neighbors who often crowded the small living room to watch the TV. She'd heard in the human district and downtown Bohan the power worked all the time. She didn't believe it, though the shimmering towers that rose up to the east of the Hole and by what she saw on the TV almost made her consider it. Almost.

"Yeah, once I'm done eating." Krystal wasn't as nervous as she thought she should have been. She herself had nothing against the humans, which was rare among the Cernians living in the "Hole", the huge low income housing outside Bohan built by and for Cernians. It had existed before the war but had grown a thousandfold when the war broke out with a virtual river of refugees flooding into Bohan from the West. She was personally more excited to be leaving the Hole for the first time. Her parents had said they hadn't always lived here and that the Hole was a very new place. It didn't matter, she'd been very young when they'd come here and only had vague memories of anything outside of it. Krystal ate her soup quickly and grabbed her school bag from the table. Heading into the living room she was pulled into an embrace by her mother. Her mother held it and then pulled back and looked into her eyes.

"Just remember my daughter, do your best and perhaps one day you'll be able to work for the humans and escape this hell." Her mother told her looking into Krystal's eyes with her own pair, a pair that had seen far too much sorrow to retain the happiness Krystal vaguely remembered from her very early youth. She was wearing the traditional clothing of this area of Cernia, a simple white and yellow bra and loincloth with three steel rings in wrapped around her blue furred tail. Krystal's eyes darted over to the elaborate staff that had always leaned up against the wall in a corner. Daddy had said it was families most precious heirloom and had been a weapon hundreds of years ago. Bohan was near the equator of the planet and the temperature stayed consistently warm year round. Krystal didn't wear that anymore, she'd been told to wear human inspired clothing. Apparently the Cornerians saw it as inappropriate for the classroom, her walking around in clothes they considered 'scandalous'. Some people are just crazy. Instead she wore a simple white blouse and a skirt that came down to her knees, in her mind wearing so much clothes made her feel like a Northlander. However she kept the two steel rings on her tail, they could take some of her heritage from her but not all of it.

Krystal hugged her mother again and then headed out the door. But Krystal's eyes briefly darted over to the elaborate staff that had always leaned up against the wall in a corner. Daddy had said it was family's most precious heirloom and had been a weapon hundreds of years ago. She stepped out onto the dirt street, small children in loincloths played out in the streets, mother's out on the steps watching them play, their faces impassive as if they no longer cared about what was going on around them. Many of them were widows. Even more had lost a child to the war. Most of them weren't even from Bohan originally, but like the Sujiks, had moved here after or during the war. Krystal's family had lived in a big house in a city called Lester or so her parents had told her. Lester was roughly five hundred and sixty kilometers west of Bohan but had a similar culture and heritage so Bohan wasn't wildly different. She'd heard long ago Lester and Bohan had lain within the same boundary back when multiple governments had ruled Cerinia prior to Corneria's intervention forty years ago. But nowadays there was only one boundary and it was hard to imagine anymore of those bothersome things. How would anyone do anything with a bunch of boundaries all over the place? No wonder that system had been given up.

Krystal plodded on down the street her feet getting dusty because the sandals she wore, her human clothes getting her more than a few odd stares and a few hostile comments. She had to walk about two kilometers to reach the compound they'd built to house the humans going to the newly built Union high. Krystal was part of a group of whom after some lobbying from the Cornerians and other Pro-Cerinian Quality groups had been admitted into the new high school. Now she and about two hundred other teenaged kids from the Hole would be going to a decent school. The humans had built a few schools in the Hole but that was about it. Literally built them and told the Cerinians to teach themselves.

Most kids had gone to the schools after a few community organizers got them running but they were incredibly overcrowded and underequipped. Many of the teachers were volunteers and most had taught somewhere before the war. The community had tried to raise money for books, supplies and a salary for the teachers but such things were so expensive. Krystal had been given a lot of supplies when she'd been admitted into the program and she guarded them jealously. Krystal had been one of the better students at her school which was part of the reason she was selected for admittance into the new high school. Maybe now she could get a real education.

She started to pass through the shopping district that was the closest the average human ever came to interacting with the real Cerinia. Some Cerinians had elected to do jobs, mostly manual labor and other such low income/low skill work in the human sectors of Bohan, and they didn't really represent the average Cerinian at all. They lived in a different section of Bohan, on the North East side, where as the Hole comprised the entire west of Bohan, going all the way up to the massive concrete wall that marked the DMZ, The wall wasn't originally built for defense, most of the turrets faced inward. Some tried to escape by boat, tunnel, what have you. Krystal knew a few who had tried, none had made it.

People bustled through the market place, humans mixed in with Cerinians to form a truly rare sight; however there was a long way to go. In the middle of the square was a massive Human tank armed by human soldiers in there odd patterned green uniform. They didn't even trust the CA (Cernian Auxiliary) to keep the peace in this potential powder keg. Most of the Cerinians who held shops here kept their traditional clothes but a significant number wore human clothes as to not alienate their human customers. Krystal kept walking and eventually reached the gate to the human compound.

"Stop! Have your papers ready!" Shouted one of the human guards stationed at the gate when Krystal got within 20 meters. The Hole had stopped being built about 40 meters ago leaving a long strip of open land making it hard for anyone to sneak past the guard towers into the human zone. Krystal pulled the passport she'd been given by the humans upon entering the program and a few other sheets of paper authorizing her to pass the checkpoint.

"Hands up and drop you bag!" The guard shouted again when Krystal got closer to the gate. Krystal complied and the guard walked over, never letting his rifle sights dip off her, and picked up the bag. It was understandable; there had been attacks on guards by Cerinian freedom fighters. They had cooled down in the past while but they were defiantly still a felt presence in the Hole. They'd been known to launch suicide attacks, and little girls were just as likely to blow themselves up as grown men if prompted by the right people.

Three other guards kept guns aimed at her while the guard who yelled at her, Krystal assumed he was in charge, searched her bag and looked at her paper work. Handing back her paperwork, Krystal was surprised when the guard spoke to her, "You're the last one to come through this checkpoint, your bus arrives in ten minutes at A and 4th street." Krystal merely nodded and walked through the chain link fence as the gate slid open revealing something Krystal hadn't seen since moving into the Hole all those years ago: a clean, paved road.

She arrived at the bus stop and found two groups standing there, a group of about eight humans and about twelve Cerinians. All of them looked back on her as she walked up and she instinctively joined the group of Cerinians. They had a long way to go to break down the walls they'd built up.

A/N: Wow. I've seen longer chapters, but I crammed as much info as possible into those 4600 words. Good god, I hope you guys made it through there. I couldn't really think of any other way to make an AU this extreme make sense and even then I think I still have even more plot holes to address in the next chapter, but it shouldn't be nearly as bad. More action/dialouge/romance all the goodies, I promise. I also sincerely hope none of you were put off by the racist undertones of the humans. I didn't want to write another "Yeah the world is all perfect and happy and snuggly bunny lollipops" fic but I do hope I didn't over do it in there. This story took a lot of inspiration from the movie "District 9" if you didn't figure that out already.

And if I missed any: Cernia=Cerinia. I'm pretty sure I missed a few whilst fixing that little (ehm, massive) blunder.