A galaxy-wide celebration came in the wake of Andross's defeat. A looming threat that had kept the Cornerians on their toes for years was vanquished, and in an instant it was as though the Lylat System had breathed a collective sigh of relief. The news broadcasted nothing but the inevitable clean up aftermath of the war. In flashing red banners lining the screens, the news articles read a variety of tidbits—"Androssian Remnants Fleeing to Nearby Sargasso Region", "Star Wolf: Missing Band of Mercenaries Believed to be Dead", "Geralt Andross: The Man Behind the War", and finally, "The Cornerian Teleportation Project—To be Resumed Following the End of the Lylat Wars".

Fox McCloud found the news reports to be mildly interesting at best. Distractedly, he flipped through the channels, propping his head up with a bent elbow and an open palm to his cheek. All these press stories… it's what everyone is going to be talking about for weeks. It had been expected, but it still irritated him. After his father's passing a few years prior, his family had been put under the media's spotlight for some time. He had been known as "the son of James McCloud" during those dark times. It had been a mantle he had loathed for a time… before learning to wear it with pride. Without thinking, his hand strayed to the box within the confines of his desk. It was smooth, small and rectangular in shape… the container of the last gift his father had given to him. He had not opened it since he had gone to Venom... and for some reason, even though Andross was gone, he could not bear to open it.

"I've turned down seven calls from the Cornerian Press, Lylat Today, and Nebula News Network," Peppy Hare said with a ruefully sip from his coffee mug. "But I doubt that's the last time we'll hear from them."

Falco was busy drumming his fingers on the bridge's control panel, eyeing his bank account via an adjacent monitor with gleaming jade eyes. "I don't care about the press, I just wanna know when those checks we cashed are gonna turn up in our accounts!"

"I'm sure it'll be soon, Falco!" Slippy said, trying to act cheerful. His tongue was stuck out to the side, flopping about comically as he studied his own computer monitor. He was playing a colonization game, Fox noted, one out of a series. "Age of Lylat III", or something… Slippy had always had such a fascination with strategy games, even when they had both been young. From a brief gander, it looked as though Slippy had selected the water planet of Aquas for his starting empire.

Empires. I think the Lylat System has seen enough of those to last awhile, mused the vulpine darkly. Even the word "empire" reminded him of Andross… it reminded him of what had almost been. He massaged his temple gingerly, closing his eyes and giving a small sigh. Even before I was born, Corneria was the center of its own empire. And that was a disaster too. He was trying not to think of the thing that had been nagging him since his battle with Andross. But it was there, the looming shadow in his dreams, the fly buzzing in his ears… He tried so hard to banish it from the front of his mind, but with sullen reluctance, he accepted it for a moment.

Who was it that I saw on Venom? Who was in that plane that guided me? The radio static had made the transmission hard to understand, but he could have sworn he it had been…

"What's wrong, Fox?" Slippy asked him. When Fox opened an eye to his friend, the toad continued, "You keep doing that."

"Doing what?" Fox asked obliviously.

"Sighing. Aren't you happy? We defeated Andross! The Lylat System is safe!"

Safe… For now. Star Wolf hasn't been found yet. And there's still a few of Andross's generals we'll have to face sooner or later. The Lylat Wars are done according to the media, but I doubt they'll be actually done for awhile… Fox thought, but he mustered a weak smile to his friend. "Yeah, I'm happy, Slip." But it wasn't convincing. Not to the friend who had seen him at his worst. Not to the friend who had seen him at his best. Fox cringed outwardly when Slippy's brow furrowed.

"You're a bad liar, Fox," Slippy said.

Called me on my bluff…

"Yep," Fox sighed again, and Slippy swiveled his chair to face him, frowning.

"So spit it out already!" Slippy said, and Fox became aware that Peppy and even Falco were watching him. His skin crawled beneath his fur, and he evaded their prying looks.

The pressure from their looks reminded him of a time when he had felt like another person entirely. Fox recalled the feeling all too well—two years ago, he had sat under the eye of General Pepper, the President of the Cornerian Flight Academy, and his father's wingman, Peppy Hare. They had implored him… begged him to consider taking charge of the Star Fox team.

This is just like before…

He felt himself cracking under their looks. The seams of his sanity were ripping—bursting, even. They had to have noticed the sleepless nights since the fight on Venom—his eyes were bloodshot more and more with each day.

"There's just a lot I don't get," Fox admitted finally. "Peppy, when you and Dad went to Venom… you know…" The last time. "… You said you saw a temple? You said the air was toxic? I didn't see anything like that when I was there. It was like Venom was a machine…"

Peppy shifted uncomfortably in his chair, studying Fox's face over his spectacles. He hates talking about what happened that day, I know he does. But I can't… just sit here in my thoughts anymore. I need to know what I saw. I need to know what I saw was real. Fox felt himself swallowing down a lump in his throat and let his gaze fall onto Falco, who was awkwardly slurping out of a glass bottle of Cornerian soda. Poor Falco, thrown into all of this mess. He was just some guy we found on the side of the road, really. Some guy that needed work just as much as we needed him…

"Fox," Peppy's voice did not hide a quiver. He sat his coffee mug down, removed his spectacles, and rubbed his eyelids. Fox expected a heartbroken sigh, but he heard nothing but the quietness of the old hare holding his breath as he stewed upon his own thoughts. It was a long moment of uneasy quiet before the pilot spoke again, solidarity in his voice. "After your mother died, James was forbidden from taking part in the investigation behind the explosion. The task was given to the Cornerian Police Department, who were able to uncover not only Andross's involvement but the plan to use the teleportation devices being developed for selfish purposes. Your father, myself, and a select few others left him on Venom. We thought it'd be a death sentence on its own..."

"You didn't just laser him to death?" Falco piped up but Slippy 'shushed' him.

"Andross… was tampering with things we didn't quite understand. He had changed somehow—we didn't understand how or why," Peppy sighed. "Anyways, after the mission, your dad took you and went to Papetoon. I'm sure you remember moving there and living there for a few years. When you moved back, we were all stunned. James had sworn off Corneria—said it was the place of his miseries. But he came back, wanting to form his mercenary band—like he'd been saying since the Cornerian War ended. He enlisted Pigma, despite what I thought wasn't a good idea. Somewhere in our adventures, we found Randorn. His Order sent him, I know. But he became part of the team. Part of the family."

"General Pepper had a bad feeling about Andross, ever since we left him. He noticed there was something odd about the toxic planet, Venom. There was a lot of activity being picked up on the scanners. Venom was… well, it was an old colony site for Corneria, but that was a long time ago. It was dubbed inhospitable after a certain incident—an incident no one really likes to talk about. We didn't think anyone could survive there, but General Pepper had us look into it. We found ancient structures there, and Randorn seemed to know something about them… So we landed, had our oxygen masks on… went into the 'temples', as Randorn put it… When we got inside, we found Andross was in there—alive and well and raising an army. To this day, I'm still not sure how he swayed so many people to follow him."

"Through fear, probably," Slippy chimed in and this time, it was Falco that 'shushed' him.

"We… well, we were discovered. At the time, we weren't sure how, but Andross knew we were there so we made our way back to our Arwings. In our escape back to the Mothership, we were caught into a tractor beam somehow… Andross was trying to pull us into a tractor beam. He wanted to use the teleportation device and trap us into another dimension," Peppy continued, eyes glazed over with memory. His voice was hard, steeled in a way Fox had never heard before. There was no gentleness in his godfather's demeanor.

"Pigma was the only one unaffected. I should've begun firing at that moment… but I didn't realize what it meant. He turned his lasers on James and with what little maneuverability we had, we fought him. Our Arwings were heavily damaged. Randorn was able to disable Pigma's weapons somehow… Enough to down the plane, at least. James took it upon himself to destroy the tractor beam… Randorn and I were sitting ducks, trying to fend off the Androssians as best as we could. By the time that James was able to disable the tractor beam… we were nearly defeated. And James… He gave us one final order to return to Corneria and give our reports."

Fox expected tears in Peppy's eyes, but there were none. The old pilot's nose wrinkled with distaste, as though he were chewing on something bitter. He gave the empty air before him a hard look, his shoulders sagged with unseen weight. "I begged James to come with us. Over the transmission, there was the sound of laserfire. He was under attack. He said 'Don't worry, I'll be right behind you guys'. I knew it was a lie. I knew it then as much as I know it now. But I left anyways." His hand trembled, fingers curled into a fist wrapped around his Space Dynamics mug.

So that's how it all happened, huh…

"Thanks for telling me, Pep," Fox said with a melancholy smile. He gave another sigh and took a soda from Slippy's hand gratefully, giving his friend an appreciative nod. He popped the cap off, let it fizz a moment before giving a good, long drink. All the while, he mulled over what his wingman had told him. Peppy's story fit in every way he had anticipated… except for one detail. "So wait… the Venom I saw… versus the Venom you saw…?"

"It sounds to me like something happened to the original Venom. Maybe it was teleported elsewhere…? Maybe it was destroyed?" Peppy sighed. "It's hard to say. Andross was messing with some dangerous technology."

"Yet, the fake Venom was in the same place as the original…" Slippy rubbed his chin. "It is a tough one. I guess he may have put it there as a trap? He couldn't have destroyed Venom… Everyone would know if he had, the entire Lylat System would have felt it!"

"It makes me wonder…" Peppy stroked his chin hairs, "… if the real Venom was put elsewhere..."

"I want to go to Venom," Fox announced, and Peppy's eyes widened. The vulpine rose out of his chair, moving to the main control panel. "There's something I need to see for myself."

"But Venom's been destroyed, Fox," Slippy blinked with surprise. "You can't go back. It's just debris!"

"You just said it yourself. If Venom was destroyed, then the whole Lylat System would've felt it," Fox took another drink from his soda. "I don't think that was Venom. It was too small and it didn't look anything like the Venom Peppy saw."

"What are you saying?" Falco scoffed, breaking his silence. He kicked his boots up and onto the control panel, much to Peppy's disapproval. "That the real Venom got sucked away somewhere else? I'm not a freakin' genius but I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed that."

"It's not… entirely impossible," Slippy began quietly. "Swapping a fake Venom with a real one. Not with t-technology like the kind Andross had…"

"But how would we find it?" Falco sputtered. "You're talking about traveling into another dimension… Aren't there a million of those? Besides, we don't just have a teleporter lying around."

"No, but we have a General Pepper," Fox shrugged. "One who owes us a lot of money and even a life debt."

"Fox…" Peppy warned him, brows raised. "I don't know what you're thinking, or why you're so interested in Venom, but you need to ask yourself what you think you'll really find there. It may not be what you're hoping for…"

The vulpine fiddled with his crimson scarf for a moment. He had been young when his mother had died in a hovercar explosion. Her memory was faded in his mind, like a picture torn and faint from age. She was a name and the distant face… One he only knew from those ancient photos. He remembered that when his father had passed, he had been afraid of how quickly he might forget his dad. As absurd as it seemed… Fox was still scared. Andross was dead, yes, but that had not brought his father back. It would never bring his father back. Fox could only rest knowing that no one else could fall victim to the ape's insane schemes again…

Was that why it still hurt so bad? Because his run of vengeance had come to an end? Because the ghosts were still ghosts? And the wounded were still hurting?

"Answers, Peppy. I just want some answers," Fox said after a moment of quiet contemplation. None dared argue further.