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

Star Fox: Other Side

Chapter 0

A slow, subtle beeping gradually brought consciousness back to her at a slow, steady pace. She pushed herself up off the console of her Arwing and groaned. Her forehead felt damp, and when she pressed her hand against it, and looked at it, her glove was stained red. Upon returning her gaze to the console, she saw a similar red stain adorning her radar screen. Doing her best to rub the stain away from the screen, she tried to get an idea of her location. The screen glitched and spasmed, and after a few moments gave up, shutting down altogether. With a heavy sigh, Miyu leaned back against her seat, staring out the canopy. Then, she realized that she was underwater. How deep, she wasn't too sure, but she could still see the sky.

As she began to recover, her memory started to return. She could vividly recall combat, flying in the depths of Lylat Interstellar Space, in a dogfight against Venomian Remnants for control over an Orbital Gate that Cornerian scientists were testing. The Gate had opened unexpectedly during the fight, and the Portal that formed was unstable, with Miyu and other fighters being unable to escape its pull. She recalled one other Lylatian flying with her, helping her defend the Warp Gate. She had been sucked into the Portal as well, and her last memories before everything went black included Miyu and Fay being shot out of the Portal with any Venomian Remnants who were trapped as well, all of them caught in the gravity of a nearby planet, one with a remarkable resemblance to Corneria.

She groaned and looked around at the underwater environment around her. She checked the screen for anything larger than a local aquatic creature. Unfortunately, or fortunately, she wasn't sure, the scanners detected nothing larger than a small fish. She ran a diagnostic on the Arwing itself in an attempt to determine the damage. It was surprisingly minimal, but the little damage she had sustained was quite severe. Her left wing had been clipped in half, and her fuel tank had ruptured. Groaning, she tried to activate the Arwing's thrusters, hopefully get out of this body of water she was in. The thought crossed her mind about why someone hadn't noticed her in the water, and as her Arwing started up, with a large warning about low fuel, she soon realized why when her Arwing lurched out of the water and into the air. The nearby beach showed her something startling. An alien city with only the slightest resemblance to Corneria lay on the island, and as she did a fly-by in an attempt to find a place to land, she noticed something else surprising about it. The city was in ruins, vehicles of ancient models were abandoned, some had crashed into various objects around the city. The buildings themselves were showing the signs of old age, some were crumbling very slowly, had broken windows, or were missing entire parts of themselves and leaving only the framework of supports that held them up, and in some parts not even that.

A loud beep reminded Miyu that she only had a few more minutes worth of fuel left in her tank, and after a quick survey, she managed to find a clearing on one of the roads to land safely. As the Arwing initiated its landing procedures, Miyu relaxed and assessed her own injuries. Aside from her head injury, she seemed largely unscathed. Once she landed, she opened the canopy and climbed out of the Arwing cockpit. Her right leg immediately twinged and forced her to pause for a moment to check her leg. There was a small red stain on her thigh, and a quick check around the cockpit revealed a piece of mangled technology with her blood on it. She recognized that it used to be her 12-S rifle, and it had been destroyed in the crash. Grunting, she pulled herself out of the semi-intact Arwing and landed less than gracefully on the ground. Picking herself up, she managed to find the Arwing's supply compartment on the underside and get her EE-40 pistol, along with a first-aid kit.

After doing what she could to treat the wounds she had and bandaging herself up, she checked her ammunition stock and her food rations. She didn't have much in the way of food, probably a week's worth if she only stuck to one meal a day. This is gonna do wonders to my body, and not the good kind, she thought to herself and pressed her head against the Arwing's hull. In terms of ammo, she had enough plasma cartridges to take on a small armada all on her own, assuming she was a sharpshooting sniper with perfect accuracy. Her mind returned to the alien city around her. The city was practically the picture she thought of when she thought of urban decay. Whatever had happened here must've happened quickly, as there was literally no movement to tell her that anything was living here at all. She grabbed her helmet from inside the compartment, she hadn't worn it during their mission, having not anticipated facing Venomian Remnants during what should have been a simple test run. She slipped it on and tapped it. When a lens unfolded from inside the helmet and positioned itself over her right eye, she was thankful that it still had enough power to work. She scanned the area for any signs of radiation, chemicals, or microbes. Nothing registered on the scouter, which threw out a few of her ideas behind what had happened here.

An idea popped into her head and Miyu, in an attack of curiosity, tapped her scouter twice. A holographic image appeared an arms-length away from her and she "tapped" one of the icons that appeared. The fact that she could activate this meant that she was still able to connect with her Arwing's computer. A few clicks later, and she had updated her journal with a short list of objectives:

→ #1: Find Fay

→ #2: Get home

→ #3: Find out what happened here (Optional)

Going back through the Arwing's logs, she tried to see if the ship's radar had tracked Fay's Arwing. The screen showed them, after having left the portal, plummeting toward the planet, and she could see Fay's Arwing as a tiny green blip on the screen, descending toward the planet alongside her and a bunch of red blips before the screen abruptly shut off. She had an idea and decided to check for something. She sent an electromagnetic test signal into the sky, hoping to hit a satellite in the atmosphere. A return signal told her that there were dozens, maybe hundreds in orbit around the planet. She was pleasantly surprised, and a bit skeptical that these satellites could register her technology, and sent the data from the Arwing's radar, hoping to get an idea of the area she would have to start searching in. There was a pause, as if the satellite network was thinking, then sent back geographical data of both the general area that Fay had apparently landed in, as well as map data for her own general location and the locations of most of the other landing sites of the Venomian Remnants. She marked the location of Fay's Arwing on her map and closed it up. She looked back to her own Arwing. She wasn't as adept at fixing tech as Fay was, but she figured if she could at least patch up the fuel tank and find some fuel, she could get to Fay quicker.

The first sensation to arrive when consciousness returned was a mind-numbing pain in her left shoulder, and when she opened her heavy eyelids, she realized why. A piece of the canopy glass had lodged itself in her shoulder. It was painful as Hell, but when she tried to move that arm, she figured that it hadn't hit any nerves. She realized that she needed to find a medical kit and treat it, lest her injury become infected. With a gasp, she forced breath into her lungs and sat up, despite the burning protests from her midriff. She looked around at her surroundings, her blue eyes scanning the area for hostiles or friendlies, and instead only seeing an orange-tinged sky filled with black clouds that made her think of an apocalypse film, or something similar.

As she struggled out of her Arwing, her mind raced at the thought of where Miyu was and whether she was alive or not. Briefly, as she reached into the Arwing's supply compartment for her first-aid, she entertained the thought that Miyu was too stubborn to leave Fay alone and die, no matter what. She patched herself up, then began analyzing the damages to her Arwing. Unfortunately, while she was mostly okay, save for the various wounds, her Arwing looked like it had seen better days. She glanced around at the alien city around her and realized that, in her crash, she managed to come to a stop on the roof of one such building. She spent some time looking around and realized that, at ground level, there were all sorts of vehicles that, while definitely not Lylatian in design, definitely looked similar to vehicles she'd seen driving around on the streets of Corneria. She went back to the Arwing to see if she could get an idea of what she needed to get it space-worthy again. Some fiddling with the on-board computer eventually granted her a ship diagnosis. The damages were more severe than she thought, as the G-diffusers had cracked alongside the fuel tank. While she figured she could siphon fuel from the vehicles below, once she knew what it was, and patch the tank, a G-diffuser was difficult to fix without the right tools, none of which she was certain she had. However, fixing one was only half the trouble, as the exotic matter, known publicly as Orichalcum, contained inside the G-diffusers, which was used for generating the graviton field to reduce the g-forces caused by reentry, not exactly the cheapest thing to replace, would probably leak out and become inert as the exotic particles escaped or decayed.

She cursed when she realized that and pressed her head against the ship, resting for a moment before looking around. The ancient, alien city was, in many ways, similar in its designs to Cornerian cities. It made her wonder what may have lived on this planet. She looked around the roof of the building she was on in an attempt to find a way down. As she did, she had a brief thought and checked to see if her map could pull up. Thankfully, her headset was still intact and the mapper was still available and receiving geographical data. She paused upon realizing that. "If this place has a map," She muttered to herself, "that must mean there's satellites!" She mused over the advantages of having access to a map and as a thought, put her crashed Arwing on the map as a way-point if she needed to return. As she did, she activated her scanner in the event she needed it. If it still worked properly, she would be able to detect functional machinery. She'd used such a device before when she and Miyu had explored a few stellar wrecks for anything worth selling or salvage.

She found a section of the roof that had collapsed, likely due to her Arwing's crash, that gave her access to the top floor. The rubble left from the collapse would leave a half-decent path up to her Arwing when she returned with the parts to fix it. She managed to find a stairway down to the bottom floor, but upon checking again to see just how high up she was, she began to wonder if there was some kind of elevator available. While searching, her scanner pinged and led her to a small device. It had apparently remained functional, despite the possible centuries that had passed, leading Fay to wonder how it worked. The device was a hand-held, box-shaped construct with a few buttons on it and what looked like an antenna. She picked up the device as the scanner automatically analyzed and memorized its design. A bit of fiddling around with it led her nowhere, so she tried tapping one of the buttons, an X-shaped button. Her headset picked up on a foreign transmission and once she ran a scan of it, she realized that it was a video file. Fay spared the device a glance and realized that it was a type of transmitter. She decided to open and view the file.

After seeing the video play, she had to lean against the wall to recollect herself. She understood every word that was spoken, but that was beside the point. She had just seen things that she knew absolutely had to make it back home. "I need to find Miyu. Right now," she declared, more to herself since there was no-one around to hear her. She decided that trying to find an elevator would be useless and took the stairs, figuring it would take longer and her scanner didn't detect any additional technology.

A/N

→ This may seem like your typical "Star Fox meets X" fanfic of the "Star Fox crashes on X" variety, but as you can see, something is very, very different here. This is my twist on that fanfic model, based off a wild theory I once had.

→ I mentioned above that there is some original content I don't own. The content in question (EE-40 pistol, 12-S rifle, Orichalcum) belongs to Tobias Umbra and is being used with permission. I highly recommend you readers to check out his content as well.