In the cold, dark void of space, wrapped among a merciless and unforgiving blanket of stars, a lone cruiser drifted aimlessly. The ship in question belonged to a rejected and unloved character. A blue humanoid vixen formerly known only as Krystal but now an almost unheard of bounty hunter going by the name of Kursed. In the ship's control room a hunched shadow sat over a control panel, silhouetted by blinking lights and multiple screens. In the corner was a bin filled with soda cans. The bin was second hand, as almost everything was on the ship.
She finished the contents of another soda can and tossed it into the bin with practiced ease. She'd been tracking this same bounty for countless weeks, but with fruitless success and the leopard who'd hired her was getting impatient. "Crap" She grumbled as the system displayed another failed scan. "Maybe I can scan for the ship's radiation trails" She thought. After initializing the settings she engaged the scan. 5 long minutes later the scan came up, empty. "Shit!" she shouted, pounding her fist against the metallic surface, after all, there was no one else to see her like this. Then she noticed something. The screen was buffering. After seemingly endless seconds two bright yellow stripes appeared on the screen. "Yes!" she cried ecstatically and then remembering her job she sat down again and muttered "yes!".
Her hands flew over the keyboard as she tracked her quarry to its current coordinates. The computer screen traced the rad-trails to somewhere in Sector Z. Hurt filled her mind and heart as she remembered the last great dogfight against Star Wolf. The look on Slippy's face as Fox dodged blast after blast from Wolf's cannons. The evil cackle that Leon transmitted over the radio channel. The moment that Panther blasted Fox's starboard wing an G-diffusers clean off and he spiralled through the clouds to his doom. She forced the thoughts out of her head and set a course for the ship she was tracking. After punching the acceleration to full, she traversed the narrow corridors to her room. Lying down on the narrow bed, she let the days of missed sleep and tiredness overtake her...
2 years earlier…
"Watch out Fox!" Slippy yelped as another beam blazed towards his friends arwing. "Don't worry little man, Fox has everything under control" Replied the team's resident blue avian, Falco calmly as Fox deftly barrel rolled to the right. "Launching missile!" Peppy bellowed. As a missile streaked from the portside hull of the Great Fox towards the stern of the Great Wolf at over 1000mph. It impacted harmlessly against the deflector shields arranged strategically around the ship. "Damn!" Grunted Peppy through gritted teeth. As Leon laughed manically over the com array. As the arwings fought furiously to remain airborne, another single-seater spacecraft zoomed towards the combat area. Jinking effortlessly through the debris, it charged its nova cannons and kept a steady course, aiming straight for Leon. Nova cannons fully charged, it let loose its salvo of plasma beams, shattering the rear part of Leon's craft, the Rainbow Delta. Somehow the cabin was still intact, albeit with a cracked canopy. As the depressurizing cabin was drawn back towards the Great Wolf Leon transmitted one last line of speech before the com array fizzled out, disconnected from its power source. The words were, "You'll be sorry for that, whoever you are!" "I seriously doubt that." Replied the unknown pilot in a cerenian accent. The nimble craft made a slow flypast beside the bridge. It was only then that the fighter was moving at a slow enough speed for Peppy to recognise it. "Krystal?" He said unsurely as the custom-built Space Dynamics craft called Cloud Runner moved through his field of vision. She opened a channel on the com array. "That's me. What do you want?" She spat dryly. Ever since Fox told her to leave the team she had been like this, choosing to hide away from the rest of the galaxy. She had rarely been seen, and when she had few lived to see daylight again. Mostly because the only people who saw her where her quarry. "We thought we would never see you again" Peppy said in astonishment. " Well you won't. This one last fight and we're done." Fox was staying unusually quiet when a voice over the com array broke the silence. "Watch out Foxie!" It was the voice of a grinning Panther, who duly opened fire on the unsuspecting vulpine. Quickly rolling to starboard, he then performed a loop and fired his own guns on the surprised panther. Panther roared in anger at being outwitted so easily. With otherworldly grace, he turned his craft around and fired one extremely fast plasma beam. There was no way Fox could have dodged it. It tore through his starboard G-diffusers and wing, sending him spiralling down towards Fichina. "Fox!" Squealed Slippy. "Damn…" was all Falco could say before entering a near-vertical dive towards the planet. Breaking through the cloud barrier, he pulled up only to see snowy whiteness in every direction. "Fighter must have been buried by the snow" he thought darkly. "There's no way anyone would ever find him in this." "He's gone." He transmitted in a choked voice. "He's really gone…"