The solemn mood remained as the Star Fox team returned back to the Great Fox, but there was no time to mourn. For the time being, Beltino Toad had to detail a new plan to take down the Aparoids once and for all.

"This new program we are working on will wipe out each and every last Aparoid," explained Beltino. "The big mistake we made 15 years ago was thinking they were self-sufficient. But really, the power they get comes from one giant source, protected by none other than the Aparoid Queen."

Falco raised his eyebrows in a rare show of emotion. "Aparoid Queen, huh? So, why haven't we seen her before?"

"That's because the Queen lives in the Aparoid Homeworld, surrounded by the biggest droves of Aparoids ever seen, bigger than the army that took down Corneria. The homeworld itself is surrounded by miles upon miles of Aparoids, all being nourished by the Queen herself. The homeworld is located in a distant corner of the Lylat System, only accessible by our orbital gate. If we go in any other way, they'll take us down in an instant. But if we sneak in with the orbital gate, we can get in to the homeworld."

"That sounds like a great idea, Beltino," replied Fox. "So how will we take down the Aparoid Queen?"

"We're developing a program that will self-destruct all the Aparoids in one blow," explained Beltino. "If we send this to the Queen, we'll be able to take her out, and all the other Aparoids won't be able to feed off the Queen anymore. The only problem is getting there in the first place. We have to time the entry into the homeworld just right, or else we'll all end up in another place entirely, or worse - right into an army of Aparoids."

"That's fine, Beltino," exclaimed Fox. "Just tell us when, and we'll be ready to take them out!"

Beltino turned away from Fox, trying not to appear embarrassed. "Umm... we can't go in yet."

Falco threw up his hands in frustration. "Why not? Don't tell me you don't have the program ready yet..."

Beltino shook his head.

Slippy stood up from his seat. "He only figured this out a few hours ago. Our buddies down at the lab are working as hard as they can to get this program underway!"

"Thanks, Slip," sighed Falco. "Just one more thing before we go into the homeworld... do we have to bring Star Wolf with us?"

"I don't see why not," Krystal responded. "We could always use more help for the cause."

Fox sighed, shaking his head. "I don't know... I know they mean well, but I just have a bad feeling about them. I've learned not to trust them."

Peppy stepped into the conversation, sensing Fox's doubt. "I don't quite trust them, either, but... it's the only option we have. Besides, they can provide valuable backup when delivering the program to the Aparoid Queen."

"I'll definitely give it some thought," sighed Fox. "For now, we'd better relax until the program is set to go. Beltino, let me know when it's ready... I'll be in my quarters."

As the Star Fox team left the bridge, Fox went over to the back of the base, away from the rest of the team, and headed straight to his room, when he felt a presence around him, like he was being watched. Fox's muscles tensed up as he turned around and noticed Wolf standing behind him, barely paying any attention to anyone around him.

Fox gulped as he slowly approached Wolf. "Hi... You good?"

"Yes," Wolf responded, clearing his throat. "I couldn't help but overhear the conversation with you and that toad. You're saying the program will take out all the Aparoids in one shot?"

"That's what he's saying," Fox replied. "I'm not sure how exactly all of it works; you'd have to ask him or Slippy. I'm not very good at how science works."

"Nah, I won't bother," growled Wolf. "If the old man's anything like that tadpole of his, I don't want to go anywhere near him."

Fox brushed aside the comment. "Sure... Listen, Wolf, about what you did for me on Corneria..."

"Don't mention it," Wolf said, interrupting Fox. "I figured we'd have a better chance of defeating the Aparoids with you alive than dead."

Fox stood in the middle of the hallway as Wolf leaned against the wall, content to be at peace for the time being. Wolf then looked back up at Fox, looking slightly more irritated. "Is there something you need, or...?"

Fox rubbed his hands on his face, trying to put his eyes back in focus. "I'm sorry, I'm just... I know we needed to kill General Pepper, but... he meant so much to me."

Wolf glared right back at Fox. "You think so? Your point of view is so different from mine. You'll never understand, Fox. Frankly, it was an easy decision for me. Not just for my sake, but his."

"What makes you say that?" Fox's irritation was rising, just the same as his blood, and every muscle in his body restrained him from strangling Wolf where he was.

"You ever saw someone taken over by the Aparoids, Fox? Like, actually taken over as if they were some kind of food for those... things? Have you ever thought about that? Remember the first attack from the Aparoids 17 years ago? I remember that very clearly."

Fox scratched his head. "I don't know why nobody brought it up until now."

"Of course," sighed Wolf. "It's not something the Cornerian Army talks about at all. Only a few people know about it... including myself."

"What?" Fox jumped. "You mean you were on that ship?"

"I wasn't just there, Fox... Both of my parents were there, too. They were on that same Cornerian Fleet that got destroyed by the Aparoids. They were exploring a new part of the Lylat System, somewhere nobody else had gone there before. We were the first to figure out why nobody had gone in that part of the system before."

Fox let out a heavy breath in disbelief. "So you mean to say that they..."

"They were both killed in the battle," said Wolf bereftly. "I'll never forget their pain and agony when they became assimilated into the collective, turned into machines. It was... the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. Just seeing your parents being tortured and agonized into sheer material... I don't want to talk about it detail right now. But while your parents had the pleasure of dying after a date with Andross, my parents were eaten alive by those things."

Fox stood there in shock, frozen in time. He took a while to process the information inside his mind, placing all the pieces together. "I had no idea... I'm so sorry."

Wolf leaned back against the wall, facing away from Fox. "I don't expect you to be sorry. But at least you know my side of things."

Fox stood there for a minute, soaking in all the information inside of him. Fox shuddered to think about the horror of seeing his parents being murdered in front of his eyes, seeing them being mutilated by the Aparoids.

The silence continued between the two of them, before Wolf decided to stand away from the wall and walk away from Fox. "Well... We should start planning the battle inside the Aparoid Homeworld. Somehow I don't think we'll be very welcome at all in there."

"We can't really do anything until we get to the homeworld itself," explained Fox. "But I figure we could go down together and deliver the self-destruct program while everyone else provides air cover."

Wolf stood still in deep thought for a couple of seconds. "That should leave us with five ships in the air, if all goes well. We'll see what happens."

Just as the two were going back to their own quarters, when the alarm bells started blaring all across the ship, sending Fox's heartrate racing as the two ran over back to the bridge.

"Incoming Aparoid forces approaching the orbital gate," Rob 64 buzzed, as Fox and Wolf rushed into the front of the bridge.

Krystal was looking outside the window, overseeing the gate as it orbited around Corneria. "There's quite a number of them surrounding us, Fox. We'd better take them down!"

"Then there's no time to waste," declared Fox. "Everyone get into their ships! Let's rock and roll!"

"I'll get Rob and myself into the Great Fox," replied Peppy, as every other pilot ran towards the hangars of the base, hurriedly stepping into their ships and blasting off into space, seeing dozens of Aparoids swarming the base and the orbital gate.

"There's too many of them!" screamed Slippy, as he bounced around in the cockpit of his Arwing.

"Nothing we can't handle," Fox responded back, as he set his sights on the group of Aparoids flying around him, sending a charge shot into the group and taking them down with one shot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fox could see the three Star Wolf ships flying in formation, taking down as many of the Aparoids as they could. Confident of their abilities, Fox flew away from them, and headed towards the other band of Aparoids, shooting them down one by one as he flew beside them.

"I've got good news for everyone!" exclaimed Beltino, distracting Fox from his rage of fury against the Aparoids. "The program is almost complete! We'll be able to get ourselves down to the homeworld soon!"

"We haven't got much time to waste," said Peppy, onboard the Great Fox. "Once the program is ready, we should head over there as soon as possible. Radar is showing that there's more Aparoid forces on the way."

"Just get yourselves to the homeworld," assured Beltino, "We'll take care of ourselves once you guys are gone. What matters now is that we need to be protected while these guys are trying to take us down! Once you're gone, we can leave the base alone for them to have."

"Sounds like a plan, boss," Falco responded. "We'll do our best to take them down!" At that point, Falco sent down a smart bomb in the middle of the battle area, taking out some Aparoids in the process, but the blast got dangerously close to Fox, forcing him to dodge out of the way out of the smart bomb's wake.

"Watch where you're sending that, man!" Fox yelled.

"Sorry," Falco replied, not saying another word.

Fox brushed aside the near miss as he snapped his mind back into action, crushing over any Aparoid that got in his flight path.

"Incoming missiles approaching towards the gate," buzzed Rob 64, in an alarmed tone.

"What?" Fox nearly swerved towards an Aparoid ship upon hearing the words. "Where are they?"

"They're showing up on radar right about now," Peppy confirmed. "Take those missiles out, everyone! Don't let even one of them through!"

"Got it," replied Fox. "Krystal, back me up while I chase down the missiles!" At once, Fox sped off towards the first missiles in front of the whole formation and shot directly at them with his laser, rapidly firing at them so much that his hands were starting to become stiff from handling the controls so firmly.

"I'll take care of the missiles, too," Wolf said, following his Wolfen closely behind Fox. Wolf started shooting directly at the missiles in front of Fox, as the two helped blow up the first group of missiles that had appeared.

Fox checked his radar and found more missiles quickly surrounding the base. "I'll split off and take care of the left side," Fox explained. "We'll be able to take down more missiles that way."

"Good idea," Wolf said, as he kept firing at the missiles in front of him. Wolf shot his lasers furiously until the missiles in front of him exploded into a million pieces, but after the debris cleared out of his flight path, an army of Aparoids formed up, waiting to attack on Wolf's ship. Wolf instinctively barrel rolled out of the way, barely avoiding the Aparoids as he jerked the controls heavily towards one side, hurdling his head towards the edge of the cockpit.

Wolf felt his ship spiral out of control as it spun and hurtled towards another ship. Wolf frantically jerked the controls in one direction, bringing the Wolfen back onto level air, but the ship was still going at a fast pace, making everything around Wolf into a blur. Wolf blindly shot at the Aparoid in front of him, before looking downwards to check his radar to see where the missiles had gone. While he was searching for the next missile to shoot down, more Aparoids approached Wolf from behind, firing directly at the Wolfen's engine, triggering numerous alarms on the ship.

Barely able to catch his breath, Wolf sped away from the pack of Aparoids that had snuck up behind him and swung the Wolfen back around to shoot them down. But another swarm of Aparoids attacked Wolf, startling him in the process as he desperately shot his lasers in rapid succession, not even letting his fingers off the triggers, constantly firing away until the lasers themselves had enough and shut off, delivering yet another alarm to Wolf, further distracting him. "Dammit," Wolf grunted under his short breath, "overloaded the damn lasers..."

Wolf moved out of the way of the formation of Aparoids he was shooting at, but unable to defend himself, the Aparoids quickly took advantage of the stricken Wolfen and swarmed around the ship.

Panicked thoughts surged into Wolf's head, overwhelming him as he hardly had enough time to think about the ship's alarms blaring in the background, never mind his own predicament. As his muscled tensed to the point where they felt like they were going to explode, a sense of dread started to creep into Wolf, something that he hadn't felt in years, not since his parents were swallowed up by the Aparoids 17 years ago. His mind started to shudder as the image of his father being assimilated and mechanized while he writhed in agony replayed in his head...

"Is this it?" Wolf quietly said to himself, almost shuddering in fear. His hands grew closer to the button where a smart bomb would detonate right inside his Wolfen, blowing himself up with the rest of the Aparoids following behind him. "If I'm going to die here, I'm not going to let the Aparoids destroy me..."

Wolf took a deep breath, filtering the blaring alarms out of his mind, shuddering and shaking inside the cockpit, gritting his teeth.

"Well... here goes..."

Wolf laid his finger on the button, but felt an explosion happen behind him, and some lasers filtering through from behind. It startled Wolf enough to take his finger off the button and back onto the steering controls, frantically moving his head in every direction to see where the shots were coming from. "Leon? That you? Panther?"

At that point, Wolf's lasers suddenly came back online, and finding a couple of Aparoids in front of him, didn't hesitate in shooting them down and making them history.

As the debris from the last two Aparoids filtered away from his flight path, Wolf soon found out who had helped him out earlier, as he flew his ship beside Wolf's, giving a smile of confidence back as the two looked at each other.

Wolf raised his eyebrows in stunned admiration. "Fox? But..."

"Thought I'd return the favour," Fox replied, saluting Wolf back.

Wolf turned away from Fox, looking back towards the battle in the distance. "Never mind that... let's just get the rest of the missiles."

"There isn't a whole lot left," Fox confirmed, looking back on his radar. "Falco and I were taking more of them down while you were in that jam. Then I noticed you were in trouble, and... well, Falco took care of some more missiles while I helped you out there."

Wolf didn't know what to say in return, and decided to fire up his engines back to full throttle again, having gotten a well-deserved rest in the last minute. "The last missiles are straight ahead, I'll get right at them, Fox."

Fox followed closely behind Wolf as the two shot directly at the remaining missiles, being free to fire at them at full strength, with hardly any Aparoids following behind them. The missiles duly got destroyed in quick succession, and the radar fell silent for the first time in what seemed like ages, giving much needed relief for the two teams.

"Yippee!" Slippy belted at the top of his lungs. "We did it!"

Wolf shook his head in aggravation as his intercom was bombarded with Slippy's jubilant reaction. Suddenly, the radar popped back to life again, giving one giant spot far into the distance.

"Danger. Incoming missile detected," alarmed Rob 64.

Falco turned to see the incoming object growing in size by the minute as it appeared from the warp that it came in. "Umm, that doesn't look like missile..."

"Never mind that," barked Wolf. "Whatever it is, it doesn't look very promising." Shortly after, Wolf sped towards the large object, resembling a spaceship more than a missile, as it darted towards the base.

"It seems to be going straight for you guys, Beltino," said Fox, communicating back to the base. "How's the program going, Beltino?"

"Almost done," said Beltino, scrambling around on the bridge. "We'll transport it to each one of your ships once we have it complete."

Fox's radar then alerted him of the arrival of more Aparoids following closely behind the missile-like ship. "Better get the gate fired up, then," ordered Fox. "We don't want to waste any time at all."

Wolf started scanning the slow moving object as he flew around it. "There seems to be a lot of armour, but I found an open spot to attack this thing." Wolf then shot at the back of the object, taking a lot of effort as it slowly but surely started to weaken until it broke apart, and started to disintegrate.

"Is that it?" Wolf asked, spinning through the debris. Suddenly, he noticed the object start to pick up speed. "What's going on?" he yelled.

"It seems to be a multi-part missile," confirmed Slippy. "The more we take it down, the faster it goes!"

"That's crazy!" Falco shouted, as he started to go towards the object. "Now what are we supposed to do?"

"Keep firing at it until we blow the whole thing up," ordered Wolf, as he resumed shooting at the missile again, only to be impeded by the thick armour. "What the... has the open spot moved?"

"Here it is," Leon confirmed, shooting at the side of the missile. "Those bastards sure know how to annoy the hell out of us." Leon and Wolf both fired endlessly at the missile, until more debris started to fly off in front of them, leaving a blaze of smoke in its wake, only for another part of the missile to speed away from the wreckage.

"Warning. Warning. Missile approaching," Rob 64 alerted.

"Damn..." Wolf rammed his fist on the controls in frustration. "Where's the open spot now?"

"Seems to be at the front this time," said Peppy, looking on from the base. "Get that missile down before it strikes us!"

"Damn..." Wolf rammed his fist on the controls in frustration. "Where's the open spot now?"

"Seems to be at the front this time," said Peppy, looking on from the base. "Get that missile down before it strikes us!"

Fox rushed in from the ongoing battle to the front of the missile. "The open spot is larger than the others, but it's at an awkward angle... and the speed doesn't help, too..."

"Don't worry about us, Fox," said Wolf. "Just shoot like crazy and don't stop!"

Fox followed Wolf's instructions and shot as much as he could to the front of the missile, while Falco shot at it from the other side. Wolf went above the missile and turned the ship around, facing the missile from afar as it sped towards the base. It soon became apparent how close the missile was getting towards the base, and Wolf nearly froze in fear. "Hurry up, everyone, the missile's really close!"

Wolf and Leon then blasted right to the front of the missile, joining in the attack with Falco and Fox. Suddenly, their radars started blaring away, as the Aparoids started swarming the base again, attacking the ships shooting at the missile.

Falco did his best to ignore the Aparoids surrounding his ship, as the shields started to weaken. "Go away, you pests! I don't have time to take care of you!"

Wolf decided to set up the smart bomb he had saved earlier and set a delay on the bomb, firing it forward and planting it right onto the front of the missile, right through the open spot. A few seconds later, as the Aparoids started taking meaningful damage onto his ship, the smart bomb deployed and destroyed what was left of the missile, sending shockwaves in the area.

Fox let out a breath after the last of the missile disintegrated into dust. "That was too close..." Fox then noticed a new program being installed into the ship's programming, quickly downloading itself into the system.

"The program's complete!" shouted Beltino, as the rest of the programming crew started celebrating around him. "We can finally get going to the homeworld!"

"Good work, everyone!" Peppy replied. I'll get Rob and I into the Great Fox as quickly as I can. Get into the gate and we'll follow closely behind you!"

As the two teams formed near each other towards the orbital gate, Fox noticed the Aparoids were drawing further away from the team and closer towards the base, where Beltino still remained.

"Beltino! Are you ok?" Fox yelled.

"We'll be fine, just go ahead," Beltino replied. "We'll abandon this base if we have to. Just get through the gate and deploy the program!"

As the orbital gate breathed into life and gave its distinctive green afterglow, Fox had to leave Beltino at the back of his mind and charge forward into the homeworld, not saying a word as he got closer to the gate.

"They'll be fine, Fox," Wolf said, breaking the silence. "They know how to get out of there in a hurry. Just focus on the mission."

Fox looked around him and mentally confirmed the seven ships, four from Star Fox and three from Star Wolf, all flying in formation towards the gate as it opened in front of them. Fox took a deep breath as his ship entered into the gate and appeared on the other side, overseeing the Aparoid homeworld, and saw the rest of the ships enter closely behind him.

Krystal looked onwards towards the Aparoid Homeworld, as it resembled a nest for the creatures to live in. "So... this is where the Aparoids live, then... I never thought it would look so peaceful."

Wolf's face grew foul on the remark. "I very much doubt the homeworld is peaceful at all."

Slippy started analyzing the homeworld as soon as he got the chance to break the conversation with Wolf. "It looks like the entrance to the homeworld is very simple to get into… but I'm starting to get stronger energy readings from the entrance as well!"

The pilots looked over to the entrance, and found that it started to form up a shield blocking the path inside to the homeworld. Falco zoomed over to the entrance and tried shooting at it, but the lasers bounced right off the shield and back towards the formation, forcing everyone to dodge out of its way. "Jeez, do they know we're here already?" he groaned.

Fox searched around the formation, ignoring Falco's complaints. "Has the Great Fox come in yet? Maybe they can help analyze this thing."

Almost on cue, the Great Fox started appearing from the gate. Fox relaxed inside his cockpit, but sat upright again as he started hearing the familiar cries of the Aparoids coming out of the gate. "Where's the Aparoids coming from? I thought we didn't have any Aparoids following us through the gate!

Fox looked over to where the Great Fox was, and found the entire rear of the mothership covered in Aparoids, swarming the machines as much as they could, disintegrating everything that came in its path. The engines started to engulf in flames as it careened towards the front of the homeworld.

"Out of the way, everyone!" Peppy declared, sweating from head to toe. "We're going to bust through that entrance if he have to!"

Fox swerved his Arwing to the back of the Great Fox, trying to shoot as many of the creatures as he could off the ship. "Peppy! We're on our way to help you!"

"It's no use," Peppy sighed. "We might as well go out with a bang! Rob, divert all energy to the main guns!"

Rob 64 typed away as usual, oblivious to the flames and alarms blazing around him. "Warning. Hull reaching critical levels. Hull breath imminent."

The Great Fox fired its main lasers at full capacity, but even it wasn't enough to make a dent through the entrance. Peppy ignored the warnings made by Rob 64 and put all the thrusters as fast as they could go, speeding directly into the entrance at full speed.

Slippy cried out in terror, seeing the Great Fox speed directly towards the entrance. "Don't go, Peppy! We need you!"

Fox heard the repeated calls from his teammates pleading Peppy not go charge towards the entrance. But Peppy kept charging onwards, gaining more speed by the second. Fox stared at the Great Fox, as it was being disintegrated by the Aparoids. "There's nothing I can do," Fox said grimly to himself, with the radio off. "I don't want the Aparoids to take over his body."

As the Great Fox was about to hit the front gate, Peppy shut his eyes closed, trying to keep his mind away from his impending doom. His body was shaking as he kept thinking of his happiest memories, thinking about his wife, Vivian, his best friend, James, both of whom he was certain he'd be joining soon in the afterlife. "I'm coming soon," Peppy told them. "Just one more duty left to do."

Peppy took a deep breath, awaiting his fate. Suddenly, he felt the Great Fox halt dead in its tracks, and Peppy was thrown forward across the bridge, tumbling down past the controls and onto the ground. Peppy looked up towards the front of the bridge, seeing the entrance break open in front of him, as the bridge started to break open into the void of space.

Fox noticed the entrance open up and set his hands back onto the controls. "We don't have a time to waste! Let's get in before the entrance closes up again!"

Krystal moved her ship towards the entrance, going there at full speed. "The window of opportunity is short, everyone. Let's not hesitate any longer!"

The rest of the Star Fox team followed behind Krystal, and went in formation through the entrance, with Star Wolf trailing close behind. Moments after the two teams went inside the Aparoid homeworld, the entrance closed up behind them, and the Great Fox lit up in a blaze, leaving nothing but a bright light in its wake, blinding the pilot's rear view mirrors.

Fox's heart sank, knowing fully well what happened to the Great Fox. "So long, Peppy… I won't let your sacrifice be in vain."