The voyage to Venom airspace took them across the Lylat System once more. Twice Fox saw comets trailing in the distance, their tails illuminated like fireworks. Solar flared as they passed it, burning with a tenacity that rivaled Lylat. Sector Omega greeted them with naught but rubble—remnants of the Androssian fleet drifting in the vast ocean of the abyss, the distant nebula carelessly watching the corpses of the once-active fleet flounder.
"Alright, so where is Venom?" Falco asked Slippy as they made their approach in the mothership. He carelessly leaned against the wall and sipped some Cornerian soda from the bottle, the glass clanging awkwardly against his beak.
"Right there," Slippy pointed ahead. "Well, in theory that is!"
"In theory…" Falco scoffed and took another drink from his soda. "Welp, Slip, it's gonna be really hard to get into orbit if we can't even see the damn thing. How're we supposed to know we're not about to crash into it?"
"At a certain distance, cloaking devices aren't in effect. So if we just keep flying at where it should be…" Slippy shrugged.
"How close, though?" Falco asked and Fox admitted he was wondering the same thing.
"Close," Slippy suggested with an uncertain chuckle.
"Well, I guess we're gonna keep going forward," Fox decided aloud and no one protested. He kept a keen eye ahead of the Great Fox, where there was nothing but darkness and faint stars dotting the distance. Doubt began to crawl upon the back of his neck after a few moments of silence. Peppy had scarcely said a word since they had passed Titania, his mahogany eyes filled with disquiet as he stared out the window. Fox couldn't blame him; returning to this place was likely a nightmare for him, and the vulpine considered offering to let him stay on board the Great Fox during their expedition.
No, he'll want to see for himself, too.
"Something's wrong," Peppy said giving the air a sniff. Running to the window, the hare peered through the glass at the Great Fox's massive wings. "We're… We're burning up!"
"Burning up?!" Slippy nearly fell from his chair.
"We've entered the atmos—" the greying hare began.
"ATTENTION!" ROB64 chimed suddenly. "APPROACHING LARGE GRAVITATIONAL FIELD AT HIGH SPEED… BRACE FOR IMPACT IN… FORTY-FIVE SECONDS…"
"Whaaa? What's going on?" Falco sputtered.
Red emergency lights began flashing and the alarms resounded in Fox's ear with such volume that he visibly cringed. A panicked look was shot at Slippy, who ran to the controls and began punching in buttons. The map display overhead depicted an image of Venom—a swirling gaseous sphere that made Corneria look pathetically small. The alert displayed the word "WARNING" in bright, flashing red letters across the planet's image.
This isn't the Venom I saw in the other dimension.
"Gravitational…" Fox stared into the nothingness ahead. "Pull?" There's nothing here. Just empty space… Adrenaline coursed through his veins and he flipped the controls to manual. Back arched, he pulled back on the steering, all the while dialing back the speed as hastily as he could.
"Well, are we close enough, Slippy?!" Falco demanded.
"I… I don't know! Why can't we…?!" Slippy fumbled for the right words.
"ATTENTION… APPROACHING LARGE GRAVITATIONAL FIELD AT HIGH SPEED… BRACE FOR IMPACT IN… FORTY-FIVE SECONDS…"
"Pull up!" Peppy shouted, wrangling the controls from the toad. "We're not at a good angle for our descent, we'll burn to pieces before we even make it to the planet!" The hare gave a mighty heave and the mothership began to surge upward. A crackle and pop from somewhere made Fox grimace and he prayed it was nothing important.
"The planet!?" Falco exclaimed. "What planet? You mean…"
"We've entered Venom airspace," Fox managed as the ship gave a lurch.
"ATTENTION… APPROACHING LARGE GRAVITATIONAL FIELD AT HIGH SPEED… BRACE FOR IMPACT IN… THIRTY SECONDS…"
"We're not gonna make it!" Slippy exclaimed woefully.
"Escape pods?" Falco suggested, already halfway out the door.
"No!" Fox shouted over the cacophony, stumbling to the window. The Great Fox had pulled up, at a decent angle to enter Venom airspace. The wings were not burning away, but their exposed interiors made him cringe all the same.
We've been sucked in. The alarm's wrong, we're not approaching the gravitational field, we're already in it… It'll be the planet we hit next…
To the hare, Fox yelled, "Peppy, slow it down!" The veteran did not answer but reached over to decrease the mothership's speed, pulling back on the lever. Fox could feel the Great Fox slow its pace, but he wondered if it was enough…
"ATTENTION… APPROACHING LARGE GRAVITATIONAL FIELD AT HIGH SPEED… BRACE FOR IMPACT IN… FIFTEEN SECONDS…"
The countdown began, in perfect rhythm with Fox's frantic heartbeat. Space still stretched ever onward in front of them. A blink and the vulpine would have missed it. The reflected image of the Great Fox stared back at him in the cloaking device, the mothership burning from an engine and his own bewildered face in the front window, staring at the mirrored picture with mixed horror and wonder.
Almost out of time.
From the depths of the mayhem, Falco pulled him away from the window, forcing him behind and under a protective countertop.
"Come on you hunk of junk! Jim didn't pay a fortune for you to flake out on us now!" Peppy yelled as he gave another pull on the steering and the front window became full with red, rocky dirt. The mothership's nose tilted upward in the last moment before the impact and with a sudden collision, the Great Fox landed on the planet Venom, sliding for a few moments before coming to a screeching halt.
Fox had not realized he had closed his eyes upon the crash. The force itself had knocked him to the ground and he crouched with a hand still on a nearby chair. He used it to pull himself up, his green eyes searching the room for any clear signs of damage. A blazing red sky greeted them, the alien turf barren and devoid of life outside of eerily colored trees moping about the landscape. The air itself seemed to be mist, glittering and swirling like dangerous, uncanny smog. Before they set foot outside, they would have to grab their gas masks and oxygen tanks. It was theorized that the atmosphere could permanently damage the average Lylatian's lungs in less than an hour of exposure. Three days of exposure was theorized before death. Fox did not want to risk it either way.
Venom. The supposed first planet of the Lylat System. It was supposed to be as beautiful as Corneria is… but something happened here and the land became terraformed. Now it's a wasteland. A toxic hellhole.
"Any breaches?" Peppy asked ROB64 after a moment of silence and sighs of relief.
"NEGATIVE," ROB64 beeped.
"A small blessing," Peppy sank into a chair, breathing out his tension and worries. One of his paws readjusted his glasses, which had become crooked at some time during the crash-landing. "Let's hope I never have to crash-land this thing ever again."
"DAMAGE LISTING FOR GREAT FOX," ROB64 chimed. "HANGER… PARTIALLY SUBMERGED IN TERRAIN. LEFT ENGINE AT… 25% CAPACITY. RIGHT WING… DESTROYED. LEFT WING… DAMAGED. FRONTAL LASERS… DESTROYED. LOWER STORAGE UNITS… DAMAGED. BURN DAMAGE ON HULL… MODERATE. MAINTENANCE SUGGESTED."
"Geez," Falco sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Guess I can kiss part of my paycheck goodbye."
"Can't miss what you never had, Falco," Slippy teased but Fox saw a murderous light in the bird's eyes and decided to intervene by clearing his throat.
"This isn't quite what I'd hoped for, but it'll have to do," Fox sighed, "We'll take our Arwings from here."
"The Landmaster would be better suited for this, I'd think," Slippy rubbed his chin. "But I never got to install the back seats… So uh… It'd be a little cramped, I guess."
"Arwings. I can't stand that pile of crap," Falco scoffed.
"The hanger is partially submerged in the ground," Peppy pointed out. "We may have little to no space to take off…"
"Well, we've got to try something. We won't make it far on foot," Fox shrugged. "Don't forget to grab oxygen tanks and masks in case something happens." A gander to ROB64 and the vulpine said, "Stay here with Direct-i. See if you two can't patch up the engine." The smaller robot had sat in the corner, rebooting after Slippy had installed new software into him (they referred to ROB and Direct-i as males for reasons Fox did not even know). Thus far, Direct-i had remained silent… it was odd, but Fox did not necessarily mind it. Having two robots read off damage reports might have given him a bigger headache.
"AFFIRMATIVE," ROB64 chimed and set about his work.
The team made their way down to the hanger and Fox grimaced at the dents in the interior walls of the Great Fox. Cargo had spilled out of one of their storage units, its crates shattered into pieces about the lower corridors. Most of it was food, which was both and blessing and a curse, as they would be hard pressed for decent meals on their journey away from Venom. But on the more positive side of things, at least their bombs had not exploded upon impact.
Maybe I should talk to Slippy about storing our explosives away from our food… considered Fox for a moment as he slid down the ladder into the hanger. A glance at the Mark I Arwings and he saw they had sustained a few more scratches from being jostled about the hanger. Thankfully, latches had kept them in place and they had not been permitted to fly amuck the room, wrecking other Arwings in the process. The Mark IIs were in no better condition and Falco lamented at how the tip of his right wing had been knocked clean off. Slippy hastily promised he would fix it on the return flight and Fox clapped Falco on the back before proceeding to his Arwing.
He powered on his spacefighter, watching the main screen light up with a the Arwing's systems prep. It was a long and tedious process, but necessary particularly after their crash landing. Nothing internally had been damaged from what the systems check informed him. He sighed with relief, watching the computer go through each and every weapon, priming it for use. The fighter's engines whirred melodiously in tune with those that neighbored it. Fox donned his headset then took a quick glance at the hanger door. It had partially opened to reveal its halfway submersion—it would be a tight squeeze.
"I'll go first," Fox said after a quick mic test. "Don't try anything fancy, boys, let's just take a quick scope of our landscape."
"Roger that," Peppy replied, tone quiet and somber. Fox could not blame him.
"Ooookay!" Slippy said with the sort of zeal that made Fox smile.
"Pft. Whatever," Falco said and Fox was certain the bird was rolling his eyes at him.
His eyes trailed back to the computer screen on his dashboard. The deflector shields were enabled with a confirmative blue light and the final confirmation that all systems were readied played across the screen. Fox sent out a ready signal and when there were no protests, he pushed forward on the accelerator the moment he heard the Arwing become unlatched to the Great Fox's hanger. Wings tucked back, the fighter sleekly glided forward, out of the hatch and towards the semi-opened door. The vulpine gave it a little more of a push and the Arwing boosted through the gap, pulling back on the steering to guide it skyward.
The map display to his right showed one by one as his teammates followed him from the partially submerged Great Fox. A painful look over his shoulder made him realize just how damaged the mothership had become during their unconventional arrival on Venom. ROB64's analysis had been accurate—a portion of the Great Fox's hull was dented, scraped, and battered. The way Peppy had landed it caused the mothership to have a slight tilt favoring the left side, and one of its severed wings pointed to the fiery sky, a small pillar of smoke still billowing from it. Costs aside, Fox was beginning to wonder if ROB64 would be able to get the ship to even lift off.
We may have to send out a distress signal to General Pepper… but would they even be in range?
He shoved the thought into a corner of his mind, labeling it as something to worry about later.
"Peppy," Fox spoke into the mic, breaking the disquiet that had overtaken the team. Even Slippy's cheer could not shake the dreariness of Venom. "Do you recognize any of this from the last time you were here?"
"No," Peppy said. "Everything looks about the same, but no landmarks ring any bells."
"Would you be able to remember the coordinates where you guys were last time?"
"Hm… Probably not. It's been awhile."
Well that would have been too convenient, Fox mused bitterly. He piloted the Arwing upwards and put out a scan for any large technological readings. The Great Fox binged on his radar almost immediately and the computer maintained the scan for a few minutes as they zipped over the Venomian treeline. Strange structures jutted unnaturally from the planet's surface—like stone fingers yearning to seize the distant flaring rays of Lylat. The weeping trees shrouded some areas beneath them, but the scans picked up not even a remote sign of life.
This place is desolate.
A beep on his radar interrupted his grim sightseeing and the vulpine looked at where the signal was coming from. He steered the spacefighter towards the indicator on the map, pushing forward on the boost. The others wordlessly followed suit—Peppy to his left, Slippy to his right, and Falco to his rear.
"There's something up ahead," Fox commented on the radio. "Slippy, can you run an advanced scan?"
"Already working on it, Fox!" Slippy chimed back and went quiet for a few moments. His report came with as much enthusiasm as before. "I'm picking up a massive energy reading up ahead."
"What kind of energy?" Fox asked.
"The same as the portals!" Slippy confirmed. "But… holy moly, it's HUGE!"
"What's our distance from it?" Fox asked, zooming out on his map and letting the Arwing flip onto autopilot for a few moments.
"We're a ways off," Slippy confessed. "So uh… Hope no one has to use the bathroom!"
Peppy gave a disgruntled sigh at that, and Slippy could be heard laughing from his side of the radio. Fox shook his head, rubbing his forehead and opted to let the Arwing fly itself. His eyes wandered about the alien landscape, taking in the nearby green waters of a lake. A strange, long-bodied creature breached the surface, arching over the waters before disappearing into the murky depths below. Fox shuddered, pulling his starfighter up in altitude and spent the next few minutes wondering what other devilish creatures lurked on the inhospitable planet.
Time ticked by slowly, and Fox's mind aimlessly traversed his varied thoughts. From the sunglasses that would forever sit in his Arwing's cockpit, to Yaru DePon, to what they would find—he mused a million things until his forest green eyes misted over and he felt himself sinking away from the grip of reality. This was the place where his father had died. It was a strangely numb realization. He wondered if his father had seen the same blazing sky he was seeing. He wondered if his father had come this way at all. Fox had hoped there would have been something beautiful about this place, but there wasn't… and he felt his throat tighten with dismay and disgust. His father's true tomb was unfitting for a man of his prestige. The burning sunlight, the tainted air and water… even the ground was hideous, like swollen red acne upon the planet's surface.
Every bit of him loathed this place almost as much as he loathed Andross.
"We're approaching our destination!" Slippy alerted them and Fox jolted with surprise.
Flipping the Arwing into manual, he saw the silhouette appear on the horizon—a massive structure that brazenly flew an Androssian flag at its peak. A cyborg building of metal and stone, the building looked to be an old set of ruins that had been stabilized by modern machinery. Its original shape had been fashioned in a rectangular pyramid, but its peak had collapsed inward and now mechanized plates held it together. Obelisks lay broken into pieces, their carvings too intricate to make out from a distance. A crane was dormant next to the temple, a spotlight lazily hanging from a cord to illuminate the deserted base. Apelike statues stood silent sentinel over it, their arms constructed in ways that reminded Fox of church worshippers.
"Andross was a sick, sick man," Falco said with disgust upon their approach.
"These look awfully old," Slippy mentioned. "Older than just a little over a decade…"
"Agreed," Peppy said, "These temples are everywhere on the planet, Slip."
"Are they all like that?" Fox asked, gesturing to the semi-rebuilt structure looming before them.
"No… I can't say they are," Peppy replied, "The ones we saw were untouched by modern technology. This… this is different."
Upon their approach, Fox switched his Arwing into Walker mode and they neared the crumbling base. The protective walls had fallen, perhaps out of their own accord or from lack of stability. He hovered over its rubble, landing in the base's courtyard. A gander about the front revealed nothing of particular interest. There were strange markings upon the elder part of the base—designs that did not resemble modern Lylatian. The monkey statues looked down at him with discriminatory, yet lifeless rage, their hands tucked into lengthy robed that veiled most of their body.
"The energy source is coming from inside," Slippy said.
Fox looked from the statues to the metallic doors and blasted them open. As he entered the temple, he sent a single laser down the corridor, watching at how it illuminated. The walls were decorated with a myriad of things—more eerie ape statues and writings that made his fur prickle with unease. Regardless, he willed the Walker to lurch forward, and the others followed suit without any commentary. There was something fell about the temple—something that transcended even Andross's madness.
"Bringing up data on the monitor," Slippy announced and a screen depicting a map appeared on the Arwing's dashboard.
"The power source is above us," Fox said after a quick glance at the map.
He flipped a switch and two lights at the nose of his Walker flickered on. They moved down the hallway at a slowed pace, the images in the corridor looming in the stilled, abandoned facility as though they were frozen in time. The decaying rock hallways manifested into steel and stainless white walls after some time, and Fox was glad that the eerie statues had not been moved into the newer sectors of the building. When they made a loop about the first floor and found nothing of interest, Slippy had the idea to try the next floor.
Fox was in process of aiming his lasers towards the ceiling when his Arwing's map display chimed. Surprised, the vulpine looked down at the radar, an unidentified object moving from the westernmost wing and towards them.
"There's something coming," Falco sounded spooked, and Fox vaguely heard the bird scrambling about within his cockpit.
"That can't be good," Fox commented. "Evasive maneuvers!" He primed his finger on the twin laser trigger, his emerald eyes searching the darkness for whatever approached them. Distant sounds of footsteps—colossal and bulky—resounded in the shadows, and as the creature turned the corner, Fox could hear Slippy yelp with surprise.
It took massive, hunched over in the corridor, pausing to stare at them with lifeless stone eyes. Its build was ape-like, yet something was off about it. It was one of the statues come to life… but bigger, its arms flailing about with wordless belligerence. Carved into its body were designs not unlike those on the walls—precise markings that were worn by time and the elements. The statue's head swiveled and moved on an axis, its many, angry faces staring through them with permanent rage. A thundering beating of its own chest was quickly followed by it running down the corridor, and the team quickly gathered to one side to let it pass.
"Peppy, care to enlighten us?" Falco sputtered.
"Your guess is as good as mine, Falco," Peppy replied back with evident shock in his voice.
"Why is it running away?" Slippy asked.
"Follow it!" Fox insisted and boosted after the strange statue.
"This is such a bad idea," Falco said.
"I have a feeling it's not going to leave us alone even if we try to leave it alone," Fox remarked.
They rounded the corner with such swiftness that the Walker's wing nearly scraped the side of the base. Fox had expected the statue to turn and fight them upon realizing it was being pursued (if robots could even realize such a thing), but it did not. Instead, it kept moving, and with the lift of one of its gargantuan hands, the metal and stone of the interior tunnels began to peel away, forming dangerous spires that simply fell over in the tunnel.
"What the heck kind of thing is this?" Falco demanded. "It's not even fighting us!"
"It seems… scared?" Slippy suggested. "Can statues BE scared?"
"Seems like a waste of time to me. Let's just blast it and move on, Fox!" Falco suggested.
A waste of time… Falco might have hit the nail on the head with that…
"Arwing mode, let's go!" Fox said, shifting the Walker back into its normal spacefighter state. The statue turned then and blocked the corridor with its massive frame, shifting heads and its eyes burning with mechanical red eyes. Fox slammed the brakes and the others did the same.
"Ooookay, it's a robot. Definitely a robot," Falco commented.
The statue began to beat its chest with a stone hand before charging a laser from its mouth, fangs glistening unnaturally in the dim light. As the laser propelled forward, Fox dropped his Arwing low, shifting it back into its Walker mode. Pressing forward on the boost, he dodged to the left to avoid a second beam and the statue lunged forward. The Walker scraped against the wall as the robotic primate zoomed by. A few careful aims from Falco sent the stone flying from its exoskeleton.
"Yikes!" Slippy exclaimed as the robot reared its ugly mug at Peppy's Arwing, fangs clasping the very tip of his wing. The hare boosted and in the middle of his U-turn, shifted his plane into a Walker, sending a spray of laser fire at the Androssian machine.
Its arms began to pull the ceiling down around them, its stone body falling away with each and every hit. Its gurgles and screams were lifelike, to the point where Fox cringed as he sent a charged laser into its gaping maw. The robot emitted a shrill cry before sending a few blasts from its metallic face, destroying and collapsing the walls of the corridor.
"He's bringing the whole place down if we don't stop him!" Peppy warned as the robotic statue blasted a hole into the wall, exposing the toxic Venomian air.
"Let's use a bomb!" Falco began.
"Let's not crash this whole place on us!" Fox interjected. "Kill it… quickly!"
The vulpine could feel the very foundation of the place tremble as the mechanized statue fell under a merciless spray of lasers. When the lights of its eyes had faded, Fox released the tense breath that had been held in his lungs.
"Well. That was fun," Falco remarked. "Where do we go from here?"
"Up," Slippy said and Fox took a gander at the shattered ceiling. The robot had torn a substantial hole into the ceiling, and beyond it, he could see the ceiling of the next floor. The leader of the Star Fox team gave a shrug and hovered upward, his Walker easily able to clear the distance.
The second floor was illuminated by blue floor and ceiling lights, giving it an uncanny aura. Watery tubes lined the hallways—specimen that looked aquatic and fish-like drifted in the tubes, unconscious and likely deceased. Slippy squeaked with fright at a massive tank, its inhabitants seemingly missing from its murky depths. Larger fish were in the ones in the last few rooms, with labeled that were written in Lylatian. Their bodies were larger, fatter than the fish people he had seen before, their eyes half-lidded and glossed over without pupils. They did not appear to be breathing, but strange tubes were hooked and latched onto their backs, fluid still pumping into them. Fox grimaced, wondering what he should do about it, but decided that it would be best to leave the strange creatures inside—he did not want to disturb their slumber and risk endangering his teammates. An elevator greeted them at the end of the hallway. Fox happily blasted the elevator to pieces, using the shaft to hover onto the next floor.
There's so much to report back to General Pepper…
The third floor was polished far more than the others, its hallways white and glistening as though they had been cleaned that morning. The radar chimed and Fox's ears perked as they neared the central room of the third floor, its doors sliding open as if they had been expecting the team's arrival. A machine sat in the room's middle, massive with two spires creating a portal between them.
"Convenient…" Falco commented aloud.
"Agreed," Peppy sounded suspicious and Fox shared the sentiment.
"Where does it lead, I wonder?" Slippy asked.
"There's only one way to find out," Fox turned his Walker back into its Arwing mode and directed the fighter towards the wavering portal.
"Fox, are you sure about this?!" Slippy began, but it was too late.
We've come this far, we can't turn back now. No matter what… I need to find out what I saw.