❺ Questions ❺

With caution, Slippy stepped through the opened steel door into Lab 4, where Fox, Sabre, and Fara awaited him. Falco and Miyu walked beside him, wondering how Fox's discovery would impact their next decision. Stopping next to where Fox stood, he noticed the white-furred vixen seated on the floor in front of a deactivated machine that he recognized from a schematic stolen from Venomian authorities three years prior to the present date. A thin sheet of fabric covered her body to provide her with at least a semblance of decency, but shame and misery still riddled her persona. Although her sapphire-colored eyes were opened, she never looked up from the floor next to her.

"What's the plan, Fox?" asked Slippy. "Is there something you wanted me for?"

Fox crossed his arms and replied, "Yes. We're going to head back to the transport, but I don't want you to have to suffer through the weather again. It's going to be even colder than it was earlier, so I'm ordering you to stay here with Krystal while the rest of us get the transport. We'll fly it back out here to pick you up after we reach Silverhurst."

A ghost of a smile appeared on Slippy's face. "Sounds good to me. Thanks for keeping me out of the weather, by the way. I'm really sorry that I even bothered to come to begin with. Is there anything else you wanted me to do while I wait for you guys?"

Scratching the back of his head, Fox explained, "If you can, I'd like you to ask Miss Krystal here some questions."

"What kind of questions?"

The vulpine took a quick glance at the white fox and replied, "Well, it's kind of hard to explain, but she thinks she's my wife. She recognized me the instant I freed her, and to be honest, it's scaring me because I've never met her in my entire life."

Slippy brought his hand to his lips and stroked his face. "That's strange… You know, I wonder if she might have been part of an experiment. I recognize this machine here. If I remember, it was designed to keep test subjects suspended in a hallucinogenic fluid that would make them more susceptible to 'persuasion' from outside sources."

"Mind control," Fox muttered. "That's got to be it. It's obvious that you're the man for the job, so I'm leaving you with the task of finding out more about what's going on here. We'll leave you alone to do your thing in just a minute. I'd say that we'll be back in about eight hours."

Visibly nervous, Slippy raised his hand and asked, "Um…I'm not sure it's safe here. What if more guards show up?"

Before Fox could reply, Sabre, who had been leaning against the back wall, spoke up. "I'll stay here with you. I'd like to have a word with her as well."

"That solves that problem," said Fox, glancing at the rest of the team, who stood near the doorway. "Alright, we're out of here. Good luck, Slippy."

"Yeah, thanks. Try not to die on the way back," the amphibian suggested.

Fox shook his head and marshalled the rest of Star Fox out of the room, leaving only Slippy, Sabre, and Krystal in the lab. Once the rest of his team had left the room without any signs of returning, Slippy looked over his shoulder and asked, "Can you lock the door, Sabre?"

Sabre nodded and approached the door before pressing two buttons and sealing it from the inside. Spotting a small office chair nearby, he wheeled it into the back of the room and removed his outer clothes to make himself more comfortable. The temperature inside registered at around twenty degrees Celsius, making his heavy winter attire unnecessary. While he sat down in the chair, Slippy snatched up a clipboard and a blue ink pen from a nearby desk and stepped in front of Krystal.

"Hello, Slippy," the vixen whispered, still refusing to make eye contact with him.

Hearing her using his name made him uneasy, but he resolved to maintain his confident demeanor. Stepping in front of her, he explained, "Fox wants to know more about you, so I'm going to ask you some questions. Can you handle that?"

"I think so."

Taking a deep breath, Slippy tapped his pen on his chin and then asked, "Alright, first question: How do you know Fox?"

For the first time, the vixen glanced up at him, revealing the haunting depths of her blue eyes. "I've been married to him for over five years. He rescued me on Sauria when I was nineteen, and I've been in love with him ever since he made me a member of Star Fox."

Slippy's eyes widened in shock, but he restrained himself and maintained his composure. "Right. Of course."

"I'm not bluffing, Slippy," Krystal emphasized.

"In your mind, you're not," the frog replied. "Anyway, question two: Where are you from?"

At this question, Krystal cringed and tensed up as the memory of her homeworld's destruction returned to her mind. Looking like she was on the verge of breaking into tears, she answered, "I'm from Cerinia. It was a planet outside the Lylat System that was destroyed by Andross eight years ago. If you want me to tell you where it was, I can't. I'm sorry – I really wanted to find it, too."

Gripping his pen, Slippy began writing down Krystal's answers. "Cerinia? I've never heard of that planet. I guess I could ask Peppy if he's ever come across anything like that. Then again, I've studied the star map for all it's worth and unless this planet is outside the galaxy itself or on the very edge of it, she must be answering from a twisted memory."

"My memory is just fine," Krystal growled, causing Slippy to drop his pen on the ground.

"Wha…? How did you know what I was thinking? Are you…?"

"A telepath? Yes, I am," Krystal replied. "It's an ability all my people have."

After retrieving his pen, Slippy proceeded to write "Note: Has telepathic abilities" on his clipboard. The longer he looked at her, the more her presence bothered him. Her inexplicable knowledge of both him and Star Fox in general perturbed him to the point of visible agitation; but as his frustration grew, so did his ideas for additional questions. Smiling in a mildly devious manner, he glared at Krystal and asked, "Who was on your version of the Star Fox team?"

Krystal appeared to be perturbed by Slippy's mention of 'her version' of the team; but still, she replied, "It was me, Fox, you, and Falco. Peppy stayed with the team until after the Aparoid War, when he became the general of the Cornerian Defense Forces."

"The general? That's a step up," Slippy thought, scribbling down additional notes. "I'll have to mention this to him." Clipping his pen to his clipboard, he presented his fourth question. "Alright, I'm finished with the basics. Let's see how you handle the more technical questions." From Sabre's point of view in the back of the room, the frog seemed to radiate an air of excitement that he hadn't exhibited before. "First off, what's the model of the fighter we use in Star Fox?"

"Which model? The current one, or the one we used during the Aparoid invasion?" Krystal inquired.

"The current one. What's the model number for it?"

Krystal brought her hand to her muzzle and stroked it before she replied, "They're SFX Arwing II models, built by the Space Dynamics Corporation – at least, that's what they're based on."

"Not bad," Slippy mumbled, writing down her answer. "Now, what nickname did Falco give his?"

"He called it the Sky Claw," the vixen replied."

Slippy scratched down her answer with a look of delight on his face, as is he knew something about her answer that she did not. "Hmm…alright. Who are the current members of Star Wolf?"

"Wolf O'Donnell, Leon Powalski, and Panther Caroso."

"Interesting…she missed Algy," Slippy observed. With his preliminary questions completed, he turned away from Krystal and paused for a moment to think over his next group of questions. Then, he rotated on his heels and said, "I've known Fox since I was a kid, so we'll see how well you know your 'husband'. First question: What was Fox's father's name?"

"James," Krystal replied. "I'm certain about that."

"She used his middle name? That's interesting." After taking a momentary pause to write down Krystal's answer, he asked, "How did James die, then?"

Krystal frowned, not knowing much about the details of the day that impacted Fox the same way that the destruction of Cerinia affected her. "I don't know exactly what happened, but the simple answer is that Pigma turned on him and shot him down over Venom. Andross's men killed him after that."

"That's not right, either. This is starting to get interesting," thought Slippy. For a moment, he glanced at the ceiling before he conjured up another question, which he promptly presented to Krystal. "What was the one thing Fox was afraid of not being able to do before he died?"

Krystal replied, "I'm pretty sure it was having children. He was always afraid that something would happen to me or him before that."

"Nope. Close, but no cigar," Slippy shot back. "If you want to know the right answer, it was 'bang Fara Phoenix,' which he eventually managed to do.

Krystal frowned but said nothing in return. Although she felt that she was being taken advantage of by Slippy, she elected to play along with his game until he finished. "There has to be some kind of mistake here," she thought to herself. "I know I'm right, but it's like everything I'm saying is wrong to him for some reason. I just don't understand it!"

Before giving out the next question, Slippy chuckled and then asked, "So, for Fox, is it boxers or briefs?"

"Excuse me, but what kind of question is that?" Krystal barked, showing her teeth.

Slippy pointed his pen at her and replied, "It's a legitimate question. What's the answer?"

"If you must know, it's briefs," she growled under her breath.

"Wrong again."

Furious, Krystal stood up, nearly dropping her sheet and exposing herself. "What do you mean, 'wrong again?!' I've lived with him for years and know all about things like that!"

Taking a step back, Slippy pondered one final question – a question that he believed would determine Krystal's legitimacy – or lack of legitimacy – not only to himself, but to her as well. "Hmm…What's one thing that only Fox would know? If she really claims to know all about him, she should be able to answer this. It can't be an objective question, either. It has to be something that no one would ever have on record."

Tapping his pen on the fingers of his left hand, Slippy faced the unhappy vixen and asked her, "What were the last words that Fox's father said to him?"

In response to the question, Krystal bit her lip and turned to the side, avoiding eye contact with Slippy and lowering her head to her chest. "I don't know," she whimpered. "How could anyone know that? Do you know?"

Slippy nodded.

"What? How is this possible? Does that mean…that everything about me is a lie?"

Slippy took a step back, unsure of whether to confirm her fears or to make a flimsy attempt at consoling her. However, his logical side overpowered his emotions. With a frown indicating that he felt no pleasure in explaining Krystal's reality to her, he replied, "That's what it looks like. I'm sorry, but so many of your answers were wrong that there's no way what you've been saying is true."

In response, Krystal's eyes began to fill with tears. All in one moment, she felt meaningless, betrayed, and most of all, unloved. She knew everything there was to know about Slippy, but he knew nothing about her except for an educated assumption that she was the victim of a Venomian mental experiment. At the same time, she wondered about Fox. Her time spent with him had felt all too real for her relationship to have been a fraud all along. Even her own fur seemed to confirm that something was wrong with her perception of the past. While her pelt had previously been a deep blue color, in what Star Fox believed was the 'real world', it took on an icy shade of white that sickened her to look at. This was not because it made her unattractive, but because she knew that despite her own refusal to admit it, it was the color of fur that she had been born with in the world that she knew next to nothing about.

Recognizing that he had done enough damage, Slippy glanced over his shoulder at Sabre and backed away from Krystal while telling the orange vulpine, "If you want to talk to her, go ahead. I'm finished here."

Sabre nodded and rolled his chair forwards until only five feet separated the two of them. Krystal, still standing and holding her sheet in front of her otherwise naked body, looked into Sabre's eyes and recognized the burning anger and frustration that raged inside of him. She felt like she was supposed to recognize him, but nothing about him brought anything to her mind apart from his slight resemblance to Fox. However, Sabre's fur seemed slightly darker than Fox's, while his frame stood out as being slightly taller and noticeably more muscular than his counterpart's. Considering that Fox was in peak physical form, this was saying something.

With a dark, raspy voice, he asked Krystal, "Do you know who I am?"

Krystal shook her head, hoping that her answer would not provoke him to violence. "No," she whimpered. "I feel like I'm supposed to, but I don't know who you are."

Sabre clenched his right fist and gritted his teeth. For several seconds, he said nothing; but after the momentary pause, he rose from his seat and approached Krystal until only a foot separated them. The vixen felt her heartbeat increasing as the vulpine moved closer to her; and she nearly screamed when he grazed her arm with his finger and plucked one of her hairs. Krystal yelped in response to his action while he held the white hair between his thumb and index finger and studied it.

"Her fur must be naturally white, because there's not a trace of blue anywhere in this," he thought to himself. "What does this mean?"

Returning his attention to the nervous vixen in front of him, he asked her, "Do you remember your father and mother?"

Krystal brought her hand to her muzzle, attempting to dig into her memory banks to retrieve the answer. However, nothing related to her ancestors came to her mind – only the chaos from her final moments on Cerinia, preceded by a brief, blurry image of a white vixen standing over her.

With a look of desperation in her eyes, she pleaded, "I'm sorry! I really don't know! Please don't hurt me!"

"What would make you think that I'm going to hurt you?" Sabre rasped.

"Your anger – I can feel it in my mind. You're about to snap," the vixen explained.

Sabre's eyes widened. Although he had noted Slippy's analysis of her mild telepathic abilities, he failed to realize the scope of their power. Turning to the side, he mumbled, "You're right. I'm sorry…it's just that…"

"…You thought I might somehow be your stepsister, who you have an unnatural obsession with," Krystal interrupted.

Sabre could have caught fire by merit of his anger alone. It was all he could do to prevent himself from shoving the white vixen to the ground in rage. Balling up both his fists, he snapped, "Do you have a problem with that?"

"N…No," Krystal lied.

"Good," Sabre growled. "I've spent the last five years of my life looking for her, and instead of finding her, I find someone with her name who insists on smart-mouthing me. Why can't everyone just accept it? We're not related by blood, so it shouldn't matter what I think about her."

"Your sister was named Krystal, too?" the vixen asked, surprised at the information. "What did she look like?"

Still holding back his anger, Sabre replied, "She had the most luscious blue fur I've ever seen in my life, and her tail was so long and soft that she could wrap it around herself and use it as a pillow. She was the same height as you are, too. Not quite as thin, though."

Krystal gasped. In her mind, Sabre's description of his stepsister called to mind her former appearance, especially her plush tail and blue fur that could have rivaled a sapphire in terms of color depth. Despite her knowledge of the facts, she refused to comment on Sabre's sister's appearance. "Am I the person he's been looking for? Oh, I hope not. He terrifies me. It's like he keeps the anger of five people bottled up inside himself, just waiting for someone to make him angry so he can release it on them."

Unfortunately for Krystal, Sabre noticed her expression of emotion, which she could not hide. "What was that for? Is there something I need to know that you're not telling me?"

Krystal clenched her teeth and held onto her sheet even more tightly than before. "Will you promise not to get angry if I tell you?"

Taking notice of the terror exhibited by the white vixen's every move, Sabre relaxed his muscles and glanced at the ground before he looked into Krystal's eyes once again, this time with a considerably more placid disposition. "I really should have waited a few more minutes before I spoke with you," he admitted. "It's not you that I'm angry at – it's the bastards who put you in here. I'm not going to hurt you."

Still visibly nervous, Krystal nodded and explained, "I still don't know where I am or even who I am, but before Fox freed me, my fur was blue. Does that help anything?"

Sabre contorted his mouth and replied, "Yes, but I'm not sure what to do with that. You can't be my stepsister – I know her too well to mistake you for her, even though you don't look all that different apart from the white fur. I have a suspicion about something, but I need to test it before I go any farther." Turning around and locking eyes with Slippy as he sat behind a desk on the back side of the lab, he asked him, "You're the computer expert, right?"

"Well, yeah…" Slippy abashedly replied.

"Do you think you can get into the computer network in here? If you can find out anything about what the purpose of this room is, it would really help."

Slippy studied the computer monitor in front of him and the tower below the desk on the back wall, looking for any information related to its model number, operating system, and date of assembly. After a lengthy pause, he told Sabre, "This looks outdated. I think I might be able to get into this thing. Hang on."

Powering on the desktop, he waited for nearly a minute before the old machine booted up, revealing a silver-backed screen requesting a password. Upon noticing the obstruction, he proceeded to reach into his heavy coat's front pocket. Pulling out a small, thin, red-colored chip, he held it up to the light in the room before he inserted it into an appropriate slot on the front of the computer tower. In response to the presence of Slippy's device, the computer monitor went berserk, flashing warning signs and plunging into a sea of static for a brief moment before the screen returned to normal, this time complete with the system's administrative password.

Slippy turned towards Sabre and grinned as he pressed the enter key, prompting the computer to display the desktop background – the Andross monkey head emblem set over a sheet-metal-themed Sabre scrutinized the screen from across the room, Slippy opened the 'documents' pane and leafed through its various folders, stopping when his cursor came to rest over a manila-colored icon with 'Lab 4' written under it. Upon double-clicking it, the folder opened up into a vast expanse of documents, most with unintelligible alphanumerics passing as titles. However, numerous images appeared in the massive folder.

"Sabre, check this out," said Slippy. "I think I found something."

Perking up his ears out of curiosity, Sabre left Krystal to herself and walked across the lab floor until he stood next to Slippy. As he fixed his eyes on the screen, the amphibian pulled up a grainy, low-resolution photograph of a partially clothed blue vixen being placed into a machine identical to the one Fox had deactivated. Noticing Sabre's fingers twitching on the edge of the desk, Slippy asked him, "Is this the person you were looking for?"

Undoubtedly looking at a picture of his stepsister, he slammed his fist on the desk and growled under his breath, "I knew it. She was here after all. Those maggots must have flown off with her before I could find a way in here. I wonder what that means about the girl in here, then."

From across the room, the white vixen angrily insisted, "I have a name, you know!"

Shaking his head, Sabre muttered, "Telepathy is a bitch. Anyway, I have a theory about what happened here; but I'd like to hear what you think first to see if I'm thinking straight."

"Alright," Slippy replied, "First, the machine Fox freed Krystal from was designed for psychological experiments using heavy sedatives and hallucinogens. I know this because I've seen schematics for these devices before. If you're right and she isn't your stepsister with an altered appearance, I would have to say that she's probably the result of a mental experiment involving your stepsister. Her name was Krystal too, right?"

Sabre grimly nodded his head.

"In that case, it's likely that the scientists tried to transfer the contents of your stepsister's mind to 'Krystal's' mind. I don't know why they would do that, though. It wouldn't do anything other than to prove that they could. This project must have cost several million credits, so there had to have been a reason for this. I guess there's not really much more we can do about it, though. Most of these other documents don't have any important information in them. Looks like the Venomians must have moved or deleted those files before we arrived. Either that, or they were never stored on this computer."

"If they deleted the files, isn't it possible that they knew we were coming?"

"No, it's just…wait a minute." Slippy's eyes widened, and he found himself staring blankly at the wall in front of him as the possibility of what Sabre was suggesting occurred to him. "It would have taken too long for them to delete or transfer all these files after we got into the base. They never would have been able to escape if they had done that, especially if they had to deal with the processing speed of this glacier. But how would they know we were coming? This was a secret operation! No one was supposed to know about this!"

"Well, it looks like somebody did, unless this is all just an unlucky coincidence," Sabre growled. "That is a possibility. Still, why would they delete the important files to such an expensive experiment if this wasn't planned out beforehand? Or maybe they decided to move the information somewhere more secure."

Slippy scratched his face and replied, "I don't think this computer was supposed to be on. Everything else in here is completely shut off – even the wires coming from the backs of those data centers over there look like they've been deliberately sabotaged. That's not normal…"

As Slippy trailed off, Sabre's fingers twitched, accompanied by his ears erecting themselves. "This reeks of a set-up. I…wait a minute!"

Noticing an active security camera above the door, Sabre whipped his handgun out of its holster and fired three shots at it. Two of the rounds found their target, shattering the camera's lens and otherwise destroying the mechanism that housed it. Placing his weapon back into its spot on his belt, he muttered, "I thought I saw that thing move earlier. Dammit – I hope no one in the control center was monitoring that."

"I'm starting to think that it's not safe in here anymore," Slippy nervously opined.

"Same here. How much longer until the rest of the team gets back?"

Letting out a tense, deep breath, Slippy replied, "At least seven more hours; six at the earliest."

Sabre bared his teeth. "Well then, we'll just have to wait it out. Keep your guard up. From what your teammates told me, you're not known for being good at that."

"Don't you start doing that too," Slippy retorted, clenching his lips in frustration. "Maybe you should see if you can get any more information out of Krystal."

Shaking his head, the vulpine whispered, "I'm going to need another name to call her by, because there's no way I'm calling her Krystal." For a moment, he glanced at the ceiling and muttered under his breath, "Krystal, if you're still alive, I promise that I will rescue you. Please, don't give up."

AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):

If Krystal's incorrect answer about Fox's father being named James threw you off, that is because Fox and Fara's universe is rooted in the original SNES canon, not the post-64 retconned canon. By extension, that would also mean that instead of being betrayed by Pigma, Fox McCloud Sr. flew through Andross's black hole to his assumed death. I know there's more to it than that and that it includes something about the appearance of some kind of space whale, but just try to ignore that for now. After all, it's an AU story. Or is it?

In response to Northernmegas:

The manipulation of Krystal's conscience in The Oasis was also something that bothered me. While I'm pleased with the overall story and the overwhelming amount of fanfare it received, I feel like it could have been much, much better. On another note, I think this chapter answered most - if not all - of the questions you raised in your review. While 'Krystal' is the victim here and should indeed be pitied, she isn't exactly doing herself any favors by claiming to be Fox's wife. Fara is jealous for her husband, so there's no way that can end well.