AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is not a mirage. I swear. After a long hiatus, I have gotten over my writers block and am finally back to finishing this story! And it's finish or bust this time, I'm keeping myself to a pretty good production schedule that will hopefully keep the updates pretty regular. As we speak, the next chapter is nearing completion, so this isn't just a fluke. I hope I still have the attention of the readers that have been reading so far and anticipating this new chapter, and maybe by now I've got a few new readers as well. Regardless, I'm happy to present this newest chapter, the beginning of the second act of our story if you will, where things start to get a bit more complicated between Fox and his friends, as well as all of the people in the story he's connected to.

The song featured in this chapter is Florence and the Machine's "The Girl With One Eye", modified a bit as "The Boy With One Eye" by Morgan DeVayne.

And with that, promising you'll get the next update soon, please enjoy and review!


-The Goodbye Kiss-

The StarFox Team bolted down the short hallway of B Deck, their fatigue abated by the urgency of the current situation. As Peppy led them towards the main double doors of the Great Fox's bridge, Fox adjusted himself inside his white pilot's jacket and tried to smooth down the disheveled, sweat-drenched fur on his head, ignoring the narrowed glances from Falco's avian eyes as he walked close behind.

Sweeping under a bright glowpanel in the cool, white hallway, Slippy looked over to Peppy and inquired softly, "Why didn't ROB alert us that Krystal was taking the Pleiades without clearance? We didn't get a warning or anything; he had to know…"

"Had ta' know? What about help? She'd hafta be a hell of a pilot ta' back that thing safely outta tha' landing bay without guidance," Falco muttered, popping a yellow caffeine tablet into his mouth and gulping it down as their boots tapped against the polished metal floor.

"Who said she did it safely?" Peppy grumbled, adjusting his glasses, "I'll bet we've got a fair share of dents in the deck and walls to pound out."

"Not me," Falco declined promptly.

"We'll get some maintenance droids on it; we've still got a few that work," Peppy dismissed, coming up to the bridge doors, "But I'm with you on the whole ROB thing, Slippy; hasn't he been a bit twitchy since O'Donnell knocked him around on Temple?"

The bridge doors slid apart with a sterile hiss and they entered the ovaloid room, a mass of beeping computer equipment and holographic readouts. Lining the bulkheads were four different computer stations for damage control, engineering, flight operations and radar, each with their own chairs and computer screens for relaying information. When the entire StarFox Team was on the bridge, Slippy was commonly manning both the damage control and engineering consoles, where Falco would occasionally take care of the radar consoles. From these stations, the bridge sank down into a lower pit area, accessible by a central set of three steps, and at the center of the pit was the leather captain's chair with the attached computer display that Fox usually sat at. In front of the captain's chair was a large space in the floor where holoprojectors in the ceiling usually displayed navigational readouts or transmissions from other ships, while further up ahead was the forward curving rail and the side-by-side paired seats for the forward control consoles. The left console took care of communication while the right console was dedicated to helm control and warp navigation, as well as being the USC socket from which ROB could control the whole bridge, and thus the entire Great Fox. Up ahead of this was the enormous, v-shaped panoramic viewport of the Great Fox, offering a vision into the blackness of space that spanned around half of the bridge.

As they walked across the tough metal floor, Fox couldn't help but notice the way that the rest of the team was just subtly ignoring him, as if trying to keep out of their minds how he could have let Krystal grab both the disc and the Pleiades without him knowing. They hadn't asked him how it happened, but Fox could see that at least Peppy and definitely Falco were considering the plausible scenarios that might have occurred. He grunted and tried to hide his embarrassment, looking at the floor and exhaling hard.

"Either way, we're going to have a word with that droi…oh," Peppy trailed off flatly, his grey ears drooping as his eyes fell upon ROB hunched over his station at the forward control console, his metal face buried into a keyboard.

The android's head was facing them with his large bottom jaw hanging slack and the strip of his singular photoreceptor dark and inactive. It was clear that the droid had been deactivated through the external power switch at the rear base of his neck.

They all stared at ROB for a moment, flabbergasted and beginning to grasp for the first time just how thoroughly Krystal had played them. Then the arrowhead-shaped form of the Pleiades glided into view through the bridge viewport, the glow of the five engines already distant and near indistinguishable from the twinkle of the far-off stars, prompting them all into action.

"I've got ROB," Peppy growled, taking charge and marching forward past the command chair, leaning over the android's shoulders and looking back towards them, "Slippy, get on engineering and make sure the sublight engines weren't deactivated, too. Bring us up to full speed; we'll have to manually operate the ship for a bit while ROB gets situated. Falco, I assume you still know how to work the radar station?"

"Yep," Falco nodded, slipping out of his tattered red leather jacket and draping it over the radar station chair, reduced to the black pants and white tee shirt that he'd worn to Club Glamorama as he plopped down and began typing on the keyboard.

"Good, get a fix on the Pleiades' position. I'll home in on the tracking beacon and route the signal to your station, that should make it easier," Peppy nodded, digging his furry grey fingers into ROB's neck socket and searching for the power switch. As Slippy took his position at the engineering console, Fox meekly stepped forward and slid into the command chair, watching the glow of the Pleiades' engines as it blasted away from them.

Why?

Why had Krystal done this?

After what had happened between them, the seeming reconciliation in his quarters, followed by the torrid, intense tryst, it made no sense for her to just take everything and run without a word. It seemed to contradict everything she'd said to him, everything Fox thought he'd known about Krystal as a person. Had she been lying the whole time?

Fox closed his eyes painfully and scratched the back of his head, leaning back with a weary grimace in his chair.

Peppy's fingers finally found the power switch on ROB's neck and flicked it on, quickly withdrawing his hand as the droid's cycloptic photoreceptor glowed crimson with life. The android sat up from the keyboard, its bottom jaw flexing up and down as it automatically tested its servomotors with a slight whine.

"Novell Ultra-Systems Robotic Operator, unit B-64 online. Systems nominal. What are my orders?" ROB-64 chirped, glancing up at Peppy as its hands actuated with hydraulic squeaks.

"ROB, I need you to plug into the USC socket and take control of the ship again; the Pleiades has been stolen," Peppy instructed, sliding into the chair at the left forward control console, his fingers flying over the keys as he tried to establish contact with the fleeing shuttle, "Slippy, how are we coming with the engines?"

"They weren't shut down or anything, we're building up to full speed on the sublights," Slippy called back.

"I got a fix on her; fifty-six kilometers an' closin'," Falco added, scanning the radar displays in front of him.

"USC coupling secure, Great Fox interface complete. Recommend activating anti-theft slave circuit system on the Pleiades, then maneuvering ship to retrieve with rear tractor beam," ROB instructed as the ship rumbled just slightly with the increase in power from the engines.

Peppy nodded as the rear of the Pleiades began to draw closer, the blue glow of the five engine nozzles becoming clearer as the Great Fox pursued. A moment passed and Peppy's head leaned closer to the display screen, his ears twitching as his gaze flew from readout to readout quickly.

"I'm not getting a response from the slave circuit system," Peppy insisted, shaking his head before looking back up at the fleeing ship from the panoramic viewport, "I'm only getting a response from the tracking beacon."

"She must've found the slave circuit and deactivated it," Slippy mused quietly, his mouth wrinkling into a frown.

"We've probably got a pretty clear bearin' on her from tha' main batteries," Falco suggested, swiveling around to the viewport from his station.

"We are not shooting at her," Fox finally growled, looking back over his chair at Falco.

"Hey, just a thought," Falco shrugged, looking over Fox's disheveled face critically, "But you're right. Wouldn't wanna damage tha' ship. An' without tha' disc, we wouldn't find tha' Xerxes."

"Okay, how about trying to slow her down with the forward tractor beam?" Peppy suggested.

"Forward tractor beam was on the old Great Fox, Peppy," Slippy corrected, "We went with the wing-mounted missile batteries instead on this one. We've only got the rear tractor beam to assist with landings; a forward one for ship capture's on our list of things to install when we get the money."

Peppy scoffed and rolled his eyes, instantly thinking to himself that he definitely didn't have to deal with problems like this in the military. He swung back into position in his chair, looking up as the rear of the Pleiades drew closer to them. By now they could just make out some of the rear details surrounding the five engines, coming within fifteen kilometers of the vessel. Though the Pleiades was much more maneuverable and had far less mass, its engines were considerably less powerful than the mighty sublight engines of the Great Fox, which could propel the massive ship to even greater sublight speeds, allowing it to catch up quickly despite the shuttle's considerable head start.

The leporid stroked the thick grey fur over his muzzle, narrowing his eyes at the escaping ship, analyzing it as an adversary, an obstacle, putting aside whatever confusion he had about why Krystal was taking it. Those questions could be answered later, and Peppy could see Fox's inability to put those questions aside and deal with the matter at hand. Regardless of Fox's emotional issues when it came to Krystal, Peppy saw the need to take charge when the StarFox Team's leader was compromised.

"Currently leaving local space-traffic zone around Corneria," ROB informed them.

"Okay," Peppy sighed, swiveling around in his chair and staring at Fox, Falco and Slippy, "We're going to try to establish communications with the shuttle, maybe see if I can talk Krystal into surrendering. If I can't, I want Falco and Slippy to get into an Arwing and try to intercept her. We're going to fire warning shots, and if she still doesn't respond we'll have to shoot out the engines. Then Great Fox will maneuver so that we can use the rear tractor beam to bring her into the landing bay."

Fox noticed with a swallow that Peppy had given no instructions to him, let alone waited for his input. He knew not to object; Peppy clearly knew what he was doing where Fox was still trying to wrap his head around what was going on with Krystal. He had to put that aside. There was no time to worry about how this would affect his personal life. This was a concern of the mission now; he needed to be the leader he was supposed to be.

"We're going to disable our own ship?" Slippy demanded, frowning.

"There's no other choice," Peppy answered, shaking his head, "It's either that or let her get away with the disc."

At that moment, the five engines of the Pleiades flared brightly and the shuttle flashed forward into the blackness of space, disappearing into the stars in a blink.

"Ho! She went ta' warp!" Falco called, and Peppy spun in his chair as Fox grimaced and leaned backwards.

"We're still receiving the signal from the ship's tracking beacon," Peppy muttered, scanning his display readouts.

"She's traveling faster than light, we won't be able to track her exact position in real-time, just where she was a few moments ago," Slippy informed, "As she gets farther away, that lag time's going to increase."
"There's only one place she would be going," Fox said quietly, eyeing a bright yellow star through the viewport that seemed bigger than most of the ones surrounding it, "Fortuna."

"Yeah," Peppy agreed, "According to the CSB, she's the one that set up the meeting with the Venomian Remnant; now that she has the disc, she doesn't need us to meet up with them."

"Doesn't she need to give them the pardon from the prime minister?" Slippy inquired, scratching his neck.

"Ya' think that's gonna stop her?" Falco retorted, leaning forward in his chair, "This whole damn thing smells like a setup."

"Alright, let's save the theories for later," Fox sighed laboriously, trying to put Krystal out of his mind, "ROB, does that look like where she's going?"

"Given the current vector plot the Pleiades is following, the course would put it in the vicinity of the inner Triton sub-system," ROB concurred as the holoprojectors in the ceiling came to life, painting a three-dimensional star chart of the Lylat System in the air in front of the captain's chair, showing a dotted line tracing itself from Corneria, through the hundreds of millions of kilometers of empty space towards the star Triton and the three orbiting planets of Fortuna, Zoness and Aquas.

"How long would it take her to get there?" Fox inquired, his green eyes scanning the chart.

"At the maximum warp factor the shuttle is capable of, it could reach Fortuna in approximately thirty four hours. This is opposed to the maximum warp factor for the Great Fox, which could reach the planet in approximately twenty eight hours," ROB answered, looking back at Fox with his cold scarlet photoreceptor.

"Okay, so we head to Fortuna and get there before her. We cut her off and follow Peppy's plan, then we… figure out what to do with her and how to make the meeting with the Remnant. Alright?" Fox proposed, trying to regain his composure and establish some sort of authority as the star chart disappeared.

"Sounds good to me," Peppy nodded, turning around in his chair.

Fox tried not to think about Krystal, about the river of almost contradictory emotions running through him or any one of the hundred questions he had. Instead, he tried to think about the mission. He was good at that.

"ROB, plot a course for Fortuna, maximum warp," Fox instructed.

"Affirmative, stand by," ROB answered, his fingers flying over the keyboard of the warp navicomputer controls.

"Warp core spinning up, engines primed for jump to light speed," Slippy called, his bulbous eyes locked onto the screen of the engineering station.

"Secure course to Fortuna plotted, Fox," ROB informed him, "Filing and sending off warp jump record to Commonwealth Commerce Ministry just before we jump. Jump record sent. Ship reports ready to jump."

"Punch it," Fox ordered.

"Affirmative, sir," ROB nodded, pressing a metallic finger into the large green button on the warp navigation control console.

Fox dug his fingers into the armrests of his chair, prepping himself for the slight feeling of discomfort associated with making a warp jump. As the dull humming of the warp drive coming to life echoed throughout the ship, Fox recalled that calculating, measured look in Krystal's cyan eyes, always lurking behind the innocence and intense passion she'd shown him. He closed his eyes and he could almost see Krystal's, leering at him through the blackness, manipulating him with her wiles. A drained feeling of defeat spread through him, a poison in his veins, spreading from his shoulders down his back, eventually reaching his toes.

She'd played him like some pathetic violin, the whole time, hadn't she?

He didn't know whether to feel devastated or furious. He was too confused to feel anything too distinct, let alone think clearly.

In the midst of his thoughts, Fox realized that the process of the ship jumping to warp was taking uncharacteristically long. He opened his eyes to see the field of stars outside the Great Fox viewport unmoving and unaltered in their appearance. Peppy, Slippy and Falco were all looking up awkwardly at the ceiling, glancing around in equal puzzlement as the humming sound of the warp engines continued to build. The hum grew louder, then faded into an eerie moaning, creaking sound, before a tired mechanical whine spread throughout the Great Fox that died down into silence.

"…That's not supposed to happen," Peppy mused slowly, his leporid brow furrowing anxiously as his nose wiggled up and down.

"Warp drive failure," ROB alerted them, "Auto-diagnostic non-specific."

"Slippy, what's up with the warp engines?" Fox demanded, looking back to the plump amphibian at the engineering station.

Slippy's mouth was open, his bottom jaw quivering aghast as his hand rested behind his large head.

"I—I—I don't know…I did a full manual diagnostic on the engines, just like I do before every assignment…they're fine…" Slippy answered weakly, looking down as his eyes ran wildly from side to side, struggling to think of an answer.

Falco was the first to realize the obvious.

"Awwww, she sabotaged tha' fuckin' warp drive?" the avian moaned incredulously, throwing himself back into his seat.

"Shit!" Slippy cursed, leaping out of his chair and bolting towards the doors of the bridge, making a beeline for the turbolift.

Fox exhaled wearily, lying back into his chair and looking up at the ceiling, rolling his eyes into the back of his head. Near the bottom of his vision, Fox could see Peppy disappointedly pluck the glasses off his face and rest an elbow on the communications console in front of him, shifting the cream-on-gray markings of his fur as he massaged the bridge of his nose with chagrin. He could hear Falco behind him heaving out of his chair; the avian's black sneakers pounding lightly on the metal floor as he paced back and forth along the outer edges of the bridge. ROB was the only one of them that seemed unaffected, working clinically at his station and retracting the warp jump report to the Commonwealth Commerce Ministry.

A moment passed and Fox sat back up in his chair, a frigid tingle up his spine telling him that he was being watched. From his seat in front of him, Peppy was looking askance at Fox with his soft brown eyes, fingers still kneading the bridge of his nose, his mouth slightly open with an unspoken question on his lips. Fox met Peppy's gaze and his jaw tightened, knowing full well what the question had to be but unaware of how to answer it. He was willing to admit in the back of his mind that he might've been too ashamed to say anything.

Fox could feel the sharp, icy blue eyes of Falco burning into his back as the avian broke the silence.

"Okay, let's hear it: What happened when you an' Krystal got off tha' lift for that one-on-one chat you were talkin' about? How'd we get from that point ta' where we are, 'cause I'm a little fuckin' stunned that we got duped like we did just now. Do me a favor an' explain it ta' me, Fox," Falco interrogated loudly, making his way back and forth along the edge of the bridge like a caged animal.

"There's no point in being abrasive, Falco, what happened happened, just let Fox explain," Peppy chided, placing his glasses back on his nose and turning to face Fox's chair.

Fox could feel both of them looking to him for an answer: Falco fierce and demanding, Peppy composed and curious, both expecting some sort of explanation. He knew it wasn't going to be one that they liked.

Fox took a moment to choose his words carefully, trying to figure the best way to package the ugly truth, licking his vulpine lips before starting slowly, "…It's…complicated-"

"Bullshit!" Falco snapped, cutting him off, "I been hearin' that word too many fuckin' times today an' I'm tired of it! Just lay it out straight, Fox!"

"I just wanted to show her the bracelet!" Fox barked back, looking away from Falco and lowering his voice, "The one I found on her birthday after she left. I just wanted to show it to her and talk about how sorry I was. What I'd been through and everything. Before I knew what she was doing she…kissed me and I just…"

Fox stopped talking, gritting his teeth. How could he have been so blind?

Falco scoffed and rolled his eyes in indignation.

"Ya' fucked her, didn't you?" Falco charged with disgust.

"I just…" Fox replied breathlessly, unable to deny or even finish, feeling the dark toxin of humiliation slide through his body once again as he hung his head.

"Oh, Fox…" Peppy cringed, looking sideways.

"She said she wasn't angry… that she missed me," Fox protested quietly, his own words sounding weak and hollow.

"I don't believe you!" Falco barked, "Krystal comes back afta' more than a year as some meat-eating super-assassin an' you think it's a great idea ta' hop inta' bed with her? It didn't strike ya' as really fuckin' odd that she'd even want ta' fuck ya' afta' what happened? Or are ya' gonna tell me ya' just ignored that ta' get your rocks off?"

"Falco!" Peppy admonished harshly.

"It didn't happen like that!" Fox defended, looking back and meeting Falco's glaring raptor's eyes, "It's not like I initiated it!"

"Oh, so you're tellin' me she came onta' you! An' that makes it betta'? You fell for the oldest, an' I mean before-time-stone-age oldest trick there is!" Falco rebutted, his voice ringing around the bridge.

"I know I made a mistake, everyone does and I'm sorry!" Fox snapped back, "I know it was stupid, but it's not like you're in any position to make judgments!"

Falco's face fell for a moment, his eyes widening slightly as he took a step forward.

"Whaddaya talkin' about? What about me?" Falco demanded agitatedly.

"Fox, this really isn't the time…" Peppy scowled.

"Nah-uh, old man, let him say it!" Falco burst out, "How am I fuckin' up lately? C'mon Foxie, lemme hear it. I'm sure it's gonna make you feel better."

Fox knew it was immature, he knew it was childish and only going to make things worse, but he didn't care. He was angry, at Krystal, at Falco, most of all at himself, and all he wanted to do was lash out and stop feeling ashamed for just a few seconds.

"Maybe you might notice it if you didn't have a drink in your hands every time you had a free moment," Fox hissed.

Falco's beak opened slightly, his eyes darkening as his face wrinkled.

"That's tha' best ya' got?" Falco scoffed, "I have a few drinks off duty an' suddenly it's a fuckin' issue?"

"You're drinking every time you're off duty! Everyone sees it! Your room's stock full of alcohol, and we all know you've had a problem with it in the past! Couple that with the outrageous, even embarrassing way you act in public and it's hard not to see a connection," Fox shot back, leaning out of the captain's chair.

"What I do ta' myself is my own goddamned business!" Falco roared, his blue eyes swelling with rage, "I'm thirty years old an' ya' ain't my fuckin' father! An' even if ya' were, it's not a problem an' it nevah was!"

"You're in denial if you think it's not a problem! You think we don't know?" Fox snapped, throwing himself out of his chair, staring Falco down, "You think Katt didn't tell us about all the times you nearly drank yourself to death when you were with the Hot Rodders? You think she didn't tell us how you started drinking again after the war and that it's why she left you?"

Falco stiffened and his bottom jaw twitched, the whites of his eyes almost glowing as his pupils shrunk. The plumage on the back of his head ruffled and he tightened his hands into feathered fists and for a moment Fox thought Falco was going to hit him.

"Fuck you and tha' fuckin' elk you rode in on, Academy boy!" Falco hollered, his voice piercing Fox's eardrum so loudly it almost stung, then he whipped around and stomped towards the bridge's automatic doors. They slid apart with a hiss and the avian stormed through, still spitting and cursing loudly at Fox.

"I ain't tha' one that just got conned by some nympho-bitch on a payback-trip," Falco snarled as the bridge doors closed behind him.

Fox breathed out, grimacing at his own actions, and then he turned back to Peppy with a ragged look on his face. There was a disapproving wrinkle in the rabbit's forehead and tiredness visible in the brown eyes under his glasses. After a moment of stillness Peppy hunched over and heaved a sigh, his long ears drooping down as he slowly, discontentedly shook his head.

"Even if now were the right time to talk to Falco about the drinking—which it isn't—that was not the right way to go about it, Fox," Peppy said with his jaw clenched in frustration, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

The old leporid pursed his lips shut and gave him a rigid, disapproving stare from his seat, and it was suddenly like they were both fifteen years younger, with Fox a novice Flight Academy dropout under Peppy's stern tutelage. It felt like Fox had made so many mistakes back to back, with Krystal and Falco, he might as well be the same barely-trained rookie that he'd been back then.

Fox breathed outward and swallowed, meeting Peppy's criticizing gaze.

"I really screwed up, didn't I?" Fox inquired hoarsely, the bridge now feeling uncomfortably quiet.

"Yeah, you did. With Falco and with Krystal," Peppy answered bluntly, his words sinking Fox lower than before, "Move on and stop beating yourself up about it."

"Easy to say with Falco," Fox muttered, looking off to the side.

"I'm talking about her, too," Peppy instructed with an authoritative point of his finger, leaning forward, "Did you really expect her to come back and not be angry? That you could just pick up where the two of you left off, after almost two years without seeing hide nor hair of each other?"

Fox sighed and shook his head in refusal, once again berating himself for his gullibility. He'd let his emotions and sentimentality get in the way. Or maybe he'd let his best wishes get in the way, or he'd moved too fast, or…Fox didn't know. He couldn't make sense of it. He still felt guilty for what he must've put Krystal through, but at the same time hadn't he suffered too? Hadn't he been through his own hell, filled with loneliness and regret, only to be capped by that traumatizing encounter with Wolf? After all that, did he deserve what Krystal was now putting him through? He couldn't decide. On one side was the frigid guilt of knowing he'd cast Krystal out and put her through God-knows what, pushing away his friends to the point that he'd almost died on Temple. On the other was the simmering hurt and anger at what she'd done to him, how she'd led him along with her soft words and alluring glances only to steal from him, sabotage his ship and leave without a word. Rather than cancel each other out, there was a storm of opposites whirling within Fox, confusing and dominating his senses until he couldn't think straight.

"Then think of it this way: You've got some stuff to work out with her, just like you originally thought you would. It might be worse than you thought it would be, but hey, you'll have a chance to work that out," Peppy instructed, shrugging.

"Worse than I thought?" Fox demanded, "She stole our shit and sabotaged the warp drive."

"You know, Fox, that's the one thing I realize you never really got. Even though Vivian took care of you when your father and I were on assignment and you grew up with Luce, you never really got to see how females work. I mean, from what I hear about your Academy days, you could get in their pants fine enough, but you never really saw them at their worst. Krystal was your first girlfriend, right?" Peppy inquired.

"I had a few girlfriends in school. There was Fara back at the Academy, but it wasn't serious. Bill said she tried to sleep with him after I dropped out," Fox offered, scratching behind his ear as his bushy tail twitched slowly to the right.

Peppy waved a hand dismissively, "So yeah, Krystal was your first. And you were her knight in shining armor. She worshipped you. You guys didn't really fight that much did you?"

"No," Fox answered slowly.

"Welcome to girl-world, Fox. You ever hear that proverb, "Hell hath no fury like a female scorned"? It's true," Peppy answered flatly, "One time, Vivian and I had this fight over…I can't remember what, I think she thought I was cheating on her or something; James had me tail this suspect we were tracking in Corneria City for a few nights and I couldn't tell her where I was going. I came back and she'd taken all of the doors off the hinges, cut a hole in every undergarment I had, and charged over a thousand Liat on my credit chip. She took Lucy and went to stay with her mother, and left me a note with the words 'No secrets' on it. She wouldn't come back until I'd cleaned the house up and apologized."

"I think this is a little different," Fox said dryly.

"Be that as it may, consider it," Peppy insisted, "She's acting out…in her own way, I guess. Remember, she didn't come from a place at all like the Lylat System. Maybe this is just the only way she knows how. Regardless, it means that she still feels something for you. Or else she wouldn't have used up the energy to do all this in the first place."

Fox blinked and nodded, trying to take Peppy's words to heart. Whether or not Krystal was acting out, whether or not she still felt something for him, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. He was still angry. He was still confused.

"So what do I do now?" Fox inquired.

Peppy leaned back in his chair, swallowing slightly.

"Your job," the leporid shrugged, "Help Slippy if you can in the engine room, update Frost on our progress and talk to him about what happened earlier tonight, come up with a plan of what we're going to do when we get to Fortuna. If we get to Fortuna. Maybe even get some sleep. Figure something out. You know what to do. No matter what, don't let what Krystal's done shut you down. That's not going to solve anything. Just focus on your job for now, then take care of this thing with Krystal when you actually can."

Fox nodded, smoothing down his still-disheveled fur.

"What about Falco?" Fox inquired.

Peppy made a face, his eyebrows rising for a moment as he looked off to the side.

"Let Falco be for now. You know how he is. Give him some time to cool off, maybe wait until we're finally at warp and he's slept it off a bit. Come up with some stuff for him to do and give him his orders, but don't make it sound like you're ordering him. Take whatever heat he gives you and find a time later on to deal with the whole alcohol thing. That's what I'd do," Peppy suggested with a slow bob of his head.

"Okay," Fox said quietly, trying to smile as if everything was alright.

"And Fox," Peppy added, giving a soft, crooked grin, "The best thing I can suggest is that you just leave this whole Krystal thing on the back burner. Really. There's not a whole lot you can do about it now, so don't let it get in the way of doing your job."

"I'll do that," Fox answered, clearing his throat and leaving the bridge, making his way through the hissing automatic doors.

He walked down the quiet white hallway, still finding it a challenge to put Krystal and all of the questions out of his mind as he passed the doorways to the war room and then the B Deck head, making his way to the turbolift and pressing the call button. It took a few moments for the turbolift to make its way back up to B Deck, probably after taking Falco down to whatever deck of the ship he'd rushed off to. Though he hoped he wouldn't run into Falco just yet, he figured his chances were slim: knowing Falco, the avian was probably holed up in his room, drink in hand. The turbolift arrived and Fox made his way in and pressed the button for C Deck, quickly descending back down to the living areas of the Great Fox and exiting the turbolift into the short hallway of living cabins on the ship. A glance down the hall revealed the door to Falco's cabin shut tight, a thin band of light underneath.
Fox quietly returned to his cabin, shutting the door behind him and turning on the glowpanel in the ceiling. The tousled sheets, his clothes still thrown everywhere, the smell of sex still lingering around the room gave him a stinging reminder of what had happened, and he quickly made his bed and gathered up his clothes, trying to ignore Krystal's bracelet left almost innocently on his desk. Tossing the clothes into a small hamper in the closet, Fox once again surveyed his room, mostly devoid of reminders of the encounter with Krystal. As he inhaled, the musky taste of his scent intermingled with Krystal's remained, once more prodding him about his mistake and making him feel like a fool. Fox exhaled hard and rubbed a hand over his face, getting a whiff of the fur on his hand and smelling Krystal's scent on him, like forest rain.

He needed to take a shower. He wanted to wash away as much as he could of his mistake, of the complete and utter fool that she'd made of him. He wanted to erase any immediate reminder of her that he could.

Fox slipped out of his jacket and threw off his boots, then unzipped his flight suit and shed his boxers, striding into the lavatory and twisting the knob of the shower on. Jets of hot water blasted out of the shower head and the room soon filled with vapor, fogging up and distorting Fox's face in the mirror as his green eyes stared back at him hollowly. He stepped into the shower and felt the intense heat flow over him and soak his fur, circling around to make sure every part of his body was wet before thrusting his face into the stream. With his eyes closed, as the water and steam washed away the traces of Krystal, Fox could still see her seductive cyan eyes in the blackness, and he clenched his jaw tight and tried not to think. Even if he was successful in getting her out of his head, Fox could not deny the aching, poisoned feeling that spread throughout his body from his chest.

After a few moments of standing under the shower, Fox shampooed his fur for good measure, then rinsed and twisted the water off. As the streams of water gushing from the shower head went dead, reduced to a somewhat constant drip, Fox shook himself inside the shower to wring some of the excess water from his saturated fur, which hung in matted, soaked locks from his flesh. He reached over the shower door and pressed a small red button on the wall, instantly feeling a toasty, electric heat as the panels of the thermal dryer glowed a bright scarlet in the ceiling above. Fox smoothed his fur down into the usual composed and conservative way that he wore it, feeling it grow progressively dryer and dryer until it was warm and silky smooth. He stepped out of the shower, rubbing his feet dry on the green rug on the lavatory floor before breathing in a gulp of humid air and re entering his room, finding it easier to banish thoughts of Krystal from his head and save them for later. He selected a new pair of boxers and slipped back into his flight suit, boots and jacket, adding his fingerless gloves and red scarf to the outfit. He then strapped his holster back to his hip and thrust his blaster inside, wanting to look presentable.

Fox yanked open a drawer in his desk, then grabbed Krystal's bracelet and put it inside, shoving the drawer closed roughly without a word or a thought, then picked up his datapad and accessed the remote controls to his cabin's holoprojector. He dialed in the contact number he'd been given for Rupert Frost, then set the datapad back down on his desk and strode to the center of the room as the scanning and projection panels in the ceiling came to life. He stood up straight as the sound system came on and the bright green words Calling: Rupert Frost appeared in the air in front of him. There was a slight click on the sound system and the words disappeared, replaced by the ghostly image of a middle-aged badger in a black suit, white shirt and black tie. Floating a few centimeters over the head of Rupert Frost's hologram was a read-out of small white letters announcing that he was transmitting from a starship operating on Cornerian Standard Time, which was currently 13:54. Since most ships in the Lylat System, especially Commonwealth-affiliated ships like that of the Cornerian Military and the Great Fox ran on CST, Frost could've been practically anywhere in the Lylat System. Fox wondered if Frost was experiencing the same jet lag he was feeling; after two days in Apollo, he was still running on that time. Regardless of the fact that it was almost two in the afternoon in Corneria City and on most ships in the Lylat System, it still felt like four in the morning to Fox.

"Commander McCloud," Frost began coldly, "I've been waiting to hear from you. We've been getting some interesting information from our Apollo field office. You've got some explaining to do."

Fox wasn't in the mood for Frost's officiousness; even though he'd known the badger for as long as he'd been running StarFox, they'd never been exactly friends. He trusted Frost to do his job and tell him what he needed to complete a mission and stay alive, but he was always aware that Frost saw Fox as a professional associate, nothing more.

"I could use some explanation, too, Frost," Fox replied, "Why you didn't you tell me that Kursed asked the CSB to hire us?"

"That's hardly on the same level, Commander," Frost retorted, "According to my reports, Club Glamorama turned into some sort of bloodbath last night, and then there was a star fighter assault on the surrounding blocks of the city. What the hell happened down there?"

"Exactly what you expected to happen!" Fox snapped, "You sent us in there knowing it was a viper's nest. Turns out StarWolf was all it needed to go crazy."

"StarWolf?" Frost inquired, his brow wrinkling.

"Yeah, I noticed they weren't on that list of possible competition we'd run into on this job," Fox chided.

"Our intel showed that they were on Aquas, just a week ago working for the cartels," Frost answered, "We didn't expect them to resurface so fast."

"They resurfaced all over the club and turned it into a clusterfuck, Frost. They're also the ones that brought the fighter," Fox informed him.

Frost frowned and scratched his head.

"We didn't expect this angle. Did you at least get the disc from Bowman?" Frost interrogated slowly.

"Yes. And we met up with Kursed. Thanks for the heads up with regards to who she was," Fox retorted coldly.

"What are you talking about?"

"Kursed. She's Krystal. Like, our Krystal."

Frost's frown deepened as he shifted his stance.

"That's… that's unexpected. At least we know why Kursed wanted you guys."

"Yeah, and we might've been a bit more prepared if you'd told us that she'd sought us out through you," Fox fumed.

"I've never met her; you know how this goes Fox," Frost admonished, "These things are on a need to know basis. We didn't know that you needed to know, so we didn't tell you. It's not like us telling you would help you guess that it was her. Grow up."

Fox clenched his teeth but said nothing.

"We're going to need a statement from you and Lieutenant Lombardi about what happened at Glamorama. We also might need to ask Krystal some questions about what she's been doing as Kursed. I'll get back to you on that. Just send me yours and Falco's statements," Frost instructed, "Are you headed to Fortuna yet?"

"We're just taking care of some last-minute things; then we'll jump to warp. We should be there in about thirty, thirty-two hours," Fox lied. He decided not to tell Frost about Krystal and the disc; better to let him think that both were still on the ship under his control. He didn't want to run the risk of Gillian Morrow finding out and dropping StarFox's contract.

"Send me an e-mail when you reach Fortuna's orbit. Director Morrow is going to want detailed accounts of your observations when you're in the Remnant's camps. We're collecting as much intelligence as we can on the Fortunan civil war. And try to analyze the data on the first disc. It's copy-proof, but you should still be able to get some stuff out of it concerning the access codes for the Xerxes. We want as much data as you can get," Frost instructed.

Fox nodded, maintaining his lie. They definitely needed to fix the warp drive, now, before the CSB got anxious waiting for them.

"Anything else?" Fox inquired, crossing his arms.

"Yeah," Frost's ghostly hologram replied, "Take care of yourself, especially since StarWolf's involved. Don't let what happened in Apollo happen on Fortuna. We might not be able to help you if you get into trouble down there. Oh, and say hi to Krystal for me."

"I sure will," Fox murmured, "Talk to you later, Agent Frost."

"See you later, Commander McCloud," Frost returned, and after a moment the hologram disappeared and the projector switched off.

Fox swallowed, staring at the space that Frost once occupied. If the issues with Krystal and Falco weren't enough, Fox was also dealing with the fact that Frost and the CSB were hiding something from them. They were intentionally keeping everything as silent as possible, telling him only what he needed to complete the mission and nothing else.

What were their plans for the Xerxes, for a ship that was both powerful and uncatchable? What about the super-weapon that might still remain on the ship, mentioned during the briefing as capable of creating an artificial black hole? And what of the enormous price tag, the 217 billion Liat promised to whoever could bring the ship back? It was the largest bounty that Fox had ever heard of, exponentially greater than the rewards for StarFox's actions during the Lylat War, the Saurian Crisis, and the Aparoid Invasion. For an assignment as seemingly simple as finding the ship and securing it, it seemed too good to be true. Perhaps the money was both the CSB's excuse for telling them as little as possible and their way of buying StarFox's silence about the entire mission.

Fox was feeling very wary about the true nature of his contract with the CSB, ever since seeing those scanner droids in Apollo that kept an eye on the entire city. Hearing what Bowman had to say about them and the deception surrounding Krystal only intensified his suspicion of just what Gillian Morrow had planned for them.

He shifted his feet and shook his head. He needed to take Peppy's advice and focus on doing his job, on getting the Great Fox back into working order and getting back on track with their assignment. It was useless to speculate on everything happening when they were currently stuck where they were. Just doing his job and keeping himself occupied on the task at hand would probably help get himself back in order, so that he could actually deal with Krystal, Falco, and the CSB when the time actually came to do so.

Fox left his room and proceeded into the turbolift, pressing the button for E Deck and feeling the lift begin to descend. E Deck, partially built above and around the large hangar bay on F Deck in the Great Fox's superstructure, housed the primary propulsion and power systems for the entire ship, including the three Space Dynamics FX9 plasma engines, the warp drive and the massive solar ionization reactor that produced more energy than a small star. Just about the only person to visit E Deck was Slippy, who almost single-handedly took care of the upkeep of the complicated systems with the assistance of several maintenance droids on the level, however Fox wanted to know what was going on with his ship.

The lift chimed as it reached E Deck, the doors sliding apart to reveal a gray, industrial-looking corridor with wires, pipes and consoles lining the walls. The glowpanels in the ceiling were somewhat dimmer on E Deck than on the rest of the Great Fox, they were still trying to figure out why. The corridor led in two directions, one towards the bow of the ship where the radar and shield generator were housed along with the two main laser batteries, and one deeper towards the stern where the engines, warp drive and main reactor were. Fox moved down the corridor towards the warp drive, eventually passing the entrance to the port-side engine room before coming to a doorway labeled REACTOR/WARP CORE. From inside, he could hear a mix of two voices arguing back and forth, and Fox stepped slowly into a large, brightly-lit room flooded with machinery. Though one of the larger rooms on the ship, the core room was dominated by what it housed: The vaguely cylindrical warp drive of the ship, the size of a maglev train car, occupied a trench in the floor of the room, surrounded by a metal catwalk while the ceiling was occupied by the immense exposed machinery for the central plasma engine, accessible only via ladder or repulsor-sled. Both of these machines were connected by large pipes and wires to the ship's main reactor, a huge grey metal sphere in the rear of the room, which featured five large pipes sticking out of it that led into the wall and connected with the rest of the ship. A steady humming sound from the reactor along with the rumbling sound of the engine meant that one had to shout somewhat in the reactor room, but that seemed to be no problem for the two amphibians on the catwalk surrounding the warp drive. Slippy crouched on the catwalk in his yellow jumpsuit, messing around with a part of the warp drive and occasionally glancing at a set of schematics on a datapad at his feet while Slippy's wrist-mounted data assistant, clipped to the catwalk's railing, projected the image of a female amphibian with bright green, almost shiny skin and blue eyes wearing an orange and yellow jumpsuit. A somewhat large yellow bow was placed on the back of her head.

By amphibian standards, Fox understood that she was quite attractive, however her buxom, pear-shaped form and the fatty, loose-hanging skin typical of her species made her somewhat frumpish when more mammalian body types were considered. From what Fox gathered from Slippy, his wife Amanda was more than a little insecure about her looks. Slippy's parents, Beltino and Beatrix had met Amanda on a star-cruise shortly before the Aparoid Invasion and introduced the two, who began dating and really began to hit it off after the Aparoids were defeated. Fox had only met Amanda a few times before and after the wedding; they never really had much to talk about. She was the chief engineer on a luxury star-liner that operated around the Triton Sub-System and Sector Y, much like way that Slippy was the chief engineer for StarFox. Apparently, one of the ways that they clicked was by sharing professions, but it was hard for Fox to tell from what he was hearing:

"You didn't think of calling the police or anything like that? What if Fox hadn't been there to bail you out?" Amanda's hologram demanded, her hands on her hips as Slippy twisted his hydro spanner on a component of the warp drive.

"Then I guess he would've fried me. Even if I did have time to call the cops, it's not like they could've scared off Wolf O'Donnell before he shot me down," Slippy shrugged, his back to Amanda.

"You see? This is what I'm talking about," Amanda directed, "You told me that you were going to be the chief engineer, the head mechanic, the fixit guy or whatever for StarFox-"

"That's what I'm doing right now. Aren't you getting the visual feed on your end?" Slippy interjected in a laborious tone.

"Yeah, but you never talked about crossing paths with psycho-killers on a regular basis, Slippy!" Amanda retorted, gesticulating wildly with her arms.

"Isn't that a risk you take, too? There's a lot of pirates active along the Sakura's cruise route," Slippy shrugged, twisting the hydro spanner once more before muttering, "There we go."

"The difference is that when psycho-killers attack, I don't run towards them. I hop in a goddamn escape pod and get the hell out of there," she stammered back as Slippy got to his feet and walked across the catwalk, striding through the hologram. Amanda's image shimmered and became distorted for a moment or two before the hologram regained integrity.

"It's a risk that comes with the job, Amanda, and I've been doing it longer than I've known you. Do you know how many times we've saved the galaxy? What we do is kind of important," Slippy defended, stopping and examining a part of the warp drive, running his hands over it as Amanda's hologram rolled its eyes.

"So why do you have to do it? You do have a wife, you know. A wife who really wants kids someday. Maybe I should give up on turning the guest room into a nursery, since there's so much risk you'll get shot by some random thug. That, and the fact that you won't ever be home long enough to knock me up," Amanda sneered.

"Well, we could always go for in-vitro fertilization. That way I wouldn't even have to hear your voice to knock you up; what a joy that would be," Slippy grumbled, his hands grasping around a coil-shaped component of the warp-drive as Amanda let out a high-pitched gasp.

The female frog's mouth remained opened in shock, staring at Slippy's back until he turned around to face her with his eyes lowered.

"I'm sorry, Amy, I didn't mean it. I really didn't, baby, you know that," Slippy soothed, approaching Amanda's hologram as if to hug her.

"I'm just worried about you. I don't want to be a bother, but I hate being separated like this and I can't help it that I want to see you whenever you're gone," Amanda pouted.

"I know, Amy," Slippy smiled reassuringly, "I'm just a little stressed, that's all. I didn't mean anything by it. I promise, after I get back we'll work on the nursery together. Then we'll work on making a baby. Okay?"

"Okay," she whispered.

"Alright, I'm going back to work. You can stay on the line if you want," Slippy answered, wrapping his hands around the coil-shaped component and tugging upwards, trying to free it to no avail.

As Slippy struggled with the piece, Amanda's hologram stared over his shoulder.

"Umm, Slippy?" Amanda piped up, "You have to twist that part to get it out."

Slippy gave Amanda a narrow-eyed look, and then went back to wrestling the component out of its housing. Slippy could get a little stubborn when it came to tech stuff. Fox had seen one particularly volatile argument break out between Slippy and Beltino over the proper way to network the new Great Fox's computer systems after they replaced the one destroyed during the Aparoid Invasion. It ended when Slippy tore one of Beltino's circuit boards out of the mainframe and threw it across the room.

Slippy grunted and tugged on the coil, only for it to remain steadfast inside its housing without any indication of budging.

"That's the sync coil, isn't it?" Amanda chimed, "You have to twist it out."

Slippy's only response was to roll his eyes and continue to ignore her. Fox smirked and began walking around the warp drive, climbing the set of stairs onto the catwalk and approaching Slippy from behind. Neither Slippy nor his wife took notice of Fox.

"Seriously, babe, you have to twist it. Counter-clockwise."

A few moments passed, during which Slippy's grunts became louder and more violent as he endeavored to prove his wife wrong.

"Twist it, Slippy!"

"It's not like an ST-12 or an ST-14!" Slippy snapped, whirling around to face Amanda's hologram with his eyes wide and his large mouth in a sneer, "It's a military-grade warp drive and they don't build 'em like they do on the Sakura!"

"Then try it and prove me wrong," Amanda submitted confidently.

"LOOK!" Slippy shouted, turning around and twisting the component counter-clockwise on its axis. With a metal scratching sound, the large component came free of its housing in Slippy's hand and he fell backwards into the rail with a grunt. He stared baffled at the component in his hand as Amanda's hologram crossed her arms.

"See? I know more than you think I do, Mister Smarty-Man," Amanda beamed, "I think an apology is in order."

At that moment, Slippy noticed Fox on the catwalk behind Amanda's hologram. Fox gave a brief wave and Slippy grabbed his wrist-mounted data assistant off of the railing and snapped it back onto his wrist.

"I've gotta go, Amy. I'll apologize later," Slippy said quickly, pressing a button on the device.

Amanda's hologram disappeared just as her mouth opened in protest.

"You didn't have to cut her off," Fox said, leaning against the catwalk railing.

"Oh yes I did," Slippy replied flatly, "You ever try to apologize to Amanda? It takes almost an hour. She needs to be complimented, reassured and lied to before she lets anything go. You gave me the perfect excuse to hang up."

"Glad to be of service," Fox returned with a wry smile.

Slippy's gaze softened, and he smiled faintly.

"How you holding up?" Slippy inquired.

Fox looked off for a moment, and then looked back at Slippy.

"Trying to keep my mind off it. Ask me again some time. Did you figure out what was wrong with the warp drive?"

"Yeah," Slippy nodded, "Krystal did a number on it. She not only disengaged two of the primary valves on the coolant system, she also tore up the synchronization coil that starts generating the warp field and hacked the auto-diagnostic system so we wouldn't know what was wrong."

Slippy then showed the component in his hands to Fox, revealing the sections where the interlocking coils had been severed.

"It's a clever idea, from a saboteur's perspective. She found a way to work around the auto-diagnostic system so we wouldn't know the drive was sabotaged until the maximum damage had been done," Slippy explained, "By sabotaging the sync coil instead of just flat-out removing it or shooting it, she could hack the auto-diagnostic to register the coil as still functional. So the core spun up like normal. But without the coil functional, the drive kept failing and trying to restart the process. And with the valves on the coolant system jammed, the system kept pumping coolant in to deal with the heat from multiple restarts and the pressure in the lines started spiking. The pressure got too high, so the coolant system automatically flushed itself, and the drive shut down because it overheated."

"Okay," Fox replied, acting as if he fully understood the significance of what Slippy had just said, "So, can you fix it?"

"Yeah," Slippy nodded, "I've already fixed the valves in the coolant system. I'll need to take the sync coil up to my workshop and repair it, then re-install it and bring the warp core back online. Then I'll have to re-fill the coolant system and debug the auto-diagnostic program to get rid of whatever code Krystal inserted into it. Then I'll want to do a quick diagnostic on the drive to make sure there wasn't any damage from overheating or anything else that Krystal may have done."

"How long are we talking about?" Fox inquired.

"About four hours or so. Maybe five," Slippy offered with a slight frown.

"So much for cutting her off before she makes it to Fortuna," Fox grumbled, turning to leave, walking down the metal grating of the catwalk and back down the steps, "Keep me updated on your progress."

"Sure thing, Fox," Slippy's voice followed him as he walked towards the exit, "Hey!"

Fox stopped and turned around to look at Slippy.

"The way I see it, things could be worse. She only sabotaged the ship, at least she didn't leave a bomb or something as her goodbye kiss," Slippy shrugged.

Fox tried not to think about Krystal. He tried to keep his thoughts on the mission.

"At least there's that," Fox agreed quietly, barely over the noise of the engine room.

"And we'll definitely see her again," Slippy offered.

"We definitely will," Fox conceded as he turned and left.


"You know, Leon? I never could wrap my head around why you watch USBN," Panther commented as he slumped down into a station chair on the Lone Wolf's bridge, a toasted tuna salad sandwich on wheat bread in hand after his journey to the galley.

Leon only spared Panther a slight look before returning to the Unlimited Sports Broadcast Network's live coverage of the octagon game between the Corneria City Dukes and the Tombstone Gravediggers in Tombstone, Katina. The play began and the two opposing teams smashed against each other, clashing shield and baton as the Dukes' runner attempted to get the ball past the scrim line, and IG-N 96 looked up from his USC station at the hologram, scrutinizing it along with Panther.

"Commentary: I must admit, Comrade Powalski, this does appear somewhat inconsistent with what one would presume to be your interests. Normally, those that watch sports broadcasts do so because they lack the attention span or neural capacity to appreciate more sophisticated programming. This is similarly the case with those that watch reality shows, and yes, I do direct that comment to you, Comrade Caruso," IG said eloquently.

"Even Wolf doesn't watch sports that often. So what's your story?" Panther yawned, ignoring IG's comment.

"I like the energy," Leon shrugged, his eyes on the game.

"I don't follow," Panther responded.

Leon exhaled and his fingers twitched, then he turned away from the holofootage projected in front of the Lone Wolf's main viewport.

"My father took me to a Gravediggers game when I was a kid. I thought I would hate it. I hated playing sports. We sat down just as the first play began. I didn't even know or care how octagon worked, but…everyone else in the stadium did. I could see them all moving, cheering like one giant organism. I could sit back and let the energy of the crowd just…roll over me. Waves and waves of emotion, like electricity. I could feed off of it, and for once, have some idea of what it's like to be normal. If I pay attention enough to a broadcast, I can almost sense the energy of the crowd. It's one of the few things that I can actually get a rise out of," Leon explained quietly.

"Interesting perspective, Comrade Powalski," IG remarked dryly.

"Mff—you never talk about your parents, Leon," Panther mumbled through a mouthful of tuna sandwich.

"I never knew them. I was adopted by a pair of rabbits named John and Martha Powalski at an orphanage in Corneria City, and then they moved me to Katina to start a bison ranch. I guess they were good parents; they said they loved me. Made me go to church. Fat lot of good that did," Leon answered, his yellow eyes glued back to the hologram.

"You don't remember anything about your real parents?" Panther asked, swallowing.

"Bits and pieces," Leon muttered scratching the green scales on his neck.

"Any juicy bits or pieces?" Panther quipped, thinking himself quite clever for pun that the phrase made, considering Leon.

"I do have one early memory; I think it's of them," Leon said quickly, "I must've been really young, it's as far back as I can recall. I remember seeing a flash of light, something metal…a scream…and then red. Lots and lots of red."

There was a moment in which Panther couldn't think of anything to say, so he simply bit off a large piece of his sandwich and masticated in the silence. After he gulped down his bite, the moment felt only more awkward.

"Allll-right then," Panther said, "Forget I asked."

"Too juicy for you?" Leon retorted, the vaguest hint of a sneer on his lips.

"Let's go with that. I suppose this is why we don't talk about our childhoods," Panther muttered.

"I guess it is," Leon respired, returning his attention to the octagon game.

Panther rolled his eyes and turned around in his chair towards the back of the bridge.

Wolf was reclining in the imposing command chair overlooking the bridge of the Lone Wolf, drumming his hands on the computer console mounted on the chair's right armrest. Overlooking his teammates, Wolf only barely registered the conversation between Leon and Panther. He'd never heard Leon mention the memory about his birth-parents; part of Wolf wondered if he'd been telling the truth, but there was no real way to know for sure, so he dismissed it.

The combination of fatigue and boredom of the last few hours of waiting had put Wolf in the mood to listen to Morgan DeVayne, and he lazily called up the music player on the computer console, setting it to play a random song. The warm, sultry strumming of an electric guitar cut through Wolf's ennui like a sunset breeze, bringing a smile to his face as he recognized the tune: "The Boy with One Eye." He couldn't help but think that somehow, Morgan had Wolf in mind when she wrote it.

"Wolf. How long do we have to stay here listening to your music? We've been shadowing the Great Fox for hours and it hasn't moved. We practically don't even need the sensor jammers active; it's not like StarFox is doing anything. And I'm tired…" Panther emoted over Morgan's voice.

"Whine, whine, whine," Wolf grumbled below his breath, reclining back in his chair as the guitar quietly snarled and Morgan moaned: "I took a knife and cut out his eye…I took it home and watched it wither and die; well, he's lucky that I didn't slip him a smile. That's why he sleeps with one eye open, woah-ohhh-oh, but that's the price he'll pay…"

Panther did, however, have a point. The original plan had been to monitor the Great Fox from afar and follow their course after they warped away, however the StarFox mother ship hadn't moved after the Pleiades warped away hours ago. There was no reason for StarFox to just take the shuttle and warp away to their next destination rather than taking the Great Fox. But nevertheless, they remained locked in their position.

"Speaking of sensor issues, Lord O'Donnell, I've been picking up faint signals of something possibly behind us. It may just be a sensor ghost, however. Just thought you'd like to know," IG piped up from his station.

"Alright, I've had it with waitin' for 'em ta' do somethin'. We know they're goin' ta' Fortuna, right? They gotta be. The second discs gotta be at Zaius' remnant camp. Let's head there," Wolf instructed.

"Are we planning on cutting them off and attacking before they can get to the surface?" Leon inquired.

"Nah," Wolf growled with a shake of his head, "We're gonna do things a little different this time. We can guess where they're headed now, that's not gonna be tha' case later. We head ta' Fortuna an' keep a low profile then wait for 'em ta' dispatch ships ta' land on tha' ground. Then we go down there in tha' dropship an' attach a homing beacon ta' one of their ships. That way we can track 'em all the way ta' that ship. We catch 'em by surprise at the Xerxes. Then we cut off an' attack 'em."

Leon smirked and nodded at Wolf's plan.

"Shall I set our course for Fortuna then, my Lord? Maximum warp?" IG inquired from his station.

"Do it," Wolf growled, leaning back in his chair.

"By your command, sir. Oh, and I just picked up that sensor ghost again. Is there anything you'd like to do?" IG replied.

"I don't fuckin' care. We're gettin' outta here, what's it matter?" Wolf shrugged dismissively. It had been a long night of fighting in Apollo, and they still hadn't gone to sleep. Wolf's ribs were still aching from where Edgar Suchos had slammed him up against the wall of Club Glamorama. Once they were at warp, he would head back to his quarters for some rest. But he at least wanted to hear the end of Morgan's song.

A low-pitched humming began to build up from within the bowels of the Lone Wolf, and IG began to count down, his reedy synthetic voice filling the bridge. With a tired sigh, Wolf increased the volume on the sound system so as to drown out everything else with Morgan's voice and the building crescendo of the guitar as she howled: "I said, HEY! Boy with one eye, get your filthy fingers out of my pie, yeah, I said heyyyy-eyyy, boy with one eye, oh-oh, get your filthy fingers, out of my pie! I said HEYYY, boy with one eye, I'll cut your little heart out…'cause you maaaade me…cry…"

Almost as if on cue, the engines rumbled and the stars beyond the viewport stretched into long, white strings as the Lone Wolf jumped to light speed.


Drifting through space a mere sixty kilometers behind the Lone Wolf's position, the Roylott Drive Yards Amphibious Interstellar Assault Transport known as the River God did not appear to pose any sort of threat to the Team StarWolf mother ship. Not only was the thirty meter-long ship less than a fourth of the Lone Wolf's size, the concussion missile launchers and the twin laser turrets on the front and back of the vessel were no match for the firepower that the Nostromo-class cruiser and its three Wolfen star fighters could dish out. Additionally, the River God's pair of oversized 5G5 fusial thrust engine nacelles, each nearly dwarfing the boat-like main hull between them, gave the ship the appearance of an overpowered, inefficient, and anything but subtle machine.

But, as Daddy had always said, "You're all fuck-ugly, so don't twat around puttin' stock in how somethin' looks."

At least that was how Edgar remembered it.

The River God was hijacked by Edgar's daddy while he was being transported to a parole hearing, and flown back home to his brothers when Edgar was barely hatched. Daddy spent years tinkering around with the ship and teaching his boys how it worked. Well, at first, Daddy tried to teach all of them, but Waylon never cared much for learning anything but how to fly it and Edgar just kept getting confused, so after yelling at them some he gave up and taught Joseph how to fix and maintain the ship. Joey was best for learning that sort of stuff, anyway, seeing how he was the smallest and could get his hands into all them tight spaces on the ship and such.

Waylon got it, he just didn't care. Edgar couldn't ever make sense of fancy things like engines or navigation systems. It gave him headaches whenever he tried to. The headaches made him angry.

Daddy had modified the River God to have the same strengths as their great crocodilian heritage: The shields, lasers, and especially the engines were very powerful, but it wasn't nearly as valuable as the ship's ability to track its prey, stay hidden and strike when the time was perfect for an ambush. The ship featured a tractor beam that could pull the River God towards a larger ship (or the other way around for a smaller one) and a hull breach mechanism that could even nullify a ship's shields in order to cut through the hull and allow the Suchos brothers to board another vessel. Edgar didn't get headaches trying to understand those things. They made it so he could go inside a ship and tear up the people inside. Edgar was good at that sort of thing.

Among the ship's other after-market extras was an advanced thingamajig called an IES that Edgar couldn't remember what the letters stood for. One time, Joey had explained to Edgar that, as long as it was maintained in top condition, the IES allowed the River God to "store its generated heat" (whatever that meant) so that the ship was practically invisible to sensors without the need for sensor jammers, which could be detected by a clever enough pilot. Edgar didn't quite understand what Joey meant and it started to make his head hurt, so he called Joey a nerd and threw him down a corridor. He deserved it, using big words like that to confuse him.

The River God also had a device called an ion wake spectroscope (Edgar remembered the name of that one because he thought it was funny to say), which he understood a little better. Waylon told him that the spectroscope let the River God "smell" exactly where a ship was going as long as it hadn't warped away too long ago, by following some sort of trail that ships at warp left behind. Waylon was good at explaining fancy things like that so he could understand; Edgar liked Waylon better than Joey. He didn't have to use confusing words to show that he was smart.

The glowpanels inside the River God were dim and yellow, the air warm and muggy just like he liked it, but Edgar barely noticed. The silence throughout the River God's cramped quarters only reminded him that both Waylon and Joey were dead.

After Daddy died, Edgar's brothers were all that he had or cared about. Now he was all alone in the universe. The bastard cane and the hairy wolf-trash from the club…it was all their fault. Edgar could only think of the reasonable thing to do: hunt them down and tear the flesh from their bones.

As Edgar stared out the cockpit's viewport at the Lone Wolf's main drive engines, his mouth hanging slackly open to release heat, something in his head screamed at him to board the unsuspecting ship. Stalk them through the bulkheads. Make them afraid as they smelled his breath. Tear them. Slash them. Rip them to chunks. Devour them. Fill your belly. Take your revenge. Feed.

Edgar struggled to remind himself why this was not a good idea. It was hard work.

Waylon mentioned something about a ship. A ship full of riches. A ship that would make the galaxy quake in fear of their power. Waylon's plan had been to grab the one called Kursed at the club and force him to show them the way to the ship, then kill Kursed for the bounty on his head. The plan also called for them to kill anyone that got in their way, but all of Waylon's plans called for that. If they somehow missed Kursed, they were going to follow whoever was helping Kursed until they led them to the ship, and then kill Kursed for the bounty on his head along with whoever was helping him and anyone else that got in the way. Waylon would've wanted Edgar to get what they were after, not just get revenge.

Edgar wanted to do what Waylon and Joey would've wanted. He wanted his brothers to live on through him. But Edgar wasn't good like they were; it was maddening to just watch the Lone Wolf, knowing that the one that killed Waylon was inside. He had to wait. He had to.

Why did he have to wait?

Edgar couldn't remember at first. After he did, he explained it to himself out loud:

"The wolf is following the fox. The fox is following Kursed. Kursed will go to the ship. Follow the wolf, and get to the ship. Kill the wolf. Kill the fox. Kill Kursed. Take the ship. Make brothers proud," Edgar explained to himself, slowly, his guttural voice rumbling around the cockpit.

If he boarded the ship now, he reminded himself, he would only kill the wolf. He wanted a lot more than that.

The Lone Wolf's engines suddenly flared and the ship shot forward into the darkness of space, winking out of Edgar's sight. He gasped slightly as holographic displays appeared and readout screens began to flash with data, only adding to his confusion. His head darted from readout to readout and screen to screen, trying to understand but it was all flashing and it was hard to read all of the words and the information was always changing, and Edgar could feel himself getting a headache. He started breathing harder, he wanted the machines to stop and just make sense but they didn't and his head was really hurting, starting to make him angry. His clawed hands began to tremble and he gritted his teeth; he hated the stupid computers for confusing him and making everything so hard. Edgar's tail began to wriggle underneath him in the chair, making him even more uncomfortable and the machines just wouldn't stop confusing him, and he let out a deep growl through his jaws.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Edgar bellowed, leaping out of his chair and raising his hands above his head to bring them down on the controls. As he was just about to smash the controls, his thick tail swiped into the side of a bulkhead, slamming into the durasteel plating and sending a spike of pain up his spine. Edgar let out another anguished roar and turned around looking for something to hit.

When he found nothing, the moment of confusion allowed him to collect himself and calm down. The headache faded away like morning fog.

Edgar turned back to the beeping controls, still unable to make sense of them, and looked through the viewport at the empty field of stars where the Lone Wolf once was.

The ship was already unimaginably far away and getting further by the second. No amount of screaming at the controls was going to change that; that little he understood. He needed to figure out how to make the River God follow the ship. Waylon and Joey always did that stuff. They knew how to make the ship work. Edgar wasn't good like they were.

He turned away from the cockpit and entered the living area just outside of it. The room was a cramped mess of crumpled food containers, soiled clothes, forgotten snack foods and stacks of synthetic hypersteriod patches, with three hammocks haphazardly attached to the pipes in the ceiling. Edgar could smell both of his brothers in the room, very much still with him. The humidity in the air circulating around the ship, coupled with the amount of time that had passed since the shootout at the club, meant that the whole interior of the River God smelled of Waylon and Joseph.

This was probably due to the fact that their corpses were lying side by side on a large table in the center of the living area.

Though it was less than a day since they had died, the humidity and temperature inside the ship magnified the stench of early decay, especially coming from the multiple slashes and burns on Waylon's face. Anyone but Edgar likely would've been floored by the smell, but he couldn't just leave them at the club for the scavengers to feast on. They were his brothers.

Edgar slowly walked around the table, forcing himself to look at their faces. He placed a hand on a shoulder of each of his brothers, bowing his head in reverence.

When they were all little, Daddy told them about Maiize, the river god for which their ship was named. While some people worshipped the Krazoa, others worshipped a goddess called Lyla and most others worshipped nothing at all, their people had worshipped Maiize for longer than anyone could remember. Maiize was the river and the spirit of all crocodilians, who gave birth to their people. The legend held that Maiize sacrificed his wife Faiyum to the river to make sure that it would always flow full of life, but before surrendering her body to the waters he ate her heart so that her soul would live on through him. Maiize then regurgitated a cluster of eggs onto the ground, which were Faiyum's children and the earliest ancestors of the modern crocodilians. Life was a never ending process of sacrifice and consumption; to gain something, one must lose something first. Much as eating Faiyum's heart allowed her soul to live on in Maiize, the eating of prey was good for both parties: the prey would live on inside the predator, and the predator would get the strength of his prey. Crocodilians lived this way for thousands of years, and most continued to live this way.

Edgar squeezed Joey and Waylon's shoulders, and he thought of Maiize and Faiyum. He thought of how he'd lost his brothers, and how it was his job to avenge their loss. He thought of how hard that would be without Joey's skilled hands or Waylon's smarts. Edgar just wasn't good like they were.

He wanted to do what Joey and Waylon would've wanted. He wanted his brothers to live on through him.

Edgar set an antique saw, knife and hammer down on the table, looking down one last time at his brother's whole and untouched bodies. He hesitated for just a second, wondering whether or not Joey or Waylon would've wanted this. Edgar knew that they would've wanted to live on in him, so that they could pass down the river of life together when Edgar's time came. And Edgar knew that he needed his brothers' talents to avenge their deaths. And after all, he was so hungry.

It was so hard for him to think when he was hungry.

Edgar picked up the saw in one hand and the knife in the other, walking around the table so that he was closest to Joey. It would be easy to get what he needed from Joey. He'd need the hammer, and a bit more effort, to get what he needed from Waylon.

Edgar lowered the saw and went to work.

Over an hour later, Edgar returned to the cockpit, his stomach full and his mind feeling oddly clear for once. He sat down in the seat and wiped a maroon stain off of his lower jaw, then gazed carefully at the still beeping and flashing displays at the cockpit. A holographic display over the main viewport was tracing a long, yellow line through space, with technical data that mentioned vector plots and ion emissions. Edgar struggled through the information until he caught the phrase 'ion wake spectroscope', and suddenly felt proud that he'd memorized the word. The River God's computer had used the ion wake spectroscope to trace the path of the Lone Wolf's warp jump. Edgar looked down at the screen closest to him on the cockpit control panel, with the word navicomputer labeled above. The computer had automatically plotted a warp jump based on the data from the ion wake spectroscope, which would trace the path of the Lone Wolf. Edgar again struggled to figure out where exactly the ship wanted to take him, but his eyes caught the word Fortuna somewhere.

They were going to the home world.

Edgar hadn't been back to his people's home world, where he and his brothers grew up, for a long time. Any desire to set foot on Fortuna was tempered by the new, almost predatory focus on his mission. Unless the ship was there, Edgar would only continue to follow them. He would be patient. He would be smart. He would be skilled.

And after all that, the joy of finally tearing apart and devouring both the fox and the wolf would be even better.

He looked down at the bottom of the navicomputer screen, seeing a touch-sensitive button labeled Execute Jump?

Edgar pressed the button with a clawed finger and felt the massive engines of the River God rumble to life.

"I'm comin' for both of you," Edgar growled, almost smiling, "I'm gonna get you good."

The stars outside stretched to infinity and the River God blasted into warp.


The light of stars and nebulas zipping by at several times the speed of light poured around the ship, so fast that it was impossible to take any single feature in; it was as futile as trying to watch a single raindrop in a downpour. Kursed knew that even if she could focus onto a single star flashing past, it would be gone long before she had time to register.

It was said that staring too long into the swirling patterns of light through the windows of a ship at warp could cause motion sickness, epileptic seizure, even madness. Most ships kept the transparisteel opaque while at warp, especially for long journeys, however Kursed found the stellar light show almost soothing. In the five hours that the Pleiades had been at warp, she hadn't left the plush pilot's chair of the shuttle or taken her eyes off of the shimmering warp field through the viewport, even though she felt more than tired enough to sleep. She supposed it was the chair.

It was too soft, too pampering, unlike the reassuringly solid wool-packed cushions she'd used at home.

Home, Kursed thought to herself, the word echoing in her head like a dead lover's name. The word conjured thoughts of humid, rainy forests, harmonious halls of sandstone capped by flower-bud shaped towers, a vast blue sun burning in a lavender sky and wisps of incense wafting through windows with lotus-pattern grilles. The mouthwatering smell of ginger and maja fruit, being ground into a fine paste to make kemia salad, mixing with the scent of shisha being smoked from a narghile in the next room. The whispered sutras and prayers of her father, thanking the Krazoa for the blessed day as swarms of glowing blue beetles buzzed through the thick night air.

But that was all gone now, and only fools indulge in nostalgia, so Kursed stared back into the universe as it sped by and cleared her head of images, taking out a pack of Dutta Ebony kreteks and a burner. She slipped a single kretek in between her lips and lit the end with the burner, then put both back into the pocket on her belt as she took a drag of the cigarette. The glowing orange end of the kretek crackled slightly and Kursed breathed the fire into her lungs, exhaling out through her nose.

You should sleep, she told herself, You'll need the energy later.

It was so hard for her to sleep these days, and Kursed knew it wasn't because of the chair or how smotheringly soft most Cornerian-made mattresses were. Something was eating at her inside, a cold and consuming fire that she couldn't name and couldn't deny that made her hate everything she saw in the society she was forced to live in. It wasn't just the holovision voices with their unreal accents and jokes that Kursed could not understand, or the way that absolutely everything seemed to have a price, an abstract value that made it all seem so worthless. Even the people that she'd worked to protect not so long ago seemed empty and unworthy of being saved. She was lost in a forest that she didn't understand, wandering for so long that she could hardly remember her own name. The fire inside told her to keep running, far away until she couldn't remember anything from before, all the while cursing everything she'd left behind for the pain of losing it.

Kursed didn't want to name it. She didn't want to face it for that long, for all the sleepless nights it gave her. Bringing it into the light would only expose her to more pain. The only option was to dive further into the darkness, until it was all erased.

She sucked down on the kretek, blowing the thick blue smoke out in a jet from her mouth before flicking the ash onto the durasteel floor. Kursed reached into another pocket on her armorweave bodysuit and withdrew a metallic grey holodisc, bringing it up to her face with a neutral look in her cyan eyes. It seemed so disposable and insignificant; it was funny to think about how many people were chasing after what it represented. The CSB, the cartels, the mercenaries, they all pursued it hungrily as if the Xerxes held some sort of deep, fundamental truth. But they weren't after truth; they weren't after anything substantial or meaningful. No one in Lylat was.

They wanted money, they wanted control and power. They all wanted it, for however fleeting and trivial it was in the grand scheme of things, and they would move worlds if it meant getting their hands on it. They fought and struggled for it like dancers, unaware of their folly in thinking that it was all for the best, that it was all worth it, that it would somehow fill the void within them rather than intensify their lust for more. She was able to see the absurdity of this violent quest without being concerned as to what the ultimate outcome would be. Kursed didn't care what happened to the Xerxes or all of its weapons and money, her only goal was to further bury the remains of her past and enjoy the calamity that she had set into motion. When it was all over, Kursed could finally start forging a new life, free from the questions and memories and anger that kept her up at night. She would finally be free of that vulnerable, foolish girl named Krystal.

As she slipped the holodisc back into her pocket and returned her gaze to the vortex of stars in front of her, she glimpsed the logo of a winged fox stamped into the metal on the pilot's controls, but she quickly snuffed out the thoughts that seeped into her head. She took another drag of her kretek, blew the smoke out through her nostrils and did not think of Fox McCloud or the other members of her once-adopted family that she'd left behind on the Great Fox. She didn't like the way it made her feel to think about them. It was just as useless to think of that former life as it was to dwell on the far-off memories of her home world.

She flicked her half-finished kretek onto the durasteel floor, letting it burn itself out with the smooth odors of cloves and tobacco. Kursed put her feet up on the control panel and reclined in the too-soft command chair, glaring at the light storm that raged outside the ship.

She had been a different person on Cerinia, just as she had been a different person with StarFox. They were younger, weaker people than her, naïve to the random cruelties and futility of life in a galaxy that had lost all meaning. There was no going back, to that other person, to that other place. This thing, this cursed shadow, it was all that she was now.