Zaravan asks: What got you into the Star Fox fandom?
SnowLucario answers: I think it was a combination of a couple of factors. First off, Fox McCloud is so badass, and I had played Star Fox 64 quite a bit. Plus, I had this awesome idea for a story in my head, and I was getting sick of writing SYOTs. I wanted something different. I hope that answered your question.
I got a new computer for Christmas, and two Survivor buffs (Tadhana and Angkor). I have a picture on DeviantArt of them hanging off the side of my bed, so go check that out if you have not already.
Welcome to the longest chapter yet of Wing And A Scare, at 9,371 words. My second longest chapter ever, after the final chapter of Labyrinth, which is 10,115 words. Hopefully, that receding bar on the right-hand side of your screen helps to illustrate that. As to the word count, I'm just proud that it's OVER 9,000!
I know, I had to do that, and the thing is that I'm not even that big into Pokemon. I was never one of those kids who collected cards and went around looking to battle random people on the streets of the SnowLucario neighborhood. I always though Pokemon was dorky, which is ironic considering my username now.
I was a little nervous to post this chapter, because I think it's so great, and yet there will probably be very polarizing opinions on various things within it. It's going to make you laugh, cry, and shiver. Literally. It's like an awesome scene from an action movie.
LUCAS'S POV
Over the course of the last five days before the mission to the Cornerian glaciers, we trained hard. I often went to bed feeling like I had done several hours of hard labor, but it was worth it. The knowledge that I might be able to save thousands of people from an avalanche was what kept me going.
Every day, groups of us tackled the rock wall. We practiced using crampons and pickaxes. We had to pick up as much as possible, and I was hoping that Leon wouldn't end up regretting his decision to allow cadets to take part in such an important mission. Why not choose actual military personnel?
Of course, Fox McCloud (who was rumored to be coming to the school just to take part and help us in our task) had defeated Andross in the first Lylat War at the age of eighteen. But they were expecting kids as young as sixteen to take on this challenge. I guessed that they just wanted to take this radical next step.
We were even briefed on what to do in case of an avalanche. We didn't use air bags, so we were told to try to step as lightly as possible to avoid triggering one. If one managed to start despite our best efforts, we were instructed simply to "ditch our harnesses and run".
All in all, I was feeling no small degree of nervousness about this mission. However, I tried to downplay it to others as much as possible. I didn't want them worrying about me. This worked just fine until the afternoon before the mission.
I was walking in the dining hall, about an hour before dinner. I was supposed to be going back to my dorm room for shower hour, but I knew that a walk might help to calm my nerves. Besides, the "no students outside their dorms" rule was only really enforced at night.
By now, every last vestige of the holiday season was gone from the dining hall, so there was nothing around to prevent me from seeing anyone who might come to pass.
And who might that be but Willow Foster, my sort-of girlfriend?
She was looking as beautiful as always, today wearing an aquamarine dress that really brought out the color in her eyes. It also really went well with the color of the ice of the glacier when looked at from a certain angle. The glacier I'd be climbing up tomorrow.
"Good afternoon, Lucas" she said.
We'd made up since our previous fight, and were on good terms once again. Although we didn't talk as much as we could have back in Swanville, we tended to patch up our arguments quickly, which tended to bode well. I have heard of a lot of people who were married for years and then got divorced, who had had arguments before they got married.
I didn't know if I could see a future with Willow just yet. I knew, however, that one way or another I was going on this trip.
"So...are you still going to the glaciers, Lucas?" she asked me.
I'd been ready for that question. "I am, Willow. As much as you might not want me to, I really want to help save those people. And I want to play a role. I'm sure that you can relate to that, sometimes?"
"I definitely have been able to relate to that before. But, still, Lucas. You don't have to do this. You might get hypothermia, or die in an avalanche...".
I snorted. "Really? Willow, we're used to New England winters. If I can handle sixteen of those, then I can handle this".
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am" I said, desperately hoping that was the truth.
I then noticed that Willow was looking very bothered by something. "What is the problem, Willow? You sound...upset".
"It's just that you're going on this death trip-".
"For the last time, I'm not gonna die".
"-and my detention with Slippy was terrible. I had to wash all of the things in the Engineering room for a solid three hours. Beyond that, I spent the whole time, as I still am now, absolutely worried sick about you. Can you even imagine that?"
I couldn't. And that was the scary thing. It was hard for me to empathize with people, sometimes. And I didn't use the excuse of having Asperger's, either. I was genuinely not a very empathetic person by nature, and caring about someone who didn't directly concern me was, quite frankly, none of my business.
"That sounds like it really sucks" I said, which was really the thing I could say that was closest to the truth. Or, at least, what I truly believed to be true.
The next morning, as I helped Seventy-Four, Cole, and the others clean up the dorm room, I was still thinking about how the mission was going to turn out. Hopefully, it was a success, and none of us would die or get seriously hurt. Hopefully.
I couldn't shake the feeling, however, that something bad was going to happen. There was a certain tension present in the room the whole time we were working on cleaning it, and I knew that the most likely cause of this tension was the fact that Cole and I were going on this trip despite only having been here for about four weeks.
"Good luck" Will said. "You're going to need it".
I nodded. I knew that I needed to get lucky in order to survive this trip. But I also felt that I had it in me.
After we were done with cleaning, we were supposed to report to the dining hall in order to get ready to board the chopper. Cole and I were there, as well as the other eighteen students going on the trip. We were all fairly nervous, I could tell.
We were led down a serious of corridors, ranging in colors from mustard yellow to crimson red to indigo, and then some butterscotch orange, seafoam blue, and jungle green. It was all beautiful, but I didn't know where it would all lead, or if it would ever even end.
Finally, though, we ended up in a single, large room with metal walls. I could tell that this was a hangar of some sort for various planes. Arwings, the personal aircraft that the Star Fox team used, were clustered at one edge of the room as though they were having a conference. There were also some small helicopters, but the real show lay outside, Leon said.
"I think you will find the view very awe-inspiring" he said.
He pressed a button on a remote that must have been in his pocket the entire time, and the door to a runway opened like one that you might find in a suburban garage.
Except that the runway was much bigger than a suburban driveway. As soon as we were outside of the hangar, we caught a full view of it.
It did not look like a suburban driveway.
The runway went out past the protective bubble, meaning that we were greeted with a fresh blast of cold winter air. Luckily, Leon had come prepared, as he handed each of us purple-and-turquoise winter coats, or whatever color our rank dictated. One girl I noticed, Abigail, was wearing gold and magenta, meaning that she was at the second highest level there was. I wondered how long she had been there, and thus how long it might take me to reach that rank.
"All right" Leon said. "You're really going to need these, because as cold as it is here, it's going to be much worse on the actual glacier, so be prepared for that. And, also, you might want to appreciate the view on the way up".
From what I could see, it was most certainly spectacular. There was a view of the plains and the mountains, lightly dusted with snow, from the hangar. I could only imagine what it must have looked like when we were actually up in the sky.
"Personally, I prefer the air" came a voice from behind us.
Falco Lombardi strode over to us. He seemed to have come out of nowhere, except not actually having teleported.
We all thought Leon had had no idea. As it turned out, though...
"Falco is coming on this mission. It was planned from the very beginning" Leon said. "And we have another person who will help us. Indeed, he is already in the helicopter".
"Who will it be?" an orange-and-teal girl asked.
"You'll just have to wait and see" Falco said, smiling.
COLE'S POV
Aside from the helicopter ride to the flight academy, I had never flown in a plane before. This was mainly because I had grown up poor, and neither my birth parents nor my adoptive parents had had the money to fly anywhere.
I had never had the feeling of the plane lifting off beneath you, and looking out the window to see the suburbs of Detroit start to look like toys. And yet, soon the Grey Clouds Flight Academy (an extremely imposing piece of architecture, mind you) was no larger than something a kid built out of LEGOs.
Soon, though, we were past that, and I was in awe of what I noticed outside the window.
Plains far below us were covered in a light dusting of snow. Lakes and ponds dotted the landscape, spots of every shade of blue from steel blue to navy. The plains itself ranged from green to white, and I could see large hills and mountains in the distance. On the ground, the valleys looked far better and more spectacular than Yoshi Valley from Mario Kart 64.
For someone from the concrete jungle of Detroit, this was something new. I had almost forgotten the sight from four weeks before, but this definitely helped put it back in my head.
The special guest on this trip, by the way, turned out to be Fox McCloud. He turned up from the engine room of the chopper just a minute or two after we took off.
"How much longer until we reach the glacier?" Lucas asked him.
Fox looked over his shoulder at the approaching mountain. "It's only a half-hour trip, and we've already been in the air for at least fifteen minutes. So, maybe fifteen minutes until we reach the glacier".
Lucas nodded.
I then went to the window and looked at more of the scenery. We were now so high that I could see the ocean in the distance, and the snowfields on the mountain looked like icing on a cake. A cake the size and shape of a major mountain, but still a delicious chocolate cake with white frosting, something I would have killed for right now. I knew now that we were getting close.
The glacier was riddled with several crevasses, but it was attached to the side of the mountain pretty well. It was a steep upward slope of perhaps thirty degrees, and it glistened with ice. It was a good thing that there was a long, thick rope attached to the side of the glacier, which was covered in feet of snow in some places and yet completely icy in others.
In other words, it was both beautiful and terrible at the same time.
When we reached the place that Leon seemed to have been thinking of, he let us off the helicopter.
Once again, he showed us the equipment that we would be using. He made sure that we all put on our harnesses and clipped into the rope, so that we wouldn't fall too far down the side of the glacier. If we did fall down, the rope would arrest our fall, and we could then climb back up.
I had always been scared of heights, and Lucas was correct in assessing that I had most likely never been rock climbing before. That was the truth. I was completely inexperienced in all of this stuff, and, quite frankly, scared to death.
And yet, why did I volunteer for the mission? I guess you could say that had something to do with the fact that, after I had stolen from people so much, and done so many immoral things in my life, I wanted to get something right for a change. I wanted a shot at redemption. I didn't want to end up as just another poor juvenile delinquent from Detroit who disappeared one day never to be seen again, because that was no doubt how I was being portrayed back at home.
I wanted to stand out.
The wind was very cold, but thanks to our winter clothing we were able to significantly increase the amount of heat our bodies retained. Surprisingly, I had heard that the air was much thinner up in the mountains, but I didn't notice it that much. Maybe things were different in this universe somehow.
It really made you ponder some philosophical questions, like if there was some higher power who was in charge of everything, and controlled both of these dimensions. I'd always considered myself an atheist, but maybe there might be more than just this.
Right now, though, that wasn't what was important.
As soon as we were fitted with our crampons, we started climbing up the glacier. Then, things got even more beautiful and terrible.
For the most part, we were supposed to be traveling on foot up the face of the glacier. However, the snow and ice was so packed in some places that we were forced to crawl.
Crawling was necessary because of the steep slope we were going up, and that if not for the rope that was present, we would go sliding backwards down the face of the glacier, only to end up dead several thousand feet below. I didn't want that, and neither did anyone else.
However, the harnesses we were wearing made crawling more difficult. The metal components jingled a lot, and could get in the way of me pawing snow to the side with the gloves I had been provided.
Right behind me, I had to avoid kicking Lucas in the face. Right in front of me was Abigail Ashland, a girl who was tall and curvy, as well as somewhat skinny. She looked like someone you would see in the red light district of Detroit (and that's a place I had been to before, trust me). The ice was very slippery, so we had to make sure to dig the crampons well into the snowpack, or at least as much as we could without getting our clothes wet.
While our snow pants were somewhat effective in keeping the water out, it didn't completely make my clothes underneath it impervious. My tattered blue jeans were already starting to feel a little wet. It might have been from sweat, but I doubted it.
Within ten minutes or so, I was already not having a very good time. I was starting to question whether or not I had really made the right decision to go on this mission. How much further up the glacier could the bomb be? Would there have been any other way that I could repay my debt to society?
So many unanswered questions. So many unanswered questions and so little time.
"Hey, Lucas" I said, trying to lighten up the atmosphere.
"Yeah?" he panted. I could tell that he was becoming short of breath due to the incline. While I myself was doing all right thanks to being used to sprinting away from tense situations, Lucas Enfield must have been suffering.
Lucas might have been built like a cat, but he sure isn't as agile as one!
I kept that as a bubble thought, though. If this mission was to succeed, we would need to learn to work as a team. That might not happen if I was putting down Lucas.
"What are you thinking of this trip?" I asked.
Lucas took a few seconds to catch his breath (which wasn't easy, given the fact that we didn't want to hold up everyone else) before answering.
"It's a lot sweatier than I expected. Sweating in cold weather is the absolute pits. It's gotta be ten, maybe even five degrees above zero".
"Dude", I said, snorting, "you should move to Detroit. Gets absolutely freezing, we get like ten feet of lake-effect snow".
"I'm from freaking Maine, dude. I could beat you on that".
We both laughed, which got us a disapproving glare from Abigail. Clearly, she was taking this very seriously.
After all of that had been said, there wasn't much left to do except to soldier on. Occasionally, we reached spaces about a hundred yards apart that had metal posts the shape of lollipops, the rope being threaded through. Since we couldn't get the carabiners through them, we had to briefly unclip ourselves from the rope in order to get around them.
This brief time untethered was very terrifying. Thankfully, our feet were covered in enough snow that we could probably stay on the glacier regardless, even if our harnesses weren't clipped to the rope. But the ice didn't help, as it made everything wet and slick.
Not for the first time, I considered unclipping my harness and just running up there. However, I knew that that wouldn't do much good. In fact, it would probably result in my doom.
It was at the point that we had been climbing for exactly two hours, according to my watch, that the first interesting thing happened on our climb.
Ahead of me, there was a scream as Abigail disappeared like an elevator whose chains had been cut. Almost immediately, the rope began tugging on my harness, and I felt like I was about to get dragged in with her if we didn't do something fast.
"Hold fast!" Fox yelled. "Or else you'll go in too!"
That last sentence probably galvanized a lot more people into motion than there already had been, and they started pulling back on the rope. This put me deeper into the snow, which I was sure was starting to seep into my boxer shorts, but it was better than me falling into a crevasse (which probably wasn't warm in the slightest).
"Okay!" Fox ordered. "Now pull her up!"
This took double the effort. Abigail Ashland might have been a skinny girl, but it wasn't as though she wasn't a burden on us. We really had to pull her up, and I could hear her trying to climb, but her crampons could not get a good hold on the ice. Therefore, we had to do all the work.
I was sweating so much that I worried my harness would slide off of my waist. It wasn't just from the exertion, but also because we were getting closer and closer to the sun, and there was less ozone layer up here. And yet, it was only getting colder.
After what must have been at least five minutes, Abigail emerged from her crevasse.
"Are you okay, Abigail?" Leon yelled forwards.
"Yes!" Abigail shouted.
"Good. Now, let's continue on".
It was more of this slog for what felt like an eternity. Seriously, I do not wish this on my worst enemy. It was a long, torturous crawl through snow and ice, and I couldn't even talk to Lucas the whole time. There were too many people close by who would hear anything I might say to him. And I'm not gay, I wouldn't have talked to him romantically, but there were certain things that I felt should stay private.
If I had known what would come next, I might have been more forthcoming in talking to him.
LUCAS'S POV
After we had rescued Abigail from a very dark and cold end, we continued up the face of the glacier. Every so often, we continued unhooking ourselves from the rope, and then clipping back in once we had passed the stakes in the ground. It was a very arduous trek.
I had no way to keep track of time, so Cole did it for me, as he had brought a watch on this trip. Why it had even been allowed was beyond me, but he gave me updates on each hour.
I grew thirsty, but we were instructed not to eat any of the snow, because it would apparently lower our core body temperature. I didn't know if it was clean or not, and I decided not to ask. I was also hungry, but it wasn't like I would be allowed to eat anything.
Why we hadn't been allowed to bring water was beyond me, but I figured it might be in order to travel light.
Around four in the afternoon, when the sun was finally beginning to sink below the hills, and we must have been at an elevation of well over eight thousand feet, Fox stopped us.
"This is the place" he said. "I can sense it".
"Are you sure about that, Fox? It could be a trap!" Leon replied.
Fox turned back to Leon, a good fifty yards behind him. We could all hear both of them yelling at each other, because in this mountainous region it echoed a ridiculous number of times.
"I am an expert at this, Leon Powalski. I know a bomb when I see it".
"If you're sure, then" Leon said. "I'm not gonna stop you".
"I know I'm right" Fox said. Then, he looked back at the other 21 of us. "Which of you do you want to go with me? I want two people".
I didn't hesitate in raising my hand. "I'm in!" I shouted.
Abigail, the girl two people in front of me, was the other person who volunteered. With her tall, curvy frame, she wore an expression on her face that told us that she felt as though she was above this mission.
"All right" Fox said. "Climb up to where I am, and we'll unclip you from the rope. Then, you'll follow me into the caverns below the glacier. You ready?"
After we unhooked our harnesses from the rope, we followed Fox into a small hole in the ice that I had barely noticed. If Fox had not pointed it out, I might have fallen into it on accident and gotten stuck there. That would definitely be a scary experience!
After the hole, there was what felt like a slide that lasted for twenty seconds or so. It was pretty slippery, the ice, and I knew that if I tried to climb back up it I was likely to break my neck. That would jeopardize our chances of defusing the bomb for sure.
I tried to see the fun part of it- a frozen waterslide!- when we finally arrived at the bottom. With being on terra firma once again, it was easier to see my surroundings.
We were in an icy tunnel about eight feet tall and ten feet side to side. It was a beautiful blue color, the same color as the eyes of Willow and me. And yet, this memory made me feel sad.
Willow.
If this mission failed, I might never see her again. That thought in and of itself was enough to make me determined to succeed, but it also made me want to cry at the same time. Emotions could really mess with your head.
"Be careful" Fox said. "The ice is very slippery, and we don't want to have to call in a trauma surgeon from our medical team".
"Wait, you've got a medical team?" Abigail asked.
"You didn't know that?" I asked.
As it turned out, Abigail had only been at the academy for about a week longer than I had. She must not have been present when I had collapsed weeks ago.
"I'm the guy who passed out in the flight simulator last month" I said, trying to sound emotionally neutral, just telling it like it was.
"Really? Poor you" she said, in a voice that told me that she didn't really care.
"Yeah" Fox said. "And Lucas had to go through a tilt-table test, but he is perfectly okay. Otherwise, he wouldn't be on this mission with us".
"But you do have a medical team here?" Abigail asked.
"We have pretty much a complete hospital wing at the school, but I think you should know that by now" Fox said. "It's not like that's important, though; I'd rather get through this without anyone getting any serious injuries. It's another five minutes to the bomb, and then we'll have to descend back down the glacier through the darkness".
"Why couldn't we have landed the chopper at the top of the glacier?" I asked.
"Simple. It would have slid down the ice" Fox said, as though that should have been obvious.
"How will we get out of this tunnel?" Abigail asked, as we passed more and more ice that reflected us in weird ways, like a house of mirrors at a carnival.
"There's another way back that doesn't involve the slide" Fox responded. "Come on, we're almost to the bomb. Let's go!"
The bomb was impossible to miss. Absolutely impossible.
It was built into the wall, or so it seemed to me. There were eight giant red sticks of dynamite attached to it, that would no doubt obliterate everything that was within range of the glacier.
"Do you know how to defuse it?" Abigail asked.
"Yes" Fox said. "I don't like the amount of time we have, though".
Fox pointed to a digital timer with red numbers. It read 7:33, and was counting down by the second.
Meaning that we only had about seven and a half minutes to get this thing defused.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked.
"No, Lucas, just stay put. I thought that I would need help, but it's actually pretty simple. The question is whether I have enough time to get this thing neutralized".
Fox took a wrench out of his harness, which he also seemed to be using as a tool belt Leo Valdez-style. It wasn't a magical one, but you know what they say about any sufficiently advanced technology.
"Crap...shit...fuck!" Fox said through clenched teeth.
"What is it?" Abigail and I asked in unison.
"There must be some kind of lock on this thing. We don't have enough time! Let's run!"
We didn't question Fox's orders. We jogged down the icy tunnel. More accurately, we slipped and slid, trying to stay upright as much as possible. It was more like ice skating than running, but we made some distance.
"Oh, no!" Fox said.
"What is it?" we asked him again.
"I think it's going off now!"
We were still thirty yards from the bottom of the slide when Fox led us down another tunnel. However, we were too late.
COLE'S POV
BOOM!
"What was that?" I asked Leon.
"I think it was a bomb, dude!" a boy in front of me said.
THE bomb.
And Lucas is inside those tunnels.
I tried to make a move to get in there to try to help, but it wasn't going to have done anything anyway. At that moment, the shockwave hit us.
Snow flew everywhere, blinding me. It was almost beautiful through the orangey light from the winter sunset, but I knew that this was bad news.
And then, it hit us. The rope was snapped in two, and snow and ice kept falling away. I was no longer protected should what was below me give way. Already I could see other students falling, in all probability to their deaths. Lucas was probably down there somewhere, most likely nothing but stardust now...
After that, the foundation of snow and ice that had been supporting me fell out from under me, and I went tumbling down the side of the mountain.
It was absolute chaos. We weren't going at a complete free-fall, it was more like repeated somersaults (very painful against the ice), but it was even more confusing. The broken ropes that bound me to the others twisted and turned, like we were caught in an extremely grotesque dance routine.
Every so often, the sun illuminated a patch of snow, and I was able to see what was ahead of me and (kind of) control my descent. Whenever that happened, though, another wave of white snow came and buffeted us, and we kept on careening down the glacier.
All around me, I could see others flailing around, and doing somersaults like they were in a washing machine on the spin cycle. The metal clips on people's harnesses were jingling around, creating more noise and confusion than there already was on the mountain due to the blizzard.
Just when I thought this pattern would never end, we went off a twenty-foot headwall, and I landed on my rump in the cold snow.
It was just like a chair beneath me. I had been one of the lucky ones. Other people were struggling to stay above the rapidly settling snowbank, and it was looking as though some might not make it.
But more and more people kept popping up, like the mountain was a field in Whack-A-Mole. Leon, too, emerged out of the snow, turning paler.
.As avalanches go, it could have been a lot less fortuitous than ours. We ended up right next to our helicopter.
Finally, twenty of us had surfaced above the snow.
"Leon! Will you do a body count?" one of the others asked. It was Cecil Bentley, I remembered. Yes, that was his name.
"Yeah, Bentley. Let's do this!".
"We've got Abigail, Bentley, Cole, Frederick, Jason, Octavia, Underwood, Baylor, Taysom...is that all?"
"Wait up!" shouted a thickset boy whom Leon had addressed as Jason.
"Yes?" Leon asked.
"Where is Lucas? And what about Fox McCloud, the most important one of us? I don't see them anywhere!"
The bad part was, I looked around and saw that Jason had been right, as much as I desperately wished he wasn't.
"This is very bad. And we've got the chopper right here. We can take off right when we have them...but where are they?
Fox McCloud had disappeared. And so had Lucas.
LUCAS'S POV
I felt like I fell for a very long time. I tried to keep an eye on Fox, who held my hand the whole time, but I noticed that Abigail had managed to get above the rapid avalanche.
Eventually, we hit the bottom, wet, fluffy snow. I was bracing myself for the snow to come down and crush us. This might as well turn out to be my tomb. Forget being buried on the Enfield family plot!
It never came.
I didn't realize why until Fox gestured above him. "The ice has settled. It's not going to crush us. Truly, we have been very fortunate".
"Except for the fact that we're stuck in an air pocket in an avalanche!" I yelled.
"Don't waste your breath, Lucas" Fox said. "By now we're hungry, dehydrated, and yelling just uses up more air. If you have to talk, talk quietly".
I knew that he was telling the truth. At this point, we should just be focusing on staying alive long enough for a rescue team to come and get us.
My throat was very dry from six hours of not drinking anything. No, close to seven.
As if he was reading my thoughts, Fox said, "Don't eat the snow, either. It might quench your thirst, but it will ultimately dehydrate you in the end".
"Wow. You're such a survival expert, Fox" I said, laughing weakly.
"You learn this stuff in the academy. If we make it back there, you will become just as great as I" he said, raising his head.
We were in a seven-foot sphere of ice, blue all around us. Abigail had escaped, but we had not. I really felt that this was quite an appropriate place to have the crypt of Lucas Enfield.
It was also very cold in there, which caused me to shiver. But Fox didn't want me to do that, either, saying that it would just expend extra energy that I had no reason to use right now.
Finally, I felt like I was starting to get sleepy. I had heard that this was how hypothermia victims often died, and I had no doubt that this was going to be me soon. The ice was very wet, and had begun to soak my clothes, covering parts of my body I didn't even want to think about in icy water.
"Just try to stay awake, Lucas" Fox said. "I'd rather you didn't die on me here".
Since Fox himself was a vulpine, he was far less prone to freezing to death than I was. Even so, that didn't help me any. It was a little embarrassing to have to cuddle him for warmth, but that was the point things had come.
COLE'S POV
We had been digging for three hours and still come up nothing. At this point, we were starting to lose hope.
"Maybe we should stop looking" Bentley said.
"No" Leon said flatly. "I'm not going to give up this search, even if there are lots of stars in the sky. Let's go back to the academy. We can get more specialized excavating equipment in order to dig them out. Shouldn't we at least recover the bodies?"
"I agree with that" I said.
And, with that, the decision was made to halt the attempt to rescue Lucas and Fox for now. We would get some more advanced shovels first.
But first, I knew that there was one person I would have to notify of what had happened on the glacier. Someone to whom I was not looking forward to breaking the news.
WILLOW'S POV
"You said he would be safe!"
I wasn't proud of my outburst, but I felt that by now I could at least call Lucas my boyfriend. That would be the most accurate way to describe how I felt towards him.
And now, Cole McCallen, this kid who looked like such a juvenile delinquent, was telling me that he was in all probability dead and buried by hundreds of yards of snow? That does not make my day, to tell you the honest truth. It does not.
In fact, this was the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae that had melted a long time ago. It had melted as soon as Lucas had volunteered to go on this trip- no, as soon as we had been sold here against our will.
"We did everything we could. And we're going to go out again, try to rescue him. Are you going to come?"
I saw no reason not to. After all, I might see Lucas if he survived. And I wanted to be one of the people to greet his grave if he had not.
Either way, I benefited from going.
"I will".
FOX'S POV
Despite all of my best efforts, Lucas managed to fall asleep. This was very deadly in such a cold place as this, because there was no guarantee that he would ever wake up again. At this point, I knew that he was severely hypothermic, and likely to die if not given immediate medical help.
If they did manage to find him, and bring him back despite everything, he wouldn't be able to drink any hot chocolate or anything. They'd have to give him heated saline or something, along with an extremely warm blanket. This was a serious situation indeed.
I had learned all of this in flight academy back when I was Lucas's age. Looking at the pale face of this teenager, his steel blue eyes and fluffy light brown hair, I knew that he had potential. We'd just have to get back, and that was a big if at this point.
To make matters worse, I was starting to get short of breath. I knew that this place probably gave us some oxygen from above, thanks to one tiny hole I could see. I could tell, based on that, that night had fallen. And Lucas was now unconscious. This would really make things better for us.
Great. Just great.
COLE'S POV
After getting some special digging equipment from the storage closet (more like a labyrinthine library), we took it on board the helicopter with us as we returned to the glacier.
Our one goal: to rescue Fox McCloud and Lucas Enfield, renewing our attack on the avalanche snow and saving our friends' lives. It might turn out to be too late for them, but we had a moral obligation to at least try. I didn't know if I would be able to live with myself otherwise, and I figured as much of the others.
We all wanted to get them out of their icy tomb, and we would go to any means necessary.
I felt an extra obligation due to the girl standing beside me on the flight. Willow Foster was the guy's girlfriend. If Lucas died in that mountain, she would suffer for sure.
"We're gonna get it. Get it together" I said, hoping that it was true.
Due to a storm, we were forced to wait out the night before attempting to dig around the snow in the morning. I figured that this was wasting time, and might be getting rid of any chance Lucas and Fox might have had. Leon, however, as well as Bentley and Abigail (the only two other students with us on the rescue mission), figured that this was necessary.
The good news was, the helicopter did have sleeping bags with it, so we were able to get a little bit cozy. I was sitting next to Willow, but I wasn't worried about Lucas getting jealous. After all, he was either unconscious or dead at this point, and I sincerely hoped the former.
If it was the latter, I would be devastated. So would everyone else in this helicopter.
We had to do this. And I knew that we could do this, somehow. Even so, it was a very long night.
Once the sun began to light up the sky once again, we assembled to determine our roles in the rescue.
Bentley and I would be doing the digging with their high-tech shovels. There was also an avalanche beacon attached to it, so that we could sense the hearts beating if there were indeed beating hearts somewhere below all that snow.
Leon and Willow would be taking care of the external rewarming. He had blankets ready, as well as hot packs in order to get Fox and Lucas warm again.
Dr. Howler was also present. She had two large thermoses of hot chocolate, but also had two bags of heated intravenous saline ready in case they were unconscious (which, she told me, was pretty likely).
That was the plan, and we would not deviate from it.
Cecil Bentley had very strong arms. "I'm from Montana, worked on a ranch for a lot of my life" he said. "I know how to use a shovel!"
"Glad we have someone like you" I said. "It definitely helps. One of the people trapped is Willow's boyfriend. I hope we can find him, because he's my friend too".
"Lucas?" Bentley asked me.
"Yeah, he's the one I'm talking about".
"He's the one who passed out in the flight simulator last month, right?" he said.
"How did you-" I said, but then I realized that the answer to that question was very simple.
"It's common knowledge" Bentley told me.
The shovels that we had been provided easily ripped through the ice like it was sand. Even if they were five hundred feet below the surface, an hour of digging would be sufficient to find them.
Thankfully, it didn't take very long until we hit on a round plate of ice that was like a dome in shape. Digging around it revealed it to be a sphere, and it was rather exhausting.
"Could they be in here?" Bentley said.
"It seems quite possible. Let's ask for some more powerful ice picks".
Leon was willing to provide us with ice picks, in order to get through the dome, although he warned us that we should be careful so as not to crush Fox and Lucas. They might be numb by now, but there was no way to tell if they would feel pain or not. Or, they might be crushed.
Or they might already be dead...
No. I had to keep on believing that Lucas was still alive. I couldn't live with that hanging over me.
Bentley and I renewed our attack on the ice. It wasn't difficult to break the ice, and we managed to get a large "window" open in the sphere. Once we cleared the remaining snow and ice away from it, we saw the scene for ourselves.
Fox McCloud seemed to be alive and conscious, because he was shivering. There was no reason to believe that he was in that grave danger. Apparently, being a vulpine must have helped him.
Lucas Enfield, on the other hand, was limp and still on the blue ice. His eyes were closed, and yet there was a smile on his face, as if he was having a very pleasant dream. Which, if there is a heaven, he might have been.
"We've got to get them out of here" Bentley said.
"I agree, let's help get them onto the helicopter".
Fox was too weak to walk on his own power, so we helped to half-lead, half-carry him out of his snowy crypt to the chopper, where Dr. Howler was waiting. Once he was in, they sat him down, and the Bengal tiger began checking his vital signs.
Leon helped us get a stretcher in order to carry Lucas's unconscious body out of there. At best, he was unconscious.
Finally, we had managed to get both of them onto the chopper, and then we sped downwards, eager to leave the glacier behind.
"What are you going to do, Dr. Howler?" Willow asked.
At that moment, the doctor was checking Lucas's pulse. "He's breathing normally, so there is no need to give him extra oxygen. On the other hand, he's still very cold...let's get the blanket".
Dr. Howler placed a blanket on top of Fox and Lucas, who were lying next to each other on a makeshift bed. I touched the blanket, and I instantly knew that this thing was just like a radiator. It would be just as effective to warm both of them up.
"Fox, drink this" Dr. Howler said, handing him a mug of hot chocolate. "It'll warm up your insides, and get some fluids in you".
Fox accepted the drink and took a sip. "That's heavenly" he slurred, like an alcoholic heading home from the pub after a night of heavy drinking.
"And Lucas is unconscious, so he can't drink anything. Thankfully, I came prepared".
I watched as Dr. Howler inserted an IV into Lucas's left arm, hanging a bag of warmed saline solution above him.
"He's also pretty dehydrated, hypothermia will do that to you, so this is going to help him a bunch. It looks like both of them will be fine" she said, smiling at me.
WILLOW'S POV
I wasn't one to cry easily. Even when we had been carted away from our homes, sold by our own families, I managed to avoid shedding any tears.
But now, seeing Lucas look so pale and vulnerable on the floor, I found myself holding back waves of fury coming from my eyes. Cole seemed to be pretty nice now that I had gotten to know him a little better, but the fact that he was the one person I really and truly loved made things worse.
Hopefully, the heated fluids would make him wake up and talk to me. As Dr. Howler placed electrodes on his chest, I realized that I didn't want to lose him. Thankfully, I probably wouldn't.
Even so, it was pretty scary watching all of that happen.
Lucas might have been unconscious, but I felt like he was saying to me, It's gonna be fine. Don't worry. And I hoped that, some other time, I could go out at night and see him again. Maybe even go up to the roof, underneath the stars, and look at the glacier where he had nearly died.
I didn't fully relax, however, until we arrived back at the academy, and Lucas and Fox were wheeled into the hospital wing.
LUCAS'S POV
Slowly, out of the cocoon of warmth that I had found myself in, I managed to surface. I didn't think that I would ever see this room again, at least not from my physical body.
When I had fallen asleep back in that little dome underneath the snow, I had felt myself slipping away, in a way. It was peaceful, though. It was as though some higher being was saying, Lucas, just go to sleep. Never wake up. What's your favorite lullaby?
Imagine my surprise when, instead of pearly gates or whatever heaven might look like, I found myself lying in a hospital bed with electrodes on my chest and an IV in my arm.
I tried to stand up, but my every movement felt sluggish, like when you have a fever. If this was heaven, it sure was a weird one.
One of the machines next to me said, "Patient is awake" in a mechanical, robotic tone. Dr. Howler, who had been looking at something on her computer, came over to my bedside. She was looking surprised but relieved, like she had expected me to never wake up or something.
"Morning" I said groggily.
Dr. Howler, so serious and stoic most of the time, actually laughed. "It's actually not morning anymore".
Remembering the mountain, and the avalanche...it all came back to me. Why I had felt so sluggish. Why I was in the hospital. Yes, that was it.
"How long have I been out?" I asked. My throat was very dry, and it felt like it was lined with sand. No wonder I had the IV.
The Bengal tiger looked at me, more seriously this time. "It's about lunchtime on Monday, so about eighteen hours. Are you hungry?"
My stomach growled, and I realized that I was. I nodded, noticing how much my head hurt.
"You must be very thirsty. Do you want some water?" she asked me.
I nodded once again.
She went over to the bubbler next to my bed and filled a paper cup. Grateful that I didn't have to eat snow, I chugged the water greedily.
"So...what happened?" I asked, feeling the water begin to rehydrate my vocal cords.
"Well, you remember what it was like on the mountain? The avalanche?"
"Yes" I said. "I remember all of it".
"Well, you see, the bomb went off before Fox could defuse it. Because of this, the whole glacier ended up exploding. You and Fox, if you remember, were buried under many tons of snow, but there was a dome that went around you, allowing you to still breathe. Whether it be divine intervention or just plain dumb luck, you are thankfully still with us".
"Where is Fox?" I asked, suddenly realizing that he wasn't there.
Just then, the same vulpine who had been on the mission with us came over. He had evidently not suffered the effects of the cold nearly as much as I had, and had recovered much faster.
"I got hypothermia, too, since I was trapped with you. I can't believe you fell asleep like that, you could have died. You should have died, not that I wish you had. But I came out of it a lot faster. Just a blanket for me, and some hot chocolate".
I snorted, which is my way of laughing when I am slightly amused by something. "Why couldn't I get hot chocolate?"
Dr. Howler didn't say anything, but I could tell based on her expression that she was going to state the obvious. Because you were unconscious and couldn't drink anything, so I had no choice but to give you an IV instead.
"You know, we still have some hot chocolate. I only drank one of the two thermoses, do you want some?" Fox said.
I shook my head. "I'm fine. If it's been sitting out for 18 hours, it's probably cold chocolate by now, right?"
Fox snorted. "Making cheesy jokes. That's a key sign that someone's getting better".
"But about the hot chocolate? Because I'm pretty thirsty right now".
"It's been reheated, and besides, it wasn't out there for the whole time you were unconscious. From what I've been told, they dug from four to seven trying to get us, but then they gave up. They went back to get more specialist equipment so that they could break through the ice. Dr. Howler, is it okay if he has hot chocolate?"
"Only if he promises not to spill it" Dr. Howler said cynically. "These sheets are expensive, you know".
Fox filled a cup with hot chocolate and handed it over to me. My every movement felt sluggish, but I guess that it's just what happens when you get nearly frozen to death and then rewarmed rapidly.
Even so, I managed to sip the brown, frothy goodness, although it could have used a little more sugar. But that wasn't an important thing for me to be concerned about.
After all, I was alive. That was all that mattered.
"So I was really trapped under there? Unconscious? For twelve hours?"
"Yes, that is what happened. You are lucky to be alive, Lucas. I can't believe that we survived that" Fox said, patting me on the leg. He had to avoid my chest because of the electrodes, and he had to be careful of the IV in my left arm.
"Fox McCloud, I am proud to be your flight student" I said, and I really meant it.
Fox laughed. "I'm not actually a teacher here. I'm on leave from combat back on Venom. The situation is really bad there- we're being spread very thin. I wanted to help with this mission, though, so that's what I did. For what it's worth, though, I am proud to be your teacher, Lucas Enfield".
Now, it was time for the moment of truth.
"How long do I have to stay in here?" I asked Dr. Howler. I didn't know if I would like the answer, but it was one of those Band-Aids that you just had to rip off.
The Bengal tiger pursed her lips. "I think that you should stay at least until the morning, and no physical classes for at least a week. Engineering, Field Medicine, those will be fine. Mathematics, too, should be okay after a couple of days. No classes for at least three days, no Aquatics, Flight Simulators, or anything else physical for a week. That is my prescription".
She noticed the annoyed expression on my face, but she said, "Sorry. Your body has just really taken a beating with the temperatures, and it needs to recover. You understand that, don't you?"
I did. Maybe I could use a little rest after the mission today (yesterday, I had to keep reminding myself).
"I'll see about getting you something to eat for lunch. Just sit tight there and wait for it".
She went off to fetch something from the dining hall, but I fell asleep before she came back from warmth and physical exhaustion.
This chapter is dedicated to my father, who has December 27 as his birthday. I always feel bad for those with their birthdays in the winter, because they live farther from Christmas and their birthdays always either get overshadowed by Christmas, or they just have to wait a REALLY long time for their next time where they get a lot of presents. I'm just glad that my birthday is in June, and I'm almost halfway two Christmases. Man, my parents are really getting on in years. But that's neither here nor there.
I hope you enjoyed this ridiculously long chapter, which took me about 4 days to write in total. I had quite a lot of time.
This was an extremely fun chapter to write, and I thought it was HILARIOUS when the joke was made about cold chocolate. As a northerner, we don't like cold chocolate up here!
I am at 20 reviews now, and about 1,200 views on this story. I hope that reaches 50 and 3,000 by the time this story is over. Considering that I expect this to be about 20 chapters (I'm just about done with Chapter 13), we are a little behind schedule. So, please rate and review, guys!
SnowLucario out.
(P.S. I am feeling a lot better now. I just had a fever of 100.4, and I'm glad I got new pajamas for Christmas, because my old ones are pretty dirty and now sweaty).