A Cold Night in Hell

by Tobias Umbra

In this sequel to "A Great Day to Die", Fox McCloud tries to put his team and his life back together and Wolf starts to question his choices as both become tangled in a web of intrigue surrounding a long-lost battleship and a vigilante known as "Kursed"

10. Heart of Darkness

AUTHOR'S NOTE: These next few chapters are a bit special for me, given that they take heavy inspiration from a certain book and its movie adaptation, both of which remain favorites of mine. If you're familiar enough with them, you can probably guess what they are by the titles of this chapter and the next one. I also got to experiment with the idea of language in the Lylat System, which I found pretty interesting. There's no real music for this chapter, though "The End" by The Doors was a sort of musical inspiration while I was writing a lot of the jungle scenes. Again, please review, and you'll have a much faster release in the future. Be careful, though: It's a jungle out there. - TU

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-Heart of Darkness-

"All-right, let's do this dance one more time," Peppy muttered to himself from the communications console on the Great Fox's bridge as Fox slid into the command chair.

"Hopefully we'll get more than just a whimper out of her," Fox sighed, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I went over every bolt of the warp drive, Fox; she's ready to fly," Slippy reassured them from his seat at the engineering station. Fox gave the amphibian a curt nod, turning back to the communications and navigations consoles in front of him. The silence after Slippy's comments was almost disconcerting without Falco there to fill it with a condescending remark; the fact that the avian had'nt emerged from his cabin only highlighted that Fox would have to deal with what happened between them soon enough.

One thing at a time, Fox thought to himself. The past five hours that it had taken for Slippy to repair the warp drive had allowed Fox to disconnect himself from the confusion, anger and shame that he felt for Krystal's betrayal. It was still there, simmering beneath the surface, but he'd managed to channel the feelings into handling the task at hand rather than letting it sidetrack him. The only way to get answers from Krystal was to continue the mission, and take whatever happened in stride. That included dealing with Falco in his own time.

"Couldn't we just use the orbital gate to get to Fortuna?" Slippy inquired, "We could still get there before Krystal and cut her off when she drops out of warp."

"That's not an option, Slip," Fox explained, "The CSB's paying us so that they don't have to take the blame if anything goes wrong. That means we keep a low profile. There's too much regulation, too much attention from using the orbital gate, especially if we wanted to use our clearance codes to jump ahead of all of the civilian ships in line to use it. If we gated out to Fortuna, the security scans would detect that the Pleiades isn't in the docking bay. If the CSB decided to look at those scans, they'd know something went wrong, pull the contract and we'd lose everything. We can't risk it."

Slippy nodded in agreement as ROB finished entering the navigation data.

"Secure course plotted for Fortuna, Commander," ROB instructed, "Warp jump record sent off to Cornerian Commerce Ministry."

"Engines are primed for jump to light speed, warp core spinning up. Everything looks smooth," Slippy reported from the engineering console.

"Attention all hands, Great Fox commencing jump to maximum warp on a secure course," ROB announced over the intercom, addressing the entire ship, "ETA twenty seven hours, forty five minutes. Jump in T-minus five, four, three, two, one. Commence jump."

A dull, energized hum rumbled from the deepest depths of the Great Fox, and the red fur on the back of Fox's neck began to prickle up as his stomach churned and a tingling sensation appeared at his fingertips. It usually annoyed Fox that he would still get jump-sick after all his years of space travel, however this time the familiar wave of slight nausea was a relief, telling him that things were going right. He dug his fingertips into the armrests of his chair as the humming noise grew louder, the ship quaking lightly as the plasma engines came to life. The stars visible through the bridge's main viewport stretched out to form infinite blue and white streaks, and then there was a jolt as the entire ship shot forward into space at faster than light speeds.

A relieved exhale of breath escaped from Fox's jaws as Slippy let out an energetic, victorious whoop, a beaming smile spreading across his large face.

"The ship has achieved maximum warp, Fox," ROB-64 reported, his neutral synthetic voice tinted with a hint of pride.

"Looks like you saved the day, Slip," Fox remarked warmly.

"Way to go, Slippy!" Peppy saluted.

The amphibian leaned back in his chair and blew on his fingertips with mock nonchalance, still grinning emphatically.

"Well, we've got twenty eight hours until we get to Fortuna," Peppy explained, "I suggest we use that time to get some rest and prepare for what we'll be doing down there."

Slippy nodded and got up from his chair, exiting through the bridge doors as Fox slid out of the command chair and looked at Peppy.

"You want to start making plans for Fortuna?" Fox inquired hollowly, scratching his shoulder under his jacket, "I'll get the intel the CSB gave us loaded into the war room so we can-"

"Fox," Peppy cut off, "You're exhausted. You've been through a lot tonight. Get some sleep, you've got more than enough time."

"You sure? I want to make sure that we've got everything covered so it doesn't turn into a shit-show like in Apollo. I wanna make sure we know how to deal with everything she might-"

"Fox, when I said do your job to keep Krystal off your mind, I didn't mean burn yourself out. The ship's fine, we're on our way, and we'll have plenty of time to sketch out op-plans. Get some rest so you can be at a hundred percent. You'll need it."

Fox nodded, swallowing.

"I just…I don't know if I'll be able to get to sleep. Not with her on my mind," Fox whispered.

"Try," Peppy encouraged, putting a hand on his shoulder, "I promise it'll be easier than you think. Meet me in the war room around zero six hundred, alright? That'll still give us more than enough time to formulate a plan and keep everything together."

Fox nodded again, a troubled look on his face, and made his way off the bridge and towards the turbolift.

When he reached his cabin and finally threw himself into his bed, he spent almost an hour tossing and turning as he struggled not to dwell on Krystal, even though he could still smell her on his sheets. The pent-up fatigue finally took hold early into the second hour, and Fox slipped into a quiet sleep. But his dreams were haunted by blue flames, and cyan eyes glaring at him cruelly through the darkness.

When Fox awoke a full twelve hours later, he did not brood upon or carefully consider the Krystal-inspired dreams that had plagued his slumber, instead he went through his regular waking routine, trying to occupy his mind with anything else but thoughts of her. He put on his workout clothes and then took the turbolift down to D deck, helping himself to a breakfast bar and a glass of water from the galley before going up to the gym room on A deck. During the hour-long workout, Fox couldn't stop his mind from wondering on to Krystal, however the anger and frustration that came with those thoughts only gave him more energy to power through each exercise stronger than he'd ever done before. After working out he sprinted back to his cabin, showered off and dressed himself back into his flight suit, boots, jacket and red scarf, leaving his pilot's headset on his desk. He then went back to the galley for a more complete breakfast of eggs and Katinan bison bacon with orange juice, then journeyed back up to his cabin and cleaned his teeth with an ultrasound toothbrush.

Fox then took the lift up to B Deck and met Peppy in the war room, spending the next few hours going over the intel that the CSB had given them on Fortuna and the Venomian Remnant camp. Though StarFox had been to Fortuna before, during their campaign against Andrew Oikonny's Remnant forces, they had never left their Arwings. This time, they would need to be on the ground, and would have to take into account any obstacle that they might run into. It didn't take them long to realize that, due to the conditions and climate of Fortuna itself as well as the political state of the planet, the StarFox Team had its work cut out for them.

The first planet of the Triton sub-system, Fortuna was the home world of the primate, reptile, and avian races and was the most humid terrestrial planet in Lylat. Another sentient race native to Fortuna were the greater felines, which included tigers and panthers that were markedly larger-framed than the lesser feline race of Corneria. Where Corneria's surface was covered by sixty-five percent water, Fortuna was almost a complete 50-50 split between land and sea, one half of the planet covered by an enormous super-continent. The planet's natural humidity and the intricate system of rivers that ran all over the continent meant that practically every land area was thoroughly hydrated, covering the surface with vast, deep rainforests, grassy plains-covered hills and jagged mountains. Even though the planet was the first world of the Triton sub-system to be conquered and colonized by the Cornerian Empire over a millennium ago, several of the jungle regions remained unexplored well into the present day, within which still existed primitive tribes of avians, apes and reptiles (both chameleon and crocodilian) that had never seen a trace of modern civilization. The jungles were also crawling with some of the most diverse, unique and dangerous wildlife in all of Lylat, with several species of apex predators that would happily make a meal out of an average-sized person.

Out of the three sovereign governments in Lylat, Fortuna was without a doubt on the bottom rung, possessing neither the heavy industry and mineral resources of Macbeth nor the military might and high-tech consumer economy of Corneria, relying instead on its food exports, tourism and manual labor force in the interstellar economy. The Fortunan government, formed after the planet won its independence from the Cornerian Empire with Macbeth in the Lylat Civil War, was relatively totalitarian in its authority and heavily segmented by gender and species. The intelligent races of Fortuna had been involved in various speciesist conflicts amongst each other since even before the Lylat Civil War. The current Fortunan government was dominated by apes and felines, and tended to discriminate against other native Fortunans. In the years leading up to the Lylat War, a civil war had broken out on Fortuna between the government and several anarchist, anti-government factions mostly made up of avians and reptiles. Among the first military actions of the Venomian Empire included aiding the Fortunan government in suppressing and exterminating the rebels, and in fact Fortuna was the only planet in Lylat that Venom did not actively seek to conquer in its heyday. After Venom's defeat, the Fortunan government gave asylum to the fleeing remnants of the Venomian Army, harboring thousands of people directly responsible for the war's worst atrocities. In the years since the war, the Venomian Remnant became unofficial allies of the Fortunan government, fighting against the rebel factions with the same guerilla tactics that they used against the government. When StarFox defeated Andrew Oikonny's faction before the Aparoid Invasion, the Remnant was essentially gutted of some of its most powerful ships and personnel. In the two years since, the left over forces of the Remnant commanded by General Maximilian Zaius managed to rebuild and fortify themselves at least enough to prevent any of the rebel factions from claiming major victories over the government.

The location of the Venomian Remnant base was deep within the Kongis jungle region, a dense and directionless rainforest a hundred kilometers from the planetary capitol of Kan-Doltha. Not only was the Kongis a thick and mostly unexplored jungle, it was also regarded as one of the most dangerous regions of Fortuna because of how many rebel factions were based in its depths. The United Fortunan Independence Army (or the UNFIA) and the Vs, the two largest and most violent rebel factions, had an especially strong presence in the Kongis to mount strikes on the capitol.

The difficulties of the operation were compounded: They would not only have to worry about dealing with the Venomian Remnant (which could just as easily keep their end of the bargain or kill them all for the misery StarFox had caused them in the past), they would also have to look out for the rebels hiding in the jungles that would be looking to kill them, steal their ships or both. On top of this, they had to find the Remnant's base in an uncharted jungle crawling with a menagerie of dangerous animals, and if the government of Fortuna were to discover them, there was a fair chance they would be arrested (and probably executed) as spies. And as if this wasn't enough, they also had to find Krystal in the jungles, secure her and get the disc before she reached the Remnant. This last part was especially tricky since Krystal had probably visited the Remnant camp before to set up the disc exchange, and they had no idea what to look for aside from some orbital surveillance footage of what might've been the Remnant camp.

Fox chided himself for somehow thinking that this whole assignment would get easier after the fiasco at Glamorama. They had merely traded one likely-death scenario for another: While their operations in Corneria's worst city saw them headed into a trap, their business on Fortuna would send them into a warzone.

The StarFox Team was journeying into the heart of an immense darkness, and the odds were definitely against them coming out if anything went wrong.

The plan was relatively straightforward. They would use the tracking beacon on the Pleiades, which was still sending out a signal to their knowledge, to follow the shuttle to wherever it landed on the planet's surface. Since Krystal had stolen their usual landing craft, the only feasible way to get to the planet's surface would be to fly the Arwings in and land them somewhere they would be reasonably safe. The time that it had taken to repair the warp drive had nullified the advantage of the Great Fox's faster warp engines that they'd originally had over Krystal; in all likelihood they would arrive at Fortuna within an hour after Krystal did, allowing her enough time to enter the planet's atmosphere and not much else. They would have to be prepared to follow her trail through the jungles and cut her off before she reached the Remnant camp. Assuming they were able to catch up with her, the plan was to subdue her and continue to the Remnant camp with Krystal as a prisoner, if necessary. If they didn't catch her before she reached the Remnant, the plan was all but ruined. The Remnant was expecting Kursed, and if StarFox showed up on their doorstep without her accompanying them, there was no reason to expect anything but a hail of blaster fire. Once they had Krystal, they were to continue with the mission, obtain the disc from General Zaius, and then use the Pleiades to take Krystal back to the Great Fox and place her in the small brig on D Deck. Then they would fly the Pleiades back to the surface with Slippy at the helm to pick up the Arwings, and continue on to the Xerxes to finish their contract. On the way, Fox would be able to interrogate Krystal and find out just why she had done this to them, for whatever reason. When he thought about confronting her and getting answers after so much wondering, Fox's breathing began to increase and his jaw began to tighten.

"You know you can't go down there alone," Peppy instructed, resting his elbow on the large electronic map table in the center of the war room around which he and Fox sat.

"Yeah, I know," Fox admitted quietly with a nod. The jungles were hostile in just about every way, and it was foolish not to bring some backup. Fox also figured that it was a bad idea to face Krystal alone, as reluctant as he was to admit it. Not only was there the chance that his emotions would interfere with what needed to be done, but from what Fox had seen in Glamorama Krystal had become a more than capable combatant in her time as Kursed. Her telepathic abilities, coupled with whatever fighting skills she'd developed, meant that she wouldn't be subdued easily.

"Slippy can't go down there," Peppy reasoned, "Fighting on foot was never his forte. Not to mention that he's even more out of his element in the middle of the wilderness. I wish I could volunteer, but…awww hell, let's face it. I'm not exactly in peak condition anymore. I'm pushing the limits when I'm piloting an Arwing at my age, and this gut doesn't really help, either. Still a good shot, but you're going to need more than that down there."

"I know what you're getting at," Fox conceded, exhaling and leaning back in his chair.

"You're going to have to talk to him."

"With everything going on, I don't even know where to start with Falco. It just feels like there's too much we should be handling first before we sit him down and have an intervention. Krystal dropped a bomb into our situation, the last thing we need is for Falco to be unreliable. He gets that way when he feels alienated," Fox said.

"Then don't alienate him," Peppy shrugged, "Don't be confrontational. Just tell him what we need him to do, and leave the drinking thing for later. You'll probably have to do a little bit of ass-kissing or at least take some heat from him, but do what you need to do. Falco's got a fragile ego, but he's quick to rebound. Get him on your side. Out of all of us, you're the one he listens to most. That's why you piss him off so easy."

"If he listens to me the most, that's probably why we're having so many problems with him," Fox smirked cynically.

"Don't sell yourself short," Peppy growled, pointing at him.

"Hard not to, with all that's happened lately."

"People screw up. Even the ones that have saved the galaxy a few times are bound to make some bad choices down the line. It doesn't have to define you as long as you never give in," Peppy instructed, his brown eyes as hard as stone.

Fox nodded, suppressing a roll of his eyes.

"Alright, you better go get Falco and get it over with. We're about seven and a half hours out from Fortuna still; that gives us plenty of time to prep the Arwings for launch, gather supplies and have a bite to eat. It also gives Falco some time to sober up if he's been hitting the booze in his quarters. I'll meet you two in the armory in about an hour; that talk about my gut's put me in the mood for a workout," Peppy said, glaring down at his paunch.

"Even the ones that have saved the galaxy a few times are bound to get old," Fox smirked, teasingly throwing Peppy's words back at him.

"Old and fat. Enjoy that body while you've got it; it's going to be a piece of shit in about twenty years. Just you wait," Peppy sneered.

"At least I've still got twenty years," Fox grinned, his bushy red tail flicking through the air behind him.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, go on and rub it in my face. Don't you have some tail-feathers to kiss?"

"Look who's rubbing it in someone's face now. I'm going," Fox sighed, getting out of his chair and exiting the war room through the sliding automatic doors.

He made his way to the turbolift and took it back down to C deck, walking down the corridor of rooms towards Falco's door. As he passed the door to his quarters, Fox made a quick stop at his closet to change out his white jacket for the white padded survival vest with the winged canine's head of the Cornerian Flight Academy and Starfleet sewn onto the breast. He'd barely worn it since the mission on Sauria, which had required him to wear something cooler than his jacket. He imagined that the humidity and temperatures of Fortuna would similarly dictate his need to wear something without sleeves. The vest was fire retardant and also functioned as a blast vest capable of absorbing limited medium-power blaster fire, so the choice was more than just for comfort.

Fox exited his room and walked up the corridor, stopping at the door to Falco's cabin. He paused, took in a breath and rapped his knuckles on the clean white door. There was a muffled, confused mumbling sound from behind the door, and Fox looked down to see a strip of light emerging from beneath it. He knocked again, hearing a shuffling from within the room, and then the door slid aside, revealing a slightly bloodshot-eyed Falco wearing a white A-shirt and navy blue sweatpants, his clawed, yellow-scaled feet bare. The avian's blue feathers, normally slicked back for an almost windswept look, were disheveled especially around the left side of his face.

Falco stood in the doorway and just looked at Fox, his lower jaw working over in his beak as his wing-like hand gripped onto the sliding door.

"Hey," Fox finally said to break the silence.

"Yo," Falco returned, his blue eyes hardened disparagingly.

"About what I said earlier…" Fox began, and Falco rolled his eyes and emitted a short, quiet grunt.

"I was out of line," Fox finished.

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Honestly, it's something that we've been concerned about for a while," Fox explained, trying not to mention the definite smell of alcohol on Falco's breath or ask him if he was hung over. The avian let out a jet of breath through the nostrils on his beak and he began to softly shake his head.

"But right now isn't the time to bring it up. We've got too much on our plate. And we need you on Fortuna. For now, I just want to say I'm sorry for what happened," Fox explained.

Falco nodded, drumming his fingers on the door.

"Cool. We'll let it go for now. But when you gotta talk ta me about my shit, there's some stuff I wanna hear from you. Like what was up with that freakout ya had in the club before everything went ta shit," Falco said quietly.

Fox's green eyes widened slightly and his jaw loosened just a bit.

"Ya thought I'd forgot, motherfucker?" Falco demanded, "Just 'cause I got issues, don't mean I can't see yours. You got just as much explaining to do as me."

In all that had happened, Fox had almost forgotten about the flashback he'd suffered at Glamorama. Just because Krystal had shown up didn't mean that those problems had disappeared. Falco was right, though, if he was ever going to intervene about the drinking, there was no way to avoid finally revealing the extent that his encounter with Wolf on Temple still haunted him.

Fox breathed out and looked Falco in the eyes.

"Alright. Next chance we get, we sit down and talk this out. Until then, we do our jobs." Fox yielded.

"Fine by me."

A moment passed and Fox looked the StarFox ace pilot up and down, then said, "Peppy wants us in the armory in about an hour. Can you get ready? Dress for warmth and humidity."

"Yeah, sure," Falco nodded.

"Are you in the right… state for an op?" Fox inquired, choosing his words delicately rather than blatantly asking Falco if he'd been drinking.

Falco leered at him sourly for a moment, then bluntly answered, "Yeah. See ya in an hour."

With that, Falco slid the door closed, leaving Fox standing alone in the white corridor.

Fox spent the next hour in the rec room one deck below, absentmindedly trying to find something to occupy his time. He turned on the holoprojector and tried to watch holovision, but what little the Great Fox was able to pick up at warp only irritated him. Slippy came down for a snack, but he was preoccupied with a new project in his workshop and only wanted to talk about technical details before leaving to go back to his work. Fox spent most of the hour trying not to think of Krystal or of the flashbacks that Falco had reminded him of, which was mostly futile. He was glad when the hour was over and he was able to hop into the turbolift up to C deck to make sure Falco was out of his room on time. As the turbolift chimed and the doors opened up, he was surprised to see Falco standing in the doorway, clear-eyed and with his feathers slicked back like usual, clad in a forest green flight suit with a darker green blast vest. He didn't smell at all of alcohol.

The avian strode into the turbolift and nodded at him, pressing the button for A deck without a word. The doors slid shut and the lift began to ascend.

"So…" Falco trailed off, "Got any idea what you're gonna do when ya see Krystal?"

"We're going to get our disc back, and she's taking us to the Remnant. Whether she's our prisoner or not is up to her," Fox answered, trying to focus on the mission.

"I didn't ask what we was gonna do. I asked what you was gonna do."

Fox sighed, not looking at Falco.

"I'm not going to let her mess with my head anymore. Past that, I'm playing it by ear."

"Just remember, Foxie: she's not your girlfriend anymore."

Fox breathed, pursing his lips and looking askance at Falco.

"I know," Fox respired quietly after a moment.

"Personally, I'm sayin' ta hell with tha' past. She comes in here and robs us, then fucks with tha ship we sleep in? The bitch is goin' down."

Fox threw Falco a look, and the fleshy corners of the avian's beak turned upwards in a smirk. The turbolift then came to a stop with a chime and the doors slid open.

The two StarFox pilots strode down the white A deck corridor, passing the doors to Auxiliary Fire and Damage Control, Slippy's workshop, the gym room and the firing range before reaching the door to the ship's small armory. Fox pressed his right hand flat onto the security panel next to the door and the panel glowed pale green for a moment, analyzing the DNA in the fur on his hand.

"Identity confirmed: Commander Fox McCloud," the panel said in a synthetic voice similar to ROB-64's, and the door slid open.

Fox and Falco walked inside the slightly cramped room full of weapons lockers and gun racks lining the walls, lit by a single glowpanel in the ceiling. The walls were loaded with blaster pistols, rifles, carbines, and heavy weapons of several shapes and sizes, many of which were in varying states of disrepair. There was also a small locker in the corner filled with special weapons that Slippy had designed for the team, including an experimental personal cloaking field generator (currently inoperable thanks to an ill-concieved practical joke that Falco had played on Slippy involving a bucket of water) and a tactical cryo-laser that could flash-freeze practically anything (including the limbs of the person who wielded it). In the center of the room, bookended against a shelf of weapons, was a wooden work table upon which sat a Ventura Munitions R-3 rotary blaster cannon, a monster of an assault blaster with six rotating barrels and enough firepower to level a small building. At this table sat Peppy, who turned to face them as they came into the armory.

"There you are. Nice of you to join us, Falco," Peppy greeted, his glasses reflecting the light of the glowpanel above.

Falco gave Peppy a lazy, silent salute, and listened as Fox and Peppy gave him the rundown on their plan of action on Fortuna.

"Great, can't wait ta' get down there. Ya' know I hate nature? And this is tha damn bush," Falco grumbled after they were finished.

"You're obviously going to need more than just your sidearms down there, with everything you could be up against," Peppy instructed them.

"Then how 'bout we just kick it inta overdrive an' bring ol' painless outta tha' bag?" Falco suggested, patting the array of six barrels on the R-3 cannon, "Betcha could fry half a city with this puppy."

"Not what I had in mind," Peppy remarked flatly.

"We want to be armed, but we also have to worry about the Remnant. If we come in there packing all kinds of heat, they're probably not going to trust us. And, you know, it would be nice if they didn't shoot us on sight either," Fox retorted.

"Weak," Falco teased, "So what are we packin'?"

"I was thinking these," Peppy answered, getting up from his chair and pulling out a pair of ArmsCor Commando 12-S blaster carbines from a weapons rack, setting them down on the table, "Three-shot burst fire, made to penetrate light body armor, and specifically engineered to stand up to moisture-heavy environments. Plus, they're shorter than the average blaster rifle and don't look near as powerful as they are."

"And a lot less sexy than ol' painless," Falco quipped. Both Peppy and Fox ignored him.

"We're going to need something to deal with Krystal, though," Fox mentioned, "Since we're trying to avoid shooting her."

"We are?" Falco probed, the crimson plumage around his eye twitching.

"We still need her for the mission, at the very least. No shooting at her unless she shoots at us first, and we always shoot to wound," Fox directed bluntly.

"Where's tha' fun in that?" Falco muttered, but Fox paid no attention.

"We've got these flashbangs," Peppy suggested, taking a pear-sized grenade out from a weapons locker, "Renders the target blind, deaf and disoriented for a few seconds. But they were made to be used indoors; they'll probably be less effective in the jungle. At the very least, you'd have to make sure it detonates pretty close to her."

"Anything else?" Fox inquired.

"We've got a riot gun that could knock her out, but Slippy said there was something wrong with it, so it's in his workshop until further notice. I think the net launcher still works, but you'd only get one shot," Peppy shrugged.

"I don't think a net's gonna take her down," Falco disputed.

"I'd have to agree. We'll take the flashbangs," Fox concluded. They gathered together their weapons, a Commando 12-S carbine and two flashbang grenades for each of them, then went to work preparing for the mission.

They spent the next six hours preparing the Arwings for launch and generally getting situated for the mission, also having lunch in the galley as a team. When the Great Fox dropped out of warp in Fortunan space, they went to work quickly to minimize the head start Krystal would have on them. Fox e-mailed Rupert Frost that they'd arrived at Fortuna and then journeyed with Falco down to the hangar bay on F deck, where they climbed into their Arwings and fastened their headsets to the backs of their skulls. Almost before Fox realized it, he was being shot out of the Great Fox's trapezoidal launch tunnel and into the blackness of space with a roar of powerful plasma engines.

Through his Arwing's canopy stretched the unlimited black star field of space, with the bright star of Triton blazing far off in the distance. Directly ahead was the massive orb of Fortuna, a green and brown ball with vein-like rivers weaving throughout and thick white swirls of clouds splattered over top. Even though he'd seen the planet before, there was something different, enigmatic about it this time as it revolved before him: The planet seemed to be smiling, frowning, inviting, grandly savage, always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out."

"I'm at your four o' clock, Foxie," Falco's voice came over the comm., snapping him out of contemplating the enormous globe that dominated his view out of the canopy.

"Affirmative," Fox answered into the microphone on his headset, "Peppy, what's the status of the Pleiades' tracking beacon?"

"Slippy just locked on to the signal. She's down there alright," Peppy's voice responded in his ear, "Transmitting the coordinates to your navicomputers. While you're entering the atmosphere we'll pull the ship into orbit over the area and see if we can get some recon data for you guys."

"Thanks, Peppy," Fox sent back, shifting in his pilot's seat and pressing a series of icons on the main console, "Re-adjusting G-diffuser output for entry and atmospheric flight. Executing entry maneuvers."

Fox and Falco's Arwings rocketed into a boost that shot them towards Fortuna, and soon nothing was visible through the canopy aside from the greenish-brown world below. The Arwing began to tremble slightly as the computer console flashed the message 'WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY IMMINENT', and Fox called up the heat radiation shield controls on the console and activated the re-entry protocol, hearing a hum of energy as the fighter diverted weapons system power to the radiation shields. The Arwing's speed increased as Fortuna's gravity dragged the fighter downwards, and Fox gave a quick pulse on the gravity brakes to slow the descent.

"Form up on me, Falco, we're taking a pretty steep dive to get down there fast," Fox instructed as the fighter began to shake more violently and a rumbling sound could be heard from outside the cockpit.

"You got-oxie," Falco's garbled voice came in over the comm. as the orange glow of superheated air blossomed around the nose of Fox's Arwing.

He dug his fingers into the joystick, gripping it tightly to make sure that the fighter stayed in a nose-dive position.

The computer locked onto the planet's surface far below, displaying an altitude of 276 kilometers over the surface of Fortuna on his headset's green scouter over his eye. The number was quickly decreasing as the Arwing sped almost 9,000 kilometers per hour towards the planet, the air roaring around the fighter to an almost deafening degree as the re-entry fires turned a bright yellow and enveloped most of his view out of the canopy.

Fox glanced from readout to readout, carefully making sure that he was on a safe re-entry path and that the shields were holding. As he looked up into the re-entry fires surrounding his ship, he felt his fur start to prickle on the back of his neck, his skin tightening almost uncomfortably so. Fox's breathing increased, and his grip on the joystick began to shiver.

He could feel slick beads of sweat beginning to form on the skin under his fur, and his stomach began to churn as if there were a living thing inside trying to escape.

Keep it together, keep it together. You're fine, Fox thought to himself, trying to calm his nerves. The last time he'd re-entered a planet's atmosphere in an Arwing was when Wolf shot him down in the space over Temple. He'd fought for his life just to keep from disintegrating in Temple's upper atmosphere, and it was only thanks to his talents as a pilot that he hadn't died in the crash landing that totaled his previous Arwing.

It was hard not to think about that fall from the sky months ago, which only made his stomach spasm even more. Fox let out a groan, squinting his eyes shut and fighting against the flashback that he knew was coming. His mouth flooded with saliva to the point that it was hard to open his jaws without drooling, his flesh feeling tighter by the moment as his brain began to heat up.

Fight it, fight it, come on… Fox commanded himself.

He couldn't afford to have a flashback right now, not during re-entry when a loss of focus could quickly prove fatal. He opened his eyes to see his altitude quickly getting lower as his speed climbed higher and higher to 9,500 kilometers per hour, then 10,000. He was going way too fast, but the numbers on the console were getting hard to read, growing fuzzy and morphing into shapes that he couldn't recognize.

He closed his eyes, not trusting them, letting his left hand glide over the controls as his right stayed firmly gripped to the joystick. He didn't need his eyes to know what to press; he'd been flying an Arwing for so long that it was second nature. His hand found the familiar handgrip of the gravity brake controls, yanking them hard backwards for a strong pulse. A screeching roar of the gravity brakes could be heard from outside as the Arwing jerked under him, rocking Fox in his seat.

Stupid, he thought. He'd braked too hard, let his fear take control.

He didn't even know what his altitude was or how fast he was going; he didn't want to open his eyes for fear that he'd see something that would completely disable him.

The Arwing blasted through a pocket of turbulent gas in Fortuna's upper atmosphere that threw the ship wildly off of its approach vector, swerving and twisting the fighter through the air. The frenzied chirping of multiple alarms flooded the cockpit and Fox instinctively opened his eyes with a gasp.

The fiery glow around the ship had brightened into a blinding white-hot aura, brighter than the brightest star. He could feel his spine rattling as the Arwing trembled like someone in the throes of a seizure. His skin felt unreal, as if horrible things were slithering and crawling under his flesh, trying to find a way out before they suffocated. Alarms increased in pitch and urgency, a wailing in his ears only just barely audible under the ear-splitting roar of super-heated air pummeling the fighter.

Something was wrong.

Fox squinted his eyes, putting his left hand over his forehead to block some of the light pouring into the cockpit, leaning forward to try to see the primary console. His vision blurred for a moment as shapes and colors danced on the computer screen, and Fox forced his eyes shut and shook his head fiercely, feeling his brain slosh painfully around inside his skull. He opened his eyes to see the console finally clear and recognizable, displaying a damage readout schematic of the Arwing from the top, looking down. The right G-diffuser was highlighted red, and the variable sweep mechanism on the right wing was blinking red and yellow.

"What the fuck?" Fox yelled, barely able to hear his own voice, unable to understand how the ship's G-diffuser and wing mechanism had become so damaged.

The Arwing began to shake even worse, wobbling through the air like an imbalanced spinning top. He called up a display on the shield systems, watching the console display the message 'WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY. HEAT SHIELDS 15%'

Fox's jaw dropped open, flabbergasted, unable to make sense of how things had gotten so bad, so fast. If he couldn't get the heat shield integrity back up to at least 35% or decrease his speed soon, the powerful friction of Fortuna's atmosphere would melt the Arwing into a ball of molten slag.

"TSF-1, Great Fox, mayday mayday mayday, I've lost power to my right G-diffuser and my right wing rotator is inoperable. Request immediate assistance!" Fox shouted into the microphone on his headset, wrestling with the control stick to bring the fighter back to some sort of control. All he could hear in response to his distress was static over the comm., the atmospheric re-entry naturally causing interference with the comlink signals.

"Falco! Peppy! ANYBODY! I need help!" Fox yelled desperately, trying to get a sense of his position but only seeing the bright yellow-white glow from outside blocking his view of anything else. Another crackle of static came over the comlink, this time joined with a murmuring sound of what could have been words.

Fox jumped at the possibility of help, shouting, "Peppy! Is that you? I'm in an uncontrolled re-entry dive; you need to direct Falco to form up right on my side and expand his heat shiel-"

"Good ta' see you too, McCloud," a rich, gruff voice sneered over the comlink.

Fox could feel the blood drain from his face with dread at the sound of Wolf's voice. It was what happened on Temple all over again, only this time he wouldn't be so lucky.

"Think fast, Fox," Wolf menaced, then the comm. was filled with the sound of his enemy's laughter, cackling and guffawing as Fox plunged to his death.

His heart pounded in his chest, thrusting against his ribcage painfully as he struggled with the control stick, trying to pull it out of the dive as Wolf continued to howl with laughter in his ears.

"Come on, GODDAMMIT!" Fox roared, pulling the stick up and feeling the Arwing lurch only slightly, wobbling on its axis even more than before.

His hand flew to the gravity brake controls and he yanked on them again, hearing the lurching scream of the gravity brakes against the Arwing's inertia as his face was thrown forward into his lap. He could feel his internal organs being scrambled by the g-forces in the split-second before the inertial compensators kicked in, allowing Fox to throw his head back up and look outside the canopy.

The first thing that Fox was able to process was the relative silence: no cacophony of multiple alarms wailing, no blaring rumble of air friction battering the fighter, no Wolf O'Donnell cackling in his ears. The blinding white light that had been flooding into the canopy was gone, instead the re-entry glow had cooled to an orange-red and had shrunk down to the immediate area surrounding the fighter's pointed, dagger-like nose, allowing Fox to see the vibrantly blue sky above. There was a slight rumbling of rushing air outside and the whistling roar of the Arwing's plasma engines, but these were practically whispers compared to the insanity from before. He quickly glanced out the canopy to see the blue G-diffuser housing as well as the right wing both looking perfectly pristine, then called up a damage readout that confirmed the entire fighter was in excellent condition. When the damage readout disappeared, it was replaced by a screen that read 'WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY. SHIELDS 85%'. Currently, his altitude was 75 kilometers over Fortuna, his speed 2893 kilometers per hour. He was coming in a little fast, but other than that, his approach was good. The Arwing was fine.

Fox pulsed the gravity brakes until the fighter was going just under 2,000 km/h and instantly heard a high-pitched roar as Falco's Arwing screamed past, bathed in re-entry flames that cut a swathe of fire through the clouds.

"Too fast for you ta' handle, Foxie?" Falco teased over the comlink, his Arwing performing a barrel roll that flared his shields with a blue-green flash.

"Falco, full brake and decrease speed to point-five Mach, then pull out of this dive and form up on me. Continue descent and level off at two point-five kilometers, then increase speed to Mach one point-two," Fox instructed, breathing hard.

"Fine, fine, party pooper," Falco relented, "That was a pretty bumpy trip down, eh Foxie? Air over this planet's thick as bison shit."

Fox engaged the gravity brakes at full power and pulled up on the control stick, pulling the Arwing out of its nosedive. The brakes screeched and the orange glow of re-entry fires vanished as the fighter leveled off to a milder descent angle, Falco's Arwing swooping in on the left as they sailed down lower and lower through the clouds, going from 70 to 50 to 45 kilometers over the ground in a matter of seconds and getting lower every moment.

There was a low hissing in his ear from the comlink, then Peppy's warm voice could be heard saying, "Everything go alright with your entry, Fox? We got a transmission from you a minute or two ago, there was a lot of interference but it sounded like you were having some trouble."

"Everything's in the green, Peppy. Just had a little false alarm," Fox answered quickly, trying to simply remain calm and take what had happened in stride as he disengaged the re-entry protocol, hearing a hum of energy as power returned to the weapons systems and the shields returned to their default state.

"You sure you're okay, Fox?" Slippy's high-pitched voice intoned over the comm.

"I'm fine now!" Fox snapped quickly, then frowned at his poor choice of words, "Just never mind. I'm looking at my radar display right now and I'm not seeing the signal for the Pleiades anywhere."

"Whups, I guess that's my bad," Slippy chuckled sheepishly.

A second later, a dot appeared at the top of Fox's radar display, broadcasting the location of the shuttle just as the Arwings reached three kilometers over the surface.

"Accelerate to Mach one point-two on my mark," Fox instructed, gripping his hands around the throttle, "Mark."

Both Arwings blasted through the sound barrier with a bluish-white burst of engine fires, vapor cones forming briefly around the ships as they left the thunderous crack of a sonic boom in their wake.

"Proceedin' ta' target. ETA twelve minutes," Falco announced over the comlink while the two Arwings flew in formation through the brilliant blue skies over Fortuna.

Fox was still catching his breath, the cool feeling of sweat still moist on his fur. How much of what he'd seen had been real? Had it all been in his head? The truly confusing thing was the fact that, for him to have made it this far without running into an actual emergency, it meant that he had to be actively piloting the Arwing on a successful re-entry maneuver even while he was hallucinating. The idea that some part of him was still functioning properly, even while his mind was in the grips of horrific visions, did little to ease his anxieties. If he couldn't trust himself to be coherent while he was flying, it would be disastrous to get into a fire fight.

As he felt his heart rate calm down to a normal level, Fox glanced out of the canopy to get his first look at the surface of Fortuna. The planet looked abnormally lumpy, covered with a fuzzy, incredibly green grass, and after a moment Fox realized that he wasn't looking at the actual ground of Fortuna but its trees, treetops as far as the eye could see, stretching off endlessly in a façade of infinite, impenetrable green, the actual surface of the planet a mere abstraction at this distance. The jungle was almost featureless, as if constantly growing and still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness, colored so dark green as to be almost black. Fortuna's sun, Triton, shone a fierce yellow-white in the sky, and the land and trees seemed to glisten with steam, grey clouds of mist blooming just through the green shroud. Every once in a while Fox could see a hole in the shroud, a clearing or the track of a river, but it was no bigger than a pinhead or a crack in the untouched expanse of forest. Aside from these occasional landmarks, it was impossible to get a sense of scale or direction over the verdant shroud below; the only way that Fox knew they were headed in the right direction was the dot on his radar drawing gradually closer to the icon representing his Arwing. Even though Fox and Falco were traveling faster than the speed of sound, with every glance down the surface looked the same, as though they hadn't moved. With everything that he knew awaited him below those treetops, the planet had an ominous, enrapturing quality that Fox couldn't quite describe, the kind of eerie foreboding of a dark and inescapable fate. So much was hiding underneath the shroud—Krystal, the Remnant, the discs, maybe even StarWolf. And as eager as he was to face it, he could not deny a feeling of dread for what was hiding in the darkness of that jungle.

The next twelve minutes passed in a blur for Fox, the featurelessness of the rainforest canopy below distorting his sense of time. He was barely paying attention when Falco came in over the comm., "I think I see it down there. It's a big clearing about a klick ahead. Ya see it, Foxie?"

Fox stared into the distance, seeing a large circular rupture in the green shroud, with a large grey arrowhead-shaped object parked in the center.

"I got it," Fox replied, "Cut your speed and configure the G-diffusers for vertical landing. We're going to have to drop in pretty fast."

He quickly selected the G-diffuser controls on the Arwing's main console, selecting the icon labled 'V/STOL POWER CONFIG,' then slowly throttled down while pulsing on the gravity brakes. A series of short screeches could be heard from the gravity brakes as the fighter's speed decreased, and the two fighters banked downwards with the blue engine flames erupting from their engine nozzles fading to a light glow. The air beneath both of the fighters began to shimmer and sizzle as the ships slowed down to a hover mere meters over the treetops, the G-diffusers almost entirely keeping the fighters in the air. The two Arwings floated over the rim of the clearing, dropping lower and lower to the ground.

"Landing gear deployed…" Fox trailed off, gently guiding the fighter with the control stick, hearing a mechanical whine as three retractable, magnetized landing struts extended from the fighter's undercarriage. He continued to dial down the G-diffuser power, feeling the ship sink lower and lower.

"And…touchdown," Fox murmured as the Arwing jolted, coming to a rest on the surface of Fortuna. He quickly deactivated the flight systems and unclipped his harness, the fighter's engines whimpering to sleep as the console displayed the message 'GOODBYE, FOX MCCLOUD'. Fox slid open the storage panel at his right elbow and withdrew his Commando 12-S blaster carbine, feeling the heft of the rugged black firearm in his hands as the Arwing's transparisteel canopy opened up to allow him to exit. Fox came to his feet and hopped out of the fighter, his grey boots crushing the moss and decomposing leaves that covered the ground. As Falco's Arwing went silent next to his, Fox glanced around at the encroaching rainforest at the edge of the clearing.

The first thing that hit Fox as he took his first few steps away from the Arwing was the air. It was thick and heavy with oxygen and humidity, enveloping him like a tangible thing. Every breath felt refreshing and clean as well as almost suffocating, like trying to breathe through a wet cloth. It had to be more than 40 degrees Celsius.

The clearing itself was practically featureless aside from the three ships parked inside, the ground soft and almost mushy. All around, the dark immensity of the jungle beckoned to them, daring them to brave its depths.

Fox exhaled, already feeling his red fur starting to bristle in the heat and humidity. Falco jumped out of his Arwing, blaster carbine in hand and strode up to Fox's side, the feathers on the back of his head ruffling to release heat.

"Yeesh. Ya' sure we can't just do this in the Arwings?" Falco griped.

"Yep."

"She is gonna be sorry she made me hike through this…"

"Remember, don't-"

"I know, I know, don't shoot her. Not unless she shoots me," Falco grumbled, "Goddamn, I hope she shoots me."

Fox rolled his eyes as they cocked the safeties of their blaster carbines and approached the sleek grey form of the Pleiades parked across the clearing.

"Peppy, we're approaching the Pleiades. No movement so far," Fox muttered into his headset's microphone.

"Be careful, Fox," Peppy came back over the comm., "We're still moving the Great Fox over your position to see if we can get any recon data for you. We also just got a message from Rupert Frost. He wants you to notify him when you're entering the Remnant camp. Just give us a shout and we'll send word to him."

"Copy that," Fox replied, "Moving in."

They kept their carbines at the ready, moving into the shadow of the medium-sized shuttle's landing gear. Moving underneath the grey underside of the Pleiades' hull, Fox and Falco came up to the seams of the boarding ramp, reaching up to a small panel and flipping it open to reveal a single green button. Fox directed Falco to take a few steps back and cover the area, then pressed the button.

The boarding ramp hissed as it lowered, touching the soft ground as the airlock at the top of the ramp slid open. Falco stood at the ready for a few moments, the green scouter over his right eye slaved to his rifle's sights, allowing him near pinpoint accuracy as he trained his aim on the shuttle's entrance airlock. Fox slowly came to Falco's side, pointing his carbine up the ramp as well, then slowly began stepping up the ramp with a quiet click of his boots on the metal. As he reached the top of the ramp, Fox took cover in a corner next to the airlock's opening and silently motioned Falco to make his way up. The avian joined Fox, who covered him as he crept through the airlock into the darkness of the ship's lower level. After a second or two, Fox saw Falco's blue-feathered hand emerge through the airlock and wave him inside. He carefully stepped through the airlock, standing next to Falco in the middle of the ship's lower level.

There were three possible places on the ship that Krystal could've been hiding: In the engine housing to the aft of the ship, in the cargo hold in the arrowhead-shaped bow, and in the cockpit and passenger seating in the second level up the spiral staircase. Fox directed Falco towards the cargo hold with a motion of his hand while he made his way silently to the cramped engine housing room. He slid open the door, peeking inside and wishing that there had been more light, finding nothing but the interlocking pipes and tubes of the Pleiades' five engines. He did note, however, that the control box for the ship's slave circuit system had been torn open and the circuitry inside had been ripped free of its housing.

Fox soundlessly returned to the airlock of the shuttle, where Falco emerged from the cargo hold after a moment and gave the thumbs-up symbol. They both glanced up the cramped spiral staircase, and Fox directed Falco to cover him as he crouched down and slowly crept up the stairs, one silent step at a time. All the while, Fox kept his blaster carbine bared, held close to his hip as he edged his back along the rails of the stairs, always keeping his eyes and his aim on the curving stairs around the corner ahead of him. He reached the top of the stairs, briefly taking cover around the corner of the entrance to the cockpit area before glancing back around to see Falco crouched behind him, his hard predatory eyes leveled at the entrance to the cockpit. Fox made a motion with his hand and Falco snuck forward, nearing the opening before quietly lunging into the cockpit area and sweeping his carbine swiftly over the room. After a moment of stillness, Falco approached the pilot's seat, quickly coming around and leveling the carbine at whoever might be sitting there, then his eyes widened and the fleshy corners of his beak turned downwards in a frown.

"Shit. She ain't here, man," Falco announced.

"Dammit," Fox cursed, joining Falco in the cockpit and speaking into his microphone, "Peppy, we've just cleared the shuttle. Krystal's not here."

"Guess we couldn't expect to be that lucky," Peppy grumbled over the comm. as Fox approached the pilot control consoles, accessing the shuttle's status log on the main computer, "Did she leave anything behind?"

"Yeah, she left tha' disc, gift-wrapped an' right on tha' floor for us," Falco remarked flatly.

"It doesn't look like it," Fox replied into the microphone.

"Whup, scratch that. She left her butt," Falco announced.

Fox turned to tell Falco to knock the sarcasm off, and was surprised to see a burnt-out, half-smoked Dutta Ebony kretek held in the avian's fingers.

"Hmh. Krystal neva' seemed tha' type," Falco shrugged, flicking the kretek through the air.

"You could say that for a lot she's done lately," Fox murmured, returning his attention to the status log on the shuttle's computer console, "The engines were powered down only about fifteen minutes ago."

"She can't have gotten far," Peppy came back over the comlink, "We haven't been able to get much helpful information for you, Fox, but judging from the data the CSB gave us and our own thermal scans, the Remnant camp should be within about two kilometers west of your position. See if you can pick up her trail. I'll send you a topographic map to display on your scouter; but I'm not sure how much help it'll be since it doesn't take into account the thickness of the vegetation in the area."

"Just send it; we'll make do. Moving out," Fox replied, leading Falco down the staircase and through the airlock, pressing the green button to retract the ramp before stepping back out into the clearing, the muggy, hot air smothering him like a blanket. Through the green scouter over his eye, Fox suddenly saw a three-dimensional map of the surrounding area, with a compass rose in the corner pointing him towards an area currently off screen. Fox turned until the compass was pointing him directly ahead into the forbidding, shadowy rainforest at the edge of the clearing, then began walking towards the façade of trees with Falco in tow.

"I think I've got her," Fox announced hesitantly, crouching down near a series of depressions in the soft ground that led in the same direction that his map was pointing him.

"Ya' sure those are hers?" Falco inquired, his eyebrow twitching upwards.

"It's not an exact science and it's hard to be a hundred percent about it…" Fox admitted, examining one of the tracks, "But it looks like her shoe size, and it's pretty recent. The tread patterns make it a boot of some sort. And they're headed in the right direction. Peppy's better at this than I am, but it looks like the best lead we've got."

Falco nodded and they followed the trail towards the verdant barrier of jungle. The trees seemed to tower more and more overhead as they got closer, and Fox's grip on the handle of his blaster carbine tightened.

"Just make sure you stay sharp in here, for all the-" Fox began, only for Falco to interject, "I know. Rebels, Venomians, Krystal. All baddies with guns that don't like us."

"Not just them," Fox informed him, "Keep an eye out for predators, too. Varanis dragons and anacondas especially."

"Ana—whatsits?"

"Anaconda."

"Tha' fuck is that?"

"It's a big fucking snake," Fox snapped, "Grows about fifteen meters long, thick as a tree trunk and likes to eat things about your size. They hide in the rivers and ambush prey that go near the bank. You want to watch out for them."

"Sweet. I hate snakes," Falco groaned.

"Well they love you, so let's not to run into them," Fox remarked.

"Roger that," Falco muttered flatly as they stepped into the shade of the rainforest canopy.

The air instantly became cooler as they began to walk amongst the trees, the light from the sun almost entirely blocked by the canopy of leaves far overhead. A glance upward revealed a patchwork of treetops that obscured almost all view of the skies, with veins of light penetrating through like grout through the seams of a tile floor.

Journeying into the rainforest felt like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted in the earth and big trees were kings. The remarkably clear forest floor, soft with moss and decomposing plant matter, contrasted with the sheer immensity and diversity of the trees and plants enveloping them, the most lurid expression of nature that Fox had ever seen. Trees stretched as high as small buildings, surrounded by hundreds of other trees of similar size and different type, intermingled with hundreds of varieties of vines, ferns, and shrubs. There was so much green that it felt almost oppressive, and in some places the air hung so heavy with moisture that whole areas were cloaked in a muffling, impenetrable fog. Hundreds of types of insects that Fox couldn't even begin to name crawled along the tree trunks and flew through the air, while the symphony of dozens of different birds cawing and tweeting could be heard in the distance.

Aside from maybe the oceans of Aquas, the jungles of Fortuna were the most biodiverse environment in all of Lylat, with one in 15 known species in the galaxy native to the planet. Spending most of his time in either the sterile, lifeless environment of starships or in the bustling megacities of Corneria, Fox felt overwhelmed, uncomfortably so, by the vibrantly fluctuating rainforest all around. Everything around him was in some state of living, breathing, growing, decaying, and dying, as if the forest and everything in it was all one massive, cancerous organism. Fox was accustomed to the trappings of his own advanced civilization, which had conquered and tamed nature to such an extent that it could drain the oceans and practically change the weather. Civilization was an abstract thought here, nature the unbound, untamed, unquestioned master. Fox found it hard to shake the feeling that he was being watched, hunted even, by something within the shades of the forest. Several times he could swear that he saw vines in the process of growing out of the corner of his eyes, their tendrils slithering up tree trunks like snakes. He couldn't tell if it was a trick of the light or the beginnings of another flashback.

As Fox and Falco delved deeper into the rainforest, following Krystal's trail, the shadows cast by the canopy above only seemed to grow darker. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine that occasionally leaked through the treetops. The trail through the jungle ahead of them ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances.

Fox brushed aside a fern with a rustle of leaves, hearing a twig snap under his boot and prompting a wince across his cream-furred muzzle. They needed to be quieter, but to go any slower would run the risk of the trail going cold. Fox could hear the roaring gush of a waterfall far ahead, but beyond about ten meters the air grew thicker and greyer until all that could be seen was a white wall of fog.

Even though it was considerably cooler in the shade of the canopy, the air was still thick and heavy enough that the fur on Fox's arms was becoming matted, and he occasionally caught himself panting slack jawed from the heat. Whenever he did, Fox hastily corrected this behavior to prevent Falco from making some sort of remark about it.

Fox glanced ahead to see a new set of Krystal's footprints in the soil, confirming that they were still on the right track, when a rustle in the branches above dripped water onto his bare shoulder. They both looked up and heard a pair of warbling squawks, the distinctive splayed-out wingspan of a violet macaw flapping overhead. The macaw unleashed a few more reedy croaks as it fluttered away into the trees. Fox looked back at Falco and suddenly burst out laughing at the sight of a blue mohawk of feathers standing erect on the avian's head.

"What?" Falco demanded, the stiff plumage on his skull fanning out to be even more erect.

"I should tell Katt she's got some competition," Fox chuckled, cupping his hand over his muzzle as his tail swept back and forth in amusement.

"Whaddaya talkin' about?" Falco interrogated hotly, then his beak clamped shut and his hand instantly went to the top of his head, discovering the erect head crest and forcefully smoothing it down, his eyes softened in a rare show of embarrassment as he cursed under his breath. Fox tried to suppress his chuckles, but he didn't succeed.

"Shaaaddup, fuzzball," Falco shot back, "At least my mouth don't hang open like a droolin' retard when it gets hot."

"Does that always happen when some parrot notices you, or did this one just do it for you?" Fox grinned, rounding the trunk of a particularly thick tree and thinking about how much Slippy would enjoy being told this story.

"Fuuuuuuccccckkkk you," Falco drew out, "Ya' better cut that out, fuzzball, I'm gettin' a little pissed."

"Wow, what a change of…pace," Fox trailed off, stopping mid-step and staring down at a tiny, glowing orange dot in the shade of a small fern. He crouched down and brushed away the fern's leaves, revealing a fresh and remarkably clear footprint of Krystal's along with a still-burning Dutta Ebony kretek in the dirt nearby.

"Hel-lo," Falco remarked softly, staring at the kretek in Fox's fingers as he stood up to full height.

"Something's up here," Fox muttered, scrutinizing the kretek, "She had to know we're following her. There's no way she'd be that sloppy."

"She's gotta be close if it's still lit, right?" Falco whispered, drawing close to Fox.

"Five minutes ahead at most," Fox mused, "But why would she be so careless to just leave this here after covering her tracks before now? Either she's trying to lead us in the wrong direction, which she didn't have time for…"

"Or?"

"Or she wants to be found," Fox finished.

They had hardly brought their carbines to their shoulders before a volley of blue particle beams lanced out of the mist-shrouded forest ahead and plowed into the tree trunk nearby. Fox and Falco both instinctively leapt to the side, taking cover behind separate tree trunks as blue blaster bolts hissed out of the fog and darted through the air, punching into the trees with a burst of sparks and the odor of scorched wood.

"Cleva' girl, huh?" Falco yelled over the blaster fire, snapping his head back in surprise as a particle beam punched a hole through the tree trunk near his face.

Fox pushed his back into the tree trunk as he gripped his blaster carbine tightly, waiting for an opportunity to give Falco enough covering fire to outflank her. Falco seemed a bit less patient, unclipping a stun grenade from his belt.

"Enjoy, doll-face," Falco called out, pecking the pin out of the egg-shaped grenade with his beak and lobbing it into the fog. They took cover as a flash of white light and an earsplitting boom pierced the relative silence of the forest, prompting the rustle of trees and the frightened calls of birds taking flight from above. Just under all of this, Fox could swear that he heard a female voice letting out a cry of distress up ahead.

They waited about two seconds to make sure that they weren't being fired at before leaping out from behind their trees and charging forward, squeezing the triggers on their blaster carbines. The Commando 12-S jerked in Fox's arms as it spat out green blaster bolts in rapid one-two-three bursts with every pull of the trigger, firing a steady stream of green into the clouds of fog ahead. His feet smashed into the soft jungle ground as he and Falco rushed forward, their carbines popping as they blindly fired at the mist.

"Cover!" Fox barked as they reached a thick tree surrounded by ferns, throwing his shoulder into the trunk with Falco just as more blue particle beams shot out of the mist. The blue bolts hissed through leaves and ferns like needles through paper, flashing past into the dim jungle depths behind them or plowing into a tree trunk with an explosion of sparks.

Fox gritted his teeth as the firing continued. He didn't even know for sure that it was Krystal, the fog had been so thick that it was impossible to tell just who was shooting at them and where they were. He edged his head around the curvature of the tree trunk, moving only millimeters at a time until he could see a small clearing about ten meters ahead, the sunshine giving enough light to make out the silhouette of an athletic female figure holding a heavy blaster pistol in each hand. Fox wasn't even allowed a moment to get a good look at the figure before it fired a blue particle beam that tore a grapefruit-sized chunk out of the tree trunk above his right ear. He yanked his head back behind cover, gripping onto his carbine tightly and letting out a growl as the firing suddenly stopped.

"I know every move you're going to make; even before you do," Krystal's posh, silky voice called out, "Fighting me isn't wise for either of you."

Just the sound of her voice spurred a rising sensation of pain and outrage in his chest. Fox bared his teeth and unclipped the grey hexagonal reflector device from his belt, handing it to Falco and signing an order to flank to the right with his hands. The avian nodded and Fox held up a fist, signaling him to wait.

"Listen to me!" Fox yelled, "Make it easy on yourself and we can talk this out. I know you're angry. But there's only one way this ends, Krystal."

"There are several ways this ends, Fox. The only constant is you, face-down on the ground. But if you're determined to prove me right, then let's bloody have at it."

"I DON'T want to hurt you, Krystal!" Fox retorted.

"You won't," Krystal hissed, "And that's not my name anymore."

"Oh, fuck this," Falco scoffed, grabbing one of the stun grenades from Fox's belt, pulling the pin out and lobbing it around the tree. The egg-shaped grenade sailed through the misty air, reaching the apex of its trajectory just as a blue particle beam blasted the grenade apart.

Falco growled and leapt out from behind the tree before Fox could tell him otherwise, firing off a burst of blaster bolts from his carbine before activating his reflector device. A hexagonal blue shield blossomed in front of Falco just in time to reflect a blue bolt back to its sender.

Fox leapt out from behind the tree to see the beam dart harmlessly into the depths of the jungle as Krystal leapt almost effortlessly to the side, bringing her twin DC-15 pistols up to bear at the same moment that Fox pulled the trigger, aiming for her legs. Almost in slow motion, the blue vixen pounced through the air, leaping over the three green blaster bolts before rolling across the ground and opening fire from a kneeling position. Fox lunged forward as a blue particle beam flashed past his ear, seeing a bolt graze Falco's shoulder just out of the corner of his eye. Krystal shoved her right-handed pistol into its holster, taking aim at Falco with her left as Fox charged towards her angrily, raising the butt of his carbine like a club. Fox was just about to smash the back of Krystal's head with the butt of the blaster when Krystal fired a shot into Falco's green blast-vest that threw the avian off of his feet, then lunged upwards and grabbed Fox's carbine with her free hand. She twisted around and came to her feet, stunning Fox with a knee to his stomach before elbowing him in the snout, snapping his head backwards with a flash of pain. Holstering her other pistol, Krystal grabbed Fox's carbine with both hands and yanked it out of his grip while he was still disoriented, then smashed the back of Fox's leg with the butt, bringing him to his knees and cracking him across the side of his face. Fox yelled out, the copper taste of blood in his mouth as he hit the dirt, seeing Falco sprinting forward with his hand on the reflector device.

Krystal brought the carbine up as Falco flung the hexagonal device through the air, the blue reflector field blooming out from the device just as it collided with Krystal's elbow. The vixen shouted and the carbine flew out of her hands as the reflector's induction field zapped her with a burst of electricity, knocking her backwards as Falco charged forward with his carbine in one hand and a clenched fist in the other.

Krystal tumbled to the side in an azure blur, the burst of green blaster bolts from Falco skimming just past her knee when she came to her feet, Falco's fist flying towards her jaw. In one fluid motion she bent backwards, grabbing Falco's wrist for balance as her foot came up and kicked into his beak. The avian fell backwards with a coughing squawk of pain just as Fox came to his feet and ran towards her, leaping into the air and thrusting his leg for a flying kick to Krystal's stomach. She caught his extended leg by the knee and ankle, using his momentum to twist around and throw him across the clearing. Fox yelled as he plowed into the ground, rolling across the soil with a throbbing pain in his hip and dirt caking the fur of his bare arms.

Fox and Falco got to their feet, wiping the blood from their mouths as Krystal drew both of her guns and aimed one at each of them. There was a momentary pause when she glared at them with steely cyan eyes, each of her pistols trained on their foreheads as they both stood without a weapon in hand. Then a cruel smirk appeared on her soft lips and she holstered her guns, sneering, "Surely you can do better than that."

Neither of them bothered to draw their side arms and instead rushed at her from either side, a fire burning in Fox's gut telling him to silence her pithy comebacks.

They reached Krystal at the same time, throwing their fists in her direction as she leapt into the air, scissor-kicking her legs so that one foot struck Fox's chest and the other foot struck Falco's. Fox stumbled backwards as Krystal came back to the ground and ran towards him, swinging her foot around for a kick to his shoulder. Fox blocked the kick and elbowed Krystal in the stomach, producing a satisfying grunt of pain from the vixen as she tripped backwards. Krystal dodged Fox's jab to her solar plexus, ducking underneath the crook of his arm and pressing her back into his chest, gripping his extended wrist. In a split-second, Fox saw Krystal tilt her head backwards and gaze into his soul with those sharp cyan eyes, then she planted a light, teasing kiss on his lips. Then she used his arm to throw him forward over her shoulder, slamming Fox on his back into the jungle floor.

The wind flew out of his lungs as Fox hit the ground, stunned, and Falco rushed forward with rage burning in his raptor's eyes. Krystal leapt through the air to meet him, swinging her leg out towards his face only for the avian to duck down and dodge it. Krystal landed gracefully on the ground, flipping her azure hair out of her eyes just as Falco slugged her in the face. She tumbled backwards as Falco threw another jab towards her and Fox rolled to his feet. Krystal blocked Falco's punch with one hand and backhand slapped him with the other, then punched him in the ribcage and struck him between the eyes with the flat of her palm. Falco fell backwards as Fox sprinted up to meet her, Krystal twisting through the air and lashing out with her foot. Fox ducked under the kick as she came down, jabbing her with a kidney punch that made her cry out in pain. Fox's victory was short lived, as Krystal swung around and drove the side of her fist into his jaw, throwing him backwards.

He was quick to regain his balance, darting rearwards and narrowly dodging Krystal's knifehand strike to his face before leaping into a hook kick aimed at Krystal's shoulder. The vixen cartwheeled to the side, Fox's foot sweeping over her head, both of their feet touching the ground at the same time. Fox charged towards her and Krystal somersaulted backwards, running off to the edge of the clearing. He gained on her, almost close enough to grab her blue bottlebrush tail until she jumped up and grabbed onto a low-hanging tree branch, swinging her legs forward before kicking both of them backwards into Fox's upper chest. The StarFox leader choked as he found himself once again on his back, quickly sitting up to see Krystal leap over his head and run to meet Falco, who grasped an egg-shaped object tightly in his hand.

"Cover!" Falco shouted as he blocked Krystal's punch to his face, then thrust his head forward almost as if offering it to her.

Fox saw the exact moment that Krystal's fist connected with Falco's beak, just as he dropped a primed stun grenade right between her feet. He quickly looked away and clamped his hands over his ears, kissing the dirt just as the piercing explosion of light and sound erupted from the small grenade.

Fox opened his eyes and sat up, feeling a slightly disorienting ringing in his ears, but it seemed mild compared to the state that the other two were in: Falco was on his hands and knees, breathing raggedly as blood trickled from his beak, while Krystal struggled to stay standing, grabbing blindly at the air.

Fox leapt to his feet, wiping the blood away from the corner of his mouth and storming towards the temporarily blind and deaf Krystal. Gripping her arm in his right hand and her neck in his left, Fox slammed her backwards into a nearby tree trunk then ripped his EE-40 blaster out of its holster and pressed it into her temple.

His grip on her neck tightened until he was sure he was choking her just a little, then he waited a moment for the effects of the grenade to wear off before drawing his face close to hers and roaring indignantly "WHY?"

He stood there with his hand around her neck and his gun to her head, breathing raggedly and covered in sweat and dirt, the taste of blood still fresh in his mouth as he stared into her eyes, once so gorgeous and full of promise, now only empty and haunted. She glared at him unyieldingly, her lip upturned in a sneer.

"Why not?" she whispered finally.

A heavy feeling sank through Fox's chest at her words, a stunned frown spreading over his muzzle. She continued to stare him down, unconcerned by the gun pressed to her head, as Falco struggled to his feet behind them with a groan.

The avian breathed groggily for a few moments as he stepped carefully across the clearing and retrieved his blaster carbine and the reflector device, then walked over to them and raised the gun up to Krystal's side.

"Yeah, so what was that ya' said 'bout knowin' every move we were gonna make? I guess improvisation's a bitch, huh?" Falco riposted, narrowing his glacial blue eyes.

Fox continued to stare her, his brow furrowed and his frown morphed into a grimace, his hand still tightened around her neck. More than anything, he wanted a straight answer from her.

"Right now's a bit improper for a heart to heart, don't you think, Fox? We do have people waiting for us," Krystal reminded him coolly, the blaster still shoved into her temple. The fact that she'd read his mind and knew what he wanted only infuriated him more, and he grit his teeth together in a fierce snarl.

"Yo Foxie, we gotta keep movin'. We can do this later," Falco insisted.

"I want to know why she did this to us. I want to hear her explain it," Fox menaced, his eyes still locked onto hers.

"Remember what ya' said ta' me? Tha' part about not lettin' her get in your head? Think about this, man," Falco protested.

Fox's breathing slowed, and his glare softened, and his angry scowl became a frown of sad regret.

"Put her in cuffs," Fox breathed, keeping his EE-40 blaster up to her head.

Falco withdrew a pair of thick grey metal binder cuffs from a large pocket on his blast vest, opening them up with a small remote before grabbing Krystal's arm and snapping one of the manacles over her wrist. Fox released Krystal's neck and stepped back a bit, his blaster pistol still leveled at her face as Falco restrained Krystal's shoulder, turned her around and snapped the other manacle over her wrist, pressing a button on the remote that made the manacles tighten to her arms.

"The more you struggle, the tighter these things will grip," Fox explained, holstering his pistol, "I've seen them crush a guy's wrist."

"By all means, hurt me as much as you'd like," Krystal smiled, "Make sure you frisk me good, too. Don't forget my panties and my bra, Fox."

He gave her a hard look, and she only smirked back, as Falco took her two heavy pistols out of their holsters and stuffed them into the large pocket on his blast vest, then removed her extendable electrostaff from the sheath on her back and took the combat knife out of her belt.

Fox ran his hands over the pockets stitched to the legs of Krystal's bodysuit, feeling for anything inside. His fingers crushed a palm-sized object in a pocket on her upper thigh, and he opened the pocket and withdrew a shiny silver holodisc in a small half-moon shaped holder. He exhaled through his nose and slipped the holodisc into a pocket on his white vest, while Krystal only smirked at him like a child caught sneaking snacks before dinner.

Even disarmed and with her hands cuffed behind her back, her bright and sunken eyes still made her look dangerous. Wrapped up in her tight-fitting black armorweave bodysuit and heavy leather gauntlets, she didn't even look uncomfortable in the heat and humidity of the surrounding jungle. No matter what, she kept smiling her alluringly casual smile. Nothing seemed to faze, or even touch her.

"Peppy, we've got Krystal in custody and we have the disc as well. Proceeding to the Remnant camp," Fox announced into his headset's microphone, not taking his eyes off her.

"Copy that, Fox, good job. Remember to send word when you reach the camp," Peppy's voice came over the comlink with a low hiss of static.

"Falco, stay on her and make sure she doesn't try anything. I'll stay on point in case anything else happens," Fox instructed, picking his blaster carbine up off of the ground and quickly rejoining them.

He re-examined the map on his scouter, the compass rose still pointing them forward, into the grim shades of the rainforest. Fox looked over to Krystal, mentally keeping his focus on the mission, and asked, "Are we headed the right way?"

"You tell me."

"It's just as much in your interest to reach the camp as ours. And you wouldn't have headed here if you didn't know how to reach them," Fox challenged.

Krystal breathed and looked off to the side for a moment, then conceded, "If we keep heading in this direction, we'll reach them in a few minutes."

Without another word, they trudged out of the clearing and back under the dim rainforest canopy, the thick air wrapping around them once again like a damp sheet. After a few moments, they passed the bend of a thick river with the waterfall that Fox had heard before, just barely visible through the trees and haze. They avoided the river as much as possible, not wanting to risk the chance that an anaconda might've been waiting in the depths.

As the sounds of the waterfall faded, the disturbing silence of the jungle began to unease Fox as they hiked. Every so often a bird would cry out or tree branches would rustle insistently, but otherwise the forest around them seemed remarkably still and quiet. Fox once again got the slight feeling that something was watching him through the darkness.

"You do realize I had to let you capture me, don't you? The Remnant will only give over the other disc if I have the Prime Minister's pardon. I realized that on my way here. It was really the most elegant solution," Krystal shrugged.

"Oh, so ya let me stick that stun bomb up your ass?" Falco derided haughtily, "All part a' your master plan, huh? Please shut up an' keep movin'."

With that, the avian shoved Krystal's back, sending her stumbling forward wildly with a grunt.

As she caught her balance, the vixen whipped around and glowered at Falco, hissing, "Kiikasheg!"

"What tha' hell did she just say?" Falco asked, chuckling slightly.

"She's speaking Cerinian," Fox muttered back, vaguely recognizing the sounds. Whenever she got angered or frustrated, she would occasionally curse in her native tongue.

"Did she bewitch me or somethin'?" Falco giggled, unconcerned.

"It means 'your mother's vagina'," Krystal informed him sweetly.

Falco laughed at her mockingly, shrugging it off.

"Now there's one I neva heard before. I'll hafta use it sometime. Too bad everyone speaks Basic, though," Falco retorted.

"Predictably arrogant. And patently false," Krystal huffed, looking over her shoulder, "Children on this planet learn to speak native Fortunan side by side with Basic. Over eighty percent of the planet speaks it as their primary language. And let's not forget that all of Sauria still speaks Saurian."

"So she's a language expert too. Who woulda guessed?" Falco mused indifferently.

"It's a skill you acquire when you find yourself the last person in the galaxy that speaks your native tongue," Krystal informed him.

"So where's the accent come from?" Falco interrogated.

"I don't have an accent," Krystal shrugged, "This is what Basic sounds like when it's spoken properly."

"I didn't think you ever spoke Cerinian anymore," Fox commented quietly, looking back at her.

"Do you think I dream in that unfeeling language of yours?" Krystal whispered softly, for once without a hint of sarcasm or malice in her tone.

Fox turned back and began leading them forward once again. They continued into the jungle in silence, the forest seemingly stretching on forever, the trees growing a bit thicker than before. It almost felt as if the trees were closing in on them.

"We're almost there…" Krystal muttered as Fox continued forward, then her voice suddenly pierced the silence as she yelled, "STOP!"

Fox froze and whipped around to face her, leveling his carbine at her as Falco did the same.

"I wouldn't point the gun at me, not when I just saved your life," Krystal growled at them.

"What are you talking about?" Fox demanded, his carbine still trained on her.

"If you'll allow me a moment…" Krystal trailed off, slowly walking past Fox as their guns continued to follow her. She continued about a pace or two ahead of him before gesturing to the ground with her foot.

Fox looked down into the dirt, noticing what at first appeared to be a small branch or seedling sticking out of the soil, then realized that it was a three-pronged metal pressure fuse. It was the telltale sign of a Venomian Mark-S antipersonnel mine, nicknamed the "leaping Lucy" by Commonwealth soldiers in the Lylat War. When the fuse was tripped, a propellant charge would detonate, launching the mine up to face-level, at which point the mine itself would detonate, spraying hundreds of metal ball bearings in every direction at lethal speeds.

Fox looked up at her with a small amount of confusion, and she nonchalantly said, "Psychic, remember? The whole area leading up to the camp is covered in these. I can navigate the minefield if you'll let me lead."

Fox looked at Falco, then back at Krystal, asking, "How close are we?"

"Moments away. The minefield is their perimeter defense," she answered.

Fox gestured with his hand, and Krystal began leading them forward, instructing them to stay directly behind her, as close as possible. They continued about five more minutes into the dense, dark forest, matching Krystal's footsteps as best they could, following her weaving path through the minefield.

As they rounded around a tree trunk, the shrubbery and ferns suddenly grew prohibitively thick, blocking their view into the depths of the jungle.

"I thought you said we were almost there," Fox growled.

"We are," Krystal answered quietly, looking straight ahead.

Fox looked back ahead into the veritable wall of shrubs, suddenly hearing a low mechanical whine as the barrel of a long, heavy blaster cannon swung out of the shrubs and pointed right at Fox. His muscles tightened and he could suddenly feel the weight and coolness of the sweat dampening his fur, the harness of the metal carbine in his hands. He could now see the metal housing of the small turret tower that the cannon was connected to, painted green and black to camoflauge it against the jungle background.

There was a cocking of safeties as a small group of soldiers wearing weathered maroon and black armor with face-obscuring black helmets emerged from the brush, aiming long HLT-18 blaster rifles at Fox and Falco.

"Oh, shit, this feels familiar," Falco muttered under his breath, looking around at the group of soldiers in Venomian armor aiming guns at them.

"This is your operation, right, Fox? Just explain why we're here," Krystal told him, almost condescendingly. The soldiers hadn't said a word, looking down through their rifles' sights at them, their black helmets as expressionless as ever. Fox breathed, trying to keep things cool, then stared at the soldiers and at the blaster turret.

"We were sent here with something for General Zaius," Fox explained, and the soldiers shivered a bit at the mention of the name, "We're expected."

The soldiers exchanged looks, even though their faces looked all the same, and they stared them all down for a moment before one pointed at the carbines in their hands.

Fox slowly slipped his arm into the strap around the carbine, throwing the blaster over his shoulder and showing his empty hands. Falco did the same, and the soldiers lowered their guns, one of them gesturing into the wall of shrubs.

The three of them slowly walked into the shrubs, parting them and walking through with the soldiers following them and the turret's cannon still trained on them.

The area they entered was not quite a clearing, but the amount of trees was significantly less. Fox looked up to see a long network of camoflauge netting stretched out amongst the trees above, keeping the entire area in shade and hidden from being spied on from above the rainforest canopy. A series of large metal prefabricated buildings were scattered around the area, and soldiers in Venomian armor of varying stages of care were walking around everywhere, everyone holding a weapon in their hands. A grounded, rotting hovertank lie up against a tree nearby, and Fox slowly noticed the odd, revolting stench of death and decay emanating from the entire area.

Fox stepped forward into the camp, looking over to the side and spotting the hulking, two-legged frame of a Venomian fighting mech, a nine-meter tall bipedal walker with a head curved like the beak of an avian that gave the vehicle an almost comical look. For some reason, what he saw on the mech's leg unsettled Fox more than anything he'd seen so far. Written in vibrant, almost shining white were the words: OUR MOTTO: APOCALYPSE NOW.

"Welcome to the Venomian Remnant, Fox," Krystal said, "Don't expect a warm welcome."