Hi peeps! Sorry for the wait! I have no excuse other than my computer crashing, so yeah…

Enjoy!

Ch. 12~

He stared blankly at the ceiling from where he sat on the floor, leaning back against the wall behind him. Hi could hear Slippy weeping from his room. He gazed over at his door, seeing it was still wide open. Peppy was trying to console him and he couldn't hear Krystal anywhere. For that matter, he couldn't hear Kat anywhere either. He wondered if Peppy had told him yet. Fox gritted his teeth and slammed a fist against the wall behind him. Why had he been so weak? Why had he let this happen?

Fox let out a breath and stood, walking out into the hallway; he gazed down towards the bridge, seeing Peppy standing at the controls with a bottle of whiskey present on the counter next to him. No point in trying to take it away from him. They had their own ways of dealing with it. Fox looked away and headed further down the hallway until he came to the last door. His hands shook as the door slid open. The last time he came here, he was sitting on the floor, tuning up his already ridiculously powerful blaster. Hyping up the firing speed or capacity it could hold with new mags, making him even more jealous. But he wasn't there. Pieces of his blaster weren't scattered about the floor, the blueprints to the blaster weren't lazily sprawled out on the floor for him to see while he worked. More notably, Slippy wasn't there lecturing him about screwing up the weapon.

Fox entered the room, looking around at the vastly empty room. Filled with objects reflecting the limited interests he would let the world see. A stack of books sat on the bookshelf above the headboard of his bed with that Geno shaped bookend he had given him for his birthday a few years ago. On the opposite side of his room was the small closet containing his clothes and boots. The only thing absent was his uniform… Other than that, there really weren't many other signs of interests. Fox walked over to the bed, staring out the window as they glided by Venom. The smog infested atmosphere seemed to be fading. Little by little the planet became more and more visible with every time they passed by. It was once the place where he had followed, gunning down the army and helping clear the way to Andross himself. Fox looked down at the bed, seeing his father's journal sitting on the bed. He made a fist and shoved it off. The journal landed with a small, single thud, breaking the silence for only a second. Fox's brows pulled together, he fought the tears and climbed onto the bed, lying down on Falco's bed and stared out the window. He was gone. Falco was gone. He was never going to come back through that door and-he could hear Kat crying next door. Fox curled up into a ball and gave in.

"Damn it…Falco…"

He could cope with deaf silence. Honestly it never bothered him. He sat back against the wall of his cell, ignoring the guards banging their rifles against the bars, harassing the various other prisoners because they had seemingly nothing else to do. What surprised him was that he wasn't their only prisoner. There were cells lined up in the enormous room. Some stacked, while others were randomly spread out. Looking around, he counted more than fifty just on the floor level. He was in a cell with two others. It didn't give him any comfort that the dog just stared blankly out of the cell without having said a single word the past five hours, and the cat was lying on the opposite, limp and unmoving. Everyone within this enormous room was silent other than the guards laughing at their own sick entertainment.

If every prisoner in here had been drugged with something, he had yet to be exposed to it himself. He winced from the jolting pain of his wound as he shifted against the wall.

"Hey bird!" he heard one of the guards call. He shot them an icy glare as they approached the door to his cell. One of them took out a key card as two more approached with what he assumed was another prisoner when he heard the sound of chains rattling.

"Hehe. You're gonna' love your knew cell mate!" another guard chuckled. Falco looked away, ignoring them.

"You two! Get up!" one of the guards bringing another prisoner barked. The dog in his cell jumped and trembled with fear. The cat still had yet to move. "Come on now!"

The dog stumbled to his feet and walked out of the cell, while the cat still lay there.

"Oh I see. Get the corpse out of here." Falco watched in the corner of his eye as one of the guards picked up the limp body, throwing it over their shoulder and walked back out of the cell. Then the two guards came in with their prisoner, unchaining him and slamming the cell door behind him. Falco froze. Fox? No…it looked like him though. The fox shot a glare at the guards as they left before walking over to the poor excuse of a bed and lying down. Falco looked away from him as he heard the doors to the room slide closed.

"Your so young." The fox said after a moment. Falco didn't look at him. He didn't care what anyone thought. Most likely none of these people were themselves anymore anyway. "How'd you manage to get yourself mixed up with all of this?"

"Worry about yourself." Falco replied simply.

"Hmph. Just try not to scream." Falco gazed at him in the corner of his eye again. The fox tossed off his tattered leather jacket before lying down with his back to him. Falco's eyes widened when he saw the enormous and dried up gash traveling diagonally across his back. "They'll increase your hours." Hours of torture. "So who is it I'm stuck with this time?" Falco wrapped his arms around his legs and leaned his head back against the wall.

"Does it matter?"

"Well, incase one of us manages to get out of here alive maybe we can pass it on to relatives." Falco was getting irritated. He didn't want to hear any of this optimist crap.

"Uh, you do realize who it is who's in charge of all of this, right?" he asked letting his irritation ring out in his voice. The fox didn't look at him.

"Yep. Hard to believe isn't it?" Falco glared at the back of the fox's head.

"Oh yeah? You know something about all this, buddy?" The fox didn't respond right away.

"More or less." Falco stared. Was he mocking him?

"So tell me." Falco said impatiently.

"Why would I tell someone when I don't even know their name?" Falco looked away.

"Forget it." Falco grumbled before looking away. There was a long awkward silence fell between them, what was worse, was that Falco knew the bastard was just waiting for him to give in. He was stubborn enough to keep this up all night.

"I'd offer you the bed, since you're wounded but I'm still dizzy from the blood loss. If you want to rotate let me know."

"I'll pass."

"You're Falco, aren't you?" he asked after a long pause. Falco stared. How could he have known that?

"Who the hell are you?" Falco asked sternly. The fox still didn't move.

"Yeah, I remember seeing you while I was on my way out of Venom." Falco stared. "Peppy and Slippy were there too. Slippy's grown."

"What the hell are you getting at?" Falco demanded. "Who the hell are you?" Why was it that this guy knew him? Or Slippy or Peppy even?

"What? Fox never showed any of you a picture of me?" He asked finally rolling onto his back and gazing over at him. Falco got a better look of his face, and then all together, he knew what he was about to be told. "Then again, I always have sunglasses on." He said moving his gaze to the bars of the cell. Falco looked away from him.

"You're James, aren't you?"

"Yep, that's me."

"And I really was speaking to Andross just now?"

"Yep, domesticating Aparoids makes it easy to use the core memories. That's why he has a brand new body, and why I'm still here."

That's it! HAHA didn't see that coming! R&R!