Krystal – Jewel Of The Lylat Space-Station, Katina Airspace

Krystal – Jewel Of The Lylat Space-Station, Katina Airspace

Jewel Of The Lylat, they call it, Krystal's inner voice expressed with tinges of irony. The station was large enough in consumer stores and luxury hotels, that the mask of upper-class spread over the pitiable multitude of slums hiding in the realm of hypocrisy's dimly lit corners. The dictators of a prestigious floating castle in space could not forgo the offering of cheap labor from the less than fortunate. Krystal released a disgusted groan from her voice. While we were fighting wars out there, the people unlucky enough to live in places like this were fighting their own battles. It probably makes no difference to them if the system is under Cornerian or Venomian leadership. For a small fragment of time, just for a second, Krystal contemplated that the poor may have preferred food at the cost of warfare in the refuge of the Venomians, rather than be drip-fed from Corneria's upper crust of society. She canceled out her consideration, and subsequently her ingrained ethics raised moral flags of patriotic magnitude. I'm not a Cornerian soldier, I don't want to squash anything that resists the symbol of 'good' in the universe, but nor am I a Venomian soldier. Krystal gritted her teeth as she found herself with no choice of side in the battle of the giants. One has considerably less evil than the other – but there's still evil.

Her slender purple frame retracted into a squat from a standing position in a darkened alcove tucked away behind a red bulkhead. To adopt the illusion that Krystal was no better off than the rest of the slums' population, she wore a grubby hunter green jacket she discovered back at Star-Wolf's base, and typical dingy navy space-flight overalls beneath. The colors clashed horribly, but it was just the tool for breaking into the confines of the desperate low-life hordes that inhabited the shadowy alleys. Mugging unsuspecting innocents passing by had become a way of life for the population in the slums, and to one of these thieves Krystal would appear as a vulnerable target – defenseless, female and weak. Equipping a visible blaster may have been a precaution to scare some thugs away – yet attract others. There was no way of preparing herself to become immune to potential threats, so under the cloak of her begrimed jacket, was a hilt in possession of a retractable staff. The staff was her lifeline, after receiving it back from the Sauria Crisis; she'd never been without it since. As well as having the duty of keeping Krystal alive, the staff was all that remained of a life she'd led long ago.

The shady corner stunk of rotting processed food that may have been half-eaten by the locals, and judging by its stench, Krystal assumed that shortly following consumption it would have terminated an unlucky victim. At first it had been foul enough to stir nausea within her stomach, her throat seemed to shrink and her head would spin upon every minute sniff. However, the reek of the under-levels in the space-station had proved to be bearable upon lasting exposure, and now Krystal was coping well enough without a jacket sleeve serving as a filter over her muzzle. Her back was pressed against a bulkhead slopped with a coating of jelly-like grime and the sticky vomit-colored trails of subterranean slugs. Dripping from a ceiling shrouded in shadow was a liquid of some kind, and Krystal didn't want to spare much thought as to what it could be comprised of. She was unable to tell how far up the protruding side of the building beside her hung above her head as the area surrounding it was completely black, but estimating from the sharp pelting of the overhead drips, it may have been up to fifty meters tall. The wall she crouched next to was stamped with bold white lettering against the reddened background, stating 'LEVEL -6, F2 QUADRANT.' Krystal hands encompassed a small tracking device decorated with buttons and a screen, which she was using to locate the position of the target Star-Wolf had assigned to her. The tracker was adequate for an assignment such as Krystal's – where achieving the technique of invisibility was advantageous – because it was compact and resonated no technical bleeps or chirps to scan the surrounding area. The only noise that met with Krystal's ears was the nearby sewage pipes trickling with water somewhere out of sight, and the occasional deep bellowing of mechanized contraptions moving about in the space-station's auxiliary atmosphere-processing center. Every time there was a shift of a colossal metallic cog within the station's depths, it rumbled through every crack, fissure and pipeline of the under-levels and echoed in Krystal's eardrums. The source of the bellowing came from above, as the center was constructed in the middle of the station, between the upper and lower levels. The radiating power of the reactor core was indeed overwhelming forceful, the sheer light that the core produced was controlled by solar-panels and light-reflectors formed in a sphere around it. This created an amber glow, which blessed the under-levels through monstrous skylights, which were truly so behemothic, by most citizens of the Lylat System they had to be seen to be believed. However through the filtering of higher levels in the station, which weren't as poor as level six – intertwining catwalks, conduits, gas cylinders, living quarters and elevator shafts – the light dimmed, and a there was only a soft orange luminosity.

A labyrinth of building blocks, black in color and many of them with little to no viewports, clustered in the centre of each level of the slums. Krystal had discovered that losing orientation between these masses of solid rock material was probable without a map, or familiarity to the floor's layout. The fiery light of the reactor core seemed to hit most spots along the sides of these buildings, but was absent from corners between these structures and most of the alleyways. Who knows if a poor soul was being robbed of their possessions in the cover of the darkness? It was near impossible to see anything but the garbage cylinders some looked upon as all-you-can-eat buffets down the fringes of each narrow passageway.

The street – if one could call it that – was empty. The only signs of life were the conduit slugs that roamed over the grimy walls. Krystal found it somewhat disturbing, not only was the lack of life gloomy and unpromising, but if she couldn't see the locals of Level Six, did that mean they were awaiting her presence in a shadowed section nearby? It was a possibility that the Level Six inhabitants were tucked away in their neighboring towers, scavenging anything they could from abandoned rooms. Krystal had previously wandered through the buildings, and learned that the insides of the slums were just as bleak as the outsides. Smashed in viewports created a sea of shattered glass blanketing stairways, blaster fire had scorched most of the walling and gaping chasms in some of the rooms' ceilings stretched through hundreds of apartments high. Within the building, the locals seemed to mind their own business, only caring for their own needs and disregarding anything Krystal might have had to offer.

An effervescent speckle of crimson glow made its debut on the tracker, and Krystal's grip around the device tightened. Her muzzle twitched slightly as she came up from her crouch, and sidled against the red wall. The target was relatively close – Krystal couldn't pinpoint the exact position but the channel frequency left unchecked on the prey's communications unit was a dead giveaway, and would be his folly in remaining hidden from his predators. That, and he has no idea I'm en route. She removed a strand of midnight blue fur drooping over her field of vision, and tried to make no sound as she walked, following the tracker's directions. A layer of thin moisture residue seemed to coat the street path, and Krystal's boots created small ripples and miniature splashes with each step. Across the street came a muffled groan, and her eyes shifted to focus on a cloaked figure in the distance. They moved slowly – some poor old soul trying to go about their own business – and Krystal discarded the possibility of a threat. She tilted her head downward as the individual's eyes stared her down, analyzing her for spare credits, food… anything. Even though Krystal was comfortable with her masquerade as an under-level commoner, she still had a face that could be easily recognized. With stretched fingers she brought her blue fringe back down to slip over her brow, and continued discretely as she could down the street. It wasn't long before her tracker informed her with a throb of crimson light that she had arrived at the structure where her target was in hiding.

The red battered door, wearing scars as if it had endured a life of harm it was proud of, was covered in dry remnants of blood splatters, deep wounds which had been chipped at over time, and the blackened scorching of laser blasts here and there. It was an old swing-door, seen only in the lowest of low far reaches of life, and creaked open loosely. What was revealed beyond was not a pretty sight. Krystal felt a sickening lump in her throat when the innards of the apartment building were exposed. To think that people actually lived in places such as the aforementioned was disheartening at best. Sneaking around in the shadows wouldn't be doing her any good – such actions would only raise suspicion for those that managed to catch a glimpse of her activity. Instead, she quietly made her way up a spiral stairway coated in a sheet of shattered glass, cringing each time her footsteps instigated the crunching of the fragments. As she made her way to the second floor, which wasn't much of a journey, the device clamped in her hand began pounding with its red glow faster than before, indicating she had grown close to her target. Being inside the building didn't seem to be able to protect inhabitants from the residue that clustered in spots on the ceiling, and as she departed onto the catwalk of the second floor, a particular patch on the wall adjacent to her seemed to have been riddled with so much water it looked as though a hand could enter through it and exit through the opposite side. As it caught her eye she realized that coincidentally, it was where her target was housed. The signal was strong – Krystal knew he was definitely close. With her fingertips, she tried giving the door an almost effortless press in hopes that the door's prehistoric bolt lock had broken over the test of time just like most of the others in the building – but was disappointed. To initiate her next series of actions, she decided upon a deep breath to help clear her mind of thoughts, providing her with the ability to concentrate on the moment at hand. A stiff set of blue fingers wrapped themselves around the cylinder sheath extending slightly above her jacket collar. She made a quick check to confirm that no locals were hanging about, and when she removed her trusty staff, the metal-on-metal shriek was prolonged as it was drawn unhurriedly. She allowed herself some room for wide vectors of the staff when she took a step backward, and arced the tip of the weapon to meet with the lock. Her shoulders rose and fell like washing waves upon shore in patterns that ceased to stray off rhythm, in the calm and collected moments before the storm. Just go in there, and do your job – Krystal's mind ordered her physical form remorselessly, but a splinter of hesitance lengthened her wait. It's not supposed to be an issue Krystal grimaced. She was shamed by her lack of haste to barge into the room and launch an assault, but holding her back was the vixen's nature that was impervious to abandonment. Enough was enough – she terminated all thoughts and feelings floating in the air. With a whisper under her breath, her guard obeyed, and a jolt of voltage jumped from the apex of the staff. It sizzled with a crackle through the rusted yet sturdy bolt lock, snapping it in two and sending its remnants to the floor. They resonated with a weighted thud on the patch of damp wooden floor. With a bop of her staff, the door swung open, revealing all that hid behind it. A darkened apartment block with just enough light seeping through the lines between the lowered sunshield to unveil shabby furnishings. There was a silhouetted figure standing against the orange light, relatively short, a little bit fat, and most alarmingly… facing her. It was only moments after Krystal had the chance to make a quick analysis of the room beyond her, when the familiar curves and casing of a laser barrel invited itself onto the back of her blue neck.

Trapped.

It had all happened very fast. Krystal was unaware of how her target had taken the steps to ensnare her, but it was now evident that he had the upper hand.

"You know that cold object at the back of your head?" the figure in the distance spoke. Krystal narrowed her eyes as she looked into the cracks of radiance emitting from the reactor somewhere in the middle of the space-station. His voice was whiney, grated and in the higher register. Those elements spliced together were instantly recognizable as the traits of a certain thorn in Star-Wolf's side.

Pigma Dengar you swine!

The hog had somehow escaped certain death more times than he would self-appoint himself as a nuisance in Star-Wolf's business – and that had occurred on a regular basis. Pigma Dengar was a lone greedy pirate that had an issue with being killed – he and death just didn't seem to agree with each other.

Krystal nodded and felt the blaster barrel sliding up and down upon the tiny hairs of her neck.

"Yes. It's a blaster. And I know the stench of whoever's standing behind me. He's clearly identifiable as an amphibian."

Pigma's stumpy outline waddled toward her a little.

"I'm not sure he'll be pleased to hear you refer to him like that, little foxie. He's very short-tempered."

"Well Pigma, he's made one mistake" Krystal said. She'd realized that thankfully Pigma's ego was an instrument in preventing what could have been a quick laser blast to the back of her brain. The lackluster space pirate preferred small-talk over initiating the third act of his plans; it was another feature that could be easily allocated to Pigma's personality time and time again. Pigma snorted between the gaps in his nostrils and the golden ring that was threaded through each of them.

"What's that?"

"He hasn't confiscated my weapon."

She whispered something in another language, and suddenly her staff's color transformed into a dazzling vermillion. With firm two-handed grasp, she stabbed the staff downward into the floor plating, creating clustering cracks, and a tremor of vicious velocity. Krystal somehow seemed to be protected from the maneuver, levitating in the air for a few split seconds whilst Pigma's cranium met with the back of one of the apartment's dingy sofas. He yelped, followed with a half-snort and thrashed about to regain his footing. He quivered his head in disbelief as his sense of balance fooled him as to believe he was on a ship afloat at sea. Krystal gave the clearly unconscious amphibian behind her half a look, before cautiously moving toward her target. The hog had pulled nifty tricks to escape his enemies in the past – she was careful not to let the same occur here. "Don't move a muscle, Pigma" Krystal said, but her words seemed more like an urge than a demand. As the hog attempted to writher onto his overzealous belly, flailing his arms about like wings, Krystal's deep sapphire eyes caught the sight of a potential card waiting to be played – atop Pigma's grimy yellow flight suit that appeared to be roughly half a century old, was a contrasting sleek piece of technology. Jetpack, Krystal realized. In being cautious, she'd let the opportunity pass by – the hog was already reaching for its activation ignition. The staff swooped down in a trajectory to flatten all the digits on Pigma's hand, however the hog was already in motion. He crashed through the viewport with a trail of eye-penetrating gas exhaust, bright enough to burn onto Krystal's retina had she been looking at it directly. The viewport screen shattered with a chaotic cry of fragments scattering across the floor plating of the apartment, and Pigma's jetpack fueled flight through the tall structures of the Jewel's slums disappeared from vision. Krystal's eyelids enclosed her eyes to slits, and a feral animosity she had not felt before tingled in her arms and shoulders, but most of all, in her chest. Had she been with Star-Wolf too long? Her jaw was clenched tightly as she watched the fiery ball that was Pigma's cunning escape disappear from her vision.

Not this time.

She thrust her staff into the air, uttering the words of an ancient mythical language under her breath at the same time, causing one end of the staff to erupt with blue flame. As she positioned herself over the staff, it rocketed forward out the shattered viewport and took her with it.

Krystal was dragged through the air by her weapon like rag doll, and controlling the direction of the staff was difficult. She mustered all her strength to gain a decent grip on the shaft of the staff, enough to follow the general trajectory of Pigma. Buildings that had been crumpling apart for the last couple of years flew past her in an instant and soon she was immersed in the mechanical surroundings of the B6 recycling department. Navigating through the dark cracks and crevices of buzzing and roaring machinery, Krystal realized that Pigma was going to try and lose her in the less spacious parts of the space-station. A mechanical arm from somewhere out of the corner of her eye – everything was going by so fast – almost swept her from the staff and collected her head, but she was quick to gather the little strength she had left to send her to the other side of the staff, in spite of how much straining pain in her arms it caused her to endure. In a dark tunnel of dangerous metallic moving parts, she could see the exhaust of Pigma's jetpack leaving a smoky trail. As she tried to pull herself further up the staff, her right hand slipped and flung back in the force of her velocity. She had almost fallen from the staff entirely, into a rather inconveniently placed melting pit, but the fight in the grip of her left hand hadn't quite given up yet. She cringed into the distance to try and spot Pigma, and decided she'd need to try her luck with something of a miracle, before his bizarre antics killed her. Lining at the top point of her staff with the back of Pigma's jetpack, she spoke a phrase to release a glistening bolt of red flame which flickered at a tremendous speed toward the hog. The flaming projectile impacted bang on target, scorching a black hole in the yellow jetpack. Pigma spiraled out of control through a mechanical valley aligned with metal teeth, flailing his arms wildly in frustration and panic, doing his best to avoid the sharp fangs designed for trash compacting tearing holes in his sides. With a handful of near misses, one of the body-sized spikes snatched Pigma's jetpack, and left the hog free falling into a seemingly endless pit of assorted refuse.

Krystal's arms felt like they needed a week's long rejuvenation, but she was still able to use them to recover Pigma Dengar's pudgy, scruffy body from the mountain of scrap. The nausea-inducing smell that Krystal had a hard time putting up with didn't seem to bother Pigma as much – he was probably used to living in such habitats. As she released the hog from her grip, Pigma lost his footing and collapsed to the ground, covered in grime and the remains of several meals from the famous Jewel Of The Lylat restaurant. He started to scrub away the coat of slime which covered his pinkish skin, as he looked up at the sapphire vixen standing before him, both grumbling and sighing in dismay. Her dreamy blue eyes weren't amused at his acrobatics through the B6 recycling department at all. Pigma sensed he was in for a hard time. He took a brief look at the pit he had just clambered out of with his enemy's help, which was on the face of it a blur and murky greens and muddy browns.

"You were dead Pigma. We destroyed you. In the Meteo Asteroid Belt. I was there" Krystal stated, holding any personal remarks back. Pigma slapped his palms together diagonally in an attempt to rid them of sludge.

"After the Aparoid infestation was reversed," he replied in his usual salesman-like grouch, "the hold they had on my mind was released… and the rest… well, it's self-explanatory. I'm sure a young, pretty, smart thing such as yourself my dear little foxie can figure that one out, eh?"

"You were in a shell? Floating in space?"

"Let's not go into details, now! I'm not fond of those particular memories of my sterling career."

She cleared her throat and revolved her staff slowly, though threateningly, so the tip faced Pigma's neck. He backed away sloppily on all fours, still puffing a little from the prior chase.

"You know what I want" Krystal said, lowering her tone, meaning business.

"You want me dead" Pigma shot back, almost laughing about the issue. She frowned.

"I want the data-card. Star-Wolf wants you dead."

"Bah" Pigma moaned, defeated and weak. He reached inside his yellow well-rounded jumpsuit, into one of the inner pockets, unclipped the safety catch, and his hand emerged with a small green computer chip of some kind. It was battered a little on the corners but Krystal could tell that it would still read on a computer system. Pigma chucked it at her effortlessly, and she brought a hand from her hip down to catch it. She tucked away somewhere in her jacket. Hopefully she wouldn't be doing anymore sky-soaring on her staff to merit putting the data-card somewhere safer. She returned a glare to Pigma, not bringing the staff away from his soft-looking neck.

"Wolf wanted ya to kill me, didn't he?" Pigma grunted unsurprisingly. "Go on then."

"Someone like you doesn't deserve the luxury of life, Pigma" she announced. But she didn't strike – she couldn't.

You don't deserve life… but I'm no deity to deal out life and death.

Pigma shrugged and nodded.

"Hah! And I agree with you little foxie! I've lived long enough like this to realize where I'm going when I die. And I'm tired of having to resort to these petty measures of criminal… child's play when I used to be the brains running the show!"

Krystal's expression softened up, her glare dropped and she found herself gazing at the ground, reminiscing about the old stories Fox used to tell her about James McCloud. Her arms were too weak to hold her staff pointed at Pigma any longer, and she dropped it on the ground. It chimed a high-pitch and also offered a loud clunk on the recycling depot metal floor. The vixen took a few breaths as the hostility in her blood lowered from boiling point, back to the placid Cerinian manner.

"You used to be one of the good guys, Pigma" she said disappointingly. He bobbed up his eyebrows once or twice, just to signify that times did change. She took a few steps back from the hog and sighed.

"What?" Pigma chirped harassingly. "You're not going to finish the job?"

"You're a mess, Pigma. And I'd be leaving behind a body that wouldn't be worth cleaning up."

Krystal approached a door entitled with 'EXIT' that she spotted somewhere near another mass of trash in the recycling depot, but stopped after a few steps toward it. "And get of the station immediately. I may not kill you, but if any of Star-Wolf sees you, they will."

Wolf O'Donnell swallowed the harsh fluid down and popped the fancy empty glowing drinking device on the bar. He shuffled in his seat and released a breath, and then turned to face Cass Rico. He stared her in the eye for a little while, maybe to shake her up a bit, and then decided to say something.

"I'm lucky all the criminals hang out here" Wolf remarked with a chuckle. He looked over his shoulder at the mass of people crowded around a stage, where some kind of performance was going on that neither of the two had any interest in. The bar was certainly loud, and Wolf had to speak clearly and vociferously for Cass to understand. Cass nodded in agreement, with a little bit of humor.

"So am I. So where's my cargo?" she asked.

"Where's my money?" Wolf shot back. She narrowed her eyes with a playful grin, and asked again,

"Where's my cargo?"

Wolf shrugged.

"Where's my money?"

"I can't give you traceable good old fashioned cash, obviously."

"And your cargo is in a safe place for now" Wolf replied. Cass didn't like the sound of that, and she pulled up the brown jacket she was wearing further up over her shoulders.

"How do you want to do this then, O'Donnell?"

Wolf replied almost instantly.

"I want you to give me the data-card I'm assuming you were planning on paying me with, so I can download the details from it and get access to a legitimate account. Is that what you had in mind?"

Cass frowned, and was hesitant.

"You've done this a lot."

"Rough 'n' tough gangsters always work the same way" Wolf said smugly. Cass reached inside her jacket pocket, gave a quick glance around the bar to make sure nobody was paying attention, and slipped him a data-card. Wolf took it into his grasp and tucked away somewhere in his jumpsuit, and then gestured to the mechanized bartender to fetch him another drink. The robot with a singular yellow oblong for an eye obliged with a nod, and went on about his duties. Beams of flashing pink and cyan fluorescent light shone over the two mercenaries sitting at the bar as something mildly interesting on the stage occurred. Wolf couldn't tell, but whatever it was, it was consumed in a rainbow-colored haze.

"So where's my cargo?" Cass asked again. Wolf offered her a smile.

"It's in a safe place. Let me check out the legitimacy of these account details first, and then I'll contact you. Does that work for you?"

"Well I'm not left with a plethora of choices here, am I?"

"Um… no" Wolf agreed.

The hangar bay Star-Wolf had chosen to use on the Jewel Of The Lylat was isolated from the main docking bays on the upper west quadrant of the space station. Instead, Wolf O'Donnell had selected a small hangar near the bottom levels of the slums which didn't seem like it had been attended to by service bots for at least a year – which was perfect for what Star-Wolf was looking for. Above Leon Powalski, who was occupied underneath one of the Wolfens, hanging from the rail connected to the ceiling, were two sets of pincer arms. Bits and pieces were missing from them – it looked as though a service-bot had set out to repair them only to get called away for another task. There were signs of electrical fires with scorches and burns dotted all over the rail. Obviously this hangar had given the maintenance team too much of a problem, and being in the slums, they had decided to abandon it completely.

The security around the slums in the Jewel Of The Lylat was limited at best, so Star-Wolf had no problem checking in unnoticed. The whole station was virtually a haven for criminals and outlaws. All Leon had done to secure the area was make sure the Wolfens' weapons were online and ready to fire upon targets as long as they were marked if necessary. The chameleon's beady eyes fixated on the entry door to the hangar as he heard the alert beacon. The door jerked open – it had stopped moving halfway through its cycle and Wolf must have jarred it the rest of the way. What a trash can this hangar was.

Leon noticed that as he entered, Wolf looked calm. He understood that there must have been an overabundance of thoughts and stresses trying to piece together like a jigsaw in his mind, yet the captain was playing it safe and keeping his cool… taking one step at a time. After drinking at the bar many levels up, Wolf had removed his flight gloves. He reached into his flight jacket perched across a heating unit to retrieve them. As the charcoal hands felt their way inside the gloves, Wolf spoke up to get Leon's attention.

"Did you check out those remote explosives like I asked you to?" Wolf announced. He made his way toward Panther's Wolfen, in which Leon was working on. The slim figure of the lizard seemed to slither forth out from under the fighter and stand up, all in a single motion.

"Yes" Leon replied.

"And?"

"They're not remote explosives."

Wolf nodded.

"As I thought" the captain said. Wolf turned his attention to the transparent oxygen bubble offering a view of half the Lylat, and he fixed his eyes on a couple of colored orbs rotating on a huge vector around the system's sun. From this distance it could do a lot of damage pointing the eyes directly at the sun, even from the safety of the space-station's oxygen shield he could feel the unmerciful heat of it. Leon's eyes widened.

"You suspected that the pirates had tricked us?"

Wolf shrugged.

"I don't hold it against them. Something as absurd as 'remote explosive devices' is just a formality. I know where the real insurance is."

"He has something on you?"

"No" Wolf replied, offering Leon a hint of surprise. "Something for me, in fact."

"What did he offer, this Arctirus?"

"He told me he can help me find something personal that belongs to me, if we do this job for him."

"Will he keep his word?" Leon inquired, ever so distrustful. Wolf nodded with relative confidence.

"Did you see what condition that ship was in?"

Leon frowned in frustration moving his arms about a little.

"I don't understand- the Luperium are supposed to be wealthy."

"They are. But you see Leon, there's more than meet the eye. You can tell a lot about them by the condition of that ship. Their ability to survive on nothing is what gives them their strength. Arctirus maybe sitting on a pot of gold but you wouldn't know it."

"You're saying that… he's budgeting?"

"You can never have enough money" Wolf confirmed. "When he's ready to retire from this line of business, he'll be a wealthy and safe man."

"Though the ship was old, it did have a state of the art cloaking device" Leon noted.

"Of course, Arctirus seems like a person who will invest the money into what counts… Not simple luxuries. And the look the cheap lifestyle is enough to fool the authorities, I'm assuming" Wolf explained. He placed one of his gloved hands against Panther's Wolfen and leaned against it, grinning with a bit of admiration for the space pirates who had 'blackmailed' Star-Wolf. "The Luperium is relatively low key, but for those who know it, it can conjure up a lot of fear. So already, you think… big guns… fine drinks… a life of envy. But Arctirus is smarter than your usual thug. You see already, we know a lot more about this little gang of pirates than most others. He must trust us to some extent."

A blue vixen tossed a green hunter's jacket aside just after she had retrieved the data-card from one of the pockets. She made her way through the hangar door and unhappily approached the two Star-Wolf pilots clinging to Panther's ship. As she moved closer, with a flick of the wrist she sent the data-card flying through the air toward Wolf. The captain caught it and eyed up a quick analysis of the damage done. Not much – it would still work.

"Speaking of trust" Wolf muttered to Leon as Krystal came closer. "You don't look so hot" he mentioned to the new entrant. She ignored his words and gestured toward the data-card sitting in his palm.

"These trade points we use have been sabotaged. Run of the mill thieves, apparently."

"That's not a problem" Wolf acknowledged. He tucked the card away in his flight suit. "However there is a problem."

Krystal tilted her head sideways, and all of a sudden seemed alerted. She hadn't noticed the sounds of any footsteps behind her, but when Panther Caruso cleared his throat she jumped and swung around.

"What's going on?"

"Why don't you tell me, Krystal?" Wolf asked loudly, bringing the vixen's attention back to him. Her mouth half open and startled, Krystal switched glances between the two pilots on either side of her. Wolf shrugged – annoyed, and looked over to Panther.

"Did you finish the hog, Panther?"

"He's taking his chances in a melting pit. I imagine he'd go fine with a superb casserole at about this moment" Panther replied. Wolf nodded appreciatively. He brought his hands together and a clap echoed harshly throughout the hangar. The three other Star-Wolf members gave him their attention, although Krystal was still taken aback.

"Leon, Panther. I want you two to carry out basic security measures, and make sure this hangar is locked down tight before we take off. Pigma has other goons wandering around the place" he ordered. The two snapped to it like it was instinct, with Leon heading for the hangar's main control panel and Panther heading for the door. Krystal kept her distance from Wolf, but took up an offensive verbal assault.

"You had him follow me?" she barked, her hands snapping to her hips. Wolf spared her his bad eye, and carried on to his Wolfen.

"I knew you couldn't do it" Wolf replied abruptly. Sitting on top of his Wolfen's port wing was a small refrigerating unit. He popped the lid open with a click and a display rack ascended out of the boxy device housing some Fortuna fruit and a Cornerian power-bar of some kind. Krystal figured at that point Star-Wolf must have been painfully low on funds for Wolf to be eating from his survival kit. Or maybe Wolf had just spent all his money upstairs at the bar. Without thought, Wolf snatched the bar, then closed the kit and pressed a button on the port fin itself which opened up a compartment to house the refrigerating unit. It disappeared and became another part of the Wolfen before Krystal's eyes.

"So you had one of your boys follow me. And Panther too… nice" Krystal nodded, disappointed in her leader but also ashamed within. Munching on the snack which quickly became nothing but crumbs on the dirty hangar floor, Wolf finally turned to her and looked her in the eye.

"Krystal, let me put it to you. You're a good girl. Maybe too good. Maybe you had a bad run with your ex-boyfriend and you felt like being a bad girl for a while… but it just doesn't work forever, huh?"

Krystal crossed her arms, ready to take Wolf's criticism but taking every opportunity to find something to fight back with. The captain continued as he prepped the exterior of his fighter. "You can't kill someone in cold blood. That, to me, is a flaw. If my team was relying on you to pull us out of situation, which depended on your ability to take a life… I wouldn't be so sure we'd get out cleanly."

"Is that it?" Krystal chipped away. Wolf scowled as he pressed down a button to lower the boarding ladder from the cockpit.

"No, Krystal. It isn't" he said. He took a few seconds to scale up the ladder and into the cockpit. He sat down inside and glanced at her over the side while configuring some pre-flight settings on the main console. "You don't fit in. Your moral code is too high for the likes of scum like us. I'm clever, Krystal, but at the end of the day I realize I'm just a clever thief. You're an idealist. And I have a lot of respect for you."

He stopped fiddling about with his controls for a minute and sighed. "But you're added baggage."

"I carry my own!" Krystal retorted. Wolf raised his brow.

"You do, which is good. But nobody's keeping you here, and you don't belong. Heck, sometimes you might even get in the way. It's only a matter of time before you move on… foxie, let's not pretend this little adventure of yours is anything else."

Wolf stayed stiff for a few moments, watching her closely, reading her reactions, before going back to the ship's controls. He gave the ignition a kick and listened to the hum of the Wolfen boot up. Krystal, arms crossed, standing sternly, had nothing to say to the captain. She wanted to protest, she wanted to argue for the sake of arguing – but nothing would substitute for the black rock somewhere in her chest that Wolf had invoked. She angrily kicked one of the landing legs of Wolf's fighter – hurting her foot in the process and subsequently hopping around on one foot for a bit – and then moved to intercept Panther's path as he headed back to the Black Rose.

"Let's not talk about it here" Panther declared in a finalizing manner as he spotted her coming his way.

"You killed him?" Krystal squealed in disbelief. "Panther how could you… he's a worthless hog."

"He had become quite the problem" Panther said, still not interested in conversation. Just like Wolf had done, Panther began running some exterior checks on his ship.

"I'm disgusted. Disgusted in you!" Krystal groused.

"It's who I am, Krystal" Panther replied. Warm violet hands suddenly caressed the curves around her backbone, and he brought her in close. She was quick to fight the embrace.

"Hugging me now and telling me everything's going to be fine doesn't suffice here" she warned grimly. "How long have we been together now?"

Panther bit his lower lip. "Or can you not recall? Am I just a simple amusement for you, Panther? Just another woman to help you pass the time?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions" Panther said wearily.

"Murderer. You're a murderer" Krystal hissed. Panther snarled and banged a fist against the Black Rose's fuselage.

"And how many young cadets have you blown away in the skies, huh? How many families have you destroyed just by doing what you thought was right?"

"This is absurd! There's a clear distinction between defending a cause and selectively taking a life for monetary gain!"

Panther stopped, released a breath, and ascended the ladder into the cockpit. Navigating through the controls, he tried to think of something to say to Krystal, something to ease the tension. He twitched his nose and took a glimpse at her strong and unrelenting appearance – something coincidentally he realized turned him on – but offered nothing but a head shake and a shrug.

"I'm sorry Krys. Really…" he assured quietly. He felt a touch of relief as she dropped her stance and returned to her ship.

So far it was an ordinary take-off procedure, but something inside was bothering Wolf O'Donnell. It wasn't the harsh disposition in which Krystal had felt toward him, but something was sitting right. He voiced for assurance through the private com channel.

"Leon, you definitely checked the control panel, right? Nobody has tampered with it?" Wolf asked. There was some kind of insulted noise from Leon across the frequency before he replied.

"Of course not, Wolf. We're down here all alone."

"Right" Wolf said. "And Panther, everything in the area was sealed? And no signs of tampering with any of our equipment?"

"Nothing of the kind, Captain" Panther came back.

As the three Wolfens and Krystal's Cloud Runner accelerated in formation toward the oxygen bubble of the hangar, a violent tremor sent Wolf flying toward his dash. Eye piercing white light filled the hangar, accompanied by the familiar booming roar of an explosion. The furious shades of red engulfed the four ships and chewed up everything it came in contact with. In the midst of the chaos, Wolf's working eye caught the sight of a passing ship outside the hangar. At first he didn't recognize it as anything significant, but as he put together some basic pieces of the puzzle, he could distinguish the ship as belonging to…

Pigma you slime ball!