"History tends to repeat itself", you fools love to say. Easy enough when you want to see the patterns happen time and time again within history. A ruler becomes corrupt with power, a hero rises from whatever lowly station he or she or they were once stuck in, a villain begins their fall after never being accepted by their society.
But you mangy lot want to see patterns and similarities, and never think if it is as simple as it looks. History is just lessons you want to learn from the past, but somehow never do. It is how you learn to fear the sharp and the hot. It is how you learn to fear the abnormal in a person, the damnation after a terrible chosen decision. You end up not liking that Destiny is what brings you to your decisions, because if it is your destiny to be a hero and give you all you wanted, what is that same destiny giving to that poor missing-supplies shopkeeper, that lonely mother-of-five harlot in the alley, that blinded and mute orphan doomed to never be loved by anyone? What kind of mass cruelty does destiny wish upon you all, time and time again, just for someone else to get their rocks off inside some hapless heir to some faraway throne?
Destiny, you thus decided, does not exist. How freeing it feels, that you can decide what you want to be in life! That you can find what the meaning of suffering and torture should give us in the end! And how you can choose to be who you are not, with the only obstacles in the way being nothing but your will, your courage, and your socioeconomic status in the capitalist hellscape of the modern era!
Despicable. All of it. You who have all the answers laid out in the past, and yet still never reach the truth of the future. It is not Destiny that controls you, as you rightfully ascertained. Instead, it is Fate, that beast of fortune for the few. It cares not about the lives it holds, only for its pleasure in how life unfolds. It has a guide for each of you, and a role in which you must play for its entertainment.
History doesn't repeat itself. Fate just likes to hear its favorite stories. And oh, how I hate these stories...
Star Fox: Horizon Zenith
Chapter 1: Electro-Magnetic Paws
The alarm clock blared inside the room. An auburn furred arm flailed about before silencing the arrogant loud machine. It was a reprieve for only five minutes, but with the annoying sound gone, the arm returned itself to what it believed was its rightful place.
On top of a blue and white-furred arm. It liked its company.
Though the owner of the orange arm wanted nothing more than to stay by the side of its companion, the blue arm and its owner were already awake. "Fox," a vixen's voice echoed. "It's time to wake up."
Fox merely grumbled, shifting his arm down to where he could hold his company's hand. "Just five more minutes," he whined in a tired voice.
Though the vixen was understanding of Fox's exhaustion, a leader should always be the first up and awake. At least, that was what he once told her. She shifted her hand away from Fox's. "Fox, c'mon. We still have that budget to do. Let's get that done and then we can go back to sleep."
Fox answered back with a low whine, shifting his body to fall even more into the soft embrace of his bed. The vixen, now starting to get a little annoyed, glared at the vulpine, sitting up with crossed legs on her side of the bed. Though he would not see it, she exaggerated her motions in crossing her arms, looking intently at the face of the vulpine.
Though Fox would not see it, he could feel it. He shut his eyes tighter for a moment, just to get the mental image of the vixen's disappointment out of his mind, but all he got was a telepathic link that still brought the image to mind. Finally opening his eyes, he blinked a few times to get the crusty 'just woke up' blur out of them, before looking right to see the mental image being a reality.
For her part, the vixen moved her muzzle left and upward, in an even more exaggerated tone of disappointment, closing her eyes as she spoke, "I thought good leaders should be alert and awake at all times. That's what someone told me once."
Fox drooped his eyelids but gave his head a slight shake to keep himself from falling back asleep. "Krystaaaal," he spoke in an apologetic tone, "I love you."
"No no," Krystal retorted, still looking away from Fox. "You are not getting away with a simple 'I love youuuuu', mister Fox. Since I woke up first I have to lead the team now."
Fox could see the smirk on her face as she continued, "As Star Fox leader, I'm going to make sure that everyone gets 2 months vacation instead of 2 weeks. I'll institute a mandatory Taco Tuesday and I will use the team's funds to buy another fridge so we can fit all the ice cream we want. And you will have to do my bidding and be subject to my whim unless you want to be fired."
In his half-asleep state, Fox took a beat to answer back. "Okay, okay, you're the leader. I was gonna wake up and make the team some of my famous pancakes, but since now I don't have to be responsible anymore I'm just gonna go back to bed."
With a bit-too-heavy sigh, Fox sunk back down onto the bed, closing his eyes and trying to hide the growing smirk on his muzzle. The low needy whine coming from his right only made the smirk wider. "You are evil, Fox McCloud. Daring to hold me hostage over breakfast?"
This time without missing a beat, Fox answered back, "Your mercenary team for some pancakes, then?"
Even with his eyes closed, he could hear the pout coming from Krystal. "Fiiiiiine, I promise I'll tell no one, and you can keep being the leader."
Hearing that gave Fox his first wind of the day, now fully feeling awake. He opened his eyes and sat up to look at his beautiful mate sitting opposite him on the bed. Thinking quickly, he readied his final nail in the coffin. "Hey, Krystal?"
"Yes?" Krystal replied, now looking back at Fox. Before she could react, Fox leaned forward and connected his muzzle to hers. The sudden surprise gave way to a relaxed state, the two keeping the kiss at only a chaste moment before moving away.
"I love you," said Fox.
Krystal could only giggle in response to the repeated phrase, before lightly tapping Fox's muzzle with a single finger. "I love you too, you sly fox."
The newly retained leader of Star Fox smiled, before letting a yawn escape his mouth and giving him one last natural wake up call. "What can I say? People call me a good negotiator."
"No one in the history of this team has ever called you a negotiator, Fox. Unless you count corpses and wrecks as successful diplomacy."
Fox shrugged. "I just never had the time to talk them down. C'mon, let's get ready so we can get the pancakes started before the rest of the team wakes up."
"So after this whole boring budget thing is done, got anything else we need to do, Fox?"
The Great Fox 2 was nothing more than an oversized corvette compared to the destroyer of the first Great Fox, but it came with some advantages the Star Fox team didn't have before. For starters, a rec area that was either an exercise room, a mission planning room, or a dining room. Currently, it was serving as the latter, with a big serving table in the middle for the crew to pick up their plate and serve themselves some nice warm and buttery stacks of maple syrup pancakes.
"Well, Krystal and I are going to be looking for our next job, like always. Slippy I think was gonna take some of his new tools to work on our Arwings after our last mission. Peppy, you gonna do anything?"
The old hare took his time to chew on a particularly big slice of a pancake before speaking. "Ah was thinking er working on updating some er our computer systems, still got 'nough from the last budget to cover a full drivah update package."
"Oh, let me know when you -urp!" Slippy began to talk, getting caught with shoving down a whole pancake down his mouth before taking the time to swallow. "Let me know when you're gonna do that. I need to re-link all of the Arwings' computers back to the ship for a performance test. Gotta wait for you first before I start the tests."
Fox shrugged his arms, finishing his bite of the Lylat-Famous McCloud Space Pancakes. "Really it's just our tasks, Falco. I don't expect to take another job for the next week, so if you want—"
"Mind if I head to Katina then? Katt's over there, we talked last night," Falco interjected, a little bit of excitement in his eyes. "It's just gonna be a check-in and check out, no—"
Fox rolled his eyes but kept a happy manner. Over the years he'd known his friend Falco, his on-and-off side piece Katt Monroe was becoming less of a side piece and more of a centerpiece in the avian's life. Wasn't going to be long before he heard them pop the "wanna go steady?" question to each other.
"I told you, probably will be waiting a full week. I'm gonna keep the Great Fox anchored here in Mateo, you can go on ahead to see Katt for a bit."
Fox paused, "Just so long as you bring back some groceries, because yeesh did y'all eat your breakfast and left practically no leftovers!" Fox felt a little bit of Peppy's drawl in his last sentence.
A belch came from Krystal of all people, and she quickly covered her mouth with one hand while blushing in embarrassment. "Oh, excuse me!"
The team lightly chuckled at the outburst, before beginning to finish their plates and collecting the dishes towards the marked area of the rec room, a holographic sign titled "Dishes" hovering over a large sink. For the millionth time in his life, he thanked whoever was watching that someone like ROB was able to do the menial tasks on his ship.
"Ok, before you ask, I was so not aware of this," Fox said, staring at the cubed computer hologram in the center of the table. With breakfast now done, the team's big management issue of updating the budget was next on the list for the day. Though he was expecting an easier time with this last paycheck, he was not expecting the numbers from the payment receipt brought to him and the team by ROB. Nor the small message left on the bottom.
"I'll let you know if I ever need a handsome fox to help me again. Here's a little tip on top of everything, please do come back sometime~"
"I knew I didn't like that Fara Phoenix for a reason. Stupid little hussy-" Krystal seethed.
On the other end of the circular table where Fox and Krystal sat, a small devious joke entered Falco's mind. "Hey, Fox, how much do you think you can charge Fara for a night?"
"Oi, I am not for sale!" Fox retorted.
"You sure? We're mercenaries, we do anything for a quick buck, so technically we do sell our bodies-"
"Alright, alright, focus!" Slippy interjected, trying to not let the task at hand/paw/feathers/webbed toes get derailed. "Fox, with the, uh, tip, this is three times the amount of money we got last time. Want to just triple the amounts from the last budget and call it?"
"Mmm, wait a sec, lessee those numbers," Peppy asked. "ROB, pull up an interactive menu er the last budget, an' triple all the balances."
"Affirmative, pulling up las- WARNING, MASSIVE ENERGY SIGNAL DETECTED TO PORTSIDE."
An alarm blared briefly, setting the team on edge and alert. Fox stood up from his seat. "Star Fox, stand by! ROB, get me a camera feed now! Is it a weapon?"
The table's hologram projector switched from a multi-sided cube to a large monitor with a camera trying hard to pinpoint the energy source to the left of the ship. Everywhere the feed looked, however, there was either a stray Mateo asteroid or otherwise space.
"Unconfirmed, but the energy source is growing past five quadrillion joules and rising a hundred trillion every second."
"Five quad- that's more than a tactical nuke!" Falco yelled. "What the hell is it!?"
"WARNING, ENERGY SPIKING UP TO - ERROR, ERROR, CANNOT MEASURE LOCAL ENERGY FIELD WITHOUT CAUSING DAMAGE TO CPU."
This time, the camera began to pick something materializing into view. Seemingly, a tiny electrical storm was beginning to form a few hundred yards from the Great Fox, and it violently crackled with lightning as it grew closer every few minutes. The closer it came, the more light began to shine from it, enough to make the team start closing their eyes as small ripples of electricity began to cycle through their room, and presumably onto the Great Fox.
Then, as suddenly as it all happened, it ended.
Star Fox, unable to understand anything about their situation, rooted themselves to their spots as the camera feed, the ship's lights, and even ROB all shut down, sending them to total darkness. The only light source came from Krystal's eyes herself, which began to glow as it scanned the room.
Following instinct, Falco and Peppy used their hands to get closer to Fox and Krystal's side of the table, while Slippy was heard trying to press a few buttons with nothing but clicks to respond to him.
"Oh no, oh please no, my wrist-com got caught in that thing too. I can't see!" the toad began to panic.
"Krystal, do you see anything?" Fox asked. Normally, his eyes would adjust quickly to the low-light conditions, but it seemed even the emergency lights that go off in a shutdown weren't working. Even he couldn't help but feel a little panic, as life support systems came to mind.
"Yes, I can. Slippy, your wrist device looks completely shut down. Falco, careful, there's a chair in your way," Krystal directed. The avian felt around in front of him before feeling the chair he was just about to trip over. A metal screech echoed on the dark ship as Falco moved the chair away.
"Yeesh, if that doesn't put the fear of the unknown in ya..." Falco mused out loud.
"Falco shut it. Everybody, I need you to do. Not. Panic. Krystal, I need you to head down to Life Support Systems right now and bring it back online, somehow. Just see what you can do. Try to keep your breathing down, take as few breaths as possible to conserve the oxygen on the ship. Uh, what else, annnnnd start wrapping yourselves up with anything on your body. Oxygen and heat are the first to go with LSS down. Go!"
In the darkness of the ship, and with their situation finally settling in, Fox reverted to Leader mode, directing his team to what he hoped was safety and a plan. War hardened the experienced merc to make quick work against thinking enemies, yet the cold darkness of space was an altogether different beast. If nothing could be done with Life Support Systems, Star Fox was pretty much a floating and freezing coffin in the depths of the cosmos.
Fox saw the glowing eyes of Krystal move away, and though he couldn't see it, he suddenly felt like he was breathing out chilled air. "Slippy, get under me. Falco, get under Peppy and get over here, we have to huddle for warmth, furs on top of non-furs."
The clink of boots on top of metal flooring right next to him told Fox his commands were followed, and soon enough he felt feathers hold his right arm as something shuffled underneath his torso. He began to kneel and started to feel the chill of the air cling to his eyes and nose.
"Ack. F-f-fox! I'm, I'm already starting to f-f-feel sle-slee-sleepy!"
No, no, no! Fox thought. This is happening too quickly!
Fox heard a cough from his right. "Fox, ah can't, ah can't breathe-" Peppy stuttered. A muffled "flump!" echoed in the dark, and Fox could hear Falco utter a gasp.
"Peppy? Peppy, talk to me, man!" Falco whined. "Shit, I think Peppy's down!"
"No no no no no-" Fox's panic began to settle in full earnest. His lungs began to ache as if a fire was lit inside his chest, mixing with the now frozen temperature of the air around. "No no no no no no no no no no-"
Another "flump" echoed, this time underneath the leader of the team. Fox shivered as he tried to cover his whole body under the now icy-feeling toad.
"Fox, if we KOFF, aw, man, I don't think we're getting out of-" Falco began to cough out. "Fox, thank - thank you for, being, there for me. Thank you, for, for, for the team-"
Suddenly, a whirring noise echoed throughout the ship, and Fox felt the need to draw in deeper and deeper breaths, before doubling over in a coughing fit. Four small red bulbs brought a little brightness to the room, the emergency lights finally turning on. Within the dim glow, he could see Falco having his coughing fit, barreled over an unmoving Peppy on the ground. The vulpine himself looked below him to see Slippy keeping his limbs together and his eyes shut to keep warm, but at least he was still breathing.
"Hey, hey!" Fox tried to get Slippy's attention, and the amphibian cracked open one eye to look at the leader. "You alright Slippy?"
It took a moment for Slippy to fully open his eyes before he responded. "Ye-yeah. Yeah, I'm OK. Whew, that was too close! What about you, how are you and Falco holding up?"
Fox turned to see Falco now on top of the hare, putting his hands around the hare's face. "Fox, get to Krystal! I'll stay here with Peppy and Slippy!"
At the mention of his mate's name, Fox gasped for a moment before bolting up and looking for the exit. They at least had each other for warmth in the last few moments, but Krystal had nothing but her flight suit on as she tried to find the LSS. If there was anyone who had more chance to succumb to the cold, it would have been her.
Shoving the thought aside, the vulpine raced down the dimly lit hallways of the Great Fox 2, before he found the room that contained the generators for power and Life Support. The door seemed to have already been opened, and quite forcibly too, as it was torn off its hinges on the way inside.
Fox scanned the room, taking note of the nearby computer screens either saying "Rebooting…" or "Awaiting reboot…", before noticing a fire in the corner. Hunched over the fire was Krystal, wearing a depressurization mask and black box on her flight suit, and holding her staff down and activated just underneath rolled up arm sleeves and an opened flight jacket.
Krystal looked up from warming her bare hands at the fire to see Fox coming over. "Oh thank the stars you made it. The mask wasn't working until I started it with a jolt from my staff, and I had to use the fire from it to keep warm while I tried to find the computers and generators. The entire ship was all out of power, I was so scared-"
Fox shushed her by getting close and embracing her with one cold arm. "I'm just glad you're OK. What did you do to get the power back?"
"It, um," Krystal began to explain, "It was honestly a gamble. I aimed a shock spell at the generators just like I got the mask to work. At first, it didn't, and I just felt everything drop from under me right then. Fox, that was," she paused, widening her eyes at the implications of her almost failure, "that was too close!"
His senses only still coming back to him, Fox couldn't help but laugh, "You're telling me. We just felt this utter chill in the air, before our lungs started working overtime just to breathe in any working air. Slippy and Peppy both fell, and Falco was about to say his last words when-"
Fox's eyes widened, remembering more details. "Oh no, Peppy!" he screamed back into the hallway. He turned away from the tempting warmth of the fire and bolted back down into the Great Fox 2's hallways to rush back to the team.
"I'm," Falco began, taking a moment to compose himself, "I'm sorry, Fox."
While Slippy was able to sit back up and rub his muscles back into working order, Falco sat hunched over the unmoving body of Peppy Hare. The veteran team member held his eyes closed, with his face contorted in pain from what was most likely his lungs failing. Every few seconds, however, his face seemed to relax just a bit into an eerily blissful state, as if he was–
"No no no, Peppy don't you die on me yet!" Fox knelt beside the hare and put his hands on top of Peppy's chest. There, he began pumping his hands down right at the top of his mentor's ribs, counting out loud each pump.
"Fox, I already tried CPR, it didn't work!" Falco explained.
"Well maybe you didn't try hard enough!" the vulpine responded with a desperate rage. He leaned down to give the first breath to the hare and saw nothing moved or responded on Peppy's part, except the face now looking more like any one of their defeated enemies: unmoving, and uncaring to the world.
"Maybe we need to defib him, his heart might be slowing down after his lungs couldn't get any oxygen. Slippy, is the defibrillator working?" Krystal asked, coming shortly behind Fox from the room's entrance. Her eyes still glowed in the dark, even with the emergency lights on.
"Not likely, it, it, it needs power, and whatever you did must have only restarted the generators. It's gonna be too long before power can cycle in the ship enough for us to u- u-use it," Slippy explained, looking at the other end of the room where he knew there was an emergency medical station. Like the rest of the ship, it seemed completely powered off, even with LSS still trying to catch up.
"Defib," Fox ruminated, trying to stare at Peppy's chest instead of acknowledging the rest of the body now starting to relax. "Krystal, that's it! Your shock spell on the staff! It can work the same, right!?"
"I, well, I think it can, but how much power do you need? It's not like my staff is a taser, you know!"
"Start at uh, what was it…" Fox held both of his hands to his head, trying desperately to think fast. He did not want to lose his close friend and teammate, and he was not going to start today, goddammit! "I think it's at 300 joules. Think you can do that?"
The sound of lightning echoed in the still dimly lit room, as Krystal charged up her staff to the correct power as she hoped. "Ready!" she cried out.
"Go!" Fox leaned away enough for Krystal to strike Peppy's chest. With a bit of a flash, the Cerenian staff hit the left side of Peppy's chest, and Fox felt a bit of sympathy pain at seeing his father figure and mentor arch up in shock.
Almost as soon as the charge was delivered, Fox leaned forward back onto Peppy and resumed pumping his chest, now looking at the hare's face to see any sign of life in them. He noticed a blue hand place a depressurizing mask over Peppy's face and saw that Krystal had taken her mask off to put it on the elder team member. Glowing eyes met Fox's teary stained ones. The vulpine didn't even realize he was starting to cry.
"Fox, stop just a sec!" Falco asked, bracing his arm against the vulpine's chest. Fox stopped pumping his arms and looked at Peppy, now noticing his chest expanding and compressing of its own accord. A small cough came from the mask, but Peppy still kept his eyes shut as life seemingly came back to the old hare.
They did it. Peppy Hare was still alive.
Fox let out a sigh of relief, and he heard his three other teammates do the same. He stood up, trying to formulate his thoughts under all the intense stress of just the last few minutes, feeling the adrenaline run through his body. Wiping the tears off his muzzle and eyes, which felt like they had seen a monument of pain within a lifetime of 30 minutes, he switched back to Leader mode. "Here's the plan. Slippy, keep watch over Peppy, take over Krystal holding the mask, he could still need help breathing. Once power cycles through the ship enough, I need you and Krystal to bring Peppy down to medical, get him hooked up on a personal LSS until he comes to. Falco, when the ship comes online, I need you to try and get ROB online so we can have him help us figure out what the heck happened. I'll head to the hanger and get an outside view with my Arwing, see if there's more damage on the outside than we think. Everyone got that?"
"Roger!"
"Understood."
"I got it, Fox!"
Fox nodded his head at his teammates and scanned the room one more time. The emergency lights were still on, bathing the room in an eerie red glow, with Krystal and Slippy moving towards each other to work on their task. With nothing else to do until the power came back on, Fox walked over to a chair and sat down, putting his hands on his forehead as he was coming down from his adrenaline high.
He heard a set of footsteps come over, and he looked to see Falco crossed his arms and staring at the table where the hologram projector sat, unpowered like much of the ship. "That was too close, Fox. Too close for my good, and too close for any of us, especially Peppy."
"I know, I know. You were about to say your last words there, bud," Fox responded, remembering the last convo they were having before LSS got turned on. "You're, uh, welcome by the way. I guess."
Falco turned his head away, and Fox wondered if it was in embarrassment or shame that his normally brash and risk-taking friend had lost hope for his life in such an unglorified way. Of all the ways to die in the metal coffins they called space ships, Life Support Systems failing is one of the most unpopular and frankly unassuming ways to fall to the uncaring cosmos.
Falco shook his head, getting himself back to the present. "What do you think hit us? Or do you even think we got hit by something? Our ship is usually supposed to tank an EMP or two, but you heard ROB. 5 quadrillion joules. That's over a megaton of energy happening right outside us, and I've never heard of a weapons platform managing to handle that much energy, much less focuses it on just an EMP."
Fox shook his head, a mental picture of the Arwing he was going to take outside flashed in his mind. "Whatever it was, Falco, it was nothing good…"