author note & disclaimer:
I've wanted more than anything to get the ball rolling on this story again. It's changed quite a bit in the process. Sorry for that. From now on I will not update unless I've really got time to focus and put out something halfway decent.
and...
I DON'T OWN STAR FOX. I DO OWN THE NINTENDO 64 GAME AND SFA. THEREFORE I HAVE PAID INTO THE FRANCHISE, BUT I'M MAKING NO MONEY FROM IT. SORRY IF MY STORIES DON'T FULFILL ANYONE'S EXPECTATIONS OF WHAT A STAR FOX STORY SHOULD BE BUT JUST DON'T SUE ME FOR IT.
Much gratitude to those who have read, reviewed & have offered words of wisdom=^-^=
Strangers No More
Ev^-^
___________________________________________________________________
Dial A Prayer
"We've made it....Listen to that..."
Nothing.
"You okay?"
Krystal looked at Fox from where she leaned exhaustedly against the bathroom door. She'd gotten sick, probably from that bite, he told her, but it was over now. Everything had turned out okay.
"We're a little busted up but I think I can get this thing back on course with a little work."
She tiredly wiped her dampened forehead with the back of her hand. "How bad is it?"
"Our shields are gone. Fact is, just about everything's been taken out....our weapons, the stabilizers, the guidance system,"
"The guidance system?" She ripped away and sprinted to the front, hastily tapped the controls as she knew they'd lost the most crucial function of space travel. One more time she pressed the map indicator and received no response. "We're drifting," She said as he had come beside her. "We can't do anything without a guidance system. We could float out here forever and no one would ever find us..." Then she recalled another very important issue and looked to the back. "That thing...it's growing....two months,"
"Now just hold on a sec, Krysie. We won't be out here two months."
"Sure we'll be dead by then."
"Hey," He came forward, pulled her to him. "We can make it. I'll make the repairs and we'll get back."
"And how will you make those repairs? All the circuits are back there....with that creature."
"I'll have to do some of it from outside," He walked over to the sensors and tapped the ventilation unit. "For one thing, we're losing air. And that creature is no longer one, but several, and they must've worked their way into the valves. I'll have to run a line from back there to the front. It can be done if I change a few connections, but it'll all have to be done from out there..."
"No!"
"No?" He furled out a sort of discrediting laugh and glanced back at the sensors. "You're telling me not to go out there? Just tuck my tail between my legs and let both of us die? Look, what we need to do is rig a device that can support me. You do have cables, right?"
She did. Short. Long. Getting them was a matter of inches to the storage compartment, even so, knowing what he'd be up against and the thought him paying for her mistake....
"I'll do it."
The coloring in his eyes fused almost instantly from their normal scintillating green into a translucent shade of cobalt blue. "No way,"
She stepped to the compartment, got a grip of the handle, hesitated turning it. "If anyone's going to get us out of this, I should. I got us into it--"
"This isn't your fault, Krystal. I agreed with you, remember?" His hand went on the latch with a stronger than her push. Finally the door was opened and the cables in full view.
"Against your better judgment."
A frown slowly formed on his brow just before he reached over her to retrieve the gear and propelled it over his shoulder, slammed the door, then went to the center of the cabin where he got down onto his knees and put down the cables for a thorough check. It seemed that he'd made sure to turn his back to her, his bushy tail that usually swung with ease around her, sadly motionless.
"You know, you should have listened to your mentor instead of me," Krystal pressed on, although once she'd started, she began to feel a bit nauseous again. "He looks out for you like a father. You were the one who told me that. He doesn't want anything to happen to you. If anything, Peppy was only trying to... You're not listening, are you?"
He stared at her briefly then shifted his attention back to the cables as she continued.
"I'd be very grateful if I had someone like him in my life..."
His fidgeting with the cords halted abruptly, his gaze traveled slowly upward and into her eyes. "That's enough," he said, bringing out a utility knife that he'd used to splice wire and stabbed it into the mound of twine.
"I'm sorry, Fox. I'm not trying to hurt you...that's the last thing I would want..."
No answer. Brief silence.
"Get an extra line for the harness," He seemed to command, not request. "And I'm hoping you've got a good set of tools."
Having nothing else to say, she brought out the toolbox and stayed nearby to lend a hand.
In about thirty minutes they had constructed the harness and attached it snugly to the cable. An oxygen mask was also needed along with a couple of small tanks. They worked persistently, Fox building the device as she assisted him as would an electrician and his apprentice, her putting each tool in his hand as he asked for it and listening attentively to him as he spoke out loud from time to time just to break the tension.
"I've done this plenty of times before....... ....Just have to make sure all the latches are secure.... ...trim down all the excess...."
He finished up and she helped get the harness onto him, and he pulled up the cord with hooks on the end that he'd attach to the brackets on the ship's hull. Lastly, he picked up the mask and raised it to his face,
"Wait," Krystal stopped him to peck one last kiss on his muzzle. "I couldn't let you go without that."
They were both quiet, eyes locked on each other when he nudged his muzzle against her cheek then pulled away.
"I want you to keep an eye on the air sensors. Let me know the second anything changes." He shifted a bit then took her right hand and opened it, grabbed his blaster and put it there. "If anything moves, kill it."
The sensor held steady for a long time after he'd gone. At least it had seemed a long time, but when Krystal looked at the timer it had been only six minutes. Those six had seemed like an hour. Not much longer before the digital readout started dropping again, and soon it had plunged below the safety line, which was when her lungs started feeling tight and her head a little lighter. Distant objects had just started getting blurry when all of a sudden the front controls lit up, then she immediately checked the air sensor. The numbers were climbing slowly back to normal.
"...Krystal....I'm coming in..."
The sound of his voice on the intercom gave her a great sense of elation and she anxiously opened the air lock then went out through a circular chamber that led out to the lower deck. It was basically a cargo hold—another standard in transports—with interlocking center bay doors on the floor. All she had to do then was punch the release then hold onto the rails surrounding its porthole as the doors parted side to side. Fox was right there when they did, looking up at her with his back to the sky when she reached for his hand. It had all gone smoothly until the ship jolted forward all of sudden, causing their link to separate, and he tumbled away, and the sudden movement had been so rough that it threw her to the floor. She screamed his name into the blackness of space then, hearing nothing for so long that she had even contemplated jumping but realized how terribly foolish that would have been, and as she had almost broken down to cry, a hand came up, grasping onto the outer rail. Her strength sharply replenished, she'd crawled up and reached out to get him and with both hands tugged him in. During the struggle she grabbed at any and every part of him she could, an arm, a leg, his tail, until finally he had enough leverage to pull up the rails, climb over, and he fell onto her, slammed the palm of his hand onto the button that engaged the airlock, and at last the doors were closed. After that was done, Fox pulled off the mask along with the two oxygen canisters and tossed it all aside.
"I wonder what made that happen?" he panted and raised up, helped her as well, then noticed something he hadn't felt in quite a while. "We're not drifting, we're actually moving. That must've been it. A speed increase... Come on, we'd better get back up there and see what's going on."
She knelt one more time to retrieve mask and canisters, then noted on their readings that they had been empty for almost two minutes. Knowing that, she turned and to see him for a moment, and understood that just a little more time out there would have taken him away from her indefinitely. And so with one hand holding the gear and the other locked in his, she quietly went back with him to the top level, unaware of anything else until looking ahead to the sky.
"Fox! Look!" She let him go and dashed to the front. From there it almost didn't appear to be real. The mothership. Great Fox.
Fox hurried over to the map indicator and sent his code via communicator. "They're not answering but we're obviously headed toward it so they must be pulling us in."
He then sat down again and patted the other chair for her to join him, and he checked the contents of his pack that was between them while she studied the huge ship ahead with unspoken suspicion.
I shouldn't....His team is there, and we've made it back. There will be nothing else to worry about.
Then an abnormal chilling sensation traveled the length of her spine.
_________
"Krystal? Hello? A good flight attendant never drifts off into her own little world when the pilot wants more coffee...." Fox outstretched an empty cup in front of her but she briskly shoved it back at him and huffed out a reply.
"I'm not in the mood for jokes right now...And I'm not your flight attendant."
"Right," He smiled in jest, put down the mug, then tapped at the manual landing controls. "...You're more like my flight instructor. ...Like this, for instance...what the hell's wrong here? Everything's lit and going haywire. Krystal. Hey... are you listening or what? This is no time to go blank on me, babe..."
"They're pulling us in," She replied in a daze and her voice sounded strangely monotonic. "And the team...."
"Yeah, the team. They're pulling us in."
"No, not them..."
She was then stiff, quiet, hauntingly emotionless. On the other hand, the possibility of the team facing an unknown danger hadn't so much as crossed Fox's mind so far, but now he began to wonder why they didn't answer and distressingly rubbed his face, then shook off such unpleasant thoughts. Consequently, they were jarred from his mind by the suddenly rumbling floor under the soles of his shoes and loud clicking sounds from the underside as the transport made its assisted descent toward the landing dock.
"What--"
Before he could get out another word the clicking noises got louder.
"Pressure valves," He watched the indicators closely, noted the landing gear lamps flickering. "Jeez, I know Slippy checked that. They must've taken damage from the laser strikes.... This could mean trouble, Krystal...Krystal? Oh man...not again,"
Without delay, he spun around in the chair, getting a hand on his holster before making what he expected was another turn at coming to her rescue but instead got a good dose of the unexpected when he saw her on the bed leaning toward her personal cubby hole where she swiftly removed an unknown object and concealed it somewhere underneath her cloak.
Fox spun the chair back to the front and took one good deep breath. Then again. Turned back around. Krystal was still on the bed, finally adjusting whatever it was she had just hidden from him and pulled her cloak nicely over her shoulders. He turned back to the controls before she could catch him spying.
Onboard was also an automatic landing indicator flashing on the control panel, and it read twenty-five minutes until docking with the Great Fox; not much time, he thought to himself, because if the problem with the landing gear was what he suspected then that was pretty much it for them. Nothing could be done if the transport collapsed on impact. Developing a pressure leak while being pulled into a gravitation field was deadly—the ship would be crushed like an aluminum can with its vacuum seal breached, the pressure alleviated with violent force, and everything inside expelled in the huge explosion as nothing more than particles of dust and metal and scattered debris that would blow back out through the bay exit into the sky. But he couldn't worry Krystal over this. Furthermore he didn't dare let any negative thoughts about her drift back into his head. Far as he was concerned, this was her first mission as a member of Star Fox whether the guys approved or not, as she'd done well enough to pass any test that any one of them could have dished out by proving her strength, her ability to ability to learn, and a consistent level of awareness. Why was he needing more proof? She was just a girl who had traveled the galaxy in search of answers to the deaths of her parents and decimation of her planet. Her parents. Dead, just like his. She'd been honest with him all along and he had no reason to believe she had anything to hide. Nevertheless, his suspicion had begun to creep back in.
Not knowing what else to do then, he pulled the com off the dash and tried a few times to make contact with the team. "Peppy... Slippy... Falco..." And he leaned back in the chair after getting nothing, and saw that Krystal had come back and was standing near, gazing at him with that same blank expression.
"They won't answer,"
He'd barely heard her over the hard pounding clicks which now rattled throughout the hull.
"You sound sure," He was swift and direct, shooting up from the chair and getting right onto her. "You're absolutely certain they won't answer. Why is that, Krystal?"
A frightened look was also in her eyes as he approached her then became steadily focused. She appeared ready for a confrontation, so ready that she had even predetermined where he'd frisk her first, because as his hands went underneath her cloak, she grabbed them, tried her best at prying him off while he pursued a quest to find something and soon won out in the struggle. The object he found was hard and metal...a weapon with a trigger and thick barrel. With a good grip on the handle, snatched it from the place where she'd tucked it between her skirt and her glowing blue fur, then spun her into his arms and had her locked in, her weapon revealed. Once that was done he forced her back against the wall and held up his discovery in plain view.
"Handgun, semi-automatic," He held it down, checked the cartridge. "Loaded. Like new."
There was another short scuffle where she tried getting it back but didn't succeed as he held it up and away while wrestling her off of him.
"Don't tell me you're a hired assassin—"
"Give it back!" She yelled and made a feisty attempt at grabbing it.
"Who's your target? Not me, I hope,"
"No, not you!"
"Then who? Falco? Slippy? ...Peppy?.."
"No, not anyone! Just give it back! It's mine! I need it!"
"For what?"
"Protection!"
"From who? What?"
She reached for it again but failed. "Just give it to me!"
"You can't just go firing off one of these things on a spaceship, Krystal..."
Looked like she was really panicking then. Her eyes kept shifting to the front where the landing dock had come into full view and the lights inside were casting shadows on the dim transport cockpit.
"We're landing!" She screamed and pointed forward.
The hull vibrated violently, the clicking sounds were then so loud that it was painful on the eardrums.
"Yeah, we're landing. Good thing about that is we've still got time left to say a few prayers of forgiveness before we crash!"
"Crash?"
He backed away, tucked her gun under his belt. "That sound you're hearing is a pressure leak. If we land too hard, we'll break up. If that happens, the force pulling us in spikes. We'll go down and the sudden release of pressure splits us into a billion pieces...I mean everything, including you and me."
She looked to the front in sudden desperation then snatched away and ran to the controls, "We can pull back out, can't we? That's what we'll have to—"
"If you're looking to kill us both even sooner that'll do it..." He caught her just in time to move her hands away from the controls. "A reverse right now would tear the hull from one end to the other. I think what I need right now is for you to tell me why you're so scared of going back."
He could feel her hands trembling in his, could see the fear in her eyes.
"...It's a trap..." she said in whisper. "That's why I wanted us to leave...because the last thing I'd want is for you to be hurt. He was relying on catching you here..."
"He? Who's he?"
"Everything that happened in the last days of Cerinia's existence was my fault. I could've stopped it. I never even knew.."
"Krystal—" Fox wanted details, not confessions.
"I didn't know who he was....but then....Tira..."
"Tira?"
"She was my best friend. We were brought up in the same sect. She was killed trying to escape..."
He scratched behind his ear. "Excuse me if I'm not seeing how this fits in."
"No one would admit to it but I happen to know she was murdered, accused of spying for the enemy. I could have been murdered as well if not for him. He saved me from being murdered by our king by putting me onto one of his ships to get out. Next thing I knew, Cerinia had been destroyed. If not for him, I would have been dead, too, and so I swore after that I owed my life to him and pledged my services to him..."
Fox perked up immediately. "Hold it. Your services?"
"I worked for him. I received the distress signal from Dino Planet through him and met with him again after you rescued me. He came there and told me there was just one last thing he wanted."
"And that was?"
"Your ship. The Great Fox,"
"Whoa...." He jammed his fist into his chest to make the block of air he'd swallowed go down "I'm not believing this..."
"You don't understand. I was told things about you...He told me you'd do anything just for money... He really had me convinced that you'd set everything up with General Scales and made it look like you killed Andross just so you would look like a hero—"
Fox lapsed into pathetic laughter. "Made it look like I killed Andross?"
"Yes, he said it wasn't really him...that you were fighting a fake. He says Andross is still alive and you were very well aware..."
"Just hold it. For the last time, who the hell is it?" He watched her tense up then he took a quick glimpse at the countdown reading. "We've got five minutes 'til landing and you're gonna tell me who this guy is before we hit zero."
With her efforts to keep stalling, he flipped back a few pages of his memory to a conversation they had not long after she first came aboard the Great Fox. There had been mention of Andross and his connection to General Scales, and the odd thing about that which Fox still had a hard time figuring out was how Krystal had called Andross a mean old ape. How could she have known Andross's origins when the only time she saw him was at Krazoa Palace with that mask of a Krazoa god over his head? And when it came to his empowerment of General Scales, she seemed to have answers, stating how she knew he was a scientific genius with a maniacal mind. How did she know? Who provided her with the information?
"I pledged an oath, Fox," she said after a good lengthy stance of silence. "You should know about these things, shouldn't you? Just like your allegiance to Star Fox?"
"Meaning you pledged an oath to this leader of some kind of rogue merc unit and you're not gonna tell me who it is..."
"He believes you're just another one who wants ultimate power over this universe,"
"I guess you know how crazy all this sounds. And we've got three minutes--"
She didn't seem to like at all the way he pressed at her. "You don't understand,"
"I understand perfectly," Fox's brows were at ease, then lowered into a hard frown. "Now who is he?"
It was a strange feeling just for that moment, being that Krystal never was really part of the team after all, and now if the disaster he was expecting did happen, she would die with him not as a member of Star Fox, but perhaps an adversary, and even if they survived the landing, and if he eventually found the rest of his crew unharmed and intact, she would be a highly guarded prisoner, no longer trusted, no longer the ideal mate he'd come to know so well...
The seconds ticked down under two and her eyes were deeply focused into his as she finally broke her loyalty and disclosed the identity of her leader. "...His name is Wolf O'Donnell..." She bowed her head for a second or two, then looked back into Fox's suddenly forlorn gaze.
"Good...." He started, "...God..." his the heart seeming to cave in. "...You...." hitting him so hard that he couldn't form his mouth to speak, couldn't think beyond the connection:
...Krystal..Star Wolf....Andross....
"He never did anything to make me suspicious of him." she insisted.
"Yeah...but he'll do just about anything for money as long as it's for the other side."
The other side... Krystal had thought of how Lylat was broken up into many different sectors of independent republics and planets. "What other side?"
Fox picked up his backpack, put it onto the chair behind him. "Which ever one I'm not on."
After they both stood there awkwardly, Fox could barely look at her as another thought crossed his mind. "So you were traveling the galaxy before we met. But you couldn't have done that without some kind of assistance...you know... food...shelter. Where was that, Krystal? Where has your home been since Cerinia was destroyed?"
Again, she bowed her head, and softly, she answered. "Venom."
The entrance alarms started ringing outside and the landing gear made a loud bumping noise as it extended from the transport's belly. Yet he couldn't help but think of how long she'd lived on Venom and what she might have been doing all while she was there, and in the span of seconds he envisioned her with Wolf, taking his orders, fulfilling his wishes, no telling what else.... A bitter taste coated Fox's tongue then, and the palms of his hands felt just as hot as his heart felt bloodless.
"Fox, I—"
She pounced forward but he moved back and went to the bed where he immediately got a good grip around the metal floor to ceiling end post.
"Grab something and hang on." He made it nothing more than an order from a commander to his subordinate, and she obeyed, although not as he'd expected.
She went to him, tightened her arms around his waist, tucked her head upon his shoulder, and he'd tried hard not to let it happen but his heart was suddenly thumping strong again and felt even heavier, same as the low sigh he had released and the inability to keep from gently holding her head against him as the transport entered the final stage of its descent into the dock. The clicking noises then became hollers of structural weakness as it touched down onto its right, "We're tilting..." Krystal gasped as the ship went aslant and the noise intensified, and Fox knew he heard a few gaskets blowing which he figured was all just a matter of time until the screeching in his ears became the abrupt pop that would suck them out into the sky with bone-shattering force. He soon felt air rushing around him and heard the hissing of the ventilation system, then, the left side lowered gradually, until the craft sloshed down flush with the landing pad, then silence.