Chapter VIII
"He's got Jade." Eric's whisper pierced the room like an arrow through a Japanese door.
Pepper came riding up, suspicion screaming in his eyes. "And how do you know this?!? He demanded, picking Eric up by the scruff of his shirt.
"I'm Sherlock Holmes, I see everything," Eric retorted, trying to get his bearings and his breath back. "When Jade bit me, she drew blood. You can even see it in the center of the room. Now, Kryss, when he walked out, I could've sworn he was wincing. And look… four drops of blood between the door and Jade's bassinet."
Pepper gave the kind of relaxed feeling you get from Secret Service bodyguards; anything goes wrong and they're prepared to give hell. Outside, a school of Cloudrunners flying in front of the window gave Eric a terrifying idea. If he didn't pull it off… it was a long way down.
"Gimme a gun," Eric whispered as the rest ran towards the door to check on things downstairs.
Pepper got his bad temper back again. "No way in-!"
Fox interrupted. "We'll need all the firepower we can get, General," Fox explained. "Besides, you don't even know what he's going to use it for yet." Eric noticed Fox's hand wavered dangerously over his holster as if he expected he was going to use it already.
Pepper grudgingly handed over a blaster. "Now what?"
"And a translator from common to…er… Dinosaur…Planet…ese…" Eric said, eyes darting towards the window outside and praying that more Cloudrunners were still out there.
"For communication?" Pepper said, eyeballing Eric as he handed one over.
After he got his gear ready, he walked over to the window, opened it, and started shouting at the Cloudrunners below.
"Eric?" Sarah asked. "You wouldn't…" she whispered to herself.
"He would," Fox didn't realize he had said that out loud as Eric started backing up from the window.
"No! No! No! No!" Spike, Krystal, and Sarah yelled out as Eric took a dash at the window. Pepper took a lunge to stop him, but missed. Fox dove, but was too far away.
Eric dove out of the window, his feet breaking part of the bottom. If calculations were correct…
Moments before diving off into the teeming masses of people below, he caught onto the back of a Cloudrunner. "What are you doing!" it yelled. "I'm supposed to be on the roof helping with the attack!"
"Change of plans!" Eric bellowed over the pouring rain. He was praying the blaster and translator were waterproof, as his shorts were soaked to the skin already and the interior of his pockets were drenched with enough water to put a hydro pump to shame. "Come on! We've got a McCloud to save!"
"You don't mean… Sir Fox McCloud's in peril?" The Cloudrunner breathed as Eric guided it to an escaping ship with a V on it.
"No, just his daughter. Yah!"
(Fox, Sarah, Krystal, Spike)
"Damn!" Fox cursed as Eric landed on a Cloudrunner. He steered over to his right where, Fox saw, a Venom ship was attempting escape.
"Fox McCloud, don't you dare try anything rash!" Pepper warned as Fox began to get the manic glint in his eye.
Nah, no more Cloudrunners, Fox thought. Kid's got guts. What he said instead was, "Our only chance is to make it to the hanger for our ships, General, call for reinforcements." Fox tossed Krystal and Sarah blasters. "We need firepower, do you know how to use a gun, miss…" Fox added, looking at Sarah.
"It's Sarah, and yeah, I play paintball with Eric all the time…"
"This is only slightly different from some childhood game…!" Pepper roared as he picked up his radio, but the rest of his sentence was lost as the others dashed out to figure what was going on. As they left, the Master Alarm went off, blaring over almost all other sound.
(Eric)
"Get me over to that ship!" Eric howled over the deafening static of the off-key radio called the rain.
"But how…"
"I swear to god, the next time you question about what I'm going, I'm jumping off and finding another Cloudrunner!" Eric said menacingly. "Less talk, more fly!"
(Fox, Sarah, Krystal, Spike)
The rest of the building was almost as screwed as Jade was. Venom had launched an attack and was attempting to make off with the next generation of McCloud, with Krystal's powerful staff to boot.
"They're trying to follow us!" Spike cried, laying low a Venom terrorist coming from behind.
"Fox! This is hopeless!" Sarah moaned, nearly getting a mouthful of plasma. "The only way we can stand is if those reinforcements Pepper called arrive! And what about Eric!" She added, blasting a firm shot in the shoulder of an advancing thug.
"Here's the plan!" Fox called as they ducked behind an overturned table. Krystal stood guard. "We need to get to the basement! When we get there, I can get my parked ArWing, and then I'll get Eric. You'll have to hold the fort until Pepper's soldiers arrive, got it?"
The wall behind them suddenly exploded as a small, tank-like machine plowed through it. It immediately fired a missile at Spike, whose flesh split open as it exploded on his scaled hide. Sarah fired a few shots at it, to now avail.
"Run!" Krystal called, grabbing Fox's arm. "Nothing we have will take this on! We need to get to the hanger!"
Fox nodded in reluctant agreement, but as they tried to escape, machine guns fired at Spike, causing him to fall. His life force ebbed as his eyes began to cloud, and he stumbled, smearing blood on the linoleum floor.
"Spike!" Sarah called, running back to kneel beside him. All Spike said was, "Go!" before another rocket landed on his back. When the dust settled, the grossness of blood smearing the wall was only compounded by Spike's beheaded cranium rolling and coming to a halt at Sarah's feet.
Sarah vomited as Krystal dragged her away when Fox found the armory weapons on this floor. He gave the tank a shot from a rocket launcher, and Sarah found her screaming stopped by the high-pitched whine coming from the rocket-propelled grenade, which landed inside the tank before exploding in a shower of glory and tank parts.
Your death, has been avenged, Fox thought as they fled. Gunning down two more Venom terrorists, they finally made it to the elevator. "Ok, I'll go get my ship, you guys take out as many of those guys as possible. I need to make sure that no one escapes through the air."
"Alright," Sarah said, still feeling sick at the loss of Spike. Krystal helped her to stand as they staggered to the door as Fox mashed the buttons on the elevator.
(Fox)
I hope this wasn't the wrong choice, Fox thought hopelessly. Right when my vacation was going so well, too…
With no time to lose, Fox decided to speed things up a bit. He pushed the, "Slide," button on the elevator door and heard the brakes loosening up. Within seconds, he was at the bottom basement where the secret hangar was, ready for grabbing his stuff.
Pocketing his sword he got upon becoming knighted, he ran for the ArWing he kept here when he was vacationing. Booting it up, he pushed the remote that would open the meadow a short distance south up so he could see what was going on from his preferred view: the sky.
Now to see how Eric's doing and when are our backup is coming.
(Eric)
Wiping his hair out of his eyes for the sixth time in about two minutes, the Cloudrunner was nearing the Venom ship. Fleeing from Eric, the back hatch started to open.
Whipping out his blaster and translator, and hoping that they weren't damaged by the sheer dose of H2O they had taken recently, he stood shakily to the back of his mount. "Give Jade back!" He yelled as it finished opening.
It was Klepto! He was holding a mask that looked like Kryss' face on it. With no time to lose, Eric readied his gun and was about to pull the trigger when he pulled out both Krystal's staff and…
"Jade!" Eric moaned. Klepto was using her as a fox shield, despite the awesome array of crimson plasma that resulted from handling her with his bare hands. Eric couldn't get a clean shot off!
"Die! No one who sees me in a moment of weakness lives!" Klepto called. His voice was scratchy, like a crow's. He waved Krystal's staff in the air and fired a fireball at Eric
Dodging to the side to avoid a third degree burn, Eric dropped the translator as he struggled to keep his balance. "Stay steady!" Eric yelled at the Cloudrunner, despite it's inability to understand. Slipping to get to his feet again, he aimed his blaster as Klepto readied another shot. From over Jade's right ear, one blazing eye dared him to shoot.
(Fox)
Through his rain splattered windshield, Fox could see Eric perfectly. He was standing on top of the Cloudrunner he landed on, and was steadying his aim through the wind. Good, Fox thought, He hasn't gotten himself killed yet. Fox accelerated to get to the point where his lasers could be useful through the heavy rain, and noted out of the corner of his eye Lylat ships coming in through the atmosphere. Looks like the cavalry's here!
(Eric)
With Klepto readying another shot and crouching behind part of the door and Jade herself, he wasn't going to get another shot. "Squeeeeeeeeeze the trigger…"
Results couldn't have been both catastrophic and favorable at the same time. The laser pierced through Klepto's eye, causing him to scream in pain. Also, as Fox would later tell him, the laser speared the brain of the pilot of the ship.
Good things ended there, however, as with his last breath Klepto threw Jade at Eric. Dropping his gun to catch Jade, it looked like Klepto's last chance to kill Eric would have been in vain as he dropped from this ship, Krystal's staff in his death grip. Unfortunately for Eric, turbulence from the ship's dying controls rocked the Cloudrunner, creating a shudder that rocked his body. Eric lost his balance and began to fall into the urban abyss, clutching Jade tightly and ignoring the fact that she was eating his hand. He shut his eyes and waited for his world to end.
Eric was falling through the air for almost three seconds when he hit a hard object, a good 30 seconds before he anticipated he'd actually splat. Opening his eye, Fox grinned cheerfully through the windshield of the ArWing Eric had landed on.
Eric had no time to breath a sigh of relief, for the impact of landing had shaken his grip. He watched helplessly as Jade rolled out of his hands.
He reached out and caught Jade between his feet.
Fox steered the ArWing towards the ground while Eric had a heart attack, screaming bloody murder through the windshield. Fear gripped his mind for the first time, despite the cavalry finally arriving.
Sarah and Krystal limped out of the building, each sporting several burns as the Lylat soldiers started rounding up the Venom thugs who had failed to evacuate the area yet. Eric landed rather ungracefully, trying to keep Jade injury-free.
"Ok, here's what I've learned. One, Jade is safe, two, Klepto's gonna need a little bit more than a band-aid, and three, my hand feels like it's on fire. EEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!!!!" Eric screamed as he tried to pry Jade from his fingers. His hand was coated in blood, and near the finger it was torn open so badly you could see the bone.
Screaming in agony, he gingerly handed Jade to Krystal, who then embraced Eric ("Please, I'm still 14, I'm a bit young for that…"), glad that he brought Jade back in one piece ("I know you really, really like that Jade got back safely, but when someone hugs me for more than 15 seconds I get a little freaked out…").
A Lylat medic, noticing that Eric's hand was bleeding like one of Annie Oakley's victims, gave Eric a roll of bandages to mop up his hand with.
Pepper then came storming out of the building, grabbing Eric by the neck of his shirt and pulled him aside for a bit of, "one on one chat."
"That was the most suicidal thing I could ever imagine, for sheer lack compassion for your own life you would not even make it to the military boot camp!" He stormed, going red in the face. "And, for that, Jade owes you her life."
"Yeah, well, It's not my fault… huh?!?" Eric started, going into complete bewilderment at how Pepper's speech ended.
"When the situation was brought under control, I spoke with Lieutenant Derrek, one of my best men. I had a Purple Paw awarded in your honor, and a spot in the military should you decide to join."
"I'd feel flattered, except that I have no idea what a Purple Paw is and I think the military is too rigid."
"A Purple Paw is something we award to individuals who have made a daring act, something which can only be described as heroism or showing great compassion. Risking your own life for someone you already know is definitely something which qualifies for a Purple Paw. And, it'd be instant promotion to Captain."
"Cool. I'll get back to you if I decide to join, ok?"
"That is fine," Pepper said, beaming.
"What was that about?" Fox asked when Eric walked back to the group.
"He said that I got a Purple Paw, and, if I decided to go into the military, I'd get an instant promotion to Captain."
"No way! What are you gonna do?"
"I don't know, Captain stuff," Eric joked as Sarah pulled him aside.
"I can't take this. I almost get killed, and… It's just not natural. These are video game characters! I'm going to go now, OK?" Sarah said, looking worried. "Promise me you won't go and get yourself killed if you stay here."
"Huh? Yeah, of course I won't, I don't have any intention of taking the dirt nap."
"Be careful. I might come back, but this is scaring me. Promise me you won't do something rash." Sarah said as she took off her shades.
Perfect, ruin my perfectly good mood, Eric muttered as he walked away from the blur that occurred when Sarah took off her shades. To add even more to his gloomy mood, the death toll rolled in: 46 dead, including Captain of the Guard. Eric steeled himself by telling him, "No sorrow for those lost in righteous battles." Then, he decided, it was time.
Eric needed to know what was going on. "Fox," he called as he came closer as the aftermath of the attack subsided and the news reporters pulled up. "I want to get me some answers!"
End of Act I