Chapter V
"What?! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?!" Sarah's voice sounded freakishly high. "No vacuum support, means no air, means…" Sarah continued to trail off into unspeakable atrocities.
"Sarah, 50 years of pulp fiction to the contrary, being in a vacuum does NOT cause you to turn inside-out and explode." Eric said, trying to fight his voice from going the same way.
Sarah looked at Fox, who nodded.
"It just causes your body fluids to boil away."
At this information, Sarah's panicked look started to come back in. Eric was getting his, "I'm about to do something so insanely suicidal, it just might work," glint in his eye, like back when he saved Jade, as Wolf's voice came back onto the comlink.
"You aren't the only one with a fancy ship now, McCloud!" He sneered. Eric had to fight a crazy urge to take his sword and slice the control panel to pieces. He drew his sword and tossed the bow and arrows to Sarah and didn't notice when the arrow's point erupted into flame and the bow sprouted short, curved blades at the ends. "This is the Cerberus!" Wolf continued to gloat. "And I'm willing to bet that nifty sword your buddy has there ("He looks a bit like me," Andrew felt inclined to point out behind Wolf's shoulder) that it far surpasses the Great Fox!"
"What makes you think you can have my sword!" Eric said, none to pissed off at how he was really having to inhale to get some breath. "The only way you will ever be able to have this baby is when I die, you pry this from my lifeless carcass and feed me to the buzzards."
"Accepted. You now have two choices.," Wolf growled, taking his attention away from Murasma. "Lay down your weapons and be taken, or die a painful death from the vacuum of space." Wolf's voice was dangerously sulky and deep.
"We'll get him." Fox said. Eric, in the short time (about three weeks) he had known him, he had NEVER seen Fox so pissed off. Gritting his teeth, Eric knew he was about to do something he would regret later. "Drop your blasters."
"WHAT?!?" Was the collective reply. The rest of the group burst into argument, then stopped abruptly as Sarah poked Eric.
"WHAT IS IT NOW?!?" Eric exploded. He had far too many things on his hands, Sarah nearly cowered as the pressure on the ships computer started to hit 75%… 74%… 73%…
"Look…" Eric finally got a good shot at the glimpse of the bow's transformation. Not only had a small cut on Sarah's cheek had abruptly gotten healed, but the bow now had a carving right above where you would put your hand that said, "Beamstriker," and the arrow she had nocked had erupted into blue flame and small, curvy swords that had sprouted from the ends of the bow seemed to bathe Sarah is warrior light. Eric would have had more time to be amazed if it wasn't for their life-and-death situation.
"Much as I'm enthralled," Eric said sarcastically. "We have more important things on our hands. Anyway…" Then turned to rag on Fox, who had dropped his blaster and clenching his jaw.
"You can't just surrender…"
"This is stupid."
"No, Fox!"
"Fox, don't give up! Trust your instincts!"
"Do you really think they'll let us live?!?"
"By the sands of Allahor, Fox, keep your head up and DO something!"
"Like WHAT?!?" Fox exploded. "There's nothing we CAN do! Our weapon systems are down and none of what we have are going to take them! Wolf is smarter than that, he's never going to open the Tractor Beams on that ship without our being disarmed."
"You know what, Fox?" Eric was looking like he knew exactly what he was going to do that was suicidal and insane. "You give up. Right know. I expect you in the Cerberus' prison chambers, ready for saving."
"What the…?" Fox said. The rest of the group had lay down their weapons, with much grumbling, complaining, and talk about Fox just giving up.
"Good…" Wolf said, smiling his dubious smile about final triumph. Eric felt the pressure around him stabilize as the Cerberus fired its Tractor Beams to bring the ship in, EMP it and take hostages. Right as the door was about to open, Eric sprung into action.
Throwing his legs out from under him, Eric grabbed Fox's blaster and fired three shots into the screen with Wolf's face. He managed to get out, "What the…?" Before everything went black and fuzzy. Dropping the gun and picking up his sword, Eric heard the door open and fighting go on behind him. Dashing into the escape pod room, he prepared to rocket out of the door as the airlock closed behind him.
"Okay Eric, the moment of truth. Getting total strangers out of the third mess in three weeks. Let's roll!" You probably know the exploits he was referring to. Hitting the button, the escape pod floated out of the ship as Eric opened his mouth and started slowly exhaling. The biting cold of space got to him, but there was enough warmth from the engine of the Cerberus, which, Eric noticed, was pumping heat like a furnace. Must have a hell of a coolant system. Another thing Eric noticed that it wasn't just bigger than the Great Fox, it was HUGE, at least twice the size of the Great Fox. No problem finding anything in there, Eric thought bitterly.
Floating out from the tiny hole in the Great Fox, the escape pod vaporized when the Cerberus' lasers shot out. The few molecules left would not hit a planet for millions of years. Eric had suspected this, a diversion in case the radar picked him up. The radiation resulting from the blast would scramble radio signals for a couple of minutes.
Floating free fall, Eric noticed Fox and the rest of the group walking through the Tractor Beams and some (very) beat up crew wolves poking them with the barrel of blasters. Andrew was bringing up the rear with their weapons, doing everything in his power not to touch the Beamstriker, which was shocking him every time his hand drew near.
Almost there… Eric's blood was pounding in his ears when Fate decided to deal him a hand of cards.
He was going to miss if he didn't do something!
Reaching out with Murasma and praying like crazy he wasn't that far off, he scraped around the side of the ship creating just barely enough friction to move into the airlock of the ship. Thankfully, Destiny was also on his side as Eric had used the flat of the blade, creating friction but not cutting the ship. Fifteen seconds… Eric's lungs started to protest. Floating to the end of the ship to hit the button, the door started to close.
Twenty-five seconds. He couldn't open the next door or he'd take down the entire ship - and his friends with him. His lungs began to burn.
Thirty seconds, the door was half closed. Close, you stupid thing, close! Keeping perfectly still in the zero-grav space to preserve what oxygen was left, he closed his eyes and attempted to relax every muscle in his body.
He failed. Forty seconds… Eric wouldn't have been surprised if his eyeballs had started to implode. The door closed at fifty seconds, with Eric taking breaths prior to it being closed and paying for it in extreme pain. Sucking on blessed oxygen from the door closing, Eric stood up.
Opening up the door to the main ship, Eric could hear voices. One of which belonged to Wolf, the other one was with Pigma. Eric couldn't make them out, but Eric noticed something odd.
Where was Leon?
Peeking through corners, Eric thankfully didn't run into everyone until he hit two signs, one of which said, "Bridge," the other one led to the prison cells.
"I wonder," Eric muttered sarcastically, and sped off to the right in search of the prison cells and came to an abrupt halt at three lasers trapping a corridor. The stench of death and rotten food wafted towards him through the hall. Picking up a wrench off to the side, he chucked it at one of the guns projecting the lasers. It split in half as it went through the deep crimson of one of the beams, and the two pieces knocked out one of the traps. Stuck with no more wrenches, and with voices all around, Eric was stuck with another thing to pick up and throw when his gaze fell upon the now sheathed Murasma.
There's definitely more to this blade than meets the eye. I can only wonder what…" He started fiddling with it and nearly slitting his finger open running his digit on the razor-sharp diamond blade, while at the same time wondering why the flame didn't set him on fire. It was a cool flame, at below room temperature, with an almost hypnotic dance to it.
You can imagine his concern when he let it fall and the blade broke off cleanly from the hilt.
"No, no no! Crap!" Eric cried in despair. Unarmed and without a sense of direction were not the way to go. Out of sheer desperation, he tried forcing it back into it's place in the hilt and gasped when he heard an audible, "click."
Blade goes in, blade comes out, blade goes in, blade comes out, Eric thought, fooling with it some more. Homer J. Simpson memorial. Getting ideas from this, he picked up the detached blade and chucked it at the camera/laser trap. Bisecting the trap, Eric expected it to clamor off of the ceiling, but it came back in a smooth boomerang, cutting the other one. "Cooooooooool…" Eric said, gaping at his blade. Dashing through the long corridor, at a three way intersection the two unexplored areas went to a dank and smelly door, which you didn't have to be Isaac Newton to know that it led to the prison cells, and another hallway which, judging by the smells of food, went to the kitchens.
"How does Wolf get this stuff?!?" Eric muttered. "I mean, evildoers have less money than heroes because…" Then stopped. No. Villains tend to have more money because they don't have to work for it, explaining why Wolf and Co. had henchmen.
Opening the sliding door into the prison room, three boar-like guards held the rest of the SFF, Peppy, and Slippy hostage. They had blasters and Eric quickly gave a roundhouse kick one to the face and slashed the second through the middle with his sword, and found out that he could do this without being taught. Despite being in a life-or-death situation, pulling off fancy sword and martial arts maneuvers came naturally. Dropping the third with the flat of the blade, he cursed himself for not getting off his couch and trying something like this, he probably would have less physical injuries.
"Whoa, that was incredible!" Slippy squeaked. Even Falco was staring at the sheer speed Eric dropped the guards. Eric slashed at the bars, the SFF was freed. With the guards one floor, Eric arranged for them beneath the covers to look like Fox and Co. was sleeping, then used pillows to cover for the three empty beds. Following behind Eric, they quietly snuck through the corridor. Sarah felt that Eric, Falco and Krystal made far too much noise, Eclipse, Fox and herself were far stealthier. Then, of course, Peppy and Slippy almost brought down the house, and when Slippy tripped into a cabinet full of cooking utensils in the kitchen, holding out to see if they had been caught, Eric pulled him aside.
"You stupid freak show!" Eric exploded into Slippy's face, he cowered as much as he could, slinking down his vest. "Why don't you just hit the stupid alarm, dumbass Toad!" The noise could have woken Eclipse on a tilithium high and Slippy just sort of skulked at the back of the train of people after that.
They continued to tip-toe through the corridors of the Cerberus, someone was talking on the other side of a door. Looking up, bright neon letters spelled out ARMORY. "If your guy's weapons are anywhere in this ship, they're gonna be in there." Eric said. "You guys are unarmed, so try to grab a blaster or something, and be ready for backup." The rest of the group nodded in silent agreement. "And Slippy? Try to lose some clumsiness, for your god's sake, you and Peppy are lookout." Slippy tried to argue, then closed his mouth. He'd probably attract someone.
Eric strolled in the door like he owned the Cerberus. The pig and crocodile guards actually looked up, then looked down to their game of cards before realizing that Eric had no fur. He looked THAT much like one of the ape guards.
"Hey, you aren't Gunther!" The crocodile said, dumbfounded, meeting the sole of Eric's shoe up close and personal. Fox cracked his knuckles on the pig guard, then they went through the armory in search of weapons. After tying up the croc and pig, they found their weapons and Eric found something of personal interest.
"Eric, those are archaic!" Falco said rashly as Eric hoisted a pair of gunpowder submachine guns, both of which mostly grayish and very similar in shape. Scratched on the sides of the barrel looked like half of a yin and yang symbol for each gun.
"Yeah, I'm the only one without a distance weapon." Eric said as he put them into the vest Fox let him borrow. "Fox has his blaster, Sarah has the Beamstriker, you have the Z-1 and Krystal and Eclipse each have spellslinging abilities. Now I-" He spun them around to demonstrate. "-Have guns. Now, if it all comes to a ranged battle I won't be able to just be used as cannon fodder."
"Eric, those are BULLET weapons…" Sarah felt obliged to point out.
"Yeah, so…?"
"They make noise, blow holes in spacecraft, and any wound will be traceable to YOU."
"And if I don't let them know I have it so they just follow a dead end?"
Sarah rolled her eyes. It was futile arguing, despite dozens and dozens of blaster weapons, so Eric found a decent holster for inside the vest and the rest of the group reclaimed their weapons. "There's no fully automatic function," Eric explained. It was at that moment Gunther decided to come back…
"What the hell?"
"I got him." Falco responded. He was only slightly pissed at having to hand another life-debt to Eric and proceeded to bash Gunther's face in. Gunther fell back, stunned, when Falco shot him with a tranquilizer dart and he went down.
Tying up the fallen foes and stuffing them into a forgotten corner of the armory, they proceeded to the bridge as something bone-chilling hit Eclipse from behind. Literally. Stumbling forward and holding her back, Sarah and Falco jumped to the back as Fox was flung into an alarm button. A deafening SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEET! SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET! filled the ship.
"What the hell?!?" Eric shouted, grasping Murasma tightly as Leon Powalski seemed to appear out of thin air. "Camouflage," Eric managed to gasp as Leon pulled out a blaster. Eric tried to absorb a blast with his sword, but missed, taking a perfectly cylindrical chunk out of Eric's shoulder. Screaming from the sting, Leon promptly disappeared again. Luckily, the gun stayed visible and dropped to the ground, but all the muscle in the world can be reduced to a pile of bloody corpses by an invisible attacker.
"Subtlety be damned!" Eric called, swinging wildly. A spray of chameleon blood sprayed across the floor. Success! Leon de-camouflaged just long enough for Falco to grab him and start strangling him. Try as Leon might, he even camouflaged into Falco to make it look like he disappeared, he couldn't break Falco's death grip. Leon then began to plead for his life as Sarah muttered something about hopeless cliché's.
"Don't do anything! Don't kill me!" Leon pleaded. Falco tightened his hold, while Eric staring at Leon and the screaming alarm, and the sound of guards coming.
"No…" Eric said, standing in front of Leon and staring over the rim of his sunglasses at Falco. Eric's blue eyes were twinkling malevolently from behind the opaque barrier as the rest of the crew were trading curious glances, to Eric, to Leon, to the screaming alarm… "I've thought up of a better use for you…"
The screaming pack of foes came charging around the corridor and encountered a startling sight. Hiding behind a writhing mass of duct tape, which was encasing Leon, was the SFF. Only Leon's mouth showed, the black submachine gun poked from underneath Leon's armpit. Fox's blaster was aimed straight at Leon's head while Falco's Z-1 was also coming from behind the biological barrier that was Leon. Meanwhile, Eclipse and Krystal were focusing on a magic shield to prevent someone from coming up from behind.
"Don't shoot, you imbeciles!" Leon roared as well as he could covered in thick tape when one of the apish guards tried to squeeze in a shot. "You could cause an explosive decompression by hitting the outside wall! Or hit ME!" The guards tensed up but lowered their guns. "What do you want us to do?" They asked Eric, who promptly came up with a bluff.
"That is more like it! Take us to Wolf, and if you so much as twitch a blaster in our direction both you and Leon are going to be so covered in laser burns your skin grafts will need skin grafts!" Eric barked.
"Is he always like this?" Eclipse whispered in Sarah's ear, who had two arrows nocked, one behind the other, with the Beamstriker and it trained on a foe.
"No, this is relatively new…" Sarah replied.
"Do it!" Leon barked. Man, Leon was just not making this fun at all… Eric thought. Falco also had a similar mindset.
Leading the way, the guards led Fox and Co. through the ship. Passing an alarm, Sarah let loose her flaming arrows at the alarm, causing it to stop screaming. Just as well, the furries were nearly deaf from the constant screaming, and even Eric, who's hearing was impaired, felt like his eardrums had blown. Every time one of them turned around, Sarah was all to happy to ricochet an arrow off the ceiling and come in danger of impaling their brains on the sharp point. Wolf was not pleased when the SFF finally got there.
"How did this happen!" He roared.
"Very carefully." Eric replied. "Now I'm going to make you a deal. Leon's life, for our ship in pristine order and letting us just fly off."
"Are you sure that's wise?" Peppy whispered.
"Yeah, you have to make sure it would be something they want."
Wolf seemed to be trying to make a decision. It was made easier, since every guard on the way had their blasters ready, but with a shield Eclipse and Krystal were powering, and a gun to Leon's head and the rest of the group ready to bring hell at any move, Wolf was actually taking the time to decide. We'll get them later, he thought. And leave a little… surprise…
"Fine. Let him go now." Wolf declared miserably.
"Oh no, no, no! You fix our ship first! How do we know you aren't going to backstab us?"
"I could say the same thing. And remember something. Who's more responsible than the good guys?" Eric asked cockily.
"Just let Leon go, and we'll fix the ship."
"Turn that order around."
"Fine." Wolf finally said after much hesitation.
"That's more like it."
Backing into a corner to allow for complete control over the situation, Wolf fired the Cerberus' Tractor Beams at the Great Fox and sent workers to fix the vacuum hole. Half a cycle later, they came back.
"And Wolf," Eric added as a safety precaution. "What about the Nova Bomb and the tracking device you had your guys plant?"
Wolf's eyes flickered, then seemed sunk into his head. "How did you know? They were perfectly concealed!"
Eric burst out into laughter and triumph. Amidst the endless belly-laughs, Fox and Wolf could make out one sentence.
"I didn't, you just told me!"
Words failed Wolf's expressed anger. He literally picked up one of his guards and chucked him out the airlock, and continued to throw various random objects around. Fox dug his blaster into Leon's skull to insure that they still could bring down Leon and a bunch of stuff if they turned aggression on the SFF.
Another thirty minutes and much Enhance Endurance spells from Krystal later, they walked backwards into the bridge connecting the Great Fox with the Cerberus. Just before getting into the Great Fox, Slippy rebooted Rob to check pressure levels and for foreign substances, which were absent.
After Eric gave Leon a swift kick in the back, they prepared to launch off the Great Fox. Leon barely hopped back before the doors closed and the tunnel connecting the ships was severed, and by that time, Fox, Falco and Eclipse were in their ships and ready to give hell.
"See you later, Wolf. Until our next meeting." Eric said, gloatingly into the comlink. He was still gloating over his quick victory. "Wits need some time to catch." And so do thieves, he thought to himself, grinning like an idiot. As the Cerberus disappeared from sight, Eric turned around to the rest of the fellowship as Eclipse, Fox, and Falco came back in as Slippy and Rob took over piloting.
"Life debts owed to Eric: Twelve. Number of debts Eric owes: Zero." And with that he sat back into a chair and smiled so smugly Tom Turner would call him arrogant.
"HEY!" Krystal suddenly said. "What about saving your sorry ass back on Dinosaur Planet?!"
"I just paid that off. You guys are welcome, I'll be expecting your bill in cash."
Thirty minutes and much running from Falco later, Eric and the group settled down to eat and discuss the plans for what next. Venom was an awful long way away, and besides, the group could use some backup in case push came to shove.
"How about Katina?" Fox suggested. "It's (relatively) peaceful and quiet and Bill could give us some support for Venom. I think Katt is also staying there right now…" He said, exchanging smarting glances with Falco. The group agreed and set the course for Venom, with Eric always keeping an eye out for surprise attacks from behind. Wolf wouldn't give up, not after the giant hole in his ego Eric just gave them.
Of course, you probably know Murphy's Law would kick in soon enough.
(On the Bridge of the Cerberus)
Wolf was still fuming. How had someone who would have made a perfect Venomian manage to beat them so badly?!? Vengeance would be theirs. Maybe their superiors would stick a hand in… and then there was what they did to Klepto… Wolf sat there staring at the K.I.A. notice for Klepto. No. Next time we meet, Wolf thought, we WILL bring them down!
"Andrew!" Wolf barked.
"Yes?" Oikenny replied.
"Arrange for the rebels at MacBeth to get in the way of their trip to Venom! They will be stopped, and we will have revenge…"