Chapter VI
(Aboard the Cerberus)
"But," one of the weapons engineers said. "Do you think that's wise?" He inquired.
"I WILL MAKE IT WISE, DAMMIT!" Wolf roared. The insolent gunman cowered and shut up quickly. "We lost our best assassin and thief and are forced to hand another victory to those insolent Star Fox men! What are their destination coordinates?"
"Judging by the information we got before the traitor ape got you to reveal the bug…" He took a pause to rip a dagger out of his arm that Wolf threw at him. Wincing, he continued, not daring to hesitate for fear of drawing the O'Donnell's wrath. "And the direction they were headed, they are headed for Katina."
"You better hurry at getting those soldiers there, our superiors will NOT be pleased at impertinence and failure!"
(Aboard the Great Fox)
Eric was having it again.
The Venom dream.
Struggling to escape from the hellish nightmare, he had failed miserably. Despite his desire to wake up at the end after he got hit by a shot-down ArWing, the dream had not stopped there. Interestingly, it hadn't fractured his nerves in midway, probably from his bolstered courage over the past three weeks.
Looking up at the flying ship. He managed to jump in time to skid over the ship and land, face first, in the dirt. Feeling like someone took a raw egg and used it as a bowling ball, Eric shakily got to his feet armed with his mace he had picked up. Dashing over to the cockpit, he took the mace to the broken glass and within moments had the full window opened up. Ducking shrapnel and hoping no one saw him with any lethal interests, Eric ducked in and saw a canine in robes wrapped up, shards of glass piercing his chest and arm.
"Come on, let's get you out of here!" Eric said to the creature, who stirred somewhat. Lasers and arrows were flying, the battlefield was rapidly becoming more dangerous.
"Nnngh? Oh, it's you, Eric…" Eric heard the creature mutter. It was apparently unconscious, but Eric had far too much to think on that, with it coming to.
"Wait a minute… how do you know my name? Hold on… Fox?" Eric guessed as it pulled Eric through a silver circle into a swirling world of hoary mist. Pulling his mace out, Eric quickly realized the futility of that as there was no gravity; getting enough force just to pull it back would be insane. He was floating, he could see his body, yet Eric just seemed to float there, suspended by an unseen force. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my dreamscape! I need my sleep! I get drawn back here way too frequently!"
From under the hood, the fox had a raspy voice, hoarse, like it hasn't been used for years. Eric also sensed the veteran tone of someone who's seen too much and done too much.
"You already know who I am. I am he who has gone back so far as not to be pulled out, and clawed his way to the beginning, I am he who recovers from the irreparable wound, and flies like a bird, yet no avian am I. I am-"
"Can the freakin' titles. I want straight answers and I want them NOW!" Eric roared. From under the hood, the canine said slowly and deliberately.
"You already know who I am…" When Eric awoke.
(Outside of dream land)
Eric jerked awake with a start. Checking his watch (which he had calibrated for SF time) it was the equivalent of 2:00 in the morning. Man, he'd never get back to sleep now! To console his growing boredom and tiredness, Eric was fiddling with his new toys and his watch, trying to jump start them with new versatility. After an hour of getting nowhere, he took out his booklet and copied down everything which happened in his dream. First of all, what the hell were with all of those titles? "So far as not to be pulled out…" "The irreparable wound…" "Flies like a bird, yet no avian am I…" Man. Puzzles suck.
Trying to take a shower, which trying to keep his shades on was no easy task, he finally managed to get somewhat clean and got into a pair of spare clothes Fox had lent him. Eric was still kicking himself, why the hell didn't he bring any clothes! It was all stupid. Stupid and futile. He'd probably end up dead, then it wouldn't matter how many other good deeds he would save. Wait… dead… Bah. Stupid resurrection alter, thing probably doesn't work.
Taking time out from his jumble of completely random thoughts, he continued to stare at his recordings of the (odd, incomplete, ended prematurely) dream. The irreparable wound… that would be… death… flies like a bird, yet no avian… that could be made possible… and then my sword reads… it clicked.
"Holy sweet mother of god!" Eric exclaimed. "It's…!"
At breakfast ("Honest to god, Fox, this stuff tastes like crap." Eric complained) no one really noticed that Eric was acting different and far-off from the rest of the group, mainly because, as Sarah pointed out, it was really nothing new. But as they neared Katina, Eric was bent on one thing. Checking what other name was on Sarah's bow. It would prove his theory if it was what he thought it was.
When Sarah and the others were getting ready to land, Eric was staring at the Beamstriker, which Sarah had over her back. It just seemed simple, the gnarled darkwood bow with blades at the end, along with arrows with flaming points. Eric saw it, which Sarah herself did not see when it changed in her hands.
The bottom blade, closest to the ground, scribed towards the outside,
"Sarah V. Rienhard." Well. There it is. Sarah's middle name was Carrie.
When the Great Fox landed, Bill greeted Fox with a rather informal greeting while giving Eric and Sarah wayward, suspicious glances. Noticing this, Fox piped up. "Don't worry, the kids are with me." Sarah didn't mind the reference, but Eric's hotheaded temper flared. Eric opened his mouth to come up with a scathing comeback when Sarah elbowed him in the ribs.
"Shh…" Sarah hushed.
Left to skulking, Fox told Bill of the things they went through in getting here from Dinosaur planet as they explored Katina's capital, Yesgartoth. It was definitely not one for the weak, as the urban place reminded Eric of New York. After getting his ass kicked there on when he joined his mom for a business trip, Eric never wanted to go there again!
"So, what's new, other than going to Venom to scout out the bubbling activity at Venom?" Bill asked. The words caught Eric… didn't Pepper send James McCloud to his death to scout out, "extra activity?" Eric shook the dark thoughts from his head and let them continue.
"Well, unless you count the fact that we've been visited by creatures from another dimension, it looks like it's going to be same old, same old."
"Your lives must be really jam-packed if you consider this, 'same old, same old.'" Sarah lamented.
"Hah, yep. Things have been pretty quiet recently, though. Hey- Falco, what's that in your backpack?
"This? The kid keeps calling it a Z-1…" Falco said, pulling it out. Eric was more than miffed at the reference.
Bill's face fell. "We've been working on a weapon like that for a while, I gave it to a friend to defend the Dinosaur Planet airport. I can only assume that he was not one of the ones to escape the attack…" Come to think of it, Eric did remember being around a hunk of ice that could have easily harbored a person by where Falco found it. "We have been working on that, and the friend lost was a dear one indeed. Could I have it back? I want to be able to give it back to the scientists to work on it some more." Falco VERY reluctantly handed it over along with unrepeatable profanities at having to lose a powerful gun. Bill lightened up a bit while Eric toned out the rest of the conversation. He was daydreaming about actually playing a major part and not having Fox hog everything if some act of heroism should ensue, when an earth-shattering voice rocked his world.
"JACK EDWARD CHAYKIN!" the voice yelled, apparently not belonging to anyone he knew. Time seemed to slow down despite the shades not going precognitic on him. Distance from source of sound: 1.6 meters, decibel level: 87.8, probable source: Angry, female feline furry, suggestions: RUN!
Spinning out of his chair, Eric struggled to put some distance between whatever the hell was about to flay him alive. Tripping over Sarah's chair, Eric's blood was ringing in his ears. Vision went black and white to a paw, claws extended, ready to bring itself down on Eric's head while he struggled to roll out of the way.
Eric's blood had been pounding in his head for a while until he realized it was the SF team and Bill laughing their collective asses off while the pink, fluffy feline stood over Eric's prone form, ready to the kill.
"DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I'VE BEEN HOLDING OUT FOR YOU, you…" The cat trailed off for lack of a better word.
"Please don't kill me, wait… who did you call me again?"
The feline finally got a decent look at Eric's face, whose sunglasses were askew and only on enough as not to have him vanish before everyone's sight.
"Hey… You aren't Jack!" Eric had maybe three seconds to breathe a sigh of relief, far too soon, it turned out. "What have you done with him! Whatever it is, I'll make you suffer!"
"Whoa, Katt, settle down." Bill chuckled.
"I don't have any idea who this Jack is… wait, what did you say his last name was?"
"Chaykin." Katt was starting to settle down just barely long enough to hear what Eric had to say.
"Chaykin, Chaykin…" Eric had a very fuzzy memory of a Professor Lester Knight Chaykin in a game series called Out Of This World, maybe they were relatives. Not wanting to reveal that all of their lives were completely fake, Eric quickly said, "Nope. Haven't heard of him." Bad move, it turned out.
"Well, no dumper is going to get the best of me! I've been waiting eight years for him to rear his ugly face and come back to me! Unless…" The edge of Katt's loneliness-induced rage started to come off again. "Unless he got injured, or was on Cerinia when it blew-" At this, Katt's face started to trail into both impossibility and past sadness. She shook it off instantly though. "-Or…"
"Listen, Katt, settle down." Katt had turned away as she started naming off atrocities that kept on ending in death as Eric grabbed her tail to get her attention. Again the precognition ability went off as it gave a frozen shot of Katt's face in encompassing anger.
Backing up and dodging the claw swings, Eric backed away from the whirlwind of rage that was Katt. "Don't touch the tail!" She yelled out. Looking at the rest of the group for help, they were all laying back in their chairs.
"You got her mad, Eric, she's all yours." Falco said, grinning.
"Shut up, Lombardi!" Katt said, then turned back to rag on Eric. "Don't touch the tail, and don't tell me to settle down! I have been worried sick about Jack ever since he was a month overdue to come back! DON'T TELL ME TO SETTLE DOWN!"
"I thought you were with Falco…" Not Eric's smoothest move. At the mention of the name, Katt reared back and slapped Eric across the face, claws extended.
"Don't ever remind me of my futile efforts!" Katt bristled while Eric was shouting in pain. Needless to say, Eric was extremely grateful when Fox finally stepped in and put a stop to the fight.
(Five minutes and much first-aid later)
"OK, Eric, I think your cheek is going to be ok, but you've had a shattered jawbone and these cuts are extremely deep." Krystal had been poking the side of Eric's head trying to heal it. Eric was ok, but his jaw was still extremely sore and he had these awful scars lining his left cheek. Throughout the impromptu healing, Eric was still giving hateful glances at Katt. He hadn't even seen her for more than two minutes and he resented her, her temper, her worrying about someone who was gone for a humongous amount of time, and the small appearance of wealth that was slightly emanated by the ring on her left hand. He was extremely tempted to say, "Well, after what you just gave me trying to probe, I wouldn't blame him if he ever came back!" But remembered his jaw and thought better of it. He also suddenly realized (before anyone else, thank god, Eric thought) that he kept on staring at Krystal while she was trying to magically close the wound. After which he promptly snapped out of it and stared ahead into blankness as not to arouse remarks from Falco nor aggression from Fox.
After Eric was patched for the most part, Falco pulled him aside while the rest of the group went to do their own thing.
"Listen, kid…" Eric inwardly grimaced in annoyance and let Falco continue. "Watch your back when you talk to Katt. You know that guy she mistook for you?"
"Jack Chaykin?"
"Yeah. Well, ever since he mysteriously vanished into thin air 8 years or so ago, she's been… well… huffy. She's been on-the-edge, asks for a conversation and then explodes… I'd keep an eye on her if I were you. Something is just not right with this…"
"Um… okay…" Eric was content to wave the warning aside; his mind was slightly more focused on his aching head. Falco left Eric to arrange what he was going to do while they went to Katina to talk with Bill.
Later, while Fox, Bill, Katt and Eclipse were going to discuss what was going on, Krystal went down some restaurant with Falco to discuss events on their own while Peppy and Slippy went to monitor the Great Fox, work on maps and gadgets, etc leaving Eric and Sarah with nothing do to but hang out. Fox gave them roughly 40 credits to entertain themselves with while they were there ("The currency transfer rate better be pretty damn good…" Eric complained). Eric was also not very impressed with a piece of paper which Fox had hastily scribbled down, "NOT VENOMIAN, Sir Fox McCloud." On it.
Roughly fifteen minutes and a lot of aimless wandering later, Eric and Sarah came back out of the equivalent of a Quizno's with large sandwiches for their lunch. Sarah had practically stapled the paper onto her chest, something which irked him. Shout it out to the world, he thought, the less attention the better. Eric also didn't realize all of the meat was fake or tofu until Sarah pointed it out. Staring at the sub (Eric hated "fake," meat,) he just kept on deciding to munch, seeing that, unlike back in his own dimension, he couldn't taste the difference.
Tossing their wrappers into a waste-disposal can, a shadow slinked through the alleys watching the two humans. Eric, not noticing anything, walked ahead, but Sarah stopped.
"What?" Eric asked.
"I thought I saw something…" Sarah replied, whispering as not to attract too much attention.
"Man, I think you're seeing things." Eric said, looking in the shadows.
"It must have been nothing…" Sarah said, still looking troubled.
Thirty seconds later it was Eric's turn to spin around, hand on Murasma's hilt, which would later turn to be a mistake. Sarah hadn't brought the Beamstriker, seeing as it would have been very hard to conceal, but Eric had used a cloak he "borrowed," from Peppy to conceal the blade, as well as the submachine guns he got off of the Cerberus. "What the hell was that?"
"See?! I told you something was going on!" Sarah said, almost bragging.
"Hey, shut up," Eric scorned. Now he couldn't shake the feeling he was being watched.
Sitting down on a park bench to catch their bearings, Eric sat down to relax and contemplate everything which had happened while Sarah was trotting around the area Eric was sitting at, looking up at some of the freakishly tall buildings. Some of which were at least three or four more stores high than the one Eric jumped out of back at Dinosaur Planet!
Eric was about to get up when a hand on his cloak ripped it from his neck; and Murasma and the guns as well! The thief was a scrawny-looking rat in a dark-green cloak fleeing for his life.
Eric was about to call to Sarah for help in apprehending the thief, but after looking around, she was gone!