Chapter II
Eric blinked, the noisy hell that only previously came from a classroom full of total idiots enveloping him. Opening his eyes, he felt a tug in sunglass precognition pulling him. Eric hastily obliged and not a moment to soon. Total chaos was slamming him as he dodged out of the way of a grenade, only a foot away. His side throbbed harder than it did when he was hit with a piece of lead pipe and nothing around him seemed to make any coherent sense. A crimson spear of death pierce where his head was only moments before as a scaly Sharpclaw dinosaur hit the dirt right next to him. Looking back, thanking James, he saw the sight of the Sharpclaw and let out a technicolor yawn.
Half of the Sharpclaw's head was split open, the gray mass jiggling out of the hole made by some Cornerian's gun. Greenish blood seeped toward him as the brain finished oozing like thick toothpaste from the splattered-cantaloupe head.
Eric was immediately on his feet. Plasma shrapnel was exploding all around him, but his first priority was getting away from that mangled corpse.
A pain not unlike getting hit in the back with a spiky pool cue hit Eric from behind. Spinning around, a Sharpclaw decided on the pink mass of flesh would be an easier target than someone with a gun. Brandishing its mace, which was dripping with Eric's blood, he raised his shield as he charged for the kill.
Eric's hand flew for the handle of Murasma, which was starting to feel quite comfortable. The sense of security immediately faded when he realized it was gone! The sword must have slipped out in the crash landing.
Eric went for the guns he had "borrowed" from the Cerberus and Fox. The shotgun was broken, which explained the pain in Eric's side. One submachine gun was smashed to bits and the other one was missing. He looked up and was barely able to sidestep the club aimed for his head.
Eric was a teen of opportunity, so as the Sharpclaw was off balance he kneed it in the back. It merely fazed the creature, and due to the scales Eric felt that he hurt his knee more than he actually hurt the Sharpclaw.
Eric ran; he didn't stand a chance unarmed. "Hey, kid, where's your weapon?!" A voice called out. It was one of the Cornerian soldiers. Eric had no time to respond, he tripped over a rock and rolled, dodging a grenade.
The soldier had taken a mighty blast to the stomach from the incendiary plasma. In his last moments conscious, he popped the Venom wolf in the noggin and passed out.
Eric lunged for the limp body of the trooper. Feeling for a pulse, he found one but it was hardly beating. He wouldn't make it, and Eric couldn't carry him out of there. He took the blaster, feelings mixed between rage and sorrow mixing.
"Eric!" A female voice called.
"Huh?!" Eric called into the melee. "Who's there?" He leapt for the source of the sound and practically froze.
A huge, scaly lizard stood, cornering Sarah behind a rock. Three or four arrows were stuck in its chest, burns around each.
"Kxaj kamo, General Scales nacc DEK ro jkeffot!" This time, General Scales will NOT be stopped! Eric paused for a split second to wonder how he understood that without a translator.
Sarah nocked another arrow. She let it off with a literal bang just as the giant lizard-General Scales-slashed Sarah across the chest. In the same instant, he fell backward by the force of the Exploding Arrow.
"FOR THE FALLEN!" Eric bellowed, grabbing the barrel of the pistol from the fallen soldier and ramming two fingers on the trigger. Lasers flew out like the judges of the nine hells were after them, thanks to the low recoil and the lack of a need for machinery to reset after each shot.
The pistol by itself would have been too weak to get past the General's armor, but the speed Eric fired managed to poke a hole in the scales. Sarah had not one, not two, but four ("Whoa…") arrows ready in a spread and knocked Scales back again by the combined momentum of the multiple projectiles.
Eric aimed upwards at Scales head, hoping to stop him now before he could aid Venom. The gun clicked. Eric stared at the empty magazine. "Dammit!" Sarah felt for more arrows and the quiver was empty.
Scales charged hell-bent at the duo. Gaping at his now-useless gun – Why didn't he get more ammo! Eric chucked the gun at Scales' forehead and watched as it helplessly bounced off.
"Eric, back up!" Sarah cried out. She leapt forward in Scales way. Eric almost thought he saw Scales bisect Sarah from all the blood that suddenly was over the floor, covering Sarah.
"No… no, no NO!" Eric cried out, lunging for Scales. He'd rip the General apart with his bare hands… No one back home understood him. Suddenly, Eric halted short at a more-than-welcome sight.
Scales hadn't cleaved through Sarah, it was practically the exact opposite. Sarah had spun around with the dracocite blades on the bow giving Scales two nearly identical, incredibly deep gashes in both of Scales' sides. While Sarah was in close combat, she pulled out one of the arrows and nocked it. The General rolled to the side with a speed that would be unexpected from one of his size and fired a small disc over to the horizon. Sarah implanted the arrow into Scales' back as Scales suddenly disappeared in a green glow!
"What the…" Sarah gasped. She had taken a sword swing besides the claw she took when Eric ran in; Eric noticed. She was clutching her shoulder, which was swollen; a Sharpclaw must have bashed her there. She was definitely in worse shape than Eric.
"What the heck?!" Eric burst out.
"You have any idea what he did?" Sarah asked.
"I think so…" replied Eric.
"What do you think it is?"
"Some kind of handheld teleportation device… I think I recognize the model from some other world, but-" Plasma shrapnel created a crater not twenty feet from where they stood, flinging them across the ground. They leapt for a rock to use as cover while they yelled over the stinging sounds of furry dying and ship becoming rubble.
"But it's not in this world! Andross can't be behind all of this…"
"How do you know Andross is behind this?! He's dead!" Sarah shouted over the noise over the rock.
"I wouldn't put it past him to come back. Just like he always does, think about it, Sarah." Eric hollered back.
"That doesn't explain why you think someone else isn't behind this!" Sarah yelled, trying to be heard.
"When I was on the Outer Plane before James was fired into me, he told me that whenever a world is created in fiction, a new dimension is created. That type of teleportation device is from another dimension and no one in the Star Fox world has the ability to traverse dimensions."
The rock they were hiding behind suddenly exploded. A rock was launched into Eric, knocking him back and Sarah was flung by the impact.
"We'll talk later!" Eric shouted as Sarah stooped to gather an arrow that had fallen out of the quiver.
"I thought you were out!" Eric hollered.
"Look," She aimed the quiver's opening to Eric. Small, red particles of light were being created and coming closer together in a thin rod shape. "It regenerates arrows. It'll take awhile. Now come on!" came Vixy's voice.
"Did you have dreams about a situation a lot like this before this happened?"
"Not this situation, but that a new friend would come into my life… why?" Sarah had similar precognitive dreams that must have also been a side effect of being chosen by their weapons. Why hadn't she told him?
Several Venom soldiers found them as targets and lunged. Two in front, one behind, one on the left. "Come on!" Sarah yelled, grabbing Eric's hand and running to the right.
"I CAN WALK, YOU KNOW!" Eric bellowed. A laser beam hit Sarah in the leg and she let go of Eric as she cried out in pain. Another hit Eric in the wrist, severing the vein and felling him to his knees. "Great… jumpin' paladins of Tyr… I'm done for…" The sudden loss of blood hit Eric harder than he thought it would normally have been possible. He thought he saw an ArWing fly across and mow down the guards as he stumbled to his knees, feeling light headed and covered in the sticky crimson liquid as it flowed down to his fingertips and stained his jeans. He could feel his blood pumping through his arm as he tried to stop it with his other hand…
"KRYSTAL!!!!" was the last thing he heard before blacking out.
Falco careened over the field, mowing down the four soldiers who had taken to smashing upon Eric and Sarah and letting them eat laser with a vengeance. He saw Sarah tearing off some of her shirt and wrapping the cloth around Eric's wrist… He had seen the laser strike Eric, but Falco had hoped it wasn't anything very serious… he had grown fond of the kid. He was fun to tease.
He U-turned and engaged the VTOL function, landing close to Eric and Sarah. He prayed it was not too late…
"KRYSTAL!!!!" Sarah's call for the uber-medic hit an octave usually reserved for calling dogs. She took one of her arrows and cut off a strip of cloth from her shirt, then tied a knot around Eric's mortal wound to slow down the bleeding, but it was too deep for mundane methods. She was safe for the moment; she had her head down behind a mound of dirt, preventing an astray laser from finding her and an ArWing had taken care of the ground troops that had shot her and Eric only moments prior.
She felt for Eric's pulse on his neck. She found one, but it was rapidly slowing down. He would die an incredibly premature death unless the wound was closed within the next few minutes!
The ArWing that had mowed down the soldiers landed. Sarah expected Fox to jump out, but instead it was Falco. A semi-impression of disbelief flickered across Sarah's eyes… she thought Falco didn't give a damn…
"I said, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?!" Falco yelled, breaking Sarah's thought process.
"Use the communicator to call Krystal. Or a miscellaneous medic. ANYONE!" Sarah cried out.
Falco flipped open his arm band. "Krystal? Come on, pick up…"
A sound of static, then Krystal's accented voice came through. "What is it?"
"Where are you? We need you here, pronto!"
"I'm right here!" The same voice, only behind them and not as loud.
"There you are! Come on, you have to cast something to heal Eric!"
Krystal made a dash for Eric's limp form while Falco called for the Great Fox to provide some cover. "Get over here, man down, man down!"
Krystal started muttering an incantation. "Veetah, mortis, corium!" The wound sealed slightly; Eric was going to stabalize.
The Great Fox flew out of the sky amidst a band of starships firing upon Venom's own gunships. Falco opened the door hastily and half dragged, half threw Eric onto a chair. "Krystal, come on, he's still bleeding!" Falco cried out. Krystal was already there, chanting. The wound closed more and was glowing blue as an aftereffect of the spell. An explosion rocked the ship as Peppy and Slippy ran in.
"What the hell happened?!?" Peppy yelled.
"Eric got hurt, keep the ships weapons on!"
"Rob's got that, but he'll need help. Not since the second Lylat war have we been up against odds like this, and unlike the second Lylat war, we have backup!" Slippy squeaked.
"Hurry up, Krystal!" Falco barked. Slippy was heading back for the Great Fox's weapon systems, but the rest of the group stared.
"Every man counts," Falco stuttered. Dammit, why'd he lose it?
Peppy ran to help Slippy out as Krystal finished stitching Eric's wrist wound. Eric began to stir.
"Nngh…" Eric groaned. He looked up and saw Sarah, Falco and Krystal huddled over him anxiously. "Ho, man…" Eric gasped. "I thought I was toast!"
"You nearly were. Come on, man, there's still a battle to fight." Falco said. He turned to Krystal. "Back us up; you may be needed. The others are in the skies?"
"Yeah," Sarah interjected. "I hope they're faring better than we are."
"Why is my wrist glowing blue?" Eric cut in.
"It's a side effect of the spell to increase your blood reproduction rate. You lost a lot of blood from that laser blast to your wrist, Eric, you're lucky your hand wasn't severed." Ouch, Eric thought.
Falco, Eric, Sarah and Krystal leapt out of the side of the Great Fox with orders for Slippy and Peppy to continue concentrating on the big targets in the air. Peppy handed Eric his blaster and five clips so that at the very least he wouldn't be unarmed. Roughly seven arrows were in the quiver of the Beamstriker with an eighth on its way while Falco was dashing for his ArWing.
Eric was running as fast as he could, but the injury ached with a huge scar on the wrist. It was like living the dream that hinted that this would all happen… On the horizon, a disembodied head with two hands floating next to what looked like Scales was surveying the carnage, away from this massive melee.
Wait a minute… Eric thought. Similarities were abound in this living nightmare, but if memory serves, and it usually doesn't… this is the part where a ship crashes into me!
As if on cue, a flash of black and white cloaked his vision as a ship above got hit by a laser from a ship out of view. It careened from its low point in the sky and zoomed straight at him!
Eric, and Sarah who was standing right next to him and got the vision through her shades as well, leapt as hard as they could directly out of the way. In the leap, Eric took a low powered laser beam to his side and Sarah could feel the ship hit her legs. Eric turned around to see who was in the ship… definitely ArWing, he feared the worst. Sarah limped back to the ship, her legs numb from the impact. As they neared the ship, the windshield shot outward, kicked by the guy inside. Fox limped out.
"Cripes, man, you are waaaaaay too lucky for your own good," Eric said, relieved, then stopped. Fox had numerous burns on his face and chest and his clothes were in tatters. Several cuts lined his face, including one over his eye that didn't cut the gooey organ itself that chillingly reminded Sarah of Wolf O' Donnell. Krystal leapt forward with a healing charm, looking spent.
Krystal managed to heal Fox slightly, then collapsed from exhaustion. "Krystal, you okay?" Sarah asked. Krystal was barely able to stammer out, "Spells take a lot out of me," then lay against the ship, panting. A small comical image of a regular dog doing the same thing flashed across Eric's mind; the irony of the situation forced him to withhold a giggle.
"I'll be fine in a few minutes, don't worry, okay?" Krystal said, breathing heavily. Fox got out, feeling better from Krystal's charm.
"We have to get to Venom's command center! If we can cut down the leaders behind this, we can end this instantly!"
Sarah was looking at the horizon and noticed a large, ominous black building just peeking over, with what looked like a black mist coming out of it. From this distance, that could be a swarm of insects or dozens of ships. "Fox, that it?" She asked.
Fox pulled out his armband that looked shockingly like Eric's, pushed a button and a blue holographic display of an incredibly similar ominous building popped up in the communicator projecter. Lining the image up, they just weren't similar; they were identical. "That's it. We have to get there somehow! My ship is totaled and the Great Fox needs to back up the ground forces!"
Four wolves on two motorcycles, one driving one shooting, drove around them firing an automatic blaster rifle at various foot soldiers. They didn't seem to be true motorcycles; they had regular wheels. "I've got an idea!" It sounded like a repeating record, both Eric and Sarah were struck by the same stroke of genius at the same time. Drive a heavy stick through the spokes of the front wheel…
"Krystal, heave your staff through the front wheel!" Eric yelled. Sarah took out an arrow and expended some energy from Beamstriker to make the arrow almost twice its previous size.
"I can't throw that far!" Krystal complained.
"Argh… wait! I can throw Murasma… Oh wait…" Eric started, then stopped, deflated. "Where the hell is that sword!"
"YOU LOST IT?!" Sarah shrieked. Eric got the feeling that was Vixy speaking through her as not to alarm Fox or Krystal.
"Um… no… just hurry up and trip those cycles!" Eric yelled. Sarah aimed, fired at the tire and missed.
"Ugh, you guys take the hard way, don't you?!" Fox yelled. He raised his blaster, and with four sharp clicks of the trigger felled each of the wolves. The rest of the group stared.
"Uh…"
"Dude…"
"Fox?"
"I thought your specialty was ground…"
"Dude…"
"That was impressive!"
"Hey, you have to be well-rounded. I've been on the ground before; I've practiced my aim. I just don't like fighting on the ground as much, because it's hard, even for an experienced veteran of war to see the mutilated face of the person you just downed." Eric was suddenly struck with the image of the Sharpclaw who's head was splattered open like a cantaloupe someone took a sledgehammer to.
"Anyway," Fox continued, breaking Eric's thoughts. "Now we have two bikes."
"Transportation problem solved!" Sarah said hopefully.
"Yeah. So, who's driving, who's shooting?" Fox asked. Both of the younger companions gazed at the furries.
"Uh, you guys are the certified drivers…"
Fox nodded while Krystal rolled her eyes. Diving under the various lasers (Eric was particularly keen not to get hit in the wrist again) and they rolled to the motorcycles. Krystal and Fox got in the drivers seats while Eric and Sarah looked for weapons.
"Hey, Eric, isn't this one of those submachine guns you got?"
Eric looked over. "Yeah. I think I'll go for the laser assault rifle though."
Sarah nodded. "I feel really, really comfortable with this, I think I'll hold onto it." Then, in Eric's own mind – "How can you have lost that sword!" Vixy must have been communicating telepathically.
Yeah, yeah, keep your ectoplasmic hat on, Eric thought. He hoisted the newfound gun while Sarah looked at the near-empty quiver. "On second thought, I'll take that gun," Sarah said. She took the submachine gun while Fox and Krystal revved up the engines, Eric and Sarah on the back. The took off with the motion from the wheels spattering a trail of dirt and dust behind them when Eric saw a glint of…
"Murasma?! Fox, turn over to that rock over there! I think I saw my sword!"
"Uh, okay…" Fox steered the motorcycle he and Eric were on over to the rock as Eric let out an outstretched hand. It quickly became apparent that the dust wasn't causing an airborne hallucination.
Come on, come on… Eric thought. He reached out for the curved handle of his blade…
And missed.
"DAMMIT!" He called out. Fox's exclamation could be heard shortly thereafter.
"I'm turning around!" Fox said over the noise of the engine.
"No! Not yet! This is stupid… TIRAR!" Eric called, his hand turned over his shoulder.
A "Snikt" sound could be heard as Murasma uprooted itself from it's sturdy place in the rock that it was thrown to in the crash, and a whooshing sound as it flew through the air into Eric's hand. Eric quickly sunk the sword into the scabbard as Fox put petal to metal, Krystal following likewise.
"We're going to end this, aren't we, James?" Eric thought. It felt like a reunion with a precious possession, even though it was for at most a half hour, an hour, but it still felt like years.
"I hope so, Eric. I hope so."
Eric, Krystal, Sarah and Fox sped away from the primary heat of the battlefield, but there were still many mini-battles, and the path was littered with corpses. Eric hoisted the assault rifle, while Sarah had the submachine gun in aimed, firing at heavy foot soldiers who dared to come near.
A shuttle-type sort of ship started hovering over where Fox and Krystal were driving. A sort of landing ramp hit the ground while it was still flying at the same speed as a door opened. What seemed like eight, nine various furs were on similar motorcycles, ready to come down the ramp.
First up that slid down were a pair of rats, armed with rifles. They turned on the heat of the throttle until they were roughly fifteen feet ahead, then turned around and leveled the rifle. A white flash of gunfire, then the white-hot enmity of a laser lashed out at Krystal's bike. Just as Eric aimed his rapid-fire weapon to fell the foe before he could cause some damage, the bike ride suddenly lurched forward, taking a horrible turn for the bumpier. Fox leaned over his shoulder to see what was wrong, while Eric was recovering from almost falling off of the bike.
The second rat that had rolled off of the ramp had successfully punctured the back tire, lowering the speed to dangerously low levels and causing the turning of the bike to take a turn for the ludicrously worse.
While Fox was struggling to take control of the bike, Sarah squeezed the trigger with much distaste at the rat in front of them. Right around at this time, a black bear was rolling down from the ship on the side toting a flamethrower.
Sarah's bullets were peppering the rat as both tires blew from the sustained impact of the lead assault. He crumpled off of the bike to be ran over by Fox. This final impact on the battered motor bike was too much for the rapidly failing durability. The front wheel came to an immediate halt, throwing Fox and Eric over the handlebars. Eric landed on a sharp pointy rock, penetrating his shoulder. The warm, sticky embrace of a puncture wound flooded over Eric's shoulder. Fox wasn't much better off; his head hit the ground, knocking him out.
Eric ripped his arm from the rock, blood spurting from the wound. Somewhere in Eric's mind were the words, "The same arm in the same half-hour… I'm gonna have to reconsider my career choice…" He grabbed the assault rifle and aimed at the bear, who was circling around to finish off the job. However, that took time, and Eric never gave him another chance. Eric squeezed the trigger, the laser blasts zinging through the air, clanging in his ears. Dust was flung in front of his face as the bear started to get a shot off when the lasers connected with the large form of the grizzly. He crumpled and fell off of the bike.
Eric lifted himself up gingerly and ran over to Fox's unconscious body. Shaking him by the shoulders, he could hear Fox groan…
"Hey, man, wake up!"
"Nngh… Eric… what happened?"
"You took a nasty fall. Come on! We still have to make it to the base!"
Suddenly, out of the corner of Eric's eye, one of the most ominous sights beset his eyes since his technology teacher.
"Well, well, well. Look at what the pack has brought this time…"
"Krystal, stop the bike and turn around!" Sarah screamed as she emptied the second clip at the encroaching bike gang.
"Huh?!" She steered out to the side to avoid a plasma gutting. "I can't! There are too many of them!"
"FOX AND ERIC FELL! ARE YOU BLIND?!?" Sarah shouted above the blood pounding in her ears.
"We can't deviate from set parameters!" Krystal hollered, beginning to sound more like Fox than herself. "We have to get in there and force the leader to surrender, that way we can end this and we won't have to worry about Venom."
"I don't care!" Sarah yelled, tossing the last empty clip and drawing her bow, which had fifteen arrows in it. "Turn around!" She reached for the steering mechanism and almost caused Krystal to run into a hole.
"What would you think Eric would do?!" Krystal said, swerving to the right to avoid hitting several pillars in the ground and to offer Sarah a better shot at the pursuing forces. The train now was mounting guns as the last of the few rats fell.
"He's probably bitch and moan, just like I'm doing!" Sarah yelled. "Then again… he'd also be just as likely to say, 'keep going, dumbass! Don't get yourself killed for me!'"
"You see?!" Krystal said. Krystal started driving parallel to the train while the top-mounted plasma guns swiveled around. It launched several bluish balls into the air with a "PHUMMF" sound. The balls started to slowly float to the ground almost a hundred feet in front of them.
"What the hell is it doing?!" Sarah questioned as the bike screamed past, taking those one hundred feet quite rapidly.
The one of the blue balls hit the ground a few yards away disappeared, accompanied with the frenzied sound of an uncountable number of tiny explosions. The world exploded in pain for both companions , forcing them off the bike. Skidding to a halt and ripping most of both of their shirts, Sarah rolled over, trying to make a hasty recovery. A "PHUMMF" sound was heard. Looking up, a blue sphere of impending doom was headed right toward them.