Disclaimer- I don't own Star Fox, or XGRA. They belong to Nintendo and Acclaim.

Chapter 4 – Not a game

One week later…

"Damn it, Falco, get back in formation!" Fox was frustrated yet again by his teammate's unwillingness to follow instructions.

"I'm cutting ahead! There's an opening, I can see it! If I can just squeeze past this guy…"

"Falco, you're going to get us all killed! You're cutting into that turn way too far! Fall back! That's an order!"

"Damn it Fox, just trust me! I can make it!"

Fox shook his head as he watched the avian slip dangerously close between the bike ahead of the rest of the team, and the wall. Falco wasn't listening. Fox switched Falco's comm circuit off, and gave instructions to the others.

"Okay, guys. Falco's not listening to me, so we're going to just let him go, and get out of the way. Fall back to the outside of the turn. If he crashes, he's going to take the rest of us out with him."

"Wise move, Fox," Peppy said from the control room. "That wouldn't have been the first time Falco's recklessness has gotten us into trouble."

Falco poured on the speed at the last second to pass his opponent, and slipped out in front of him. "Yeah! I freaking told you I could do it, Fox! The race is mine!" Distracted by his supposed victory, Falco failed to see another bike approaching him from the right front, dropping speed to match with him. Suddenly, the bike he'd passed latched onto him with some kind of magnetic restraining beam, and the machine that had been in front slammed into the side of Falco's bike, knocking him off balance into the wall. For a split second, his bike no longer touched the ground, which was long enough for Falco to lose all stability. The machine promptly fell onto its side, slid to the outside of the track, and exploded upon impact with the opposite wall. Falco's display went dead, and his bike computer told him that he had crashed, and that his emergency life support system had been activated. The other team members had to swerve out of his way rather suddenly to avoid running him over.

Fox glanced at his rearview mirror for a second, watching Falco's wreck, shaking his head. "Damn it…" he muttered. "Amy, kill the simulation." The sim shut down, and the team powered off their bikes, pulled off their gear, and hopped off their machines as the platforms lowered to the ground, the locking clamps engaging.

Fox immediately stormed over to Falco's bike. "What the hell was the deal with that, Falco? I told you to fall back!"

Falco towered over Fox as he ripped off his sim gear and tossed it aside. "Look, I would have made it if that jackass hadn't cheated!"

"That wasn't cheating, that kind of stuff is legal in the race! You have to be prepared for anything out there, because you can't just throw a fit when your enemy fights dirty!"

"It was the last lap! We would have lost if I hadn't taken the chance!"

"Yeah, and if what just happened now had happened in the real race, we would be minus one pilot, one bike, and lost the race. Not placing first in a race is acceptable; loosing a machine and rider isn't. I'm in charge here, and I make the calls on the track. If you disobey my orders again, I'll have you pulled from this mission, is that clear?"

"Oh, screw you, Fox, you sound like Pepper for fuck's sake! It's a simulation, and we have a month to perfect our act here. This is where we're supposed to make mistakes!"

"Mistakes are fine, Falco, but we're just going to keep making the same ones over and over unless you follow the team dynamic. We stay in formation until we decide to attack as a group. That's how it worked during the War, and that's how it's going to work now. If you can't handle that, then you're not racing. I'm not putting the rest of us at risk because you couldn't restrain you goddamn pride!"

Falco glared at Fox for a moment, then stormed off out of the hangar muttering. Fox was fuming.

In the control room, Peppy shook his head. "Those two are going to be the death of us all. Neither of them can control their temper. Sometimes I'm amazed that either of them is still alive."

Amy glanced at him. "They may have hot tempers, but they're good pilots, when they can work together."

Peppy snorted. "Yeah, that's kind of the key that they don't seem to understand."

Slippy looked up at the control room. "Hey Peppy, I think we need a break here! We've been training for almost ten hours now."

Peppy pushed the intercom button. "Yeah, not a bad idea, Slip. Everyone get some rest, we'll come back to this tomorrow when our nerves aren't frayed anymore." He stifled a yawn as he finished the sentence. I think all of us could use a break he thought.

The trees surrounded him. The birds sang, the sun shined. Fox found himself slipping out of the twisted reality he'd been stuck in, and made no effort to stop it. He breathed in deeply, smelling all sorts of things that many people missed here in this little park. A park his family had once visited all the time.

When they had still been a family.

Fox felt his head tilt toward the sky, and then he felt himself speaking.

"What would you have done, dad?" he asked the clouds. "Would you have taken this job? There's no glory or honor in this racing league. No ones freedom is at stake, yet the people who take part risk their lives. I think you would have thought the idea completely ridiculous. You would have rather gone broke than take a job like this. And if you hadn't had a choice, you would have rather gone it alone than risk the lives of your teammates. Your friends." He thought about Krystal. "Your lover…" he whispered. He closed his eyes, and tried to picture a scenario of Krystal getting hurt, or even killed in a race. A tear fell from his eyes. No. He couldn't let that happen. He heard a sound behind him. His ears pointed backward tracking it.

Krystal approached him. "Fox? Are you okay?" She lightly touched his shoulder. He instantly relaxed under her touch. Seeing his reaction, she put her arms around him, laying her head on his shoulder. She gently licked his muzzle. "Love?" she almost whispered. "Will you tell me what's bothering you?" He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Please?" she added.

Fox sighed, looking back up at the sky. "Everything about this mission suddenly seems wrong, Krys. When Pepper first told us about it, it didn't sound so bad. During the War, the team and I, we knew how Andross's forces fought. We knew how they reacted, and we knew what they were capable of. These XGRA lunatics… not a clue. And the sport is from Earth. The league is primarily human. And not Lylat humans, that have lived among the rest of us, and learned to respect us. Terrans. Ruthless, selfish… and dangerous."

Krystal had never encountered a human before. "I've never met a human. What are they like. I mean, the ones here?"

Fox shrugged. "Dunno, but they don't cause any trouble. Not many live in Corneria City, though. They live in a city called um… Halcyon or something like that. On the other side of the planet. They named it that after they came here from some Earth colony somewhere to make peaceful contact with us for the first time. Showing our good faith, we gave them their own little continent, and they settled there. Some people think humans created us. I don't believe it."

"Why do people think that?" Krystal asked, frowning.

"Because many of us bear a resemblance to creatures they brought here as pets. We also speak the same language. We always have, since they came here. When they spoke the same way we did when they first made contact with us, no one could believe that these unknown people could communicate with us like that."

Krystal's eyebrows went up. "Maybe they did create us then. People who came from so far away, yet speak the same exact language must have been here before, at least. And the fact that we look like their pets… maybe they wanted their pets to walk and talk with them, and that's where we came from."

Fox growled. "I refuse to think of those people as… gods."

Krystal rolled her eyes. "They're not gods, Fox. Just… lonely. They wanted some friends, so they made the friends they already had able to communicate with them on a more intelligent level. Maybe you should give them some credit. If they did create us, they did a really good job! I want to meet one. What do they look like?"

Fox turned and started at her in surprise. "You want to meet one? Why?"

Krystal smiled coyly. "Because your opinion is biased, love. I want to see for myself what it is we're dealing with. If I can sense something about them, it will help me determine if they're a friendly people overall, or if they're something to be avoided."

Fox turned back away from her. "Yeah well, you'll get your chance soon enough. The XGRA hasn't built any tracks here yet, so we have to go to Earth for the invitational." Fox shuddered. "I am not looking forward to that. Earth is their homeworld. They're everywhere. All 9 and a half billion of them crammed into a dozen supercities around the planet. At least the place is clean. Even with all those people they somehow manage to keep their resources intact."

Krystal grinned. "Sounds like fun. Hey! Let's take a little trip to Halcyon for a few days!"

Fox's ears flattened against his head. He slowly turned to face her. "You've got to be shitting me. Please Krys, tell me you're just tugging my tail."

Krystal just kept grinning.

Fox wiped his face with a paw. "Oh god, help me…"

"You wanna go where?" Falco rose halfway out of his chair.

Krystal stared at him. "I think you heard me." She looked at the others. "I want to go to the human city. I want to see what they're like. It'll help me to understand who were dealing with in the XGRA."

Peppy shook his head. "The humans that live in Halcyon are probably not a good example of the Terrans; they get along with us."

Krystal didn't understand. "But we're part of a galactic alliance, and Earth is part of that too, right?"

Fox nodded. "Yeah, but they still don't like us very much. They think we're barbaric. Primitive."

Krystal gave him a confused look. "What about us do they think is barbaric?"

Fox smirked and shook his head. "I got into an argument with a human over how evolved a society we were. He gave me this weird look and said, 'your females still go into heat cycles. You call that evolved?' The conversation pretty much ended at that point."

"Personally, I think females going into heat is a good thing," Falco's voice came across the room.

Krystal rolled her eyes. "Well, no one asked you. But we're not limited to those times of the year to mate, or anything. If we were, maybe I could understand them thinking that was primitive. What, don't human females go into heat?"

Fox chuckled. "Um, no they don't."

Krystal shrugged. "Their loss. I rather like it."

Peppy was getting irritated with how the conversation was going. "Can we please talk about something else?"

"Yeah, I think I'm done with this conversation," Fox said, still looking at Krystal in disbelief. "I still don't know why you want to go to Halcyon, but fine. If you think you'll gain any insight. And anywhere has got to be more relaxing than that training hangar." He glanced at the others present. "Any serious objections?"

Peppy shook his head. "I think it's a good idea. Anything to help take our minds off this training will help."

Fox turned to Falco, who simply shrugged. "Hey, no complaint here. I want to get as far away from those sims as I can for a while, I don't care where we go to do it."

Slippy was the only person who didn't seem interested in the trip. "I actually think I could study the Hyperbikes up close to help us in our training. If you don't mind, Fox, I'd like to stay behind and maybe figure them out a little better. My dad might offer some insight, as well."

Fox raised an eyebrow. "You sure you don't need a break, Slip?"

Slippy chuckled. "You know me, Fox. When there's technology involved, 'break' isn't in my vocabulary. I'll be fine. Hopefully I'll know something valuable when you guys come back."

Fox shrugged. "Alright. Your call, Slip. I'm gonna go tell Pepper we're taking a vacation." He got up from the conference table, which was also their dining table - he had to remember to set up a conference room, an idea that for some reason had eluded him during the reconstruction of Great Fox – and proceeded to the communications panel across the room.

As Fox informed the General of their plans, Krystal's thoughts drifted to imagining what Halcyon would be like. She had no idea what to expect, since she'd never encountered a human before. She really knew nothing about them, and that was why she felt the need to go to a human city. Simply by observing the city's layout, she could gather much information about humans in general. For instance, how much or how little plant life was in the city would say a lot about how humans viewed themselves in line with nature. Did they respect it? Did they feel close to it? Corneria's cities had parks and trees and fields and forests everywhere, because Cornerians felt very close to nature, being of more… primal descent. Did humans view nature the same way? Whether they did or not might say something about their attitude toward those who did. Like her kind.

Oh well, she thought. Those questions would be answered soon enough.

A/N – Sorry about taking so bloody long with my update here… life has been eventful, and I've been working a lot. Not to mention I more or less lost interest in writing the story, as I sometimes do. One interesting thing that happened in the course of writing this chapter: coming up with the name for the human city. At the time, I had only heard the word Halcyon. I didn't know what it actually meant. It just sounded cool. And it reminded me of peace, which was something I wanted between the Cornerians and any non-anthropomorphic creatures that might also be inhabiting the planet. So I put in the name, and right after I wrote that section, I looked up what the word meant, and found out that I was not too far from the truth thinking it had to do with peace. I forget what the textbook definition was, but I found out I was pretty much right. Kind of interesting. I know there's no mention of humans in Lylat in the games, but I have always thought that, since the creatures of Lylat are evolved versions of Earth creatures, humans may have had something to do with their evolution, and if that were the case, there would probably still be some scattered around the system. So there you go. I'll try to be more diligent about my updates, but no promises. I'll get them written and posted eventually, but please be patient. Thanks to all of you who are reading! Your support means a lot to me. Until next time!