So Samus followed the wanted "man," his steps echoing down the damp streets in a fashion that made them seem louder and more ominous than they really were.
Nightfall crept silently across the sky like a wild thing. The red sun, its size exaggerated by the planet's atmosphere, rested on the very edge of the horizon and continued to submerge, marking the coming of dealings best done in the dark. More the better for her purpose, she supposed. For a moment her mind wandered, picturing what sort of nightmares dwelt in the city late at night, then returned to the task at hand, automatically selecting a new shadow to slip into as she stepped over the fresh carcass of a giant crustacean.
After an hour of monotonous creeping, the stalk finally led to the city's monolithic main gate, a mammoth opening in the thick, stone defense wall. Torches flanked the maw, illuminating four shiftless looking armored guards with their primitive light. Why something more up to date wasn't used mystified her. Coming to an abrupt end, sand and piles of decaying metal replaced the paved road. The armor bedecking the guards, cheap only in look, glinted like the eyes of animals.
Samus was almost taken aback when the man-thing continued to stride forward, his body beginning to fade and expand, taking on a viscous, almost vaporous form that sunk to the ground. Flowing over the grit and rock like stealthy morning fog, the goo left through the gate without drawing any sort of attention whatsoever.
The new form violently tugged at her memory. "…it can't be…it can't.." Setting her jaw for the worst, she scanned the creature; her logs revealed mutated DNA, but nothing conclusive. Unconsciously, she fingered her forearm, an area once occupied by a row of dangerous spikes, but now all that took residence there was a series of chevron patterned pieces of armor.
What the heck was she getting herself into!
But flexibility was another weapon in her vast arsenal, right next to patience and diligence. She'd dealt with worse and could handle something as simple as this.
She hoped. Both that it was so simple and that she could deal with it.
Shrugging off her suspicions so that she could concentrate, but not dismissing them completely, (she knew they'd serve her later), Samus grumbled to herself and collapsed into her suit's Mauru Mauri mode, an armored sphere roughly a meter in diameter. Even she wasn't sure how it worked, having been given it, and her suit, by a benevolent race on a far-away planet when she was young. This was the only discreet way she could think of getting past the guards, but it was hard to miss a giant orange ball with brightly glowing cracks-
Her thoughts broke off as three new guards, blue tinted armor dully gleaming in the half light, ambled up to the ones on duty. The one in the lead, a bald man, spoke:
"Evening, Ronald, anything interesting?"
The guard in question scratched his unshaven chin and rigidly replied, "Nope, not a thing."
"It's been unusually quiet actually," said another.
"Really? No jawas or Tleixu?"
"Not even a smuggler."
The other guard grunted, "Maybe we scared 'em off, eh?"
"Sure, like an Austarian dragon to a goomba."
"A what?"
"Never mind…"
"No, really, what's a goomba?"
Samus took full advantage of the opportunity and rolled past the preoccupied guards into the twilight of the Nusellian wilderness, bouncing over rocks on the way like a possessed sports ball.
"UMPH!" the segmented sphere grunted as it hit rock, finishing its premature plummet into a ravine. Samus berated herself for not seeing it as the ball shrugged and relaxed into her bionic looking form. It seemed fate was out to get her tonight, or to at least give her a few more dents than she was used to.
After rolling through the gates Samus had kept up with her quarry as he coalesced into his previous form and started off through the formless landscape and into the tangled, shadowed passages of the Ur-Jax, now just a city of dark, amorphous forms looming up out of the ground like petrified trees. It was high on her list of bizarre landscapes, and located a good distance away from the city, now only a glimmer on the horizon. That was an hour ago and now she was here.
She got to her feet, trying to regain her lost dignity, and climbed to the sandy lip of the ravine, hung there for a moment, smooth metal encased fingers scraping for purchase. Luckily, the weird waiter kid had been a little too preoccupied to notice her little accident. He was busily scanning a wrinkled rock face, muttering to himself in an incoherent manner.
"I'm coming…I'm coming…where is it? Where are you?" He slowly passed his fingers over the walls that rose forbiddingly above them both.
Samus cautiously lifted herself out of the ravine and followed bent low as she placed one foot in front of the other in the meager starlight. It reflected off of the white of the waiter's dirty server's jacket and her alien armor, giving them each a ghostly luminescence. The eerie sound of the man's fingers scraping the walls became almost soothing, an inseparable part of the wind.
She had only crept three steps when he suddenly cried out and disappeared.
Night fell as Krystal turned her attention from the spectacular stone of the Ur-Jax and trained it on Falco. "How far is eight miles in Nusellian metric?"
Falco stopped and took a deep and exasperated breath. "Well…eight miles? Is there really a difference? How am I supposed to know?"
Krystal looked a bit thoughtful, ignoring his smart remark and swishing her plated tail, before replying, "Well, I ask because I couldn't see the city from the Great Fox."
Falco smirked. "Well, you shouldn't. It's camouflaged to blend in with its surroundings."
"Fitting, isn't it?" Fox interjected from Falco's left.
Krystal continued down the path and said, "I suppose so…how do they do it?"
"Color composition, the architecture of the buildings, I'm sure there's a light reflector on the dome or something." Falco said noncommittally. Nodding, Krystal relinquished her lead to Falco and tried not to lose him in the relatively peaceful dark. He had gotten used to her questions long ago.
"Hold up! I can't see you very well."
Falco slowed his pace and replied, "I thought Foxes were supposed to have good eyesight?"
"In the DAYTIME maybe…"
"Aren't you nocturnal?"
"I certainly am not. I can't say anything for other vulpines."
"Well MY eyesight is just fine. Krystal is just a weirdo," Fox said, "Which would explain why she doesn't even know anything about her own SPECIES!"
Krystal cuffed him hard in the head, "Knock it off!"
They had been traveling like this for some time now, trusting Falco's memory and sharp vision to guide them through the endless paths and curling forks of the Ur-Jax. The wind always seemed to blow their fur and feathers the wrong way, but it was better than the stale air of the ship. They reached another fork and Falco stopped and fluffed his feathers in agitation. "Um…lessee…was it left and follow the slime green stripe or right and climb into the upper tunnels?"
A resounding clack echoed throughout the passages in answer, sounding from every direction and bouncing off the walls and into their faces.
Moments later a blue glow filled the miniature canyon as Krystal's staff zinged to life in an aura of flames. The safeties on Fox and Falco's blasters clicked off as they swiftly backed together, Fox scanning the skies while Krystal and Falco scanned the paths on either side with darting eyes, suddenly as observant as any bird of prey.
"What was that?" Krystal shifted her weight back and forth, her tail flicking madly. Fox's just waved slowly, only just a little more calmly.
"I don't know…Falco? Any ideas? What's out here at night?"
"I couldn't be sure. The boys always spoke of lights and snakes and the like."
Krystal shifted her attention for a split second, "What 'Boys'? Lights! SNAKES!"
"Yah!" Fox fired into the night and hit the top of the wall, raining splinters of rock down on their heads.
Falco's eyes flashed, "What is it?"
"What did you see?"
"Quiet!" Fox snapped. Falco and Krystal shifted attention back to their respective watches.
Krystal said softy, "What's up there?"
Fox's gun quivered slightly, "Something moved in one of the hollows…like a ripple in the air."
"Ripple? -" Falco sounded dubious.
"There it is again!" The stars that shone over the edge of the wall seemed warped for a split second before coming into focus again. Fox had never seen anything like it before, except in his worst nightmare. A dark dream where he saw through another's eyes as he was scooped into the air and devoured by a giant, invisible horror, firelight licking at the edges of its form.
It had been the dream he had lived on Dinosaur Planet.
"Easy boys," Krystal soothed, breaking Fox out of his thoughts, trying her best not to fall into her own fear-trap. Anything could be hiding up there. Like a giant snake.
Falco was still. "I see it..! Or saw it now, for a split second. There were three."
Fox whispered now, "Three what?"
"Blurs."
"What do we do, Fox?" Krystal asked.
"Wait." There was nothing else they could do, unless-
"There could be more," Falco said, "it could be a-"
"Shh!" Fox was still for a moment, then closed his eyes, "Falco, double duty. Keep an eye on the sky and the area up-ahead."
Falco understood. "Gotcha'."
Fox's breathing quieted as his ears twitched slightly. They were the perfect auditory instrument, spoon shaped and sensitive, catching the slightest sound. Employing them now he heard scuttling on the rocks above…then a crackling, electric…? Something rough and guttural sounding…some sort of speech...Fox tensed-
"They're moving south west," Krystal uttered. Fox broke out of his reverie and joined Falco in staring at her, eyes wide and mouth agape. She was leaning on her staff, eyes closed as if asleep, soft blue ears swiveling like windblown leaves. "…heading away from us. And the Great Fox." Her eyes finally opened and she looked up at them, smiling serenely at the looks on their faces. "I'm a weirdo, remember? I've been trained in this stuff. Shall we carry on? I'm sure Falco has remembered the way by now."
A giant's leap away, among the lost wind and starlight, Samus froze, then rushed forward. Where was he? Where had he gone? After hours of tailing had she lost him? He couldn't have collapsed into that strange goo-like form because it took a few moments and she would have seen him. That she knew of he couldn't have disappeared entirely either, though he could have teleported. An unexpected ability? But, he had cried out in surprise which implied that something unexpected had happened…
Bringing two fingers up to her slick visor she tapped the side and activated scan mode, lights on either side, darkened earlier for the sake of stealth, now brightened to compensate for the darkness. She turned slowly in a circle. There was nothing suspicious that she could see. No life signs either. Any long range radar was hindered by rock, which, on further inspection, turned out to be volcanic…scans also spoke of immense concentrations of salt. This used to be a geologically active seabed…and some of those stone towers were inactive sea chimneys…amazing…stay on task stay on task, she thought to herself.
Samus swept from side to side with her visor and stopped when she saw a dark gaping hole, like a throat in the ground, just a grain away from her feet. It was roughly the diameter of her morphing ball mode, with sides slick and glossy from use that reflected her visor lights. The hole was deep-set in the lower part of the wall, making it difficult to spot. Here was her culprit.
Samus's face was set with an uneasy expression as she examined the steep grade of the tunnel, which seemed to go on forever, down into the stomach of the Ur-Jax…either that or it was the play-ground slide from heck.
Taking a deep breath, she slipped into the tunnel feet-first and slid into the blackness, opting out of rolling down.
It took her only a few moments to realize she was going too fast. Samus dug the metal heels of her hand and feet into the sides of the tunnel, making an ear ravaging grating noise and throwing up angry sparks. The heat from the friction made her grit her teeth as she slowed down little by little until she finally stopped at the terminus of the tunnel, which emptied out into a large cavern. The stomach, she thought grimly.
Having faith in her balance, Samus peered over the lip of the tunnel into the bottom of the cavern, which housed a large body of water. Scans showed that it was salt water, an ancient lake, and that there were a few non-threatening fish. Crazy lights and lambent reflections from the lights on her helmet writhed across the high, stalactite studded ceiling like snakes.
Finding it safe, Samus leapt into the water and dropped to the scummy bottom like a stone. Completely submerged, she made her way to the far side by simply walking through the murk. Her varia suit made the walk arduous and painfully slow. Upon emerging on the other side of the lake, she felt she could outrun just about anything so free-feeling were her movements, and she made a point of it by running through whatever shallow water remained until she reached dry terrain. There she found that the ancient, finely ground sand was criss-crossed with strange tracks, fresh and otherwise…and some familiar ones leading into yet another tunnel. She sighed.
Samus plunged into the tunnel, watching the variations in the lichens on the wall as it slid past, then stopped short and activated her ice beam. There were voices up ahead. The tunnel widened into another cavern, dotted with earthy-hued outcroppings of basalt thrust up out of the ground. It was lit at the center by a pale light, a growth of bioluminescent lichen casting unearthly shapes on the red-orange walls. Cautious words drifted down the tunnel and were channeled away into the darkness. Samus crept forward into the shadows and listened.
The Jacabo Falco saw before him was not the old Jacabo he knew. Yes, his old friend had been more the quiet type, but he wasn't prone to nervousness and the darting, wary eyes of the three armed creature that stood in front of him. Standing here in the middle of a cavern, deep within Nusella, the guy looked as if he expected the very rocks to jump up and eat him.
"Falco! And friends...you made it!" He wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirty sleeve and approached them, coming out from behind one of the jagged basalt outcroppings that broke up the floor of the cavern.
"Hey, ole' buddy," said Falco, cuffing him lightly on the shoulder, "You look, um, wet…where've you been?"
Jacabo smiled weakly. "Though hell and high-water."
"I'll say…"
Fox said, "Look, I hate to interrupt catch-up time, but we're short on it, really, time I mean." He still had a hand on the grip of his blaster. For him, it had taken an unprecedented amount of time for Falco to decide the way to this funny cave. He wanted to get as far away from those things as possible. Finally, however, Falco had found the right path and led them down narrow tunnel to the place where they now stood. Krystal hadn't enjoyed the tunnel.
Falco nodded and said quietly, "Right, what happened, Jacabo? Is somebody on to us?"
"I'll try to be brief. The Hunter happened to me, and an ufacrey. The cantina's gone," his dark eyes narrowed, and he sat on a smaller outcropping.
Krystal looked up from picking some mud off of her staff, and out of her fur. "A what!"
"You don't know what an ufacrey is?" Jacabo's eyes went wide, then returned to their normal size. He got sheepish looking. It had been a while since he'd mingled with crowds who didn't daily discuss creatures with a taste for the under-belly of society. But then, ufacreys weren't known for being involved with any kind of society.
"It's a big, black spikey monster…but they're usually shy and are pretty dang rare, what was one doing here, J? And the Hunter?" said Falco incredulously, "you give yourself too much credit!"
Krystal looked inquiringly at Fox, who shrugged. He had heard the names bounced around before, but hardly knew anything about whom they belonged to.
"It's true, and Captain Falcon was there too, I'm serious!"
Falco chuckled half-heartedly, "Well, it is the scum-bucket, had to show somewhere...what happened? Sounds like a regular circus!"
"It wasn't a circus, bro! I could have died in there! Falcon and the Hunter teamed up and beat the blood out of that 'crey. It almost got them too, it was acting really outgoing for a 'crey…which leads me into the main reason for my calling you here."
"Yeah, you said you had some information for us J," Fox said, "fire away."
Jacabo's eyes studied the cavern. "I think…something's goin' down…the big powers are moving…there's talk…" Everyone was quiet now.
"What kind of talk?" Fox couldn't help but feel something go bad in his stomach, he could tell the others were feeling the same way. J's two left arms cradled each other.
"You know, that 'crey, I don't think it was itself…it wasn't the first to act nuts." Jacabo stood again and looked pleadingly into Falco's eyes.
Falco blinked. "Jacabo, what kind of talk?"
"The Pirates are becoming secluded, stopped all shipping and outside contact. The king pins of Nusella are more cautious than usual, there's been strange dealings…someone new is in town, and everyone is either trying to get out of the way and make themselves invisible or get into this someone's good graces."
"Who is this…someone?" asked Fox, feeling more agitated by the moment. Jacabo was getting visibly more upset, he licked his lips.
"I'm…I'm not sure…listen!" He was beginning to look desperate, his mouth forming words that couldn't get out.
Falco stepped up to Jacabo and put a steadying hand on his shoulder, "Hey, are you okay?" His friend began to shudder violently and whisper incoherently. "Look, are you in trouble with this over-sized wig? You can tell us, you're in good company. We'll help you, you're my brother, remember? I wouldn't leave you hanging…Jacabo?" J's mutterings got steadily louder and clearer.
"I'm sorry…I'm sorry…I'm sorry…" Over and over again he whispered, a terrible cadence, until he was silenced by the swift whine of renting air and a scythe that jutted through his chest. The glittering barbed blue scythe followed through with its thrust and nearly took off Jacabo's upper half, scattering blue fluid and gels that danced through the air before coming to rest on the grainy floor, where they slithered like possessed slugs to rejoin their master. Falco felt a burning pain slice across his abdomen, followed by a fine, red mist that clouded his already fading vision. Nausea began to take hold, followed by a headache that grew within each fraction of a moment.
Strange, he thought in a confused daze, I felt fine when we left. What the…? "Aagh!" He held his arm tight to his stomach to staunch the bleeding, the other passing through the viscous body of his friend as he slumped to the ground.
Another thought invaded his mind; Jacabo..what have you done, my friend?
Krystal dropped her staff in shock.
Left were Jacabo's fading words.
...To be continued...
Next... Ch. 5: When Worlds Collide