A tall, gargantuan plant with thorns on its body and a monstrous maw resembling a flower-bud when closed and having menacingly sharp teeth when open lashed out with its tentacles, resembling incredibly thick vines with thorns on them. Fox and Krystal dodged the vine by jumping over it. Krystal then fired her fire blasts at the monster as Fox rushed towards the main stem to strike at it and chop it down like a tree. The creature lashed one of its tentacles at Krystal, but she quickly dodged the attack with a backflip, evading all harm. But to her horror, it turned out that the monster also lashed the other tentacle out at Fox, but he didn't dodge the attack in time, and was knocked to the ground. She gasped in terror, then the beast wrapped its tentacle vine around Fox before lifting him up. Fox felt the thorns digging into his body as the vine squeezed around him. Krystal charged at the plant monster to free Fox, but Fox had this flame-like aura surrounding him. The plant monster screamed in pain as Fox's flaming body burned the beast's arm. Then, Fox dashed out of the tentacle's grasp and shot his way through the beast's main body, decapitating it in of an eye. As the plant monster's severed head landed on the ground, Fox landed safely on the ground with the flames around him disappearing, yet none of the flames hurt him. The only injuries on his body were from the thorns. He lurched in pain as Krystal rushed to him. When she approached him, he asked, "You all right, Krystal?"
"Actually, I think I should be asking you that." Krystal put her hand on Fox's shoulder and a cyan glow formed around them, and Fox's wounds healed in an instant.
"Thank you, Krystal."
"You're welcome, Fox. Anyway, what was with that flame that came around you? I didn't think you had Krazoa powers."
"That was more Cornerian military tech. It allows us to form fiery shields around us and launch ourselves like rockets."
"Rock-ettes? Oh, you mean vehicles that allow for space travel?"
"Just a specific type thereof. The large ones that have huge engines. Anyway, these monstrous plants don't let up here."
"Cerinia had man-eating plants as well. The warriors of my tribe, myself included, fought and killed many of them. Sometimes, small villages would be attacked by them and then we would rush in to save the day."
"Was Cerinia a jungle planet?"
"Well, there were plenty of jungles on Cerinia and I've explored many of them. A lot of plant monsters lurked there, and I have killed many of them."
"Were any of them like the one we just fought?"
"Some of them. Anyway, we'd better get going."
As Fox and Krystal traversed through the jungle up a hill slope, Fox asked Krystal, "Good thing we left Tricky back in ThornTail Hollow. It would have been stressfully difficult to protect him in a place like this. How much farther are we from that source of magic you detected?"
"I'm afraid that it's still way too far away from us. But, on the plus side, now that Pigma's out of the picture, you can request Peppy for his Arwing."
"You know, that sounds like a good id…" But then, Fox spotted something strange in the distance. Amongst all the green trees and bushes far away from where the vulpine duo was, they spotted something that looked like a building. Fox squinted really hard. To him it looked like a grey building and appeared way too high-tech to a Saurian temple. He took out his Hi-Def Display Device but then paused for a minute. "Krystal, do you have clairvoyance?"
Krystal smiled flirtatiously. "Yes. Oh, you think I might want to see what's over there."
"Yeah. Well, go ahead. See through my eyes." Fox looked through his Hi-Def Display Device and positioned it so that he was looking at the mysterious building off in the distance. Krystal's eyes turned cyan as she put her hands together as if meditating. She was looking through Fox's eyes as he eyed the building off in the distance.
The building didn't look anything like one of Sauria's ancient temples. The exterior of the building looked metallic as opposed to the stone walls of a temple and its structure was more akin to a technologically advanced base as well, like the ones back on Corneria. Fox zoomed in on the base. It turns out that it was a technologically advanced base just as his impressions have had him to believe. But many of the things nearby the base... disturbed him. As Krystal was looking through Fox's eyes with her clairvoyance, she too was disturbed by what they were seeing. When the vulpine duo looked closer at the mechanical ships being docked at numerous points at the base, they saw that they looked exactly like the Venom fighter ships that Fox has been fighting on the way to the planet of Sauria, and their suspicions were confirmed. Krystal clenched her hands into fists and taking slow breaths that whenever she exhaled, it sounded like a hissing snake. Fox could tell. Krystal was seething and knowing that the Venomian soldiers literally destroyed her world, Fox believed that she had every right to. Fox took a look at the front entrance and spotted two guards in front of the main door. A monkey and a cougar stood on each side of the door and Fox and Krystal recognized their uniforms. They were Venomian soldiers just like the ones Fox fought in the Lylat War and the ones that ran the experiments on Cerinia that obliterated the planet, and slaughtered the men, women, and children of Krystal's tribe, including her parents. Krystal's seething has gotten worse, and she would love nothing more than to charge into the base and rip every Venomian soldier limb from limb. But then tears formed in her eyes as she knew that would be an impossibility. If the full might of her tribe's greatest warriors were easily massacred by Venom's military troops, what chance did she have of defeating them all by herself?
Fox dialed his wrist pad, saying, "I'd better contact Peppy and tell him what we just found."
Krystal deactivated her clairvoyance and said to him, "Good idea. Charging in there by ourselves would be tempting but suicidal. They should be left to those more equipped to handle them." Krystal started standing at attention, but then she suddenly sensed something. She sensed someone's thought patterns. The thought patterns clearly showed signs of stress, panic, fatigue and fear. The person whose thought patterns Krystal was sensing felt like he was reaching his limit, but he can't stop or he'll be caught and subjected to more torture. What's more, Krystal recognized the man who had those thought patterns. She gasped in horror.
"Are you okay, Krystal?" Fox asked.
"Sabre! He's alive but in mortal danger! We have to save him! But we..." Krystal didn't know what to do. She wanted to save her brother, but she knew that she and Fox were too under-equipped to properly face off against the Venom soldiers that were pursuing him. She had to think of something. She calmed down for a moment. "Fox… I have an idea."
One soldier clad in a black armor with red markings on it, turned to another, saying, "We lost sight of him, sir."
The other replied, "Keep looking. He can't be far from here."
The two soldiers spread out looking for their prey. Miles ahead of them, a blue-furred vulpine male was crawling and bleeding as he attempted to escape from his pursuers. He almost looked like a male version of Krystal as he had blue fur and wore sandals, shoulder-pads, and braces on his forearms and lower legs just like the ones Krystal had, and had tattoos around his upper arms just like the ones on Krystal's. He also had a tattoo on each of his shoulders that looked like a spiral with four arrows on each side of it, just like the ones on Krystal's hips. He wore a loincloth similar to Krystal's but was at least half a foot longer. He was covered in cuts all over his body and his forehead had a very large injury in the center, shaped like an upside-down triangle, causing tiny streams of blood to run down his face. He had burn marks all over his chest and his arms and legs had a lot of cuts on them. He was doing what he can to escape, but he was reaching his limit. Krystal… he thought, if you can hear me, I'm sorry. Please live. He collapsed on the ground, but he didn't want to stop so he resorted to crawling just to continue escaping. But he was straining himself and was about to collapse…
The soldiers from before turned to a few other soldiers behind them, including one in the very back, weilding a sniper rifle, with a sheathed knife on his hip. Their leader said to the sniper, "I'm positive that we are closing in on the fugitive. We're sure he has barely any fight left in him, but if he does, be sure to take a few shot at him. Don't kill him, though. Just injure him to the point where he can't fight back."
"As you wish."
"Try using that tree as a sniping spot." The rest of the soldiers headed off through the jungle to try to find their fugitive while the sniper looked around to find a good sniping spot.
A few seconds went by and the sniper's fellow soldiers left the area and proceeded further in the jungle. As soon as he was the only guard in the vicinity, a figure jumped out of the bushes and grabbed him, gagging him with her left hand, preventing him from crying for help. The sniper struggled to speak, but the attacker used her right hand to grab the hilt of his knife and pulling it out of its sheath, then plunged the blade into his throat. She coldly hissed into his ear, "This is for my homeworld!" She slashed the knife through the soldier's throat and and pushed it across his neck, spilling gallons of blood dripping down his body. Krystal let go of his now lifeless body as it fell to the ground, then took off the belt holding the sheath for his knife and putting it on her own waist. Even though revenge wasn't her primary motivation for her search for the cause of her homeworld's destruction, she wouldn't pass an opportunity for it if it were to arise. She telepathically communicated to Fox, who was right behind her, Well, that's the first step. She picked up the sniper rifle used by the dead soldier, and gave it to Fox. Here. Use this. You snipe some of the other soldiers on your side from a distance while I sneak up on a few more of them from the other side.
What if you end up in trouble and are about to get caught?
I'll signal you letting you know that I'm in danger. When I do, snipe in on the enemy closing in on me. Also, don't stay in one spot for too long or it won't be long until they find you. After sniping away at a few enemies, move to another spot. And leave most of the singular foes to me. If there are two or more soldiers together, I'll signal you to take out one of them, to scatter the group. And be sure to use your SharpClaw disguise to cloak your body heat. Krystal activated her aura to mask her body heat while Fox turned on his SharpClaw disguise and climbed up a tree with the sniper rifle so he could snipe away at some of the enemy soldiers.
Fox asked through Krystal's telepathy, How many soldiers are there?
Approximately eight. Now remember our plan. Now we need to hurry or Sabre won't last long. Krystal went off into the bushes and trees as she prepared to stalk her prey while Fox prepared to snipe at the Venom soldiers from the tree tops. He tried to find out which Venomian soldier was closest to Sabre. He thought that it has to be the one farthest away from himself, and looked through his rifle, scanning the area to figure out which Venom soldier was furthest from him, therefore being in the lead of the pack. Every time he saw a Venom soldier, he checked if there was one further away from him. Finally, he found him. The leader of the pack. He put the soldier's head in the center of the crosshairs and pulled the trigger.
"Gotcha."
The laser shot out of the rifle all across the jungle and into the Venom soldier's cranium. The soldier instantly collapsed onto the ground, dead as a doornail. After his lifeless body collapsed to the ground, his fellow soldiers ran up to him, worried.
"Commander! Commander, come in!" The three soldiers closest to him ran up to him and tried checking for any sign of life. A heartbeat, a pulse, but they found nothing. The others tried rushing up to them, while Krystal hid in the trees and waited for the one straggler among them. As soon as the last one started passing by Krystal, she leaped down from the tree, gagged him from behind, cut his throat with her knife, and retreated to another tree, while Fox moved to another tree as well, taking advantage of the distracted guards and fleeing while he had the chance.
The few soldiers checking the corpse of their commander had confirmation that he was dead. They turned to their remaining men and one of them said, "Men, we have an assassin after us. They shot our commander and will be after us too. Spread out, hunt him down, and blow his head off!" The entire rest of the platoon replied, "Yes, sir!"
As the Venom troops spread out, Krystal hid in the trees and telepathically communicated to Fox, Did you take out their commander?
Fox thought back to her, Yes, Krystal. I did.
Good. That should buy Sabre some time. I already took out another trooper, so that means there are only six soldiers left. And remember, don't stay in one sniping spot for too long, or they'll know where you are.
Okay. Be sure to move around as well so that you aren't discovered either.
I'm way ahead of you. Krystal climbed to the top of the tree and waited for the other soldiers to pass by. Then, two more soldiers appeared in front of the tree, completely unaware of Krystal's location. She watched and waited, knowing that if she took out one of them right away, the other would know where she is and kill her instantly with laser fire. She stayed in the trees watching and waiting, activating her invisibility power in case one of them turns around. One of the soldiers walked away while the other stood by on guard. Krystal waited in the tree and used her power to sense the leaving guard's movements to check his distance from the one still at the tree. She crouched behind the trunk of the tree, keeping her aura activated, while the soldier activated a pair of thermal goggles. With Krystal's aura masking her body heat, the soldier looked into the tree, and didn't see any trace of her. After a few minutes, she detected no physical presence near the guard still as the tree. After the soldier turned around and was facing outward again, she crept up towards an opening where she could strike at him. She forcefully put her hand over his mouth, gagging him, and pulled him into the tree. She then pulled out her knife thrusted it into the soldier's eyes, all the while continuing to gag him so that he couldn't scream and cry for help. She then plunged the knife into the soldier's throat, until the soldier died. After the soldier perished, Krystal let his corpse fall out of the tree before dashing to another one undetected. She telepathically communicated to Fox, Five left.
As two more soldiers walked toward one of the trees that Fox left after sniping their commander, Fox, now hiding in a tree some distance off, sniped at one of the soldiers at a headshot. After watching his comrade die, the other soldier started to panic, but then Fox sniped a headshot on him too and he fell down to the ground dead. While Krystal was telepathically communing with him, Fox responded, Strike that. Three left.
But then, one of the three remaining soldiers walked by the tree where Krystal make her third kill. He spotted a trail of blood and the corpse of his comrade. He felt that the trail could lead him to the assassin. He activated a communication device. "Men. To me. I think I have found the enemy." Krystal overheard what he said as she was hiding in the bushes. She quickly took off her knife belt, fearing that the blood dripping from the knife was giving away her position, and snuck away undetected.
One of the other soldiers that the earlier one contacted said, "Copy…" but then, he thought he saw something rustling in the trees. He tossed a cylindrical metallic item into the tree. Fox attempted to dash his way out of the tree and onto another one, but the metal cylinder launched an electromagnetic field and the field touched Fox before he could escape to the next tree. Fox's SharpClaw disguise dissipated and he stumbled out of the tree getting perpetually injured as he fell. The soldier called on his com, "I found Fox McCloud! The boss'll be SO happy about this!" He fired his blaster at Fox, and Fox, thinking that his Reflector was disabled by the electromagnetic field, activated the force field on his staff.
Hiding in the bushes, Krystal spotted the soldier she feared would find her answer a call on his wrist-mounted com link as the voice from the other side said, "I found Fox McCloud! The boss'll be SO happy about this!" Krystal saw the other two soldiers hurrying off in a different direction, and after hearing laser fire, she knew she had to save the man she loved. She dashed into the tree she was in earlier and returned to the corpse of one of the soldiers she killed. She spotted the blaster he was equipped with, and picked it up and ran off.
Fox kept trying to hold up the shield from his staff, but the relentless laser fire from the Venomian soldier's machine gun and he feared that it wouldn't be long before he ends up dead. He struggled to align his sniper rifle with his one free hand and aim it at the soldier. But using one hand with a two-handed weapon can feel awkward and clunky. Due to being right handed, Fox thought that holding the staff with his left hand would make it easier to aim his rifle. He struggled to aim the sniper rifle at the soldier, but was too stressed out to make a proper aim. But then, all of a sudden, two more enemy soldiers showed up behind the first one, and one of them was a large, hulking gorilla. Fox felt that his goose was cooked, and decided to throw proper, careful aim out the window and try firing rapidly at the soldiers like a maniac. He attempted as close an approximation at the first soldier and fired without thinking. The laser from the rifle and ended up passing through the soldier's shoulder, The first soldier stopped firing and took out a grenade to throw at Fox. Fox felt that he was dead for sure…
A laser shot right through the grenade and it exploded, leaving the first soldier to be nothing but ashes. The second soldier aimed his rifle as where that first laser came from and prepared to fire, but Fox then immediately charged at him, and while the red jewel in his staff glowed with a powerful radiance, swung his staff so hard in the head that his skull became fractured and his brain permanently fractured to the point where it could no longer function and thus killing him. The third soldier, the gorilla, took out a homing launcher, but Fox then ran up to him, jumped in the air and smashed it to pieces with one swing of his staff. He prepared to strike the gorilla with his staff, but the gorilla punched him before he could approach him. Fox was knocked down onto the ground, dropping his staff in the process, landing flat on his back and it hurt when he was sliding on the ground. Before he could get back up again, the gorilla grabbed him by the throat and raised him up in the air. The gorilla sneered at Fox saying, "Our leader, the Great Emperor Andross gave us a future and you took it from us!" He started squeezing his hand around Fox's throat "Now, I'll take your futu…" but then he stumbled and dropped Fox onto the ground, and put his hands on his head, screaming in pain, agony, and torment. When Fox landed on the ground, he coughed. After several coughs, Fox looked to his left and saw Krystal behind a nearby tree, with the same angry look on her face that he has seen on her a couple of times, with her snarls and retracted muzzle baring her razor sharp teeth, only this time, her eyes were ominously glowing cyan with a disturbing aura emanating from them. The gorilla continued screaming in pain and agony until Fox heard what sounded like a meaty explosion. The gorilla's body collapsed to the ground, and when Fox took another look at it, he noticed that the gorilla's head was missing. He looked horrified. He turned back to Krystal and saw that her eyes stopped glowing cyan and returned to normal.
Krystal walked up to a shaky Fox. "Are you okay?" she asked.
Fox was still shocked and horrified to see Krystal having such terrible power, but was happy to see that she was still her. "Yeah, Krystal, I'm okay. Thanks for saving me. If it weren't for you, I would have been dead meat." He picked up his silver staff. "Well, that's all of them."
"I don't sense any more. But we'd better find Sabre and go before reinforcements arrive. Follow me!"
Sabre crawled wearily in the jungle. He was grateful that the soldiers pursuing him were off his tail, but he was still desperate to get away. He crawled as quickly as he could with his few ounces of strength, but pain began to overwhelm him. He collapsed from exhaustion. He said, "Elysia… Krystal… I'm sorry." He could almost pass out from the pain, but then he heard a woman's voice calling his name. The voice got louder and louder and then Sabre became more and more capable of recognizing it. "Krystal?" He barely lifted his head to see the woman. It was her. It was his sister. And someone was with him.
Krystal crouched down and lifted Sabre's head up, "Sabre, are you all right?"
The male Cerinian weakly moaned, "Krystal… you saved me…"
Fox and Krystal quickly became horrified at the copious wounds covering him. Especially the gigantic tearing at the skin of his forehead. Krystal morbidly and hauntedly asked, "What happened to you?"
Fox activated his wrist-mounted communications device. "Peppy, send me your Arwing. The culprit who shot us down has been taken care of and we have someone who needs help."
"What happened, Fox?"
"I'll explain in just a moment." He pressed a button on his glove. Back on the Great Fox where Peppy was analyzing the map of Sauria, a red light showed up on an area of the globe area. "Can you sense my location?"
"I see it. I'm sending you my Arwing now." Peppy opened up another console on his chair and typed in coordinates. At the Great Fox's docking bay, another Arwing automatically lifted its way out of the docking bay and soared its way downward.
Back on Sauria's Komalia Jungle, Krystal struggled to mend Sabre's wounds. She lifted her hand above his forehead and a cyan aura glowed around it. But then, she thought, if she healed the wounds after they've been infected that would only worsen Sabre's health dramatically. So she instead decided to take a nearby leaf that was originally from a tree and tried to wipe away any dirt from his wound. "It's okay, Sabre. We'll make sure you get patched up. Fox just called for a transport to get you out of this jungle."
Sabre turned his head so that Fox was in his sight. "Is that him?"
Fox walked over to Sabre. "Yep. My name is Fox McCloud and I helped Krystal save you."
"So you're the Fox McCloud." Sabre replied. Fox looked a little worried for a moment. He was nervous that Sabre would be untrustworthy of him. Sabre continued. "There truly is hope for us after all."
Fox felt relieved that Sabre thought well of him, but wanted to know what he meant. "Us?"
"More of our people are still…" But then all of a sudden, Peppy's Arwing landed closeby.
Fox said, "Right on que." He activated the cockpit so that it would open. He said, "Krystal, hop in first. Then I'll pass Sabre to you."
Krystal jumped into the backseat area. Fox lifted Sabre in a similar fashion to a war comrade. "Can you walk?"
"Just barely."
"Hope it's just enough for me to carry you." Fox walked up to the Arwing with Sabre in tow. There wasn't much distance from it, so carrying Sabre wasn't too difficult.
Krystal reached her arms out "It's okay, Sabre. I got you." Fox put Sabre so that Krystal could pull him up. She took him by the torso and attempted to pull him up while Fox attempted to lift him up by the legs. He struggled keeping him steady, but then Krystal lifted Sabre up so that his torso was above the metallic wall for the cockpit and lifted one of his legs to go over the wall and into the ship. She then did the same with his other leg. Once Sabre was in the ship, Krystal settled him down while Fox hopped into the pilot seat. He then closed the cockpit and took off to ThornTail Hollow.
Once the Arwing was miles high above the Komalia Jungle, he set his Arwing to the direction of ThornTail Hollow and then flew straight forward. He then activated his Arwing comm device to Peppy. When Peppy answered, he asked, "So is my Arwing working well for you?"
"Yep. Anyway, the person who shot us down was our old 'friend,' Pigma Dengar. He attempted to steal the SpellStone, but thankfully he failed."
"So where is Pigma now? Don't tell me he got away again!?"
"Wolf is currently punishing him for acting on his own and nearly denying Wolf the satisfaction of finishing me off. Of course, Pigma would prefer that over anything Krystal might have tried on him."
Peppy looked kind of pensive. He picked up right there that Krystal could be very dangerous when made angry, and he intuitively believed that any fate she would have had in mind for Pigma would have been particularly gruesome.
Fox continued, "Anyway, we discovered a Venomian base nearby where you just landed the Arwing and rescued someone who escaped from it. It was Krystal's brother, Sabre."
Peppy was shocked. "But I thought Krystal was the last of her kind! The only one who escaped when Cerinia…"
"Yeah, the rest of us thought so too. But apparently, Venomian soldiers managed to capture a few of them before fleeing Cerinia themselves, and Sabre was one of them. I need you to send this information to General Pepper so that the Cornerian Army could save those Cerinians and blow that base to smithereens."
"I'll get on it. Thanks, Fox." The transmission ended, and Fox kept moving forward to ThornTail Hollow where he could help Sabre recover from his wounds.