Krystal pointed in the direction of the thought patterns she detected, saying, "That way." Fox and Krystal walked along the deserted wastelands of Dragon Rock, heading towards what appeared to be a small fortress with walls and gates of steel. As they pressed forward, Krystal said to Fox, "I really don't like this place. It just seems like the desolate, barren, hollow, lifeless husk of a once fertile landscape."

"Sounds like a perfect place for a nihilist like General Scales, don't you think?" asked Fox as he kept looking around in case any danger came towards them. But then suddenly, he spotted what appeared to be a drone with a cyan bubble around it.

"Yeah. A heartless monster who scorns life itself would love a place so…"

But then Fox shouted, "Get down!" Fox and Krystal nimbly energy blasts being fired at them. They then grabbed their staffs and started firing their Fire Blasts at their enemy; an attack drone that looked like a large metal balloon with a cannon at the bottom of its body, surrounded by a cyan bubble. But no matter how many shots they fired, they couldn't hurt it. The cyan bubble was a force field. The drone prepared to fire at Fox again, but he quickly activated his reflector, bouncing the drone's energy blasts back at it, but just like the shots from Fox and Krystal's Fire Blasts, they didn't lay so much as a scratch on the drone.

It dawned on Krystal immediately that they were fighting an invincible enemy. She shouted "RUN!" at the top of her lungs. The vulpine duo dashed across the wasteland, dodging the drone's blasts, but the murderous machine kept pursuing them. Krystal shouted, "Use your SharpClaw Disguise!" Fox activated her SharpClaw Disguise while Krystal summoned her body heat cloaking aura. The two then hid behind a tall rock spire nearby and pressed their backs to it in fear and panic. Then the drone came by right in front of them and passed right by without even noticing that they were there, and then floated off into the distance. Fox and Krystal breathed a sigh of relief when the danger passed.

"Dammit." groaned Krystal. "Drones with impenetrable shields?! As if I needed another reason to hate this place."

"But there's nothing we can do about them for now. We'd better evade them until we can find some way of getting rid of their force fields."

"Well, I hope we do. First, we'd better look inside that fortress." Krystal pointed to the fortress that they were originally heading towards. Fox nodded, ready to follow her lead, but then he took a quick look behind him and saw something strange in the rock they were hiding behind.

Fox said to Krystal, saying, "Krystal, take a look at this." Krystal then looked at what Fox was looking at and saw a gargantuan crack in the rock, and behind the rock, was what appeared to be a giant, green circuit board. Fox said, "Looks like this rock is really a disguise for some kind of machine that Scales is using for his misdeeds here."

Krystal then drew her staff, saying, "Then there's only one things to do. Stand back, Fox." Krystal then rammed the head end of her staff against the green circuit board behind the crack, but the staff bounced off of it, without damaging the giant green circuits at all. Krystal then prepared to ram the tail end of her staff and a storm of electric sparks emanated from it. Then, Krystal thrusted the tail end of the staff into the green circuit board, but then the staff bounced off the circuit board and knocked Krystal back. She got up and said, "It's no use, Fox. I don't think we can destroy that thing.'

Fox then replied, "I still have a Bomb Spore. I wonder if it will work." Fox then used the tail end of his staff to dig a small hole in front of the large crack in the rock, took a Bomb Spore out of his backpack, put it into the hole, and filled the hole back up again. A bomb plant sprouted out of the ground. Fox and Krystal turned around and saw two creatures slowly walking toward them. They readied their staffs.

Krystal hissed, "FireCrawlers."

"Oh, great. I already had problems with the one back in Moon Mountain Pass."

"Now, remember, if you strike them directly with your staff, you will catch fire. You have to freeze them solid with your Ice Blast before hitting them."

"Okay."

Krystal then rolled a bit towards the closest FireCrawler, and launched a powerful Ice Blast at it. The FireCrawler tried to breath fire at her, but she instantly rolled out of the way and continued with the Ice Blast. The FireCrawler was frozen solid and then Krystal smashed its body with her staff, shattering it to a thousand pieces. Fox approached the other FireCrawler with caution, and fired his Ice Blast at it, but unfortunately, it was weaker than Krystal's, so it had slightly shorter reach, and froze the FireCrawler at a slower rate. The FireCrawler prepared to swipe at Fox with its tail, but Fox jumped out of the way, and kept trying to freeze it, thinking, Come on, come on, come ON! The FireCrawler then tried to breath fire at him but he rolled out of the way, and he struggled to get a stronger Ice Blast at the creature. The creature swiped at him with its tail, but Fox barely dodged the blow, but in the process, got a burn on his knee. He quickly used his Fox Illusion to quickly dash out of the way, but before the beast could start to pursue him, Krystal already finished freezing it solid with her much stronger Ice Blast and shattered its body to more tiny bits. He then turned to Fox, saying, "You okay?"

Fox clutched to the burn on his leg, saying, "I think so, but your magic is obviously stronger than mine. My Ice Blasts were too weak to freeze that thing."

"You tried your best, Fox, but like I said, your staff was made for Sabre, a physical combatant, making its spellcasting less powerful, so it's probably best to let me deal with any future FireCrawlers we come across from now on."

"Maybe that's for the best. Anyway, back to my Bomb Spore." Fox aimed his staff at the Bomb Spore plant that just grew and fired a Fire Blast at it. The plant exploded but when the smoke cleared, the circuit behind the huge crack in the rock remained undamaged. "Argh! Didn't work. Gotta see if there's something in there." Fox and Krystal walked up to the entrance to the fortress. There was a ladder leading to the scaffolding above the gate, but there was just one problem.

The ladder was blocked by flamethrowers on the walls of the gate, breathing heavy flames at any person foolish enough to climb the ladder. "This isn't good. How are we supposed to get up there?"

Krystal replied, "Actually, I have an idea." She positioned herself a few feet away from the fortress, then positioned her staff in a diagonal angle and then fired a few Fire Blasts to indicate the direction of her staff, and if it wasn't what she was hoping for, she adjusted her staff's trajectory to improve the angle she was aiming at. Then she pressed down on the Rocket Booster glyph on her staff and then energy glowed up all around her staff, and she instantly boosted all the way from the ground, and then flew up to the scaffolding of the base.

Fox looked at it in awe, and the sheer magnificence of Krystal taking off into the sky overshadowed any potential perverted peek he may have had of her. Fox then adjusted his staff in the same manner that Krystal adjusted hers, pressed on the Rocket Boost glyph on his staff, and then took off to the same balcony that Krystal landed on, reuniting with her. He breathed a sigh of relief and said, "I was worried that I wouldn't make it."

Krystal smiled, saying, "Even when used with staffs of lesser magical power, the Rocket Boost is still quite effective."

Fox smiled. "Good thing it comes in handy." Fox and Krystal then found an opening in the wall that led to a small ramp in a hallway. They walked up that ramp in the hall, then turned to their right, and spotted another ramp. They walked up that second ramp, and then found themselves in a circular room with a rotating double-edged Flamethrower in the very center. Fox looked at it and said, "This could be a problem."

"Good thing we are quick on our feet, right Fox?"

"Yep." After the first flame passed by, Fox and Krystal quickly walked to the area between the two flames and then quickly dashed to a safe area on the other side of the room while dodging the flames. When they got to that safe area, they found an entrance to another hallway. Fox quickly turned back and thought he saw something through the grated floor. He took another look and saw that a HighTop was being held captive in the floor below. He hoped he could find some way to free him.

Krystal called Fox, saying, "We gotta go!" They dashed through that hallway, but before they could go to the very end of the hall, Krystal stopped herself and Fox in their tracks. She briefly spotted a flamethrower in the middle of the wall at the end of the hall. She held her hand to Fox saying, "Let me handle this."

"I'm sorry, but you think I could handle this? I don't think it's fair for me to place the whole burden of deactivating traps on you."

"But I think I could more easily crawl under the flames. Or we could block them with the barriers of our staffs as we approach them."

"Wouldn't that take up too much energy?"

"That's a good point actually. Do you have any grenades on you?"

Fox felt something hollow in the wall next to him. "I think there's something behind this wall." He then took out his staff, and rammed the head end into the panel in the wall. They entered the newly revealed room, and turned to their right. They approached that side of the room, and Fox speared a wall panel with the tail end of his staff and then used it to pry it off. He found a bunch of electrical wires in the wall, and he tore away at them. Then, all of a sudden, the roaring of the flames in the other room ceased. Fox and Krystal looked back in that hallway they were in, and they saw that the flamethrower blocking their progress had been deactivated and wasn't shooting out flames anymore. "It worked!" Fox and Krystal proceeded down the hallway, turned another corner, and found themselves in what appeared to be some kind of control room. Fox looked around, and noticed that as soon as he and Krystal stepped into the room, they were surrounded by monitors and control panels. "Looks like we are in a control room. Hopefully we'll find a switch that'll turn the entrance's flamethrowers off and another that'll open the front gate. Then we should find out what else we need to do here."

"Hopefully that's where we'll find a captive for us to rescue."

"Okay." Fox then spotted a monitor showing what appeared to be an EarthWalker trapped in a cell. Fox knew that he wasn't the captive here in the fortress but decided that he still needed to be rescued, so he immediately activated a switch, and the large metal door sealing him away quickly opened. "Hey! Krystal! I rescued a hostage!"

"Good work!" Now we just need to open the gate and shut off the flamethrowers. But then Krystal immediately found a switch written in the Saurian language how to activate and deactivate the flamethrowers. "I found the flamethrower switch!" She quickly used the switch to deactivate the flames in the entire base, including the ones guarding the ladder at the front entrance.

"Now we can get out easily. Now we just need to find a way to open the gate so we can rescue the hostage being held here." Fox and Krystal searched the control room but after a few minutes of searching, they didn't find a switch to open the front gate. They sighed. "At least we rescued a hostage. Where can we find him?"

"He's on the other side of Dragon Rock. We have to hurry."

Fox and Krystal quickly dashed out of the base, running right past all of the now deactivated flamethrowers, and when they returned to the front gate, Krystal slid down the now safe-to-use ladder with Fox following suit. A FlameCrawler appeared near the front entrance but Krystal immediately froze it solid before shattering it, then she activated her body-heat cloaking aura while Fox turned on his SharpClaw disguise as they ran across Dragon Rock so that the invincible, shielded drones don't start shooting at them. Fox spotted another big green circuit board behind a crack in a gargantuan stone structure the size of a building in the middle of the canyon, but they ran past it since his and Krystal's attempts at dealing with the first one were to no avail. But as they were approaching the other side of the Dragon Rock canyon, Krystal found something that immediately shocked her.

She pointed at a large grey shuttle, shouting, "I see it. It's my shuttle! The shuttle I used to escape Cerenia when it crumbled! Hijacked by those SharpClaw scum!"

"Well, that should mean that Kite isn't far behind." Fox and Krystal then kept dashing forward and they found the now unlocked holding cell with the EarthWalker inside. When they got near it, Fox deactivated his SharpClaw disguise so as not to appear to the rescued hostage as an enemy. He and Krystal approached the EarthWaker they just rescued.

Krystal called out to the EarthWaker. "Lord Godora. Courageous warrior of the EarthWalker Tribe." She knelt before the EarthWalker. Then Fox did the same.

Godora replied to Krystal, "Thank you for freeing me, Krystal. And your friend too. But there are others."

Krystal replied, "We seek their salvation as well."

Fox added. "Your ThornTail friend told me all about it. I also spotted a HighTop held captive in the fortress on the other side of the canyon."

Godora replied, "Well, fortunately, I know how we could save the HighTop."

Krystal said, "We're all ears, Lord Godora. How do we save the HighTop?" as she and Fox rose up.

Godora explained, "The HighTop will be an easy target for the patrolling robots. With their shields, they are unstoppable."

Fox added, "We had trouble dealing with them ourselves."

Godora continued, "However, each one has a shield generator hidden somewhere nearby. If we can destroy these, the robots will be defenseless."

Fox took out his staff saying, "So what do you expect us to use? This?"

Godora replied, "Of course not. This!" He imitated a ram attack and let out a roar. "Now get on my back! Let's do some damage!"

Fox jumped onto what appeared to be a saddle on Godora's back, and Krystal then seated herself on his neck between the back of his head and Fox. She said to Godora, "We'll use our staffs to protect you from the robots' projectiles. Now let's take them down!"

Godora prepared to step out of his holding cell with his two passengers. Fox pointed at a nearby steel tower, asking him, "Is that large metal tower to our left one of those shield generators?"

Godora took a quick look at the tower Fox indicated. "No, but there ought to be one nearby. You just leave the generators themselves to me, kids!"

Fox and Krystal looked at each other and nodded, readying their staffs so they could protect Godora with their barriers. Godora charged at a large rock located about five feet from where Fox landed his Arwing to get to Dragon Rock. A shielded drone patrolled the area, so Krystal pointed the head of her staff at it and activated her magical barrier as Godora charged at the rock. The drone began to fire its blasts at Godora, but Krystal positioned her staff so that her barrier would intercept the drone's blasts. The projectiles bounced harmlessly off the barrier as Godora charged at the huge crack in the rock, revealing a green circuit board like the one Fox and Krystal discovered earlier, and Fox turned around and activated the barrier on his staff as well so he could protect Godora from shots aimed from behind him. Godora rammed into the huge crack in the big rock, and the circuit board behind it was instantly destroyed. The drone's shield instantly disappeared, but it continued to fire at Godora, but Fox aimed his staff at the drone, and with his barrier active, the drone's blasts bounced harmlessly off of the barrier, then he briefly dropped the barrier and fired two of his Fire Blasts at the drone. The drone burst into flames and crash landed onto the ground.

Fox called, "Okay, that's one drone down!"

"Good!" hollered Godora, "But we are only getting started!" Godora then charged past the base that Fox and Krystal infiltrated earlier. He darted towards a little pocket area next to the base, found another green crack in a nearby wall, and charged at it. Fox and Krystal kept their eyes peeled for nearby drones, but as they charged toward the generator, they were too far away from a drone for it to start firing at them. Godora rammed into the generator hidden in the wall, then Krystal fired her Fire Blast at a drone that she spotted after its force field was shut off. The drone ignited, fell to the ground, and exploded, just like the first one before it.

Krystal shouted, "We got another one!"

Godora turned around and spotted the green crack in the wall of the large building in the center of the canyon. He charged right at it and then wrecked it with his tusks. Then he said, "Now there's only one more generator! Guard me while I demolish it!" He turned towards another huge rock with the last green crack in it, with yet another drone guarding it. "That last generator is being guarded by the drone that it powers. You'll have to keep me well protected when I smash up its generator."

Fox and Krystal pointed their staffs at the drone and activated the barriers on their staffs. Godora charged at the generator while Fox and Krystal put their barriers in front of his face to keep him safe. The drone kept firing rapid shots at the vulpine duo and the EarthWalker they were riding, but they used their barriers to protect themselves and Godora. Godora smashed the generator as he rammed into it, but because the drone fired at the heroes so rapidly, Krystal and Fox couldn't find an opportune moment to drop the shield so either of them could drop the shield so they could destroy the drone with a Fire Blast. Fox and Krystal kept their barriers up, then Krystal called, "Godora! Get to someplace safe!"

Godora tried to flee from the drone's rapid fire. As he fled, Krystal pointed her staff at the drone and attempted to deflect its blows with her staff, but then, one projectile flew past her shield and hit Godora's back leg. Godora screamed in pain as he collapsed,with Fox and Krystal immediately jumping off his back. Krystal landed a few feet from Godora, with Fox landing a few inches from him. The drone started firing at Krystal and she immediately deflected its blasts with her shield from her staff. Immediately, it dawned on Krystal that even though all three of its targets were right there in front of it, the drone was only firing at Krystal because right now, she was the one closest to it. She had an idea. "Fox! Shoot down the drone while I distract it!"

Fox nodded, then aimed his staff at the drone, and fired a few Fire Blasts at it, blowing it to smithereens. With the drone now destroyed, Krystal turned around, deactivating her barrier, and walked up to Fox, saying, "Good work, Fox. Now, there's only one drone left. Leave it to me." She spotted the last drone, floating nearby the small tower-like structure at the side of the canyon, she shot it down with her staff's Fire Blast, and then it immediately confligrated before crash-landing and exploding on landing. "Okay. That's all of them." She then walked up to Godora, and emanated a cyan glow from her hand. She then touched Godora's injured leg with that hand, saying, "Are you all right, Godora?" In an instant, Godora's injury was completely healed.

Godora felt the pain in his leg instantly disappear. He said, "I am now, thanks to you. Could you help me up, though?"

"Already on it." She went to where she was facing Godora's back. She lifted up Godora and using the Krazoa magic in her, boosted her physical strength and flipped Godora back up so he would be standing on his feet again.

Now, back on his feet, Godora said, "Thank you once again, Krystal. I see that the two of you have destroyed all the drones. Now it should be safe for the HighTop."

Fox asked, "But then how do we reach him?"

Krystal then replied to Fox, "I think we should do another check of that fortress we were at earlier. We'll probably find a way to get to the HighTop so we could rescue him."