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Chapter -14-
Boots on the Ground…
Meanwhile…
Fox grinned over at Krystal, admiring her nude body. "I know we've been through some grade-A crap together. You think we'll get out of this?"
Krystal pressed her back against a brick wall. A blaster beam lanced in through an adjacent window, so close she could feel the heat on her face. "Well, we made it through that time when the dam burst and washed me away." She looked down at the broken bits of ancient wood, still glowing orange, at her feet.
Fox cringed at the memory. "You were sucked out of … a Landmaster, I think? It's a bit spotty. Almost like I blocked out some of that stuff."
"Mm, yes, Fox … but even that? We walked away from the situation together and whole. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. By this point, after that and after the Aparoid Assault, and after everything else we've been through? I'm starting to think we're just plain untouchable when we're together."
Fox reached his blaster through the empty window frame and opened fire again, trying to use suppressing fire to pin down wherever Andrew and his people were firing from in the tree-line.
A blaster shot struck the old brick wall, hitting the window frame. It came so close to Fox that it singed the fur of his fingers. He jerked the blaster back in and ducked down again. "Geeze!" He stole another glance at her, but his eyes were everywhere south of her face. "I'm glad you sensed them moving in, but I wish you could have sensed them from further away."
"I was busy at the moment; I wasn't focusing on my sixth sense."
"Well, at the very least, I wish you could have sensed that they had us in their sights before they opened fire."
"Oh, hey, Fox…" She waved to get his attention; her gesture trailed off into a slight waggle of her fingers. "You should probably know that they're shooting at us."
He blinked, not used to her joking in the field. "What?"
"I said … I'm pretty sure I sense they're shooting at us. Right now."
Fox scoffed with a wry grin. "Smart ass."
"I prefer the term wise ass. It makes me sound as cultured and worldly as I really am." She winked playfully.
"Are you really making jokes under fire? I mean really?"
"You're not the only one who knows how to deflect in a tense moment," she said with a shrug of indifference. "My staff is at eighty-five percent charge. We'll be fine."
"When I got that thing on Sauria, it didn't last very long. You and Mr. Beltino really did a heck-of-a-job updating the batteries."
"Mr. Beltino provided the tools to work on it, his brother, Grippy Toad, provided the rare earth elements and specialty metals to make the new batteries."
"You … did most of the work yourself?" Fox asked with surprise in his tone.
"Slippy could've told you that much, Fox. I have more understanding of Cerinian technology than the average girl of my race. My paternal grandfather was a skilled inventor."
"He was?" He flinched at an old brick bursting into small pieces. He closed his eyes so the stone powder wouldn't agitate his gaze.
She shook her head with a sigh. "Considering we've been friends for several years, now, you really do have quite a bit more to learn about me. Back to the task at hand, Fox, do you have any ideas, or do you want me to wing it, instead?"
"What're you thinking?" he asked.
"Well…" She looked around the old brick tower, thinking of how to be clever. "Hmm…"
"This is my fault. I let us get distracted."
"Fox." She looked up at the night sky through the glowing embers that decorated the beams where the roof used to be. Her gaze lowered back to her pelt, then she stole a glance at his naked body. "Stop blaming yourself, Fox. I mean, Slippy said they were clear across the moon at last scan. There's no way we could have known Andrew would put out a false signal to throw us off. The fact he ambushed us in the middle of making love was clever on his part. But it won't be clever enough to kill us. We can't die when we're together. We've established that fact already."
Fox shook his head and reached up to run his fingers through his facial pelt, wiping bits of plaster and rubble away from his eyes. "I'm just glad you dove for your staff at the last second, and activated the shield, or we'd have been burned by the roof when it came down on top of us."
"You're welcome." She pulled her flight suit close and slid her legs into it.
"Aww. Yeah, I guess getting dressed comes first – we're not going to win from this window."
"Nope, we're not."
"I remember when you bought that from … Persimmons … I think."
"I bought the outfit on Corneria, but then I used it to mend my Cerinian flight suit, which was damaged from the rough landing on Sauria, not to mention the first time I had to fight my way out of a Sharp Claw patrol."
Fox pulled his boxer-briefs up his legs, followed by his work outfit, which was an all-in-one pants suit, sort of like overalls. He pulled a shirt overtop, then his gear vest.
Once they were both dressed, they retreated to the stairs, leading down through the ruined tower.
Krystal froze the room where they had been making love leading up to the attack, using the freeze-blast from her staff. Then, she pointed the weapon down the spiraling staircase, and froze the walls.
Fox watched in silence.
"Make sense?" she asked.
"Yeah. You sense they're using thermal, so you're freezing the entire tower, top and bottom, so as to throw off their scanners. The walls of ice will mask our location briefly. At the very least, it'll buy us enough time to get out." He followed her down the steps.
Krystal hurried, taking the stairs two at a time.
Once she reached the bottom, she made a dash for the rear entrance, leading back toward the town of partially buried buildings. Her eyes widened, sensing the next attack incoming. "Fox! They're about to…!"
The entire tower exploded.
Krystal tensed her palms around the staff, activating its shielding mechanism.
Fox was still several stairs up. His body launched from the staircase. He flailed a bit and felt something cold against his shoulder. It took another second longer for his mind to catch up with the fact he was sliding across an iced wall in midair, while flying away from Krystal.
The piece of wall he was bodysurfing on met something solid, but it broke his fall. He looked up and saw the roof of a building above him.
It all happened fast. So fast that it was difficult for either pilot to follow the turn of events. The curved piece of frozen wall he'd hit acted to break his fall when it landed on the roof of an adjacent ruined building. The ceiling collapsed.
A sudden, jarring stop … Fox and the frosted chunk of brick wall landed on the floor of an adjacent building. The ceiling of the building landed in chunks, thudding on the ground all around him.
He sat up, charged with adrenaline. He looked around but the secondary building was empty.
An explosion rumbled in the distance.
He couldn't tell which direction it came from – he was too dazed.
"Krystal!" he shouted.
Another rumble came from nearby.
Fox reached up and rubbed his paws against his ears. For the first time, he realized that he'd dropped the blaster in midair, a moment prior.
"Crap," he muttered. He looked around, but Krystal was nowhere to be seen. His adrenaline spiked again. "Krystal!"
There was another distant boom, followed by yet another. He ran toward it, passing through a doorway to the outside.
The tower was gone. A few blocks of the foundation wall remained. His heart literally ached from beating in his chest … or maybe it was suddenly difficult to breathe from the plaster and silica cloud. He couldn't tell which – he just knew there was a sharp pain in his chest.
"Krystal!" he exclaimed.
Fox dashed toward the tower's foundation wall. There, in the middle, was Krystal's body. Her favorite blue outfit was torn. She had her staff clutched across her chest in her left paw, but her right was splayed outward on the ground, with her fingers half-curled.
"Krystal!" he repeated, making a dash toward her.
She didn't move.
Steam rose above the staff, as though it was hot to the touch, but when he approached her and reached for it, the staff was lukewarm. However, her paw was cold. Her wrist was cold. Her neckline was cold.
The rumble of a large rolling vehicle caused Fox to look up just in time to see Andrew approach in the chest-mounted cockpit of a large biped attack tank. It wasn't as big as the ones used in the war. Instead, the standing tank was sleek and looked to have been designed as something that would fold up and be tucked against the belly of a fighter or escape pod. It was likely from the ship that brought Andrew here.
It was as if every instinct in his body shouted out to him to evade Andrew's next attack. Suddenly, vengeance was more important than dying beside her.
Fox saw the guns brought forward. He could practically see into the dark barrel, and he dove to the left.
The large weapon released a bright energy blast, which would have hit Fox had he stayed. The blast passed harmlessly over Krystal's motionless body and left a crater in the ground several feet away from her.
Fox spied his blaster on the ground. He made a dive for it, closed his fingers around it, and rolled back to his feet in one smooth move. He dashed away from Krystal to lead Andrew into following him.
His plan worked.
Andrew opened fire on Fox and changed direction to pursue.
Fox glanced over his shoulder at the attacking biped tank.
Why did Andrew follow him? If Andrew had scooped up Krystal, he could have used Krystal as a hostage for leverage. Was Andrew's attack truly so personal as to hyper focus only on Fox?
His body ached from running, dodging, weaving, evading energy blasts.
A horrible thought dawned on him. What if Andrew's sensors showed that Krystal was dead? What if that was why Andrew ignored her?
Fox couldn't lose her. Not again.
He couldn't stand the idea of losing another person he loved the way he lost Fara Phoenix. He couldn't be the cause of another woman's death.
Not again.
Fueled by anger from letting another woman die, Fox suddenly wanted nothing more than to feel Andrew's blood on his paws.
Fox ran for one of the ruined buildings, headed straight for a wall, jumped up, put his foot on the wall, and kicked off of it. He turned about suddenly and ran toward Andrew's approaching bi-ped tank.
The mini-tank walker suit had two guns on it, one on either arm-rail, controlled by Andrew's hands.
Fox had a blaster in his right paw. He reached into his gear belt and withdrew a Personal Shield Generator. He mashed his thumb on the PSG, creating a bright blue bubble around his body.
The charged shots of Andrew's guns struck Fox's shield unit, pushing him back, but he continued on with his dash. This time, he zig-zagged.
Andrew shouted in rage, trying his best to hit Fox. "Just die already! Damn, you!" Andrew's voice cracked like an adolescent.
Fox thumbed a switched on his blaster, turning off the safeguard settings. He charged his shot so hard that the trigger cracked.
The blaster began to heat up. A warning chime came over a small piezo speaker built into the weapon. "Warning! Overcharge in progress! Functionality compromised! Discard and stand clear!"
Fox kept the trigger pressed and hurried toward Andrew.
"You wanna make this personal, McCloud!? Fine by me!" Andrew kept trying to hit Fox with his arm cannons. "Stand still and I'll make you a cold corpse like your little girlfriend!"
"No!" Fox shouted at the top of his lungs. He leapt at the machine, ran up the left arm cannon, and slam-dunked his blaster into the chest-mounted standing-style cockpit.
The damaged blaster repeated its warning down by Andrew's feet.
Fox followed through with a punch to Andrew's face, put his foot on the right-side arm cannon, and dove away.
"No, no, no!" Andrew chanted when he realized the blaster was about to explode. He groaned from the punch to his face and hit the eject lever between his knees.
A large pod launched from the chest of the tank, and the blaster fell through a hole near the simian's feet. A plastic canopy came down over Andrew's face to shield him.
Fox rolled away just as the blaster exploded.
It blew apart the biped attack tank in an instant.
Andrew's escape pod had hardly cleared the machine when it exploded. The blast affected the trajectory of his escape pod, causing it to crash on its side roughly two hundred feet away.
The batteries of the machine exploded, creating a second detonation, which caught Fox and the escape pod, throwing both further away.
Fox brought his arms up to cover his face, then his body hit something solid.
There was a muffled sound in the distance, but everything was dark and far away.
Fox opened his eyes, and the world faded slowly back into focus. A loud ringing filled Fox's ears, but it slowly faded, as well.
Two Andrews held a single blaster pointed down at Fox. They merged into one, and Fox could see up the blaster's barrel.
The ringing finally stopped. The blurriness stopped.
This was it.
Bad luck.
For all his skill and all his determination, and all the times Fox had boasted that luck runs out, but skill doesn't … he found himself on the raw end of the deal regarding luck.
Andrew's distant yammering became clear and loud again. "…And everyone will know who it was that killed the legendary Fox McCloud! My body cam's footage will be watched by everyone in Lylat, and they will know that Krystal's cold corpse and Fox's soon-to-be cold corpse will rot together on a Miraculin alter where they met. Poetic, isn't it?"
"Wait!" Fox said in a hoarse tone.
"Oh! Is the great Fox McCloud going to beg for his life?! This should be good!"
"No, I'm not going to beg. I just wanted to correct you. We met on Sauria, not Miracle."
"Fine, I'll be sure to tell the Thorntail tribe to bury the two of you how they see fit. And, after the funeral, I'll be sure to subjugate them, then nuke the Thorntail Hollow! Now, DIE!" Then, as an afterthought, he added, "THIS IS FOR KILLING MY FAMILY!"
Andrew went to the ground at Fox's side. His face struck his own blaster, sandwiching it into the dirt. Andrew sat up, dazed and confused, with a gash on his forehead. Blood ran down his right cheek. His eyes widened. "Wha…?"
Krystal stood behind Andrew, twirling her staff. "Homerun!" She cut her gaze to Fox, adding, "That is the expression, yes?"
Fox gawked at her in shock.
Andrew looked down at his broken weapon, then back up at Krystal. "How?! You were dead! Cold!"
She scoffed. "A body doesn't go that cold that fast, you idiot. It takes hours. But you're a moron, and I knew all I had to do was lower my body temperature by reflecting my ice blast off the highest part of the foundation wall, so it came back at myself just enough to lower my core temperature. Surprise."
Andrew gawked at her, mirroring Fox's expression. "You were dead!"
"How's that concussion you've got, Oikonny? I've never hit anyone in the face with a level-1 quake blast before. Boy, I bet that hurt. Your eyes are facing two different directions. You might want to see a doctor about that." She twirled her staff about and swung the end like a golf club, knocking away his blaster.
The blaster clattered on the ground somewhere in the distance.
Fox stood up with wide eyes. "The building fell on you!"
Krystal grinned at Fox. "The building fell on my shield. You're lucky I planted that suggestion in your head to run before he could shoot you where you stood. C'mon, Fox, you know better than to stand over a fallen comrade in the field. That was a rookie mistake."
"You could have died!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were dead!"
"Calm down," she demanded. "I saved you. Again. I implanted a command into your head to move, before you wound up getting shot. You're welcome, by the way. Why would you just stand there, like that? You were ready to die and join Fara Phoenix, huh?"
Fox gawked at her. "I thought you were dead. I would have joined you."
"Maybe!" She shrugged at him with a sigh. "For all we know, I would have gone to the afterlife where Cerinian people go. You might have woken up with Fara-freaking-Phoenix. I know she crossed your mind when you saw my body."
"I thought you had just joined her. I was freaking out."
Krystal brought her free paw to her face and groaned softly. She put the bulbous spearhead of her staff against Andrew's face. "And where do you think you're going, huh?"
Andrew babbled, unable to think of something clever to say. "I, uh…"
Fox reached for Krystal's wrist and pulled her right paw from her face. "Don't be upset with me. I thought I lost another teammate."
"No, that's not what you were thinking. You were worried you let another girl die. I didn't need saving. I'm the one that saved you."
"You didn't have a pulse!"
Krystal chuckled. "My suit was damaged, but it still did what it was designed to do – the auto electric defib sparked me back to action. It shocked me to life while you were standing over me with that silly look on your face. The first thing I sensed was Andrew, excited, because he had you lined up in his sights. I screamed 'move! Fight!' in my mind, forcing that wavelength into your thick skull, and you dove away so close that the blaster-shot nearly struck your leg. You're lucky I was revived, or we'd both we dead."
Andrew blinked. "Wait, I did kill you?"
Krystal sighed. "I shielded myself from the explosion, then I reflected my cold blast back at myself, using a curved part of the foundation wall. It seemed like a good plan, until my legs felt too numb to move. I fell onto my back. A piece of debris from the still-collapsing tower must have landed on my chest and briefly stopped by heart. But, after about ninety-seconds, my suit gave me a zap. I opened my eyes to Fox standing over me. It all happened pretty fast."
Andrew said, "But I still killed you for ninety seconds! I still almost won!"
"You got lucky today," said Krystal. "Just not that lucky."
Andrew tightened both hands into fists. "It seems the Oikonny family is two-and-zero for killing McCloud's women. Sure, you got lucky, vixen, but…"
Fox pivoted on his heel and buried his fist into Andrew's jaw with the full power of his bionic shoulder implant.
Krystal perked in horror and surprise at the crunching sound.
Fox followed through the punch as if he was punching something behind Andrew, but he broke two of his own knuckles in the process.
Andrew went to the ground, silent and motionless.
Krystal lowered to one knee at the simian's side and checked his injuries. "You shattered his jaw, Fox."
Fox cradled his right fist to his chest. "Good."
"I was about to say to him that he lost because, as you always say, luck runs out and skill doesn't. Since I was prepared for anything, I was revived. But he wasn't prepared, and luck had its way with him."
"Yeah? You're lucky that suit still functioned, despite the damage to it."
She stood up and checked McCloud's forearm. "I think you've sprained your wrist." She gently ran two fingers up his wrist to his paw. "And you've broken two fingers … pinky and ring."
"I should've hit him harder, but if I had, I might have taken off his head. But, in retrospect, would that have been so bad?"
She shook her head. "He was unarmed."
"So?"
"I know you don't have murder in your heart, Fox. You won't execute a man just for offending you. You hit him with a lot of anger, but you subconsciously held back because you had no intention of killing him, just punishing him."
"I … guess. I don't know what I was feeling, except mad."
Krystal reached up and tapped a fingernail against her eyebrow. "Telepath, remember? Trust me, you weren't trying to kill him, just knock him out."
"Well, I'm considering it now."
"That's the adrenaline and cortisol talking. Let's restrain him and get him ready for the authorities."
"I'm so sick of being a bounty hunter. I mean, I love the work, but I just go around trying to earn money for Corneria. Andrew was never supposed to be a bounty. He's guilty of war crimes."
"You just brought down a war criminal."
"Yeah … I guess. But it nearly cost you your life."
Krystal narrowed her gaze at Fox. "I'm not Fara Phoenix. And, even if I was, you didn't cause her death. It wasn't your fault."
"It sure feels like it. Then I shit on her memory by falling into a physical thing with Miyu. So, whether I caused it or not, I…"
"Fox! Everyone mourns differently. You and Miyu did, indeed, 'fall into' a physical thing. But it was a coping mechanism, because neither of you had proper psychological aid to help you mourn. So, you acted out. It was foolish, but it was never done with the intent of being disrespectful. It was ignorance, on your part, at best. Miyu's as well. But it's in the past."
Fox sighed softly. "God, I'm terrible at this whole dating thing."
"Oh, well, I think you've done very well for yourself once you were older, more mature … wiser. Third time is the charm."
Awkward silence.
Krystal frowned. "I don't mean to sound as though I am disrespecting Fara's memory, but what I'm saying is … you two were doomed to fail eventually, because she wasn't your soulmate. Perhaps I am."
Fox sighed softly. He felt incredibly conflicted. Mostly, he felt worried that he would cause Krystal to die … again.
"Fox, don't even start thinking about that nonsense."
"I just need to get Andrew into custody, then we can figure out our next course of action."
"What about a home on Corneria?"
"A home? Lylat isn't safe. Lylat needs a lot of work before I can consider retiring and bringing up a child. People like Andrew are still around."
"Very well, together, you and I will make Lylat safe for our future children."
"First," he breathed the word, shook his head, then, in a slightly louder tone, said, "Okay, first, I need a moment to get my head right. Let's get Andrew into a cell."
Krystal tensed up. "Wait…"
Fox's eyes widened at the way she reacted. "What is it? Another trap? An attack?"
"No … someone close to us has just experienced a tremendous loss. A death. I don't know who. Too far away. It's at the edge of my range. Let's get Andrew secured, and then we should radio in to see what's going on."
A channel opened to Fox's gauntlet from Falco Lombardi.
"Yo! Fox! I just got word … there's been a development, and, uh … it's not good."
"What? What happened? Is everyone okay?"
Falco sighed over the gauntlet speaker. "It's Peppy, man. He just called the Great Fox. Look, just finish up and get up here. I'll fill you in as soon as you land."