A/N: Thank you guys so much for the support for this. I can say, from a first-person standpoint, I can tell my writing has improved ever since the first chapter was uploaded because of the feedback I've received. If you don't believe it, maybe this will change your mindset... ;)
You guys have a good one, and I'll see you next time!
"Pepper!" Dennis shouted loudly as he sprinted down the halls. The walls were cracked and on the verge of crumbling down on top of the raven. He opened every door he came across, even if he had to smash them in with the stock of his rifle, but each door wielded no answer to his pleas. There was, however, one door left in the hall, and it was the last one he had to check.
"Pepper!" Dennis called out from behind the door, but still had no response from it. He growled and smashed the handle with the butt of his gun, and forcefully kicked the door in.
Empty.
"Where the fuck are you?!" Dennis squawked, holding his arms up in defeat. He instantly froze as he felt a cold sensation on his neck.
"Who the– Dennis!" Sheila gasped, removing the handgun from the raven's throat. "What's goin' on?"
"I could ask you the same thing." Dennis admitted, leaning up against the doorframe. "All I know is that Corneria City has been compromised."
"Compromised? How?" she asked with a sense of urgency.
Dennis shrugged. "Something from space hit the ground. We don't know what it was."
"A meteorite?"
"That's what I assumed, but it can't be possible. It exploded. Not the ground it hit, but the object itself exploded."
"Maybe some space junk or something?"
Dennis responded with a scoff. "I don't know Spitzie. I don't know anything right now. I don't even know who's alive and who isn't."
Sheila held her wrist to her muzzle. "I still can't get anyone on the line. Did you find anyone?"
"I found Stazac wandering around. He's fine, but I haven't found anyone else."
"Awesome! A scientist is just who we need."
"Hey, there's no need for sarcasm!" Dennis chirped, but was instantly silenced by the copper husky.
"That wasn't sarcasm, Corax. Stazac can possibly get our comms lines working. Where is he?"
"Oh, uh… Front lobby, follow me!"
Dennis spun around and started running back to the lobby, when a massive aftershock violently shook the ground and sent the two soldiers to the floor. Sheila struggled to get to her feet and shouted over the continuous rumbling from outside.
"You sure it was something from space?" she asked skeptically. "That sounded like an earthquake aftershock to me."
Dennis shook his head. "Vince saw it. Something shot through the atmosphere and landed directly on top of the capital."
"Then what the hell was that?"
Dennis was silent for a few seconds, then his eyes shot open. "The buildings. They couldn't withstand the blast and shock, and now they're toppling over one by one. One landed almost directly on top of the HQ lobby."
Sheila gasped and put her paw over her muzzle. "Is Pepper alright?"
"I wish I could say yes, but I've been trying to find him for the last five minutes."
"I would say he went home, but I don't know either." She shook her head and snapped back into military mode. "Come on, we need to get to Vince."
#####
"That you, Spitz?" Vince asked hesitantly, straining his eyes over the shrouds of dust.
"Yeah, I'm fine. You alright Vince?"
"I- I could be better," he stuttered, staring blankly towards the remnants of Corneria City.
"What happened?" Sheila asked, sitting on the steps next to the arctic fox.
"If I had a credit for every time I heard that," Vince chuckled faintly, then picked his head up to respond. "Well, after looking out here and seeing the damage, it couldn't be a meteorite like the preliminary observations stated. There's too much destruction resulting from one little meteorite… it just doesn't add up."
"Well, what could have caused this?" Sheila asked intently.
Vince looked up at the dark, ash-filled sky and answered. "It had to have been some kind of space junk. A satellite or a missile are the only things that could have caused such a blast. Adding to this, however, is the fact that there's a stench of burning fuel in the air. We don't use gasoline. The only people that could use gasoline is…" he trailed off as his vocal chords got strung up by a sudden realization. Sheila also realized where Vince was going and finished for him, her eyes bulging outward.
"System U-8?"
Vince was on the verge of another panic attack. The one thing that he had worried about when the first satellite started resending signals became a reality. An intergalactic attack.
"I knew this would happen," Vince muttered almost silently.
"What was that?"
"I knew this would fucking happen!" Vince shouted, shooting upward and pacing wildly on the front steps with his head in his paws. "Those aliens just bombed our damn capital! For no reason at that! I can't even put an estimate on how many innocent people they just slaughtered! This is just–"
"Stazac, calm down!" Sheila barked, instantly snapping Vince out of his rant. Vince lowered his ears and continued softly, but angrily.
"If we didn't have a bigger reason for going over there yet, we sure as hell do now!"
"Vince, that's not my authority," Sheila stated humbly. "Only Pepper can initiate war, and we can't even find his ass."
"Do we even know where to look?"
"I can drive over to Pepper's house myself," Dennis suggested. "You two can continue searching this place, and maybe get the transmissions back up."
"Ah, good plan Corax. Vince, you can work with the comms, right?"
"Of course," Vince said with a hint of pride.
"Great. Let's move."
We crawl on our knees for you
Under a sky no longer blue
We sweat all day long for you
But we sow the seeds that see us through
Cause sometimes dreams just don't come true
We wait to reap what we are due
Kennedy Space Center
"Do you realize what we've done?" Trent asked almost silently. You could practically see the steam coming out of his ears.
"Sir, it's not–"
"Don't you even fucking say it's no big deal!" Trent snapped, pointing a finger at the scientist that bravely spoke up.
"It may not seem bad, but it sure as hell is! Well, yeah, our satellite malfunctioned and crashed into a planet. No harm done, right? WRONG! You bet your asses we did something wrong! We crashed into a habited planet for Christ's sake!"
No one dared to make another move. Trent was completely furious.
"We could've crashed into a place where there's no life at all, yeah, but what if we didn't? We could've crashed into the most heavily populated area for all we know!"
Trent suddenly flushed and staggered backwards a few inches. He started off mumbling, but after every sentence his voice raised exponentially. "We just launched an attack. We, the aliens, just attacked them! We launched a rocket propelled intergalactic missile right at their planet! Well shit, we could try to deny it, but what'll that do? Make us seem like we won't fess up to our faults? You betcha! We started war, and won't back it up! We've lost before we've even started!"
Some of the scientists began to murmur to each other faintly. It finally happened; Colonel Trent has left the building. He had completely lost it.
"You saw the satellites in orbit!" He shouted, pointing at the massive screens at the front of the room. "Those things are more advanced than we could ever hope to get! If their satellites are like that, then lord only knows what their military is like. All they would have to do is look at us, and we'd be up in flames!"
Trent started pacing around the room in a haphazard pathway, not breaking stride in his rant. "Might as well surrender now! Better yet, let's evacuate the city! Scratch that, evacuate the nation! Evacuate the whole fucking planet! We just attacked an unworldly power, let's get the hell out of here before they kill us all!"
Trent suddenly turned around and punched the iron wall will all of his enraged power. He continued his rant as if he had never left a massive dent in the wall.
"We could've killed one person, but knowing my god damn awful luck we killed the president, the queen, the prime minister, the dictator, the 'insert other powerful title here', or any other person that would spark a revolution against us!" he snarled, particularly well for a human.
Trent eventually devolved into hysterics. "Know what the aliens are thinking now? We're uncivilized, bloodthirsty, insubordinate assholes that can do whatever we want and not pay the price. But we're looking at quite the lengthy bill we need to pay!"
"Fuck, you know what? They will just come over here on their highly advanced warships and completely wipe the floor with us! They will basically shit all over our throats, and our face, and our children, and our fucking grandparents, and everyone we've ever fucking met ever! They're like, 'Let me find someone and defecate on them. Oh, you met someone new? Lemme shit in their throat too, because you just bombed the ever-living hell out of our planet, and we're fucking pissed about it!'"
Trent suddenly clutched at his chest and dropped down to one knee. He started breathing in long, drawn out breaths, trying to calm himself down before his sudden spike in blood pressure killed him. He always had blood pressure issues, but this was not helping him one bit. He managed to calm himself down quite a bit and sat down on the cold cement floor.
"It's official…" Trent said quietly, gripping his forehead. "We fucked up. We're fucked! We are completely and utterly screwed over to all hell… Welp… We tried. We tried, and we failed miserably."
He suddenly shot up and held his hands way above his head. "I'm done. I give up." He slowly started walking to the door, still plagued by his mental hysteria. "GG everyone. I'll see you all in hell, 'cause that's where we will end up in a few days."
Trent stood in the wide open doorway, holding his head toward the ceiling. He sighed loudly and turned back around to the stunned scientists.
"Listen guys, I'm so sorry I snapped like that. And don't stress too much about it. I just lost my shit… I'll go talk to the general soon and we can maybe sort things out. For now, just gather as much information as you can, get some concrete examples, some possible explanations, and we'll go from there."
Trent again sighed and glanced at the floor.
"Just don't worry guys, seriously. We'll sort things out. My paranoia got the best of me," he chuckled sheepishly. Some of the scientists soon followed suit and continued working.
"Damn, sir," Sanders laughed. "You went off for a while there. Thought you were having a heart attack the way you crumpled down there at the end."
"Like I said Sanders," Trent said softly, putting a massive hand on the scientist. "Paranoia. I'm sure we'll be fine. Hopefully we can explain to Corneria that it was just an unfortunate malfunction. As long as we didn't kill anyone, I'm sure they wound understand."
"Well, what if we did, sir?" Sanders asked hesitantly.
"I sure hope we didn't, but if we did, hopefully we can explain it was just a terrible misunderstanding. Hopefully they aren't too pissed off at us and are willing to accept a truthful apology."
"Yeah, they must know that we aren't as developed as they are, and understand that accidents like this happen."
"True… I'd bet they had accidents all the time. It's just part of improving. You learn from mistakes. You understand your faults, and work towards correcting them."
"See sir? Nothing to worry about," Sanders chuckled. "You hit the nail right on the head. You learn from mistakes. I'll bet at the most, Corneria will let us off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Hell, I'd bet that they'd even want to help us, considering the fact we went through all that trouble to try and get into contact with them."
"Ah, good point. We went through hell to try to contact them, why would they punish us for it? Unless we blew up something important, they have no logical reason to retaliate. They know we aren't as advanced as they are, so if they take this as an attack, they're the ones to blame. We didn't do anything wrong on purpose. There was nothing we could do to avoid nailing them."
Sanders pointed to a section of his screen. "Right here. Solar interference threw off our communications with it. Not only that, the gravitational pull from it threw off its orbit. We couldn't fix it, because the solar interference like I said earlier. Must be a pretty massive star if it was able to throw off our instruments so bad."
One scientist piped up after hearing that. "Class two blue giant. We're lucky the satellite didn't get destroyed by it completely."
Trent sighed and shook his head. "We may have gotten lucky, but for all we know Corneria might not have lucked out. Like I said, I sure hope we didn't piss them off too bad."
"It'll be fine colonel," Sanders assured. "It was an accident. I'm sure they'll understand."
Trent patted the scientist's shoulder and lowered his head, whispering faintly.
"I sure hope your right."
Urban Corneria City
"Pops?" Falco coughed loudly in a shroud of dust. His apartment shook violently just minutes ago, and most of the walls and flooring had crumbled slightly. The room was also completely dark, except for some flashes of light leaking through the curtains. The avian managed to stagger around to the front door, then rammed his forewing into the weakened door, breaking one of the hinges and popping the door right open. He had another coughing fit as he stepped out into the street; debris and concrete littering the ground and dust shrouding the air around him. He glanced over and saw that a massive skyscraper that was about two blocks away was completely nonexistent. It would also have been pitch black if there wasn't traces of fire everywhere.
It was an eerie sight indeed; standing in a street with everything demolished around you, with the only light source coming from bright orange blazes being sparked by the felled structures. It looked as if it was a scene straight out of a movie, and that movie used Corneria City as a subject for a pyrotechnics display.
Falco was educated, meaning that he knew that Corneria City could never be susceptible to earthquakes. That ruled out the possibility of a natural disaster, which increased the avian's confusion. If it wasn't an earthquake, then wouldn't it–
"Falco!" a dark blue falcon squawked as he exited the remnants of the apartment complex and saw the averaged-sized bird in the street.
"Dad!" Falco shouted, sighing in relief and embracing the taller avian tightly.
"You alright Fal?" Riley said as he bend down and started picking at his son's feathers. Falco ruffled his feathers and whined back.
"I'm fine, I'm fine!"
Riley stood back up and took a long look around the street. The buildings were virtually leveled, and, surprisingly, the only building still standing within four blocks was their small apartment complex. Riley sighed and lifted his wing up to his beak.
"Oh great… lines got knocked out too… What in god's name is happening?" he murmured to himself. He glanced at the fourteen year old falcon leaning against a totaled car.
"Come on, we need to get to HQ. If anyone knows what's going on, it's Pepper."
Falco nodded and followed his father around the crippled building. Riley disappeared inside for a few moments, then came back out with a compact sub-machine gun and a small device. He punched a button on the device, and a door opened behind the building, revealing a sleek, navy blue motorbike. Riley handed Falco a dull red helmet, and stepped onto the bike. After the avians were secure, Riley shot forward and gracefully drove around huge chunks of concrete from the surrounding buildings.
Riley was terrified, and he is never terrified ever. The sights of the crumbled buildings didn't faze him, it was the sights of hundreds, thousands, millions of Cornerians lying dead in the streets or buried in rubble. Men, women, children; it didn't matter. Nobody was spared. The stench of blood and burning buildings plagued the fallen city and assaulted the avian's nose. It was an apocalyptic scene for sure.
Riley tried not to get too preoccupied with his surroundings, but it was like a train wreck. You can't look away. Riley almost lost control of his bike numerous times because of sights he couldn't break his stare off of. He was in utter shock and disbelief that the pride and joy of Corneria; the most advanced and fortified city in the entire Lylat system completely laid to waste by an unknown incident. Unknown.
Riley didn't know what it was. Falco didn't know what it was. The only person that could presumably know what it was miles away, shrouded in streets covered by decimated structures and blazing corpses. The CDF had the equipment to identify it, but no equipment in the world, scratch that, the entire universe could stop it. It was hell bent on destruction.
It was like it was intentional.
Riley piloted around the winding urban streets and skidded to a stop right before the main doors of the CDF HQ. He stood there staring at what had become to the main lobby.
"Not even the HQ could get away from this hell," Riley stated frankly. He turned his head to Falco and patted his shoulder. "Stick with me. We need to look around this place, and hopefully find some answers to this whole situation."
Outskirts of Corneria City
Dennis swiftly rushed up to the door of the bloodhound's home. Knowing the power was still knocked out, he banged on the door and squawked firmly.
"Pepper! It's Corax! You alright?!"
A few seconds of silence only made the raven's paranoia increase. "Pepper! You here?!" He called out again, almost on the verge of ripping the door down with his muscular wings.
The door suddenly swung open, revealing a gray tinged German shepherd in heavy combat gear with a silver handgun pointed right between the raven's eyes. He gasped instantly and lowered the weapon.
"All clear general!" he shouted with a thick, predictable German-esque sounding accent. He sheathed his pistol and glanced back at the raven. "Thank god you're alright, Dennis."
"I could say the same thing to you Wes," Dennis chuckled, stepping into the medium sized house. It was dark due to the lack of power, but there was still a little lantern on the kitchen table doing its best to illuminate the house. The glass doors on the back of the house were cracked, and the furniture looked as though it had shifted slightly from the blast. The familiar bloodhound was sitting in a chair with his head buried in his paws. He heard the raven's voice and instantly perked up.
"Corax! Great to see you!" he said as enthusiastically as he could at the time. He stood up and shook the avian's massive wing.
"Glad to see you're ok, general," Dennis admitted, returning the gesture. He made a faint glance to the canine in the doorway and continued. "Why's Jaeger here sir?"
"Oh, he volunteered to give me an escort home, and as soon as we got here the city exploded."
Wes Jaeger was a large canine for his age group, standing at an even six feet, and had a very muscular body. His fur was an evenly trimmed hybrid of a dark sandy tan and a granite black color with gray highlights, and his gray-black hair was slicked behind his pointy ears. His piercing deep green eyes stared into the raven, almost intimidatingly, but Dennis wasn't scared of the canine. Wes stripped of his heavy CDF jacket and showed off a tight black t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He had a set of silver dog tags wrapped around his neck as well.
Wes wasn't the one you would think would have much authority on anyone. He was a product of a non-marital relationship between a German shepherd and a lupine. Not only are wolf-hybrids looked down upon in Cornerian customs, pre-marital offspring only adds to it. However, Wes was stubborn, and he wouldn't be shunned that easily. His natural combat talent combined with wolf-like senses and strength made him a natural for the CDF. However, as aforementioned, it wasn't easy for him. He was worked harder by the CDF officers, mainly because they were racist toward the wolfdog.
And yes, Cornerians are racist towards each other too. Derogatory comments towards people of a different species are common and prevalent. Wes was no exception. He had the shepherd stature and fur, but the wolf color and facial complexion. He was, as previously stated, as hybrid as hybrid could get. However, he was talented, and was a great friend of many. That is, with the people that judge based on personality rather than species.
Dennis spun around and faced the general. "Anyway, about that, I was sent to get you to come to the HQ. There are some people there that need your presence there."
"There's still soldiers there? Who?"
"Spitz and Stazac, sir."
Pepper glanced down with a sly smile. "Man, those two need a promotion or something," he mumbled, then picked his head up to the raven. "Alright, Corax, you drive. Jaeger, you come with us. Let's go!"
We crawl on our knees for you
Under a sky no longer blue
We sweat all day long for you
But we sow the seeds that see us through
Cause sometimes dreams just don't come true
Look now at what they've done to you
Cornerian Defense Force HQ
"You sure you know what you're doing?" Sheila asked hesitantly as Vince was sitting there grunting at a large mess of wires.
"Yes… It's just insanely difficult because there's no power to affirm the connection has been re-established." Vince explained, wiping sweat from his fur. He stood back up and glanced at the copper husky.
"Here, take this key; it's the starter for the backup generator. Turn it on, and hit the number 5. It should give enough energy to power this room."
"Alright," she nodded, and rushed out of the room and into the hallway. Sheila sprinted down the hallway with a flashlight in one paw and her other paw hovering around the handgun at her leg. As she swiftly wound the corner, she slammed into another figure and dropped to the cold, cracked floor. When she looked back up, she saw a blue feathered wing hovering around her torso.
"Sorry Sheila," Riley apologized sheepishly, lifting the husky off the ground. "Wait– Sheila? You're here too?"
"Yeah, great to see you too Riley," Sheila grunted, rubbing her paw through her hair. She noticed the slightly smaller avian and smiled faintly.
"Hey Falco, you doin' alright?"
"Not really," Falco stated, looking around the hallway.
"I don't blame ya," Sheila said frankly, then shifted her focus to the older falcon. "What's up?"
"Well, we just narrowly escaped that explosion, and instantly came here because we thought there might be some explanation here," Riley explained.
"We're speculating it was some kind of attack by the U-8 inhabitants. There was burning fuel in the air, and the only people that would use that stuff is the humans."
"The humans bombed us?" Riley asked disbelievingly and skeptically, his blue eyes shooting wide open.
"That's what we're thinking. Hey, go into the comms room, Vince is in there and he might be able to explain more. I gotta go and get the backup generator going."
"Alright, good luck Spitz," Riley called out as the husky bolted down the hall. He gestured Falco to follow and they walked down the long hallway down to where a heavy door was wide open. They glanced inside to see an arctic fox sitting on a table with a bunch of wires running around his claws, grumbling to himself.
"Ok, this goes here… and that wire needs to be replaced… damn I need a drink… This one should wrap around– Riley!" Vince shouted as the shadow he cast in front of the large flashlight cut off his vision to the wires.
"Sup Stacy," Riley chuckled, removing himself from the flashlight's beam. He sat up against the table Vince was sitting on and continued. "I, well, literally ran into Sheila coming in here, and she said you have a bit of an explanation for what's going on?"
"Somewhat," Vince grunted, peeling a rubber stopper off the tip of a long red wire. "Our preliminary observations concluded it was a meteorite that struck the city, but once the damn thing exploded we were instantly proven wrong."
He threw down the wire and picked up a smaller green one. "Not only that, but there was the awful stench of burning gasoline, which points a giant 'I did it' sign right at System U-8."
"Wow..." Riley said faintly, glancing down at the dark floor. "I can't believe the humans would attack like that."
"You're telling me," Vince started, wrapping two wires together. "I was the one doing research on these alien creatures for years, and we were always under the assumption that their technology was too primitive and underdeveloped to even make contact with us, let alone launch a bomb strike against our capital."
"Primitive?" Riley echoed, cocking his head.
"As in, the only sign of interplanetary development was a few unsophisticated satellites in their atmosphere, and a few orbiting around the adjacent planets. We never expected them to jump straight to intergalactic communications, so we just left them alone except for sending a few of our own satellites to the planet to get a firm grasp of the civilization."
"And that's when they took down our satellite?"
"Yup… Just a few days ago, that same satellite radioed in an emergency signal when the main diagnostics chip is removed. That's when we speculated that they had gotten our coordinates, and obviously they used them to send a message to us, and not a welcoming one either."
"Man… they really escalated this intergalactic contact in a negative way, eh?"
Vince looked up and stared into the falcon's eyes with a death stare. He lowered his voice and stated as sternly and stoically as he could possibly go.
"You tell me…" the vulpine commanded in a much harsher tone than he expected. "Look outside, look at the pure devastation they left us with, the countless innocent lives they claimed, and all the chaos they've created, and tell me if this has been a negative escalation."
Riley just stood there with a blank stare, pondering the words that had just spewed out of the fox's mouth. He hated to admit it, but Vince was right. It had escalated quickly, and not in a good way.
"Also, I know how the cliché movies go, and I can tell you right now, it was not an accident."
"Vince?" Riley said hesitantly as he saw the pure hatred and animosity brewing from the arctic fox. He had never seen him so livid before.
"It's too coincidental…" Vince said, his voice rising with every word. "There's no way that it was an accident because that missile or whatever the hell it was hit the ground almost directly on top of the main city square! There is absolutely no way we weren't targeted directly!"
Riley nodded his head slowly. He was the scientist, he did the research, and there was no way to prove him wrong. Not even in this case as his rage was slowly revealing itself with every acidic word he spewed out.
"Those aliens killed millions, Riley… I don't even have to look around the city to prove that. At least half of the city was destroyed. Half the god damn city! I saw it! There was practically nothing left! Some of the tallest and most stable skyscrapers in Corneria were reduced to dust, almost as if they weren't even there in the first place! Completely GONE!"
Riley attempted to calm him down but Vince kept on ranting. "Pepper told me he didn't want to declare war on this planet unless he had to… If this isn't a good enough reason to then I don't know what is!"
His voice slowly devolved into an enraged snarl, as a spiteful scowl painted itself on his face. "And if they think they can bomb our capital and kill millions of innocent people, and try to just sit there and say it was a god damn ACCIDENT!" He slammed his fist on the table, startling the two falcons. For a few long, painfully quiet seconds he sat there with his head drooped and breathing heavily with his hand indented in the table. The echo of the rattling table reverberated around the small room. Vince's rage somewhat calmed into a low, vengeful growl as he finished his sentence, not looking up from the floor.
"They're in for a rude awakening…"
I won't crawl on my knees for you
I won't believe the lies that hide the truth
I won't sweat one more drop for you
Cause we are the rust upon your gears
We are the insect in your ears
We crawl
We crawl
We crawl; all over you
We sow the seeds that see us through
Our days are precious and so few
We all reap what we are due
Under this sky no longer blue
We bring a dawn long overdue
We crawl
We crawl
We crawl; all over you
*Rise Against – Re-Education (Through Labor)*
