DM908: Uh, Marcus? Are you awake yet?

Marcus: Uhh…yeah, I'm okay. But why did you slap me that hard? You could have given me a broken jaw!

DM908: Sorry, I didn't want you to tell the reader what the true identity of the twisted figure is.

Marcus: Oh. That's okay. Now, one more chapter until chapter six, right?

DM908: Yeah, but in order to get more reviews; I decided that chapter six will be put up when there's seven reviews in total. So people better start reviewing!

TF: So, am I in this chapter?

DM908: Of course! From now until the end of the fanfiction, you'll be in the disclaimer and the story. I mean you are the villain.

TF: True…

Falco and Slippy: Hi guys!

DM908, Marcus, and TF: Hi guys!

Falco and Slippy: (Crowds around DM908) Why did you slap us last chapter?

DM908: Well, I didn't want you to give out any spoilers, ya know…

Falco and Slippy: THIS MEANS WAR!!!!! YAHHHHH! (Chases DM908 again)

Marcus: (Stops DM908) Hey, why hasn't my dad been here since chapter two?

DM908: Oh! Well, it relates to the plot, okay?

Marcus: Okay…and you still have to give me another vision in this chapter, remember?

DM908: Of course! Why wouldn't I forgot; I mean, I am the author.

Marcus: Okay, just as long as you keep your promise.

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Chapter Five: The Two-Day Battle

Marcus woke up in a gel-filled egg, only it felt like it was an organ; it was beating and living and he could sense that the egg was alive. Must be one of my visions, Marcus thought.

Then he looked around and saw two furry hands with three fingers and a thumb and crystal-like spikes on every finger and a large spike on the back of his hand. He moved them. They were his hands! Looking over the body, he saw two wings, an armor-plated underside, canine-like legs with finger-like toes and claws, and a dragon tail tipped with white. The body was also extremely fuzzy.

What the heck, Marcus thought, and then he started feeling dizzy. It feels like…something else is in my head, trying to take control…he started to black out with his thoughts. No… His world went black and a voice said in his mind, you cannot resist …give in…sleep forever…

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Marcus woke up again all of a sudden. His head still felt slightly dizzy, but he could move and his body was normal. Wow, another vision, he thought, sitting up and letting his head clear by itself. What viewpoint was it from this time? Marcus felt relived when his head cleared. Someone that I am mentally connected too and is the center of an important event…must be the same person from my past vision! But who could it be? Also pondering this question, he went out to breakfast. Three days on the road and only two days to go, I doubt anything can happen now.

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Getting to the mess hall, he sat by the team again. Picking up a vegetable stick and gnawing on it, Marcus asked his mom, "Mom, I had another vision. This time it looked like I was in a different body than before and the body was in an organ-like egg with another…thing in its mind, but I was thinking it was probably the same person. Do you have any idea why this happened?"

Krystal stopped chewing on her asparagus to tell her son, "We Cerinians usually have reoccurring visions that center around the same people. Usually we have three visions that are linked to that person, but even I do not know how anyone could have changed the appearance of someone greatly or how to control one's mind; those activities were banned from our world."

Marcus nodded. "Okay. But maybe it had to do something with the egg…"

He was interrupted by an officer up in the cockpit shouting into the ship's microphone, "Star Fox team, please report to the cockpit! A hundred squadrons detected on radar! Repeat, a hundred squadrons spotted on radar! Over."

"I spoke too soon," Marcus grumbled, getting up. "Star Fox, to the cockpit!"

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General Pepper was once again on the monitor when the team got to the cockpit. "Hello team. How was your meal?"

"Good."

"Nice"

"It was okay."

"Delicious."

"Good, now we have not only are we overrun with squadrons at every planet in the Lylat system, we got another message from the head commander. I'll broadcast to you now." The hound dog switched to the video.

This time the figure had a slightly different appearance. This time he looked like a lumpy egg, but it was dark so nobody could tell. "Hello, General Pepper. I have called to tell you an interesting piece of information. I have sent a force of hundred squadrons to Meteo to keep your mercenaries busy for a while. In the next four days, when Star Fox comes to Corneria, I will show my true form. You better forward this message to Star Fox now." The video ended.

General Pepper popped back up. "So team, do you have it? Did you encounter a force of a hundred squadrons yet?"

Falco couldn't help but replying, "Duh! We ran all the way from the Mess Hall to here because we were going to get our mission briefing!"

"Okay then, you have a hundred squadrons to deal with. They are the ones you have encountered at the Orbital Gate. You must rid the Asteroid Field of every one of them before four days are over; we cannot face the commander alone."

"We also already knew that," Falco said quite bluntly. "What would you do without us?"

"Got it Star Fox? General Pepper out."

Marcus ran to the docking bay. "We better hurry; with that many squadrons and the fact that it's those squadrons and we only have under four days to destroy every last one of them, we can't lose a single minute!"

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Pulling the trigger back and doing a back flip, Marcus barely dodged laser fire from three squadrons chasing him. Maneuvering behind them, he locked on with a charged shot and destroyed them. Contacting ROB, Marcus reported, "ROB, this is Marcus reporting that three more squadrons are down. How many are left?"

"Eighty-seven squadrons still remaining."

"God, damn it," Marcus cursed silently to himself. "We've been fighting these guys for twelve hours; it'll take us five days at this rate!"

"Don't worry; reinforcements have arrived!" Everyone turned around to see General Pepper with two hundred ships at his backs. "We couldn't just let you fight this battle by yourself, now could we?"

You could see Marcus was surprised and confused at the same time. "But how…why…what the heck? How did you get here that quickly without a warp?

"We just took the emergency warp over; it would have taken too long if we got here by ship."

Doing a barrel roll and shooting a nova bomb that destroyed a group of squadrons, Marcus replied, "Okay, and thanks. It'll take only two days with your help!"

"Squadrons, move out!" General Peppy and Pepper called out at the same time.

The Cornerian fighters spread out and started fighting the enemy with the Star Fox team.

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The commander was watching the battle with using a camera planted on a squadron at Venom. Rushing to the throne room, he said to the egg, "Master, General Pepper and General Peppy have come with reinforcements of 200 squadrons; our army will only stand two days with that kind of force."

The figure inside of the egg opened its eyes again and said, "Don't worry; I want them to win the battle in two days; it'll take two more days to get to Corneria and then I'll strike." Closing its eyes again, the figure slept.

The commander closed the door, murmuring, "I hope you're right master."

Have I ever been wrong, commander? The figure's voice sounded in his mind.

The commander stumbled with his words. "N-no master. You have never failed us so far."

Good.

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Marcus looked at his clock for the twenty-seventh time. "36 hours have already passed, and the forces are at thirteen squadrons total. No reinforcements have been sighted." Doing a U-turn and pulling the trigger, he destroyed another squadron. "Make that twelve squadrons left."

Then there was a first. All of the remaining squadrons banded together and formed to make a giant ship. Then there was a bright flash of light and there in it's place stood a mega-squadron.

Slippy pointed to it unbelievably. "How did it do that? No ship I have ever saw could merge together to create a new squadron!"

Marcus nodded. "I agree Slippy; that thing is unbelievable, but now there's only one squadrons instead of twelve, so if we destroy this one, we get to move on!"

Falco contacted Marcus. "Uh, somehow I think that going to be easier said than done. That thing moves at hyper speed and with homing missiles to boot, we're going to need a miracle to save us from this thing."

Marcus contacted Slippy now. "Slippy, how high is the squadron's shields?"

Slippy scanned the ship. "Approximately just as high as the Great Fox itself."

Marcus whistled and punched the keyboard at the same time. "Damn it! And we have to make the eleven hour and fifty-seven deadline, otherwise we won't make it in time to Corneria!"

Falco raised an eyebrow. "You were counting?"

Marcus blushed under his fur. "Uh…yeah."

Getting back on task, Marcus led the army to the squadrons. "Star Fox Team and Cornerian Army, come in."

"Falco here"

"Slippy here"

"Krystal here."

"Cornerian Army here with a force of one-hundred and eighty-two."

The leader of Star Fox nodded with approval. "Good. Now let's move!"

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Aiming a charged shot at the mega-squadron, Falco found that regular shots wouldn't work on it. Contacting everyone in contact range, Falco said, "Falco here. I found that regular attacks won't work on this thing; we're going to have to bring out the big guns!"

Four Cornerian Fighters carried a heavy plasma tri-laser-burst cannon. General Peppy asked, "This big enough for you, Falco?"

Falco looked at the most devastating weapon created in the Lylat system. "Uh…yeah, that's heavy enough."

Peppy gave the signal. "Ready, aim, FIRE!" The sound of ten infinity watts buzzed as it hit the core of the squadron, and there was a big explosion.

Slippy couldn't help but do a victory dance. "Yahoo! We did it!"

Krystal frowned. "It's not over yet, Slippy. Look past the smoke!"

Everyone did, and what they found was that the mega-squadron split back into twelve squadrons and thus avoided the attack.

Slippy nearly fainted. "That's the first time I saw anything do that! And avoid the plasma tri-laser-burst cannon too!"

Falco nodded. "I know! When you see something that no one else has done before, it sort of…shocks you."

Marcus interrupted them. "Then we're going have to destroy every last squadron. "Okay team, hunt and destroy every last one of them!"

Marcus zoomed off to find a couple of squadrons when he found them going after a battle ship. Contacting everyone in range, he said, "Marcus here at 10 N, 16 E. Found targets going after our battleship. Calling for support." Just like magic, about 50 Cornerian Fighters appeared behind Marcus. "Okay then, 75 of you go destroy the ones hitting the engines. The rest of you, come with me. We're attacking the leaders of this force."

Boosting up to the front of the ship, he saw two bigger squadrons pausing, and Marcus felt that they were issuing orders to the rest of the force. "There they are! Hit them nice and hard, guys!"

The leaders turned around and saw the band of Cornerian Fighters charging at them. Giving out final orders, they came into the fray too.

Marcus went after one of them. Boosting up to catch up, he found to his surprise that it had disappeared. Looking around, he thought Where did it go to?

Then he looked behind his Arwing and saw that the leader had appeared right behind him and was hammering at his engine. Doing a quick loop, he fired at the squadron and scored two direct hits.

With surprising speed, the leader also did a loop and hit Marcus, who luckily did a barrel roll and was able to knock off half of the damage. Even that couldn't save him from the fact that his Arwing was so damaged that one more hit could destroy it.

Time seemed to slow down once again. The squadron was charging up, bits of plasma turning into a ball of swirling laser fire. Marcus was certain that if the squadron had facial features, it would of smirked.

His head was cracking from the pressure. He was sure that his head was going to explode if he kept this…something at bay for any longer. It was pushing and beating and tore down more and more of his mental walls built to keep it in.

The squadron fired the shot and it came closer and closer, and the nearer it got the more Marcus's head hurt, and when it was so close that the Arwing was bathed in its light, there was a bright flash of light as the pressure inside of his mind gave way and it ran wild. But all he could see was a screen of white and then he was falling into darkness that seemed to protect him from the outside world…from the terror that came from his mind…

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Marcus landed with a thunk inside of his mind. Opening his eyes, he saw what seemed like the remains of a battle. Walls were broken, the ground was filled with craters, and everything was blown away.

Going over to the center of his mind, he saw a cracked container-like object. From the looks of it, the container held something forbidden and powerful. He made the inference that it was the pressure that was contained in there.

Going even deeper, he found things not even touched, things that held ancient secrets. It grew darker and darker until it was too dark to even see. Using his sense of touch, Marcus was able to navigate without disturbing anything else.

Then a voice came out to him. Marcus, it said, coming closer. Welcome.

Welcome to what? Marcus asked with his mind, trying to sense what was talking to him.

Welcome to the deepest part of your mind, so deep, not even your mother could feel it. Here, I must tell you something regarding the incident at Meteo.

The incident? Then he remembered everything: the ambush, the fusion, the laser, the leader, the white screen…What happened then?

Listen, there is a power hidden inside specific Cerinians, the planet your mother came from. It is a power difficult to control, nearly impossible to master. It is sealed at the center of one's mind so none can access it.

Yet it can be unleashed by extreme anger or stress. Remember what happened before that flash of light appeared?

Yeah. There was a lot of pressure inside my head and it felt like my head would explode.

You knew you were going to die and so the stress you felt destroyed the container containing the power and when you still tried to hold it back, it got even more powerful with the stress you were feeling by holding it back and the fact you were about to die.

So then…what happened?

You should really thank that power. It managed to destroy all of the squadrons in the surrounding are that included the leaders of the ambush. But everything comes with a price; after the flash only fifty Cornerian fighters and your friends barely survived the blast.

Marcus's forehead furrowed in worry. How are they now?

They are safe. Slippy is repairing the Arwings and the others are in the room where your body is, deeply concerned.

Thank you, Marcus "said", turning to leave.

Good-bye, little one.

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Marcus opened his eyes to see that, as the darkness said, his friends around him who breathed a sigh of relief as they saw he saw okay.

"Marcus, you're okay!" Slippy said, bouncing over. "We were worried that you wouldn't have survived the blast!"

Falco said to him, "I don't want to lose another leader."

Krystal came over. "Marcus, are you okay? Is there something wrong?"

Marcus, realizing he was looking down into his lap with a thoughtful expression on his face, quickly snapped out of it and said, "Nope. Nothing at all." Krystal, being a mother and all, did not pursue the subject but her face looked like she wanted to.

Looking outside the window of his room, he thought, This power might be useful in defeating this new threat, but it'll be though to master it. I always did like a good challenge though!

The Great Fox's engines hummed as it continued its course to Corneria.

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DM908: Like it, Marcus? Now you have a special ability!

Marcus: It's pretty cool; I'll admit that. (Looks around) Hey, where's Falco and Slippy?

DM908: I did a little something so they wouldn't chase me anymore.

Marcus: Let me guess; you threatened to destroy them with the coming of another white flash of light.

DM908: Ding ding ding! You win the million-dollar question! But how did you know?

Marcus: I have my ways…heh heh heh…

DM908: Well anyway, next chapter's chapter six! Better bring a drum!

Marcus: For what?

DM908: Drum rolls of course! Anyway, see ya next chapter!

Marcus: See ya!