Chapter 9: A Story Begins
"Nng…" Skye felt the same weakness as before grip him, but he managed to stay awake. "How much farther until our destination? I… I'm not feeling perfectly peachy today."
"Ha. Like I said, you're getting all stuffy. It's funny." Kino chuckled.
"I told you, I'm not- …" Skye got quiet again and watched the stars out of the window, still weak. "… Whatever."
"What's the matter, Skye?" Slippy decided to pop into the conversation for once, normally very quiet.
"No idea. Happens to me when I go flying sometimes. Well… not really… but…" He trailed off.
"I'm sure they have pills for that." Slippy laughed with a snort whilst Skye remained silent. Slippy's laugh slowly faded into an unsure sigh.
Skye shook his head, somewhat with weakness, somewhat with an unsure feeling. He felt lonely… when Kino was around, he felt lonely. Kino had been his friend for a long time, but he always jarred him with questions about his "Marital status". Old memories… Skye never was one to talk about his past, nor like it. His past was not quite full of angry memories as much as… regrets. He tried for a moment to remember it despite his lack of courage to do so, but got nothing. He wanted to have his past to refer to once in a while… as angering as it tended to be. He couldn't remember it… though he knew it had to be important. He shook his head again, so many thoughts rushing through his mind, it started to hurt. Did he deserve this all? So many things he didn't understand… in time. He would know in time. He swallowed hard and felt his heart pounding. Something was wrong… he could feel it. Something powerfully wrong was happening, about to happen. Another regret… was about to be made. He felt it. Something worse… worse than anything he'd ever felt, ever gone through… he couldn't focus.
"Skye? Are you sure you're okay?" Slippy inquired again. "You look awfully out of it. Do we need to make a stop along the way?"
"I'll be fine!" He snarled a bit and clutched his chest. "I can take care of myself!"
Krystal faced toward his ship with a surprised frown, her mouth just barely agape. "I understand you can, but I think Slippy's right… you seem sick."
Skye shook his head, unable to fight off the dizziness. "Yeah… maybe…" He trailed off and thought for a moment, reaching a decision. "He is, he is. Let's stop nearby. Maybe get something to eat."
"Yeah, you'll get over it!" Slippy laughed with a snort again. "I guess you're the one who needs to cheer up now, not Krystal."
"W-wha- you…" He smiled a little. "I guess you have been listening all this time, ya little squirt. C'mon, we can take a quick rest at Salaris's moon. They have a few rest stops there. Everyone okay with that?" He pulled his hands off the controls and shook them vigorously. "Sorry to be such a burden."
"Nah, not at all! You're our leader, after all! We need you in top shape, right?" Slippy grinned widely. "Plus, I can always go for some food!"
"Yeah… we're going to get paid all the same, aren't we? I think they'll let us take a break from time to time." Krystal finally relaxed and closed her eyes with a slow yawn. "By the by… why's this little mundane job going to pay more than all of the other mundane jobs? Seems about as simple."
"Heh." Skye wiped his moist brow. "It's all about psychology… they think they're in more danger than they are, and you get rewarded about twice as much. Like… witch hunting."
"Think we'll find our witch?" Falco interrupted.
"Well, with Skye here, I find that rather doubtful." Kino coughed. "Hey! We're in range of Salaris now. Who votes we all shut up until we get there?" He remarked with a hint of irritation in his voice. "I'm not one for chatter."
"Lies. All of it lies, people." Skye joked, barely able to keep himself awake. "But he has a point. Get ready for docking, and… well… hopefully you know the rest. Land… unh..." He shook his head again and remained silent for the rest of the journey.
Skye's head twisted and spun inside his mind, the world around him a painful blur. Sweat trickled in drops down the side of his head and he clutched the sides of his head, his forefingers crushing his temples. It was getting worse… quickly. He gasped with sharp breaths as the planet came into view and drifted closer, hiding his face so that the other team members wouldn't see him in pain. Salaris was a rather small planet with an even smaller moon nearby it. The moon was very dusty, long ago plated with metal to make the area maneuverable. The landscape covering the entire moon was like a gray quicksand, the dust ground collapsing with even the slightest touch. Without the metal, the moon would clearly be extremely dangerous. The actual planet of Salaris itself was very different, a completely barren land, hiding a vast plot of clandestine caverns that stretched on for miles under the crust of the cool planet. Skye felt slightly pleased staring upward into the sky as he landed… partially with the bliss of losing the throbbing dizziness, partially with the aurora-like view in the distance of Salaris. Like another world… he had been here a few times before and had always admired the sky.
Upon landing, he nearly flew himself out of his arwing, gasping on his hands and knees. It wasn't long before the entire team was at his side.
"Skye? What's wrong?" Krystal held her hand to his shoulder and shook him gently.
"N-nothing. Stop shaking me!" He coughed a single time and climbed to his feet, shaking his head. "I told you I can take care of myself. So I get a bit… airsick. I'll be fine…" He walked forward into a dark building, clearly woozy.
"Eh… he's not usually like that, though. I mean… he has some issues, but… that's not like him." Kino rubbed the back of his head and sighed. "We should keep an eye on him… something's up. But don't let him know." He smiled a little and coughed, as he often did. "He'll kill me if he finds out."
The rest of the team laughed a little, as secretly worried as he was, and followed silently.
"So… what's on the menu?" Fara glanced up over Fox's shoulder and read slowly, scanning all around the small diner. It was headed by a small robot designed to take orders and prepare food… but whoever the creator of the robot was had never programmed it to clean the area save throwing away bits of trash. The wallpaper was slowly peeling off the wall, giving way to a sort of gray Salarian mold which spanned down the entire wall. "Uh… Fox? I think I'm beginning to question the quality of this establishment. Pretty quickly, too."
"Likewise." Fox glanced at Skye, who shrugged, apparently over his sudden and violent illness. "You've been here before?"
"Sure, sure! Plenty of times… just pick the bugs out of the food before you eat it. No preservatives, you know?"
"G-gah…" Fara gagged and held out her tongue, her hand clutched to her stomach. "Let's go… before the hunger sets in… quickly… urp."
"A joke, a joke." Skye grinned and laughed. "Please, don't barf all over the floor. That would more than likely cause me to do the same." He politely smiled at Fox, nodding, and walked to his seat, staring at the menu calmly. "Besides, I'm not entirely sure that the edition of 'Robo-Waiter' from sixty or so years ago knows how to clean up messes of that degree…"
"The nerve of that fox…" Fara frowned and sighed heavily, watching Fox.
"Well… it happens, Far. He can do that. Let's go find something… uh… edible." He copied her frown and sat down with a cringe as the chair emitted a long and deep screech of metal. "Agh… this place is… disgusting. Do you think the health inspector just skips over it?"
"Don't let it get to you, Fox… after all… the happiest fox is the one who-" A bright flash came from above and cut him off, followed by a sharp crack.
The entire team tilted their heads upward very slowly and gaped at the newly made hole in the ceiling, a mysterious hole also cutting through part of a hung lamp and following through Skye's table and into the floor, a perfectly straight shot.
"My, my… I don't remember those renovations." Skye stared, mystified, and tapped his foot while tilting his head to the side, slowly lining up his eye with all of the holes. "Yeah… we got trouble." He barely had time to finish his sentence when another blast took out a table in front of a stunned Fox and Fara. Another, cutting through the leg of the chair next to Krystal. "Yeah, yeah, move! C'mon, to the arwings! Hurry!" He jumped forward, barely scraping against another blast and bolting through the door. All at once, he felt a pain almost like an impact into the side of his head… almost as if inside his head. His fingers went directly to his temples again as the blinding pain gripped him once more, as it had the times before in the arwing. "W-what…? But I'm not even…" The world around him faded into black slowly until he couldn't see anything besides his own self. A blasting sound shot a ringing through his ears and he fell to his knees in the shadowy plain, unable to feel anything, unable to taste the breaths of air coming into him, if the air could be considered that… as opposed to a dreamlike haze.
"Wh-where…? Not now… I… I can't right now! I have things to do! I have to… get out of here." His got to his feet and felt his hand quiver its way to the hilt of his sword. The air around him was despicably cool, and he felt his feet slip about under him a few times while he tried to gain a new balance.
"Good, good… Skye. I've waited a long time for this…" A voice called out, firm.
"Who's there? You can't hide in here! Wherever you are… s-show yourself!" He thrust out his blade and engulfed it in a barrier of red laser.
"Ha… ha ha. Very funny. Now then… Mister Abison… that would be enough hiding of your past for once lifetime, eh?"
"Grah!" He jumped forward with a brutal slash and hit nothing but air, following the voices; slash after slash, filled with rage. "I told you to show yourself! Now!"
"In time… but for now, as you said, you have things to do. You sealed away your past, Skye… and that's not a very nice thing to do."
"Sealed… my…? How do you know what I'm thinking? Hm?" Skye lowered his sword to his side and crossed his arms as best he could, an almost mocking stern glare on his face. He bitterly looked about, searching secretively to find where the mystery man's voice was coming from.
"Have you forgotten already?" The voice solidified into wisps of black upon the black landscape, the wisps spinning and dancing through the air. Skye struggled to keep watch of the camouflaged blurs, dizzy enough as it was.
"Forgotten my past, you mean?" He got more informal, until he was almost friendly with the darkness. "You know, I don't remember. You tell me."
"Fine then." The wisps combined and grew into a larger shadow, pale hands sticking out from the cloudy silhouette. He held up a sword of his own, a normal blade, though ornate. It was rather flashy, but certainly had an ancient air to it. He tilted it in Skye's direction until the tip was pointed directly at him. Skye laughed a little and turned off the beam on his sword.
"What, what… you're going to duel me, or is that just for show? Or intimidation, perhaps? 'Cause I ain't feeling very intimidated. Tell me that thing has a beam function…" He turned it back on and waved it in the air a few times. "You know… a laser? Cuts through things like that little hunk of metal instantaneously? Doesn't look like it. You can't fight with that, old man… I'll cream ya. C'mon, let's make it a clean fight… get a decent weapon, and-"
The figure jumped forward in a flash and slammed Skye in the stomach with the flat side of the blade, knocking him to the ground.
"Respect… respect, Skye. For your elders. For your teachers. It's not the weapon that counts… it's the wielder."
"Agh… Skye clutched his stomach and knew it was a single giant red mark, though he couldn't see it. "That's so corny… and don't you think I've been through enough pain in one day? Crazy old coot…"
"Heh…" The figure laughed again, a dark but hearty laugh. "No, not enough pain. Not quite yet… you have quite a journey to go along with… quite a path to follow."
"Oh, yeah? What path would that be?" Skye responded irritably and sat down, nursing his stomach with the tips of his fingers.
"Isn't that your goal to figure out?" He dashed next to Skye and smiled somewhat sadly as Skye toppled over with surprise. "You're talented of course, but… you were once much better. You once had an unparalleled skill, in fact. Don't you want that strength back?"
"Eh, not really." Skye rolled over and stood, facing the figure once more. "What do I need strength for? I'm already a team leader. Star Fox, you know? I can safely say that… I'm pretty satisfied with that."
"That's the spirit, lad. Strength, of course, is not important… but it's still needed, isn't it? That isn't quite the strength I mean… I mean… strength to protect those you love? Is that not important?"
"Love?" Skye gripped his blade and pointed it toward him with a sigh. "They don't need protecting. I think I'm the one who's going to need protecting out of them all… sometime real soon."
"Ha!" The figure jumped forward a second time and smashed Skye's legs, his chest, and finally his face with three successive blows, shooting Skye into the air, and painfully back to the ground. "Protecting from me, that's what!"
Skye collapsed to the ground and gasped for breath, spitting into the abyss beneath the floor. "H-hey… that's no fair… l-let me catch my breath… and… do you plan to hurt them?" He slipped his fingers around his blade and jumped up, his nose slightly bleeding.
"No, no, of course not… why would I hurt them? I have no reason to…" He paced about, watching the goaded fox's eyes. "Or do I, perhaps? Fox, Fara, Slippy, Peppy, Falco, Kino, Krystal… so many people that I could hurt… but will I?"
"That's enough, pal! I can quite honestly say that I've heard enough at this point! If you're gonna talk like that, this might as well be a street fight! Enough with the taunts and jabs! Either I get the truth out of you, or… or I guess we will have to take this to violence!"
"That's what you want, is it?" The swords of the two fighters disappeared, replaced by two iron clubs. "You know, these are pretty painful… I'm sure your team will appreciate them when I'm smashing them with them… but would I do that?"
"Grah…!" Skye charged hastily and was met directly head-on. The mysterious man's hand glided flawlessly across Skye's face and shot some more blood from Skye's mouth. Skye toppled to the floor several feet away, and his club went further behind him. As he lay, defenseless, his club disappeared into the murky depths of the nothingness below. "N-no fair… it's not fair…"
"Oh, stop your whining… you really have changed, you know. You wouldn't give up, would you, Skye?"
"Not when I still have things to do… I'm a man of my word…" He backed up further and further, frantically trying to keep his calm.
"And what things would those be?" The old man feinted some blows at Skye's legs, chuckling as he followed Skye backward. Skye collided with an invisible barrier and flinched, staring up at the old man. "Skye… I'm afraid that if you have truly lost your past… then there is no helping you. I'm afraid… if you can't regain what you've lost… then there's no use for you."
The old man jumped up high into the air, ten or twenty feet and dived down, the iron club headed directly for Skye's head much harder than it ever had before. Skye acted without thinking, in a smooth sort of panic. His hand crashed into the ground, through the freezing gloom and shadow, and felt around with anguish in the soup, until he felt a cool object collide with his fingers, cool but warm from his grip. The old man's club was already halfway to his head, and he had to move fast. His fingers twisted around the object and his mind finally came back into hold of his body. His club was back into his hand… he finally had a defense. A second chance. His arm twitched and curved to the side, barely controlled on his own. A sharp splitting noise broke through the air and the two fighters went silent.
"So… you still have the old Skye in you after all. I was getting worried."
"The… old Skye? What old Skye? I'm right here!"
"… In time."
The two clubs disappeared and Skye began to sink back into the floor, as if the floor was slowly turning into water. Skye's feet crashed and broke through the ground the more he struggled to stay above it.
"Wait! Help! What's going on? And where am I? And who are you? Tell me! I… I'm not done with you yet!"
"So many questions… it will all be fine in the end… should you remember the important things… fight for what you want to protect and your strength will never fail you. Keep your calm and your spirit will be invincible. Train your mind… and what you've forgotten will be apparent to you… once again. Protect your friends… your family… and those you love… until you can no longer. Danger is always imminent… but you've always seen to that. That's what makes you yourself, Skye Abison."
"But… wait!" He stopped struggling and let himself sink slowly. "Who are you?"
"I'm sure I'm one of those. Now go do what you do best, son."
The ground split and the entire platform exploded into a black fluid that oozed down his face as he gasped for breath in the occasional pockets of air. He closed his eyes and panted, angrily. He clenched his fists, sorrowfully… and he fell into anguish. The black water covered him completely and dripped down his face, catching with it small drops of blood from his nose as he continued to bleed. He felt up at the fur on his head, shivering with the soul-freezing cold of the fluid. He let himself fall for what felt like hours… exhausted. Infinitely into an endless white abyss, no sign of old man, and no sign of the shadow platform the two had fought.
"What… has happened to me? Why are there so many things I don't remember… that… I can't figure out?"
"Maybe, just maybe… now isn't the time to figure these things out. You heard the man… you have important things to do." Another Skye spoke from within him, identical in voice. "Stop being blind… stop trying to avoid everything!"
"Me… avoid… what…?"
"Yes, you. You're falling… falling…" The voice growled with contempt. "Your eyes are closed, aren't they?"
"Well, y-yeah… they…"
"You have no more excuses. Have you only one fight left in you? That's pathetic. The old man went easy on you… to teach you a lesson you'd long forgotten. What happened to the Skye you once knew? That Skye you once were?"
"What Skye?" He cursed and opened his eyes, growling with anger. "I'm not going to try to be something I'm not! Now leave me alone! All of you!"
The other Skye went silent and disappeared. Skye did the same… staring up from where he had fallen.
"If… that's what you want… if you want to leave your friends in peril."
Skye looked down and to the side, he saw shadows along side his own in the void. Shadows he recognized…
"Fox… Krystal?"
The heads of the shadows turned to face him as they all fell. Alongside, more shadows came until the entire team was alongside him.
"You have people you need to save…" The other Skye spoke again. "These people can help themselves, yes. But the time has come that you learn all of those old lessons… you have the strength to repel your darkness. But do they?"
"Why wouldn't they?" Skye wiped his face clean of the red and black specks. "They've done well so far."
"They can repel their own darkness, yes… but I asked you if they could repel yours."
"Yours as in… my darkness? What's that supposed to mean?"
"They need you Skye. You're their guardian of sorts. And you're going to slack off and sleep while they're in danger?"
"Sleep?" He had forgotten the blade in his hand and stared at it. "I'm sleeping?"
"Yes. And you shouldn't be…"
The shadow team surrounded him and put out their hands, stacked upon each other.
"Go to them, Skye. You sleep far too much."
Skye nodded to his inner voice and rested his palm over theirs, his hand melting into the stack. Slowly the white turned to black as it had when he fell through the platform… until he was completely covered in darkness. A dream… he spoke to himself in his mind.
"A dream…"
He opened his eyes, and he was back in his own world, the familiar planet of Salaris. He immediately felt at his nose, no blood. He ran his fingers through his hair, no black ooze. It really was all a dream… but at the same time, it felt like something else… he got to his feet and surveyed behind him, the diner was exactly where it was before. He suddenly remembered all that happened all at once.
"Wait! I can't be here, we were under attack! I… have… to…"
He watched forward in disbelief. The world around him was silent, and he saw his team… unmoving. But they were not dead. They were standing, looks of panic on their faces, stuck in time running forward. Time had stopped.
"Fox…? Krystal…? Fara…? Kino…?" He poked them all respectively and backed up in puzzlement. "What did this?" He looked up at the sky and shielded his eyes suddenly. A burningly bright laser was halted piercing through the air, a ruby color of pure heat and light, another just like it beside the first. He looked up further and saw the small armada of ships that had started the assault, and back down at the lasers. It suddenly all connected and he grunted with surprise… no longer at the movement of the lasers, but at their placement. They were a mere few feet away from Kino and Krystal, respectively. "I have to save them! But… if I move one out of the way… the other will…"
"Who says you have to move them out of the way? Can't you just move the lasers instead?" That same familiar Skye spoke from within him and he glanced over at the lasers again.
"But I can't hit lasers out of the air!"
"Trying is better than watching one of them die. You can always try, can't you?"
Skye grimly nodded and activated his blade. "Now… to get them to move…"
"Look sharp, Skye."
Time slowly came back into motion, the lasers and the rest of the team all moving again, slowly. Skye dived forward and swung at a laser with a flash on his blade, deflecting it, and quickly caught himself on the ground with his other hand. He forced his body up with his palm and somersaulted to the second and deflecting it as well, seconds before the lasers hit their targeted victims. The others barely stopped to watch, partially in disbelief at both his speed and his precision, but instead leaped into the arwings and took off to the sky.
"We still have work to do, team…" Skye spoke, but solely to himself. He bounded to his ship and turned off his blade in mid-flight, landing directly into the cockpit. "C'mon, let's take care of these fiends, whoever they are!"
"Skye… what was that back there?" Krystal flicked on her jets and slowly rose from the ground. "That was incredible... I've never seen anyone move so fast!" She blinked and ran a hurried systems check before she was in the air.
"I… don't know myself. The two of you were about to be hit, and… I moved. Didn't seem very fast to me."
"Are you feelin' okay, Skye? I didn't even notice I was about to be hit when you took those out… two of them! And with the speed those suckers move… there has to be something wrong with you!" Kino coughed and lifted off, stunned.
"I just don't know…" Skye looked down and took to the sky. "Something happened to me, and I… not now. I'll explain later. For now, we have to shoot these guys down before they cause any more harm!" He expanded his wings and boosted into the fray. "Don't let me down, team… please."
They had barely gotten into the air when a beam of thin light pierced through space. Skye felt the pain return slightly.
"Don't waste your time…" A voice crept into Skye's mind different from before, dark, cunning.
Meanwhile, the beam grew and expanded until it had engulfed all of the ships below the small armada hovering next to the ship firing the beam… it was a mothership of sorts. Several times larger than the other ships, roughly one hundred times the size, in fact. Skye jammed on his controls, but his ship didn't move. Nor did anyone else's… the beam had completely halted all movement of the ship, slowly disabling all of the ships functions.
"What's going on?" Skye slammed his fist down and clicked at all of the buttons he could find. "Team! Come in!" He got nothing but static. For once, he felt truly hopeless… even with his newfound power, he had no one to defend, no way to defend himself… he felt utterly useless.
"… Some matters are… truly out of anyone's hands, Skye." The inner voice spoke again.
"No… no! I'm not going to let them all…"
He was cut off with a sudden drop, and a maddening laugh that broke through the pain in his head… a laugh that grew greater and greater as the team fell, one by one, down to the planet. Fate… was the only thing that could save them now. It was all left to destiny. Destiny was the only one in control as they plummeted down, down to the planet… toward the false, brittle surface hiding the caverns… the sharp, rocky caverns. It was toward those caverns that they all plummeted… most certainly to their doom, should fate decide not to intervene.
Skye Abison… died that day. At least the old Skye died… but a new Skye was reborn in his place… a new soul and strength reborn inside him. The galaxy was changing, its future uncertain. It's stability… questionable. Skye planned to rise up once again… as did the others… should they choose to learn from their pasts… and should they have the will to rise alongside their leader and to protect all that they held precious.