A Great Day to Die

by Tobias Umbra

In a time when Fox has pushed away all of the people important to him, a deadly encounter with Wolf may cost Fox both his sanity and his life. A look into the minds of both Fox McCloud and Wolf O'Donnell.

3. Act Three: The Duel of the Dogs

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ahh, Falco. If Fox is the Han Solo and Wolf the Boba Fett, then Falco is the Arthur Fonzarelli (Fonzie for the less pop-culture literate) of StarFox. That distinctive Italian-Brooklyn accent of his, and his general character, makes him one of the series' most beloved characters. Falco finally makes an appearance in this chapter, the climactic conclusion of A Great Day to Die, in which Fox's nightmarish visions come to a sanity-threatening head, and Fox must finally confront both his past and his sworn enemy. This chapter is, I warn you, the longest of all of them. Even I'll admit, it's long as hell. But then again, that should be tempered by the fact that the story's suspense, action, and most of all, emotion, are at their most intense here. Before we get started on this finale, I'd like to thank all of my faithful and kind reviewers. Kadhil, Anon: The Next Generation, killr noob (Bradley, :-P), and everyone else, this one's for you. Have fun with what has become one of the most enjoyable stories, and definitely the most enjoyable fanfiction, that I have ever written.

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"…Dad?"

"Yeah, Fox?"

"What's it like…up there?"

"What do you mean, son?"

"In space. What's it like to fly up there?"

"I've taken you flying before. And you've been on the Great Fox."

"Yeah, but you've taken me flying in the sky before, Dad. And that was just in the Pleiades. And the Great Fox is SO big! I wanna know what it's like to fly in an Arwing. And in space. What's that like?"

"Haha. It's different, all right. Not like you'd think, though."

"What's that mean?"

"It's quiet. Cold, almost. You wouldn't want to be in something as cramped as an Arwing for too long in space."

"Why not?"

"Space is big, Fox, it's--"

"How big?"

"…Really big, son. It's so hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly big that you, me, even this PLANET is just a small, tiny speck in all of it. Hundreds of galaxies with billions of stars, and a speck on one in a blink: That's us, lost in space. Out there, there's just so much nothing that it's kind of scary sometimes."

"You get scared sometimes, Dad?"

"Everyone does, Fox. Even me. It's whether or not we let it control us that matters."

"So why do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Daaaaadddd…you know…why do you go up there if it's so scary?"

"Because, Fox, sometimes there's other things that matter more than fear. I can help people up there. And, sometimes, when you don't let something stop you, just because it scares you, you can laugh at it. Some people say it's stupid, and sometimes they might be right, but it's as I said: You can't let fear control you, Fox."

"You don't get lonely up there?"

"Well, that's what I've got my wing mates for. Peppy's always there for me, to help me when things get tough. Even Pigma helps out…in his own way, I guess…they help when bad things happen, whether it's space pirates or just plain loneliness. That's why we have people that we trust and love. It's not just them, either. You help, too."

"How do I help?"

"It's hard to be lonely when I've got a kid as great as you waiting for me to come home. All of that space, all of that nothing, doesn't really matter when, somewhere in that big old nowhere, I've got you, Fox."

"…Is mommy somewhere up there, too, Dad?"

"…Yeah, Fox…Mommy's up there, too. And me knowing that I've got to make you into someone she'd be proud of…that's her way of being there for me."

"Even though mommy's gone?"

"…Even though she's gone, Fox."

"What if…what if you're gone, someday, Dad…how do I stop from being alone…?"

"I won't be around forever, son. That's why you always keep people close to you. Nothing hurts more than losing the people close to you, but that's a part of life. That's why you've always got to have people that you trust and love, so that they can catch you when you fall."

"Yeah, but you're going to be here for a long time, right, Dad?"

"I'm not going anywhere, son. Not for a while. And when I do, you won't need me anymore. You'll have plenty of people around that love you and care about you, that it won't feel like you're alone just because me or someone else is gone from your life."

"I hope you don't go for a long, long, time, Dad."

"Ha, me too, son."

"I love you, Dad."

"I love you, too, Fox."

The first thing that Fox felt upon waking was the terrible feeling of being smothered. His nose was jammed, and for some reason, his mouth didn't open.

He burst up from the floor into a sitting position, his lungs repeatedly begging for sustenance, his nostrils snorting and jerking for air as he struggled to breathe through them.

After a moment or two, Fox's jaws burst open and he gasped in a massive lungful of air, his chest almost aching as it expanded to take in as much oxygen as possible.

As he tried to open his eyes to get a sense of his surroundings, Fox felt an unnatural tugging at the rims of his eyelids, as if they were fastened shut.

Fox let out a distressed moan as his hands flew to his eyelids, feeling the lines of crusty, dried mucous discharge clinging to his lashes and gluing his eyes closed. He sucked in air through his mouth, his dismay increasing his lung's demands for air as he tried to unglue his eyelids and unplug his congested nose.

Fox's respirations of barely-contained panic formed a metronomic rhythm that, in some ways, allowed him to calm down. He focused simply on the sound of his own breathing, not the fact that he couldn't open his eyes or that he couldn't breathe through his nose. Through the blackness of his closed eyes, his breaths gave him reassurance that he was still alive.

"Calm down," Fox murmured to himself, just sitting there for a few moments and collecting himself.

As his breath returned to normal, Fox felt his nasal passages opening up, an oozing glob of mucus sliding down his throat. He breathed through his uncorked nostrils, a cold rush of air stinging his now dry sinuses.

Grimacing, Fox slowly put a hand to his right eye and probed the waxy crust of rheum that glued his eyelashes together. Using the fingernails on his thumb and middle finger, he slowly pinched it out of his eyelashes, feeling the soft discharge collect under his nails. Fox worked his way across his eyelid until he was sure that he had gotten all of it, then slowly tried to open his eye once more.

The lids still felt as if they were adhered to each other for a moment, but the sensation disappeared as soon as Fox's upper and lower eyelid became completely free of each other and opened up wide.

His eye was sore and slightly itchy as it tried to focus and adjust to the lack of light in the room, and it took a few minutes for Fox to fully see the space around him.

He had slept on the scarlet carpets of the room that he'd stumbled into yesterday, after finding neither the bed nor the bathroom free of disturbing visions. Fox had thought that it would be difficult to fall asleep due to the uncomfortably hard floor under the carpets and the ancient pieces of parchment littered on top of them, however it couldn't have been too hard, given that he'd been asleep enough to dream.

Ignoring the nasty paste feeling of dried mucosa that still lingered around his open eyelid, Fox turned his attention to his still sealed left eye, carefully clearing the discharge from his eyelashes and opening his other eye. He began to flick the crusty mucus from his fingernails as he stared at the torn curtains of the room with their multiple holes, white rays of sunlight pouring in each one and making the remaining fabric glow a ghostly yellow.

With his vision returned to him, Fox's mind dwelt back on the dream that had woke him.

His father's voice had been so clear, his manner of speaking so dead-on, it was as if he'd actually been talking to Fox. It mattered little that it had only been a voice in the slumbering darkness; it was still a voice that Fox had gone without for over twelve years. In some ways, the absence of something horrific in the vision, the way that it simply scratched at the old wound that James McCloud's death left in Fox, made Fox feel even worse. The mere reminder in such a way was horrific enough.

I'm not going anywhere, son. Not for a while.

Fox pulled his feet in and gathered his hands around his knees, then closed his eyes and bowed his head.

It wasn't just his father; it was everyone in Fox's life. They had all left or been taken from him in one way or another, abandoning him and leaving a vast, black emptiness where his heart used to be.

All that was left of them were the memories that never left him regardless of how hard he tried to forget.

Fox exhaled sadly and swallowed, licking his dry lips.

Perhaps this was his fate, to die alone on a lonely planet, forgotten by everyone.

He'd stopped trying to figure out how he had arrived in this abandoned, forsaken place, or why he was seeing so many things. It was too much of a struggle to survive, to deal with the hallucinatory assault on his psyche, to try figuring all of that out.

Fox sniffled, then opened his eyes, finally noticing how scratchy and dry his mouth and throat were. He'd never felt so thirsty; he actually feared dehydrating if he didn't find water somewhere.

Fox carefully got to his feet, his knees aching as he stood to full height. His bushy red tail drooped slightly, wagging timidly with a discomforting sensation. He'd slept on it probably most of the night, and it had more than likely cramped up as a result.

Again, the pasty, dry feeling in his mouth accentuated his need for fluids.

Fox stumbled across the room, gripping the doorway of the bathroom for balance. Peering into the dark, cold, tiled room, Fox could see a little better than he could previously, noticing in the dimness a wide, dusty old turboshower with an open privacy screen taking up the opposite rear section of the bathroom. Along the same wall as the doorframe was a rather wide-looking shallow sink, above which was a peculiarly angled mirror with an intricate web of cracks shattering the image.

Fox's boots scraped across the tile as he felt his way through the darkness, and he grabbed the rim of the sink just as soon as he felt it, jerking to a stop. The entire surface of the appliance was coated in dust and grime, leaving a dirty residue on his fingers as he groped along the porcelain fixture. He finally reached the apex of the sink against the wall, feeling the cold metal of the sink's faucet. With a rising feeling of anticipation, Fox turned the handle atop the faucet, anxiously awaiting the sound of rushing water. Moments passed, and there was only silence.

Fox paused for a moment in the darkness, exhaling with a curse.

Of course the plumbing wouldn't work. Nothing else seemed to be accommodating on this desolate world.

He exited the bathroom and walked sluggishly across the bedroom's red carpets, approaching the solid, featureless stone door.

Fox had to find some form of hydration before he collapsed, and he was all too happy to leave the room anyway.

Nothing good had happened here.

A light press of the glowing blue panel against the wall was all that it took to induce the stone door to slide upwards into the ceiling and grant Fox access to the hallway.

As he sauntered out into the bare, empty corridor, Fox gave a cautious look to the hallway's dead end, where he'd seen Slippy and Amanda's mutilated corpses lying so realistically against the walls. The visions of his amphibian friends dead and mauled had yet to return, the entire hallway appearing vacant of the distressing sight.

It was a slow walk down the hallway, the dust floating in the air making it difficult to tell just how long the corridor extended.

Fox was almost surprised when he came to the end of the hallway, finding a set of stairs leading up and one leading down. He wasted no time traveling down the metal stairwell, journeying towards the ground. Fox was thankful for the windows at each landing, he didn't want to have to imagine just how hard it would be to get down the stairs in his condition and in the dark without falling.

Fox's sense of time was somewhat off, but he was still relatively sure that he hadn't traveled down the stairs too long before reaching the ground. It seemed like merely the blink of an eye to descend to the ground level.

Fox noticed a red door with some writing on it in some indecipherable language on the wall directly in front of the stairs, and on the wall to his right a blank black door. Seeing the line of sunlight seeping into the stairwell from under the red door, Fox decided that it contained the better chance of getting him where he needed to go.

He pushed forward on the heavy door, swinging it open slowly and walking out into a quiet, sun-drenched street with buildings at either side.

Fox traveled slowly into the middle of the street and looked around for a moment or two at the metropolitan canyon surrounding him. As far as his eyes could see, not a single thing moved on the street or in the hundreds of windows in the dozens of buildings around him. Not a single sign of life reared its head for him to see, nor was there any sound aside from the occasional whisperings of the forlorn wind.

Up in the sky above him, the sun beat down on the ground with warm, yellow light.

How long have I been asleep? Fox thought as he shielded his eyes from the sun.

From the look of things, it had to have been nearing midday.

He vaguely remembered the emergency beacon in his jacket, which could at least tell him the time since the crash.

As Fox reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, he noticed a distinctive set of three claw marks torn into the side of the white fabric. He paused and pulled his hand out of his pocket, grasping the borders of the pilot's jacket, then ran his fingers across the jagged tears.

What did that…and when? Fox questioned himself once again.

An eerie feeling crawled up his spine, and the fur on his neck and tail started to bristle as Fox began to get a feeling that he was being watched.

Fox looked from side to side once more, and again the vacant buildings and empty streets offered him no answers.

Regardless, Fox began to consider the idea of whether or not he was truly alone on this planet. During that period of time, just after the Arwings crash that Fox couldn't remember, maybe something caused these rips in his jacket.

Maybe that same thing also, somehow, gave him these visions.

Fox cautiously reached into his breast pocket as he walked down the streets, pulling out the cylindrical emergency beacon with it's glowing red button on top.

"Display activation timer," Fox commanded.

The emergency beacon obeyed, it's miniaturized holoprojector glowing to life and displaying a set of glowing blue three-dimensional numbers and letters in front of him, counting upwards by the second:

Activation Time: 21:37:06

Almost twenty-four hours had passed since the crash. Fox must've slept for more than twelve of them, at least.

"Deactivate timer display," Fox intoned, watching the hologram fade away.

Fox slipped the beacon back into his pocket, glancing over his shoulder as he continued down the streets, unable to shake the subconscious feeling that, somehow, something was following him.

Fox returned his gaze forward, looking askance from side to side as his boots scraped across the dusty stone of the streets.

A glance to his right caught his attention as the sight of a rhythmic motion appeared just out of the corner of his eye.

Fox turned his head in the direction of the movement, and saw in a shady alley between two multistory buildings a stairwell leading down below the street. Reflecting upon the stone steps and faintly upon the walls of the alley surrounding the hole that the stairs led into was the distinct shimmering effect of light being refracted by a large amount of water.

There we go, Fox thought as a relieved half-smile crossed his face.

Putting his suspicions of being surveilled in the back of his mind, Fox's mad thirst became front and center as he jogged out of the street and into the alley, marching brusquely down the steps, hearing his footfalls echo slightly as he entered the dim underground chamber.

He found himself in an empty ferroconcrete chamber, unlit save for the powerful display lights at the bottom of a wide, deep pool of water that dominated the entire room. Fox sighed with contented alleviation, looking upwards and thanking no one in particular.

He swiftly approached the edge, getting down on all fours and peering into the enormous reservoir.

Because of the bright blue lights at the bottom and sides of the pool, Fox could barely see his reflection in the water save for the slightest ghostly outline of a scruffy, tired red fox with rounded, wedge-shaped ears staring back up at him from the water.

Why this big pool of clean water was here was something that Fox neither knew nor really cared about; on a planet as unforgiving as this, Fox was willing to take what he could get.

The faint yet distinct aroma of chemical disinfectants emanating from the water led Fox to think that the whole thing could've been some sort of underground swimming pool of sorts, however the sight of a series of underground pumps hidden in a corner at the bottom of the pool made the case for an industrial or drinking water reservoir.

Either way, Fox was satisfied that the water was both free of contamination and safe to drink.

He lowered his muzzle to the water's surface, opening his mouth and extending his tongue, lapping up the water with a characteristic sploosh-sploosh-sploosh sound.

Cool, quenching refreshment flooded into his mouth and down his throat with every gulp of H2O, soaring from his mouth to his esophagus that he barely noticed the water's bland chemical taste.

Once his tongue and the inside of his mouth were properly wet again, Fox began to take notice of the water's blatantly distilled flavor. It clearly wasn't meant to be drunk.

Fox was relatively sure that it wasn't toxic, but it probably wouldn't be wise to drink too much of the stuff. There was likely some form of sanitizer added to the water that could make him sick, or the water was distilled to the point that it didn't offer any of the minerals his body would need to function in the long run.

Still, it served its purpose. Fox had never thought he'd be so grateful to be properly hydrated.

After taking a short breath, Fox lowered his muzzle into the water, his mouth and nose feeling comfortably cool and moisturized as he took in one last gulp of liquid.

He then rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling, watching the shimmering refractions of the water's ripples that the display lights projected upon the ferroconcrete.

Fox closed his eyes, feeling tired, and licked his wet muzzle.

Instantly, something was off about the whole thing.

The water soaking the fur around his mouth no longer tasted like water, instead possessing the distinct tang of Redwall Rum, his liquor of choice.

As Fox opened his eyes in shock and confusion, he found that, instead of the ferroconcrete floors bordering the underground pool, he was lying down on the faux nerfskin upholstery of a fully reclined starship captain's chair.

Rather than the empty, featureless surroundings of the underground chamber, Fox found himself inside the disorganized, cluttered and flashy bridge of the Great Fox. Directly in front of him, at the forward end of the bridge, was the huge panoramic window that served as the Great Fox's 'eyes', while all around him were the various workstations with their advanced computer and holographic equipment. In the corner of the bridge, almost insignificant looking in comparison to the showy, advanced technological displays all around it, was ROB-64's recharge station and USC socket from which the robot could single-handedly operate the entire starship. The station was currently unoccupied, and Fox was the only one on the bridge.

He couldn't really move for some reason; minor shifts of his eyes, head, and arms were all that he could really manage. Upon trying to mutter an out loud profanity to emphasize his confusion, Fox found that he could not speak.

It was as if he was merely bearing witness to this event; interaction, in terms of anything but looking, appeared virtually impossible.

Fox was able to move his head inwards towards his body, seeing his hand resting on the stomach of his green flight suit, grasping a near-empty glass bottle of Redwall Rum.

Moving all on it's own, Fox's arm raised the bottle towards the ceiling as his mouth suddenly, involuntarily slurred the words, "Here's to you, Krystal…Happy Birthday!"

Just as he was midway through the word 'Birthday', the bottle slipped out of his hand, dropping to the floor and shattering into thousands of pieces on the durasteel floor of the bridge.

Beyond his own control, Fox blurted out a drunken giggle, his gaze drifting down to the floor where, amongst the shards of glass from the broken bottle lay another empty bottle of Redwall Rum and a decorative platinum bracelet engraved with intricate, curving designs and bordered on both sides with bluish purple stones.

Had he possessed the ability to show it on his face, Fox would've frowned and flinched in shame and sadness as he understood what was going on. It was Krystal's birthday.

The one after she left.

It was the night that Falco left, too.

As if on cue, the automatic doors to the bridge slid open and in stepped a lanky, rugged looking blue falcon of twenty nine, wearing a white Team StarFox pilot's jacket, specially tailored to fit his wide, wing-like hands, over a sleeveless auburn brown flight suit tailored to accommodate his tail feathers. The azure plumage of his head was smoothed back in the front but slightly ruffled at the back, giving him a rather rugged, windswept look. Falco Lombardi's intense, icy blue eyes were only accentuated by the passionate crimson color of the feathers forming an almond shape around his sockets.

Falco's boots thumped along the durasteel floor as he strolled into the bridge, pausing as his eyes fell on Fox and the pieces of broken bottle on the floor.

"Heyyy…" Falco croaked warmly with his smooth, tough voice, "What's up wit' tha' party? An' why wasn't I invited, huh?".

Due to his hard beak, Falco didn't smile like other mammals did. Only the corners of his mouth ever turned up or down, his eyes and forehead expressing the rest of his emotions. From the way that Falco's beak fell open slightly and the way that his eyes narrowed as he talked, Falco was much less thrilled than his voice might've implied.

As Falco got closer and his eyes locked onto Krystal's bracelet on the floor, they widened somewhat in surprise as he let off the vague sort grimace that his beak produced.

"Oh…shit…" Falco muttured, rolling his eyes at the ceiling, then looking back at Fox and saying, "It's that day already?"

"Hey, Falco, you're just in time!" Fox's mouth spoke without his permission, "I was just about to sing Krystal the birthday song. Now we both can do it!"

"C'mon, Foxie, cut it out," Falco encouraged, looking out the bridge's window, "How 'bout 'ya find me some 'a that Vino Wine I know we got saved up, open up a bottle and then we'll go watch tha' G-Zero race on tha' hi-def downstairs. Whaddaya say?"

The corners of Falco's beak were forced into a smile, a wide and warm grin of encouragement that was very different from the sardonic smirk that Falco usually displayed.

Inside, Fox felt touched by the obvious amount of effort Falco was putting up in his attempt to take his mind off of Krystal, knowing how rare it was for Falco to show any emotion save for cool disdain or egotistic sarcasm.

It tugged at his heart knowing what the inevitable conclusion of this whole thing was, regardless of how it might play out.

"Oh, I'm real sorry, Falco, but…but what about Krystal? It's her birthday… and she left me a present! Look!" Fox exclaimed in an intoxicated stupor, pointing down at the bracelet and then at an empty computer terminal chair across the room, "What am I supposed to do for her? I don't even think I went shoppin'… am I a dick or what?!"

"Fox," Falco hissed, losing his tenderness in a wave of frustration, "Ya' know Krystal's not there. Krystal's gone, Fox."

"Shhhh…" Fox whispered loudly, putting a hand to the side of his mouth, "I know. She doesn't know it yet, and I think it'd be pretty crappy of us to tell her that on her birthday, don't you think, Falco?"

Falco rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, stepping back and looking up at the ceiling once again, shaking his head.

"Ya' know, sometimes I don't even know why I gotta keep tryin' wit' you. You pretty much made your choice on poutin' like a little girl, no matter what I keep doin', and it's not like Peppy and Slippy are around any more to help me knock some sense inta' ya'. Don't even get me started on how borin' it's gotten around here, or how tight we're gettin' when it comes to cash lately. The only reason I stayed wit' you guys to begin with was 'cause 'a tha' cash and tha' thrills, and that's dryin' up pretty damn fast 'round here. I dunno, I might just skip out," Falco retorted with an indifferent shrug.

"You know how many time's you done that? Like twice!" Fox slurred in argument, holding up four fingers.

"Once, ya' shit-faced dumb ass." Falco corrected, smirking coolly, "An' I only came back 'cause ya' needed me ta' help ya' smoke Andross. Again. But he ain't here, so, what reason I got ta' stay?"

"I told you…" Fox hiccupped, "We already had this talk…didn't we? We all know that it's just an act, Falco! Ya' big softie! You put on that big tough guy thing so people don't start thinkin' that you're actually kind of sweet on all of us. Go on, Falco, come on, you like us…"

Falco's eyes closed a bit longer than they should've for a blink, and the corners of his mouth turned down. He paused a moment, trying to think of what to say.

"Whaddaya mean, us, Foxie? There's no us, it's just you an' me, remember? It's kinda funny, ya' know, wit' about thirty ounces a' eighty proof, ya' can somehow see through my act, if ya' wanna call it that, but ya' can't seem ta' remember that… I'm all ya' got, Foxie," Falco responded, his tone of voice loosing some of it's coolness, slipping into a much less reserved pitch, especially near the end.

"Hey, Falco…tell me somethin'…" Fox crooned, his head drooping backwards into the upholstery of his seat, "If you're really only with us… If you were always with us just for the money, or…or for the thrills…why are you still here?"

"'Cause you're all I got, ya' stupid FUCK!!" Falco roared, loosing his cool, his eyes glaring with anger, "It took me years ta' get it through my head that you 'n Slippy n' the ol' man were all I eva' HAD! An' look at what you done now! Ya' let Peppy leave an' ya pushed Slippy away, an' now all I got is you and ya' fuckin' self pity!!"

"Hey, you try getting dumped…" Fox shrugged casually, defensively, "…and not getting down on yourself."

"Shut tha' FUCK up Fox!!" Falco bellowed, waving his arm angrily, "Stop makin' excuses an' LOOK at what ya' fuckin' doin' to yourself!"

Silence took up the next few moments as Falco breathed hard and caught his breath as Fox drunkenly went with the flow.

"Ya' know what, man?" Falco snapped, "Women are killers. And Krystal? She's killin' you. And I can't fuckin' stand it anymore."

"What…" Fox blurted in confusion, "…what're you talkin' about…Falco?"

"If you can't forgive yourself, I ain't gonna watch you flush ya' life down the damn toilet," Falco growled bitterly.

"What choice do you have, Falco…?" Fox chuckled as if it was one big joke, "I thought I was all you had…"

Falco's beak opened as he scoffed, and his eyes glared daggers of disgust.

"Fuck you," Falco spat, emphasizing every syllable and turning on his heel without another word.

The automatic doors of the bridge slid open and Falco stormed through them, slipping out of sight.

"Hey, Falco! You didn't answer!" Fox called, not getting up from the chair, "…What 'cha gonna do?"

There was no reply.

The doors of the bridge slid closed, and Fox's eyes slid shut as he passed out.

When he opened his eyes to see the ferroconcrete ceiling of the underground pool chamber above him with it's shimmering light ripples, there was no shocked jerking awake as he had so many times before. His eyes slid open slowly, sadly.

Fox lay on the ground for several more minutes, putting a hand on his forehead and clenching his teeth.

I was wrong before, wasn't I? Fox thought.

No one abandoned me or got taken from me, only to leave me alone. Not really.

The ones I lost, like Dad, I can't let go of.

The ones that abandoned me, like Falco and Krystal, only did it because of what I did.

I let them leave.

I pushed them away.

Maybe it's not my fate, to die alone on a lonely planet. Maybe it's my punishment. Maybe it's what I deserve.

Fox slowly got to his feet, looking back at the calm pool of water glowing an eerie blue.

He then took off back up the stairs, as fast as he could, running up to the surface and up towards the light of day. He had to get away from this place.

The brightness of the streets was slightly overwhelming to Fox's green eyes as he dashed out of the alley and continued down the street, the guilty chill of self-loathing still gripping his spine and throat. He looked down at the ground and continued down the street as the vacant buildings on both sides looked down on him emptily.

His previous thoughts still echoed in his head, accusing him of his various crimes against those he loved and sentencing him to a painful, pitiful end on this faraway rock.

Fox's eyes darted over to his right hip, where the black grip of his Cornerian ArmsCor EE-40 blaster pistol poked out of its holster. He'd heavily modified the blaster for a much higher firing rate (more comparable to a repeating blaster than a regular pistol) and with more advanced heat shielding to resist overheating from multiple shots. The trade off was that the blaster bolts were much less powerful than normal, requiring several shots to incapacitate or kill an opponent. Fox could, however, change the power settings to charge the blaster up for a few large, lethal shots.

Do it, a voice in the back of Fox's mind whispered, Blow your fucking brains out. You're going to die on this planet anyway. Just put yourself out of your misery. Besides, no one's going to miss you. Just kill yourself.

Fox stopped walking, his eyes locked on the blaster's handle.

His right hand twitched unconsciously, as if it was itching to grab something.

Fox's breathing slowed as the seductive curves of the blaster's plastic and metal handgrip hypnotized and called to him. His eyes widened as he found himself unable to think about anything but the gun, so close and easy.

So far, it was the only offer of escape that he had.

Fox could leave it all behind; this planet, these hallucinations, even his guilt and shame would all go away.

All that it required was the pull of a trigger.

Kill yourself, McCloud, the voice in his head growled softly.

Fox's fingers shivered as sweat began to form under his fur. Even though he'd just drank, Fox's mouth felt dry as the grave once again.

A part of him was horrified at the idea, mentally kicking and screaming at the concept, but still Fox was unable to move on, due to the fact that another part of him could think of nothing but the blessed release the voices in his head promised that death would bring.

KILL YOURSELF, the wraith in his skull commanded, much less hushed this time.

Fox's breath began to falter as his right hand began to move towards the pistol grip, seemingly all on its own.

His index finger brushed the butt of the grip, shocking him with alertness that gave Fox power over his hand again, and he jerked it away from the gun in alarm.

The beating of Fox's heart reached a dance-able tempo, and he scowled and squinted his eyes shut, determined not to look at the blaster.

"Shut up," Fox whispered to the voice.

KIIIILLLLLLLLLL YOURRRRSEEEEELLLLFFF…the voice echoed.

Grinding his teeth once, trying to move his head to the left, as far away as it could turn from the blaster, Fox growled, "Shut. Up."

I've been looking forward to this day…to see you again…Fox McCloud, the voice boomed in his brain, changing from subtle and nondescript to a rolling, deep, rich voice with an exotic accent, KILL YOURSELF, FOX MCCLOUD.

Fox shuddered, putting both hands up and blocking his ears, as if that would drown out the sound. He still refused to open his eyes.

"Stop it," Fox hissed to no one in particular.

KILLYOURSELFKILLYOURSELFKILLYOURSELFKILLYOURSELF! KILL YOURSELF! KILL YOURSELF! the wraith chanted, its orders reverberating throughout his cranium.

"SHUT UP!!" Fox bellowed, craning his head back and screaming at the sky, finally opening his eyes as the sun's yellow rays blinded him.

His throat feeling raw as he yelled, Fox at last felt some power returning to his legs, and he took off running up the street like a madman, hoping that he could somehow outrun the voices.

Fox's boots pounded and scraped into the ground as he sprinted down the street, kicking up small patches of dust in sync with his tired gasps for air.

His arms pumped forward, fists tightened and biceps stretched taut as he approached an intersection.

Fox wasn't really looking where he was going; he didn't really care, his entire thought process dominated by the terror gripping his brain from the constant demands for his suicide.

He whipped around the corner of the two streets, not noticing the massive circular network of cracks in this new street, nor the small hole in the street from which all of the cracks originated.

Instead, Fox dashed blindly forward, planting his feet into the already weak and unstable road surface, too preoccupied by his fear to hear the rumbling crumble of the pavement giving way under his boots.

The first instant that Fox even realized something was wrong was when the entire spider's web of cracks collapsed into a massive, gaping hole in the road that swallowed Fox up.

He let out a small, hysterical yell as he tumbled downward with a meteor shower of chunks of road surface.

It was not a long trip downwards; Fox barely had time to inhale a breath after his yelp of surprise before hitting the ferroconcrete floor of the underground tunnel on his left hip.

A wave of pain shot through Fox's entire left side as the breath was knocked out of him, and he wheezed out a grunt of pain as a stray piece of debris struck his upper arm fiercely.

He couldn't be sure that his leg was broken, but it sure felt like it might have been.

Gulping and heaving for air, Fox looked up in confusion at the hole in the road that he'd fallen through, only seeing the bright yellow light of the sun shining through. The sunlight bore into his pupils and overloaded his eyes, and he shut his eyes and looked away.

Upon opening his eyes once again, Fox noticed that he was neither lying down nor in the tunnel any longer.

The bright light of the sun had been replaced by the piercing white luminescence of several high-powered indoor display lights mounted from rigging on the ceiling that rounded the entire perimeter.

The underground tunnel had been replaced by what appeared to be an operating theater, with several ascending rows of stands encircling a central space with a surgical operating table, over which was a bright examination light. Several figures were sitting in the stands or leaning against the wall at the perimeter of the operating space, along with a lone figure strapped down to the table.

Viewing the whole thing like a holorecording, Fox was unable to interact or move; only able to see what was shown right in front of him. Even then, however, Fox knew several of the figures in the room.

All around, guarding the exits and other spaces in the room, were several soldiers in maroon military outfits. For the most part, all of the soldiers were apes, however Fox could distinctly make out the black beak of a crow and the twin curving horns of a goat poking out from the black ballistic helmets of two of the soldiers. Their rusty maroon, almost blood red colors, marked them as troops of the Imperial Venomian Army.

In the front row of the stands was a brown female cat with a scar at the corner of her mouth, a male alligator with several prosthetic teeth, and an aging orangutan with several bald patches amongst his faded orange fur, all of them wearing maroon officer's uniforms with several bars on their chests and shoulders.

Behind the officers was a quartet of male pilots that Fox knew very well.

The first was a lanky and somewhat blank-faced chimpanzee in a yellow flight suit, attempting to solve a Fichinan puzzle box and failing miserably. Fox would've recognized the ape as Andrew Oikonny just by the quiet whimpers and whines he gave off as he tried again and again in vain to solve the puzzle.

Sitting next to Oikonny, gorging himself gluttonously on a massive bucket of popcorn, was a corpulent, beady-eyed pig in a pink and white flight suit that could barely contain its wearer's massive girth. Pigma Dengar's vulgar snorts had always disgusted Fox, even as a pup, and they had continued to mark the traitor's speech all the way up until his assimilation by the Aparoids.

Beside Pigma, wearing a short white coat and gloves over blue coveralls was the thin form of Leon Powalski. The creepy little chameleon was leaned forward, his spidery, gloved hands twitching nervously as his bulging eyes locked on the operating table with a look of gleeful anticipation like a kid at the circus.

Already, Fox noticed something odd about the entire group.

They all looked much younger than Fox remembered them. They looked even younger than he remembered them when StarFox had faced the original StarWolf a little over eight years ago. Neither Leon nor Andrew could've been above the age of eighteen. Pigma looked a bit more like Fox remembered him as a teammate of his father's. Dengar had put on more than a few pounds by the time he flew a Wolfen against Team StarFox.

Confused, Fox focused on the final member of the four.

His arms crossed, wearing a light brown duster coat over a black and white flight suit and a short red scarf tied around his neck, was a scruffy-looking young wolf with a black eye patch over his left eye. Wolf O'Donnell did not look happy to be present, wearing a look on his face that could be interpreted as either bored indifference or mild disgust.

Wolf's appearance looked the most surprising out of all of them. Fox had always remembered Wolf the most out of all of the StarWolf pilots, due to their constant rivalry. Though Wolf was only a year or two older than him, Fox always thought of the StarWolf leader as being much bigger, and older than Fox in ways different from age.

Here, however, Wolf couldn't have been a day over sixteen.

There was a type of naïve arrogance that this Wolf emanated, a kind of blind confidence that Fox didn't quite remember Wolf ever really possessing.

For some reason, Fox had a very strong feeling of déjà vu in the back of his mind as he looked at Wolf, as if there was something about Wolf that he was supposed to remember.

Fox's feelings of confusion began to be replaced by a heightening sense of dread and an intuition of what was to come.

Fox had a thought of what he might soon see, but he daren't even think of it too much for fear of making it come true.

His view of the much younger StarWolf Team was replaced by a sight of the central space, where a middle-aged chimpanzee sat in a heavily decorated, throne like chair, carefully watching the operating table and the figure held down upon it.

He wore a completely black military style uniform with a stiff collar that nearly covered his entire neck. It was featureless except for the thin split of a zipper directly down the center of the uniform's top. The chimpanzee's dark hair was very managed and restrained, combed back on the top of his head and straightened into a sage-like goatee and beard on his chin. His skin seemed unusually dark, wrinkled and almost purple like a prune. The flesh of his gnarled hands was no different, with a sharp-looking black nail on the tip of each finger. The ape's eyes were an unnatural, vibrant orange color, like molten lava. Above his right eye, snaking upwards like a crack in his face was a jagged two-pronged scar.

The sight of the brilliant, maniacal, malevolent Dr. Andross, the would-be tyrant of the Lylat System, filled Fox with equal parts rage and fear.

In all of Fox's previous encounters with the monster, he had always faced gigantic floating manifestations of the self-proclaimed emperor, be they robotic or biologically engineered avatars.

It was somewhat unsettling to see Andross as a normal, humanoid being, his evil magnified by the humbleness of his form.

As Andross stared pensively at the operating table, his lips curved into a sadistic smile, Fox was finally allowed to see the prisoner in the center of the room, confirming the worst fears that he had held all along:

Strapped to the operating table, a visage of stubborn determination belying his tattered body was James McCloud.

His father's fur was matted with sweat and dried blood, the yellow scarf around his neck and the old green and navy blue Team StarFox jacket torn and ripped in several places. James' black flight suit had several tatters and rips in it as well, along with several dark spots around his chest that indicated parts where blood had soaked in and dried. His trademark sunglasses were gone, exposing his blue eyes underneath.

The eyes were absent of fear, instead adopting a simple preparedness to accept whatever might happen to him, regardless of the consequences.

At that moment, Fox had no greater desire than to stop seeing this, right now.

He'd gladly relive any of the horrible things he'd seen previously, from Krystal's spontaneous combustion to Falco's bitter goodbye.

Anything but this.

Fox's worst nightmares had been the sight of just what Andross might've done to his father, and the vividness of it all made the current vision more awful than a lifetime of nocturnal terrors.

His prayers went unanswered, and the vision continued as a white-clad ape wheeled in a small cart with a collection of various instruments, surgical tools, needles, and bottles of fluid. Every thing on the cart had at least a sharp point, a warning label, or a power source.

The ape reverently approached Andross at his throne with a paper box of surgical gloves and an apron, kneeling down and presenting them to his emperor like a living sacrifice.

Andross carefully slipped a surgical glove onto each hand, then tied the apron around his black uniform and approached the operating table, his boots clicking on the floors and echoing as the room went silent.

Andross stopped at the table and glanced at James McCloud, then carefully examined all of the tools at his disposal on the cart, running his thin, slender fingers over every object gingerly.

A subtle smile crept across Andross' face as his hands contacted each of the tools, picking them up and examining them as if choosing one, then moving on to pick another.

He seemed to take joy in the slight, barely noticeable flinch that James McCloud gave at every stop that Andross' hands made.

"If you were just going to grope your tools up, why'd you go to all the trouble of getting me out of my cell?" James McCloud's voice enunciated, filling the theater.

Fox would've savored the sound of his father's voice, had it not been for the circumstances.

Andross stopped, his fiery orange eyes slowly shifting towards James' face.

"Commander James McCloud," Andross rumbled with his deep, rich, exotic voice, "The famed adventurer. Even in the face of agony and death, always defiant."

"Keeps things interesting," James shrugged, almost as if he and Andross were having a friendly conversation, "Imagine how boring this whole thing would be if I just rolled over and begged for my life. It would be too easy for you. What would you do with the rest of your day?"

"James McCloud, why do you bring this on yourself?" Andross asked in a tone that made the question obviously rhetorical, "If you had only the vision to see that which is coming. Your comrade, Pigma Dengar did. He knows that the future lies with me. You could save your life by merely submitting to my will. I only ask for your knowledge of the Cornerian military's intelligence concerning my operations. I only ask for that which Pigma Dengar has not provided. Instead, you dishonor me with your stubbornness, which will only cause more lives to be lost when I invade all of Lylat."

"I've never been all that great at submitting," James smirked unsteadily, "Especially when it's to a damn dirty, stinkin' piece of ape trash like you."

Andross' eyebrow raised slightly in what could've been disappointment or amusement, and he calmly looked back at the cart, picking up a rather large high-voltage shock prod.

Pressing a button, he activated it, a crackling blue arc of electricity sparking between the two electrodes, and without another word he plunged it into James McCloud's stomach.

A series of sparks coincided with loud screams of pain as his father began to spasm from the electric shock. A moment more of James' screaming passed before Andross pulled the prod away and allowed the prisoner to fall limp on the table. In the stands, Pigma gave off a snorting laugh, whilst Leon licked his chops with his long, slimy tongue. The grimace dominating Wolf's face hadn't changed, however he exhaled softly as his remaining eye shifted elsewhere.

If Fox had been able to, he would've scratched his own eyes out just to prevent himself from seeing this. The fact that he couldn't do that, or anything besides simply watching helplessly, made it even worse.

He felt just like a pup of fifteen again, helpless to do anything but endure the wait for his father to return from his fateful mission on Venom.

As the ruckus in the audience died, Andross smirked down on James McCloud as he set the shock prod back on the cart.

"Your disrespect will gain you nothing, James McCloud," Andross growled, "I must admit, however, I admire your endurance. I have never heard of a prisoner requesting extra torture to spare his friend pain."

"You…think I'm gonna let Peppy hog all of the attention?" James panted, gritting his teeth, "I'm having a blast here."

"You are merely providing a reprieve," Andross mentioned, "When you die, we will simply have to devote all of our attention to Peppy Hare, to extract the information that you are so reluctant to provide. Your sacrifice is for nothing, James McCloud."

"That's what you think," James retorted, "Because things like you only think of yourself."

"Try, perhaps, taking your own advice, James McCloud," Andross argued, "When my forces invade Corneria, what is to stop me from destroying your son, Fox McCloud? Your submission could do more than save him. I could make you the governor of Corneria, and your son it's prince."

"And answer to you?" James replied, "I think I'd rather die. And I'm sure Fox would, too."

Andross' scowl deepened as he picked up a small branding iron and a handheld fusion torch. The ape clicked the fusion torch on, it's small, blue jet of flame shooting out of the barrel and enveloping the end of the branding iron, quickly heating it until the metal turned as orange as the fiend's eyes.

"You sadden me, James McCloud," Andross sighed with a shake of his head, "As I am generous, so am I wrathful. I will erase the very memory of you, your family, and your StarFox Team from the histories. No one will ever know."

"They'll know," James McCloud hissed, "As long as there's at least one free person in the galaxy, they'll know."

"I respect your optimism, given the circumstances," Andross snarled in reply.

He then grabbed James' right hand by the wrist, holding it down as he struggled and grunted in resistance. Andross pressed the end of the branding iron to James McCloud's lower arm, creating a small hissing sound and tiny wisps of smoke as flesh and fur burnt under the hot iron.

Again, James' screams filled the room, enveloping Fox like a wave of pure agony. Fox begged for it to stop.

Andross pulled the branding iron back, revealing the upside down 'A' symbol of the Venomian Empire of Andross burned into James McCloud's flesh.

Pigma once again erupted into a flurry of guffaws, and Leon rubbed his hands together, stealing a handful of popcorn from Pigma's bucket. Even Andrew looked up from his puzzle box to watch.

Letting out a grunt of pain with every breath, James gritted his teeth and growled, "Andross…do you really…expect me to talk to you? Do…you think I'll tell you…anything?"

Andross' simian mouth developed a deeper scowl. The tyrannical emperor let out an exhalation, and then he gave a firm half-smile as his eyes hardened in resentment.

"No, James McCloud," Andross whispered tenderly, "I expect you to suffer. And I expect you to die. That is all that I ask of you."

"It's about…damn time," James breathed.

"I think I am going to take joy in exterminating your son," Andross sneered.

"You know what…I think…?" James panted, resisting his pain, "I think … someday … he's gonna kill you."

Andross' only response was a glare of respect-tinted hatred as he lifted a scalpel up and began to close in on James' face.

Fox prayed for the hallucination to end.

Please, he'd go through anything but watch this anymore.

Almost instantly, Fox's surroundings changed, and it appeared that he'd gotten his wish.

His father was no longer the one on the operating table.

Now, it was Fox.

The black rubber straps at his armpits, wrists, and ankles held Fox down to the operating table, cutting off his circulation painfully as the sensation of actually having a body of his own returned to him.

His heart stopped in terror as he looked up at Andross looming over him with the scalpel.

"I've been waiting for you," Andross announced, "Fox McCloud."

Andross' surprisingly strong hands grabbed Fox's muzzle hard, holding his mouth shut as he brought the scalpel at the left corner of Fox's lips, the cold blade feeling like it was making a cut just by touching his flesh.

Fox forced his eyes closed as the blade sank into his face, the frigid steel of the scalpel tugging at his muscles and leaving a trail of sharp pain as it sliced his cheeks in half and gave him an ever widening, unnatural smile.

Fox tried to scream, but couldn't open his mouth with Andross' hands holding his jaw shut.

The only result was a loud, muffled moan of pain that Fox belted out as the scalpel reached the end of his left cheekbones, having completely bisected his left cheek.

Fox continued to scream and moan in pain, unable to fully vocalize it with his jaw held shut, as his own coppery tasting blood filled his mouth and began to slide down his throat. The disgusting warmness, the amazingly hot temperature of all of the blood in his mouth, made Fox feel like he was going to be sick.

He kept his eyes closed as he felt the scalpel going to work on his right cheek, and he tried to beg for mercy, still unable to because of his securely-shut jaws. Fox actually thought he heard a ripping sound as his flesh was torn with surgical precision by the laser-sharpened scalpel. Even more blood was flowing into Fox's mouth, so much that he thought he was going to drown in it even though he didn't have any more cheeks to hold the blood in. He felt the heat and the wetness of it as the blood flowed down his face and drenched the fur on the back of his head and neck, soaking into his back and his coat and his flight suit.

His blood was everywhere.

Andross' hands released their grip on Fox's muzzle, and he opened his eyes in order to beg forgiveness, in order to offer submission to Andross finally.

Andross had won.

Instead, however, Fox found that the person standing over him was not Andross.

It was Falco.

In his blue-feathered hands was not a scalpel, but an open bottle of Redwall Rum.

In Fox's pained confusion, he thought that, maybe, just maybe, he'd been saved somehow. The depressed, frustrated look in Falco's avian eyes told Fox that he had not.

"If you can't forgive yourself, I ain't gonna watch you flush ya' life down the damn toilet," Falco prosecuted.

With that, Falco poured the bottle of Redwall Rum onto Fox's face. The alcohol smell soaked Fox's fur and got into his eyes, stinging him as the alcohol burned his eyeballs. The rum soaked into the massive, open cuts in Fox's cheeks, lighting his whole face on fire as he screamed out in anguish.

Fox jolted and threw himself against the straps holding him down, unable to get free.

His face and eyes still burnt and stung, but the effect was surprisingly short. He kept his eyes closed.

"I'm sorry, Falco!!" Fox sobbed, "Please!! Help me! Don't leave me!!"

Fox opened his eyes, only to see, instead of Falco, dark-eyed Krystal standing over him at the operating table.

Fox's cuts still bled and they still stung along with his eyes, but somehow Fox was still stunned by Krystal's appearance.

"Do you love me now?" Krystal whispered softly.

Fox sank even further into desperation and despair, knowing full well what was going to happen as Krystal leaned in close and pressed her lips to his.

The instant they touched, Fox could feel the indescribable heat of Krystal's lips, so hot that they blistered Fox's very skin, making them feel like his lips were being torn off.

Fox tried once more to scream with pain as his face and fur began to scorch, the cuts on his cheeks sealing as the sheer heat cauterized them.

Despite the fact that the skin on his nose was frying and sizzling with the heat, he could somehow still smell the acrid stink of his own flesh burning.

In an instant, the feeling was gone, and Fox was afraid to open his eyes for fear of what he might see.

"Krystal…", Fox wept, "I do love you. I was too scared to admit it. I need you. Please…"

The tears soaking through Fox's tightly shut eyes only stung his burnt flesh more.

After a few moments of nothing happening, Fox found the strength to open his eyes.

Standing over him, looking fully-grown and exactly as Fox last remembered him, optical implant and all, was Wolf O'Donnell.

Fox couldn't breathe, not knowing what to expect.

Wolf just smirked, then said, "It's a great day to die, ain't it, McCloud?"

Somehow, those words had a deeper meaning for Fox, as if it was trying to tell him something.

At that moment, Wolf raised his hand proceeded to blow a cloud of yellow powder into Fox's face.

Fox could just barely make out the powder's stale, flowery smell as it stung his eyes and he was once again forced to shut them.

Fox's eyes stopped stinging, and he opened them up wide.

The first thing he noticed was the absence of the horrible pain from before.

No longer was his fur and flesh burnt, nor were his cuts soaked in alcohol, nor were there any cuts in Fox's cheeks at all. At that point, Fox noticed that he was, once again in the underground tunnel that he'd plunged into seemingly so long ago.

Sitting up in bewilderment, brushing off pieces of pavement from his chest and legs, Fox breathed hard as he tried to calm himself from the previous intense vision. As painful and horrible as it was, as enlightening as it might've been, the vision had provided him with that one missing piece that Fox needed: Wolf.

This is all his doing somehow, isn't it? Fox thought to himself.

Now he remembered what happened just before and after the Arwing crash. Wolf had attacked Fox, hadn't he? He'd made Fox crash onto this planet, Temple, and then they'd gotten into a fight. And then, Wolf had done…something.

That powder he'd thrown at him.

Fox might as well have snorted the stuff with the amount of it that must've gotten into his nose and eyes. It was some sort of drug, wasn't it? It had to be. And that was why Fox was seeing all of these hallucinations.

The anger at what Wolf had done to him boiled inside of Fox as he kicked the rest of the debris off of him and jumped to his feet in fury.

Where the FUCK is he? Fox thought, his mind a raging storm of wrath, I'll fucking KILL that son of a bitch.

"I'm right where you want me, McCloud," a deep, drawling voice growled from behind him.

Fox whipped around to face the other side of the tunnel as a rugged-looking wolf with an optical implant stepped into the spotlight of sun made from the hole in the ceiling above.

A crooked smile of carnivorous teeth widened as Wolf strode casually towards Fox.

"Why, Wolf?!" Fox demanded.

"Why not?" Wolf answered, leaping forward.

Wolf was fast, even for Wolf, his clawed hands gripping Fox's neck and slamming him up against the stone walls of the tunnel, strangling him.

Fox gasped for breath, slapping against Wolf's arms, unable to dislodge him.

As Fox's right hand went for his holster, Wolf's foot swung out and swept Fox's legs out from under him, making him slip down the wall and onto his ass hard.

Wolf kept his grip on Fox's neck, this time crouching forward and shoving one of his thighs under each armpit, blocking both of his arms from reaching down into his holster to get his gun.

As Wolf's smile grew, Fox could only see Wolf's own heavily modified blaster pistol in a holster at the right side of his waist. Unlike Fox's own blaster, Wolf had given Fox easy access to his blaster.

Vainly trying to suck in another gasp of air, Fox's left hand shot forward and grabbed the end of the blaster, yanking it out of it's holster to Wolf's total surprise.

Not even taking time to aim and fire it, Fox just shoved it forward into Wolf's neck, burying the curved bayonet on the end of the blaster pistol into his jugular vein.

Wolf let out a gurgling cry of surprise and pain as torrents of blood began to gush from his neck, spilling in a hot, red mess on Fox's lap.

The fingers around Fox's neck loosened and Wolf fell backwards onto the stone floor, dead.

Fox sat there; just breathing for a moment, then got up and looked at Wolf's corpse.

The silence of the moment only made Fox unsure as to what to do.

If Wolf's dead, what now? Fox thought.

"Now the real fun begins," a voice growled.

Fox looked over to the direction of the voice, only to have his jaw drop and his blood turn to ice as Wolf walked into the light once again, from a different direction.

In his shock and confusion, Fox looked back, only to see Wolf's dead body right where it fell. And yet, in the opposite direction, was yet another Wolf approaching him, just as ready to fight.

Fox breathed hard, his eyes growing large with frenzy as pure rage and aggravation got to him, seeing Wolf's crude smile only made him want to kill him all over again.

Fox let out a roar of bloodlust as he charged forwards, scooping up a large chunk of pavement debris from the cave-in off of the ground whilst Wolf barreled to meet Fox, claws bared. Before Wolf could even swing his arms, Fox tackled the StarWolf leader squarely in the chest, shoving him into the tunnel wall and knocking him fully off balance.

As a dazed Wolf tried to push back up from the wall, Fox swung the heavy piece of debris into the side of Wolf's head, hearing a satisfying thumping sound as the debris connected with his enemy.

Wolf's head whip-lashed into the stone walls, a second blow to the other side of the head that created a slightly lower thud.

Wolf tripped and fell on his back, still alive and holding up his hands for Fox to stop.

Fox ignored him, raising the chunk of debris high over his head and bringing it down on Wolf's face, feeling the exact moment that the bones of his skull cracked.

Blood spurted from Wolf's face and his entire snout looked like it was at an odd angle, but the fact that he was still moving was too much for Fox.

Fox brought it down again, smashing it into the grey fur, watching with pleasure as one of Wolf's teeth flew out of his mouth and skittered across the floor. The hand that Wolf had been holding up to stop Fox fell limply to the floor as he lifted the asphalt chunk back up. He wouldn't have even recognized Wolf by now if it weren't for the optical implant.

The sight of Wolf's chest still moving as he breathed, no matter how slight, was enough to force Fox to smash the pavement chunk into Wolf's head one final time, hearing an almost humorous cracking pop as some part of Wolf's cranium snapped open and punctured his brain.

Sweating, breathing hard, Fox dropped the debris tablet, looking down the tunnel and spying a ladder leading up to the street.

Fox stumbled down the tunnel towards the ladder, reaching it and gripping the rusty, iron rungs. He spared a final look down the tunnel at Wolf's corpse.

Let's see you get up from that, Fox thought to himself.

Fox ascended the ladder, reaching a large circular metal hatch with a simple lever-style latch holding it closed. He clicked the latch open and pushed upwards, feeling the hatch rise above him and clang onto the ground. Looking around as he lifted himself up out of the underground tunnel, Fox realized that he had to be inside.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he found that he was in the middle of a large room, with a pair of stairs leading up and rounding the perimeter of the room before ending at a pair of large doors.

"Where'd ya' think you're goin'?" Wolf's gruff voice inquired from behind Fox.

With a sense of overpowering confusion and dismay, Fox turned to find Wolf approaching him, hand hovering over his holster, looking as good as new.

What the fuck's going on here?! Fox thought in horror.

Not even waiting for an answer, Fox yanked his blaster pistol out of its holster, bringing it to bear on Wolf's head and firing.

The blaster kicked just slightly as the red blaster bolt seared out and struck Wolf's head, upon which it promptly exploded in a gushing splash of red.

Wolf's headless body fell to the ground without a word.

"What the fuck indeed?" The StarWolf leader called out to him, appearing from the shadows at the end of the room.

His mouth parched with dread, Fox's jaw dropped again, and he found he couldn't even lift his blaster. Instead, he just ran for the stairs, sprinting as fast as he could as he saw another Wolf O'Donnell materialize and give pursuit of him.

Fox's feet hit the stairs and he began to ascend, completely ignoring his muscles' appeals for him to slow down or his lungs' pleas for air, concerned only with escaping his immortal enemy.

I think I've got it all figured out, Fox thought to himself frantically, now convinced that he heard the footsteps of four Wolf O'Donnells following him.

I thought it was all in my head, maybe that I was completely losing my mind, but this I can at least make sense of. Now that I think of it, it's always made sense.

Wolf's not one man. He's an army.

Andross always was good at biotechnology. He probably wanted to make sure that he'd always have a StarWolf Team to count on. He probably made a whole production line of Wolf O'Donnell clones. Maybe he cloned Leon and some of the others, too.

How else do you explain it?

Fox reached a landing on the stairs, turning around, looking back and wishing he hadn't.

Following behind him by maybe five seconds or less was what looked to be about ten Wolf O'Donnells, their jaws dripping with saliva as they snarled and growled at him, working their way up the stairs.

Fox fired one shot, then another from his blaster, each time hitting a Wolf, each time watching them fall into a pool of their own blood.

And each time, the pursuing entourage of Wolfs only seemed to get bigger and bigger.

Letting out a short yell of panic, Fox took off up the stairs once again, praying that he could reach the doors at the end and that they'd be strong enough to hold back the legions of Wolfs.

Maybe there's always been more than one of him. Maybe he kept a bunch of clones after Andross died. Maybe I've never even met the original Wolf.

Fox's lungs burned, he felt like he was going to vomit them up any second if he didn't slow down. His chest ached as his heart jack-hammered in his chest and his legs hurt to the point that he thought they might fall off.

But still, he ran ever more; too afraid of what might happen should he stop. Fox turned another corner in the stairs, and saw far ahead at the top of the long flight the large pair of doors that marked his salvation. He sped up the stairs, disobedient of his body's pleas, to the soundtrack of dozens of pissed, slobbering Wolfs snarling and growling after him.

After all, how could one guy do all of the stuff they say he's done? How could one guy always find us and expect us, no matter what we did to catch him by surprise? How else can you explain that insane way that he jumps right into a fight, no matter what the odds, and always comes out on top? How many times have I shot that psycho out of the sky, only to have him staring me down again after what seems like no time at all? How can one guy die again and again?

Fox reached the large doors, gripping the handle of one and pulling as hard as he could, hearing it screech and groan in reluctance, eventually opening up just enough for Fox to squeeze through. Once on the other side, he pulled the door closed with all of his might as his eyes tried to adjust to the bright sunlight.

Fox turned around, only to freeze in shock.

Standing there, not a hundred feet from him, was Wolf O'Donnell.

There was something different about this one. It was the way he carried himself, the way he seemed almost lazily confident and waiting for him, the very Wolf-ish way that he crossed his arms as he leaned against a broken pillar that told Fox that this, without a doubt, was the genuine article.

Wait. Who am I kidding? Fox thought, There's only one Wolf O'Donnell.

The space that they were in was some sort of rooftop garden, the sun beating down on them and on the grass-covered dirt and stone paths. In the center of the space was a single stone path that led up to a rather ceremonious looking altar with a series of pillars holding a roof up over it. Lining both sides of the path appeared to be multiple pillars as well, however these were for the most part collapsed or cracked, littering the rooftop space amongst various large slabs of white stone.

The wind blew warmly and quietly as Fox and Wolf stared each other down for a moment, neither of them speaking.

"Now I know it's really you," Fox stated simply, "Regardless of how many of you I saw back there…"

Wolf's eyebrow raised and his smile curled in amusement.

"You saw me? Damn, you are pathetic, McCloud," Wolf smirked.

At that point, Fox noticed a pair of thin, flashlight-sized silver cylinders in Wolf's hand. They didn't look fat enough to be grenades, which Fox was glad for, since he wasn't quite ready to fight yet. He wanted answers first.

"What did you dope me with, Wolf?" Fox demanded.

Wolf gave off a short chuckle, then answered, "It's called Dalianide. It's supposed ta' make it so your dreams, memories, and everyday thoughts kinda' all melt together and loosen your grip on reality. Leon uses it ta' torture folks. It usually makes people go completely nuts and commit suicide, or it turns their brains ta' mush. I gave ya' a small enough dose not ta' kill ya', just enough ta' wear ya' down."

Fox felt like he was going to be sick with disgust at Wolf, the only thing worse than his revulsion being his anger at the whole thing.

"Wear me down for what?" Fox interrogated.

"A showdown, McCloud," Wolf smirked, "You an' me."

With that, Wolf tossed one of the cylinders in Fox's direction, which landed at his feet. Fox picked it up, seeing a button and a focusing lens, getting the general idea and pointing it upwards before thumbing the activation button.

A high-pitched hiss announced the plasma sword's activation as a four-foot blade of blue plasma extended from the device's end.

Wolf pressed the button on his as well, a blue plasma blade growing outward with lethal beauty.

Fuming, upset over what he'd been through just for Wolf's sick amusement, Fox wouldn't be satisfied with just what Wolf had told him.

"Wolf," Fox commanded, "What the fuck was this all about?!"

"To prove one thing, McCloud. Somethin' I told ya' years ago:" Wolf growled, "You're good, but I'm better."

"You…" Fox snarled, "…BASTARD!"

A violent battle cry erupted from Fox as he burst forward in seething anger, slashing at Wolf with the plasma sword, watching as Wolf put up his blade in a prepared block. The plasma swords collided with a crackling of energy as the two nemesis pushed against each other's sword.

"Do you have any idea what you've put me through?!" Fox bellowed.

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I'll bet it was hell an' then some," Wolf chuckled.

Wolf gave a shove of strength against Fox, pushing him backwards and delivering a harsh kick to Fox's stomach that sent him backwards into one of the broken pillars.

As he came to a rough stop against the pillar, his gaze drifted over towards the edge of the roof, which featured no ledge or guardrail to speak of. An unlucky person would not know that they'd fallen off of the building until they hit the ground.

Fox's attention returned to the fight as Wolf let out a roar and leapt forwards through the air with a broad slice of his plasma sword.

Fox dove forward, rolling to the side as Wolf's plasma blade sliced all the way through the pillar, making a perfectly straight cut through at least two feet of pure ferroconcrete.

The pillar slid down the edge of Wolf's cut, hitting the ground with the thump of a felled tree.

Wolf whirled around and thrust towards Fox's still crouched form, his plasma blade growing by a few inches as it stabbed through the air. Fox brought his plasma blade up, batting Wolf's sword away as he shot up to his feet.

Fox brought the plasma sword back around for a cut that would've separated Wolf from everything above his stomach, only to have it intercepted by a well-timed parry from Wolf, who then summersaulted backwards, tossing his plasma sword from his right to his left and drawing his pistol.

Fox dove to the left as Wolf's pistol barked, spitting out a massive glob of green blaster bolt, which disintegrated in a green sizzle and a scorch mark on one of the stone paths.

Fox mirrored Wolf's move, swapping hands with his sword and whipping out his pistol and firing, unleashing a stream of red blaster bolts that rained down on Wolf as he tried to dodge.

After giving off one or two yelps of shock and pain in response to being grazed by blaster bolts, Fox saw Wolf press a button on his belt with his elbow.

Fox was taken totally aback as a pinkish-white energy field enveloped Wolf, which then absorbed two of the blaster bolts and reflected them directly back at Fox.

A surprised Fox had to throw himself backwards, hitting the ground on his back to avoid his own blaster bolts.

Fox leapt up just as the energy field around Wolf disintegrated and he fired another shot from his blaster, the green bolt flashing right over Fox's right ear so close that it singed some of the hairs.

Taking cover behind a pillar, Fox called, "Where'd you learn to build a personal reflector shield?"

" 'Copied it from yours. Your frog friend was sellin' 'em on th' InterLink," Wolf replied flatly, " All's fair in love 'n war."

"Thanks a lot, Slippy," Fox muttered sarcastically.

Fox's anger was only increasing, and he deactivated his plasma sword, putting it in his pocket so that he could have his left hand ready to activate his own reflector.

Two could play at that game.

Without warning, Fox whipped around and fired a single blaster shot, pressing the button to activate his reflector the instant after he pulled the trigger.

There was an electric crackle as a blue energy field surrounded Fox, then another as Wolf's reflector shield activated as well.

The blaster bolt hit Wolf's shield and bounced back to Fox, then hit Fox's shield and bounced back to Wolf. The blaster bolt bounced back and forth twice before impacting Wolf's reflector shield once again and overloading it, sending Wolf flying back with a shower of sparks.

One thing that Wolf probably didn't know about was the limited amount of shots at one time that Slippy's reflector device could handle before the field short-circuited. Any modifications Wolf made to his likely didn't correct this design flaw.

Fox deactivated his reflector, then holstered his blaster and drew the plasma sword once again, charging towards Wolf's stunned form as he lay on the ground.

Just as Fox stabbed the plasma blade into the ground, intending to run Wolf's body through with the energy blade, Wolf rolled across the ground, getting on all fours as Fox's plasma sword melted a small hole in the roof's surface.

Fox was able to pull the plasma sword out of the roof, however he didn't have it ready when Wolf lunged forward, swiping with the bayonet on his blaster pistol.

The steel blade sliced through the upper bicep of Fox's white pilot's jacket, cutting into the flesh underneath and causing Fox to leap backwards, bringing his plasma blade up to guard.

"C'mon! I thought you were angry!" Wolf snapped, "Cut loose! Let's fuck shit up!"

Wolf's taunts just fanned the flames of Fox's rage, bringing to the surface all of the things he'd experienced in the past twenty-four hours.

He'd watched his friends suffer.

He'd been tormented by the psychological scars Krystal's absence left in him.

He'd lost some people he'd loved all over again.

And for what?

After all of that, there was no greater meaning for it all than simply a way for Wolf to get under his skin? Fox had lost every one, essentially everyone important to him, and this past day had made it all the worse because it simply reminded him of the fact that they were almost all gone because of things that he did. Even if he somehow came out on top in this fight with Wolf, who would care? There was no one to go back home to. Fox was all alone.

He didn't care if he lived or died anymore, he just wanted to hurt Wolf; all that Fox wanted was to hurt Wolf in some way, so that maybe he could share some of his own pain with his nemesis.

Fox roared once again and cocked the plasma sword over his shoulder, swinging it hard at Wolf, who brought his plasma blade up to meet it.

The energy blades met with a loud crack, and Wolf stumbled backwards just a bit with the force of Fox's strike.

"I've got NO ONE left, Wolf!!" Fox screamed, slamming his plasma blade into Wolf's once more.

Wolf had to step back a bit, now on the defensive.

"Why couldn't you just let that be revenge enough?!" Fox shouted, putting all of his weight behind his plasma blade as he smashed it into Wolf's block.

"Wasn't I miserable ENOUGH for you?!" Fox demanded, parrying a desperate strike from Wolf away and delivering a solid kick to his enemy's stomach. Wolf flew backwards, stumbling with a smile.

He looked up at Fox, his grin widening.

"There it is!" Wolf laughed, "Let it out! Gimme' all ya' got!"

Their swords clashed together, one of them screaming, the other one laughing as the plasma blades collided.

Fox let out a roar of effort as he shoved Wolf's plasma sword downwards with his own, trapping it near the ground and leaving Wolf's upper body exposed.

As he expected, Wolf began to step away, giving Fox the exact amount of space he required to lift his leg and lash out with a forwards roundhouse kick to Wolf's face.

A gratifying crunch of advanced electronics accompanied Wolf's bellow of pain as he fell backwards, his left hand over his face.

Fox stood back and smirked, watching Wolf steady himself and lower his hand away from his face, only to confirm that Fox's foot had met it's target: Wolf's optical implant, the photoreceptor of which was now completely cracked and useless, rendering Wolf blind in one eye.

Baring his teeth, a look of ferocity spread across his face, Wolf snarled, "Now, that was just bad manners."

Wolf let out a rage-filled howl as he leapt forward, clashing swords with Fox once more.

They continuously smashed their plasma swords together, both on the offensive, both blows merely colliding with enough force to shake both combatant's whole bodies. The air was thick with the sound of plasma blades crossing, like a thunderstorm localized on the roof of the building.

"Here's somethin' ya' got ta' think of, McCloud," Wolf growled as their plasma swords met once again with a tempestuous crack, "If you've been seein' things all this time, how do you know any a' this is real?"

Fox paused, frozen with a look of dread on his face.

Wolf was right.

Maybe this was another vision.

Maybe Fox had been dreaming the whole time.

Fox's moment of hesitation was all that Wolf required, violently kicking Fox in the chest and sending him to the ground within a few feet of the edge of the roof.

As soon as he hit the ground, Wolf delivered a tremendous blow to the plasma sword in Fox's unprepared hands, knocking it out of his grip and sending it tumbling off of the edge of the building.

There was a moment of shock as Fox realized that Wolf had beaten him, and he looked into the bluish white plasma blade as Wolf brought it to bear on Fox's neck.

"Checkmate, McCloud," Wolf said with a grin.

Fox exhaled, closed his eyes, then looked back up at Wolf.

Perhaps this was his destiny.

"Go ahead. Do it," Fox said solemnly, "I don't care anymore."

Wolf appeared to pause, taken aback, and he cocked his head to one side in curiosity, raising his eyebrow.

"You don't care if you die?" Wolf inquired quietly.

Fox sighed the tired sigh of one that has lived too long with nothing to show for it.

"I should've died… so many times before. Who would care if I lived?" Fox breathed.

Wolf looked stunned, insulted, almost hurt even.

"In all a' our years, the one thing I never thought I could break was your spirit," Wolf stated in a soulful, vaguely surprised tone, then his voice deepened into a growl of outrage, "Who cares about your friends; I care whether you live or die! Who am I supposed to measure up to? Who's gonna' keep me on my toes? Who am I gonna' fight?!"

"Figure something out," Fox replied coldly.

Wolf's remaining eye narrowed, and his mouth contorted into a grimace of disgust.

"You're not Fox McCloud. You're his carcass," Wolf hissed, "You're what's left of 'im, and it makes me sick."

With that, Wolf deactivated the beam sword, tossing it over the edge of the roof and drawing his blaster pistol.

He looked at Fox as though he had some sort of infectious disease.

"I thought this was gonna' be a pleasure and an honor," Wolf spat, "Instead, I'm doin' this out a' spite, for makin' me go ta' so much trouble all a' this time for nothin'. I can't stand the sight a' you."

Fox sniffed forlornly, looking up at Wolf with empty eyes.

"That makes two of us," Fox replied with a sad smile.

Wolf gave a loathing scoff, and then took aim at Fox's head.

Fox closed his eyes and waited for what would come.

His only wish was that wherever he went, his father would be there, too.

"Hey Wolfie!" a smooth, tough voice called, "Don't 'cha know 'bout not kickin' a guy when he's down?!"

There was the sound of two blaster shots, definitely not the sound of Wolf's blaster, then the sound of someone gasping in surprise and several footsteps running away.

It was then that Fox heard the sound of Wolf's blaster, however not nearly as close as he expected to hear it.

Fox opened his eyes to see Wolf angrily running for cover as a pair of blue blaster bolts blasted into the ground from the sky above, taking shelter behind a nearby pillar.

At that point, a lanky blue falcon in an auburn brown flight suit and a white pilot's jacket dropped from the sky in front of Fox, landing gracefully with a standard issue Cornerian ArmsCor EE-40 blaster pistol in his right hand. Giving one last cold look in the direction that Wolf had retreated, Falco Lombardi holstered his blaster and gave an arrogant avian smirk.

"Thought I smelled space trash…" Falco remarked.

"…Falco…?" Fox whispered, unsure.

Falco's smirk softened into more of a warm smile of friendship as his cold eyes glanced over at Fox.

"Hey, Foxie," Falco greeted, "That makes twice I gotta come in 'n save ya' from tha' bad guy. Now get off your ass 'n let's put this mutt down."

Falco offered a feathered hand to help Fox up, which Fox regarded with caution and fear.

No, it can't be Falco. Falco's gone.

It was just another hallucination. Why was this happening? Why didn't Wolf just put him out of his misery?

Falco looked at Fox with concern, as if to ask what was wrong.

Before he could, however, a green blaster bolt seared through the air, nearly taking Falco's head off before he ducked, then Wolf leapt out of hiding with his blaster drawn.

"Fox McCloud ain't available now, but if you'd like to leave a message, that'd be just fine…" Wolf growled menacingly, laughing slightly.

Falco's beak returned to it's default smirk position.

"Yeah, I gotta' message for ya':" Falco said, quickly drawing his pistol and aiming it at Wolf, "How ya' doin'?"

Falco's blaster screeched, shooting out four shots as Wolf dove back behind the pillars, darting between them as he talked.

"Put a bird an' a wolf in a room together an' guess which one's walkin' out alive…" Wolf threatened.

"I dunno, I'd say the one that's still got depth perception's got an advantage," Falco shrugged coolly, "Tell ya' what, Wolfie, I'll do ya' a favor: I'll do my best ta' stay on tha' side ya' can still see outta."

"I've always wondered:" Wolf called out, "How many bones am I gonna have to break to shut that beak a' yours up?"

"Ya' talkin' 'bout my bones, Wolfie…" Falco inquired, "Or yours?"

Wolf laughed bitterly.

"You always were all talk, Falco", Wolf called out.

Falco approached the series of pillars closely, then taunted, "Ya' gonna bark all day, little dog, or ya' gonna bite?"

With an animal growl, Wolf leapt out from behind the pillars, lunging at Falco with his claws bared.

Falco hopped backwards, lashing out with a kick towards Wolf's side. Wolf caught Falco's foot in his other hand, then wrapped both hands around Falco's boot and swung hard, throwing Falco off his feet, through the air, and across the roof.

Falco landed on his feet, drawing his pistol just as Wolf drew his. The two of them got into a strafing run across the roof, letting off shots at each other that mostly came close, but not close enough.

Wolf leapt to the ground, firing a shot at the top of one of the broken pillars near where Falco was.

The green blaster bolt from Wolf's pistol disintegrated, toppling the pillar over towards Falco, who dove through the air and rolled along the ground, just barely missing the falling pillar as it crashed into the roof.

From his prostrate position on the roof, Wolf fired another blaster shot at Falco, and Fox watched as Falco leapt high into the air, flipping before landing gracefully on the ground. Wolf rose to his feet, holstering his firearm and running towards the blue falcon.

His blaster still drawn, Falco had no qualms about squeezing off one or two shots at Wolf as he closed in, throwing the pistol back into it's holster just as Wolf got too close for comfort. Wolf let out a feral snarl as he swiped at Falco's head with his clawed fingers, each time just barely missing the falcon as he dodged from side to side. Abruptly in the middle of Wolf's swipe-fest, Falco grabbed both of Wolf's wrists, yanked him forwards and kneed him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of Wolf with a rough yelp. As Wolf's head jerked forward, so did Falco's, head butting him in the skull, inciting a growl of pain from Wolf. Finally, Falco delivered a forceful kick to Wolf's sternum, throwing him backwards against a pillar.

Falco sprinted forwards to catch Wolf whilst he was still off guard, apparently misjudging Wolf's reaction time and receiving a vicious drop-kick that connected cleanly with Falco's left arm, producing a distinctive squawk.

Falco stumbled backwards and Wolf came forward, sending he heel of his palm straight into Falco's beak, knocking the bird's head back along with his body.

As Falco tripped backwards, his wing-like left hand sliced through the air in a beautiful knifehand strike directly to the right side of Wolf's neck, denying any opportunities for him to continue his assault. Falco and Wolf were able to recover at nearly the same time, Falco running towards Wolf confidently, flipping through the air and slapping the back of Wolf's head as he sailed over top of him.

Wolf caught Falco just as he landed, elbowing him hard in the chest, then delivering a swift knee to Falco's side.

Falco let out a scream as the spike on Wolf's kneepads gouged into his ribs, leaving a nicely-sized stab wound for him to worry about bleeding from. Angrily, Falco slugged Wolf in the jaw with a hard right hook, leaping backwards through the air to avoid more close quarters combat with Wolf.

"Quit hoppin' around, ya' little bastard," Wolf snarled.

"We all got our talents, Wolfie," Falco explained condescendingly, "Birds fly, 'n dogs drool profusely. I'd say it's a trade-off."

"Stop jumpin' the fuck around before I make ya'," Wolf barked.

"Come 'n get it, doggy," Falco taunted, whistling.

Wolf's snarl deepened as he dashed for Falco, who leapt into the air with a laugh.

A devious look on his face, Wolf hopped up into the air as Falco sailed over him, grabbing two of Falco's massive blue tail feathers and yanking hard.

Falco let out a humiliating, high pitched scream as Wolf plucked out two of the three foot long blue feathers and began to laugh to himself, rubbing his thumb up and down the pilfered plumage as he gathered them up in his hands.

Falco landed in a rage, his intense eyes glaring with a passionate, fiery hate.

"You plucked my fuckin' FEATHERS?!" Falco roared indignantly, "You motherfuckin' dickless piece 'a shit!!"

Wolf let out a mighty laugh and waved the feathers through the air before placing them on the ground and stomping on them hard. Falco only looked more pissed, if that was even possible.

"Aww, did I hurt ya'?" Wolf grinned.

"Not as much as I'm gonna hurt you!" Falco snapped, diving forward.

Wolf struck at Falco first as he approached, swiping out with the claws on his left hand. Falco caught Wolf's hand in his left hand and jerked Wolf forward, punching him right in the forehead, stunning him. Wolf let out a yelp of pain and surprise, but obviously wasn't prepared for Falco's feathered fingers to grip onto the strap of Wolf's broken optical implant and rip it out of his eye socket.

Wolf let out a bloodcurdling screech as the implant was torn free of his eye, exposing the empty, dark hole where his left eye used to be.

Not stopping there, Falco tossed the implant aside, grabbed both sides of Wolf's vest for grip, and proceeded to viciously peck at Wolf's face, aiming for his empty eye socket and hitting his mark several times. Several screams of agony erupted from Wolf's mouth as Falco's beak pounded mercilessly into his face, repeatedly letting loose an onslaught of pain.

"How ya' like that, 'cha fuckin' fuzzball?! Huh?! Whaddaya think 'a that?!" Falco yelled as he pecked into Wolf's face.

With surprising speed, Wolf's hand squeezed tight on Falco's neck, digging his sharp claws into Falco's flesh and drawing blood whilst simultaneously strangling him. Wolf then swept Falco's feet out from under him and slammed the bird to the ground; wrapping both hands tight around his neck as Falco's beak came wide open in a violent hiss.

"I think…" Wolf snarled, blood oozing from his eye socket and from various other points around his face, "I'm gonna fix me some parrot soup tonight…"

Wolf's jaws opened up and he felt the animal inside of him taking over, telling him to eat this piece of shit bird alive.

As Fox sat there, watching Falco in the grips of Wolf, he thought of how different this was from the other hallucinations he'd had. In all of the other ones, Fox was somehow helpless to stop the events.

Now, however, he had complete control of his body.

Conceivably, if he wanted to, couldn't he interfere with the vision?

Then maybe that meant that all of this wasn't a hallucination.

His father's words came back to him for some reason: You can't let fear control you, Fox... Nothing hurts more than losing the people close to you, but that's a part of life. That's why you've always got to have people that you trust and love, so that they can catch you when you fall.

Maybe Falco really did come back for him.

Maybe he could save his friend right now.

Maybe it wasn't too late for Fox, either.

As Wolf's maw opened, ready to devour Falco, Fox leapt up to his feet and dashed forwards, tightening his right hand into a fist as he got closer and closer.

Since Wolf's left side, his blind side, was the side facing Fox, it came as a total surprise attack when Fox's fist slammed right into Wolf's bottom jaw, knocking free a tooth and throwing him off of Falco.

A shocked Wolf slowly collected himself on the floor, trying to get up as Fox looked back at his prostrate friend, this time extending his hand to help him up.

Quietly, Falco took Fox's hand, getting quickly to his feet.

"'Was wonderin' when ya' were gonna wake the fuck up," Falco sighed.

They looked at each other, then looked straight ahead, where Wolf now stood, bleeding from his eye socket, face and mouth, looking tired and bloodied, and with nowhere to run.

He stared at them with his one working eye filled with animal rage and hate, but at the same time he looked willing to accept what he knew they would do.

With cold precision, both Fox and Falco drew their blaster pistols and leveled them at Wolf.

The few moments that they took to line up their sights perfectly could've possibly changed the course of their lives, and possibly ended the life of Wolf O'Donnell.

Before those few moments were over, however, there was the distinctive, loud rumbling sound of a pair of G-diffusers working on a vertical take-off protocol, and then a pair of VenCom B-35 Wolfen star fighters rose up to the level of the roof, their laser cannons armed and ready. At the helm of one Wolfen was a maniacal chameleon with a triangular head, and at the other was a self-absorbed black cat with a white scar below his eye.

All three of them looked stunned to see the two star fighters, Wolf possibly being the most shocked as he looked behind himself to see the hovering ships.

When his head turned around to face Fox and Falco, however, he wore the cruel, devious grin that Wolf O'Donnell was known for. Without another word, as if daring Fox and Falco to take their shots, Wolf sprinted to the edge of the roof and leapt through the air, wrapping his arms around one of the wings of Leon Powalski's Wolfen, pulling himself and making a perch on the wing.

Fox and Falco looked at each other quickly, knowing what would be coming next, and both of them saw the neighboring building separated by a rather wide alleyway as the only means of escape. They both took off running just as Wolf O'Donnell's triumphant laughter began to sound. Fox and Falco leapt through the air, coming in for a rough landing on the neighboring building just as the barking of numerous high-powered laser cannons filled the air, and dozens of laser bolts slammed into the roof of the building, engulfing it in explosions.

Fox and Falco put their arms over their heads to shield themselves as the explosions began to dissipate, and with a mournful screaming a pair of Wolfen star fighters sailed over their heads, carrying a single stowaway.

Riding atop Leon's Wolfen, Wolf tried to ignore the pain of his injuries, regardless of the extent to which they hurt. He carefully pulled out the small spare comlink unit he kept in his pocket for emergencies, slipping it into his ear and turning it on. It automatically picked up the Wolfen's frequency.

"Wolf!" Leon cried, "Are you alright?!"

"I will be," Wolf growled, "Just take it easy 'til you drop me off at my Wolfen. What the hell are ya' guys doing here?"

"You're the boss, remember Wolf?" Leon said, "Can't exactly have StarWolf without you. If we let you die, what'll we do for fun?"

"I just came because I hate the bird," Panther purred, "You know I wouldn't pass up the chance to take a shot at him."

Wolf detected the undercurrent of affection in their voices, and to his surprise there didn't seem to be anything fake about it. It sounded like, underneath their statements, they had genuinely cared for his wellbeing. It was this new discovery, rather than his near-defeat, that Wolf focused on as his compatriots flew him back to his ship.

Both Fox and Falco looked up in awe as the Wolfens hovered out of view, and then they both let out massive exhalations of relief.

They sat there for a moment, catching their breath, and sharing a silence together as sweaty, bleeding brothers in arms.

When Fox finally had the breath to speak, he came right out and said to Falco, "I…didn't think you'd be coming back. I thought you didn't want to see me again."

That warm smile appeared on Falco's face again as he glanced over at Fox once more.

"I kept an eye on tha' StarFox frequency, in case ya' eva' thought a' sayin' ya' sorry or somethin'," Falco shrugged, "'N, well, that's tha' two good things 'bout us birds. We change our minds easily."

Fox gave a soft chuckle.

"What's the second?" Fox inquired.

Falco's smile deepened, "No matta' how far we fly, we always find our way home."

A warm feeling rose up in Fox's chest, and he found that he just couldn't take it anymore, embracing Falco like he would his brother and sobbing slightly into his neck, "Oh, please, God. Please be real. Please let this be real…"

Falco looked shocked for a moment, then slowly but surely allowed a feathered hand to rest on Fox's back and words of comfort emanate from his beak.

"It's gonna be alright, okay, Foxie?" Falco whispered, "Ya' gonna be alright, man."

Fox had never thought he'd be so happy to hear those words.

As Fox McCloud reconciled with his wing mate rescuer, and the engine trails of three Wolfen star fighters shooting off into space seared across the heavens, the mid-day sun gleamed warmly down upon the planet of Temple.

---

Did you really think I'd leave you hanging there? To give a proper sense of pacing and closure, I've written a true conclusion to this story as the next chapter. Don't worry, it's super short. Also, as an added bonus, those of you that review and send me a private message requesting it, I'll send you a copy of this chapter's original introduction, which was written from Falco's point of view. Eventually, I decided that, since Falco isn't really a central character, regardless of his importance, I could just include his thoughts and feelings in the dream sequence. After watching The Lion King and hearing Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son", I decided that it would be a bit more heart wrenching to include Fox's dream about his father as the introduction. I thought if it was more of an abstract dream and thought sequence that bled into and combined with the actual narrative rather than the soliloquies of the previous two chapters, it was symbolic of the way Fox's thoughts were disorganized and chaotic at the time, as if he was loosing his sense of identity in his own mind. But whatever. Go on and finish this story.