I took a break from all of the seriousness that my writing had acquired. How, you might ask? I wrote a short, humorous interview with Mr. Resetti and posted it in the Super Smash Bros. category. Go check it out if you're looking for something other than this big ole' piece of junk.

Again, I urge you all to give reviews on this story… I feel like my writing has improved a bit, but for all I know it could still have bugs or flaws. I appreciate you reading this, and I hope it's at least decent.

So this is where we'll get a bit more intense. There might be too many characters involved later in the plot, but I might as well give it a shot and see what I can come up with. See how you like it.

CHAPTER 13: An Unexpected Relapse

A pair of green eyes flittered open as light seeped its way underneath two heavy eyelids.

A soft, low-pitched groan was emitted shortly after the irises adjusted to the bright flashes. Then, a furry head lifted itself up just a few inches involuntarily as its mind tried to scramble together thoughts and prioritize which one needed to be addressed primarily for whatever reason as they spun out of control in a dreamy blur within the mind's subconscious. Once the cluttered plethora of ideas calmed down over the next few seconds, a muffled voice was beginning to be made out from the apparent confusion… Its clarity was revealed, and its tone belonged to someone who was seemingly boisterous, rude, and impish.

"What the hell have I been smokin' lately? I'm tellin' ya right now, there ain't any way something as ridiculous as that could have gone down, General!"

"Falco… Listen. I know it seems like a load of BS, but I'll tell the truth to you as many times as you want to hear it. Once your teammates are awake, we'll start the interrogating." A second, much softer voice was added after the first… one that sounded tired and aged.

"What, are we criminals?! Did I lose my fuckin' memory after getting involved in a bunch of crime shit?!"

"Calm yourself down, Lombardi. No, you haven't done anything that labels you a criminal or an accomplice to one."

"Okay, General…" An audible grunt was heard as the first voice appeared to come closer. "Whatever. Hey, the lazy bum leader's finally up…"

Clearer images were being brought into view, and it was no longer a canvas of pixilated splotches of color. The picture's details sharpened as the pupils continued to dilate and repeatedly adjust until finally a familiar blue bird was standing above, arms crossed and with a flustered expression on his face.

"Wakey, wakey, Fox. C'mon… Let's get this dumb thing over with so we can kick it and buy a couple of drinks somewhere."

The vulpine clutched his forehead with his palm. When Fox looked down, he noticed that he was dressed in a casual T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. He had also been sprawled out unconsciously over a leather couch for what seemed to have been a while.

Ugh… Is this different now than what was going on before?

When he took a look around the room, his mind recognized the setting as a place he had visited countless times before. There was that same leather couch, the cluttered desk, the blinds that were always closed, the walkie-talkie that blared out incomprehensible gibberish at high volume every thirty seconds…

There's the General. That was Falco a short while ago…

When he sat up a bit more, he looked over to his right and noticed a sleeping figure in the furniture opposite to his. He was dressed in the same casual clothing, but he had a long weapon attached to his belt which hung out to the side. His body was covered in snow-white fur, except for his long hair that fell in smooth lavender locks around his face, reaching almost down to his shoulders. A thin tail, white and equally as furry as the rest of his body, flickered and swished about behind him and occasionally wrapped around the sheath of his katana. Fox could see a few of his facial features and also noticed that underneath his clothes he was quite developed…

Oh, wait. His name is… uh, let's see… Cloud? Blue? Bright?

He was definitely a lynx. Fox could gather that much. Once he finally opened a groggy eye after stirring in his slumber enough to try and exit his dream realm, the vulpine immediately felt a rush of memories flood through as he stared into the shining topaz iris that revealed itself. It was all beginning to come back… Fox knew that amnesia was not a very enjoyable experience a majority of the time, but he was almost overwhelmed and overcome with a powerful headache from being able to rapidly recollect the incredible scenes from his most recent and extremely dangerous expedition into Zoness.

Yup, that's Sky… Gray Sky. Apparently, he just woke up… and Falco's already moving around…

Let's see, first we landed on the shore in these weird suits. They were expensive, but impenetrable. I remember that much. Then, we made a little hike across the plains and hills. The landscape was really dark and fogged up with a bunch of unknown stuff. After that, we found a gaping hole… Of course, we dove in and dug deeply into the ground, despite how hot it got while we descended. That's when…

Fox's eyes widened. He stood up from his chair and looked up at the ceiling with dilated pupils, realizing the true mystery of his current situation.

That's when we discovered that asteroid. What it apparently did was lodge itself into the crust and stay put deeply within the planet for who knows how long… How it ended up there without the population being able to tell is a bit confusing to me, but we all made it down there… in Lucifer's Den. Sky starting levitating in midair and had a spiritual seizure because of some incredible force that was coming from the rock.

As Sky was collecting his bearings and conversing with Peppy and Falco for a few minutes, Fox was wrapping his brain and trying to connect the dots without much luck.

My voice got through to Sky. He froze up, gathered his strength, and delivered the blow, which caused this odd chain of events to happen as a result… but what exactly went down? Where did we all go?

"You were transferred… into the… d-deep realm of the subconscious."

Fox perked his ears up. Along came Sky, making his way over towards the vulpine sluggishly and yet again answering one of his mental questions. Fox was just about to ask another when he took a look at the lynx and tilted his head out of concern.

"Hey, Sky… You, uh, doin' alright? Are you hurt?"

Sky grabbed hold of one of the arms of the leather couch and slumped down against its backside, yawning and chuckling lightly while replying in the same weakened tone, "Oh, not at all. Thank you kindly for your… your concern, but I am… s-simply exhausted. Once the three of… of us had escaped into another dimension, my body was drained of its… physical ability and m-mental capacity, but only temporarily."

"So we basically just took a seriously long nap, and now we're getting sleep hangovers?"

"I would suspect that's the right idea…" Sky ran his palm very slowly and soothingly through his hair and let it fall as he continued, "By the grace of Mudarduh, our bodily essences were transferred back to this location. I cannot tell you how, but… That is certainly m-most… fortunate, don't you agree?"

"Damn straight. We've got a lot of luck on our side, eh?"

The two exchanged pleasant laughs, which were interrupted by the clearing of Falco's throat and his following remark, "The General wants to talk to all three of us… Come on over once you're done doing whatever, cool?"

Fox and Sky stood up and sat in chairs set up in front of Peppy's desk. He sat solemnly with his fingers laced together under his nose, and he fixed each team member with a piercing stare… one seemingly filled with skepticism and discontent.

"Fox, have you figured it out yet?" The old hare inquired gravely.

"Um, n… no. I don't exactly know what this question means," Fox replied honestly. He looked over at Falco, who merely sighed and stared at the ground with some sort of defeated and depressed countenance.

"Very well… I'm terribly sorry to inform you of this, and I hope it causes you no more disturbance than it does me."

Did Slippy or Krystal die or something? That's the worst possible-

"Zoness exploded."

He blinked. That was it… He just sat there and blinked. As his mind was switching gears and trying to process things faster, he only furrowed his eyebrows and blinked repeatedly at the General for a minute or two before whispering, "… what?"

"The Lylat's been thrown into yet another giant calamity. The equilibrium which the system was previously enjoying is now shot to hell and so out of balance that every other star and planet has been knocked a light-year out of its own orbit."

Fox's forehead broke out into sweat. As he listened to the words come out of Peppy's mouth, they pierced through him like a thousand sharpened needles and caused his breathing rate to rapidly increase. He was pierced again and again as the flustered hare's voice steadily grew with intensity as well as the glare coming from his eyes. Fox backed away a few inches in his chair while Peppy began to stand up, putting his paws on his desk in front of the trio.

"The people are inconsolable. You know the estimate for how long it would take for this whole thing to blow over and for the system to reenter equilibrium? Decades! The expenses are gigantic, and there's not a damn thing that the leaders and higher ups of each planet can do about it right now! For a planet to just explode like that… Unthinkable! The threat of imminent destruction crawls towards us at a much faster pace now, and the only thing we'll be able to do is fall back on our asses and watch another apocalypse unfold!"

Fox stuttered in a shaky tone while hunching himself over and clutching his head, "G-General, I'm so s-"

"You're SORRY, is that it?!" Peppy reached across and clutched the distraught vulpine's left shoulder, "Did you three do anything that could have caused this? The Mercury was scanning endlessly for you, all over the planet's vicinity, its former coordinates, everywhere within its orbit in Triton! And you were nowhere to be found! There was nothing but sheer panic, and I thought you'd been obliterated by that damned miniature supernova!"

An audible and painful moan was heard from Fox as he squinted his eyes shut and gripped his head harder, pulling the fur behind his ears while unsuccessfully attempting to endure the General's words that severely pelted his skull and marked him with mental bruises. Peppy gave both of his shoulders a final shake as he leaned over and raised his tone one more decibel.

"I order you to tell me right now, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE IN THERE?!"

Fox fell out of his chair, moaning and grunting through bared teeth as he covered his face and the rest of his head with his arms. He was on his side, writhing in immense pain, rocking back and forth quickly, kicking out with both legs, letting tears slip out of his eyes; his teammates backed away slowly and watched in wide-eyed horror. Peppy kept his paws on his desk while remaining standing and watching the vulpine's spectacle, blinking in confusion. Falco stood up and leaned down a bit, reaching out a wing as if to touch Fox and try to calm him down, but he hesitated for a moment and froze.

I didn't realize that the truth would hit him so hard…

The avian's mind whirled and pirouetted. Because of a scathing reprimand like this, Fox buckled over and started to convulse? Wait, that couldn't have been right… Normally, his leader would have stood tall, perhaps slumping his shoulders shamefully while being scolded. Something was amiss. As if on cue, Sky shot him a worried glance as though he knew what had transpired from Fox. Even though the lynx was also trembling from fear in reaction to Fox's sudden seizure, he still forced himself to maintain mental stability, and his telepathic ability allowed him to transfer to Falco mental images and emotions that were leaking from the vulpine in the form of an unseen, potent aura. The avian then had a flashback…

After closing his eyes, in his mind he was teleported to the time when he and Fox were headed to Aquas to see Slippy as they were engulfed in that horrible space vortex, which spit them out on Div Sablast after causing pandemonium inside the Great Fox. In that hellish blizzard, while Fox was waking up, Falco told him an important detail which he hadn't even considered since that day long ago: the vulpine's head collided with a large projectile object in midair, but unbeknownst to his teammate, he also received a very serious concussion from impact.

Th… That's right! He suffered from head trauma!

Falco now clearly remembered telling Fox about all of the horrible accidents that had happened while they were sucked into the black matter and teleported to another galaxy. Fox had never treated his own condition prior to teleporting back to the Lylat and traveling to Zoness during that fateful investigation. Because he hadn't been feeling any sort of searing pain since the crash landing, and he had apparently gotten used to bearing the trauma and continuing onward regardless while believing it was only a simple headache, nobody had ever questioned him.

The avian snapped his eyes open and stared dumbfounded at Sky, who was kneeling next to the convulsing vulpine at that current moment. Falco decided on impulse to do something he never would have even thought of doing while in the presence of a military leader as honorable as his own comrade, but he knew what needed to be done. Taking a sharp deep breath and shaking his head to snap out of his own fear, he slapped both wings down on the table and countered Peppy's fearsome glare. The next words that came out of Falco's beak were what he hoped to be the last words he would ever have to yell out at him.

"GENERAL! You need to get your head straight and realize what we've been through first before you do somethin' like THAT to one of YOUR best men, damn it!" He pointed a feather furiously at Fox while looking at Peppy, who had fallen back in his seat out of shock and had leaned back while gripping the arms of his chair.

Sky interrupted immediately after Falco finished his first sentence and spoke out, "His condition is worsening! He's becoming delirious!"

Using that as a cue for his next thought, the furious avian continued, "Do you have any remote idea what he's talkin' about, Sir? Fox smashed his head against a heavy flying object when we crash landed on Div Sablast! It was YOU who just made his condition a lot worse than it should have been! While we were trudgin' our way through a literal hell in Zoness, a LONG time after he got injured, we came across a giant object that was brimmin' with black matter, and Sky here had to do the only thing he could have done to put an end to it since the fucker was takin' over his body and dissolving it into a bunch of particles!"

At this point, Peppy was genuinely on edge with his bloodshot eyes wide open and he slumped down in his chair even more when Falco put his snarling beak closer to his nose and lowered his tone to a fierce growl.

"Did you think we meant to cause that explosion? Do you think we could have helped that? Our bodies were about to melt into magma, and Sky did the best thing he could think of to save us all! In just one moment, we were all weakened to the point of dying, and the only thing we can remember after that was somehow ending up in the same place we fuckin' started at! Now, General, with all due respect…" He suddenly steepened his volume again and bellowed out the final phrase, "Why don't you BACK THE HELL OFF AND CALL AN AMBULANCE?!"

Falco paused for a few seconds while his heaving chest eased to a calmer breathing rate. He calmed down rather quickly and stood back up, plastering a normal expression on his face again as he put both of his wings down at his sides and took one last look down at his leader, whose painful breathing and moaning hadn't ceased since he began his dressing down. Peppy narrowed his eyes at the avian, then exhaled sharply and shakily dialed the emergency number, barking out an order for the medics to make their way to his office. Afterwards, he sat back in a normal position and rubbed in between his eyes with two fingers while waiting for medical assistance. The hare, the avian, and the lynx were utterly silent and solemn for a good few minutes.

At long last, a few doctors and nurses with a stretcher burst in through the General's automatic door and sedated Fox before lifting him gently and carrying him out as quickly as they had arrived, all without making any sort of loud noise or commotion. Falco and Sky were getting ready to follow the medics when they heard Peppy speak out from behind, making them turn their heads and stop.

"Wait…"

Sky answered this time, "Yes, General?"

"Please, just… come back and sit down for one more moment. I have one last thing to mention before you go."

The two sat back down in their chairs in front of Peppy's desk in the absence of Fox. The hare appeared to have calmed down when he spoke again with a much softer tone.

"I must apologize about earlier. I'll personally go visit him in the hospital and talk to him when he recovers… It shouldn't be long, since he'll be treated by experts in Corneria's medical branch. Anyways, you were right, Lombardi. I shouldn't have lost my nerve, and furthermore, I should have run a few diagnostics on the team before I sent you all out. I'll take the blame for this one."

Falco said nothing and only nodded once. Sky glanced over at the avian, then did the same and looked back at Peppy, "We understand, Sir. Um… is there anything else?"

"Hmm…" Peppy let out another long pent up breath of air and leaned back in his chair, "I'm afraid you might not like this next bit of info."

Falco raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side suspiciously.

"It's about Wolf O'Donnell and his gang."

Both team members leaned forward simultaneously, but it was Falco who exclaimed first, "Come again?"

"Aye," the General confirmed. "Remember the black matter you mentioned earlier? A team of Aquas scientists detected an unknown substance nearby that had a chemical structure very similar to the gas that leaked out of Zoness's crust before you began your mission. They found it near Corneria, more specifically in the Meteo asteroid belt."

"I should have expected those lowlifes to be involved in this!" Falco growled and crossed his arms before finishing the thought. "So, General… if I'm piecin' this together properly, that means that they would have traced it all the way from Triton star system to-"

"Sargasso. You guessed correctly."

"Alright… I'll find out for sure when we bust in there and give those bastards a hard lesson, but it sounds to me like they somehow caused that ominous space object to bury itself that deeply into Zoness, and then the next part of their grand scheme was to lure us in for the kill. If we survived that, they would obviously frame us for the planet's destruction and flee back to base with their tails between their legs. I think it's a possibility, considering that they had a lot of methods to try and put us to shame multiple times when the Anglar Wars were going on."

"We don't know for sure, but just rest up for now… We'll leave it up to you to investigate once the team has made a full recovery." Peppy adjusted his glasses and concluded, "Our most important aim right now is to get to the bottom of this foreign mystery and stop it before it tears the Lylat apart."

Sky took an uneasy breath and looked over at Falco, who had already gotten up from his chair with his feathers in his pockets and walked over towards the door. The lynx adjusted his belt with his weapon at his side and got up quickly to follow behind. Before exiting, he turned around and gave the General a final nod and a brief farewell.

"Sir, I'm… sorry about all of this. Perhaps if my new teammates had never found me, I wouldn't have brought another disaster upon you all…"

Peppy gave a slight chuckle and dismissed the lynx's apology, "Heh… Don't worry about it. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel. I have faith in you three, and even though we don't have much to fight back with, we'll still back you up 100% and make things right."

"Thank you," Sky replied. He began to step through the threshold, but then hesitated and added after a few seconds, "I just… don't understand something…"

"What is it, my boy?"

"Why were you not angry at me? I was the one who caused the reaction that led to Zoness's demise. Fox was trying to help his teammates all this time."

Unexpectedly, the hare faintly smiled and nodded once, "Now that I understand what went wrong, I realize I shouldn't have been frustrated with any of you three. Of course, it saddens me immensely, but that's the way fate planned it to be. It's actually quite similar to how you met Fox and Falco."

The lynx thought for a few seconds before smiling back, "Yes… I see what you mean. Thanks again, Sir. I won't let you down."

Sky gave a quick salute before exiting out into the hallway to find Falco, leaving Peppy alone to his own thoughts for a while. He sat in silence, staring at the door and twiddling his thumbs. The walkie-talkie was unusually quiet, and because of this, he allowed himself to be at ease for the time being. He laughed quietly to himself, thinking of how quickly Sky had become acquainted with and taken under the wing of two complete strangers.

It's all pretty interesting… Destiny works in mysterious ways.

…