The last 20 years would have given Corneria City plenty of time to rebuild, if the last 20 years weren't full of random space invasions every few years.
As it stood, the city was rebuilt to the point of housing back its population. What no one wanted to say was it was rebuilt to house its surviving population. After every invasion from those years, there wasn't enough time in between to fully grow back the missing populace from all the civilian casualties during that time. If there was time, the story ended in two ways:
After one fateful day, a child never saw their parents again. Or, after one fateful day, a mother and father came home to a bloody nest.
Either way, plenty of empty bombed-out homes to hide in. Some even didn't have the bodies still stuck in there.
Alessia wasn't sure if she was followed, either by the police or by her supposed assassin. What she was sure of was her throat being parched by all the running she did, and her body being exhausted from the sudden escape. She didn't have much time in the hospital to gather what things she needed, so she went for the essentials and then booked it when she heard the sirens from her hospital room's window.
She swore she could still hear those sirens, but either they were for different medical emergencies, or they were the police closing in on her.
Everything had gone wrong. EVERYTHING. Whatever secret plans to help her had gone out the window, same as that poor woman. Veyana may have been cold in the end, but she was still warm and inviting at the beginning, and genuinely cared for Alessia up until that last moment.
Now, she was just cold again. At least until the incinerators would warm her.
Stars, when was her humor starting to be this dark? Was living in a hospital getting to her that much? Maybe that empath thing could feel some desperation from less-than-lucky people who truly didn't know if they were going to live the next day? Alex mentioned during one of her card games that she had thought about becoming a combat medic once but her mother forbade it as the only thing she couldn't do in the Army, because as her old woman put it, "she was strong enough to dodge death, but not to fight it".
Maybe she was right. Alessia certainly couldn't handle her own death, that's why she got brought back and others are now dying because of her.
No, no. Snap out of it. Sirens are getting closer, and she didn't get this far brooding about her lot. She had to keep moving.
She quickly scanned her surroundings, hoping for something to hide in if her hunch about the sirens was correct. It was the old market district of Mobius County, one of the last few places in Corneria City that was slated to be fixed yet barely any work had been done. Old shops still held up their proud signs, the wear and tear only starting to show from nature, though some blast marks and buildings that were nothing but rubble would suggest this was some random Venomian pilot's target before they moved on. She could spot a few scavengers darting out of her vision, not wanting themselves to get caught by those sirens behind her.
One of the scavengers looked less scared, making eye contact with her for a moment just to see who she was, before going into a doorway. Walking closer out of curiosity, Alessia heard faint music coming from out of the building, a two-story duplex that seemed one story now on account of the upper floor being nothing but rubble.
One step closer, however, she heard the faint sound of machinery coming from the roof. She froze in place, her eyes looking up to scan for anything in the rubble, and she finally noticed the sentry gun camouflaged under the destroyed brick-and-mortar nests on top of the building. A red light blinked at the tip of the barrel before it switched off, and another quiet murmur of machinery echoed in the dead landscape.
Alessia, still frozen in place, suddenly let go of the breath she was holding in, expecting it to be taken from her at any moment. With the sentry gun making no more movement or noise, her sense of curiosity took over again, and she slowly walked to the same door the scavenger took to get inside.
Heading inside, the building had a small tunnel illuminated by a strange purple light, and another set of doors, though this one was guarded by a single burly German Shepherd, imposing in his stance and eyes as he scanned Alessia head to paws.
"You here for trade or rest?" he asked in a gravelly tone.
"I... I guess rest? I don't have anything to trade, really..." Alessia answered back, feeling even more naked even though she was fully clothed.
The dog harrumphed. "You got any weapons on you?"
"Please just be some lost girl and make my job easy enough."
"Just the clothes on my back, heh," Alessia nervously chuckled, feeling his remark of being a 'lost girl' was more on the muzzle than anything else.
"Alright, nothing to confiscate then. Rules are no fights inside, you take them outside if you need to. We ain't some seedy wild frontier tavern, people do business here and they'd like their business uninterrupted, so don't fight or you're thrown out. Beds are five credits, your own private walls and rooms are fifty to five hundred depending on choice, don't sleep on the floor or you're thrown out. Finally, argue with the bar three times over pricing and you're thrown out. Do I make myself clear?"
Several moments of previous rabble-rousers being thrown out of the place replayed in the dog's mind.
"Crystal clear, don't fool around and pay my dues," Alessia responded, trying not to imagine herself among the myriad of folks being thrown out as they were in the dog's head.
"Hmph. Makes my job easy enough. Come on in, world's your oyster if you're gonna be good, " the dog said, opening the door next to him for Alessia to enter. Too focused on the dog and the sudden weird slang, she didn't notice what was inside to greet her, until he shut the door back on her face. With a strange low twang of some stringed instrument she couldn't remember the name of, she turned around to finally see the scene.
She half expected it to be the shanty town frontier bar the bouncer mentioned it would not be, but the dog was fully right. Instead, it was a full-blown restaurant centered around a bar, with waiters in proper formal serving attire attending to otherwise vagabond-looking scavs and scavengers. Strange holo-curtains shielded tables set on the walls of the establishment, but the middle tables seemed to be just tables for these scavengers to eat.
Regaining her wits, Alessia began walking towards the bar in the center of the room, hoping that she didn't attract too much attention from all her staring and wonderment. Even as an amnesiac, she felt that something like this was not at all mentioned or possibly even known to people in the repaired parts of Corneria City. Darting her eyes, she spotted a gray tabby cat who looked wizened beyond his years, which would be the perfect person to ask and get her bearings on the situation.
Saddling up to a seat at the bar, seeing no one seated next to her for some space, her presence alone garnered a look from the old bartender. Alessia hoped she still didn't have that "lost girl" look.
"You lost, girl?" the bartender asked.
Dammit.
"... Am I that obvious?" Alessia muttered, feeling a slight bit of embarrassment at being automatically guessed.
"Not many folks with clean and untattered clothes walk into here, so that's usually the first sign," the bartender explained, shuffling his position closer to Alessia. "The second one was the sentry guns outside didn't see any weapons or damn near anythin' on yous, like you're just asking to get hit by a stray desperate hound around here. You're on the wrong side of town, Missy."
"Yeah well, can't exactly go back the way I came, so..." Alessia said, rolling her eyes as she thought about the sirens that were behind her before she found this bar.
"Ahh, now I'm starting to see the full picture. You do know though if any authorities come in, we gotta give you to them fair and square, right? As long as they got the warrants and such. Some of them blue and whites like to come here just in their off time, cuz usually they get swarmed by requests and complaints from city folk anywhere else. We're a neutral zone, so unless they got the actual law behind them, they can't do anythin' to ours until we see them papers."
Alessia couldn't help but sigh.
Take things one step at a time, she said to herself, holding up her jade ring to show to Fox.
Alessia involuntarily shook, widening her eyes for a brief second. She hesitated to speak, then felt words come out of her mouth, even when she didn't know where they came from in her mind. "Let's take things one step at a time."
"Yeah! Life choice I can get behind! No need to worry about several futures if you can just work towards the one you want!" the bartender exclaimed with a smug smile, before tightening his lips back to a neutral expression and walking over to the drink nozzles of the bar. "Buuuuut I'm assuming you ain't here for some philosophy, and I'm assuming you ain't got nothing but the clothes on your back. All I can do for you is water until you find something worth trading or killing for."
Alessia involuntarily reflexed at hearing the latter phrase, quickly shuffling her tail for a brief moment.
"Huh, and here I was thinking poor little thing couldn't hurt a fly."
He noticed. He absolutely noticed her small reaction. Oh stars, he's gotta know. Alessia froze up in her seat as the bartender furrowed his brow.
"... Well, if that ain't some shit," the tabby cat said, staring at the she-wolf. "Wish I could say it gets easier with the next, but that's only if you already were in the business. Sorry to hear."
... She didn't even say anything for him to hear.
"Welp, if the cops ain't grabbed you yet seeing as we're close to the main city, I'd say you've got a bit to run until you can get off-world. After that, universe is your hog."
Strange way to say "it's your life", but then again, someone else saying the world is your oyster also didn't make sense. Must just be a quirk of the employees. Alessia passed over the bartender's last words, preferring to focus on the hidden fact. "Were they supposed to grab me before or after I ran out of breath right in front of here?" she asked.
"Before. They keep a few hidden eyes on the edges of their civilization and ours, so unless you're real lucky to have dodged them on the way here, you absolutely should have been grabbed. Whatever you did, it ain't been noticed yet."
Alessia highly doubted that. "No, I can't be that lucky. It was literally all in public, in front of a hospital for crying out loud!"
The bartender regarded her with a confused look. "What the hell? If it was in public you should have been caught by now."
"Shh! News is on!" someone else quickly ran up to the two, a small white fox in tattered clothes that looked like he didn't even reach his teen years yet. Alessia's attention quickly turned to the TV holo-screen that popped up next to the bartender, surprising even him at the suddenness.
"—ampant speculation abounds, but the police chief's words remain unchanged. It was a lifelike mannequin that fell onto the main plaza of First Corneria General Hospital today that caused several grievances with onlookers believing it was an actual body. Several witnesses reported that they heard screaming coming from the supposed mannequin, but other witnesses believe the opposite. With multiple different stories all clashing with each other, it's become one nightmare of paperwork after another for both our boys and girls in the field and for the Blue and Whites at their work."
An auburn husky woman appeared on screen, giving the latest in Cornerian news. Scrawled across the bottom margins were the words "Fake body scares hospital visitors?" along with several other scrawls. None of the others were important to Alessia, however, as she fixated on the one that mattered the most.
They... haven't said anything about Veyana?
"... It was a real body, wasn't it?" the tabby bartender piped up next to Alessia, watching the same newsreel to her side.
"I... I don't..." Alessia stuttered over her words.
"You've already said plenty enough, and as I said, we ain't do anything until we see papers. Though it looks like the police themselves don't want out that someone DIED, now do they?" the tabby said.
This was getting too much, too fast. The mantra of "one step at a time" replayed in her mind, and Alessia had to quickly get to the bottom of this.
Willing up a sense of bravado and confidence in herself, Alessia took a deep breath before she pointed at the bartender, "OK, look. I'm assuming you don't have the credentials to run a restaurant like this one because everyone knows this is a Bar with No Name scenario. So I'll tell my story seeing as I can bring down yours if you betray me."
"Sounds about right," the tabby replied, nonplussed to her accusation.
"I pushed someone off the top floor of that hospital. Doctor Veyana. She was helping me, but..." Alessia quickly caught herself, "There was this whole thing, and I accidentally shoved her out of a window hard. She definitely fell and she was definitely screaming. So what the FUCK are the police saying she doesn't even exist?!"
Alessia raised her arms up to prove her point, but felt a dozen confused and angry eyes staring at her for momentarily breaking the peace.
The tabby shrugged, keeping a neutral posture and expression as he just went to clean more glasses. "Sounds like someone up top is trying to cover it. Really well, by the sounds of the journalists accepting the cover story being new ones compared to the folk I saw last week.
Alessia stared in slightly offended confusion, "Wha—what do you mean? Who's covering a whole freaking murder of a top-notch doctor in broad daylight?!"
THUD. A loud smack echoed through Alessia's side of the bar, coming from the tabby bartender's hand swinging down to catch her attention. "Now listen here, I don't know why the cops aren't caring, same as I don't know why you are caring! Folks around here would kill for a chance like yours just to slip away after the fact, so why don't you head on out and back to your cushy apartment, and leave the rest of us REAL reprobates alone? Either grab some water and calm the 'ell down, or I'm getting Briggs out there to throw you out!"
Alessia stood rigid again, feeling her claws suddenly grip the ends of the bar table in fear. The longer she went on about her increasingly confusing situation, the longer she was making more enemies.
A small jolt of consciousness rumbled through her arms, as she forced herself to breathe in and relax her posture. She took a few more deep breaths before barely whispering, "Can I just have that water now?"
The tabby cat did little more than grunt, taking a random glass and filling it with the flavorless clear liquid. The glass slid from his counter and stopped right in front of Alessia's place on the bar, belaying a sense of skill far more incredible than some dingy shanty town bartender would be.
... Ruined another potential friend, Alessia. Great freaking job, me.
"—nd the Star Fox crew are now off-planet, taking another contract to help our military finish the last of the Andross rebel forces. The loss of their team member hasn't taken the wind out of their sails one bit, Tom."
With nothing else to occupy her time after losing her potential friend in the bartender, Alessia kept an ear open back to the TV.
"I don't know about that, Shelly. Everyone knows KRYSTAL and Fox McCloud were close, they were practically the next celebrity couple off the record for how much the paparazzi followed them! And if local rumors are true, Mister McCloud may be thinking of disbanding the team entirely after they are done with their current contract!"
WAIT. THAT'S ME.
Alessia turned a lazy eye up to the TV, on a whim. The bottom margins, quickly glossing over the hospital news, now read "FUNERAL PROCEEDINGS DONE FOR KRYSTAL: FALLEN STAR FOX MEMBER", accompanied with a picture of...
Of...
An azure-blue vixen in a purple flight suit, with a tiara on top of her head, her hair cut short in the front but flowing in the back with a few braided bangs on the side, and a strange collar wrapped around the base of her neck as part of her flight suit.
Alessia felt her heart drop. The sounds of the bar and the TV faded away, as her hyperfocus on the image tuned out everything else. It was her, the girl in the mirror right before Veyana got killed.
Krystal was dead. Is dead. She was dead. She is dead. But she is alive, Krystal is alive and so is Alessia but Alessia should be dead as Krystal should be dead and she should be dead and I should be dead and—
I am dead. And I am alive.
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I found myself seated at a bar, one of those old frontier space colony ones that looked only just as seedy as the customers that used it. A sudden jolt of pain struck my head, and I began to rub my temples as I tried to get my bearings. How did I get here? Did I randomly fall asleep while on a mission?
A grey tabby cat was polishing a glass next to me, and I could sense that he wanted to keep his eyes off of me. Why? Did I end up bothering him with my sleep? Perhaps I should wash up, and get my wits fully up before I end up accosted by some rogue and causing a scene.
"Pardon me, sir, but do you have a washroom nearby?" I asked the barkeep. Before he answered me, he did something strange. He finally met his eyes towards mine, and the only emotion I could sense from him was utter confusion, his incredulous expression matching.
"Now what the 'ell you changing your accent up for? Are ya goin insane right now?" He asked back. I was taken aback, feeling my own confusion and wondering what I had done to make the barkeep now so defensive. Did I accidentally imbibe something and had spoken to him in my old tone?
I know Fox said he liked my old tone but he had been training me in the Cornerian accent. And I'm fully aware I have an even older tone whenever I drink strong spirits, that one always seems to make Slippy laugh.
"I—I'm sorry?" I apologized in hesitation. "I was just asking for a bathroom or washroom?"
The tabby cat grumbled something, now more annoyed than confused at me, and tilted his head over to a hallway next to us. I waited to hear him talk, but he continued wiping his glasses, the same ones that he'd been wiping since I first saw him, oddly enough.
He does not want to talk to me anymore, does he?
Taking his cue, for what a grunt and a shake of his head a cue is, I got up out of my seat and began walking towards the washroom. At least, I thought I was walking. It felt strange to be on my legs, as if I had suddenly grown two inches and needed to swing my knees just a little more in order to keep my balance.
By the goddess, what did I drink?
Heading inside, the hallway itself seemed to be filled with doors to multiple one-occupant washrooms, with no sex or gender denotation to say who gets which. I chose the closest one near me and was pleasantly surprised to see that despite the seedier look of the bar, its own bathrooms seem to be well kept and clean, with the tiles bright white and the sink and toilet areas having no marks or stains whatsoever.
Not to say that I'm picky, just that it definitely beats a hole in the ground and a river nearby.
My first thought was to the sink, and luckily enough cold water did come out once I turned it on. Splashing it on my eyes, I tried to will myself to wake up more, and to get my brain going.
I closed my eyes and took a minute to recap what happened. I was on a mission with Fox going down into Fortuna, we were looking for a supposed new leader of the Andross rebels. I was separated from him after an unusually heavy storm knocked our Arwings out of the sky, and comms were somehow down so I couldn't call to him. And then...
And then, that was it. Nothing else in my mind could crawl or reach its way out to explain what had happened after Fortuna, or why I was here.
This isn't good. Why can't I remember what happened? If I can't remember, I can't obviously debrief Fox and the team once they can figure out where to pick me up, and that's if they know I came down here. Was it Fox that left me here? Bit strange to leave me heaved on a bar stool chair, and the cat would at least have mentioned something if Fox told him to keep me there.
No. I think something worse happened to me.
Alright, calm down girl. Your mind is racing, but if your flight suit is still on then no one tried to drug you and get you out of-
My flight suit is not on.
I initially washed myself as an instinct rather than deliberately, so I didn't think of looking at myself in the mirror. But when I opened my eyes again to look at the old dingy mirror, I saw someone wearing a tan sleeveless coat, with the same color undershirt, and belted jeans covering their lower half with some simple laced shoes. And this was in the mirror.
I saw a wolf staring back at me, silver-grey furred with bright blue eyes, a messy long white-grey mane fumbling around its neck and a bit over its eyes. And this was in the mirror.
I am looking in the mirror, and the mirror is seeing a wolf. The mirror is looking at me, and she is looking at Krystal.
What is the wolf's name?
Alessia.
I gripped the edges of the sink, my breath halting in fear as I felt my eyes widen. I don't know if that was my voice that said it or if it was a voice within my mind, but I knew the wolf's name from somewhere, and that somewhere was within me.
I am way, way, WAY over my head with whatever this mission was.
You're telling me, I was just trying to relax for a brief moment, and then all of a sudden my body gets hijacked by a dead fucking ghost. Can I have it back?