As the rest of the pilots file into the war room, James is on his comm with Jermi. "Yea… good… oh… mmmm, alright Jermi. Try to get yourself out of there for a few days. That way if they come back, you aren't there for them. Thanks again." He looks up from his call and sees everyone in attendance, including somewhat pessimistic Gazelle and Clash, an eager to get started Jody, and a still visibly annoying Zoda. Since the Galaxy Dogs are only a four man squad, there aren't enough chairs for everyone, so Zoda and Gazelle stand up in the back, while McCloud stands at the front, turning on his big monitor on the wall.
Before he can begin talking, he gets a message on his communicator. It's from the GSF, and since Jody just informed them that the rescued pilots will be helping him with the mission, he won't be paid for their bounties until they're returned home. James is slightly annoyed, but he gets it. Maybe some of these guys can be convinced to go home early if things get a little too hot. He turns on the monitor, and up pops a picture of all thirty F-Zero pilots, in order to help get a grasp on who they're going for.
"Alright guys, here's the scoop. The Galaxy Dogs are getting paid a quarter of a billion space credits for every pilot rescued and returned home safely. There's supposedly somewhere between 16 and 21 pilots who're missing. Obviously, we know about Black Shadow and Blood Falcon." He takes a laser pointer and pings the two with it, putting big red borders around their pictures. "And there's also the seven of us." He hits the seven racers in the room on the screen, graying their pictures out.
"The rest of these guys are either captured or on the run with no knowledge of their whereabouts. The only ones I know for sure are captured are Samurai Goroh, Super Arrow, Billy, and Bio Rex. After that, I got outta there, and started looking for you guys. I would also have to imagine that Captain Falcon is captured as well, since he was at the finish line, and those two have the biggest history together, so they had to come to blows, and either Falcon won and this situation would already be over or he got captured."
"He might've got away, and is in hiding now", Monique pipes in. "Maybe he's keeping a low profile until he can make a run for Shadow, like we are."
"Possibly, but then Shadow would be more worried about him than us. So, I'm gonna assume he got captured", James replies. "Now then, Jody. Let's pull up that datachip and see what alternate us figured out."
Jody pulls the chip from her pocket and sets it in the middle of the table, pressing the button on the side of it that makes a projection of the galactic supercluster appear in front of them with several markers attached to various points in space. A lot of these markers are red. James zooms in on them by grabbing the hologram and pulling his hands apart to make them bigger and reveal what their past selves found out. The red markers show dead ends and places not to go; places they already investigated and found nothing. There are about thirty of these red markers littering the galaxy, making it seem like they've tried so many places in the many timelines they've been doing this in, and have largely failed. In the entire expanse of the cosmos, there are only three green markers. Three lonely specks of green in a vast ocean of black and red. And if what Phoenix said is true, they've had four attempts at this, and this is all they had to show for it. A mountain of failed leads, and only the scantest supply of hope imaginable.
James touches the first of the green markers and finds a space station orbiting the planet Zorok in the Fishbowl Galaxy. Zorok is a planet in the latter stages of terraforming; an atmosphere is in the process of being made, so the people working on it mostly live on the space station when they aren't in the field.
"You think he's being imprisoned there?", Jack asks.
James shakes his head no. "That'd be a waste of the doctor's talents. My bet is that Shadow is funding this whole terraformation as part of his criminal enterprises, and they're probably just using him as a doctor. In fact, I think that's why Shadow specifically targeted us. F-Zero racers represent the smartest, strongest, most resourceful beings in the galaxy. It makes sense that he'd want to use us for what we're good at, instead of just locking us up in some dungeon somewhere."
Dr. Clash adds his two cents to the situation. "Terraforming a planet as large as Zorok is incredibly dangerous, and having a doctor as prolific as Stewart would be a huge boon for him. Stewart's the reason Gazelle's still with us today." Gazelle quietly nods in the corner, and agrees that Stewart had a crucial hand in saving his life. Whatever that life is now, at least.
The second marker takes the racers to the outer edge of the galaxy to the planet Cryton. Jody instantly gets up from her seat to examine the location of the marker, and her voice is full of dread. "I know that place. It's the home of Don Genie…", she says ominously. A few of the pilots are surprised by this, with some others being confused. "Don Genie is the head of an intergalactic smuggling ring. Organic life, money, drugs, guns, gambling equipment, you name it, he's gotten it where it doesn't belong. We keep busting him, but he's built up such a fortune that he just keeps buying his way out of jail. He's the absolute worst kind of person, and I don't even want to know what he's doing with one of our racers."
James touches the marker to reveal who's unlucky enough to be there, and it's Antonio Guster. This actually gives Jody a bit of relief, as Guster is one tough customer. Guster's a former bounty hunting partner of Samurai Goroh, who was betrayed by him and has been spending the last several years desperately trying to get revenge on Goroh. Genie is most certainly dangerous, but Guster's one of the few people on the roster who won't be in danger from interacting with him.
The last marker is actually relatively close by, but it's in a section of the galaxy that's barely been explored. The planet of Porix is home to some of the most dangerous life in the galaxy, with huge wild beasts roaming free for billions of years to evolve into some of the craziest monstrosities mankind has ever seen. And it's there that Beastman is being stashed. Beastman is a wild beast hunter who specializes in protecting people from ravenous beasts that may encroach into an expanding human territory. It's obvious what he's doing there, but why would Shadow put him there?
Zoda walks up to the table and examines the planet. "He's building a base there", he says out of the blue. "Think about it, if you don't want people to come snooping around your base, what better place to put it then somewhere that's otherwise completely inhospitable? My guess is he's clearing out a place in the dense forest just big enough for an outpost and is going to use it as a pit stop or something like that for his empire."
James leans against the wall and tries to put himself in Shadow's head. "Mmmmm, he's terraforming a planet, setting up deals with Don Genie, and building outposts in the middle of nowhere. This feels like someone making their own trading empire, but if that was the case, Genie would snuff that out in the cradle. Maybe some kind of partnership is in the cards?"
Jack raises his hand and looks like he's pieced together something in his head. James looks a bit confused, but calls on him. "Roger Buster and Draq do deliveries across the galaxy. Michael Chain has a legion of gang members at his call to do grunt work. Falcon, Goroh, and Guster are three of the best bounty hunters in the universe and can get rid of anyone in their way. They're building a smuggling network across the cosmos, in coordination with Genie, and are doing this to make their investment they're getting from the F-Zero Grand Prix prize money grow even more!", he says with a big smile.
The rest of the racers look around at each other and nod in agreement. "Jack…", James says softly, "keep doing stuff like that."
"Alright, so this is great and all, but where do we go first?", Monique asks. "If we go to any of these places, there's no guarantee that they'll be there after we rescue someone else."
Jody responds, "Well, not necessarily. Whatever Don Genie is doing with Guster, I doubt Shadow will just go 'hey I need to move this guy somewhere else, sorry about whatever you're doing with him', so he's safe to leave for a bit. And kinda the same story for Beastman. Porix has been empty of sentient life for literally forever. The only person in the galaxy qualified to clear that place out is Beastman. But conversely, Dr. Stewart could absolutely be moved to a different space station or trading post or slave camp or whatever else Shadow runs. I think the best option is to go for Dr. Stewart."
"I think you're right, Jody", James says, "but I also think that that place is going to be the most dangerous option of the three. It's going to be incredibly well-defended, and Stewart could be literally anywhere on that station. We're gonna need to know every inch of that structure before we can make any kind of attempt to get Stewart out of there."
Before the discussion can go on any further, James gets another call from Jermi. "James, those guys know I duped them. They bugged my office and heard the call I sent you. I…" Suddenly there's a banging on the airlock door. The call gets very quiet for a second before suddenly Black Shadow breaks in. Jermi tries to reason with the menacingly large bull-helmeted figure, but without saying a word, he grabs him by the throat, rips off his communicator, and carries him to the airlock. Jermi fights to break his grip, but it's no use, his hold on the man's throat is locked tight. He tosses him into the airlock and closes the door on him. Jermi pounds on the door to be let back in, but Shadow, without breaking eye contact with the man, opens the space-side door of the airlock, letting him, in Zoda's words, explore space without a helmet. His body freezes in the cold expanse of outer space, and his now frozen, lifeless body drifts away from the toll station.
The call is still going on and the racers hear every bit of it. Some of them are stunned, others look devastated, Zoda just nods knowing that this is what Shadow's capable of. Shadow walks over to the communicator he ripped away from Jermi and talks into it. "I know you heard that, racers. I'm sure you're already millions of lightyears away from me, but know this. You will know no safety. You will know no rest. Sooner or later, I will track you all down like the cur that you are, and you will either join my army… or you'll join your little friend Jermi. The choice is yours."
The call hangs up, and the war room is silent. James looks around the room at his fellow racers. "This… is what we're up against. This is what Black Shadow is capable of. He's a cold, heartless monster, not just some goofball who may race us a little dirty. He's going to try to either enslave us or kill us. I'll do my best to make sure you're all safe, but I can't guarantee your safety. If you want out now, I can put you on the bus we rode in on and escort you back home. No judgment, no questions asked." Everyone looks around at one another, and they all shake their heads.
"I'm not letting that monster keep my Sugarbear for any longer than I have to. I'm going to save him. End of discussion."
"If we go back home, he'll still try to hunt us down. My fans will be in danger from him. That's not gonna happen."
"These racers are all that I've known that haven't left me. I know some of them don't consider us a brotherhood, but that's what they are to me."
"I'm not going to let him show me up, and take my title as the most feared man in the supercluster. I'll end his reign of terror, and start my own."
"I've sat in the shadows for the last 50 years and let everyone else be a hero. I'll give you all I have to offer."
"Black Shadow is this galaxy's most wanted criminal, and I will bring him to justice."
"Then let's get out of here before the old ox gets here."
