Chapter 2 - Fowl's Rush In
For Fox, Slippy, and Krystal, the next thirty seconds were a blur. When Peppy hit the floor and passed away, they stood silently, unbelievable. For Falco, it was a blur too, but one of motion. In a flash, he was sprinting towards the Arwing bay, body pitched forward and arms extended in a V behind him for top speed, slowing only slightly to stomp on the pedal to open the door to the bridge. The pedal system allowed him to keep his arms behind him, preserving his momentum.
He used the long corridor up to the aircraft hangar to build his momentum to breakneck speeds, pausing only to activate the hangar door via foot pedal, and shooting through like a laser beam. He easily located his ship, the Sky Claw, in part thanks to its distinctive design. Like Falco, the Sky Claw perfectly resembled a metal pheasant, complete with long wings with protrusions meant to mimic feathers at the end.
He angled his impressive momentum upwards and hurled himself up and into the open cockpit, lithe as a bird. The smart ladder intended for facilitating cockpit access flashed a safety warning, but Falco drowned out its alarms with the futuristic sound of the Sky Claw's ignition. He didn't bother checking his G-diffuser system. "Ain't no G in space anyhow," he told himself. He didn't even wait for the windshield to close all the way before he floored the accelerator pedal, another of Slippy's innovations.
"Falco! Get your hot head back to the bridge!" Fox was staring up at Falco from his dashboard comm screen, a look in his eyes like he was scolding a pet bird, not an independent adult one. "You're letting your emotions over Peppy's demise get the best of you! Didn't your mother ever teach you that revenge is a dish best served cold?"
"Piss off before you piss ME off!" snarled the independent adult bird, terminating the comm link and slamming his boot even harder on the accelerator, sending feathers flying around his strong head as artificial air whipped at his face like wind before being shielded from him by the sealing of the polyurethane windshield. A flick of a finger feather was all Falco needed to activate the boost, incendiary propulsion rocketing from the rockets of the Sky Caw.
Back on the bridge, Fox squeezed his eyes shut. Although a bystander might mistake his closed-lid expression for one of slumber, Krystal and Slippy knew the look well, and would have identified it instead to be one of composure-seeking, as well as, if they were lucky, plan formulation, but Krystal was focused on the leader of Star Horse, who had just finished making his one demand.
"You what?" the cobalt vixen began, confusion evident on her furry brow. "You want us to give you back…" A consternated pause. "Your son!?" In response, the caramel horse gave a terse nod, with a snort thrown in for emphasis.
"Don't act so surprised." The equine's eyes narrowed, easily visible against the shiny surface of his steel pilot's blinders. "And do not make me repeat myself. I will not be commanded. I will not be made to submit to the desires of anybody in the universe, let alone a ringworm-riddled huntable like you, you vile VULPUS."
The racist term made Krystal's ears twitch in offense. The vulpus turned to Fox to gauge his response, but the orange-bodied leader was only half-listening, his ears that so much resembled leather, triangular satellite dishes folded in two different directions. One ear was indeed twitching with offense, angled expertly toward the new foe, but the other was pointed downward, clearly still hoping to hear Falco's voice from the speaker on his command console.
"Don't take it personally, Fox," shot Krystal reassuringly from her seat to Fox's left ear. "Try to remember, Falco never knew his mother." A nod from Slippy bolstered her statement.
"He's probably never heard that about cold revenge before," agreed the frog. "You know, you're a lot like a mother to him!"
"That's right," Krystal concurred. "Don't fret too much. Falco can hold his own, despite the bugger being a bit shit." She could tell from the faintest whisper of a smirk at the bottom left corner of Fox's stoic muzzle that her message, couched in foreign parlance as it was, had gotten through to him. She was reminded that she truly did love him, even if he really had secretly adopted a horse.
The three horses who had taken Peppy from their lives were still looming on the windshield, seeming very much like three out of four horses of their personal apocalypse. Boomerang was practically braying in cruel laughter, no doubt at Team Star Fox's misfortune. Chica Linda was chuckling in a manner that could be described as "dainty" were it not done through a mouthful of oats, thus rendering it improper. Spirit Donovan, in contrast, was simply staring straight ahead, as if into their midst.
"Just do us all a favor, and give up," piped up Chica Linda, not bothering to first swallow her food, sullying her gender. "I reckon you guys ain't got no hoof to stand on, and you're down your Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO)! Boy howdy, the old geezer really ate floor! I guess it's true what they say: old rabbits die HARD!"
Slippy didn't think it was possible, but at this remark, Boomerang brayed even more harshly than before. The slippery tech genius blinked away an eyeball full of tears, then another, before shouting at the enemy equines in a shaky tone.
"You guys are really starting to tick me off! Maybe you think you're 'all that and a bag of–'"
"Oats?" guessed Chica Linda, finishing the fuming frog's sentence without his consent. Krystal came to his aid with a cutting ethnic burn.
"Oi, you wanker! 'Cheeky Linda' is what they ought to call you now, innit?" She dryly spat.
"Don't make Falco's mistake, you two." It was Fox, eyes now revealed through open eyelids, sharp and confident. "If you get carried away in a war of words, or rush to retaliation, you're letting yourself be controlled like puppets. A eye could see that plain as day."
Krystal was bolstered by her beloved lover and leader's return to the metaphorical fray, but couldn't help correcting his grammatical error.
"Fox! I love you more than a right cuppa, I do, but you simply must remember to use 'an' when a noun begins with a vowel, yeah?" To this, Fox loosed a smirking expression her way, hinting that not all was as it seemed.
"You know how much I love your culture's propensity for proper speech, but I'm not in the habit of making mistakes on the job," he said with a knowing nod. Krystal's jaw opened as if to say something, but her eyes stole her attention away from whatever words had hoped to escape. Across the bridge, Slippy was typing furiously at his computer console, taking his right hand away from the task only intermittently in service of manipulating the computer mouse, zipping the cursor from one menu to another, then to a button, before conjuring menus out of nowhere using a second mouse button to the right of the first. It was all too complex for a tech novice like Krystal to follow, but it was clear that the pond-dweller had heard something in Fox's words that the across-the-pond-dweller had not. Her pupils snapped from Slippy back to Fox, who decided to give her a hint.
"Oh, you know what I'm getting at, don't you?" He bared a friendly fang. To better get the point across, he borrowed a British phrase. "Go on and have a think. Puppets? A eye?"
"Oh!" Krystal lit up in eventual recognition. "You wily fox, you! I could give you a right snog, I could!"
Slippy had taken Fox's suggestive meaning right away. He had made expert use of keyboard and mouse in perfect synergy to activate one of the Great Fox's greatest aces in its hole. Beneath the bridge, a perfect replica of the bridge had been constructed during the renovations that Slippy Toad had undertaken when he had first been added to the roster. Occupying that bridge were incredible, life-like puppets styled after the five members of Team Star Fox. The resemblance was so exact that not even the highest resolution visi-cam in the galaxy could differentiate them from the real thing, and the strings controlling them only occasionally glinted in the air above them as they moved.
As lifelike as their appearance and movements were, however, additional technology was needed to lend the faux Fox and crew the strong personalities that defined them. To make the illusion complete, Slippy had created AI versions of each of their brains, housed in fully three dimensional heads, capable of mimicking their speech, generating convincing catchphrases on the fly, and even answering basic queries. The polygon count of the digital heads was only slightly lower than that of the real things, and the small discrepancy was masked by clever use of liberal edge blurring. By layering a visi-feed of the digital heads over top of a visi-feed of the puppet bridge, the brilliant fly-eater could create a seamless visual effect. Then, by placing a small monitor in front of the bridge's outgoing visi-cam, the visi-feed seen by all participants in the visi-call would no longer reveal the true goings on of the Great Fox's bridge, but in actuality, what would be seen would in fact be the digitally enhanced puppet version.
"Switch visi-feed to puppet bridge on my mark," Fox whispered to Slippy, but Slippy shook his head, flustered.
"We can pull the Falco puppet out of there through the floor, but…" Slippy paused for only a sad moment, "the Peppy puppet is sitting at its console, fit as a fiddle!" Krystal made the implication vocal.
"But if we pull that one out," she slowly began, picking up speed, "Star Horse will notice he's not there anymore, and their suspension of disbelief will be shattered!" Slippy gave a worried nod to her and added one more complication.
"And if the puppet is still there, the AI layer will still activate, so…" Slippy gulped. "The AI Peppy will act like it's alive and well instead of… instead of…" The words caught in his gullet.
"It's OK, Slip," cooed Krystal. "We know. You don't have to say that Peppy is now nothing but a corpse."
"Slippy," said Fox, whispering with commanding force, "how long does it take for our visi-feed to transition over to the fake one?" Slippy's pupils darted around his sockets as he thought.
"Well, it's an almost seamless transition," he replied in low tones. "There's only about seven seconds of static on their end to mask the switch!"
"Then we'll just have to work fast," said Fox, stealthily prying at a panel on the floor beneath him with his boot. He readied his right hand over his leg's blaster holder and glanced about at his comrades. "I'll take care of the Peppy puppet. Krystal, get the Falco puppet, and Slip, you take care of Peppy's AI."
In perfect unison, the two lowest ranked thirds of the assembled crew gave a nod accompanied by an affirmative grunt, and just before Slippy stomped down on the puppet feed's activation pedal, Krystal could swear that Spirit Donovan's mouth let out the slightest of grins.
"Come on, hatches," the determined "Falco"-named fowl yelled to himself over the deafening roar of his own acceleration force back in the Arwing hangar, "open up before I shoot you!" It was an empty threat, he knew. The hatches that kept the Great Fox's hangar bay safe from the harsh airlessness of outer space were magentically sealed for maximum resistance, especially to shooting damage. It didn't matter in the end, as for all their technical innovations, the hatches completely lacked voice recognition AI, and could not parse the bird's crass attempt at coercion. They stubbornly stayed firmly in the closed position, giving the rapidly accelerating bird in a spaceship a light panic attack. The hatch was seemingly growing huge in his keen vision, although he knew that to be merely an illusion of perspective. He knew if it got too large, however, it was a sure sign he was going to crash. Call it an ace pilot's intuition.
"Sh-shit!" Falco spurted out of his chattering beak. He was pretty sure he could hear a certain recently deceased old rabbit tutting him for his use of an expletive, but he didn't have time to mentally fire back with a retort. Something was wrong. He quickly jabbed a feather at his touch screen interface, targeting a bright orange button marked "eject".
To his confusion, however, the button was suddenly obstructed by an incoming comm request. Sh-shit! Falco thought internally, safe from the disapproving ears of the spirits of acquaintances past. His hunter's eye took note of the incoming comm ID: "Boomerang Steedman."
"Sorry, Boomerang," Falco smirk-talked, "guess you'll just have to get back to me." He quickly jabbed a feather at his touch screen interface, perfectly targeting the bright red button marked "reject".
To his confusion, however, the button was suddenly obstructed by an incoming request. It was a boiler plate form auto-sent to all team members in the case of an officer's untimely death. As next in command, Krystal was auto-nominated for the role of Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO). The well-informed plumage-headed pilot didn't need to research her qualifications or positions on key issues, and with Boomerang's comm request still ringing in the background, Falco quickly jabbed a feather at his touch screen interface, perfectly targeting the bright green button marked "elect".
To his confusion, however, the button was suddenly obstructed by an incoming notification. It was an automatic eulogy request in honor of Peppy's recent untimely sacrifice. Falco solemnly, but quickly, jabbed a feather at his touch screen interface, perfectly targeting an honorable purple button marked "respect". Doing so locked the user interface and a twenty-second moment of silence countdown appeared on the screen. The chime of Boomerang's comm request continued, piercing through the respectful silence with pure impudence.
Glancing down the beak of his ship, as well as the beak of his head, Falco could now make out the embossed lily pad design of the SlipTech logo on the individual bolts that comprised the ever-nearing bay doors. "Since I'm a falcon," he thought to himself by way of a low mutter, "I could make out those details from two miles away. At the speed I'm traveling, that gives me only a matter of seconds before–" He cut the mutter short.
After yet another chime, the comm request timed out. A familiar click and whirr signaled to the fretting fowl that the spacecraft's message recording system– a magnetic wound-tape-based invention that Slippy had devised early in his career which had yet to be improved upon, so elegant was its design– had kicked in. Falco knew an audio prompt was now asking Boomerang to record a message, but only once a beep had signaled for him to do so. Ten seconds of respectful silence remained before control would be returned to the pilot, and he was forced to simply wait and listen in real time as Boomerang Steedman's grating voice began to record its message.
"What's wrong, Lombardi?" sing-songed the insufferable horse. "Having technical difficulties?" A nicker most foul, then a sinister twist on a benign idiom: "Seems like somebody closed the barn door before the horses could even leave the stable!" A long loud bray was heard. "Let this be a lesson to ya! This is what you get when you steal somepony's s-" the sentence was cut off abruptly as the message exceeded the length of the wound magnetic tape. Falco knew the tape would require winding in reverse before it could be played again, but he didn't exactly feel like reliving the memory any time soon.
"How the heck did that long-faced asshole know the bay doors weren't working right, and when did I ever tell that probable gelding my last name?" Falco breathed without his vocal cords, careful not to violate the sanctity of the moment of silence now counting down its final seconds. "And what does he think I stole? His ship or something?" He mentally ran down a list of words that begin with "s" in alphabetical order, giving up on the task by "submarine." The literal doors were practically at his metaphorical ones, many seconds before the bird of prey's estimated ETA of arrival.
Just then, the clean steel Arwing bay doors flew open with mere inches to spare, revealing a second set of bay doors, rusted and corrugated. Before Falco could quickly jab a feather at his touch screen interface, perfectly targeting the bright orange button marked "inspect", the dilapidated second set of doors screeched open, and Falco, along with the Sky Claw that was currently encasing him, shot straight into a strange and hauntingly rustic aircraft hanger.
"What is this place? A ship bay…?" wondered Falco, his flabber gasted and his peripherals flooded with motion-blurred imagery of wooden stalls, hay bales, and wound ropes, "...or a frickin' STABLE?" It was then that the sheer number of compounded undiffused artificial G's caught up to his adrenaline-infused nervous system. As his vision blurred to pitch white, Peppy's moment of silence finally ended, but Falco's had only just begun.
