Author's Note: Hey guys, hope you're having a good day, just thought I'd let you know that I don't know when I'll post a new chapter, because as I've probably mentioned, I never really have a lot of time to work on this because of school, and seeing as my spring break is over, you see where I'm going with this? I think you do so I'm just gonna stop talking and get to the chapter.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the story. Games and characters involved belong to Nintendo. NEW cover art by Damian2841 on DeviantArt. All rights reserved.
Enjoy!
Chapter 11: "Egyptian Distress!"
The African sky was mostly empty, mostly empty as there were still flocks of birds, but more importantly, a S.O.R.A transport ship rocketing towards Egypt. Inside was the egg-laying fleet of foot dinosaur, Yoshi, the PSI Powerhouse of Onett, Ness, and the leader of Team Star Fox, Fox McCloud, who was piloting the ship, "How is it that only now we realized that Yoshi is apparently a dinosaur?" The vulpine asked the thirteen year old, who was fidgeting with a yo-yo.
"I don't know, Fox," Replied Ness, "I mean I've been to an underground land full of dinosaurs, then again," The PSI hero looked back at the aforementioned dinosaur, "He doesn't look anything like the dinosaurs I've seen."
"You may have been to a land full of dinosaurs, but I've been to an entire planet full of them." Responded Fox, "But none of the dinosaurs I've seen look like Yoshi, although some, but not all, of the ones I met were friendly like him."
"Man, you're lucky, Fox." Ness told him, to which the Cornerian chuckled.
"The only lucky parts of that were that if I hadn't gone on that mission, not only would I not have made some new friends, not only would a planet had fallen," He told him, "But I also wouldn't have met the love of my life."
Ness sighed and looked out the window with a solemn look, "Yeah, I know how that feels." He sighed. "If I didn't go on my adventure to stop Giygas, not only would my whole universe be gone, but I wouldn't have met the three people that I now call my best friends, and my girlfriend." Ness adopted a look of wistfulness.
His troubled expression didn't go unnoticed, "You okay, kid?" Asked Fox.
"Huh?" The young psychic relocked his eyes with the vulpine, "Y-yeah, just a little homesick is all." He continued, "My parents, my friends and my sister must be worried sick and freaking out right now." He sighed, "I just hope they're okay."
Fox then put the ship on auto pilot and put a reassuring hand on Ness' shoulder, "I know how you feel, Ness," He said, "I'll bet my friends are as worried about me as I am for them." He then gave the boy a warm smile, "But we shouldn't worry, because after we stop Master Hand, we're gonna find a way home." That made Ness smile back, "And we will see our loved ones again."
"Thanks Fox, I needed that." He replied.
"Anytime, kiddo." The Papatoonian held out a fist bump, which the teen accepted. Just then, Yoshi, who stayed quiet in the back and overheard the conversation, walked up to them, smiled and gave a few chirps, "What did he say?"
"He says that he feels us too." The teen psychic translated, "Mario and Luigi are his best friends, his entire race swore to protect them ever since they were just babies, and he'd never forgive himself if something bad happened to them. He also knows that there's a big world out there full of innocent lives, he's got friends that he's worried about not just here, but back home too, but he knows that we still have a job to do, and that once we get through this whole thing," Ness smiled again, "We'll find a way to get home." He looked at Yoshi again, "That IS what you said, right?" Yoshi nodded in confirmation, leading Ness to pat him on his head, causing Fox to smile as well.
"Hey, we all have someone to fight for." He commented, the two smiled brighter at that. The moment unfortunately had to end as the three heard a beeping noise, then felt the whole transport ship shake.
"Who the heck is shooting at us?" Ness asked as Fox took the ship off auto-pilot and retook control. Near them were six jets with Polygon soldiers inside firing lasers at the S.O.R.A transport ship, forcing Fox to try and outmaneuver the blasts.
"Fasten your seatbelts, you two!" The aforementioned vulpine told the teen and dinosaur, who complied, "We've got an aerial dog fight on our hands!" The Polygon jets remained on the S.O.R.A ship's six and fired, in an attempt to shoot them out of the sky, but Fox wasn't going to give them their satisfaction. He reared the ship to dodge the blasts with relative ease, but with the bigger number of jets, it was difficult to return fire. "I can't shake them!" He grunted, then realized something, "Man, now I know how Slippy feels- Ugh!" The ship shook again.
Just then, Ness and Yoshi looked at each other and nodded, having the same idea and unbuckling their seatbelts, "Fox, open the window!" He said as he and Yoshi got up out of their seats and to the back to exit the ship. "We'll cover you!" Fox understood their intention and opened the hatch to the outside, Ness jumped out first and floated out using his psychokinesis and levitated himself up to the jets' windshields, and smiled cheekily, "Hi." Then he got serious, pointed his fingers at two of the jets, and yelled, "Hypnosis!" An energy swirl mesmerized the two soldiers in the two jets, "Shoot each other." The PSI boy commanded them as the hypnotized soldiers did as they were told and shot each other out of the sky to crash into the empty desert below. Ness then saw a missile heading straight for the ship and held up his hand, "Shield!" He manifested a PSI Shield around the transport ship's rear, blocking the missile and making said missile explode on contact.
Yoshi backed Ness up by flutter-jumping onto the jet's (the one that fired the missile) windshield, punching through said windshield, and slurping up the Polygon soldier with his tongue. The soldier came out as an egg, which the dino threw the egg at another jet, which he entangled in his tongue, while Ness wrapped another into a yo-yo and they both swung their respective jets into each other, resulting in a fiery explosion. Yoshi expanded his dragon wings to fly up to Ness to give him a high five. Just then, Fox was able to make the transport ship do one thing while the jets were firing at him as he thought of something a certain elderly rabbit said to him, "Time to do a barrel roll." He said as he spun the ship in a 360 degree revolution to dodge the lasers. He then called Ness and Yoshi, "Guys, you may want to move out of the way." The two did so as Fox pushed a button and dropped a bomb out the back to blow up the last two jets, and it landed resulting in a glorious explosion, leaving nothing but scrap metal in place of the jets.
"Nice one, Fox." Said Ness into his communicator, "I think that was the last of them."
"Thanks," The mercenary replied with a smile, "Meet me down below."
"Copy that."
Suddenly, Fox got a call from Sakurai, "Fox, before you get out of the ship, I just thought I'd let you know that there are some extra weapons in the armory of the transport ship."
The vulpine smirked, "Thanks for letting me know."
"It's no problem. Oh and by the way Fox, I'm pretty sure you did an aileron ro-" Fox shut it off out of the lack of care for what he had to say about the maneuver.
When the Polygon jets started firing at the three, it was mostly due to the fact that they were approaching their seized territory, now that they've been dealt with, the three managed to regroup to the desert below, Fox landed the ship where he got out just as Ness and Yoshi landed gently on the ground, Yoshi's wings disappearing as he landed. "Good job up there, you two." Fox commented, "Also Ness, you can hypnotize people?"
The psychic boy scratched the back of his head sheepishly, "Well, yeah." He said, "But we can talk about that later."
"Agreed." Said Fox as he took out a pair of binoculars and looked through them, "We're here, anyway." He pointed to the great pyramids of Egypt which have been almost completely captured. They could see the citadel where the Polygon soldiers were keeping a lookout for possible intruders and interferences that could and would jeopardize their mission. "I see about fifteen troops watching from all sides, in addition, tanks on the ground and jets airborne." He looked back at his teammates, "To say the least, getting in won't be easy." He then looked back out near an outpost where he saw something that shocked him, "And there's a new problem."
"What new problem?" Asked the PSI warrior as Fox handed him the binoculars, which he looked through to see something that made him grimace, "Are those hostages?!" He saw several tourists and Egyptian citizens forced to sit down, handcuffed. He hands the binoculars back to Fox, "Okay, that's a low blow and a punk move." He scowled as he saw several soldiers keeping the innocents prisoner, with their guns ready in case of resistance.
Yoshi growled, "Grr, raow, rr-rrr, Yoshi rr (Must've rounded them up after they took the place over)."
"Yeah," Said Ness, "That could also be the reason S.O.R.A or the military hasn't done anything yet. They didn't want to risk innocent lives being harmed or worse."
"And by that observation, it looks like a head-on frontal attack isn't gonna work." Said Fox before looking back at his allies, "I don't think I NEED to convince you two that the hostages need to be rescued before we strike at the fortress, right?" The agreeing nods were enough of an answer, "Then we need a distraction."
"How about we set off the fire alarm?" Suggested Ness, somewhat jokingly, making the dinosaur and vulpine turn to him, "Yeah, admittedly, that's a dumb idea."
"Actually, Ness," Fox grinned, "You might be onto something." This surprised the two, "Ness, how big of a firework can you make?"
The slayer of Giygas' response was a confident smirk as two of his fingers ignited.
Everything was going almost perfectly, the aerial team they sent out to strike the enemy aircraft they found on the scanners hasn't reported yet, but considering the enemy hasn't moved since then, they rather foolishly believed they were taken care of or in the process of disposing of what remained. In the meantime, they had orders to continue holding the humans and small anthropomorphic animals captive until they're no longer of use to them. "Air force F-8, come in." The leader of the ground force called but all it heard was static, "F-8, do any of you hear me?" Once again, no reply, "Hmm, this is not to my liking…"
"Interference from an outside hacker?" A Polygon soldier suggested.
"Or maybe they aren't finished with them yet." Another said.
Suddenly, "PK Fire Omega!" A massive psychic fireball shot into the sky and lit it up like a firework on the Fourth of July, receiving their attention.
"What was that?!" One of the soldiers gaped as the explosion died down.
The squad leader got suspicious, "You two will stay with the prisoners." He ordered and then addressed the other Polygon soldiers. "The rest of you, come with me to investigate the source of that blast." The soldiers left the two others behind as they left to find the disturbance in the empty desert, it wasn't far from the citadel. When they got there, they saw an anthropomorphic red fox and a thirteen year old boy in a red and blue hat facing sideways.
"Hey there." Fox said casually, "Just wondering where the rest of the tour group went."
Something about these two felt familiar so the squad leader checked his manifest and noticed the alert for any Polygon minion to look out for twelve individuals that have interfered gravely with their missions, and these two fit the description, "Take them prisoner! Master Hand might want them for himself." They cuffed Fox and Ness and escorted them to the other prisoners. However they weren't observant of a tiny green dinosaur with white wings slowly following like a moth to a fire, Yoshi was told by Fox that he needed to not be noticed by the enemy, he was lucky enough to have a Mini Mushroom on him so he could go unseen to the vulnerable eye.
It wasn't long before they made it to where the rest of the hostages were, "Ensure you keep a careful close eye on these two." The squad leader gestured to Fox and Ness. "Patch me through to Master Hand."
The 'captured' heroes whispered to one another, "Shouldn't we act now if he's gonna let the big Hand know about us?" Ness asked, knowing full-well that if Master Hand got them, it was gonna get worse for them.
"Not yet, Ness." Fox whispered back. "We need to free the hostages first. Yoshi, can you make sure they don't get through to their master?" He asked the shrunken dinosaur, who nodded and saluted.
Yoshi then flapped his tiny dragon wings to fly with no one noticing, giving him an open opportunity to follow the soldiers into the citadel. He followed them to the communications room. "Patch me through to Master Hand. He will be pleased to know we have two fugitives in custody." The squad leader said to the technician who was unable to notice Mini Dragon Yoshi landing on top of the control panel. Unfortunately, while Yoshi was smart, he wasn't all that good with machines, so fortunately, he contacted Ness and Fox with the psychic link Ness created when they left S.O.R.A HQ.
"Ness, Fox," He mentally called them, "I need to stop this communication and I'm not good with computers, so do either of you know how to cut it off or short-circuit the computer."
Fox's groan was his first answer, "I guess I didn't think of that, but what do you see in the circuitry?" Yoshi told him that he can see several multicolored wires, "Okay, if I remember correctly what my friend Slippy taught me, it's that it's always the blue and red wires." So Yoshi pulled the aforementioned wires out of the sockets, resulting in the computer being shut down. Before the technician could check, Yoshi returned to normal size and punched it.
Yoshi chirped in a pattern as if to say, "Sorry, but no one likes a tattle tale." And then he punched out the squad leader and smashed the controls.
"Commander!" A voice came from behind the doors. "Is everything oka-" It didn't finish as they saw the green dinosaur steed run up and kick them in the face, knocking them out. Then the dino spread his wings and flew to where the jets were and took control. He might not be good with computers, but he does know how to drive a go-kart, and while a plane is different, he knew he'd figure it out. He launched out and fired at the citadel, prompting the Polygon soldiers to fire at it, while ignoring the hostages, as well as Fox pulling out a golden spear and breaking his cuffs, and doing the same with Ness'.
"Everyone, you need to get out of here now!" He told the captives after freeing them, who complied without a second thought, "This is your shot!"
"Now?" Asked Ness.
"Now." Fox nodded.
"Okay." Said the PSI hero, smirking back and igniting an aura in his hands, "PK Rockin!" He fired the psychic blast at the jets that were cornering a bunch of children, then he turned around and struck a soldier with his bat without looking, he flung his yo-yo at two more soldiers before it returned to his hand, he then saw five more soldiers charging at him, so he pointed his fingers them, "PK Flash!" Two of the soldiers were blinded, one of them was atomized, another became ill, and the last one started crying uncontrollably all by the flash of light, Ness beat down the ones that weren't atomized with his bat. Fox got ready for melee combat (no pun intended) as his staff clashed with a Polygon soldier's sword, to which he countered with a swing of his staff, knocking the soldier off balance, and giving the vulpine an opening to stab it in its chest.
Fox turned to another soldier charging for him, he pulled out a sniper rifle and shot it. He pulled out an EMP as he saw four soldiers approaching him and he threw it at them, shocking them unconscious, then he stabbed another soldier in the face without looking and fired his blaster at another. Then he pulled out an extra blaster and performed a spinning double blast barrage and the blasts landed on all sides, "That's what I'm talking about." Thankfully, seeing as all of the civilians were nowhere in sight, and far away from the conflict with no possibility of being hurt in the crossfire, the three heroes were free to go all out.
The jet Yoshi was piloting started to lose altitude from the ground assault, so as a final blow, he hit the jet boosters to increase speed, he crashed into the Polygon soldiers and sped off. He jumped out of the aircraft, making it and the soldiers crash into a nearby pyramid. Yoshi then ground-pounded, causing the ground beneath them to shake and half the soldiers to lose their balance. The reptilian steed took advantage of this by encasing himself in an egg and rolling into all of the unstable soldiers, ending right at Fox's side, who was firing a rocket launcher at a bunch of soldiers, "Nice job, Yoshi." He told him through the telepathic link, "But did you take care of everyone in the citadel?"
"Yup." The dinosaur answered, throwing eggs at the soldiers.
"Ness, batter up!" Called Fox as he threw a grenade to Ness' spot, where the boy from Onett swung his bat at it, redirecting its location to another horde of soldiers, where it exploded. The three then noticed that the citadel had begun to light up again, "What the heck?!" Gasped Fox as he turned to Yoshi, "Are you sure you took it out?"
"I told you I wasn't good with computers." Yoshi mentally responded.
Fox sighed, "Looks like we need to take the entire citadel out."
That gave Ness an idea, "Just leave that to me, Fox. But you and Yoshi might want to get as far away from the thing as possible."
"Are you sure?" Asked Fox, kicking a soldier away.
"Depends," Ness replied as he smacked five more soldiers with the Legendary Bat without looking, "Are you comfortable with being in the epicenter of a meteor shower?"
"Wha- No." Responded the vulpine, stabbing another two soldiers with his staff, "But what's that got to do with-?"
"You'll see, just go!" He told them and they complied by running as far away from the citadel and Ness as they could.
"Kid," Said Fox through the telepathic link, "Are you sure about this?"
"Positive, just trust me." He returned his glare to the fifty remaining soldiers and the citadel.
Fox sighed, not wanting one of his new friends to get hurt, but at the same time, he knew how strong he was, so he knew he could handle it, "Alright, I trust you." He then thought, "Alright Fox, remember what Peppy taught you, never give up, and trust your instincts." That instinct, of course, was to trust Ness with whatever he was planning, so he and Yoshi ran to where they parked the ship. "Alright, I think we're far enough away, do your thing." Fox contacted Ness.
"Say 'Fuzzy Pickles.'" The aforementioned PSI warrior then clenched his fists, as a psychic blue aura surrounded his body and he started levitating off the ground, "Gotta make this count." He then unclenched his fists and raised his open hands into the air as he shouted two words, "PK… STARSTORM!" As soon as he said that, several meteors encased in blue flames came rocketting down to where the soldiers were, but the majority of the stars hit the citadel until it was nothing but a pile of scrap and rubble. After the smoke cleared, Ness slowly lowered to the ground, landed safely, and kneeled down as the aura vanished from him, breathing heavily.
Fox and Yoshi ran up to him, Fox placed his hand on the boy's shoulder, "You okay, kiddo?"
Ness, in spite of his temporary weakness, managed to give a thumbs-up and a smile to the vulpine, "Never better, thanks for trusting me."
"No problem, Ness." Fox smiled back and Yoshi cheered that they managed to finish off their citadel, Fox received a call from Sakurai.
"Fox, this is Director Sakurai, the team sent to Paris have finished their mission, what's your status?"
"Mission complete." Fox answered, "The citadel is nothing but a pile of rubble and scrap, Egypt is secure, and the Polygon soldiers have been taken care of as well." He turned to the other two, "Good news, the Paris team succeeded." Yoshi cheered, and Ness joined in when he recovered.
"Okay, that's two down, two to go." Said Ness, "We can do this."
Every second and/or minute, it appears as though their mission was getting closer and closer to success, but only time holds the answer.
Author's notes: The idea for Ness to establish a psychic link with his teammates was inspired by Young Justice (Miss Martian did it a lot).
BTW: Who has any guesses for who the "Small anthropomorphic animals" could represent?
Random Fun Facts: In Star Fox, the barrel roll is actually an aileron roll. Ness technically learned Ultra Instinct before Goku in the Mother 2 manga.
As I mentioned above, I may be absent for a while so please, let me know what you think of this story so far and I also want to know why you think it [(please I really need reviews) sorry I'm still new here and I REALLY want to know what you guys think of the story so far and why]. I can take criticism, do you think it's too bland and generic? Is it complex? Is the pacing alright? Is it too rushed? Do the characters work well or bad off each other? Do they have good chemistry and teamwork with each other? (These questions apply to the WHOLE story so far, not just this chapter) Please let me know in the reviews.
I'm sorry if I sound desperate, I just really want to know what you all think.
Also, again, sorry about the random edits to previous chapters (this one included), I either want to make sure I get the characters as accurately as I can or maybe it's something else, either way it's becoming a habit, so honestly sorry.
I think I've spoken more than I needed to, so...
Anyway,
Hope you enjoyed, I'll see ya next chapter, coming... when I finish writing it. Until then... MISSHION COMPURETE (Melee Fox Voice: MISSION COMPLETE!) See ya next time.
