I was now freely roaming the streets as a metro cop.

It was only an illusion, though; another nifty spell my staff had learned when I had lost it on Sauria. It was Fox, in fact, who inadvertently caused this enhancement when breaking out of a SharpClaw prison. He used an experimental device designed by Slippy who had then airdropped it to him to break him out; a device that allowed him to adopt the projected form of a SharpClaw scout. I realised soon after reuniting with my staff that it had actually learned from the device's illusory functions and could now conjure its own illusions, just like it had learned to mimic the capture beams from the confiscation field.

I had always wondered if I would ever encounter a situation where I would have to cloak myself in a false image the way that Fox had to, but I was certain that now was an excellent time to test it. Having gained an apt reference from one of the officers that I incapacitated, practically downloading his likeness in a technical sense, I had now assumed the form and identity of Officer 8369. And much to my pleasant surprise, nobody around, not even the police, gave my appearance a second thought.

Calculating that I was only several blocks or more away from the radio tower, I proceeded down the improvised route I felt would lead me to it. It was both a fascinating and troubling experience assuming the role of a Combine police officer; every citizen I passed, regardless of whatever chores they were doing, dared not to look at me and kept their heads down as I passed. Their thoughts disturbed me even more; they were prepared for savage beatings even when they knew they were keeping well with their business.

My heart ached terribly seeing the misery in these peoples' eyes, for it was an aged misery. The kind that physically changes your appearance. This brutal oppression had been going on for so long that many hardly remembered a time before it. Who will remember? Who can remember?

There was so much I wished I could do for these people, to help them right now in any way I could, but I knew that my reveal and intervention would put them in grave danger. I had soon begun to fear that I had made that couple's situation much worse by incapacitating those brutish officers. I should have carefully considered this in hindsight and cursed myself internally for rushing into things like that.

There was regretfully nothing that I could do about it now, and I prayed that the couple had managed to flee the scene together before the Combine could indite the two of them as complacent witnesses, or worse, being branded as the perpetrators. I stayed focused on my mission, which was going along rather smoothly. My guise seemed to be holding up well and no one stopped me for anything, and a part of me wondered whether or not it was possible to keep this ruse up until I made it to the airstrip.

Before long, the winding streets I followed down led me to a grand main street where the brick-laid road was at least twenty yards wide and had a median of palm trees running down its centre. The buildings along this street were marvellous in design with many curvy metal fittings on their roofs. They looked rather old compared to some of the other buildings I had seen in this city, which added to the mystery of what this city truly was like in its prime before the Combine sullied it with their presence.

This massive strip was unnervingly devoid of people, save for the few who were walking up and down the open streets with their heads down―and for every citizen I saw there seemed to be another officer patrolling the premises. I had lost sight of the radio tower a few minutes ago and the winding streets that I had emerged from threw off my bearings a little bit. Being the open area that it was, I was inclined to venture out into and relocate the radio tower.

Stepping out into the open street, which bore two sets of imbedded metal rails for streetcars on either side of the median, I looked down to my right and was able to spot the radio tower over the buildings along my end of the street, and was at a much closer distance this time. It was nice to see that I was making some real progress. I was naturally inclined to look down in the other direction behind me, where I finally caught my very first view of the citadel.

Quite surprisingly, I somehow managed to avoid a glimpse of City Three's citadel up until this point, though it was considerably far away from where I was, maybe about two miles away. While said to not be as high as City Seventeen's citadel, the one in my view was nothing to scoff at. It looked to be a staggering eight hundred metres high, easily one of the tallest structures I had ever seen. It was an angular monolith that rounded off at the top and was coloured a dark matte greenish grey, though that could have been from the haze of the warm day. Gigantic cables reached out just below the citadel's midsection and were sprawled outward into the city, most likely power cables if I had to wager.

I was not within its direct presence, but the sight of it made my shoulders drop. While an imposing sight on its own, one that showcased the Combine's dominance over the planet in an effective visual analogy, that alone was not what wisped my breath away. It was the peak of that gloomy monolith that made me shudder with indecisive dread.

It was atop that towering monolith I would find my way home. The Combine owned and closely guarded the only means by which I would leave this universe and return to my own, back to the Lylat System and Star Fox. While my main objective was clear and my target set, I presently had no idea how meeting any of these goals would be remotely possible to achieve given my current circumstances.

Yet still, a ray of hope simmered soundly inside my chest. A kind of hope that told me all was not as bleak as it seemed. I needed to retain my faith and not get weighed down by my doubts. I had a job to do right now, but I may have been standing in one place for just a little bit too long. I was a cop who wasn't keeping up with his own tasks.

"Hey, you there," a distorted voice crackled behind me, and I sensed that it was directed at me. I turned around to see another metro cop approach me. He had his sidearm holstered, though I sensed that he was suspicious of me. "I don't believe you're assigned to this part of town. What's your number?"

I remained poised as he confronted me. "8369," I stated. As it turned out, my illusion could also alter my voice according to the form I projected, and this officer seemed to buy it (my voice anyway).

"You're not registered in my precinct," he observed. "What business do you have here? Are you here under orders from your captain? If so, please provide me with their official statement."

"They haven't," I said quickly, getting a little flustered, which may have transferred too well into my fake voice. "I'm…new to Civil Protection. I'm a tad lost."

The officer simply crossed his arms. "You could get in serious trouble for wandering out from your jurisdiction, kid. They aren't too forgiving to those who don't learn quickly to stay in their place," he warned, they he projected more annoyance than concern. He then began to closer examine me, and he only grew more confused. "You don't even have your standard issues," he noted, reeling his head back. "Did you leave them back in your barracks?"

I sensed that great danger could ensue if I did not de-escalate this situation, though I found myself rather tongue-tied. I regrettably had not formulated a series of answers should I have been stopped or questioned while in this disguise. "I wasn't…issued any…?" I stammered.

I sounded profoundly unconvincing, even to me. The officer shook his head with a blend of embarrassment and pity. "All right, you better come with me. You'll likely just get a slap on the wrist if you simply turn yourself into a station. Better to be a stupid cop than a defiant one."

As much as I did not wish to get led off my path by this officer, I think he may have inadvertently provided me with a saving strategy. I had to act stupid. At least for the time being, I had to play along until I found the opportunity to escape, so I reluctantly followed him across the street, making sure to keep the radio tower within view.

Seeing as I was kindly informed that I was an officer of another precinct, I took the liberty of putting Officer 5973 on momentary leave while I resumed his number and patrol.

I made sure to find him a cosy alleyway behind a dumpster to take his well-earned break in before I did just that. I even found him some cushy old trash bags to lay his head on. After that awful concussion he took, it looked like he would be out for a long while.

While I could have returned down the way I came, I now wanted to avoid that main street for as long as I could should I run the risk of getting stopped again by a suspicious agent. I couldn't keep knocking out officers forever; I wanted to get this bloody thing for the chief and hightail it back out of the city. Dejon would be out again in his transport later that evening for his nightly patrol of the outlands; I needed to be back at the extraction point in time and with the prize in hand, and so far, I seemed to be handling the situation rather well for the most part.

However, as convenient as it might be to simply blend in amongst your foes, that comes with the high probability risk that they expect things from you. The recent officer I sacked was only a taste of that, and I unfortunately was about to be force-fed a much bigger serving. The narrow streets I found myself in were hardly distinguishable from the ones I was in beyond the median, but I sensed a growing disturbance here.

When there are numerous autonomous entities in grand space, it can be difficult to hone in on what each of them is thinking. A pool of cerebral white noise. Having said that, the general theme of a patch of cerebral droning, if the comparison can still be made, still makes it just as easy to determine the 'mood' of an area, and the mood on this end of the median was drastically more subduedly fretful.

It didn't take me long at all to realise that there were virtually no civilians walking about. I could sense them in the area, such as inside the buildings all around me, but I felt something was off here. Being that it was so quiet, my cloaked ears could easily pick up the sound of boots and gear shingling about and coming my way quickly just behind me.

I turned around once it became obvious that the owners would intersect with me, and from around the street corner I had just passed, several officers were jogging with haste down the lane, and one of them stopped when they noticed me. "What are you doing?" he yelled in exclamation.

"Uh…"

"Didn't you hear your com? We've got a code A3 at the old firehouse. You better pick up the pace!" he ordered before hurriedly rejoining his group, who hadn't stopped to wait for him. Reluctantly, I traipsed behind them in their direction. I really should not have gotten more involved than I already was while under my disguise, but this incident was in the general direction I needed to go anyway. I figured that I would steal a glimpse of what was stirring civil protection up, or what exactly a code A3 was.

As it turned out, a code A3 was an "ongoing anti-citizen incursion", though it looked like the conflict had resolved itself by the time I arrived at the scene―much to the dissatisfaction of some of the officers'.

There were fifteen officers stationed outside of a large white building with intricate columns built into its corners, though one of them had been smashed to bits long ago, and most of the structure itself had been fitted with unsightly Combine panelling and stilted supports. The officers had their weapons drawn, primarily facing the blown-out entrance to the building, though most were at ease and were either communicating with Overwatch, or amongst each other.

I made sure to stay well in the back of the modest crowd of officers as I watched the developing scene play out. After doing a bit of psionic prodding, I pieced together that a group of dissidents had managed to smuggle and plant explosives beneath the building of interest. The significance of this building remained unclear to me, but the rebels found it important enough to attempt to destroy it. This seemed to explain the reason why there weren't any civilians out on the streets within the blocks surrounding this site.

I was contemplating continuing on my merry way until commotion began to stir once figures began to emerge from the still-smoky building entrance. The first to emerge was a frightening behemoth of a unit; a bulky, dark powdery-blue Combine soldier with an egregious amount of upper body armour such as shoulder and chest pads, and bright yellow eyes to boot. He was the first amongst a trio of identical units, and they chattered amongst themselves and to the officers with a particularly heavy voice distorter that was difficult to understand at my distance, though their synthesised thoughts suggested them being a kind of bomb squad.

Seconds later, the anti-citizens were forced out into the open with their hands held tight behind their backs by their rough escorts. There were five of them present; two were bruised and were blood-soaked from their head to their waists―somehow still able to walk given their brutal injuries―and the other two were unconscious while being carried out by two of the massive soldiers, though their injuries were identical. Scanners who had been floating the scene were now getting up close and personal with the captured convicts, taking numerous pictures of them and blinding them with their flashers.

My heart suddenly felt like it was turning to ice as I watched the prisoners step out into the open. I knew the units sent inside would have most certainly killed these anti-citizens on-site during most raids, but apparently, they spared them―at least the few that were present, for I couldn't tell how many more there could have been. There was a purpose to sparing them, a sinister one, and I realised I was in the midst of finding out what as they began to line the captured rebels up in front of the building.

The unconscious ones were hauled inside one of the transporter vehicles that Dejon drove, while the other three were forced to the knees just outside the highest step leading up to the building. While many of the officers here were watching intently, quite a few seemed disinterested and wanted to return to their posts. I listened in with my telepathy, taking the place of my ears being as far away as I was.

"Now, here's how things are going to play out," a high-ranking metro cop told the hostages in a cruel distorted voice, wearing a similar mask and uniform to Dejon's superior. "There are more of you. You have friends. We know these things. Tell us where they are, and we will let all of you live."

The hostage closest to him, a bloodied bearded man, glared up at the officer and spit blood out of his mouth. "Eat. My. Ass. Traitor…"

"We are one with the Union, now," the officer contradicted, indifferent to the vulgar insult. "The only traitors here are the ones unwilling to allow us to evolve. If you wish to retain your primitive ways, then so be it. We too will use that."

The officer then signalled some of his subordinates still inside the building to 'emerge'. Moments later, two more metro cops came out from the building, hauling another hostage, a woman, by her arms, practically dragging her legs along the ground. I noticed quickly that she had been shot in her left shin, as plainly shown by the pant leg sleeve below her knee coloured a deep crimson. She was also in incredible pain and delirious, only half aware of what was happening around her.

All the rebels on their knees gazed in horror as their friend was dragged behind the high-ranking officer and held there by her two apathetic escorts. "I will admit," the officer said to the rebels, "we deal with dissidents in private far more often than we should. The public deserves to know just what happens to those who operate on surplus spirit."

Reaching for his holster, he drew his pistol and cocked the slider on top before aiming it at the wounded woman. "Where are the rest of your friends…?" he asked, completely devoid of emotion.

The rebels could only stare in terror, and even the delirious woman had begun to realise the situation she was in and was promptly given the full scoop when the officer cruelly shot her in the other leg. She unleashed a bloodcurdling scream that resounded throughout the street, becoming the only thing that was audible for a harrowing moment, and the rebels, including myself, recoiled in horror.

"SHELLY!" the rebel in the centre screamed with primal rage, trying to rise but his captors held him hard against the ground.

"She can't take many more," the officer said soullessly. "Where are your friends?"

The rebel he had been addressing turned pale and dead silent from shock. He physically could not produce a verbal response, and the officer took that as an act of defiance and promptly shot Shelly again. She let out a terrible pained shriek again, though this one was noticeably frailer and her head fell forward limply. She was still alive, but I could sense that one more shot would be the end of her life.

I could not tolerate any more of this as I drew my staff, momentarily disrupting my disguise, though that no longer mattered to me. Between the feigning wails from Shelly, the rebel calling her name in a monsoon of tears, and the hopelessness in the others' eyes, there was no walking away from what was about to happen. My stubbornness had led me into many perilous situations that I have barely escaped from in the past, but this was not up for internal debate.

"Tumorous faculties…" the officer said, uttering one of the most malice things I had ever heard before he prepared for the final shot on Shelly's head.

"ENOUGH!"

Raising my deployed staff above my head, subsequently grabbing the attention of every single Combine officer within the vicinity, I drew upon the power of every electrical conduit within the surrounding buildings, up above within suspended wires, and even beneath the streets, causing a great number of property as tendrils of power arched straight into the gem within my staff before I slammed the hilted end down into the street beneath my feet, focusing all of my siphoned power into bringing Fichina to Earth.

I retained my knelt position for what felt like a really long while, at least up until I felt a shiver from the sudden drop in temperature. I felt as stiff as a statue; every joint took a little effort to move, but I soon could with no issue. I opened my eyes for the first time, and apart from noticing that there was frost in my eyelashes, I too noticed that I was standing in a frozen street.

I slowly looked around and saw that the buildings around me were covered in facets of ice, and a still chilly air hung around me. I fully came to a stand once I acknowledged the brand-new garden of life-sized frozen statues in the shape of Combine metro cops. All of them were in an identical pose of one being thrown backwards, some even having their frozen weapons drawn, but they no longer posed any threat to me or the rebels. And speaking of the rebels in question, I could hear desperate moaning coming from up ahead.

I looked overhead and saw a frosty, but considerably unfrozen Shelly squirming with pain on the ground, sobbing from the agony in her legs. My faint daze snapped as quickly as this cold and I bolted for her, my feet clawing through the newly-made icy terrain as I hopped around the statues in my way. What was beneficial about converting a staggering amount of voltage into an explosion of freezing magic was that it still behaved like electricity.

This conjured blizzard meandered and curled around in the air, seeking viable conductors to strike. And, as I had discovered in recent weeks, I was able to be selective in where the power would strike. With as much willpower as it took to create this flash freeze, I keenly made sure it waved right past the rebels, making them the sole survivors of the freeze along with the conjurer.

I ran up to Shelly's side. While the freed rebels to my right were completely disillusioned from sensory overload, along with being whitened from thin layers of frost, my greatest priority was tending to Shelly, who was trembling severely from both the pain and the cold. The bullets were still in her legs, that much was certain, but getting them out was going to be a problem.

Thinking fast, I concluded that I would simply magnetise my staff for a quick removal, though it would be like getting shot three times all over again. I hated to bring her more pain, but there was no time to delicately tweeze the bullets out. She would die from injury as quickly as she would from hyperthermia.

"Shelly? Shelly! Shelly, I need you to look at me," I told her telepathically, for I knew she likely would not be able to hear me audibly so well. Feverishly shaking, she managed to look up at me with a little help from my hand holding her head gently. She acknowledged me well enough but was far too preoccupied with her conditions to properly realise my bizarre appearance. "I'm going to remove the bullets from your leg," I instructed carefully with my mind. "It's going to hurt. Hurt very badly. I need you to lie as still as you can; bite down as hard as you can right here if you have to."

I then offered her my forearm since there was a lack of anything else around better suited to contain her inevitable worsening agony. She had a momentary hesitation as she realised what was about to happen. Shelly gave me a scared look before compliantly nodding. She gently closed her jaw around my right forearm and shut her eyes, trusting every word I said about the procedure being excruciating.

I took a deep breath and exhaled a cloud of steamy breath before holding my staff over Shell's bleeding legs, which still had enough charge in it to magnetise itself. "Here we go, Shelly…" I warned her telepathically. I too closed my eyes for the inevitable rush of pain that would overtake me once I commanded the tug.

Wanting to rip the bandage off, in a not-quite-so-figurative sense, my staff then yanked all three bullets from Shelly's leg and got stuck to its gem, and Shelly predictably screamed just as loud as she did when she got shot multiple times. I too let out a brusque scream as her teeth dug into my flesh as an outlet to contain her agony, gritting my teeth with my ears flattened against my head.

I bared with her for as long as I could until Shelly's grip on me relented, eventually letting go of my arm. As leftover sobs escaped her, I fell a little bit backward and looked to my arm, where a row of fresh round teeth marks was now visible, soaking my blue fur in the blood that was beginning to bleed out of them. With how hard Shelly had clamped down, I was astonished that she didn't actually tear this portion of my arm off in all honestly.

The other rebels were in my line of view, and I could see that Shelly's screaming must have fully woken them from their days, once again being among the countless who made me the centre of their speechless attention. Well beyond bored of this unblameable treatment, I simply pointed at their friend with my bloody arm. "Help her…" I croaked, mildly rushed from the focused pain.

The rebels were very quick to remember their priorities and rushed to Shelly's aid, only just now beginning to take note of their notably colder surroundings as they swabbed Shelly's with all the clothing that they could spare, putting greater emphasis on wrapping her wounded legs tightly to staunch any further bleeding. The rebel who was still full of tears in his eyes gently began to prop Shelly up onto his lap, patting her down to keep her warm and stable as well as comforting her.

The bearded man finally took a moment to realise me and my handiwork we sat amongst. He just looked around at before shaking his head in disbelief once his gaze finally landed on me. "I got nothing…" he shrugged jadedly, looking into my eyes. "Are we in Heaven or something? You an angel? Your eyes kinda give me a wraithlike feeling…"

I managed a stifled smile as I attended to my own wound and I proceeded to staunch it with a tiny, personalized roll of gauze I had in my pack. "No, you're still in the vilest city I have ever been to."

The bearded man then looked at all the frozen Civil Protection ice sculptures again, which were ominously looming around us lifelessly. "Yeah? It ain't usually this chilly, though…"

Being that the others were distracted helping their friend, and I was not telepathically receptive to robotic programming, no one, not even myself, noticed the city scanner right behind me until a flash went off behind my back.

"Shit…!" one of the other rebels cursed, whipping out one of the dropped civil protection pistols and began shooting at the floating robot a couple of times before the whole thing exploded into sparking pieces. This served as a horrid but necessary reminder that all of us were still far from safe.

"We gotta get her out of here," the rebel holding Shelly said, his face full of emotion.

"How? The Combine's everywhere! There's no way we can hoof it, especially with her like this."

"We'll take the wagon," the one with the pistol suggested, pointing to the frost-blasted transport close by. "We don't need implants to drive them. The others are already stuffed in it; what could we lose?"

"Our lives," the bearded one said, though he frowned begrudgingly. "But we don't have much choice. We better get Shell in there quickly if we want―"

Breaking through the relative stillness of the air, a series of deep, dreadful alarms began sounding out throughout the city. These were the kinds of alarms not reserved for the average emergency like a fire or a heist, no. You could feel it in your blood that the whole city was now on high alert, and I had a premonition that I may have helped to trigger them in some impactful way.

"We're fucked. Oh, we're so fucked…" the rebel holding a nodding Shelly quivered with dread.

"No," I quickly said, turning to all of them. "I think they've forgotten about you rather quickly. They're after me. I have to move so you can escape. They won't be on your tails while they're too busy chasing mine."

I don't think it was deliberate, but my tail swished with agitation after saying that. I was just eager to run for both there's and my sake, so I did. "May the Krazoa keep you safe!" I hollered as I ran off as far and as fast as I could to not endanger them.