StarFox Fan Fiction ❯ The Shards of a Broken Krystal ❯ Realities ( Chapter 9 )

Disclaimer: Surprise. I don't own the Star Fox series or any of its characters. I do, however, own the story. Keep that in mind before you steal it.

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The Shards of a Broken Krystal - by Staindgrey

Chapter IX - Realities

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It was about midday as the rain continued to seep through the ceiling of tree branches covered with red and orange autumn leaves, though one could hardly tell the morning from night in the shadows of the thick storm clouds looming up above. The ground below was darkened with the trees' shade as it soaked up the rain water like a sponge. The trail there was narrow and unleveled, leaving puddles of ranging sizes along the path. Two armored, green Sharpclaw trudged through the wet and muddy mess as they carried their victim in their paws, the front one holding its arms and material bag on his back, the one in the back, her legs. They had been traveling for close to an hour now, though neither of them minded. Their boss had told them to `dispose of the mammal', and they did as they were told; it was merely a bonus that they were eating up a lot of time doing it. If they took long enough, maybe they could miss the battle with the Earthwalker King entirely and save their own hides. No one would ever know.

“Oei kxadb kxaj aj vuh odeiwx?” the back Sharpclaw grunted to the other. The one in front looked around him, taking in the surroundings through the static of rain with his beady, yellow eyes. He then shook his head no.

“De. U rak vihkxoh.” Both Sharpclaw soldiers knew that they were inching ever nearer to Lightfoot territory; the shedding dicot trees gave it away, as this was one of the only territories on the planet that had such broad-leafed trees. The sight would have been much more beautiful without the storm overhead, but neither of the Sharpclaw cared too much for the view anyway. Instead, they continued along their makeshift path, slipping and fumbling here and there, but making sure they kept a tight grip on their unconscious captive- after seeing what she did to their base, they didn't want to see her awake again.

As the two began to argue over leaving the body where they stood or continuing onward, their conversation was cut short by a rather close burst of lightning, resounding with a huge, crashing thunder less than a second afterward. Both dinosaurs caught their tongues and looked toward the luminous flash with wide eyes, wondering if it was from the blue mammal they held or even the Krazoa within her.

The Krazoa Spirits were of more than high regard to the inhabitants of Sauria; no one wanted to get a spirit angry and suffer the assumed consequences. Each of the Sharpclaw presumed that the sudden explosion of power that came from this female earlier was from the Krazoa within her body, which was why neither of them was brave enough to even attempt to kill her, as was ordered by their leader. Instead, they dragged her as far away as they possibly could from Moon Mountain Pass, hoping in the depths of their hearts that they wouldn't be smote for their actions by the Krazoa somewhere along the way. This fear was the reason for their sudden arrest at the bright flash of light and the cowardly begging within their minds that the lightning was not supernatural. The soldier in the back accidentally dropped one of the vixen's legs as it slipped through his wet, scaly fingers. But soon after, he dropped the other on purpose while yelling to his comrade, pleading that they leave.

“S'med, Krozo! No doot ke wok eak ev xoho!”

“Senuht!” the one named Krozo scoffed in return, still holding the arms of his prey with a steady grip. But that grasp instantly melted like ice over a flame as something flew past above him, cutting through the mass of branches and higher trees overhead. Both Sharpclaw looked up to witness what seemed to be a flaming meteorite passing through the wood like a hot knife through butter. The nose of the object stuck out like the muzzle of a great beast while flames and sparks of an inexplicable blue energy flashed on all sides of it like magic. Without waiting to see where the phenomenon was heading, the leading Sharpclaw dropped the mammal's arms like anvils and ran back the way he'd come, slipping the mammal's knapsack he'd been carrying as he did, thinking it may be cursed as well. The other Sharpclaw was already ahead of him, slipping through the muddy mess while his heart raced to the beat of a jackhammer. Both `warriors' were gone from the scene in but a few moments, neither bothering to look back for even a glance. The blue fox they had been carrying lay on the sodden ground lifelessly, a faint amount of air passing in between her lips as the driblets of rain smacked against her body without rest.

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Fox came back into consciousness slowly as his eyelids rose with the pace of a lingering slug. As he took in a breath of fresh air, he began to remember all that had just happened: the storm, the flash, the crash... His eyes shot open to their full extent as he looked over himself in pure apprehension. He lifted his paws and examined them- he was unscathed. He felt along his head for any bruises or cuts, but found none. Either he was in the afterlife already, or those new safety precautions put into the next-gen. Arwings were more than just lifesavers. Fox moved his legs beneath the cramped control panel and, though stiff, they worked just fine. Apparently, he was okay. His Arwing, however, was another story.

During the crash, all the power systems of the ship had powered down, most likely due to the massive overdrive of electric current the lightning bolt had forced the ship to endure. Fox remembered, though, that a new automatic power control system was put into the ship to regulate electric flow in case of an emergency, one much like his, or, on the opposite end, one like the gravity bomb explosion that his father had experienced, where the entire ship's power shut off leaving not even the oxygen producer in running condition. His Arwing, thankfully, kept power out of the blasted open fuses surrounding him, but left enough to keep the artificial atmosphere within his airtight cockpit up and running, so he wouldn't survive the crash only to die of suffocation. Fox thanked the workers at Space Dynamics under his breath and proceeded to reach for the manual hatch opener. He grabbed onto the small, silver latch and pulled it down forcefully, unlocking the cockpit shield and cracking it open just wide enough to fit the furry digits of his paw through. He did so, pushing upward as hard as he could from his awkward sitting position until it was high enough for him to pull his entire body through. As he hopped out of the cockpit and onto its slick, wet metal edge, he swung his legs around to face the ground below him where his wing should have been, then fell skillfully onto his feet and stood upright.

“That'll be a pretty steep bill,” Fox mused with a small sigh following. He supposed it would be best if he finally let this one go and moved onto another Arwing from storage- it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper. His grounded aircraft was only a shell of what it once was, its sleek, chrome paint replaced by scorch marks and scuffs aplenty from the impacts with multiple trees. Both wings were missing; only black nubs were left in their place. Fox looked back behind the ship where a small passage of bent and broken trees pointed up towards the sky, then he thanked the ones upstairs for allowing him to still be able to walk.

Pushing thoughts of his wrecked companion aside, the russet Fox reached for his communicator and punched in the numbers for Great Fox's frequency. “Dad, come in. This is Fox. I've landed on the planet, but...” Fox paused for a moment to look back at his Arwing, then finished, “...not too gracefully. Do you copy?”

Fox waited with rapt ears for an answer. None came.

“Rob, this is Fox. I'm down. Get James McCloud on line.” He waited a few more moments; no answer. Fox cursed his luck for a moment then punched in the code again to make sure he had it right. Another try- no go. “Damn it, there must be something blocking the transmission...” he thought aloud.

“Too bad,” a raucous, elder voice boomed from behind him, “I guess your team won't be here to save you this time around.” As Fox whirled around in a heartbeat, which his heart had skipped in that instant, his wide, unbelieving emerald eyes beheld the one thing he dreaded to ever see again. It was a giant ape, though in its normal, complete body size. His fur, matted and wet with the dribbling rain that continued to beat against it, had the color of the sand of an overused beach. Atop his head lay a sopping mass of stringy gray hair while several liver spots could be found on his sinisterly smiling face. His eyes were beyond menacing; their cold, devious glare cut Fox to the bone with fear, even after seeing them twice before. With a small yet rumbling chuckle, the beast rose from his sitting position to a slouched gorilla stance, placing his weight on his fore knuckles. His sneer widened at the sight of the bewildered son of James McCloud before him, who looked like he had been frozen solid in all but his trembling lips that could hardly utter a word.

“An-Andross?” he stammered. Andross gave a widened smile in response, confirming the vulpine's evident fear. “No... No, you're dead!”

“I've been dead before, boy,” the gorilla answered as he inched nearer to him, still on the other side of his destroyed Arwing.

“No! I must be having a nightmare! You're gone!” Fox's words were a little cliché, but they were all that were running through his mind as his racing heart nearly exploded inside his chest. Without even thinking about it, he reached for the blaster holstered on his right hip and aimed it at the much taller ape, firing almost ten shots before finally backing away a step. Much to his dismay, however, none of the shots seemed to make contact and the gorilla's leer was still as strong as ever. How...? was the only word that formed within Fox's anxious mind.

“You're going to need a lot more firepower to bring me down, boy.” The aged gorilla then leapt on top of Fox's Arwing, denting its hood further with indents of his ape feet while his massive hands gripped the edge of the ship, readying for a pouncing leap. As he lunged for his prey, Fox's survival instincts kicked in in the knick of time, forcing him to roll to his left and out of the gorilla's reach as he passed over. Andross latched onto a slim tree, however, and swirled around it, hurling himself back towards the vulpine at full speed. Turning just in time to see the primate flying towards him with killer instinct, McCloud once again dove out of the way. Fox tumbled and returned to his feet, holding the charging latch on the side of his blaster to form a red ball of energy at its tip. As it charged to full power, and his enemy began charging for him again, Fox let it go, the gun's recoil forcing him backwards a bit, but not knocking him off his feet. Andross, however, merely batted the blast away as if it were nothing, letting it explode harmlessly in a set of trees nearby.

Fox was awestruck. Not a muscle in his body even tensed up as the gorilla came ever closer; he'd subconsciously admitted defeat. Andross latched onto Fox's face, muzzle and all up to the eyes, and lifted him easily from the ground, leaving his legs dangling lifelessly above the sodden earth. Fox's jade oculars saw everything- the massive ape that held him, his glaring eyes and sneer plastered upon his face, and each individual raindrop as it collided with his furry skin and exploded into even smaller droplets- but he didn't believe one ounce of it. This couldn't be real. Andross was dead; he knew it this time. There no way he could have survived again, no way at all. But there he was, holding him helplessly like a play toy in the air.

“You aren't your father,” the giant ape mused. “You never were and never will be. You were just an angry kid with a whole lot of luck.” Without warning, Andross slammed his prey against the ground, receiving a yelp of pain in return before he grabbed him again, this time by the neck, and pulled him back up. “Fox McCloud... Hmph. You don't deserve to carry your father's name.” As he threw him across the small clearing, he shouted, “You don't even deserve to carry his luggage!” Fox tumbled over twice on his side before his back slammed into a tree, stopping his roll indefinitely and leaving him lying there in pain. Surprisingly to him, though, was the fact that he mainly felt pain in his head, his left side and shoulder, and his right paw. Those areas were stinging like crazy, yet his back hardly felt an ounce of pain after ramming into a stationary piece of lumber. He didn't give himself much time to wonder as he pulled himself up into a halfway sitting position, leaning with most of his weight on his right arm. He felt a burning sensation on his paw and wrist, but that was still better than the throbbing throughout his left side. “Pathetic,” he heard Andross grunt as he began walking near.

“Don't you ever...” Fox began, pushing himself up to a knee then rising to his feet, “...talk about my father...” he was now standing fully, albeit holding his left shoulder in pain, with his emerald eyes matching Andross's with the glare of a fierce predator.

“...AGAIN!” With that, the fox charged at the primate full force, leaping into the air for a running jump kick aimed directly for his ugly mug. Andross merely laughed at his efforts as one of his enormous brown hands took a hold of the young vulpine's shin and threw him back behind him harmlessly. Fox spun around in the air before again colliding with another row of trees and hitting the ground hard soon after. The pain in his left side was more than excruciating now, but that was all he could feel besides his hand and forehead. Maybe he had hurt them internally during the wreck without realizing it? Of had he gone insane during this short escapade?

“I'll talk about James if I so choose,” the ape huffed as he again began walking towards the fallen fox. “He was a true warrior and a worthy opponent, even for a great gorilla like myself. You, however, never deserved to take his place as the Star Fox leader, or to be a leader of any sort. You've let your luck go to your head; I'm here to remind you of your weakness.” He stopped for a moment to wait for the vulpine's wincing eyes to lock with his. “James McCloud was a hero. You are no hero.”

“No... I...” Fox coughed as he tried to push himself back up, but he just couldn't seem to find the strength to. There was no way he could let himself fall this easily, but how could he beat such a massive beast?

“Die, Fox McCloud!” Fox braced himself for the incoming hurt of a lifetime. He heard the gorilla stomping closer, the time between steps decreasing as he came closer. He imagined his fist rising high into the air to give him one final, fatal blow, then everything would be over. He braced himself, silently thinking, I'm sorry, Dad... as he awaited the impending strike...

But nothing came. The sounds of the ape's trudging feet sloshing through the wet ground stopped, his roar stopped; everything but the ever constant sound of pounding raindrops stopped, leaving Fox in a world of silent pain, both inward and outward. “You never deserved to take his place as the Star Fox leader... or to be a leader of any sort... You are no hero...”

Fox opened his eyes again and saw everything he had seen before, minus the gruesome ape. He slowly sat up and took in his surroundings- the leaves were scattered across the ground, the rain continued to poor, the trees were wet and the color of chocolate, and his Arwing was still dead without question. He grabbed his shoulder as it once again cried out in pain, but couldn't seem to feel any blood or sign of a bruise or fracture there. Slowly and gingerly, he pushed himself back up to his feet and looked around once again for Andross. Had he imagined the whole thing?

Just then, he heard the familiar sound of an Arwing engine. It was unquestionable; he knew that sound just as well as anything. He looked to the sky where it was coming from, but he could barely see anything but the gray overpass of clouds beyond the mass of tree branches and autumn leaves. As the sound came closer, Fox jogged out into a larger clearing just past the woods. The path lead to a ledge with a running river way down below, as Fox had seen before on his mission to Sauria over two years ago.

Once he made it away from the cluster of trees, he once again looked to the sky, waiting patiently for the incoming vessel and hoping to God its pilot was here to rescue him. Maybe it was Slippy, or Falco, or even... her. This apprehension nearly rid him of any thought of Andross, where he'd disappeared to or even how he'd gotten there. All those thoughts were now pushed to the back of his mind, but they were completely diminished at the sight of the incoming Arwing- it was engulfed in flames like a falling pillar of fire. What made Fox's heart drop to his feet, however, was the sight of the person inside-

“KRYSTAL!” Fox could see her unconscious expression as her cockpit rolled over to face him. She was heading for the edge of the cliff just a bit further ahead and showed no signs of slowing down. Fox's adrenaline count skyrocketed as he dashed with it from below, screaming Krystal's name over and over as he did. The sight of her dead inside that metallic coffin flashed before his eyes, and he pushed himself far beyond his own limits to get to her. Every step seemed too slow, his feet were too heavy and his heart just couldn't seem to pump fast enough. Fox raced inside his mind but his body couldn't keep up; the Arwing, now twirled around so that the cockpit was facing upwards, crashed violently into the ground at the edge of the cliff, ending in a devastating explosion of blinding, red fire. The fire's luminous aura reflected in Fox's wide open eyes as all time seemed to stop for him, the image caching itself into his memory without conscience. From the giant fireball, the form of a blue vixen was flung from the cockpit, then left to freefall towards the river below.

“KRYSTAL!” Fox lunged through the magnitude of flames with his forearms shielding his face, and once again he felt nothing. He paid that absolutely no mind, however, as he practically flew over the cliff's edge, falling quickly towards the bottom of the valley behind the helpless, blue damsel. He screamed her name again, hoping she would somehow wake up; somehow, she did. Her body was turned to face him, and her eyelids slowly parted, expelling the beautiful sapphire orbs held within. She mouthed something to Fox, and although he couldn't hear it over the wind in his ears, he could make out, “Help me, Fox.”

The tan vulpine cut through the air in the short amount of distance he had, using his elongated body to pierce through it better than Krystal's powerless shape. Her back was facing the water below, her arms and legs flailing limply upward with the constant rush of air that passed her. Her eyes were pleading for Fox to do something, to be her hero once again- Fox couldn't take it. He screamed her name at the top of his lungs once more and reached out his right paw, stretching it as far as it could go. His mind screamed at his body to reach further, to go faster, to save this girl's life before it was too late...

At last, he latched onto her wrist with a grip that could easily crush a soda can, but, luckily, not a vixen's arm. She gave a small, half awake smile in gratitude, but they weren't out of danger yet. Fox looked below along the quickly passing canyon wall and spotted a large branch extending from it just below them. He braced himself and caught it with his free left arm, feeling screams of protest stemming from his shoulder as he hung on for dear life- for his own and for the one of the woman he held onto. He cried out in sheer, fiery pain as he struggled to keep a hold on Krystal beneath him. She held onto his wrist in the same way he held hers, reinforcing the grasp to make sure she didn't fall. Fox's hand and wrist burned at the embrace, only adding to the nearly unbearable amount of pain he felt. His mind fought and fought to keep holding on, but his body felt as though it would give way at any moment. His arms were tearing away from his torso, and his chest was about to burst. He couldn't take too much more...

“Fox...” a pleading, hushed voice came from beneath him, barely hearable over the crashing of the wild white river further down below. Fox looked back down into the heartthrob eyes of the blue vixen with a mix of pain and helplessness in his own. He wanted to say something, but his groans and yells of pain were overcoming his power to talk. “Fox...” she pleaded, “Don't let go, Fox... Please don't let go...” Fox felt his grip slipping as rain continued to pour against their arms along with the rest of their bodies. Her wrist fell through his grasp, bringing the base of her palm forcefully against his fingers. She held on tightly to his hand, but continued to slowly slip away. Her eyes were enough to kill Fox with grief, but the insurmountable pain throughout his body was doing that already.

“Kr-Krystal-” He tried to say something heroic or at least optimistic, but nothing came. He yelped once again as fires erupted inside his shoulder, and his paw involuntarily let the weight he was bearing slide even further down. He was now holding nothing but her slender fingers, and he could barely keep a grip on those.

“Don't... let...”

She couldn't finish the phrase as Fox's paw finally gave way, letting the vixen fall down towards the deadly rapids below. She didn't scream. She didn't flail around in vain. She simply stared at her failed hero with a glazed over stare that expressed what words could not. Their cold, dead gaze never vanished, never even blinked as Fox watched her form fall inertly into the rushing water, being swept away and pulled into its depths with ease by the overpowering current. “You are no hero...”

“NO! KRYSTAL!” was all that escaped his lips as Fox let go of his branch and fell into the current after her, still feeling the burning sensation erupt in every part of his body. He hit the water, being immediately pulled under as well and forced to fight for his own life, save someone else's. Despite his bad shoulder, he fought to get back to the surface, but was only able to catch a small breath of air before being instantly pulled back under. His arms flailed around in attempts to command his own motions while his legs kicked furiously to do the same. He plunged straight into a large rock pointing up from the ground below the surface with unrelenting force, and it knocked what little breath he had out of his lungs as he twirled around futilely in the water. His muzzle was wide open, but there was no air within reach. Fox continued to look around him with wide open, fearful eyes through the rushing water, unable to see anything past his own nose. He tried to once again cry out for Krystal, but there was no air to do so with. He continued splashing around and trying to swim against the current, but nothing worked. He could feel his strength sapping away steadily, flowing out of him just as quickly as the river's tide, yet he still continued to search for her. Krystal! Krystal... Please... Fox was beginning to lose consciousness as the undercurrent pulled him down into the depths of the river. His emerald eyes slowly closed, his mouth still in motion to persist in trying to scream out the blue vulpine's name. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the voice from earlier replayed, stabbing the fallen champion's heart one final time before death: “You're not your father. You never were. You'll never be. You're no hero, Fox McCloud...”

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Fox awoke with Krystal's name violently escaping his lips. His eyes were shot open. He was panting. He felt pain in his left shoulder and side, his right forearm and paw, and his head, along with the cool, runny sensation of a familiar red liquid running down his face. He was alive.

Every single hair on Fox's body was on end. It was all a dream, but it had been as real as anything for him. He tried to recollect all of it and calm himself at the same time, but the now real pain all over his body didn't serve as much help. He winced as he tried to move himself; he was still in the cramped confines of his own ship's cockpit. The real life crash was a bit less forgiving than the one in his dream. Every fuse and screen around him was blown and shattered, but there was luckily no electric current passing through the ship at all. His cockpit window was closed to also shattered, the visible indent of his forehead causing a web-like form of cracks to stem along the front glass pane with a few holes left there. Fox reached to try and push the window up, but the pain in his shoulder returned with a violent resurgence that caused him to once again give a hushed yelp and place his paw over the wound. There, he felt one of the remains of the window lodged into his muscle, not too deep to cause serious long term damage, but more than enough to make it hurt like hell. Fox began to slowly pull it out, only to find that it hurt even more to do so. Gritting his teeth and clamping his eyelids closed, his grabbed the shard of glass and yanked it as hard and fast as he could, pulling it al the way out and leaving the sting of air against an open wound in its wake. Fox let go of his held breath and laid the bloody piece of glass at his side, then rubbed his wound gingerly to ease the pain the best he could.

“I can't believe that was a dream...” he thought aloud, “It seemed so real... Andross... Krystal...” Fox silently wondered if it was foretelling something, or if it was possible that Krystal was trying to use her powers to tell him something. But he quickly dismissed the idea as far too supernatural. What were real were these wounds and his need to get out of this godforsaken ship. Just like in his dream, he grabbed onto the manual opening latch with his burned right paw, tried his best to ignore the resulting pain and pushed down on it, pulling the cockpit open with an uncanny grinding metal sound. Fox pushed it up best he could with one arm, the small fragments of decimated trees lying on top not helping in the least bit, then pushed himself out of the cockpit seat with his, luckily, still useable legs. He looked at his burned hand, which was now stinging almost as badly as his shoulder; the fire had sure burned it, all right. The palm of his glove was gone and the fur along that same spot was either singed or replaced with heavily burned skin. He shook it around a little as if to help with the pain, then placed his feet on the edge of the Arwing, ready to jump off. Before he did so, he reached back behind the seat and pulled out his bag, which had some burn marks on it but appeared to have survived the wreck. He slung it over his good shoulder then hopped onto a fallen tree leaning against his Arwing, climbing carefully down it until he reached solid ground. It was no longer raining, but the log was still quite wet, which made it all the harder for the injured fox to make his way down it without falling off and further hurting himself. At last, his feet touched the sodden earth below, and he stood to look at his surroundings.

Everything was much like his dream, save a few minor details, the rain, and, of course, one big, ugly gorilla. Fox took a cautious walk around the Arwing to make sure no one was waiting for him, then went back to the right side of it to find the first aid kit stored there. He pushed a fallen log aside to get to the compartment where it was, then tried to pry it open best he could. It was heavily dented and wouldn't budge. Fox turned to find a decently thick piece of wood and picked it up, then turned back around to face the unopened compartment. He lodged the piece of wood into its side, pushing against the opposite end to spike the metal frame off and send it falling to the ground with a loud clank. Inside was a plastic white box with burn marks along its edges, which Fox happily took out and placed against the ground nearby.

“Alright, time to fix myself up, then go find Krystal,” Fox told himself as he opened the container, glad to see that its enclosed items were still intact. “I'll give Dad a call then wait for him at Lightfoot Village. I'm sure the chief won't mind me staying there till morning.” With that, he began to remove his clothing delicately as he could, hoping to whomever was watching from above that Krystal would be okay while he waited to heal.

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EDIT:

I'm alive!! I updated this chapter just to let everyone know that I am, in fact, still alive and have not given up on this story. It's something I've wanted to get to for a long time now, but have had a hard time either finding time or, when I have the time, motivating myself to do it. I feel extremely bad for leaving my readers hanging for over a year now, and I WILL finish this story. The sequel idea, however, is out, so I will simply finish this one as well as my other incomplete stories, then move onto a, hopefully, epic and huge Nintendo/Sega cross over I have outlined. But, enough about that, I simply wanted anyone who was still looking forward to this story that I WILL finish it in the coming months, and I am currently working on Chapter 10 (I lost my Starfox Adventures booklet, however, so I'll find a different way to translate to that dino language). So, I apologize to anyone who has long awaited me to finish this, but I promise that you will enjoy what I finally put up if you read it.