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Chapter 1: The Boy in the Mist
Outermost Borders Of Known Space, 4474 AIC (Later Revised As 10 BLW)
It lingered on the edge of the galaxy…the hulking titan known as Venom, sitting just beyond the borders of civilized space, seemingly untouched by the warmth of even the dimmest of starlight.
The planet was far older than any other, having witnessed the birth and death of countless stars, and the evolution of every known race in the Lylat System. One also didn't need enhanced imaging to see that it was uncontested in size, with how it completely dwarfed the other Lylatian worlds. But the other planets retained one common advantage over their gargantuan sibling: they each sported a canvas of sparkling city lights, or plumes of wispy cloud, or streaking oceans visible from any angle in orbit.
The dark planet's circular atmosphere didn't hold a single signifier of life…not a light of civilization, or a drop of healthy blue water. Its only luminescence were the sparse green lines of its radiated lava rivers, streaking across the planet's surface like a glowing spider-web over a yawning, pitch-black mouth. Thus, in spite of titanic size, Venom hung neglected at the edge of space, out of sight and out of mind for the rest of the galaxy. The most acknowledgement it got from most Lylatian denizens was on a holographic display or star map, and even that was usually accompanied with an uneasy twinge of uneasy dread.
And no one really knew why.
No one, living or dead, knew enough about the planet to be afraid of it. Both ancient and modern Lylatian records on the planet were vague and marred with inconsistencies. No one had set foot on the planet for thousands of years. Even the Venomians, the racial community of Simians that had originated from the planet eons ago, no longer resided there, having fled the planet in ancient times to establish a lowly colony on Demios, one of its distant Settlement Moons (which only made the term "Venomian" coined by the other races all the more ironic considering most Venomians had no idea what the planet below looked like, much less had ever set foot upon it). In the mind of the unassuming Lylatian public, Venom was dismissed as just another wild, unkept world on the abandoned fringe of space, incapable of life and not warranting a second glance on a starmap. That's all the word "Venom" meant to most.
Unbeknownst to them, the actual bowels of Planet Venom were worse than anyone could imagine. The skies were lathered in endless black clouds, a leftover from one of the planet's many atmospheric shifts centuries ago. The warmth and rays of sunlight were blocked, unable to penetrate the atmospheres black veil.
Beneath the unchanging, murky sky, the planet was trapped in a shroud of endless night. There no retaining any sense of time, or the passage of days.
Down below was a landscape seemingly untouched by mortal feet. The surface was an inkwell of hulking rock canyons, spiny rows of mountains, and craggy barren mesa that stretched endlessly into the pitch-black horizon. Every inch of the ground was made up of volcanic rock, coarse and ragged, and bitingly-painful to the touch of bare feet. Sinister mountains craned over valleys like huge robed figures, safeguarding the yawning crevices that yielded depths even blacker and emptier than the sky. So much of the planet hadn't seen a sliver of bright light in years; nothing, not the buzz of a heat lamp or the flicker of a candle, broke the dark static complexion of the shadow-kissed landscape. The light source for miles were dim, glowing rivers of green lava, but most ran in the highest peaks of active volcanoes or were too buried deep underground to ignite the barren surface with even a sparse glow. All that adorned the surface terrain was sheets of ghostly mist, one that obscured the ground out of sight, often cloaking treacherous cliffsides and chasms. It snaked around mountain peaks, spilling out into the open mouths of caves, steeping the planet in a frigid cold that was cold enough to cut through skin. Misshapen rock formations became tall silhouettes in the thick, smoky air, some clinging together to form archways and corridors of rock that wormed and weaved for miles, creating an endless well of haunting, labyrinthine madness. It was a scenic irony, perhaps, that for all the caves and tunnels that ran beneath it, Venom's lightless and rock-cradled surface made the planet itself seem like one massive, roofless cave.
But what truly entrenched the gaunt aura of the planetside surface was the silence.
Despite its vast size, the mist-laden necropolis of oppressive mountains and valleys was frozen still. There were no sounds of life to echo across the landscape. Not the shudder of wind, nor the rush of rain. Not the chirp of wildlife, or pitch of intelligent voices, or the wisp of breath from mortal lungs, creating a kind of a quiet that was almost deafening. The constant night air remained still and uninterrupted, flat as a pane of glassy water.
Suddenly, a sound snapped against the flat silence. A distant pitter-patter that would've been tiny anywhere else echoed loudly across the barren stretch of canyon.
A creature of a boy, whose canine features were almost indistinguishable in his malnourished face, darted across the coarse surface, the cold air raking through his fur at high speed. He was panting feverishly, rattling the beads of sweat on his face. The vile clacking and hissing he'd heard right above his head just a moment ago was still ringing in his ears. Just thinking about the noise made his heart pound, rendering him too terrified to even look behind him—
Mid-sprint, his unnerved feet scrambled over each other, toes slipping and snatching his balance from right under him.
The Boy blindly flailed his hands up to shield his face from the ground, but instantly regretted it. Upon colliding with it, the brutal sheet of rock scraped and peeled away at his open palms, while his body tumbled over. He rolled down the sloping hill, repeatedly getting hit by every protruding rock on the way down, before finally coming to a skidding halt. Pebbles trickled after him, the deep mist gathering over him like a blanket.
Face-flat on the ground, the Boy's shoulders quivered. His body tightened into a wince as he pressed his stinging hands against the ground, about to raise his head weakly…
…when he heard a hissing and clacking noise above him.
The sound instantly made him duck his head and flatten his body against the ground, his heart leaping back to his throat. The rancid, vinegar-like stench filled his nostrils, the ground vibrating with the scraping of something dragging its plated body and scuttling its many feet nearby. The Boy held his breath in petrified fear. His purple eyes rose to glimpse the shadow of the giant creature in the distance, searching the mist for him. He could feel a gnashing pain from underneath his hands, biting like nettle. He wanted so badly to cry, but a fearful silence bottled his throat. Crying meant noise, and noise meant death. He clamped his mouth over the stinging sensation, remaining deathly still…his grubby gray coat blending in with the mist thickly draped over the ground.
Finally, the vibrations against the ground ceased. While keeping his head down, the Boy raised his eyes ever so slightly, darting them about but seeing no silhouette. The nightmarish scuttling noise seemed to have disappeared, and the odor along with it. The frenzied, wide-eyed boy didn't trust the silence, refusing to move. He listened and waited, until the only thing he could hear was the thumping of his own heart.
All was silent again. The barren surface returned to its original, undisturbed state.
After a moment to catch his breath, the boy slowly emerged from the mist, glancing around cautiously. He felt so unbelievably stupid. Going into that cave to look for food had been a terrible idea, one that the sting from his hands was already making him regret. Still feeling uneasy from the silence around him, he bent back down and felt around in the mist for the hunting club he had dropped, a crude thing gnawed out of a stalactite. He dragged it behind him as he made his way up the sloping hill.
The higher he climbed, the more the mist began to dissipate. The twisted rock formations and cliffsides became more visible as he ascended, where the air was free of the eerie haze glazing the surface.
After reaching an elevation where he felt safe, the Boy finally stopped. He'd reached a cliffside overlooking the black mountaintops poking out of the mist-laden canyon belly. He sank down on the flattest rock nearby, ignoring how cold it was, and letting out a wince of relief as he bent his knees. For the first time all day, he let everything go: he let the stalactite club slide from his fingers, let his callus-ridden feet stretch out, and let his head to fall back with his eyelids half-closed. For just five minutes, he wanted to forget about where he was, and how many mistakes he'd made today.
He was only allowed a few moments of bliss, before the biting sting yanked him out. He raised his hands to see his gashed palms, from what had to be the millionth time this planet's brittle rock had claimed the skin and fur from a clumsy fall of his. He sucked on his open palm, whining softly around the sting...the salty taste reminding him that it was the first thing that he'd tasted in days.
How much longer was he going to go without eating?
He massaged the grooves in his stomach with the back of his limp hands. A real stroke of luck would've been to find another day-old carcass like that one time underground. What wouldn't he give for another right now, part of him pined silently…until his pounding heart reminded him that it wasn't worth venturing back down in those caves.
The Boy sighed, letting his eyes wander past the distant mountains rising up from an canyon-wide ocean of mist, like fingers outstretched to the unlit sky above. Every night was the same. The same constant cold, the same flat silence. No noise or warmth, no other voice to call for him…an endless stream of days that bled into each other. The nauseous sensation rippling up his weak arms, coupled with his growling stomach, reminded him that it would be time to move on soon. But he was so tired...running away from that Creature had sapped all the energy from his leaden legs. The temptation to close his eyes and rest for a moment was overwhelming. Without even feeling himself do it, the Boy curled up, wrapping his tail around his shivering legs. Maybe sleeping would help him forget how hungry he was. It would be another grueling hour of discomfort—the jagged rock would be his bed, and the mist, his blanket. There'd be nothing but lonely silence to lull him to sleep...but the stillness of the moment would all be his.
Then, he was jolted wide awake by a high-pitched whining.
The foreign sound knifed straight into his ears, and his eyes immediately swerved to the sky above, not seeing so much as a shape in its black depths. The noise rattled the air, like it was right above him. It shot a bolt of fear up the Boy's spine that made him dive back down into the mist and sprint out of sight.
VOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRSSSSSH!
High above, a flare of orange exploded behind the murky clouds, before an object engulfed in flames was regurgitated out of might have been a ship some time earlier in the night, but whatever model or fleet insignia it might've sported was lost beneath punctured hull, peppered with scorchmarks that had been viciously etched into its exterior. A ring of fire built around the ship's nose as it built up uncontrollable speed, a trail of black smoke flooded from its failing booster engines. The ship bobbed like a fly with its wings clipped, showing its pilot's fruitless attempt at a safe landing as it plummeted towards an unwelcoming bed of jagged black rock—
CRAAAASSSHHH!
The ship crumpled like a tin can upon slamming into the canyon bed, all of its metal exterior folding in and contorting. It spun about, rolling across the jagged rock surface with a shrill metallic scraping that rattled the valley. Each roll skinned off more of the ship's metal hide, peeling away sheets of metal like paper and scattering flaming valves, piston rings, and diffuser rods in every direction, until a passing rock face flipped the ship on its belly. Blinding sparks rained on the battered vessel's sides as the sound of the hull dragging across the ground sent out an ear-splitting screech. The blackened metal booster engines on the back of the ship spluttered out one last explosion, and the wreckage finally lurched to a halt.
The last echoes of the explosive entrance disappeared into the misty air. The ship's shattered window canopy was illuminated with crackling flames and the strobe-like flicker of the electric sparking of mangled wires from within the cockpit.
Clang!
The cockpit window made a pathetic attempt to rise automatically before coming off its hinges. A bent shape fell clumsily onto the ground, where it wriggled in fits of groans and labored breathing. Not even a second later, the valley thundered with the deafening growl of another machine, and the figure stopped moving. It heard the sound of the other approaching ship and didn't waste a second. It bolted off into the mist, the outline of its silhouette vanishing.
A pair of blinding white hull lights sprang to life as the ship lowered itself into the canyon, triangular hull and sloping wings emerging through the black smoke. The hot air blasting from its rear plasma reactors swept away the mist and scattered the dusty gravel of the canyon floor. Perched across the flaming wreckage, the triangular craft let out a hiss, and the canopy window swung open. The pilot's sliver boots landed on the surface, soles barely grazing the ground before he raced towards the smoldering wreckage. The firelight illuminated his orange fur as he approached the wreckage, as well as the other ornaments of his face: the curve of his jawline, the scar running up his cheek, and the glossy aviator's sunglasses catching the rising embers.
The long night's pursuit had frenzied James McCloud, put him on edge.
Even as he slowly moved around the wreckage, his brown-dipped ears flattened and his tensed. His eyes were locked on the cockpit, waiting with his hand already hovering over his holster for a silhouette to rise from it.
The smoke cleared away. The cockpit was empty.
James went rigid, ears springing up alertly. He scrambled up the twisted ship ramp, searching the shard-littered, wire-ridden but otherwise empty seat.
"Shit…SHIT!" He exclaimed hoarsely, leaping off the ramp and looking about in a rush. He would sprint a few steps and then stop in his tracks, repeating this back and forth as he darted his eyes about frantically, the sight of the seemingly-endless stretch of mist and interchangeable caves tightening his lungs with panic. "No, no, no, no, no…"
He squinted upwards for any sign of his wingmates' ships. His hand flew to the grey headset seated around his tall ears, fingers fumbling for the sliding button for Transmission Mode.
"Blue Zero to Squadron, repeat! Blue Zero from the surface—" He said, scrambling past the usual protocol jargon. "He's not here. I've lost him!"
A gruff voice, rough-hewn and streetwise, blared onto the comm. "What?! What do you mean you've lost him, you were right on him! I saw you shoot him down myself!"
"I'm in front of the wreckage, Pigma, I'm looking straight at it. The entire ship is here…but he's not," said James, breathless and frantic. "The perp's escaped."
"Whoa, whoa, just slow down now..." Another voice, Peppy Hare's unmistakable countrybred Fichinese accent, crackled on. "Do you see any sign of him anywhere?"
The mist parted around the hurrying stride of James' boots. Visibility was poor even with the dim flashlight of his headset, straining his eyes as they scanned the plates of the canyon floor.
"…No. No body, no trail, nothing. If he's alive, he could be anywhere on this planet. Any cave or ditch among a thousand."
"Let's not panic. We could try scanning for him from our ships, can't we?" Peppy offered tentatively. "Even if we find the vaguest of life-signs, we could at least know where start looking."
Pigma cut him off. "Don't bother. Look…" From his channel, there was the loud clacking of buttons and shrill chirp of his radar scanner. "All the dust and turbulence in the atmosphere is wreaking havoc on our sensors. Damn clouds are scrambling and blocking everything I throw at it—I can't even pick up James' lifesigns. We might as well be blind." The growing disappointment in his voice began to spike, and James' stomach wormed as he felt it directed at him. "If our guy's really here, then we're already too late. Even a second's head start is all he'd need to vanish on a planet like this. It'll be days before we find him…"
James finished for him defeatedly. "…if we find him at all."
A brittle silence followed on the radio. They could all feel the same sickening feeling, the sensation of an entire night's worth of effort and exhaustion slipping through their fingers.
"Great. Just beautiful." There was an audible slam from Pigma's channel as he banged his fist on his control monitor. "Are you happy now? This is precisely why you should've listened to me. But hey, whoever listens to me, right?'
"Don't start, Pigma," James growled. "Now's really not a good time."
"Why the hell shouldn't I? I had this son of a bitch pinned down back on the capital ship, he had nowhere to run!" The comm crackled under the strain of Pigma's fuming voice. "I woulda killed him right then and there, if someone hadn't stopped me!"
James gritted his teeth. "We need this guy alive, Pigma. You would've blown the snout clean off of him if I hadn't—
"He just got done blowing the Chairman of Space Dynamics' brains out and killing everyone else aboard! We'd be doing them all a favor! What would've been wrong with that?!"
"We would've accomplished nothing, that's what," snapped James, as he paced about hurriedly. "All those months of investigation, all that blind groping for leads…it would've all gone up in smoke the second you shot him. We won't stop to these people by making martyrs out of them, we have to find out who's organizing them."
"Oh, yeah?" Pigma retorted. "Then what was the point of stopping me from killing him, if we were just gonna to lose him out here? Unless letting this guy to get off free for committing a murder is part of the plan. If it is, you're doing a spectacular job."
Frustration dismantled the cool, authoritative composure James usually kept. "Look, if you're not going to be of any help, keep the comm channel quiet and let me do things my way. One of us needs to think."
"Go on right ahead. It'll be the first you've done all evening," Pigma said spitefully. "Maybe you'll find another creative way to let our fugitive escape!"
James barked into his headpiece. "What are you doing to help? I'm trying to fix the problem, take responsibility for what happened!"
"You? You can't even listen to anyone's judgment but your own, let alone take responsibility for your own—
"ENOUGH! Both o' you, just stop it!" said Peppy over their overlapping voices. "Gettin' mad at each other ain't gonna help us catch this guy any quicker. Just…" He exhaled. "Instead of focusing on all the wrong things we've done tonight, let's focus on we haven't tried yet, okay?"
The Hare wasn't older than either of them, and was in fact the youngest. But every now and then, when the impulse left over from James and Pigma's youth bubbled up between them, it was Peppy who'd step in to be the parent of the team.
James sat down on a nearby rock, removing his glasses. "I don't know what we can do at this point. Without a way to track this guy, we're lost." He rubbed his eyes, feeling the sleeplessness of the last three days rush at him. "Pigma's right…this was a bad call. My bad call."
Hearing the unusual amount of discouragement in James' voice spurred Pigma to suggest out of guilt: "Hey, hey…look, I just jumped to conclusions a little too fast. None of us could've predicted what this guy was gonna do. Hell, how do we know this guy didn't just set his ship to autopilot to lure us here? We were just in the clouds of Demios…maybe he jumped ship back there. Took a space suit and let us chase an empty ship, y'know?"
"And risk burning up? You really think he'd be that desperate?" Peppy sounded dubious.
"He's with the VLA. You know their type: brainwashed, obsessed, hellbent…they're the worst kind of desperate," Pigma said with audible distaste. "I'm tellin' you, after what he accomplished tonight, I wouldn't be surprised if hasn't high-tailed it back to the colony by now…scuttled back to the nest to disappear with the other ants, y'know? And if that's where he is, that's where we should be!"
The splintering headache from James' head dulled out the voices of his teammates bickering on the comm. He massaged his forehead, also subconsciously rubbing his nose at the musty smell in the air.
James froze. He inhaled immediately; even with how faint it was, the rust-like smell was unmistakable. He jerked his head, aiming the flashlight of his headset to the ground, probing the rock-surface until he found it: red flecks, hued orange against the illuminated rock.
"…Blood." He exclaimed. "Pigma, Peppy, there's blood here!"
Pigma stopped mid-sentence. "Blood? Is it his?"
James didn't answer, crouching down to smear some of it on his fingertips and bring it up to his keen snout. "It has to be his—it's fresh, a few minutes old at most."
Retaining a low crouch, James walked briskly in step with the trail of blood speckling the ground, occasionally brushing his fingers on the ground, years of tracking returning to them like reflex. He repeatedly swerved his eyes from the trail to the unraveling valley ahead, bracing for an ambush from behind one of the tall rocks looming up from the mist.
He kept muttering aloud: "He was in a mad sprint…and the trail snakes about a lot…" His fingers traced the erratic line. "He was looking for some place to hide, quickly…"
Suddenly, the rock floor beneath his fingertips became smoother and wet, and he felt the air around him become colder. James swerved his gaze up to find himself at the mouth of a cave, the fog spilling into its dark bowels…along with the dotted trail of blood.
Still crouched, James spoke in a low voice. "The trail goes inside one of the caves. …He's inside."
The radio suddenly became devoid of chatter. The other two pilots already knew what their Leader was thinking. Pigma started. "Now, Jim, wait—"
Without a moment's hesitation, James rose to full height. "Adjust G-Diffusers for atmospheric entry and land at my coordinates," he ordered, the authority returning to his voice now that the situation was back in his hands. "I'm heading in after him."
"James, don't," Peppy immediately protested. "Pigma and I have your position on the radar, we'll be there in a minute to back you up."
The Fox overrode him. "No, you won't. Neither of you follow me inside, you hear me? You two stay at the cave entrance and guard the perimeter; cut him off if he tries to double back. I can handle it from here."
"By yourself?" Pigma yelped. "You're faint enough as it is, we can barely hear you—you go into that cave, your frequency might disappear off the comm completely! If something goes wrong, no way for you to reach us!"
"I won't need to call you. He's only one man…only one of us needs to pursue him."
"Have you lost your mind?!" The Hog's channel was practically straining under his voice. "For Christ's sake, James, you're not a full squadron or hazard team…you're one guy, on a planet you've never set foot on. Hell, no one's set foot on this place in a thousand years! You won't know what kind of death trap those caves'll lead you straight into—" Then, there was a hesitation in his voice. "Look, maybe….maybe we should let ISCA-12 handle this from here."
A cold sensation that nothing to do with the planet's frigid atmosphere shot up James' back, causing him to snap angrily. "You know exactly what they'll do to him when they catch him. Why the hell would you even suggest something like that?"
"This guy isn't leaving us with any options! I know you don't like the way they deal with…well, his kind…but so what? After what he's done, maybe he deserves it—"
"No one deserves what they'll do to him, understand?" James spat. "I don't care what species he's a part of, I'll never stand by willing for something like that! Never, understand?"
"Stop it! We're not turnin' this into another race debate." Peppy spoke firmly, before focusing on their Leader, trying to nudge him from a place of reason. "James, I know you're trying to make up for letting this guy escape, and this ain't the way to go about it. We have to be smart about this! Diving down there in that cave, without radar and without backup, is probably exactly what this guy wants."
"Peppy, he's already bleeding," James said urgently. "I can still get to him, talk to him…make him see reason before anything. I'm not losing this lead, not this time." He reeled back the haste in his voice, steadying himself. "Guys…please. Too much has gone wrong tonight because of me. I might not have another shot at making things right."
There was a pause from the other two pilots. The desperation in the fox's voice made it apparent that he wasn't ordering them around this time.
Pigma's sigh of resignation distorted the comm channel. "You always make this job fifteen times harder than it needs to be, you know that?" There was an audible click as he yanked his flight stick into place. "Fine, then. Peppy and I will touch down, but it'll be tough to reach you. And Jim…watch yourself. These Liberators are zealots, you hear me? Blind, brainwashed. They'll do anything for this cause of theirs. Now's not the time to play the 'concerned parent' routine, so don't—gh—FSHHHHHHHH—ere the—FSSSSSHHHHHHHH—av—FSSSSHHHH—"
James winced slightly at the scrambling noise, before glancing upwards. The radio system of the other Arwings must've been blacking out from atmospheric penetration. It was just him and the silence now, with a thin, icy wind emerging from the giant cave yawning before him, whistling through his fur. James blinked the sleeplessness out of his steely eyes, squeezed the numbness out of his fingers…purging himself anything that might hinder him.
He drew his blaster from its weathered holster, and cautiously stepped inside.
The silent tunnel rattled with the slow, rhythmic echo of James' ginger footsteps. He almost felt like he was being swallowed; the air grew damp as the tunnel shrank around him, and it became easier to accidently nudge the cold, wet cave walls with his arms, sending a shiver rippling up his fur. He could barely see the ground or the area around him. The dim glow of his flashlight danced over the cracks of the wall, only allowing him to see a few inches in front of him. He probed the blackness with the barrel of his GD92 Telsar pistol blindly. Soon, he could barely make out the grooved ceiling of the cave transition into a swarm of stalactites. Endless spiny rows of them clung to the walls, jutting and hanging in a way that created the optical illusion of the cave walls melting all around him
Feeling his fur raked by the cold air, James tightened his grip on his blaster. This planet was nothing like he imagined it would be… so dark, noiseless, oppressive and endless. Certainly nothing like the Papetonian forests and rice fields where he'd grown up. He couldn't imagine any kind of life-form leading a dire existence in a place like this...
Then, in the corner of his eye, he saw a rush of movement ahead, barely distorting the shadows. "HEY!"
Shwa-THOOM!
James only had a second's notice to flatten himself against the rock wall, feeling the flurry of red laser-shots singe the air as they streaked past his face. He cursed and rubbed the burn that had seared a patch of fur off his cheek, but heard the dragging noise of the Fugitive's frantic limp as he sprinted deeper into the cave's lightless bowels.
Instead of firing back, James spun to a shielding part of the cave wall, blaster at the ready. Any attempts at stealth were pointless now. Keeping his muscular back aligned to his cover, keeping as much of his bright, reddish-brown fur out of view as possible, he peered around and called out.
"There's no use running!" He eyed the blood trail freckling the stone floor. "Even ignoring your condition, there's no place for you to run to—not on this rock."
He waited, ears perked for any sound that would rattle off the cave walls. A voice caused James' barrel and attention to jerk up.
"I don't need to outrun you, McCloud…just to kill you."
A familiar smile from James' younger, more roguish days played on his lips as he edged out behind cover, just enough to call out: "Think you can?"
Shwa-THOOM! Shwa-THOOM!
Blaster shots greeted him—ones that seared by and lit his face red before shattering the rock fixture above him into a shower of obsidian pieces. James leapt into a brisk dodge roll, glasses falling off his face and clattering somewhere down the distant catacombs. As he scrambled back up, he took notice of the somewhat random scorchmarks left by the laserfire.
"You're wasting an awful lot of laser-rounds," He called out. "First day holding a blaster?"
No response came from the darkness ahead. James emerged from his hiding place and strode forward.
"You haven't been counting your shots…but I have," said James as he walked, eyes panning over the stone columns adorning the tunnel. "You wasted plenty back on the docking platform when I was chasing you, and before that: You used a shot when you killed the Chairman. You used another when you killed his wife…" He paused briefly, before continuing his slow walk. "…another when you shot his daughter, and another when you shot that oil gasket and set those other passengers ablaze."
"So those mongrels died slowly, did they? Good." The Fugitive's voice was layered with spite.
The words sent a boiling anger into James' blood, one that he tried to squeeze out through his fingers around the grip of his weapon, before he heard the scuttling sound of footsteps ahead. He ran further down, out of the unoccupied maze of columns to where green light started seeping into view. Radioactive cracks snaked cave walls on either side of him and illuminated the bowels with an eerie, oppressive aura, and turned his orange fur and white snout different shades of green. The catacombs now opened to a massive stone well with a large chasm, overlooked by a rock bridge that stretched over it like a weathered tongue. A sudden gust of movement erupted in front of James, one he almost shot at…realizing stupidly that it was hot air from a geyser. The rock bridge was dotted with them, each hissing to life every sporadic few seconds.
Suddenly, his eyes found the trail of blood scattered on the bridge's surface, now better illuminated with the green light, until a second trail of blood materialized, running adjacent to the first. Narrowing his eyes, James looked ahead farther down the bridge see them merge to see the two trails merge.
No…. not two trails. One that looped around.
"DON'T MOVE!"
The hoarse shout behind James made him whirl around, at last finding himself face to face with his fugitive. The two of them were sweaty and wild-eyed behind their blasters, standing barrel-to-barrel atop the rock bridge.
Now that the heat of pursuit was gone, James could see with a sinking feeling how young the fugitive was. He was a monkey—a tamarin, maybe? James wasn't rehearsed enough in Venomian demographics to know—somewhere around nineteen, maybe younger. Greasy locks of fur matted above his brow, but his face was rampant with wild young features that ran contrast to James' own creased, brow-beaten face. He was clad in the kind of stained and tattered work-clothes typical of his species these days, while also sporting a gruesome, twisted ankle that he'd been dragging along since the crash. For a moment, his sweaty and frenzied face remained transfixed, seemingly stunned to be seeing James McCloud himself, real and in the flesh...not on a Holofilm or static photo.
"Drop the blaster an' move away!" The boy spat, speaking in the garbled, uneducated accent characteristic to Venomians. "Drop it, or I'll kill you!"
James frowned suspiciously. For someone who had left behind so many corpses, the fugitive's trigger discipline was abysmal, worse than some of his Academy students, fingers curled around the grip as one would with a drill rather than a blaster.
The Venomian's eyes bulged. "You deaf?! I'll blow your bloody head clean open if you don't drop it, I swear!"
James narrowed eyes, studying him. "No, you won't."
Perplexed by his lack of alarm, the Venomian elevated his voice to a shout. "What, you think I can't do it? I've killed plenty of canines tonight, and I can definitely stomach killing you!"
"You won't do it because you're out of blaster rounds. We both know you are."
The young Simian became rigid. "I don't know what you're talking about."
James' eyes homed in on him. "Then why haven't you shot me yet? Why go from trying to kill me to trying to get me to drop my gun?"
Startled surprise ran up the Venomian's hands, threatening to rattle the grip of his blaster. He snapped the barrel higher, trying to iron out the desperate cracks in his voice. "I got one more shot. That's all I need to—"
"No, you don't," James said flatly. "You haven't been counting, but I have: you think you have another round chambered in there, but you're wrong. You've wasted a lot in this cave..." One of his keen ears twitched. "…and I haven't heard you reload."
The Venomian suddenly looked queasier under the green light teeming around them, suddenly appearing small and cornered. "T-Think I'd fall for that? I know what you're trying to do, McCloud…" He lips and hands both quivered as he tried to reinforce his bluff. "And it ain't gonna work! I've got you cornered, not the other way around!"
James slung his blaster away and faced him boldly. "Take your shot, then. If you really have one left, then you've got nothing to lose, right?" As he spoke, his fingers brushed his holstered pistol, eyes flashing. "Prove me wrong."
The air became dead, with only the occasional hiss of the geysers around them. Sudden hesitation mounted behind the Venomian's blaster as he remained petrified where he stood, clearly wary of blowing his cover by sounding off the fatal, empty click from his pistol once he'd pulled the trigger. His eyes darted from the catacombs behind him, to the Fox obstructing him.
"Be honest, kid, even if you managed to kill me, what was the next step in your plan?" James eyed his twisted leg. "Hobble down here, in the planet's underbelly till you starve?"
The Venomian backed away slowly on his side of the bridge. "There's more'n one way off this planet…" There was a strange inflection in his voice, as his eyes darted between beads of sweat.
James approached him slowly. "You sure it's me you're trying to convince?"
"Whatever happens to me, you can be sure you won't be gettin' your prize, Cornerian!" The Venomian spat. "You won't be draggin' my carcass back to make every headline on tomorrow's News Transmission like you do with everyone else. Not me…not this time!" He aimed his rancid glare behind him, cursing under his breath. "I don't even know how the hell you followed me here…"
"It wasn't particularly hard," said James coolly. "The blood trail you left behind wasn't exactly conspicuous."
The fugitive's eyes swerved back to James. "The what?"
James gestured to the flecks on the ground. "Whatever part of you is bleeding, it gave you away back at the canyon… I probably never would've found you without it."
Too paranoid to take his eyes off of James, the Venomian glared at him suspiciously. "I ain't bleedin' anywhere…I don't know what you're on about. One of you Star Fox twits tackled me back on the ship, broke my leg…but none of you had the strength to wound me."
James probed the young man's eyes but didn't find any signs of lying. He immediately furrowed eyebrows. Then if it wasn't your blood that led me here, whose…?
Suddenly, eyes darted around the cave and jumping to his own conclusions, James' voice becomes rigid. "If you've taken a hostage from the capital ship, I won't show you an ounce of mercy."
The Venomian glared haggardly at James, like the Fox was rubbing it in. "You know I didn't grab anyone. Once you arrived, with all those CDF troops behind you, I couldn't stop to think…about anything." His darting eyes found James again, his voice hopelessly thin with exasperation. "Y-You weren't supposed to be there. You, the Rabbit, the fat bastard pig that twisted my leg…none of you were supposed to be there."
"Misfortune finds us all eventually," said James, rather unsympathetically.
"Does it?" The young man stared at James hatefully. "Does a Cornerian even know what that word means, with his full belly an' smooth hands?" He raised a free hand, making the callouses of his palm visible. "Have you even worked a day in your life? Worn yourself to the bone in some factory, hoping that just, maybe, you might have food for the week?"
"You don't get to talk to me about suffering after what you just did," James snapped.
"I was giving you Canines got a taste of what you give us!" rasped the Venomian. "If I made a single one of those wretches feel an ounce of what we have to endure—"
"So this is how you remedy the inequalities in the world?" The lack of sunglasses exposed all the bitter disapproval in the commando pilot's grey eyes. "By killing innocent Cornerians?"
"There are no innocent Cornerians!" The Venomian hissed, his lip curving to exposing his fangs. "The only reason we have to suffer is because of you! All of you, makin' us the trash of this galaxy—scattered, without a homeworld outside of that shithole Demios, born to do the work of scum an' low-lifes! And why? 'Cause you think that beating us in some war a thousand years ago gives you bragging rights to have us grovel at your feet while you gloat above us! You brag about having the biggest fleet of ships, when we're forced to build 'em for you! Everyone calls Corneria City the galactic jewel, when we were the ones who paved it, built every skyscraper!"
Through the matted curtain of greasy fur, the Simian stared smoldering coals into James, his voice was filled with so much murderous anger for someone so young.
"An' you canine scum have the nerve to call it to call it 'reparations'. Reparations. Why must I pay for some war that my ancestors lost, that I wasn't even born to see?" His angry voice echoed across the bridge. "I'll tell you what it is: it's nothing more than an excuse to 'ave us wriggling under your thumb…to make us your slaves an' beggars, paving every tile in Corneria City to enshrine your victory over us!"
James didn't bother protesting or arguing. He'd heard this ballad hundreds of times, with the same fanaticism, from countless other impressionable Venomians his age. This one and the others James had captured…they all believed in what they were spewing. All of it, with every ounce of their being.
The same seething, often-recited rhetoric that had obviously been planted in them by the radical Simian Revolutionaries they idolized.
"All that big talk about Corneria being 'the Mother World', the heart of peace, but you ain't above leechin' off of an entire race, are you?" the Simian spat. "But why should I expect a Cornie bastard like you to be ashamed for any—"
"I'm Papetonian, not Cornerian," James cut in, having heard just about enough.
Venomian stopped. "What?"
"Dogs come from Corneria, foxes come from Papetoon." James folded his arms. "We're not all the same. Try to learn the difference before piling the blame at the wrong feet. It'll save you a world of embarrassment."
The Venomian's face flushed, remaining locked in a few seconds of genuine surprise before his face contorted into a dismissive scowl. "Fat difference that makes. The Dogs've got you bought an' paid for, that basically makes you one of them. But you won't be bringing me in."
"You think you're someone special just because you're indoctrinated with all this freedom fighter crap?" asked James. "Do you have any idea what you've done? The chaos you've brought about?"
"I did what thousands of Venomians are too afraid to do!" The young Simian insisted. "Everyone back home talks about how the Venomian Liberator's Army is wasting its time, that we're fightin' a lost cause…"
And like clockwork, there it was: the VLA, the name that caused James to groan internally. Where other intergalactic terrorist groups would've gradually dissipated into obscurity or defeat, the VLA were a persistent thorn in his side. It seemed like they were behind every massacre and protest these days, but always ever so careful to purge everything from evidence to their own acolytes to remain elusive, and ever at large.
"…and tonight, we made 'em all see that hope isn't lost, that we 'ave a chance at tipping the scales in our favor!"
"You have a sick way of showing it," said James disdainfully.
The Simian's face soured in response to his accusing tone. "I don't expect you to care. A Venomian uprising would get in the way of your Cornerian paycheck, wouldn't it?" He demanded, voice imbued with searing vindication. "You're part of the reason the rest of my kin are afraid to join with us."
"They don't want to join up because their lives are hard enough without being lumped in with a horde of fanatics massacring ships and doing everything in extremes," James snapped. "They don't want what you're offering. And I can't say I blame them."
The Venomian shook his head. "The others've been bent over by the Dogs for so long that they're too afraid to raise their 'eads higher than the Cornies would like them to. They've lost the will to revolt. But they'll come around eventually…a few more victories like tonight, an' they'll come to our side…"
James muttered. "Stop it, kid…"
"Once Simians everywhere see the strength of our cause, they'll be begging to join by the millions. They'll no longer be afraid of the Cornies, or you!" He straightened indignantly, his eyes wide. "We'll liberate 'em all, make their lives better one day at a time, an' there'll be nothing you can do ab—"
"Don't you get it? You're making things WORSE!" James finally shouted. He'd completely abandoned the professional neutrality required of him. "Ever since I was a boy, all I've ever heard about apes and monkeys is how letting them mingle with the rest of us is a hazard waiting to happen. 'Born with war in their veins, confused by peacetime…defective and untamable'…that's what I was taught." James' eyes hardened. "What do you think you or your Liberator friends are doing when you wreak bloodshed like this? You enforce that stigma! Venomians that had nothing to do with this slaughter are going to be harassed and mistreated for days because of what you've done tonight. Is that what you call a victory? Watching your own people suffer because of your blunders?"
The youth snarled. "They wouldn't suffer that stigma if your Cornie friends hadn't spent centuries enforcing it!"
"Because you keep proving what they say about you!" James kept pleading, sounding more like an exasperated parent here than he did back home. "Every time, it's the same. The shooting in Rhea Square, setting fire to those starship yards on Fortuna, the assassinations—"
"Triumphs, victories, every one of them." The young Venomian's eyes burned. "What, I'm supposed to feel bad about a bunch of dead Dogs in the street? Dying's the nicest thing any of them have ever done for me!"
All James could do was look on incredulously, realizing that all attempts at reasoning with the boy were going nowhere.
Resigning to an icy glare, James stepped forward. "I'm wasting my time with this...with you."
The gloating look in the Venomian's face faltered at the sudden, lethal intent that entered James' voice. He hobbled back as the Fox's lean silhouette towered over him. "Y-You're not going to…?"
"I've put in too much time and sweat into keeping you alive. Now it's time for you to make it worth it." He raised gaze slightly. "My superiors, along with everyone else, don't think tonight's ruckus was anything more than a random killing spree, but I know better. What happened tonight on that ship was deliberate, planned exhaustively…but not by you."
The Venomian's look slipped.
"You're just some urchin desperate to prove himself to the Liberators who picked him up off the street. Someone in the VLA put you up to this. Who were they? What names did they use?"
For a moment, the teenager just stared at him. "You chased me across three quadrants to this strip o' rock just to interrogate me?" He almost looked incredulous despite his breathless lungs and sweat-smeared face. "You can't be for real."
"What were their names?" barked James, impatiently snatching the boy up by the collar. The intel he'd spent maddening months coveting was in his grasp, staring right at him. "Tell me. NOW."
"You ain't gonna get SHIT outta me!" The Venomian was practically being hoisted off the ground, fruitlessly trying to wrestle James' pincerlike hand off him. "I dunno what kind of lies the mongrels tell about us on the News Holovids, but we Liberators would skin ourselves alive before rattin' each other out. Loyalty's the only thing we have left...the only thing Cornies can't take from us. You think I'd sell out the others to you?!"
"You will, if you're smart," said James coldly. "Willingly or not, you're giving me those names."
The Venomian's rapid breath steadied, breaking into a partial smile, emboldened by the newfound advantage he had over James.
"An' what're you gonna do if I don't? You watched me decorate a ship's deck with a roomful of Dogs, but you still aren't willing to kill me. 'Cause that's not your way, is it?"
"Don't test me, boy," warned James, voice raising to a boil. "I have ways of getting what I want without having to kill you."
"Is that supposed to scare me?" The boy's dangling toes found the ground and he stood taller, his silhouette rising to meet James' on the bridge's green-lit backdrop. "I grew up hearing stories 'bout you just like everyone else, McCloud. You might've been somethin' fierce back then, when I was a kid…" He gave him an up-down glance. "But that was back when you when you were younger, faster…when you still had battles to fight. I know all about what the Hero of Galactic Legend does these days: savin' townspeople here, defendin' a crippled fleet there, catchin' two-bit smugglers and pirates—that's your life now. Being Corneria's Favorite, Housebroken Boy Scout." His voice dripped with scorn as he drew brashly up to him. "So why should I be 'fraid of some wet-nosed errand boy in an old man's body, when I know the harshest thing I'm going to get is a stern lecture?"
A long time ago, a younger version of James would have probably given into the long night's worth of frustration and seized the boy by the throat and watch all the air and confidence seep out of him. Just for a few seconds, the lethal silver eyes of that younger self emerged—the one this boy wasn't old enough to ever have met, the one whose urges hadn't been tempered by age or conscience, whose ferocity in the sky at one point could've left graveyards of wrecked ships behind him. Back in the days when he only had himself to answer to.
Then, just as quickly as it had materialized, the look in James' eyes faltered.
"I'm not the one you should be afraid of…it's the people I work for," He said finally. "The lengths I'd go to get the intel I need is nothing compared to what they'll do to you."
The Venomian frowned. "The Dogs? There's no way they'll get to me. None of them followed us here—"
"Shut up and listen. My orders from the Fleet were 'capture without engagement.' Do you know what that means?" James grabbed the monkey by the shoulders, trying to rattle sense into him. "That means I shouldn't even be here, talking to you—just to hand you over to them in whatever shape I found you. But it's been hours, and they haven't received any kind of progress report from me. They'll have assumed the worst…" He shot an apprehensive glance at the tunnel. "…which means they're already on their way here. And there'll be nowhere for you to run when they do."
The Venomian suddenly swept James' hand off of him. "I won't be dragged to some Cornerian prison! None of you can make me! Even if you did, the other Liberators'll find a way to—"
"For God's sake, you idiot, they don't want to throw you in a cell, they want to KILL you!" shouted James.
The hostile look in the boy's face evaporated as straightened alertly.
"The Defense Fleet, Cornerian High Command, all the people up top?" James pointed to the roof of the cave. "They don't care who the VLA are, who you are, or what intel you've got. Normally, they'd never give rabble-rousers like you or your friends a second glance…but you've made far too big of a ripple to be ignored. You've made them look confused and unprepared on a bigger scale than usual, in front of the entire galaxy. The only reason they've sent me is to capture you and haul you back to where they can execute you." He eyed the boy grimly. "Publicly."
All the color in the Venomian's face drained, his voice thinning as his own lungs seemed to fail him.
"No, they—t-they can't do that. They can't kill me without a trial, I—"
"You think they'll bother with that, after the black eye you've just given them?" The Fox shook his head all too knowingly. "I work with these people, kid—no one knows 'em better than I do. And believe me: they care even more about sending out a message to Venomians everywhere than you do. Except they'll use your corpse to do it."
"No…no, I don't believe you…!" The anxiety practically dripping off his face along with his sweat. "This…this can't be happening. They said that if I got caught, I'd have a trial…"
"Who's 'they'?" James asked sharply. "The Liberators who put you up to this?"
Rendered speechless, the Venomian's began to dart around him, as he began to look more and more sickly beneath the dim green light. He finally locked eyes on the Fox blocking his path, voice crumbling with denial.
"You won't turn me against them! They picked me. They said I was special, they trusted me to carry out this mission—"
"You didn't question their plan, did you? You just went along with it like a good little tool, and now look at you: Cornered, crippled, trying to outrun the entire fleet on your tail—all for what?" He demanded spitefully. "Was it worth killing the Chairman of Space Dynamics for people you don't even know?"
Without missing a beat, all the indoctrinated malice returned to the Venomian's voice. "I would've killed that Canine piece of filth even if I didn't have an ounce of help! The company he ran produces more starships than any other in the galaxy…ships the people of my sector are forced to build! He and that family of his deserved what he got!"
James glares at him. "You're not the one who gets to decide that."
"Who does, then? You?" shouted the Venomian. "You won't stick up for us. You're Corneria's guardian angel, not ours. You're fine with us sufferin' as long as the ships we make go to your precious Cornerian Fleet—"
"That has nothing to do with this," James barked. "I don't fight on behalf of madmen who take the law into their own hands."
The Venomian nodded scornfully. "Then it's just as well that I did what I did tonight, if you weren't going to step up. You an' your Dog friends can drag me off an' have me executed, but I've done my family and every other Venomian in my sector a favor." He trembled slightly. "None of them will ever have to break their backs on another ship design for that Canine scum again."
James paused. "Is that what your friends in the VLA told you?"
Genuine confusion broke the young man's face as he looked at the Fox strangely, while James sighed. This is why kids like these make for such perfect recruits. None of them know how the world works.
"I hate to be the one to break this to you, kid, but starship giants like Space Dynamics have a hundred people lined up to take the place of the guy you just killed," He informed him. "They swap 'em out like I change the cogs in my Arwing. A successor's probably been chosen in the time it took you to crash land here. All the people in your sector are going to be chained to labor for the rest of their lives regardless of what you've done."
He watched as the fur on the Simian's shoulders raised, probably from the nettling sensation snaking through it.
"Y-You're lying," the boy croaked. "T-They said—"
"Your liberator friends told you what you wanted to hear," James cut over him. "They were probably using this assassination to send a message, nothing more. They picked the biggest, brightest Cornerian public figure they could find, and they manipulated the right simpleton to take him out for them."
"They weren't manipulating me!" The Venomian shouted, before his voice trailed off. "They can't have…they…why would they…? They're Simians, like me…f-fighting the same people…!"
The Venomian's hands still clutched the empty gun defiantly, trying to find the words, or muster some kind of desperate excuse. As he backed away further, James slowly walked towards him.
"Your friends abandoned you, boy…played you for a fool. They knew you were desperate…you were hungry, depressed, frustrated. They tried to take advantage of that desperation." James' eyes probed him. "Or maybe…they promised you something. Something only their revolution could give you."
Something James said must have unearthed something. The Venomian avoided all eye contact with James, fidgeting uncomfortably as the Fox's eyes continued to unravel him.
"The Liberators told you that if you killed the Head of Space Dynamics, you'd make a better life for your family, didn't they?" James leveled his eyebrows. "They fed you that line, and you bought it."
Growing, helpless distress began to seep uncontrollably out of the feverish boy's face, despite his brave attempt to contain it behind the raised barrel of his blaster. He opened his mouth but didn't speak…all the excitement and revolutionary talk had depleted. His eyes dropped to the ground, the blaster wobbling in his hands.
James relaxed his hardened expression a bit. "You're not as alone as you might think. They might've cut you off, but there's still a chance to save yourself, even in light of everything you've done. If you just—"
"Stop talking like you give a damn about what happens to me!" The Simian suddenly shouted. "You think I don't know what you're trying to do? You only care if I die before you can get what you want outta me, that's all. You only want something out of me, just like the Dogs—and what better time to get it?" His voice started to crack miserably. "The sad, stupid Venomian brat, abandoned by his friends and with his back to the wall…now's the perfect time to grab that precious intel from him while he's at the end of his rope, isn't it?"
James sighed. "That's not what I—"
"STOP LYING TO ME!" The Venomian shouted over him. "We both know damn well that we don't have enough in common for you to feel sorry for me." He shook his head hopelessly. "You have no idea how much depended on things going right tonight. You've never spent a day in that factory, without sunlight, losing all sense of time in the sweat an' fumes of that place…watching your mom and dad grow thin an' frail next to you, listening to them lie everyday about having plenty to eat when you can count their ribs…" His grimy face wandered, lost in his own exhausted misery. "Do you know that's like? Terrified of waking up one morning, and finding out the days of fumes and no food have finally got to them, and they don't wake up? And now my one shot at helping them is…it's all…"
His voice failed him as a hoarse, rasping noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a sob locked is mouth shut. James' face softened.
"You're right. I don't know what that's like," He offered quietly. "But I'll tell you this. The worst thing you could do for your parents is to make the wrong choice now. Oh, play freedom fighter if you want…but when the CDF finally drag you off and give you a hero's death on live holovid, you'll have done something worse than just leaving your parents to that factory…you'll have left them with nothing to live for. Let me tell you, there's nothing worse for a parent than going on knowing they'll outlive their child. That they weren't the ones to go first…that they didn't do something, anything to talk you out of doing something this stupid, before it was too late."
The misery and helplessness in the lines of the teenager's face were suddenly smoothened out by a surprised look. "H-How do you know all that…?"
James fixed his grey eyes on him earnestly. "Because that's exactly how I'd feel if anything had happened to my boy." He paused. "And I'd like to think that Venomians feel the same way about their kids…despite what people say."
That got the young man to stare at him dumbstruck confusion. The way the fox talked to someone of his species this was practically an anomaly, one he was still trying to wrap his head around.
"There's still a chance I can help you avoid doing that to your parents," James urged. "But I can't do a thing if you don't cooperate…if you don't turn yourself over to me."
The young man shook his head hopelessly. "I-I can't…the Dogs, they…t-they'll kill me…"
James opened his mouth to speak, when something on the ground caught his eye. He moved towards the boy's feet, causing him to flinch back in terror, only to watch James calmly pick up his fallen sunglasses.
"Wanting to kill you will be their first reaction, sure…" He continued. "But if they know you're under my protection, holding a ton of intel related to planetary security? They can't come near you, not without crossing some major boundaries. Once I make High Command recognize your value as a defector, I can start negotiating terms of exchange for your information. I could arrange a trial, maybe imprisonment. Maybe. It's not much, but it's the best option you have left after tonight. I know it's not much…" He looked at him earnestly. "…but whatever I can get you, I'll fight to get. You have my word."
"How do I know you're not leading me on, that you're not full of shit when you make all these promises?" The Venomian demanded. "Even if you're not Cornerian, you're still one of their heelhounds!"
James points his folded glasses at him. "Think. Would anyone else from my side bother to listen to your story?"
"That don't mean nothin'. You could still be takin' the piss outta me," said the Venomian, with a dry throat. "This could all be a trap. How do I know I can trust you?" His voice leapt to a desperate shout.
James paused, stone-faced for a few seconds.
"You don't." He put on his glasses, a gleam shimmering down the black lens. "Just do what your instincts tell you to do."
Across the rock bridge overlooking the green-lit chasm, the Canine Boy crept around the corner, spying from a distance on the two silhouettes that had sprinted into the same cave tunnel he did—knowingly or not. He couldn't make out their faces in the dim cavern light, regardless of how he craned his neck and squinted at them. He had no idea what they were talking about, occasionally catching bizarre phrases he didn't recognize like "Venomian" and "Cornerian."
He'd never seen anyone like these two before, prompting him to sit by….terrified, but too intrigued to run away.
Then, he heard a sound that was all-too-familiar. That same rank, vinegar-like stench from before clogged his nose…
It made the Boy's heart stop. He was already motioned halfway to start running when he realized something odd. The smell was coming from above.
"So, what's it going to be, kid?"
The Venomian kept his gaze on the ground, watching his own sweat fall to the floor as he weighed his options in an uneasy, unconvinced silence.
"If I go with you, let you cuff me or whatever…" He offered his scrawny wrists, shakily looking up at the Fox for reaffirmation. "…the Dogs won't do anything to me? You swear?"
"First things first," said James sharply. "Tell me about whoever approached you for tonight's job. You give me that, and you won't have to worry about being safe. Not while you're with me."
Mountainous hesitation clamped the Venomian's throat like a pinched straw. Slowly, the bulging, paranoid look on his face slackened. He took a shaky breath and nodded, more to assure himself.
"There was a guy on Reiaa Station—the one near Bolse. Said he was with the VLA." His eyebrows furrowed, struggling to recollect it. "He gave me some rations and started asking me questions about my family. About what I would do to help them…"
"Who was he?" James pressed him. "What was his name?"
His eyes lit up. "He was a Snow Monkey named—"
Before he could utter another word, a loud scraping and scuttling noise rattled the air.
Ears perking up at the sound, James searched the green-hewed cavern around him but saw nothing else on the rock bridge besides the Simian kid…no movement besides the geysers hissing plumes of smoke. He looked back, feeling the same confusion he saw written on the Venomian's face.
Then, they both felt a current of air from the ceiling. Warm and moist like the geysers but riddled with a rancid odor, raking their fur at a slow tempo…like breath.
James slowly tilted his head upward and saw it: half-buried in shadow and half-lit by the green lava-bed was a creature he couldn't recognize, with a long, bulbous caterpillar-like body the size of a starship hull, and plated skin just as thick. Feelers twitched and pincers clacked beneath its double-set of milky eyes, as it used its endless rows of legs to cling to the ceiling directly above them, peering down at an odd angle so that chords of its saliva dripped down.
James broke out of his shock long enough to shout to the Venomian. "Get down! MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!"
The teenager remained rooted where he stood, transfixed by the horrifying sight.
"MOVE!"
James' hand flew to his blaster, but it was too late. The Creature unhooked its legs and dive-bombed towards them, making him instinctively leap back and flatten down, the ground beneath him quaking as the bridge began to collapse under the sudden thunderous collision. Whirling around, he saw half of the bridge was gone…the Venomian and the Creature missing along with it.
A blood-curdling scream came from above. He looked up, and saw the Creature affixed back to the ceiling, curled up with its face out of view…using its huge pair of tucked, mantis-like forearms to gauge and lap up something in its grip. The Venomian's shrieks reached a fur-raising pitch, cut short by the sickening sound of flesh stretching and bones snapping—
"NO!" James ripped his blaster out and fired desperately.
The red shots bounced off the Creature's thick exoskeleton, but still provoked it to let out a guttural screech. It bolted in a serpentine motion between the stalactites and down into the black cavern depths.
James dove through the cave mouth, groping the side of his headset that bounced with his mad sprint.
"Peppy, Pigma, come in! There's—something in this cave down here with me, repeat, there's something else down here!" He started. "I'm in pursuit but need back up, hurry—"
And then the dead static reminded him that they were far out of reach, thanks to him stupidly arguing with Pigma to go alone. Cursing himself, he frantically sped through one interchangeable tunnel after another, his hoarse panting ringing off the cave walls that were being dowsed by the stream of his flashlight. He finally slid into a respite seemed identical to all the others, dim and barely lit by the glowing geyser caps. Gripping his blaster, he tucked his breath under a clamped lip as he moved as noiselessly as possible through the geyser field, darting his eyes between the hot fumes for the next tunnel out. His heart raced while another part of him listened for that scuttling…or any traces of that smell in the air…
Then, he felt something cold and slimy, buzzing an inch above his ears—an insect feeler, just behind him—before diving to the ground into a roll he almost didn't pull off in time. The Creature burst out of hiding between two hissing geysers like a maggot sprouting out of rotting bark, its scythe-like forearms almost claiming James' bushy tail as they raked the ground and sank into it. James couldn't even regain his footing; the monster had already ripped its forearms free and was storming at him. He frantically shuffled back on his hands rapidly away from the massive creature, barely wriggling out of reach as its forearms stabbed the ground, chiseling rock and spraying dust, as it worked exhaustively to impale him. As the gap between them began to close, its huge, snapping maw drew close enough for James to feel its rank, vinegar-like breath stifle his snout. Seizing the opportunity, James hauled his blaster up and shot into its open mouth.
Shwa-THOOM!
Locking its forearms together, the Creature shielded its face from the blast. It hissed down at him, feelers thrashing the air…smelling him. James hobbled to his feet quickly, but creature's scuttling advance towards him didn't stop, even when it couldn't see. The Fox backed away, scraping the wet cave wall with his elbow…realizing too late the trap that the creature had backed him into.
The creature closed in, about to lower its guard to spring its head and swallow him whole. The wall hitting James from behind sent a jolt to his spine. He darted his grey eyes about desperately, raking his mind for anything, any maneuver he hadn't tried.
The forearms shifted apart, and the Creature's twitching mouth sprouted open to let out a knifing screech as it lurched at him—and then there was a halt in its lunge. Its antennae twitched in the opposite direction, seemingly distracted. James watched in confusion as it directed its feelers to something behind it. Rearing its many legs, it swung its plates around…giving James a clear view of the absolute last thing he expected to see.
A child… A canine boy, hiding, or attempting to hide, behind a bed of the nearby rocks.
It was so out of place it didn't even seem real. James was in a confused daze, but the Creature didn't wait. It swooped low to scuttle towards the child, making a ravenous new crackling noise as if hungrily recognizing his scent. Upon being discovered, the Child looked frightened to the verge of suffocating, his trembling mouth hanging ajar as if knowing he'd already be dead before he'd started running. His face darkened from the oncoming shadow of the monster's mouth caving open above him.
James had no clue who he was, or where he'd come from. He just did what came naturally to him:
"HEY! OVERE HERE! HEY!"
He shouted at the top of his lungs, firing random shots overhead, trying anything to lure the beast away from the Child. A shower of sparks exploded over head as one of the stray shots dislodged one of the stalactites, sailing downwards and embedding itself into the Creature's back. It reared up and let out an agonized shriek, flailing its forearms as a yellow, syrupy substance began oozing out of its back.
James' tall ears perked up alertly. There must have been a soft, fleshy, unarmored portion on the roof of the insectoid's body…one that was out of the reach of blaster bolts. The Creature reeled at the splinter digging int its spine, staggering drunkenly and thrashing at James, who dove right down.
SMASH!
The jagged forearm tore a chunk out of the wall, sending a cloud of dust spilling over the room. James' lean body rose out of the cloud on the other side of the beast, and he swept the Child behind him with his leg.
"Stay behind me!"
His voice ringing from behind made the Creature lurch around and rush towards them, its flurry of movement made all the more unsettling by the involuntary convulsing and expanding of its body from its gushing wound. Eyes already on the ceiling, James snapped his barrel up and let out a rapid stream of bolts, the falling spikes pushing through the creature's skin. It shrieked and hobbled back, its rippling legs surprisingly careful to avoid a spot on the floor where the dust cloud seemed to sink into.
Not the boiling edge of a geyser….a crevice. James didn't hesitate for a second. He moved in and fired, dislodging stalactite after stalactite with each shot:
Shwa-THOOM! Shwa-THOOM!
Yellow blood splattered the floor as more jagged rock plunged into plated skin. James stormed forward as he fired, the thud of his boots echoing between every shot. The Creature staggered farther and farther back, seemingly clambering about with its short arms, until the rear row of legs wriggled too close to the cliffside edge, slipping on the soaked floor. It went sliding back into the cavity, still writhing as it plunged into the planet core…before the last echoes of hissing and clacking died out.
James leaned on a nearby wall, letting the smoking blaster dangle from his numb fingers. He hadn't had an encounter like that in years, much less that kind of terror. And if he'd been that afraid—
That's when James whirled around to see that he was alone. He almost became anxious, before he caught the soft, distant sound of breathing from somewhere nearby, interrupted by a gasp of pain. He saw droplets of blood trailing the footpath nearby, drawing him to slowly walk alongside it and turn the corner.
The Fox's shoulders fell, along with the tension in his face.
Pinned up against the wall and shivering like a leaf was the little boy. The light was still too dim for his face to be fully visible, but his silhouette was unmistakably scrawny, and the fright in his purple eyes shone even in the dark. He stood ankle-deep in the cave mist, his hands rattling around what looked to be a small club chiseled from a stalactite.
James was struggling with what he was seeing, a hundred questions racing through his mind. But the frenzied look on the child deterred him from voicing any of them. He could tell from the way the boy darted his bulging eyes that he was going to run the second he saw a gap wide enough.
He softened his voice, trying to create a reassuring shroud with his voice, the way he used to do with his own son when he was little. "Hey….easy now, just take it easy. I won't hurt you…" He lowered himself to his knees.
The boy raised his club even higher, his small chest rising and falling rapidly with every step James took towards him.
"Okay, okay, I won't come any closer," James said gently. "What are you doing down here? Are you alone?"
The boy's face remained still, seemingly blank as he stared up at him. James frowned, wondering if he was being understood. Then to his surprise, the boy's lips moved.
"Y-You killed it…" The feeble voice was barely audible, whispering like he still couldn't believe it.
James looked surprised. "Of course, I did. He was going to hurt you." His ears twitched alertly. "Are there more of those things down here?"
The boy aimed a nervous glance down the footpath behind him and swallowed fearfully, which James took as affirmation. His mind flashed to the many tunnels he'd ran through, wondering how many other feral life-forms were roaming down here…a thought that only made him stare at the boy even more. How did he manage to survive up till this point without being eaten?
"Listen to me very carefully. If there are others like that thing, we need to get out of here. Both of us. You'll be safe if you stick with me, okay?" His warm smile faltered as he noticed the boy holding back a wince, before noticing the trickling red lines running down his hands. "You're hurt. Did that thing do that to you?"
The boy squeezed his club, bravely attempting to keep his hands from trembling, but only causing them to further redden. James realized it in an instant: it had been his blood he'd followed down here from the valley.
"Here, let me take a look…"
Upon his gloved finger coming within a whisker's reach of him, the Boy scrambled back, flattening up against the rock wall and breathing frantically.
James sighed exasperatedly. "C'mon now, I'm not gonna hurt you, I promise." Trying to endear to him, he removed his glasses. "Look, there's nothing to be afraid of. We're not too different. See?"
The Boy cocked his head to the side, the rigidness in his shoulders dissipating.
James offered a small smile, having mostly removed his sunglasses to playfully reach out to him. But quickly, he soon saw that it wasn't relief disarming the Boy…but shock. His small bright eyes became a little more visible in the shadows as he leaned inward, studying James' face, seeming absolutely mystified. For a moment, he looked to amazed to even speak, and then his gaze wandered down to the glossy sheen of the sunglasses in the adult's hand. Even without words, James could feel the wondrous curiosity overwhelming the Boy, his gaze alternating between his own reflection in the glasses, and the face above him…seemingly blown away by the familiar Canine features the two of them shared. James furrowed his eyebrows down at him, wondering what could be so remarkable about that.
"JAMES! You down here?!"
A loud flurry of footsteps and ring of voices from somewhere down the tunnel made the Boy react in terror. He bolted, crawling under James' arm to sprint past him.
"No, no, no, wait—! Damn it!"
James failed to reach out for the retreating grey blur, trailing after it down the tunnelway.
"WHOA!"
Almost on perfect timing, Pigma collided straight into him, the trajectory of his flashlight flying and his hand instinctively bolting to his holster. Upon seeing the fox, relief flushed back into his velvety face.
"There you are! Peppy, he's down here!" He called back behind him, before exhaling. "Cripes, we didn't think we'd find you. What the hell happened? We were both outside, and then we heard this ungodly screeching noise comin' from inside! We thought—"
James rushed up to snatch him by his collar, hissing. "Shhh! Just SHUT UP for a second!"
Confused at first, Pigma's face soured instantly. "Well, screw you too, then! That's the thanks I get for coming in here to rescue your ungrateful ass, is it, Mr. 'Don't-follow me-under-any-circumstances'? Should I have just left you down here?"
A startled-looking Peppy turned the corner. "What's going on?" His eyebrows slackened. "Please tell me you two aren't back at it already, I swear."
"It's not ME this time. James is the one who started—"
"Be quiet, the both of you!" James glanced behind him, voice barely above a whisper. "There's someone else down here."
"Someone else? Who, the perp?"
"No…just follow me, and don't make any sudden movements. Turn off your flashlights, too. They might scare him."
The two wingmen exchanged bewildered glances, as James raised a finger to his lips and motioned them down the tunnel, where they followed him in a quiet lockstep. Past a crooked stone archway was a clearing where the green hues emanating from the cracks in the wall crept around a small silhouette cowering in the corner.
The Rabbit and the Pig's mouths dropped.
"What on Earth…?" Pigma turned to James in alarm. "How…? Where…?"
"I don't know."
With the room's illumination providing visibility at last, they could all see the cave child. He was of shockingly small build, much smaller than any wolf pup his age should have had, with downy fur that was of a quilt of bruises and scrapes The bundle of rags he was clad in might have been clothes at some point, out of which stuck his unkept plume of a tail. Layers of black soot that streaked his grubby cheeks, and his unnerved panting occasionally revealed small rounded teeth that were years away from being sharp. His anatomy was practically skeletal, with gangly limbs and a head disproportionately large atop his malnourished shoulders. In fact, his grey fur was pulled so thinly over his body that his ribs could be counted individually, and his feet had years of dry blisters from traversing the harsh landscape. And yet, frail and weathered as the rest of his body was, his purple eyes had so much energy: among the dim light and yawning tunnels, they seemed to hold the only spark of life in otherwise dead surroundings.
Just looking at him caused Peppy's heart to ache, and the immediate sympathetic utterance of "You poor thing…" under his breath. Meanwhile, as per usual for him, Pigma reacted from his gut.
"What the hell?! Whose kid is that?" His bellowing voice sent a fringe of shock up the wolf boy's fur, causing him to shrink up against the wall.
Peppy elbowed Pigma's belly. "Will you keep your voice down, for God's sake? You're scarin' him!"
"I'm scaring him?" Pigma exclaimed. "I'm not even the tallest person out of the three of us! Why would he be scared of me? This is ridiculous—HEY! C'mon out, kid we haven't got all d—"
The Hare smacked a hand over the Hog's mouth. "Stop it, you hear me?"
But the boy was already shaking, rooted to the wall with his eyes scrambling around the room for some hole to hide in.
Peppy yanked his hand back. "Now see what you've done. You've probably frightened the poor thing…"
"You deal with him, then," Pigma said annoyedly. "You're the one who's supposed to be good with kids…"
"Only because I don't frighten them half to death." Peppy then proceeded to kneel down, calling out in a leveled but assuring voice. "It's alright, bud, none of us are gonna come any closer. We'll stay right here… You can come out whenever you feel comfortable."
"S-Stay back!" The boy cried out, raising his club. "Keep away from me!"
James was about to reach forward when Peppy raised a barring hand.
"We won't do anything to hurt you, I promise." He shot a scathing glare at Pigma before continuing. "None of us are here to intrude on your home, or boss you around—we just wanna help. But we can't help you if you don't come out and talk to us."
"I don't want any help! Just stay away. JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!" The boy shouted, voice trembling like he was on the verge of crying.
James sighed. "Look, we're not going to abduct you. I just fought to keep that giant creature away from you. I wouldn't have done that if I wanted to see you hurt, right?" The other two pilots shot him confused looks, to which he responded with a glance that said: Long story. But his words seemed to reach the boy, whose club wavered.
"You can trust us, bud," Peppy offered. "None of us are gonna force you to come out. And no one's gonna hurt you."
Delicately, he placed his blaster on the ground and raised his empty palms as a peace offering, lowering himself to his knees. He gestured the others, who followed suit. Pigma grumbled as he dropped lower.
"We're wasting our time with this kiddy nonsense. He's not going to be less afraid of us…not if he's smart."
"Hush, Pigma," James ordered out of the side of his mouth.
With silent caution, the Boy edged forward, his club still at the ready as he eyed the three men with a sense of curious trepidation, made all the more evident by the routine pause every few steps he took towards them.
"That's it…there's a good boy," Peppy urged him gently. "Nothin' to be afraid of.
The boy's small, noiseless feet trudged closer. It seemed like his terror was dissipating the longer he examined the three strangers. Peppy, with his cozy maroon eyes and his gentle voice, Pigma with his doughy cheeks and amusingly-expressive face, and James, with his solemn grey eyes and deep voice… Meanwhile, Peppy in particular noticed something about the Boy as he drew closer, something that stood out prominently amongst his simple and assuming features: his eyes. They were wide with youthful innocence and shone with earnest, but there was something…strange about them, even familiar. They had a piercing, regal air to them, as if genetically plucked off of some cunning ancestor and planted on his round face.
"W-Who are you?" The wolf pup stared at Peppy. "What are you?"
Peppy, finding that phrasing bizarre, pointed to himself. "I—we're pilots, all three of us. I'm Pembroke Hare, this guy behind me's Pigma Dengar…" He felt so strange hearing himself. He and the other two were so used to people recognizing them on sight that they almost never had to introduce themselves. "…and looks like you've already met our Team Leader, James McCloud. We're the Star Fox Team, guardians of galactic peace."
The Boy's eyebrows furrowed. "Guardians? Are you guys soldiers?"
James crinkled his snout at the suggestion but gave a conceding shrug. "Er…something like that."
"And you?" Peppy turned to the boy kindly. "What's your name?"
There was labored pause, with the boy clearly pondering whether or not he trusted the three new strangers enough to tell them.
"…Wolf. At least, I think that's how it's pronounced."
A momentary outbreak of startled looks appeared on the three adults' faces, as if Wolf had said to had brought something back from the bowels of memory.
There was a brief furrow to the Hare's brow, before he seemingly dismissed the thought. It was impossible, after all. "Wolf…that's a good name. A tough name," He added encouragingly. "Well, Wolf, you don't have to be afraid anymore. Whatever happens, we'll make sure you stay safe, and—oh, God." His sentence slipped as his eyes traveled lower. "What happened to your hands?"
Wolf held them up nonchalantly. "I fell."
Before he could say or do anything else, the Rabbit had already reached into his coat and produced some bandages, fretting anxiously. "Now, be very still for me, bud. I'm gonna try and make that better for you—it won't hurt a bit—" He seized the boy's hands before he could wriggle out of reach, prompting a fearful Wolf to start struggling and writhing with a tiny, rather unimpressive growl.
"Watch it—he's a jumpy little fella," said James.
Peppy calmly placed his larger gloved hands over Wolf's smaller ones, hastily wrapping the bandages. Slowly, the boy's wriggling winded down as the soft cloth began dampening the pain in his palms. "There, ain't that better? It'll have to do before I can back to my ship, and some proper disinfectant." He grimaced the longer he wrapped, discovering more welts and blisters. "Good God, kid…what did this place do t'ya…"
Wolf, still looking confused, confronted all of them. "That sound, outside in the open…was that your ship?"
James rose to his feet. "The crash? No, that wasn't ours…that was another ship. One we were following."
"What were you doing here?"
"We're on a pursuit mission. Someone we were chasing got loose down in these caves, so we came down here to arrest him…unsuccessfully." When Pigma turned to him questioningly, James cut him off with a cautionary glance towards the boy in front of them. "Later."
Wolf looked at them confusedly. "But what part of the planet are you from? Where did you get that ship?"
The question caused Peppy to halt just before the final knot of his wrapping, giving the boy an odd glance. "We're not from around here, son. We're from off-world…like you probably are."
Wolf echoed curiously. "What do you mean, you're from 'off-world'?"
"We're from Corneria," said Pigma. "Well, that's where we work, at least."
Wolf sounded the word out. "Kone-ney-ri-ah." An insuppressible smile broke on his face. "That's a funny word. What does it mean?"
Peppy beamed as he saw a smile spring onto Wolf's face for the first time. Such a warm and endearing smile, he thought, one that instantly lit up the dim cave around them. "It's where we come from. Our home planet."
"With that name? That doesn't sound like a real place." His eyebrows furrowed, unsure if they were making fun of him. "Where is it? In the sky?"
Peppy and the others looked at each other. "It's on the other side of the galaxy."
Wolf didn't say anything. The stunned silence and look on his face embodied how astonishing the idea was to him. Concerned looks started being passed around between all three adults, before Peppy leaned forward, leveling his voice cautiously as not to let any panic influence the boy.
"How….long have you been down here, bud?"
The boy shrugged, pawing at his bandages curiously. "…S'long as I can remember."
James looked at him inquiringly. "But why are you alone, on this planet? Where are your parents?"
Wolf paused his fiddling and raised his scruffy head to look up at them blankly.
"Your mom, dad?" The Fox pressed him anxiously. "Brothers, sisters….anyone?"
He shook his head. "I'm the only one here."
"Do you know why? Do you remember why? Where they are, how you got here…?"
Again, Wolf shook his head. "It's always been just me."
The same, silent expression of doubt was passed around between the three pilots' faces, with the soft, kind dispositions they'd been adopting to make the boy feel secure vanishing.
"Would you give us a second, bud?"
Peppy offered Wolf a smile before yanking James aside, out of earshot. "This doesn't make any sense," he whispered. "There ain't supposed to be any life on Venom…any people, anyway. And yet here this boy is. He'd have to have come here from off-world somehow…"
James looked over his shoulder. "Do you think he was left behind? Shipwrecked, separated from his parents…abandoned, maybe?"
Pigma cast a doubtful glance around the dim cavern. "C'mon, man, there are easier places to ditch your kid. This is the edge of known space…the literal middle of nowhere. You'd have to go out of your way to abandon your child here." Bewilderment drew his stare back. "So why go through the trouble?"
"You don't think…" Peppy pondered in a low voice. "…he was born down here, do you?"
"For God's sake, Peppy, look around at this place," James dismissed. "A planet like this would've devoured him as a toddler. He'd never reach this age without tripping into some abyss, or being swallowed whole by some creature—"
"So how the hell did he GET here?" Pigma hissed. "What hellish miracle landed him here of all places?"
Wolf watched the group huddle of pilots bickering, ears curiously perking up to decipher what they were whispering about. Finally Peppy turned around, leveling his voice gently.
"Wolf, there's something we need you to tell us—think hard, now." He studied his round face carefully. "Do you remember being anywhere else besides this planet? Some place with the sun, with other people?"
Wolf looked at him puzzledly, before shaking his head. Peppy's heartbeat quickened, growing more alarmed by the second.
"And what about all the time you've been here? You haven't seen anyone, coming or going? Anyone?"
"I told you, it's only ever been me," Wolf insisted, wondering why nothing was getting through to them. "I'm the only one I've ever seen with two legs on this planet." Hanging his head wistfully, he let his eyes wander. "I knew there had to be others somewhere—like me, I mean—"
"How did you know?" James interrogated.
"I dunno," admitted Wolf. "I just figured, every other creature on this planet had a nest, with babies. The one I came from must've been somewhere…some part of the planet I couldn't get to, some place above the skies I couldn't reach. I'd look up at the sky and wonder if I'd ever get to see any." His eyes fell on the Fox. "Then when that blue and silver ship landed in the valley, and you climbed out, I couldn't believe it." He looked at the others. "And now there's two more of you."
"Wait, back up a second…are you telling me that…" interjected Pigma, verbally shambling over himself. "That we're the first people you've ever seen? Ever, in your whole life?"
Wolf nodded brightly. "Yup."
The worrying looks that had been creeping into the pilots' creased and battle-weary faces gave way to utter shock. Peppy and James were exchanging dumbfounded looks, but Pigma was already exploding.
"Wh—? Wh—WHA—Hold on…you've lived here your whole life alone, away from a single person in sight, and you're…like this?" His stare traveled up and down Wolf in disbelief. "How? If you've only ever been by yourself, how do you even know how to walk on two legs, how to feed yourself…how to talk?"
Looking confused, Wolf simply shrugged. "I dunno. I just…do."
"What do you mean, you 'just do'?!" Pigma bleated. "How can you even understand what we're saying? How in blazes do you know what anything is? Why do you know—no, how do you know what a starship is, when you don't even know what Corneria is?!"
Wolf didn't respond with anything, the wave of Pigma's voice causing him to shrink slightly. Seeing the look on his face prompted Peppy to mutter to the Hog quietly.
"Stop prying at him. Can't you see he doesn't know? There's no need to make him uncomfortable."
Pigma saw the effect he was having on the boy and relented his expression. "Alright, alright. Sorry for blowing a gasket." His eyes pressed Peppy. "But c'mon, even you gotta admit how crazy this all is. You don't grow up this far out from civilization, and talk n' act like this kid does. It's…it's just…"
"Look, regardless of what he knows, or how he knows it, he clearly doesn't remember anything," Peppy said firmly. "And even then, we're losin' sight of what's really important here. That he's been down here for far too long."
Wolf's ears pricked up alertly, wondering what the Rabbit meant by that.
James nodded approvingly. "True enough. The Arwings have enough fuel to go into orbit—we can catch a freighter or passenger ship to hook up with." He smiled down at him. "What do you say, Wolf? Ready to leave this gutter behind?"
Just hearing those words practically made Wolf's heart stop. A startled look sprang into his widened eyes, looking like he'd just had an unexpected gift drop into his lap. He breathed in a voice that was barely audible, making sure it was him they were really talking to. "You mean…I can leave? I can go with you?"
"Of course," said James kindly. "We're not letting you stay here a second longer than you have to. Here—" He yanked his scarf off and wrapped it around Wolf's shoulders. "You must be freezing. Why don't we head to orbit and call up a nice, warm freighter or passenger ship to hook up with and refuel. Once we've gotten our bearings, we'll figure out things from there: where you'll go, and all that…"
Peppy cut in sternly. "Not until we've gotten him cleaned up, and something proper to eat. I don't even want to know what he's been living off of down here…"
"Amen to that," Pigma agreed. "Kid needs some proper Cornerian food—and I mean a real meal. None o' that Instant Voyage Meal crap, I mean a proper meal." Checking his comm. watch, his eyes lit up. "Y'know what would be great for this ungodly hour? Some Gelbra Breakfast Bay waffles with a tub of syrup. And a nice, fluffy omelet, with that drizzled cheese, and some poached salmon—"
"Hey, we're nursing the boy back to health, not you," snapped Peppy.
"I am thinking about the Boy! God, can't we welcome the kid back into civilization with a proper breakfast?" Pigma sulked under his breath. "B'sides, it's been a long night…"
While the two of them bickered, something clouded Wolf's rejuvenated expression.
"Will I have to come back ever again?"
Pigma broke mid-sentence to look at him. "Come back? Kid, after today, you won't even have to look at this planet from a holo-map ever again, if you don't want to."
"Where will I go, then? To that Kone-ney-ri-ah place you all are from?"
"For now." James lowered himself to the boy's height. "Wolf…I can't make any promises, but once we're back within range of known space, I can send out an intelligence beacon to see if you have any family somewhere. Someone you might have been separated from."
Feeling a newfound twinge of longing, Wolf jerked his head up. "Really?"
James paused. "Again, no promises. We'll try." He slipped his gloved hands around Wolf's smaller one, as he often did with Fox back home after a nightmare or discouraging day at school. "But whatever happens, you'll be free of this place: all those nights of looking to the sky, wondering if you're the only one of your kind—you can put them all behind you, like a bad dream." He offered him a small smile. "You're not alone anymore…you'll never have to be, for the rest of your life. That's a promise I can make."
His words wrapped Wolf in a warmth even more than the scarf around his shoulders. His grubby face became aglow by the same smile from earlier, made even brighter by the way his eyes welled up with comfort and relief. Watching the life return to the ashy and sunken grooves of the small face in front of James made him smile. Then, just as he was arranging the scarf properly around Wolf's shoulders, he spotted the glint of something around his neck, peeking from inside his rags.
"What's that?"
Furrowing his eyebrows, Wolf looked down, and fished the gleaming object out, revealing it to be of all things…a dogtag.
"Mind if I see it?"
Wolf instantly recoiled back, fingers shooting to his neck and fur fringing.
James put his palms up. "I'll give it back! It's too small to fit me anyway…"
With a reluctant pause, Wolf slowly dropped it into James' much bigger hand. The Fox examined it keenly, rising to his feet.
"Peppy…look at this." He beckoned the Hare with a whisper as he read it. "Item #475956322 Blood Type O, Acquisition Date—what's all this for? Military issue?"
Peppy eyed the inscription as he leaned forward. "There's no military insignia anywhere. No CDF, nothing. But no military I know prints this kind of intel on dog tags anyway—"
"You wouldn't find one in known space that does," Pigma remarked, snatching it from him. "They don't need this kind of stuff on tags anymore, not with DNA Scanning." He handed it back to James. "It's been years since anyone used these."
James murmured. "So why leave this with him…?"
Just then, as he turned the tag over, his heart nearly climbed to his mouth.
"Guys…"
Pigma blinked. "What? What is it?"
James, seemingly transfixed, held the tag up to them. Peppy's eyebrows furrowing, his maroon eyes darting over the inscription before immediately enlarging in shock. "Wait… Is this…?"
Pigma looked aghast. "My God. It…it can't be…can it? I didn't think he…"
Behind the huddle of tall figures, Wolf craned his neck. "Um…can I have it back?" He asked, looking a little cross. "You said I could have it back. Don't steal it now."
The three of them simultaneously turned their gazes onto him, and Wolf saw for himself the feverish disbelief that was draining their faces of color.
"Where did you get this?" James asked in astonishment.
Wolf perceiving their looks as accusatory, backed away slightly. Nowhere. I've always had it…for as long as I can remember." He nodded towards it. "I can only read the first word. 'Wolf'. The second one's too long…"
"This is your name?" reaffirmed Peppy in a haggard breath, struggling to get the words out. "Wolf O'Donnell?"
Wolf nodded. "Yeah." He glanced at all of them strangely. "…Why?"
Only the mist moved in the petrified air. The echo of his voice hung in earshot before expanding into the vast dark of the cave, and then the cavern was deathly silent.
The name rang in all of their ears…but in James' most of all. The same way Wolf had looked into his canine features upon first meeting him, and found familiarity and belonging, James now stared at the boy and saw something himself. Disbelief ran down his spine like rainwater, as he darted his gaze over every part of Wolf from his jawline, to his cheekbones, to his round purple eyes...all of which possessed new meaning. The center of James' chest became hollow. His chest heaved, but breath was impossible. His hand almost spasmed involuntarily, as he felt the shock puncture his face and render it numb.
Peppy asked slowly. "Are you sure this is your name, son?
"Sure, I'm sure. It's my name." Wolf began looking around at them uncomfortably, feeling his fur prickle at the way they were staring at him. "Why?"
Emotion cracked through the doubt on their faces, drawing a disparity of looks from all of them.
Peppy looked startled, emotionally shattered, and overjoyed all at the same time, seemingly wavering between almost smiling and almost sobbing. Meanwhile, Pigma kept opening his mouth to form words that would never come, the jaded lines disappearing from his face for a rare instant. He stare at Wolf unblinkingly, as if afraid that he might disappear if he looked away.
Just before he could say something a beeping sound drew his attention to the plastic mold of his wrist communicator. "Grav sensors on the Arwing are picking atmospheric entry. A ship, by the looks of it…freighter flight signature." He cleared his throat. "She's flyin' Cornerian codes. What's our move? Should I contact them?"
James was frozen solid. He stared at the boy…devoid of the joy and excitement flooding the other two pilots, but every bit as shocked.
"James?"
The Fox flinched at his voice, seemingly snapped back into reality. He ordered Pigma without facing him. "Wait till we're outside these caves, then send them a request for four passengers." He was about to give an unsure glance at Wolf, then thought better of it. "Let's get going."
Wolf looked up at him. "What's wrong? Is there something wrong with my name?"
James glanced back with a very different look than before. A new frigidity had taken over his stark grey eyes, seeming to withdraw all of the warmth and assurance they had shown the boy up till now. He gripped the metal tag in his hand, his fingers enclosing over the etched letters of the name printed on them.
"Nothing's wrong, Wolf. Now, come on…let's not keep that ship waiting."
End of Chapter