CRASH!!
A beast the size of an Arwing wrecked through the patched-up wall and charged into the room full of startled Lylatians. The creature's company of about a dozen smaller monsters soon followed.
"Crud!" Falco shouted amidst the din as the entire group staggered backwards into the wall opposite of the threatening line of beasts.
'Yeah, this is good. REALLY good,' Fox mused with a smirk as he armed the staff in his paws and prepared to fend off the smelly monsters. Fortunately, he had a plan. 'Maybe we CAN escape. If we could get out of here from over there... But how would I get these monsters out of the way?'
As soon as that question came up, another idea came to the fox. He turned to face the other Lylatians, showing his usual crafty grin. "I've got an idea. No matter what happens, stay right behind me, okay?"
The others nodded in compliance. Fox nodded in return and spun around to face the approaching group of winged monsters. 'Here we go...'
The largest of the beasts led the attack. It hurled itself at Fox head-on, getting quite surprised whenever a reasonably large jolt of lightning drilled into its chest. The giant monster reeled back, and the other creatures did the same upon seeing their leader fall back. Carefully and slowly, the Cornerian circled around to the other end of the room, occasionally firing a spark of lightning from his charged staff to fend off a second attack. In the meantime, the rest of Fox's team and Sara stayed close behind, mimicking the fox's moves almost exactly. Even the pink Yoshi didn't stray from the group, although Sara did have to drag her along by the arm, for lack of a better way to tell her to follow.
Finally, Fox had pushed the monsters into a far corner, and at the same time reached the other side of the room without a scratch on him or his friends. After giving the crowd of frightened beasts one last farewell shock, he signaled for everyone to run for their lives. The group of six stopped creeping around and broke into an all-out run away from the cowering monsters. The monsters, realizing that they've been tricked and sorely shocked out of their minds, gave chase to the escaping party.
The Lylatians and Yoshi hurried across the barren cavern, through the recently-created hole in the wall, and towards yet another tunnel that seemed to lead back outside. The six animals only stopped to check and see if they were being followed. Of course, they were.
"Crud again! They're following us!" Falco informed everyone between gasps of air. Fox looked past his shoulder to see if he'd have to stop and reinforce the shock treatment. The monsters were gaining on the little group, but if everyone kept running, it would still be a while before they caught up. 'Good. Maybe we can just outru-ahh!'
Fox could barely turn back around and see where he was running before his foot snagged on a small stone jutting from the surrounding floor. He fell forward with a yelp and landed hard on his muzzle. Groaning, he got back up, and just then realized that he had lost the emerald staff. Fox scanned the floor nearby frantically, but he couldn't see it anywhere. 'Oh no! I must have thrown it somewhere in this room when I tripped!'
"Fox! Are you okay?" Sara called out from the head of the group. "Hey buddy, let's go! Com'on!" Falco yelled. "Dammit, I'll have to go without it," Fox muttered as he started off toward the others. He had barely caught up with everyone when the ground shuddered violently and suddenly, sending everyone trying to run to safety sprawling onto the floor.
"What the-?" someone muttered, but the rest of the sentence was drowned out by the rumbling noise of the earthquake. Even the monsters -with their large proportions- had a hard time dealing with this natural event. They stumbled around aimlessly and uncontrollably, smashed into walls, and even into other monsters. During this chaos, the six escaping animals tried to get up and keep running, but it was difficult to even crawl under such conditions.
And the conditions only got worse. The ground itself started to crack, stretch, and bend at the mercy of the quake. Fox managed to uneasily crawl forward, closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, closer to the outside... 'Must... keep... going...'
One of the larger monsters staggered back and forth in a crazy effort to regain control of its footing. It barreled ahead of its fellows, not noticing that the six creatures it was trying to hunt were directly in its wild path. Before anyone became toejam for the giant beast, however, the creature swerved out of the way and wrecked into a stone wall nearby. In fact, it rammed the wall so hard that a series of deep cracks spread from the point of impact and traveled up the wall and across the ceiling. Before the monster could even realize what it had just done, a sizable boulder broke loose from the roof of the cavern and bonked the creature on the skull, thus knocking it out cold.
Fox would have to add the sound of rock cracking and breaking apart to his list of most terrifying sounds in the world. Combined with the low rumbling of an earthquake, this noise almost guarantees some kind of disaster. Fox was too late to realize this, because as soon as he started to look for the source of that cracking sound, the normally solid rock ceiling standing above him fractured into many smaller sections, and the only thing he saw after that was a shower of granite falling towards his face.
Sara blinked. She didn't move, speak, or cry for help. She was too shocked to do anything but blink. 'Am I dead?' she wondered. 'No. Dead people can't feel pain. And I hurt like hell. But if I'm not dead, then what happened? Why is it so quiet around here?'
She slowly sat up and rubbed her sore arm, which did little good, because she was sore all over. Sara squinted into the thick fog of dust that had suddenly clouded up the cavern. She could barely see anything past her own feet. There was a single source of light, from very far away, that was fading ever-so-slowly. Sara assumed that was the last of the sunlight that would reach the inside of the caves before nightfall. She had better hurry up before it goes away. But... what was she doing? Where was she going? What had happened??
Around the same time, Fox was asking similar questions. He lifted his head off the smooth rock floor of the cavern with a faint groan, causing some miniature pebbles and scraps of stone to slide from his fur and onto the ground. A thick dust was drifting in the air and blocking out most of the light. Only a fading ray of lasting sunlight penetrated the room.
'What the hell happened here?' he blindly wondered. Only a minute later did a realization come over the fox. He sat up with a start and tried to search for signs of his friends. Fox was alarmed by some shuffling and coughing noises from across the room. By then, the smoke-like dust was starting to clear up and settle to the floor. A shadow of a figure stood out from the surroundings. Fox called out to the figure.
"Hello?"
"...Fox? Is that you?"
"Sara?" he recognized the voice. "Where... where is everyone else?" he reluctantly asked. Fox then blinked, surprised that was the first question he came up with, despite the many thousand others he wanted to ask.
"I don't know. I can barely see anything. Where are you?"
"Don't worry, this dust is starting to settle. Falco? Slippy? Peppy? You guys here??"
No reply. Fox was starting to worry. He couldn't possibly lose three more members of the party...
Sara stood up in a flash as a rush of panic reached her also. "Falco?? Oh no, he could be hurt!"
Fox also got up, and before he could even blink, started wandering through the settling dust in a desperate search for his friends. However, to his dismay, the only items left standing in the room were him, Sara, and a giant wall of fallen stone. Still determined not to give up, Fox struggled up the side of this new wall blocking the way back into the caves, and started to push small rocks aside. Sara began to do the same on another portion of the wall.
The vulpine smiled out of relief when he noticed some nearby rocks shift and move out of place on their own. He crossed the few feet between himself and the possible survivor with ease and tried to assist whoever was trapped under the stone. Fox soon met the face of a bewildered -but still alive- pink Yoshi, who was more than glad to see that she wasn't the only one living. She grinned in her own reptilian style, and Fox quickly returned the smile before turning to Sara.
"I found someone!"
"Who is it? Is he okay?"
"It's a she, and she's fine."
Sara took a moment to digest that news, and to let her common sense kick in. She finally figured out who the survivor was. "Oh. Good. We need to keep looking. See if Miya can help us," Sara ordered, and then kept digging. Seconds later, she also found something hidden in the rubble.
"Fox, I think I've found someone, too."
"Who is it?"
"Come and see," she replied, rather morbidly. Her voice didn't give any clue as to who it might have been, but the way she was talking didn't sound good to Fox at all. He finished pulling Miya from the heap of rocks, and scrambled to where the salamander was standing.
Well, standing wouldn't be correct. By the time Fox had reached the grief-stricken Sara, she was kneeling alongside one of the victims of the earthquake-caused downpour of rocks, cradling a single, battered paw between her hands.
"Peppy...?" the fox choked on the word. He didn't want to believe that the hare could possibly be dead, not then, not ever. But reality had stuck with an unbelievable force, and not even a stubborn Fox could deny the obvious.
"He's dead," Sara needlessly stated. Fox barely mustered up a nod in response. "I know..." he whispered.
Miya finally caught up to the fox and Tieka, after briefly inspecting her bruises and brushing her skin clean of dust and dirt. She hated being dirty, but that was the least of her problems at the moment. The Yoshi crawled up behind the fox, trying to see past his shoulder at what was so important, and at the same time trying not to trip over a loose pebble or stone. She finally got a clear view, and the sight before her horrified the Yoshi.
'No. Not another. How many more must die??'
A haunting memory crept into her mind, along with a deep, raspy voice.
...Death shall fall upon the weak...
Miya shook her head, blocking the thought out. 'No.'
Yes... the voice hissed.
'No!'
Something snapped the pink Yoshi back into awareness. Some sound... More survivors? No, that can't be it... Another earthquake? No, this was different.
Then she knew. It was dragons.
"What was that sound?" Sara inquired, suddenly becoming suspicious of the cave around her.
"I have no idea... but that can't be normal," Fox replied, as he instinctively reached for his blaster. Remembering that he didn't have one, the Lylatian sighed in frustration. 'I don't have that damned green staff, either...'
"Yishi yo yi! Yoshi yo! Yoshi yi!"
"Wha'd she say?"
'Just... a little more...'
A determined, feathered arm reached out from a cluster of rocks and fallen stone and exposed itself to the air of a dark, unusually warm mountain cavern. A few seconds later, a second arm sprouted from the sea of rocks. It didn't take long before a trapped falcon wrenched himself completely free from his rocky imprisonment. He took a few deep breaths, then coughed and sputtered in the darkness.
"Damn, this air is dusty. Stinks too."
To the falcon's surprise, the room wasn't entirely dark. A strange red glow bathed the walls and ceiling, from a source that the falcon couldn't really see right away. The cavern wasn't entirely empty, either, because another figure was also there, standing around and coughing just as loudly.
"Slippy, that'd better be you."
The figure took a break from its coughing spell and scanned its surroundings. It finally responded in a whining, high-pitched voice, "Falco? Boy, am I glad to see you! Where's everyone else?"
"How am I supposed to know??" Falco shrugged.
Slippy shrugged back, then resumed coughing. Falco crawled away from the pile of earthquake-caused rubble and got to his feet. For a while, he stood motionless, watching this newly-formed wall that nearly crushed him to death, and possibly his teammates as well.
'This heap of stinking rocks must be blocking the way out. How can I get past it? Where's Fox, Sara, and that other... thing? Are they okay?'
Falco held a wing to his beak and hollered into the depths of the cavern, "FOX!! SARA! PEPPY! YO, WHERE ARE YOU GUYS?!"
The avian's words resounded off the stone walls as a haunting echo, until they eventually fell victim to the black nothingness of the surrounding caves. And yet, there was no answer.
"I don't think they can hear us," Slippy commented between gasps for breath.
'Crap. He may be right. There's still got to be a way out of here, though. Think, Falco, think! Like that guy... uh... Albert Einswine.'
Many more moments passed in silence, broken only by Slippy's persistent coughs. Finally, Falco stomped one annoyed foot on the ground and turned to face the frog.
"Dammit Slippy, knock that off. I can't think when you're being so loud."
The hacking coughs ceased and the frog stared at the other occupant in the cave. "It's not as if I can help it, Falco. This air reeks. Kind of like..." Slippy paused. "...Sulphur."
"Dammit, I don't care what it smells like. You're making me overuse the word 'dammit.' Could you please just... Did you say sulphur??"
Slippy nodded. "Yeah. I already assumed earlier that this was an active... Uh-oh..."
With remarkable speed, Falco stepped over to where Slippy was standing, and snatched the smaller StarFox member up off the ground by the scruff of his shirt collar. "An active what?" he snarled.
"Well, it would e-explain the e-e-earthquakes and t-the s-sulphur..." Slippy began to stutter.
"An active WHAT??"
"I-I probably should have w-warned you guys a little s-sooner, but it s-seemed-"
Falco shook the frog violently and demanded once more, "WHAT?? WHAT IS IT, YOU STUTTERING, LOUSY EXCUSE FOR A PILOT!?"
A deep bellow, like thunder, sounded from one of the caves nearby. The ground then shuddered and rattled from some unknown force, but that barely caused Falco to flinch. By the time the noise had calmed and the earth had settled, he was still holding Slippy in the air by his shirt collar and staring into his nervous eyes with a fierce glare.
The frog gulped, and the sound echoed strangely off the walls of the eerily silent cavern.
"...a volcano," he croaked.
In the next instant, a terrifying roar pierced the caverns. Falco released the slimy frog and whirled around, hoping not to see what his eyes met a second later.
"M-m-monsters!!" Slippy screamed.
Falco gulped himself and treaded backwards a few paces. Monsters, in all their snarling, drooling glory, had decided to crash the two-person party. From seemingly out of nowhere, about a dozen of them emerged from adjoined caves and tunnels. Their beady eyes were glowing bright crimson, their massive wings were extended fully, and their jaws were pried open wide, thus exposing rows of deadly fangs.
The falcon was panicking, but he didn't let it show. Slippy, however, was the perfect representation of panic. The frog hastily crawled towards Falco and hugged his companion's boots as if footwear could save his life. The falcon, unprepared for that, reacted simply by screeching and falling onto his backside. Instead of scolding Slippy for causing him to fall, Falco actually sat up and hugged the frog back!
In a far corner of the monster-filled cavern, a fountain of molten lava erupted from the stone floor with a gurgling splash. The burning flow of rock quickly lit up all corners of the room with a fiery orange hue and exposed an even greater threat standing on a ledge near the ceiling.
It was the largest, most dangerous-looking monster yet, and it stood atop a hidden ledge near the roof of the cavern in a perfect pouncing position. Its green scales sparkled under the light that the lava produced, and its menacing eyes were dark portals to the killing machine beneath. Slippy whimpered pathetically and dug his fingers deeper into Falco's arm. "Oh no..." he breathed.
Falco gulped once again. He didn't realize that his wings were still wrapped around Slippy, but in a way, neither cared. No one else was there to see it. No one except the monsters, the lava, and good ol' death.
The green beast reared back onto its hind legs, its muzzle nearly touching the ceiling of the dome-like cavern. Its smaller minions stayed back, as if the two Lylatians were a reserved meal for their master and him alone. The big creature unfurled its wings, which stretched from one side of the room to the other, and held up its claws in a threatening pose.
Slippy croaked out his last words quickly before he was eaten. "H-hey Falco?"
"Yeah?"
"I-I'm s-s-orry."
Falco could have questioned Slippy, mostly asking what the hell he was sorry for, but he knew what the frog meant. He was sorry for fighting Falco and being an arse. The falcon suddenly felt very ashamed of himself. He wanted to tell Slippy that he shouldn't be the one that should be sorry. It was him that had constantly made the cruel jokes, the out-of-place insults, and the snide remarks. He was the one that beat him up and threatened him and turned the frog's life into a living hell. Slippy never deserved any of it, he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, so-to-speak.
The falcon didn't say anything, though. He just gave Slippy a blank stare, noticing the pure fear in the frog's eyes, and not bothering to realize that he had just the same look on his face.
The winged beast didn't wait for an apology. It wanted a meal. The monster dove from its position high up near the ceiling and soared towards the pair of Lylatians with fangs and claws extended. Every monster in the background let loose a chorus of roars, both cheers of victory and howls of encouragement, as their proud leader took the blood of two intruders that had managed to escape their claws for long enough. Slippy and Falco screamed and embraced each other tightly, as if they were more afraid to let go than to get eaten by a roomful of monsters.
If either stopped to think, they might have considered such a situation ironic, but they never had the chance to do so.
Fox perked up an ear and stood silent. Sara noticed the movement, and she also froze to listen for any noise. The salamander gasped. "My stars, what was that sound??"
The fox shook his head. "I don't know; it could be anything. I've got a bad feeling, though."
To confirm the vulpine's suspicions, a huge claw shot out from the wall of rocks nearby, thus startling everyone.
"Yoshi yo! Yoshi yi!" the pink reptile yelled out loud while pointing a finger towards the massive claw intruding into the room. Another crashing sound, followed by another was heard, as large portions of the wall in front of the Yoshi were being chipped away in an accelerated pace.
"The monsters are trying to get through! We must get out of here!" Sara realized. She hurriedly rushed over to Fox and grabbed his arm, trying to force him to turn around and follow her out of the caves. Fox was reluctant to budge, however.
"What about Falco? And Slippy? I can't just leave them hanging there!"
"If they are not dead already, they will be soon. There is nothing we can do! Please, follow me!" Sara pleaded. She tugged harder on his arm, and eventually Fox was forced to leave the other members of his crew behind, dead or alive. Sara, Fox, and Miya desperately ran for the other end of the tunnel, the only source of light, and possibly their only way out of the caves.
Seconds later, the largest of the beasts had crashed into the tunnel, and the temporary wall of small rocks and stones toppled over like a row of building blocks. The greenish beast stormed ahead after the three escaping intruders, leaving only some scattered pebbles and a few scorched blue feathers in its wake.
"GGRRAAAAAGGG!!!"
"Ahh!! It's gaining on us!" Sara hollered. Fox didn't turn around to check. He believed that the stomping sounds and deep growls approaching from behind were a good enough clue that he was being chased. He only ran faster, hoping that maybe he could outrun the beast somehow. 'We can make it! I can see the exit right there!'
The trio could see the end of the tunnel growing closer and closer. The welcoming light at the very end was like some distant goal that was drawing nearer at every second. But at the same time, so was a very ticked off monster trying to catch up with them. Fox ignored the stomping on the ground and the pounding in his chest. He was confident that he could make it out of the caves in one piece.
"Look, we're almost there!" Sara chirped, excited that escape was close at hand. She used the last of her energy to run ahead of Fox and Miya, so the salamander was the first to arrive at the end of the long tunnel. What made her stop, however, was the drop-off that stood right outside the tunnel's exit. Sara skidded to a halt and looked over the edge of the mountain in a panic. "Oh no! It's a dead end!"
Fox also stopped abruptly once he reached the outside, and so did Miya soon after. The Vulpine searched the ground around him, but there was nowhere else to go except straight down. They were at a true dead end. 'Aw crap,' Fox complained mentally. Then, out loud, "IS THERE NO WAY OFF THIS DAMNED MOUNTAIN?!"
The ground beneath the threesome shuddered in another unexpected earthquake. Fox yelped and hit the rock floor in an instant. He heard Sara scream, and then the quake was over. The fox sat up and searched for her, but the salamander was nowhere to be seen. Miya suddenly wailed some strange cry and sat up, which got Fox's attention. The Yoshi pointed down the cliff, and Fox quickly scurried over to the edge to find what she was pointing at.
"Sara!!" the vulpine exclaimed.
"Fox, help me!"
Sara was barely hanging on to the side of the mountain by her hands and feet, and she was losing her grip fast. One faulty motion, and her fingers slipped, causing the Lylatian to slide down even further. Fox reached out and snagged her arm before she could fall completely off. The ground was at least a thousand feet below.
"Ahh!" Sara screeched, "Help me, help me, help me! I'm going to fall!"
"You're not going to fall!" Fox shouted back, "I've got you!"
"YOSHI!!"
"Huh?" Fox checked behind him when the Yoshi cried out again. "Oh #$%&!"
"GGRRRRRAAAAAGGG!!!"
Fox had nearly forgotten that he was being chased. Before he could react, the enormous monster had tackled him from behind, and Fox instantly felt the sensation of falling. Sara had slipped out of his hands, and he could hear her screaming, but he couldn't see anything but the sky spinning above him.
A few seconds past before Fox finally realized that he wasn't falling. The sky stopped spinning, and he could see the ground clearly below him. Something was holding him in the air! He looked up...
"Ahh!!!"
It was the monster! It was carrying him!! The creature's mighty wings flapped against the air in strong, consistent beats, and its large talons held the fox tightly in its grip. 'Geez, we never trained for this crap in the academy,' he mused, despite the difficultly to find humor in such a situation.
Behind him, a thunderlike explosion was heard. Fox looked around back at the mountain, which was growing more distant by the second, and was quite surprised to discover that it had erupted! Lava gushed out of the cave entrances like a fountain of fire, and flowed down the cliffs in a sluggish, yet unstoppable pace. "Holy cow! Now I've seen everything!"
With a quick flick of the wings, the monster dropped from the clouds and lowered toward the ground. Fox watched in horror as the forests and jungles suddenly grew closer. The monster began to follow the path of a nearby river, flying as closely to the surface of the water as it could without actually touching it. The flying beast was going so fast that the river's fierce rapids appeared to be mere ripples. The riverbank was a blur of sand, and the trees were like a long strip of brown and green melded together. Despite these visual conditions, Fox thought he caught a brief glimpse of something standing at the riverside, holding a long wooden pole... Was it a Yoshi?
He didn't get to find out. Without warning, the green monster slowed itself and turned upwards, as if preparing to climb into the clouds again. Instead, it ascended several meters, then dove back down towards the river. The monster then resumed its course towards the edge of the island, at an even higher speed than before. 'What is it doing??' Fox wondered.
He didn't get to find that out, either. Just before the monster could reach the shoreline, a sharp, spear-like pole sprang from the passing trees like a bolt of lightning and pierced the giant beast's thigh. The creature reared back in mid-air with a screech of pain, and Fox was flung from its grasp. He felt almost weightless as he flew into the sky. Higher, higher, higher...
Then he was falling. Fox could see himself soaring past the beach, and into the ocean... The waves looked so close he thought they were going to reach out and pull him into the sea. He hit the water so hard it hurt to think about it. Everything from then on was a confused blur. He saw a flood of bubbles, maybe a fish or so, and then blackness. Nothing but a thick black cloud that seemed to absorb him and steal away his last bit of consciousness.
Then the ocean swallowed him.