"There he is!" And a volley of lasers traced the hull of the fighter. Taking his paws' attention off the indispensable weapon, Bill ducked out of the line of fire and swung himself behind the plane's glossy canopy. With one heel balanced on the rung of an access ladder, he felt along the rim of the transparent dome until his fingers encountered a crude hinge, glued to the fuselage like a cold metal snail and sealing it shut. As he pawed at the cockpit's stubborn latch, a soldier wheeled around the front of the craft and set his sights on the runaway. Bill froze at the armed guard's word. The soldier steadied his aim, as if to pick the dog from the hull of the jet like a tin can off a picket fence--never mind that the canine was wielding a gun, as well, for the trigger was sorely out of immediate reach.
The guard, something lizardesque (it mattered little--they all looked about the same), jerked forward, as if kicked in the back, and toppled over forward, his consciousness jarred out of him. Bill's gaze found the softly smoldering patch on the back of the fallen guard's uniform, then followed the path of the shot to the fox's blaster, which was being carefully juggled between two paws engaged in a hurried search through the disabled wolf's flight jacket.
Bill didn't bother to thank him (not yet, anyway), and instead took a cue to hurry along, himself. The unyielding lock on the cockpit was remedied with a gun, as well. Bill tuned the power on his rifle to its minimum and fixed its aim on the bolted latch. The spurt of gunfire knocked the obstruction loose with a sharp, high ping as its constituent parts ricocheted off the spot of scorched steel and spun away into the far corners of the room. From there, it was easy to pry open the canopy, slide into the pilot's seat, and punch off the alarm exclaiming "hull breech" in blinking monotone.
The jet was a familiar model, which led Bill to reflect on the Lylat Wars of past years, and particularly on the technology and aircraft Venom doubtlessly salvaged from conquered planets. As he fell into an old routine and activated the engines, his thoughts remarked that he could, in fact, be seated in one such plane, for its breed was recognized as Katinan. Another, related possibility occurred to him.
'Was this ship one of my squad's...?'
As the small fighter roared to life, soldiers rallied around its nose, periodically taking shots at the hull with their energy weapons. Their petty attacks were altogether as effective as ant bites against the reinforced armor of the jet. Across the hangar, Bill watched his comrade snatch Wolf's key and thereby pilfer an aircraft of the formidable wolfen class, which was poetically ironic in the hound's eyes.
Bill set the plane in gear and it stirred forward, rolling into the center corridor. The guards threw a fit in their efforts to stop him, but their objections were deafened by the sound of the engines getting riled up for a flight. The most they could do was grumble and scamper out of the way.
The wolfen leapt into the air, as if launched off the tip of a spring. It teetered and hovered over the adjacent craft before righting itself and drifting towards the invitingly clear exit. Bill started at the sight before remembering that vertical take-offs were a shared capability of both wolfen fighters and the arwings that Fox and his crew made famous. The dog checked his comm, hoping he could find a common channel with his friend.
"You can fly that ugly thing?"
The wolfen wobbled precariously, as if struck by the question. A short, belated chuckle was returned. "I can now."
Bill registered General Lakemp's grating snarl over the channel.
"Don't tink you're gettingss away sso eassily."
"Really? I'd say we are," the wolfen's pilot replied as the fighter tipped forward and easily glided away. Bill followed on the ground alongside him.
"Bye now."
"Mongrelss!" was the most natural response, and the comm was cut into static. Victory was within their reach, it seemed, but now that it was questioned again, Bill began to doubt the ease of their escape. When a long shadow fell over the hound, reality manifested his doubts. Peering at the far end of the hangar, Bill noticed their exit cranking closed like a set of rusty jaws, swallowing the mouthful of aircraft and shutting out daylight's hope on the outside.
"They're closing the gates!" Bill voiced, alarmed.
"Not a problem."
The wolfen's front-facing barbs glowed at the tips, like hot pokers. A serrated stream of laser shots poured out of the charged stingers and crashed into the gate's upper lip. The solid iron sheets shuddered under the impact, and a resounding blast turned into the building, throwing loose appliances and soldiers towards the outer walls with a fierce gust of wind. The gate's cringing panel withstood some more seconds of rapid bombardment before rupturing, then breaking outward like a snapped bone. Its mechanics failed and the entire sheet dropped into the canyon outside. The way now cleared, Fox called to his friend.
"Let's jet!"
Bill lined his sights with the narrow window, held his breath, and throttled the engines, charging towards the exit with a burst of acceleration. The stolen jet careened down the slim runway, approaching the half-erect gate. Before catching the remnants of the barrier, Bill's plane deftly bounced up and swooped over the hurdle, clearing it by inches and taking off into freedom. Fox was beside him all the way, and together they took their fates into their own hands.
What is he going to do?
Hold your hands out, like so, he said...
What is he going to do?
Say these words, like so, he said...
What is he going to do?
Pray in your heart, like before, he said...
What is he going to do?
"...And the dragon king will come."
He said these things, and they were in her head, mixed in the broth of screams, and roars, and blood, but she was hard of hearing, and it was all the same, chanting over and over:
What is he doing?
"Miya!"
She squeaked, snapping back into reality. Meekachu was squeezing her hand so hard she thought it might pop. His trembling crawled up her shoulder and shook her whole being. The pink yoshi grimaced and connected with her father's pressing gaze.
"This is important, Miya. You have to pay attention. Can you say the spell with me?"
Perhaps the poison was contagious. She couldn't move, but to quiver helplessly. Why were her suspicions so wary, now, that she was paralyzed with fear?
"Miya!" His stern, hoarse voice paused her, and she was immediately statuesque. The yellow dino then softened. "Miya, my girl, please take courage. Everything will be all right, I promise. Please trust me."
Courage...courage...
She released her captured breath with a query. "Meek, if we...? If we summon Marawok, what will happen?"
He fumbled with the green stone and glanced away. "Let's just do it, and see."
Before Miya could voice her apprehension, Meekachu elaborated.
"I hope that..." He labored to catch his breath. "...with their leader returned....order will be restored....to the dragon clan. They should....all go back to their lair, if....that is the case."
"How can you be sure that's what'll happen? How do you know that Marawok won't just kill everyone??"
Meekachu muttered into his hands. "I don't."
An appalled expression mingled with the pink one's anxiety. Meekachu jumped to beg her faith. "Please, Miya! There is no good explanation for it anymore... I....just know, somewhere....that this is what needs to be done. I can't....explain it. Please....please trust me."
Miya relented, and nodded stiffly. "Okay... whatever you say, Meek. Let's do it."
The sick yoshi smiled faintly. "Yes... yes, let us do it. Take my hand..."
They sat on the ground, there, in the thick of the dragons' storming, as their clouds of rage moved over the jungle towards the villages, and prayed. Miya marveled at everything that had happened to lead her to this point, and her mind dizzily carried on reminiscing as her lips followed in sync with Meekachu's chant.
She ran away, that fateful morning. She was going to be accepted.
"King Marawok! Keeper of the dragons' mountain..."
The foreigners arrived... Meek said they were dangerous.
"Our fates rest with thee..."
They fled the village, together. They journeyed to M'hakashan--Fox, his friends, Tieka, herself, and Meek.
"We call upon thy strength..."
They met dragons, and fire, and danger... but so few answers. Why did they even go?
"We call upon thy wisdom..."
She met the elders, and Raiquoo... Meekachu?
"We call upon thy courage..."
Meekachu's voice was remarkably strong and clear, as if he hadn't suffered a drop of Charbok's venom. Something crazy about the whole procedure irked Miya. Summoning the dragon king? It was lunacy, was it not? How do you call something back from the dead?
The dead... Many have died, already. Fox's friends, Tieka, her tribe mates...
"We call upon thy help..."
Many more will die, yet. Why? Why must so much go wrong? Where did it all begin? When will it all end?
Marawok's stone glowed warmly in Meekachu's hand. The yellow yoshi held it against the sky, where its brilliant emerald sheen was juxtaposed to the sun.
"We call upon thy self. Make good what once was. Make true the harmony of the ages! Make right the balance of nature! Make law the way of the mountain!"
Then, Meekachu dropped the gem on his tongue, and swallowed it. Miya fell back with a breathless gasp, surprised.
"With life, comes death; from death, comes life again. Accept this sacrifice..."
'Sacrifice?!'
"...and bring back the lost! A life, for a life! Long live the king of the mountain!"
Miya's speech crumbled as she tried to object. "M-M-Meekachu! What--I mean, why--I mean, what are you doing?!"
The yellow one sat back on his palms and offered a tall laugh to the clouds. He was laughing! He truly has lost his mind, Miya thought.
The yellow yoshi, finished with his mania, turned to Miya and uttered an aside. "Oh, you....know? My brother has not yet....brewed a poison....that did not stick. Better to....meet the end....like this, and save a little....dignity....than to....face them all again....my brothers. It is cowardice....I suppose. But....I was always such a coward." He allowed a lopsided grin, making a joke of himself.
Miya shook her head woefully. "No, no..."
The yellow one sobered at her words. "It is... all right. I told you it will be. You will....understand, one day."
Miya understood, and all her trembling heart's premonitions were at once justified. "No! You... you can't leave me! Not again!" Tears were venturing forth again.
Meekachu, pained by her lamenting cry, gently took her arm. "Miya... I..."
He stopped and sharply looked away towards some vacant point, his countenance distant, yet focused. There was an awkward stillness, then, as suddenly as he hesitated, Meekachu was animated again. He was called to his feet, and Miya was hastily drawn up with him. Before Miya could breathe a note, she was ruggedly shoved aside. The pink dino staggered backwards, casting a bewildered glance at her aggressor.
"Get back! He's coming!"
She afforded him more room, driven back by the force of his words. Meekachu crouched low and tucked his limbs into himself, like a cringing animal.
That was the last Miya could see of him. A pool of velvet black rippled out beneath him, deeper and darker than the spaces between stars, and it seemed to swallow the yoshi into infinity. Gathered at the rim of the black hole was a skirt of light, its sequin green like fireflies and glittering like stars. The luminous lace pulsed out from the epicenter, and Miya backtracked further so as not to let the expanding pit wash over her toes. She stumbled and fell, thrown to the ground as it began to quake ferociously.
Fox was struck with deja vu as he coasted out of the hangar and soared over the ruddy canyon. The sky was fleshy pink and the terrain was as welcoming as ever--steep walled and sandblasted.
"Ha! We made it!" Bill was ecstatic.
"Yeah, we..." Examining the heads-up display, Fox noticed a crowd of red dots pouring onto the radar. "Aw, nuts."
"Looks like I spoke too soon," Bill amended himself before Fox could spin the wolfen around and confirm the readings. The rogue base, as crippled and deprived as it was, could still procure a formidable dogfight, and it finally mustered the forces to do so. A stream of planes filed out of the gate as readily as pilots caught up to the situation and assembled in the hangar to give chase.
"We need to get out of here while we still can," Bill advised, uneasy towards re-enacting a lost battle.
"No," Fox vetoed the thought, inverting Bill's reasoning. "We need to take care of this now, while we can." Perhaps a part of him wanted to test the wolfen, and find out personally if it really was "better" than his arwings, as Wolf's old team was fond of boasting. Besides, he was used to being outnumbered; that was no trouble for the experienced mercenary.
"You're crazy," was all the hound could say as he followed Fox into the fray.
The impetuous escapees charged into battle with the same eager confidence and skill they carried into all their endeavors. However, the adventure was plagued with a hollow spirit that disconcerted even the fox, who had honed his instincts to concrete matters of fight and flight, and generally rejected superstitious airs. The portentous atmosphere almost gave the feeling that this was a last stand.
Bill circled the hangar and approached its blind side, methodically plucking the left wings off ships as soon as they were ejected into combat. Fox steered directly into the gate, deflecting head-on shots with a dexterous roll that twirled the plane on its axis and wove a transient barrier around the wolfen.
"Shields work," Fox reported to himself in singsong notes, trying to lighten the heavy mood and make sport of the melee. When he neared the gate he pulled out of an entry and looped back into the canyon, carefully avoiding Bill as he crossed over the same way. A handful of ships leaked into the field while both were re-coordinating their strike. One of these broadcast a bitter war cry, killing Fox's song.
"McCloud!"
The fox's ears twitched towards the wolfen's comm panel.
"I want my damn ship back!"
"You recovered rather quickly."
"If you don't return my ship to me right now I'll--"
"What, Wolf? Shoot me down? With that flying tin can?"
A rhetoric pause was answered with, "I hate you!!" and the comm line fizzled out.
"I don't think he likes you, Fox," Bill interjected as he dove into his second pass on the hangar.
"I wouldn't like me if I were him, either."
From the bowels of the pit, in a spectacular geyser of emerald flakes, arose the object of the battle. It erupted from the floor of the jungle and screeched across the cerulean heavens like a flaming bat. The apparition twirled in its ascent like a flaming top, showering evanescent embers over the greenery, then unfurled its great, clawed wings and caught its place in air.
A peculiar armistice descended over the field as yoshies and dragons alike stopped to watch. The yoshies--any survivors--were dumb with awe. The dragons were uniformly at attention. They smartly faced about and stood rigid, pointing like hunting dogs to a flushed-out fowl. Those still airborne clung to their spot and hovered as feebly as they were able to. Even the tumultuous earth endured a reverent silence.
Miya was pinned to the ground, captivated by the summoned monster. A quiet stutter hailed the newcomer.
"M-Marawok..."
He was a marvelous, finely crafted beast, and so much more intimidating to behold when alive. Two generous, ridged horns sprouted off his head and arched down his neck in a long, graceful "S." Polished celadon scales outfitted a lean, muscular build. His wings, like great sails, effortlessly held him aloft, despite the dragon's awesome mass. His tail was weighted with a razor-edged spade that could slice in twain any tree, if wielded like an axe. It impatiently twitched and swung at the clouds without him.
The mightiest of the dragons surveyed the scene and screamed with a roar that rivaled a thunderclap. His lowering eyes flickered with demonic flame. The other dragons stood all around him expectantly, as if waiting for some order or royal decree.
Marawok inhaled deeply, the meat of his magic coalescing in the height of his throat. A hot white ball gleamed out of the cracks in his toothy maw.
"He's going to attack!!" some yoshi announced, which spurred a flurry of retreat as dinosaurs--the handful of those still breathing--turned tail and abandoned the draconic assembly. Miya was helpless to run anywhere and expect to get very far; she was compelled to stay and watch the massacre unfold.
"Bogey! Bogey!"
"I've got my own!"
Bill ducked out of one fighter's charge and vaulted over a retiform cliff, catching the second pursuer in the sedimented net. Unlike most nets, however, the plane's integrity compromised long before the stone would yield an inch, and it wrecked with a plume of flame.
"Got one of 'em!"
"McCloud, I'm not letting you get away!"
"I don't have time for you, Wolf!"
Fox danced around the growing swarm of fighters, trying to lose his belligerent in the masses and at the same time not regret sparing the wolf's life moments ago. His aim wasn't picky, and as he navigated the throng of fighters anyone treading in Fox's crosshairs was kicked out of his airspace.
Wolf was a persistent hunter, and he couldn't drop his quarry once it caught his eye. Fox was going to curse his rival's skill when an odious crackling filled his comm. He glanced at the wolfen's panel, which had undertaken a drastic fit and now refused to display anything.
"Hey! My systems are out!"
His broken name was returned to him through the static. "F-x!"
"Bill!"
"-y sys-ms a-- -oing hay-ire, too!"
Not even Wolf's obnoxious taunts were clearly registered. "What th- ---- is --"
A bright, magnesium glow filled the corner of his viewscreen, and Fox veered into the canyon's bed to center it in his sights. When he found the anomaly, and the brunt of it was realized, his rigid ears fell limp against his scalp and his eyes widened in horror.
There was no billowing column of fire, or a scorching round projectile, crashing down to earth. There was a solid bar, burning with the white of snow, that parted the sky in two; any grounded observer would say that Marawok had taken hold of the sun in his pinching jaws and tugged until the celestial body was stretched into a thin line. The king dragon threw his body into a sharp turn, his ductile form bending around the peaked arch of his back, and with his solar beam he carved into the skyward spectators.
The first victim was run through with the initial sweep, and his vestiges rained into the jungle canopy as lumps of cooked flesh. As the second dragon was struck with oblivion the others dissipated into frenzy. Miya watched with an confounded horror as Marawok scratched the firmament with his attack, marking down one dragon, and another, and another...
'He's...killing...dragons!! Why??'
The winged serpants darted between clouds aimlessly, muddled by terror as they became the hunted. Those on the ground were riled into the air by the impulse to flee, only to climb immediately into the cage of bloodshed. Marawok's powerful beam panned over the horizon and poured into the airy heights, clipping and scourging any creature now so cursed with flight. Dozens were taken from the world this way before his breath ran dry and Marawok ceased. Survivors pressed towards the only sanctuary they knew, and Marawok personally pursued the stragglers until all--every last dragon--was en route to their sacred lair.
The swarms of demons disbanded and departed very gradually, and yet too quickly to believe, until the island was wholly tranquil--both on land and in the sky. Miya stood for a reaching glance to M'hakashan, where only a sliver of smoke could tell that any disturbance had taken place at all.
All this while, Marawok was suspended over the jungle on his massive wings, supervising the exodus. When a calm had finally been achieved and the last of his kind was a speck in the distance, the dragon king turned and cast a long look upon the ghastly battlefield, its grasses strewn with dragon entrails and tribal corpses.
What's he looking at? Miya vaguely wondered. Her thoughts were scrambled and her vision was transfixed by the floating giant, looking down at the field, at the fallen yoshies, at...
At her.
It was a pregnant look--stoic and pensive and lurid with some meaning belied by the stony, expressionless face but she could see and oh such brazen yellow eyes...
Yellow eyes...
The look passed. Marawok whipped around, disappeared, and left the field quiet.
"Go! Get out of here! Go, go, go!!"
He was screaming into the channel, something... something... it's so wrong, get out, get out, everyone go...! He pulled up, climbing up, going up, getting away, it wouldn't get him again, not after so much, he had gotten away, it was going to be over, here it comes again, just like the first time, now he remembered
He saw Wolf's ship--he assumed it was the wolf's--no, not fast enough, not quick enough, taken into it--whatever it was--it was so bright, everything was being swallowed up
No no no no no no no not again why what had he done when would it end why couldn't he go back the beginning do it again do it different
The light was there and it was everything and he saw the end of it and the beginning...
Quiet as the dead. Quiet, like the dead. Like a graveyard.
She fell to her knees and cried--for everything. Everything she thought she knew was good, and right, and fair--the tribes, her family, Tieka, Meekachu...
Fox...
was gone.
Everything was white.
He was nothing.