StarFox FanFiction Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Listen, Listen


The long corridors of the Salvation’s upper level were cold and lonely. Particles of dust seemed to float around in the chilled atmosphere from off the inscriptions on the walls. Winding hallways only lead to more empty rooms, arched with pillars that stood rigid, as if they were fossils.
  
A soft rectangular carpet lined through the hall that the falcon was walking through, and as he casually passed, his beaming lights uncovered a series of stone molding coming out of the walls. Looking for something of interest, he walked up to each of them and studied them for a moment with his light. With a grayish blue color and deep, precise carvings, he was able to make out what seemed like an old passage of a story come to life. They told of a huge amount of people, pioneers of some kind, it seemed, being sent to a huge planet by God’s providence as depicted by a ray of light. The later moldings proudly displayed their own passages; of the same people, dancing, studying, fighting with primitive weapons, performing rituals that seemed strangely beautiful even to an alien. One of the last ones was the most puzzling to the avian; it looked like this same group of people was meeting with a different group, their respected home planets shown behind them. At the center, the presumed leaders of these groups, one of them a raccoon and the other was some kind of hound dog, were shaking hands, and their followers were rejoicing. Falco gave out a whistle, signifying that he was impressed at the craftsmanship. Then, knowing he had to go on with his rescue mission, walked away and forgot about it.

The large corridor that Falco was walking through eventually came to an end, where it and several other walkways met at a large space of tiled floor, covered with a spiraled sun mosaic. Above was a huge glass ceiling that allowed the silver-white starlight to shine through, which further enhanced the symbol, as well as rid this level of the ship of total darkness. The simple but lovely pattern seemed faintly familiar to the avian, but he couldn’t remember how that was.
          
As inviting as it was, nothing about the ship seemed to imply that anyone had ever roamed these rooms, as the falcon quickly noticed while he wandered the upstairs, his light searing through the bluish-black darkness as he walked.

“Hello? Hey! Is anyone here!?” Falco’s shouts and calls were only answered by their own echoes. “Anybody!?” loud as he could make his voice, his strained yells failed to penetrate the ship’s barrier of silence. No matter how much he tried, everything fell still again, just like it had been before, and perhaps like it will once he leaves. “Jeez, I’m starting to think this really is a ghost ship. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in ages!” Had it been up to him, the avian would’ve already left this hollow piece of overpriced junk and flown off to do something more exciting. But, knowing the team had their hearts in finding at least a sign that someone was in here, and since he did just rejoin, it would seem hypocritical…or even just lazy, of him to not even try. So he kept on looking, walking in every direction, ready to inspect every corner of his assigned section.

He opened the first door at the end of a long hallway, and not too carefully, since he was already convinced no one was there. He could already see pitch black creeping out of the room, but nevertheless he walked in and benighted it with his flashlight. Immediately he saw two beds, both of a small size and unmade. One of them didn’t have any sheets at all. He inched further in and was surprised to see dolls scattered across the floor, as if they had been used very recently. Almost ready to change his mind, the bird gave out another call, this time more softer than before, “Is anyone here…?” his words stretched out as the slightest noise, his hearing sharpened by the otherwise utter silence, and he instinctively raised his blaster as he swiftly swished backwards, facing the doorway again. A gentle tap echoed, the avian returning his firearm to his holster while watching a toy shelf next to one of the beds fall over. The items it held spilled over, but a continuum of shifting, thumping noises spread from outside. “Hey!” he called, and responsively the sound increased in speed but went further away. “Wait! I know someone’s there! I’m here to help you!” Falco shouted as he quickly slid out the doorway and rushed through the hall, his boots clacking as he pumped his legs, his sense now excited. “Come back! I just want to help! I—ah!”

“Oh!”

Having been over stimulated with the hope of finding a passenger, the falcon was shocked to crash into an unknown body. “Hey! What gives?”
“Will you be quiet, already!?” a voice hissed. Falco, still stunned, could just conclude that it was female. He quickly recovered and was about to beam his flashlight on the stranger, when she struck his arm and shut it off. “What do you think you’re doing, young man!?”

“What am I doing!?” he snapped right back. He couldn’t indicate nearly as much as he could with the assistance of more light (starlight wasn’t of much help at their position), but by the look of the woman’s silhouette and with some help from his natural “hawkeyed” abilities, Falco could gather that she was a fellow avian, most likely an owl, a bit on the short side and hunched at the back.

“Yes, you heard what I said!” she replied in a snippy tone, “You must be out of your mind, running around the ship, yelling at the top of your lungs and flashing that silly light of yours. God, I can’t stand the light, especially at this hour—and don’t!” she cut through her lecture with another swipe at Falco’s wrist, seeing that he was trying to turn his light back on. “What is the matter of you? Weren’t you ever taught to respect your elders?”

“Humph. I have a hard enough time respecting Peppy and General Pepper…and this stranger thinks I would listen to her?” Falco thought to himself, amused at it for a moment before deciding to retaliate. “Listen you old hag! In case you haven’t noticed, your ship is wandering through an unauthorized section of space AND it’s completely offline! Did you ever wonder why nothing’s working in here!?”

“You idiot!” the elderly owl squealed, “Everyone is asleep! That’s why there’s no power! And if you were flapping your big beak any longer, you would’ve woken everyone up!”

“Hey! What’s all that racket!?” a voice cried from a slightly opened door across the hall.

“Please stop shouting!” another said.
“Go back to sleep!”

“You see?” said the owl in victory.

“Wha…? I, uh…” Falco had to take a step back. With the lonesome aura this place seemed to give off, the total lack of power or response, not to mention Peppy’s high level of concern, it hadn’t crossed his mind that it might just end up being a big misunderstanding. Such an embarrassing idea had never occurred to him, or to any of his teammates. He bit his tongue, processed the whole ordeal, but not all of it seemed to check out, so he continued to rebel. “Well, that still doesn’t explain why you’re way out here in the middle of nowhere, completely defenseless!”

The owl woman didn’t respond at first; by the sound of her breathing, she seemed shocked, but then she just grunted. “Don’t you know ANYTHING!?”

“What…?”

“Now how stupid can you possibly be, boy? Don’t tell me you don’t know why we’ve traveled so far!”

“Ugh! Listen, lady, I’m not a passenger here! I’m a mercenary! My team and I found your ship here and—”

“Sssshhh…” the woman’s voice fell soft as she turned around. The two birds soon picked up faint sounds of people talking just a few rooms away. “Oh, dear; the council is having another one of their midnight meetings, and I haven’t found Skye and Myst yet…”

“A council?” said Falco as he began to march away from the owl and towards the source of the voices, “Good. Maybe they can make sense out of this…”

“Wait! No, what are you doing!?”

“Whatever you think I’m doing. Why don’t you just go back to sleep or something, lady?”

Even through the darkness, one could see the infuriated red blasting out of the woman’s plumage as she gave up and stormed off, muttering to her self. “Kids these days, they’ve got some nerve! I try to help them but they just don’t listen to me, none of them! Well I’ve had it; they can go wandering around, playing make-believe, they’re all going to get what’s coming to them, then they’ll be sorry. Hell, they’re not my kids, why should I care anyway…” It went on like that until her shrill voice faded, her black figure gone. Of course by that time, the falcon was beyond caring about the old hag.

Falco stealthily crept through the hall, his sharp eyes focusing on the door just ahead of him, rather separate from the rest as if it were special, where voices kept seeping through from out of its cracks. With a wing on the smooth, stony railing and a foot on one step of a small set of stairs, he began to decipher the words that were spoken.
“What do you mean you don’t think we’re going to make it?”
“Yes! Why would you speak such blasphemy?”

“Huh?” the bird grew confused as he continued to carefully walk up the stairs, one at a time.

“We just want to put the tragedy behind us, is that so wrong?” said a gentle female voice. Falco couldn’t help by be reminded of Krystal when he heard it. “We’ve lost the attackers, and at this speed we should be able to get to our new home…”

“Don’t you understand? We were not meant to run away!” blasted an older, groggy male voice. “Even if we think we’re safe, we cannot escape this enemy…for it is not of this world.”

A younger man blurted out, not sure if he could help the argument, “But the pact…”

“The pact was that either they would come for us or we would be destroyed together! Did you see anyone coming to rescue us when the sky was bleeding!? I don’t think so!”

“What are they talking about?” said Falco as he gently leaned up against the door. With the utmost caution, he steadily cracked the door open to see a spacious, dark room, lighted with the glow of a hologram, depicting a planet that swirled with lush green, deep blue and wispy white. A large bluish white star centered the planet, and together they shone upon the round able they were based on, and gave visibility to the white robed figures that sat around the table with their heads down. “It looks like a briefing room…but what’s up with this ‘council’?”

“Our Lady is doing the best she can to lead us to the promise land,” said the female, “No matter what the stories say, she has gone to great lengths to secure our safety, and we have reasons to trust her over anything.”

“Yes, Lady Sappho is going to save us. We have faith in her,” said another figure.

Falco could just make out one of the figures shaking his head, as if in disbelief. When he spoke, it obviously was the cynical, older man. “Lady Sappho can do all she wants, but she, like the rest of us, cannot withstand God’s wrath for long. This whole escape mission is only prolonging our inevitable deaths.”

The woman gasped. “Don’t say that!”

One of the other men slammed his fist onto the table. “How dare you!?”

“Oh, Our Lady can claim she has a strong binding with the Creator, and she may have enough money to provide for us, but these things are all superficial! We’re only mortals; we can’t fight these forces forever! There is no way she can protect us forever. I know she only brought us to this elaborate ship just so we’d feel safe, like we didn’t have anything to worry about. But in the end, she’s just like the rest of us; the things she has can only go so far…”

The council fell silent, and the falcon’s eyes were wide. “What the fuck!?” he hissed under his breath. “These people are out of their minds! That’s it; it’s time to end this! I’m going in there!” he pulled his sleeves up a bit and was ready to bust the doors down, when a frail little voice popped out from nowhere.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” it cried softly.

“Huh?” surprised, Falco turned to see the image of a little girl, appearing to be ursine, and, judging by her height and the sound of her voice, couldn’t be any older than thirteen. Upon close enough look, the avian sighed and rolled his eyes. “Look, why don’t you just go back to sleep, little girl? I’ve got some grown-up business to attend to and I’m tired of being interrupted.”

“…They’re having a meeting in there…” the girl wisped. “They would be very angry if you interrupted them.”

Falco grunted. “I’m apparently the only one who’s still in touch with reality. Look, I’m trying to help you people, and you’re all in denial of what’s going on!”

“…They’re talking about bad things in there, aren’t they? They don’t think we’re going to make it…”

“They act as if they’re escaping an enemy…don’t they know their ship is dead and they’re in the middle of nowhere?”

“I don’t know…what you’re talking about…”

“What?”

“Who’s out there!?” the cynical man’s voice bellowed.

“Quick! Follow me!” the girl squealed as she grabbed Falco’s wrist and dragged him into a shadowy corner, where she flung a door open and made him enter with her.

“Is anyone there?” said one of the younger male’s voices, clouded behind the female, who had gone and stepped out of the briefing room.

“No…I don’t see anyone,” she said softly, in a tone that implied she might’ve known that wasn’t entirely true. With a few more steps, in the starlight she removed her hood and revealed a vulpine face to the empty space above her. “There’s no one here…” and she slowly walked back into the room.