Lights.

Glowing lights, incredibly bright, lighting up downtown Haransdale. Animals of all size and shape making their way through the crowded streets of the gargantuan modern city. Shops, cabs, motels, dark unwelcoming alleys, towering skyscrapers.

In such a town, who can pay attention to the newcomer?

Who indeed.

A few blocks down from one of Haransdale’s many giant squares, something was happening. Something, among a thousand other things happening at the same time. If one had had nothing better to do, one may have noticed three strangers running like those gone mad down the street after something no one else could see. If one had had nothing better to do, of course. Which everyone did.

Bill’s tongue lolled out as he panted heavily, running as quickly as he could, feet pounding the sidewalk. Alongside him were Peppy and the newly returned Falco (or so everyone thought). He didn’t know either of them very well, but they’d been working together for the common good for weeks. And, after all, if achieving the common good meant running around Katina’s largest city like complete idiots, well, then, that’s what they would have to do.

Peppy slowed down a bit. “I’m getting too old for this! We’ll never catch them anyway,” he puffed.

Falco skidded to a halt, nearly crashing into a trash can from the slick walkway. He eyed some suspicious looking characters skulking in the alley. “Peppy’s right. We need to get a cab.”

“HEY!! HEEEYY!!!” Bill tried to hail a cab, and eventually one screeched to a halt, splashing unsavoury street water in their faces. Bill gagged, but yanked the door open. They tumbled into the cab and didn’t bother to fasten their seatbelts.

“FLOOR IT!” Falco ordered the driver, a stout raccoon, pointing in the general direction of a nearby side street.

“Much obliged, sir,” the driver mock saluted. Then he took off like a bat out of the other place and careened down the road at speeds approaching 200 km/h.

Plastered against the back window of the vehicle, Peppy spoke. “Where do you think they’re headed?”

“Probably....out of town....there’s an office somewhere down there....I’m not sure....UULLGH!!” Bill lurched forward as the cab hit a speed bump and almost flipped over backwards.

“We better get there soon,” Falco moaned, clutching his stomach. “I think I’m about to toss.”

The high buildings gradually shortened, more trees and grass were visible, and there were fewer pedestrians. Soon they’d left the city. Three more minutes of their harrowing journey ensued until Bill stopped the cab in front of an impossibly tall office building. It was surrounded by a large grassy knoll with a picturesque but obviously man-made pond and a few running trails.

Falco paid the driver, who nodded and then ricocheted insanely back to the city. “Well, are we ready?” Bill blew out his breath slowly, staring up at the glass-covered monstrosity of modern technology.

“Ready as we’ll ever be, and even if we’re not we don’t have time to get that way,” Peppy responded, striding as majestically as one with his particular physical build could manage.

“Let’s get this over with,” Falco took a deep breath, pulled open the door, and they all stepped inside. Once they were in, something seemed to hit the falcon, and he turned incredulously to Bill. “’An office’?” he criticised. “The Imperial Headquarters is an office?”

“Sorry,” Bill replied, blushing. “I was sorta, you know, not thinking clearly?”  The Imperial Headquarters stood at almost 400 meters high and had 120 stories. It was Katina’s tallest building and one of the tallest buildings in civilised Lylat. The only buildings taller were system trade centers that were both located on Corneria.

They weren’t sure exactly what they were looking for, or how to get around the building. A blast of cool air from the air conditioning vent hit them full on, and their boots made clicking noises on the spotless marble floor. Peppy saw some escalators, but they weren’t turned on.

“Come on,” he said, leading them to the escalators. “Even if they don’t take us up there, we can go up ourselves.”

Bill stood staring straight up in awe at the nightmarishly tall building. Each floor up to about the 7th seemed to be built in a square shape with a hole in the middle, and the view was breathtaking and mind-boggling. He didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, and they all hurried up flight after flight of the unmoving stairs, gasping for breath as they climbed on and on.

Finally the holes in the ceiling and the escalators came to an abrupt end, and Falco looked around in vain for a lift. It looked like they were out of luck again, but Bill did manage to find a stairwell (a fire exit, he guessed) that seemed to go to the top of the building.

They climbed on, trying not to dwell on the fact that the building had one hundred and twenty floors.

* * *

Katt sat huddled in the corner, crying softly to herself as Gerdendrul battled it out with Fox. She was angry at herself for not doing anything to help, but she knew she couldn’t no matter how hard she tried.

Slippy was lying unmoving in the opposite corner in an unnatural position. Katt tried not to look at him, for it would only make her cry harder. Who knew if he was even still alive?

They were on the Imperial Headquarters’ twenty-first floor, waiting for the others to crash the party. Slippy moved his head a little and then spoke, much to Katt’s relief. Fox would have been relieved too, if he had a moment to think about anything. “Fox!” Slippy was yelling in his trademark shrill voice, which was suddenly comforting. “Fox, jump this way!”

Fox couldn’t. He had waited too long to fake that way and it looked like it was all over. It would have been all over several minutes ago if Gerdendrul had not been experiencing problems of its own.

It’s not nice to keep Jimmy locked down here, he mentally shrieked at nobody in particular as Andross’s citadel in Gerdendrul’s mind pulsated softly with power.  Jimmy had been down here waiting for too long, and it was time to stop waiting now...Gerdendrul fought to regain control, but Jimmy was quickly pushing him down, all the energy and hatred stored up over months of rotting finally coming out. It was time for Gerdendrul to pay the piper. And once he was out...oh, yes, once he was out...well, then, he’d take care of the animals and then go after Andross...yes, oh yes, that would be it...one fine day...

Fox didn’t know why this creature wasn’t moving with the deadly accuracy it had been before, but he didn’t mind a bit. He had faked too late and it would have gotten him if it had not suddenly frozen in place as if it were part of a wax museum.

Hiccuping insanely, Fox ran over to the corner with Slippy and tried to make himself invisible.

Ten floors below, three stupidly hopeful animals were coming closer.

* * *

“Is it fun?” Somebody asked him.

“No,” he responded.

“Why not?”

“It’s not green.”

“We can make it pink. Will you want to sit on it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It won’t taste like soup.”

“Cabbage, then.”

“All right.”

The creature made it so.

Falco put it on his head, but before he could begin to use it, he disappeared again.

* * *

Bill tried to cry out, but he was too out of breath. They had assumed that Gerdendrul and their friends would be on the top floor, but a loud crashing had been heard from the floor they had just climbed past. They turned exhaustedly around and nearly toppled down the stairs, pulling open the door and trying to ready themselves for whatever horrors they were certain they would find.

They got their wish.

Jimmy was inexperienced; inexperienced, but smarter than Gerdendrul had been. Gerdendrul wasn’t allowed to be smart. Jimmy didn’t know a lot about how to use his new abilities, but he was applying them very well for a beginner. And as soon as the three newcomers showed their faces, he gave a very strange yell (it was the first actual, physical sound that body had ever made since it was altered) and picked up Katt and Fox in an enlarged hand. He threw them across the room with quite a bit of force. They hit the wall with a sickening thud and slid to the ground. Then Jimmy....somehow....took the rest of them upstairs. It was a rushing torrent and they could never after be quite sure how they ended up on the top floor, but as he poured into the stairwell and took them all up with him, they knew whatever his methods may be, they were certainly effective.

In just under three minutes, they were crashing through the stairwell door on the very top floor, a large airy observation room with blue plush carpet and full-wall windows. Falco had, of course, dissolved as soon as Jimmy had touched him. So now they were down to Slippy, Peppy, and Bill. Jimmy composed himself in the corner and rose out of the shadows, a granite rottweiler once more. The three’s eyes grew rounder and each face in the room besides Jimmy’s was full of horror. Jimmy coughed once and then smiled, but did not move...yet.

* * *

“You know,” said a woman with a hateful voice, “rottweilers can turn on you just like that.”

“Really?” he said, trying not to let her see how terrified he was. Few people knows what it feels like to have a gun held on you at point-blank range.

“I never trust them,” she said, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

“I see.”

“You know,” she said, “If you’ve been buying a hat, we’ll have to have it out and see it. Then we’ll have just a bit of tea, and some crackers.”

“Okay. I got it at a nice little boutique...but you know....” he said at once, noticing the bazooka-toting cowboy who had just crashed through the green glass of the window, “We’re in trouble.”

“What do you mean ‘we’, white man?” she smirked.

Then the black hole took him away.

And this dimension, perhaps, was one of the strangest. He could now remember that Rhandon was someone he was friends with, but somewhere else he hated him. Hated him. Which one was the truth? Could both be true--? No....but then....In all creation, everything is true somewhere, he thought. Everything--or perhaps nothing.

Suddenly he knew it was time to go home.

He was back in his Arwing. It hadn’t happened. Or perhaps the place he was going now hadn’t happened. But no...it was still all inky, there were still no stars....and now he could see blue stripes going by very fast, as if he were in a tunnel...and somewhere at the end was a very bright fire. A song was running through his head, a very peaceful song. He left it up to the heavens and took what he was given. Please, he prayed, although he didn’t call it praying at the time. Please, I need to help my friends. They need my help. Please give me a chance...

* * *

The animals were all too terrified to move, so they were standing there staring at Jimmy. They were too scared to despair, although survival seemed a hopeless goal. Their minds were paralysed and they could not dwell on dark thoughts.

At once, Slippy pulled out a gun he found hanging at his side and shot Jimmy with it. Unfortunately, it was his liquefying gun and didn’t do anything much except to make Jimmy angry with him. The creature’s arm moved like lightning; it picked Slippy up by the collar and flung him across the room. One of the glass windows splintered in a cacophony of crystalline notes as Slippy’s hapless form flew straight through it and down through the thin air.

Peppy choked and collapsed. Bill’s mind froze over.

* * *

My, my, the clock in the sky is pounding away and there’s so much to say...

There was a sort of peace to falling this way. All was silence except for the wind and the air rushing past him. He tried to remember the meditation skills he had learned from that class he had taken last summer. The idea that it was all over and he was about to die never actually crossed his mind. Like jumping off a bridge, he thought, his mind taken with a numb complacency.

A face, a voice, an overdub has no choice, and it cannot rejoice....

Slippy noted that there was a cloud off in the distance shaped like a lollypop.

Wanting to be.....to hear and to see.....crying to the sky...

He shifted himself into a sitting position and folded his legs. He closed his eyes and began to enjoy the air, the temperature, everything...

Clicks, clacks, riding the backs of giraffes for laughs is all right for a while...

Slippy smiled as the scent of flowers wafted up through the still air. He suddenly thought that he might like to become a recording artist.

The eagle sings of castles and kings and things that go with a life of style...

“I’d play the mandolin,” he said out loud, but his voice was lost in the wind. He stretched out, overcome with peace and joy.

Wanting to feel.....to know what is real...living is a lie....

His breath caught in his throat. It was kind of cold up here. Suddenly the thought of landing crossed his mind. He cleared his mind and focused on the meditative exercises, hoping to levitate and avoid hitting the ground.

But the porpoise is waiting....

The smile once again spread across his mouth. Yes, he would make it. He stopped thinking and left it up to the fates.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye....

And then without warning, the sky itself was ripped in two. A brilliant flash of light was only visible to those in its very near vicinity, and something hot and solid and metal was rushing through the air, and then there was a sound like a thousand glass bells all breaking at once, the gentle tinkling shocking the still air. Then all was carpet and shards of broken glass and disbelief.

The twenty-first floor of the Imperial Headquarters had certainly seen its share of excitement that day.

Katt and Fox were lying across the room, gentle snoring noises emanating from somewhere in that vicinity. Slippy’s mouth had dropped nearly to the floor as he came out of his trance and drank in the sights. The luckless Arwing was smoking, and one of its wings dropped completely off in just a few seconds.

And Falco was sitting in it, the memory of everywhere he had been already completely gone from his mind. For, even though sometimes things can only be seen clearly when you are out of them, other things cannot be seen at all unless you are in their midst.

* * *

Jimmy sensed something. The two animals that were left were abandoned on the 120th story as the dog rushed back downstairs. It was faster going this time.  

All things come to an end eventually. Jimmy’s time was running out and he knew it. His dreams of making it for good, killing Andross, killing everyone who had wronged him, were failing on him before his eyes. Gerdendrul was trying madly to get back on top (swarming, Jimmy thought) and it would not be long before it succeeded.

He burst out of the doorway and made up his mind to go down in a blaze of glory. He would not allow himself to be defeated like a drunken rat in sight of victory again. Andross had taken Jimmy’s sanity when he turned him into Gerdendrul, but he had not taken his dignity. And sometimes insane people are the smartest ones of all.

Jimmy slammed into Slippy and the toad bounced across the room and bumped softly into the wall. He was completely unhurt, but then a desk fell on top of him and he was trapped. His only vantage point was a little peephole of sorts between the legs of the desk and all the other stuff. Now Slippy could see Falco trying madly to keep Jimmy away from the sleeping forms of Katt and Fox, and now he could see Jimmy trying to throw Falco out the window, and now he could see the shining surface of the large window that had not yet been shattered, and now he was aiming the liquefying gun at it, and now he was firing in one continuos blast, and now...

“Falco!!” he screamed. “NOW!!”

Falco shoved Jimmy out the window with one last burst of strength. The liquid glass covered the dog like a second skin. It did not harden until he had hit the ground, and then it froze him in one last agonised position, a prisoner forever.

Falco sat down on the floor, stunned.

Twenty-one floors below, Jimmy lay in disbelief on the ground, unable to move or even look around. The mind is a powerful thing. If Jimmy’s were stopped...then..... There would be only Gerdendrul left inside the shell of a person that had once thought for itself every day. Only Gerdendrul left to rot, and wait, and despair. Jimmy grasped at one last shred of spiteful satisfaction and killed himself.

* * *

Eerily, the Imperial Headquarters remained completely empty of its normal occupants for three whole days. Three days were not needed for Star Fox to finish up its business and get out of there for good.

After Falco got the desk off him, Slippy trooped down to the sub-basement and turned the lifts on. Then he took one up to the twenty-first floor, where Falco met him and they continued their journey up to the 12oth. Peppy and Bill were both in a strange state of mind, but Falco poured some water on their faces and they were as good as new in a few minutes.

They descended back to the 21st floor and poured some more water on Katt and Fox, who confirmed that nothing was broken and pronounced that they had both got a rather good nap.

Katt and Fox were not told that the real Falco that was with them now was not the same Falco that had arrived on the scene earlier. They didn’t need to know.

* * *

A few hours later, they stood on the Great Fox. Fox had just informed General Pepper that the mission had been accomplished. The glass dog on the front lawn of the Imperial Headquarters was a conversation piece, to say the least, but nobody really minded it.

Bill had flown off a few minutes earlier, telling everyone that it had been great fun and he’d do it again sometimes, but boy would it be nice to get back to the normal tasks of commanding a squadron or two....

Katt had some spaghetti and then decided she’d better go as well. It would only be polite to see her off, so everybody walked down to the docking bay with her to say goodbye.

“Bye,” they said.

“Bye,” she said back.

The Star Fox team walked back out of the docking bay, but Katt stopped Falco.

“Before I go,” she said, “I want the truth. The real, honest-to-goodness truth. Not a sarcastic comment, not a stupid joke, the truth.”

He didn’t ask, “the truth about what?” because he knew. Falco looked down.  “The real truth?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. The truth is....I missed you.”

“Me too,” she said. It looked like both of them wanted to say more, but nothing more was said.

Only a few seconds had passed when the Cat’s Paw flew swiftly out of the docking bay and twirled off to who knew where, and there it stayed until they met again.

C’est fini