A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed.

Badander

Chapter 13: Lynchpin

Fox McCloud tumbled across the atmosphere in his Arwing. In mere minutes, the enemy fighters had been eliminated with extreme prejudice by the Star Fox team. The local airspace was sanitized. So why the hell was he so worried?

"Slippy, is there anything unusual happening?" He wondered.

"Huh. Funny you should ask," the amphibian replied in his trademark high-pitched voice. "I'm detecting a high level of flux in Fichina's atmosphere. Strange."

"What's going on, Slip?" Falco wondered. Fox nodded. He was more than curious as well as to why the clouds around him were acting like they wanted to smear his innards on the ground below.

"Hmm… It's almost as if the temperature can't decide whether it wants to stay the same or…" Slippy trailed off, confirming Fox's worst fears and his theories on why the communists had bothered to invade Fichina in the first place.

"Damn…" Fox breathed as the sky began to grow darker.

"Fox, what's going on?" Krystal asked. He sighed. Although Krystal was easily one of the most intelligent people he had ever met, her life spent in the wilds of Sauria had made her somewhat naïve, which was especially obvious during the uncommon moments she had to be exposed to high-scale military strategy and political manipulation. However, this had been part of what had drawn him to her in the first place.

Over the years they had spent together, Fox had come to adore the sheer innocence Krystal seemed to embody completely without effort. She was resilient and simply refused to the miseries of life beat her down. He could only hope to be as strong-willed as her. That was why he had made it his mission to make sure nothing happened to her. No matter what he felt towards her, Krystal's capacity for good alone warranted Fox's undying protection and… well, was it something more? He wondered about this as he imagined a time not too long ago when he had stammered over the notion of taking Krystal to Sauria for "their" honeymoon.

He shook his head. Why would a woman as great as Krystal ever be interested in a guy like him?

"You mean to tell me the commies are gonna steal the Weather Control Device?" Falco's voice questioned disbelievingly, bringing Fox back into reality. "Fox, is this for real?"

"I'm sorry Falco, but my scanners don't lie. The artificial Weathersphere across the planet is rapidly destabilizing," Slippy replied in a rare moment of bleak seriousness. Fox blinked. He had grown used to Slippy's almost demeanor that he seemed to be able to maintain even under the strain of enemy fire. To hear Slippy so sullen and serious was indicative of just how dire their current situation was.

"But – but that means…" Krystal stammered. Fox heard her sigh before she continued, "How much time do we – how much time does Fichina have?"

Slippy cleared his throat before answering.

"By my calculations taken from the first time the Weather Control Device was threatened during the Aparoid War, I estimate we have approximately two hours before the planet reverts back to its original below-freezing climate."

"Um, how cold are we talking exactly?" Falco asked nervously, and Fox was instantly reminded of how much avians like Falco hated the cold. Fox's species and its canine cousins had been lucky enough to retain their fur coats after eons of evolution. It sometimes made him curious as to why foxes would evolve with winter-durable fur coats on the tropical/temperate world of Corneria which very rarely experienced below-freezing temperatures.

Recently, he had watched a documentary that stressed the possibility that Cornerian civilization had been advanced in the distant past, perhaps to the point that (either by industrial byproducts, or, more cynically, nuclear war that had somehow heated the planet instead of blotting out the sun and freezing it) it heated its atmosphere to the point of near-uninhabitability that put so much strain on the planet's inhabitants that Cornerian civilization regressed, eventually evolving at a slower pace into the war-torn interplanetary federation it was today. This theory, coupled with the advent of the various human interstellar empires, lead Fox and many others to question many preconceived notions about the origins of the universe and life in general.

"If my calculations are correct and the planet ends up resuming its natural climate," Slippy indicated, once more disturbing Fox's private moments of thought. "We could be facing worldwide average temperatures south of negative seventy degrees Celsius."

"Our Arwings can handle that easily," Falco understood. Then his voice grew dark. "But all those people on the ground… Fox, we have to stop those Red bastards from stealing the Weather Control Device!"

"Agreed," Fox replied and adjusted his heading to face the Fichina Military Research Facility. "Krystal, notify the Horizon that we have detected an attempt by the enemy to sabotage or steal the Fichina Weather Control Device. Try to signal our ground forces to evacuate as well, but if you can't, get Peppy to relay the message."

"Yes, Fox," Krystal said lowly, obviously more than disturbed that someone would annihilate thousands of lives to achieve a goal, but Fox had faith that her mission performance would remain unhindered. Krystal was a lot stronger than most people gave her credit for.

"What about Hazel and her team?" Falco exclaimed, "We can't just leave them down there!"

Fox cracked his knuckles and sighed. "Falco, we have no way of knowing if they survived the crash -"

"But -" Falco interrupted.

"We… we don't know where they are…" Fox croaked, "We need to focus on the Weather Control Device, Falco. It's the only way we can save them for sure."

When Falco didn't answer, Fox faced forward. Ahead, the sky churned like a dark gunmetal hurricane writhing violently under the cold gaze of space. Below, Fox spotted the dark spire of the research facility. He glanced at his Aerial Proximity Scanner. No contacts besides the friendly green blips of his team's Arwings registered in his view. Quietly, maintaining his vigilance for enemy fighters and missiles, Fox McCloud prepared his Arwing for landing.

Commander Rick Branson swore loudly as another one of the six gauss turrets mounted on the Hinomaru's port side was torn from the hull by a wall of energy blasts and missiles.

"All weapons – return fire!" He barked and immediately a new volley of hypervelocity rounds left the Hinomaru, tearing across the thin fabric of space to collide with the enemy vessels that hovered in the distance. Branson beamed with pride as a bright yellow hypervelocity round lanced into one of the attacking vessels, crippling its weapons systems.

Although Branson prided himself on being a particularly deadly mercenary, he always preferred to disable enemy ships rather than destroy them. And why not? He wondered. The results were the same, if not better: the enemy could no longer fight and their families back home would be spared the agony and heartbreak of losing loved ones. It was a common goddamn courtesy that some of the more zealous Japanese Imperials had not afforded him during the Second Great War, and immediately he envied the families of those stationed on the disabled DRC vessel. Those lucky bastards probably had no idea what the hell it was like to lose people who didn't have to die.

"Enemy vessel disabled," the thin Russian accent of the snide spawn of the Romanov dynasty filtered throughout the quaking bridge. Branson took a moment to survey the thin blond man, whose pale features had contorted into a severe expression. And Rick had to remind himself that the man before him had not only lost his entire family, but managed to survive whatever grueling training regimens the Malakhim forced upon their recruits. On top of that, Romanov had somehow found the resources to knock down an entire communist uprising in the unstable powder keg that was the Mediterranean Star Cluster. That feat alone warranted Branson's cautionary respect for the man, even if he could never like him. There were just too many greedy, scheming Romanovs scattered throughout the ruling classes of the Commonwealth of Worlds (formed between the now-defunct British Empire and a majority of its former colonies, including Australia) for Branson to be completely comfortable near such a man.

"Holy shit!" One of Branson's crewmates exclaimed as the CFS Horizon tore through the enemy formation spinning and firing at the lead ship. The enemy ship crumpled under the sudden barrage of blue energy blasts and red bomb-like projectiles, but what was most striking about the maneuver was the low level of damage suffered by the Horizon. It was almost as if the rotating barrel roll motions of the Cornerian vessel were reflecting the various enemy energy bolts. Branson of course dismissed that thought as completely and utterly ludicrous.

"Sir – the enemy ships are retreating!" Branson's tactical officer announced over the crackle of the wiring which lay exposed throughout the bridge. "Should I lay in an intercept course?"

"Negative," Branson ordered with a flick of his wrist. "Hail the Horizon – ask them if they need assistance."

"Aye aye," the officer replied before he got to work at the controls.

"Branson, I'm detecting something rather strange developing on the planet's surface," Romanov chimed in, his trademark royalty voice practically oozed arrogance. Sighing, Branson walked up behind the blond man who eyed his station's holographic interface curiously.

"What is it?" Branson grumbled, very much not in the mood for BS.

"Oh, and I was hoping we were more than just friends," Romanov cracked and smirked. Branson glared at him with a look that could vaporize crude oil.

"Ahem, well. I was fiddling with this nice scanning implement here," he pointed at the upper right hand corner of the viewscreen which hosed the backdrop of the ice planet below.

"And…?"

"Well you see that temperature read-out there, my Neanderthal friend?" He pointed again, this time at the distant laser thermometer that automatically scanned the nearest planets for suitable temperatures as part of a safety mechanism. It had something or other to do with automatic escape pod launch destination that had been implemented in case some officer who had a little too much sake just happened to mistake the self-destruct button for a vomit bin. Or something like that.

"Yeah?" Branson grunted, his patience waning.

"The temperature on Fichina is dropping rapidly," Romanov stated and pressed a few more buttons on the holographic interface. The blond man turned to face Branson. "If these readings are correct, and the rate of temperature decay remains the same, the whole damn planet's gonna be uninhabitable in around two hours."

"That's fascinating… Wait, what?!" Branson exclaimed. It was very rare that something was able to surprising him. And well, this qualified as pretty friggin' surprising.

"The. Ice. Planet. Is. Going. To. Freeze. Over." Romanov grumbled arrogantly and Branson was instantly within seconds of beating the man's face in before one of his subordinates decided to interrupt. And by interrupt, the subordinate probably called it "strategic intervention" or some such crap.

"Um, sir?"

"WHAT?" Branson growled and clenched his fists. He was Not Happy and he wanted the Whole World to know it.

"The Cornerian Colonel is requesting communications. He says it's urgent."

Branson sighed and drew in a deep breath. Breathe in, and breathe out, his mother had said when she found out about his loving relationship with anger. Now his mother didn't breathe anymore. He sighed again.

Life.

Sucked.

"Put him on screen."

Corporal Jessica Stevens shivered as the cool Fichina air nipped at her dark feline ears. Somehow, the air had gotten colder, if the bastards at Command would believe that, she considered silently.

"Sheesh, Jess. How can you stand being outside in this?" An older lupine named Arvani said. Jessica didn't know her first name, but that didn't stop the wolf from calling her by her own.

"Captain's orders," Jessica answered flatly, her distaste for the cold weather abundantly evident.

"Who told you that?" Arvani asked suddenly. "It wasn't Reynolds, was it?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Oh, that fat pig," Arvani said before she shook her head. "You've been Fichina'd."

"Fichina'd?" Jess wondered, although a creeping suspicion within her was beginning to recognize with painful clarity that she'd been duped.

Arvani simply growled in sympathy and took Jess's arm, leading her back to their unit's encampment, where warm food and water awaited by some miracle.

They were trudging through the powdery snow before Jess tripped over on something solid, colliding face-first on the ground, eliciting a low laugh from the lupine.

Yeah, yeah. Real friggin' funny.

Suddenly the laughing stopped. Jess looked up and shook the snow off her face to get a clear look at the lupine. Arvani's face grew pale with each passing second as she stared at the ground around her. Jess noticed that the wolf paid much attention to the various dark rocks that littered the landscape.

"What's wrong, Arvani? They're just rocks…" And then she saw. The thin, barely noticeable sapient features of each object became more and more clear the longer she looked. Jess, in a panic, glanced again at the object which had tripped her. Cold dead eyes screamed at her from the ground below, frozen in place, watching her from the places beyond the living, where the damned suffered in eternal agony.

All around them, the members of their platoon lay frozen in the Fichina wasteland.

They would not be the last to suffer that fate, entombed in a grave without a name.

"I h-h-hate the c-cold," Hazel chattered as they neared the Fichina Military Research Base. Inwardly, Hazel could feel the capitalization of the black metal facility ahead. And she found that she hated everything about it.

"You have fur, Princess. Surely you don't need to complain – my eardrums don't like it. At all."

Ah yes, Andrea Jade Bowman. The mysterious sniper and all-around antisocial amnesiac had finally decided to chime in. And what did she decide to do? Make fun of innocent Hazel who did nothing wrong except vocalize her pain. Once.

"Well I'm truly, deeply sorry if my pain is an inconvenience to you," Hazel replied, her voice thick with sarcasm.

The ape glared at her. The woman's jade green eyes flared dangerously in the chilling icy air. Above, the clouds churned more darkly than she had ever seen before. Hazel gulped. Exactly how much time had Carson said they had until the whole planet killed them? She kind of wanted to know, because dying was bad.

Right.

"Will you two relax? We still have to retrieve the weather control device and save…" Carson lowered his gaze.

"Save who?" Andrea wondered with what seemed like genuine curiosity, which surprised Hazel. From what she could tell, the team's newest simian addition was short-tempered and dangerous - not to mention the fact that she was an amnesiac and therefore extremely unpredictable. Who knew what Andrea could be capable of if or when she recovered her memories, or if Gideon, the mystery man of the year told her what he knew?

When Carson lowered his gaze further and didn't reply, Hazel glanced once more at Gideon whose dark form was readily making its way past the unguarded boundaries of the research base. She sighed. The more time she spent around the human, the stranger and stranger he seemed to get. At first she had been… well, enamored with him to say the least. When she'd met him, she had found the mystery of the past the lay untouched behind those piercing blue eyes intriguing.

She didn't know how she felt now about how they had almost kissed twice in the past few days – after all, she barely knew him and his sudden familiarity with brutalizing enemy regiments hadn't exactly helped in that regard. But when he'd showed her, told her about intimate parts of his past, his raw emotion while doing so almost made it seem like he'd never done so before. That he'd trusted a part of himself with her… No one had ever done anything like that for her before…

"You'd think this place would be guarded," Carson breathed as they stepped past the unguarded front gate. The research facility was a large building by Fichina standards. Its gothic spires easily towered over the various evergreens of the surrounding forest. They paused when the outer walls surrounding the structure gave way to a white, snow-covered courtyard that might have once been the center for more sensitive plant growth back when the government's main priority had been to terraform every last uninhabitable world in Lylat. Now, the former hotbed of scientific activity lay dormant, broken under neglect bred by a war that raged just beyond the horizon.

"I think they brought their troops into the building to prepare for whatever they did to the Weather Control Device," Gideon said as he turned to face the rest of the group. Silently, his gaze fell upon Hazel. He narrowed his eyes and walked up to her.

"Are you gonna be okay?" He asked quietly so no one else would hear. It took her a moment to realize he wasn't talking about the cold. Her heart fluttered suddenly within her chest.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Hazel answered and gave him a slight smile. He smiled back and held her gaze for a few more moments before he turned to approach the threshold of the research base.

"So, we just go in?" Hazel asked no one in particular.

"It doesn't look like it's locked," Carson replied and hesitantly tried the door.

"Wait!" Andrea hissed but she was too late. A sudden blast of energy propelled Hazel off her feet. She tumbled endlessly in the freezing snow before she finally came to a halt.

Darkness.

Colonel Peppy Hare gazed piercingly into the communications viewscreen. On the other side, the two strange humans who had aided him against the communist fleet stood rigidly in front of the bridge. Peppy cringed when he saw the various scrapes that stretched across the men's faces and the bridge's interior. The orange glow of the ancient tactical room barely masked the various scorches where a wire or power coupling had blown. Peppy's own bridge had barely taken a scratch, yet this was mostly due to the fact that the enemy fleet had been so completely distracted by the immensely powerful human vessel that they hadn't paid the CFS Horizon very much attention.

"Commander Branson, on behalf of the Cornerian Federation, I'd like to thank you for your assistance," he said, his voice clear and commanding.

The strange green-haired man cleared his throat.

"We merely defended ourselves from attack, Colonel, and quite frankly I'm not here on my own business. You'll want to speak to Mr. Romanov; he's the one payin' the bills."

Strange. Why would a human mercenary travel all the way to Fichina?

"Understood," Peppy said and the older man nodded his head respectfully. "So, Mr. Romanov, what can I do for you?"

The younger man stepped forward. He cool brown eyes glittered with dark intelligence.

"As I said before," the man stated in that strange accent once again, "I'm looking for –"

"Colonel!" Peppy's tactical officer chimed in. A look of sheer irritation spread across the blond man's face. Peppy ignored him and glanced at the officer.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" he asked.

"I'm detecting an unknown ship approaching Fichina – closing fast!"

"On screen," he ordered and immediate the dark viewscreen at the head of the navy-silver bridge blurred into a distant green streak across the black ocean of space. Faster than Peppy would have ever thought possible for subluminal travel, the streak blurred past the Horizon and the Hinomaru, tearing into Fichina's atmosphere before disappearing altogether.

"What the hell was that?" Katt asked from the back of the room. No one answered. The men and women who sat at the tactical and sensory stations of the bridge fumbled about their controls. And Peppy knew that what they just saw defied any previous classification. So what the flying hell was it? Did it pose a threat?

"Colonel Peppy," Romanov interrupted his train of thought as the Hinomaru's bridge rematerialized on the viewscreen. "I'm afraid we don't have much time."

"I know," he answered, "Star Fox just sent word that the communists are trying to steal the Weather Control Device. They're on their way to retrieve it from enemy hands."

"Weather Control Device?" Branson questioned before nodding his head. "That's why the temperatures on the planet have been falling so rapidly?"

"Indeed," Romanov answered and clasped his hands together in what Peppy recognized as a gesture of extreme worry, "but that's not why we have such little time."

"I don't understand."

"The ship that just passed us, well, it's not friendly," Romanov answered. His trademark arrogant grin was absent from his pale facial features. "They'll load up that Device and disappear before anyone realizes what happened."

"That sounds like the perfect getaway vehicle," Branson said. "How the hell do we stop it?"

"I don't know," Romanov replied. "With these weapons? I don't know if we'll even be able to make a dent in the thing."

"Okay, everyone hold on a second," Katt interrupted and approached the viewscreen. "Just who the hell are we dealing with? I've been around, ya know? I know for sure that the Reds don't have anything like that in their navy."

"They don't," Peppy promised with the confidence of a man who had access to information normal people were seldom privy to. "Not even the Soviets."

"Yeah, well, none of that matters now," Romanov said. "What do matter are the people whose lives are hanging in the balance on Fichina. If we don't act now, they'll all die."

Gideon Waller was not having a good day, though that was hardly unusual, he considered bleakly. Things just had to be so irrevocably miserable all the time for some obscure cosmic reason.

Whoever's writing my story hates me. That's what's going on here.

He shivered and sat up. He winced as his back cracked when it left the numbing comfort of the ground below. He took a moment to get his bearings. He sat up, his body half-submerged in the snow some fifty feet from where he had previously stood before the – bomb? – had gone off. Above, the sun's position in the sky hadn't changed visibly, so it had only been mere minutes since the trap had exploded, propelling him across the courtyard of the lumbering metallic structure above. He looked around again. No sign of his team.

"God dammit guys, please be alive," he let slip out before he steeled himself for the deaths he might very well have had to deal with in the moments ahead. He wanted to call out for them, to find out where they were, but something within Gideon told him to keep his mouth shut. When the Fichina Military Research Facility's large, ironclad doors, which had survived the previous blast relatively unscathed, opened, he understood why.

What emerged from the opening was perhaps the largest Cornerian Gideon had ever seen, and by the bestiary with which the Malakhim labeled the technologically primitive life forms found in the Lylat System, the figure was a silverback mountain gorilla. But large did not begin to describe the nature of the size of this heavy-hitter. The ape had a profound build of sheer muscle-mass that adorned his hulking black frame. But what was perhaps most disturbing about the creature, however, were the bright orange eyes which glowed like miniature suns out of the ape's badly scarred face.

Immediately following the oversized simian though was a rather slim reptilian who periodically turned to direct a platoon of soldiers who hefted a rather large octagonal object which glowed bright blue in the ever-darkening Fichina atmosphere.

The Weather Control Device… He thought silently as the objected cleared the Facility's entryway. Behind the device, a second platoon of soldiers escorted at gunpoint what appeared to be a collection of around twenty male and female Cornerians, some of which donned stale white aprons and coats. Those must be the scientists, Gideon figured and reached for his Thompson. His hands came back with nothing.

Shit! It has to be somewhere… He thought as he turned to comb the surrounding snow. He had no such luck, and apparently the various energy weapons he had accumulated from the morning's enemy platoon had somehow been thrown from his body in the explosion. The only thing that remained faithfully at his side was his calogladius. His heatsword. Whatever good it did him.

"You're very lucky to have survived that blast, human," a low, guttural voice emanated from behind him. Suddenly, a large hand wrapped around Gideon's neck, lifting him from the ground and forcing him to face his attacker.

The giant simian had closed the fifty-foot distance at a remarkable speed considering the loose snow coverage of the courtyard, and he had done so entirely without making a sound. As far as he remembered, no one had ever managed to sneak up on him like that in a very long time. And Gideon had an excellent memory.

"There there," the ape said in a voice that seemed too soft for the creature's size before loosening its grip on Gideon's neck. "Speak," it said lightly and grinned with child-like amusement. Gideon could spot the artificial, metallic teeth that lined the ape's rotting inner gums. He fought down the urge to gag.

"You're making a big mistake," Gideon croaked.

The ape simply smiled, his bright orange eyes radiating pure, uncompromising malice.

"Hm, your species is weaker than I expected. Disappointing," the simian grunted before he tightened his grip once more, squeezing Gideon further into unconsciousness. Black dots sparkled across his vision. "Pity the guys upstairs want you alive…"

Var-var-var! A loud, familiar set of gunshots rippled across the courtyard and the simian's grip released immediately. Gideon tumbled to the ground, clutching his neck. He looked up in time to see the simian recoil before another volley cascaded in the direction of whoever fired the shots at the ape.

In a loud bellow of rage, the simian drew a large black sword from a scabbard that apparently adorned his back.

Gideon immediately drew his own sword and began to run. The wind biting at his exposed skin, he activated the sword's heating mechanism. His right arm was met with the comforting warmth of the glowing metal as he sped toward his target, the pain in his neck forgotten. He launched himself, swinging the sword in an upside-down U arc that reflected the cold light of the distant sun above.

He didn't see the green light that tumbled down from the heavens with infinite malice in its heart.