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Star Fox: Inertia

Chapter 13

by Tempo

~ ~ ~

Fox spat out another mouthful of spiders as he punched his way through a face-high mass of cobwebs. They'd been trudging through cave systems for hours. With each step, his boots squished into several centimeters of mud, sapping his speed like an atmospheric break. Even the lower grav didn't help much.

Tricky stomped on happily. "Man! I hope we don't run into Scales. But if we do, I'll be ready!" He stared at a pile of rocks as his crest gems glowed. The stones exploded. "Yeah! Take that!"

The red fox's eyes shot wide. "Did you just blow up rocks with your mind?"

"With my crown!" He pranced forward to show off the glimmering horn jewelry. "It's just like Krystal's staff. It responds to your thoughts. How else would I flip switches?"

His gaze flicked to his girlfriend. "Krystal's doesn't look much like yours."

"Oh yeah." Tricky nodded. "We just made hers look like a staff because she has thumbs."

"And people wonder why I'm so fond of this planet." The vixen brushed a cobweb from her hair with grace. "Show up, help a bit, get a staff that blows rocks up."

Fox lowered the arm that had been shielding him from the flying pebbles. "As for General Scales, we defeated him once. I mean, he just sort of passed out once the Krazoa spirits bailed on him, if that counts. So it wasn't too bad."

"Yeah, but it's really hard to fight SharpClaws because they have hands." The ten-ton reptile bounced up on his back legs and kicked his front ones, before slamming merrily back to all fours.

Fox glanced back. "He only has one hand, Tricky."

"But the other one has pointy things!" The dinosaur king rolled not only his eyes, but his entire head, then his massive pink-purple body. "And I'm mostly soft parts."

Krystal lifted an eyebrow at him. "How's being the ruler treating you, Tricky?"

"It's pretty good!" The massive dinosaur wiggled. "But a lot of work. I'm trying to get everyone to switch to using coins instead of scarabs, but we've been using bugs for a really long time."

"That's a good idea." She nodded. "Coins are much easier to carry."

"Yeah! And coins almost never run away." He tromped down the length of the tunnel, splashing mud everywhere.

The trio came to a cavern large enough to park the Great Fox in. Massive boulders obscured the far side. Fox took a deep breath of the musty air and sighed. This wasn't the first maze Sauria had thrown at him.

Meanwhile, Krystal snapped her staff to full length, clicked several buttons, and sat on it like a witch's broom. After a second, it lifted her off the ground and hovered ten or twenty meters into the air. She surveyed the room calmly, propelled by a controlled jet of red flame, then floated back down for a soft landing.

By the time she touched down, Fox had regained the power of speech. "How'd you get the rocket boost to last that long?"

"You mean 'how did I get the flight mode to last a perfectly normal thirty seconds'?" She dismounted the staff and gave him a wry look. "Did never get that staff to do that? Was it out of fuel?"

"No, it only worked when I found a natural vent of volatile gas to fill it from." He sputtered. "And even then, it only got me off the ground for about a second."

The blue vixen flipped open a waterproof case on her belt, then froze halfway through drawing a sandwich out. Her gaze snapped up to him. "That's safety feature! It only does that when you over-fill it." She gestured at the device in her paw. "It could have exploded at any time."

Fox pondered that for a moment. "Huh."

"Ooooooh!" The dinosaur tilted his head as he thought back. "I just thought you were an awesome daredevil."

Krystal patted his side. "Tricky, now that you're older, I think you'll find that 'knowing exactly what you're doing' and 'having absolutely no idea' look surprisingly similar."

The purple triceratops closed his eyes for a moment to take in this outer space wisdom.

Ducking another cobweb, Fox rolled his eyes.

She clicked her belt pouch sealed, giving up on lunch for the moment. Still holding the staff, she crossed her arms. "So how many times did you use the staff wrong?"

"Oh, I don't know..." He shrugged. "A few times."

She stared at him and tapped her temple.

"Okay, so I did it a hundred times." He pointed off into the darkness, at the countless dangers that no doubt awaited a second shot at him. "And, in my defense, lots of things were trying to make me explode at the time."

"But you didn't! And it's all thanks to quality Saurian craftsmanship." The muddy dino trotted around them with pride, then stopped to examine a giant glowing mushroom. "It even didn't even quit working when he used it to beat up every SharpClaw we met."

Her paws curled protectively around the device. "Wait. You just whacked it against everything in your path?"

"Pretty much." He shrugged. "It did this charge-up thing once in a while, but it was faster to just keep swinging."

"No wonder it came back looking as if it'd been dropped from orbit..." She perked as the thought sunk in. "Wow. That must have taken ages."

The copper-furred vulpine sighed. "Yeah... You probably weren't fully aware of the passage of time inside that gemstone." Even remembering that mission made him tired. "Consider yourself lucky."

"Oh yes. So much better than being out fixing things." She retracted the staff with a snap and slid it back on her flight suit belt. "Perhaps Tricky would be kind enough to seal me in one before we leave so I can follow my dream of being a paperweight."

"I dunno." Tricky got a dismayed look. "Paperwork is hard enough without you staring at me from inside a big gemstone."

Fox spread his arms to sweep the topic away. "Anyway, I never really got the hang of the controls."

After a moment's consideration, she nodded. "It was designed by people without thumbs for people with thumbs, so it's not the most intuitive."

~ ~ ~

Several hours passed, only to leave them still trudging through the mud. Fox's legs burned with the effort of dragging his boots free with each step. His beautiful girlfriend looked a little worse for wear, if still lovely. He didn't say it, but she was wearing about three times her normal amount of clothing, which might be adding to her looking overheated. He, meanwhile, was carrying a belt full of grenades, which had gotten heavier with every click they'd hiked.

He glanced at his comm gauntlet, seeing it was almost evening. "I think we'd better call it a day."

"Oh, okay! Perfect timing, 'cause I know a shortcut!" Dashing off, Tricky led them through another hundred meters of twisting passages to a glowing circle on the cave floor, then stood there grinning. "C'mon!"

The foxes stepped into the ring of light, only to be gently lifted higher and higher. The three of them passed through several layers of tunnels. Reaching the surface, McCloud squinted at the sunlight greeted them. Wind danced through his fur. He surveyed the rolling hills, the ancient ruins, and the shimmering lake--and he didn't recognize any of it. The gravity lift set him softly on the grassy gravel of the hillside.

Exiting the lift, Krystal landed on solid ground beside him. "Where are we?"

"Oh, a few kilometers east of the Walled City. Pretty isolated place." Floating to a landing, the dinosaur winked, then winked again in case they missed it.

He glanced up at the hovering triceratops. "Seriously, Tricky, what did I say about the winking?"

With his massive feet on the ground, the royal dino clomped over through some underbrush to a rustic wooden cabin. "Oh wow--what's this? Some kind of mysterious structure. We'd better investigate." He stomped onward, barely disguising his enthusiasm.

Krystal picked her way through the newly-destroyed bushes toward the small building. "I suppose we could have a peek."

Shaking his head, Fox followed. When one's girlfriend and one's biggest fan agreed on something, he thought it best to just go along with it. He caught up to Tricky standing at the door to the cabin.

Bouncing in place, the dinosaur stamped even more vegetation flat with his enthusiasm. "Go on, open it!"

After a brief glance shared with Krystal, he reached a tired paw up and opened the the front door. The scent of fresh flowers and sweet smoke washed past him instantly. Inside, he found a cozy space with slightly-too-large chairs and a significantly-too-low roof. His ears brushed the ceiling as he stepped inside. A knee-high mound of flower petals filled one corner of the room, stirring with the outside breeze.

Stepping inside, McCloud pointed at it. "Is this...just a pile rose petals?"

"No, there's a bed under there." Poking his head as far in the doorway as it would fit, the dinosaur gave him an especially massive wink.

Krystal strode over and brushed off about ten centimeters of them, revealing pink bedsheets. "Huh, he's right." Rich red petals scattered over her flight boots as she ran a paw over the fabric. "Ooh, soft."

"Weeeeeeelllllllll..." The triceratops shrugged, causing the doorframe to creak. "Guess I'd better scout a good route back to town while you guys investigate this. It'll probably take me an hour to get back, maybe more, which is enough time for foxes, right?" He took the doorknob delicately in his beak and pulled the door shut after him.

The foxes stood in silence as heavy stomping and victorious giggles receded into the distance. Beside him, he noticed a potted succulent plant he'd seen the Saurians use to lubricate everything from machinery to door hinges. A faint curl of incense twirled up from a holder on the mantle. It smelled a lot like the chambers the harem's dance contest had taken place in, which told Fox more than he probably needed to know.

His girlfriend glanced in the direction of the retreating ruler, ears perked at sounds out of range to hear, mind tuned for emotions she was clearly amused by.

Shaking his head, he the ace pilot stripped off his jacket, unbuckled his belt, then unzipped his flight suit. He set down the belt of weaponry with care, though it still made a heavy clunk on the floorboards.

Krystal turned to him with even more amusement. "And here I thought you sick of Tricky's meddling?"

"You know what?" He kicked out of his boots, which landed across the room. "If the king of Sauria wants me to have sex with my beautiful girlfriend, I'm not going to object." Halfway down, his jumpsuit zipper caught on his undershirt. He tried to pull it free, but it stuck stubborn. A groan ground in his throat.

While he stood fiddling with it, the blue vixen ambled up to him and guided his hands away. Her gloved paws brushed over his cheeks, smoothed his bristled whiskers, and angled his muzzle for a slow kiss. Her calm breaths steadied his own. She tugged first one glove free from his paws, then the other, then her own. Next, she nuzzled down the side of his neck as her talented claws freed the zipper from his tank top. Their whiskers traced delicate lines along each other as she let his flight suit fall to the floor.

Standing in an undershirt, flight scarf, and Arwing-print boxers, he danced out of his socks without even hitting his head on the low ceiling. With careful paws, he unzipped her flight suit and slipped his fingers under it to slide it off her smooth shoulders. She had more modest panties on than usual, but form-fitted enough that they continued the lovely curves of her body. Beads jingled in her hair as he helped lift her shirt over her head.

The vixen turned, letting him unclasp her bra. It fluttered down, leaving her topless, save for a teal uniform scarf. She stepped out of her boots and the clothes pooled around them. She untied his scarf, then her own. Pausing for a quiet instant, she studied the matched pair. "You know, I think this does suit me."

A blush locked onto his ears. He wanted her part of his team, and part of his life, forever. Fumbling through the words to explain that, he instead managed: "G-glad to hear it."

Her supple paws guided him out of his own shirt, then explored the fur of his chest. "Mmmm. I'm quite fond of this as well."

Ears dipped, Fox smiled at how much she enjoyed his body. He kept in good shape, but piloting a space fighter didn't exactly build upper body strength. His palms slid down her hips. "What'd I do to deserve you?"

"Being sweet..." She traced a claw under his chin, stirring the short fur. "...and brave..." Her nose rendezvoused with his, warm and tender. "...and careful with my heart." She leaned in until her brow rested on his. "That's how."

His tail wagged slowly behind them. In the corner of his eye, he spotted the rose petals spinning along the floor. Right, they had a bed in here. He took her slim paws and, after a long and deliberate kiss, eased her over to the bed.

With a swish of her tail that stirred even more petals, she simpered and walked socked paws up the front of his legs. She teased both hind paws over the growing tent in his boxers. "Aiming to knock my socks off?"

He grabbed the garments in question, tugged them off, and tossed them over his shoulders. "I do have pretty good aim." Gripping her ankles, he spread her muscled legs and leaned in atop her.

"Mmmm!" She ran her paws down his back as he play-bite along her shoulder. Her hips rocked up to meet his, two layers of thin fabric doing little to block the heat of their passion.

They ground against one another. Her talented paws eased down his underwear, allowing his growing length to slip along her silken fur. She kissed him while groping his sheath and balls.

Lost in a world of pleasure, he cupped a paw against the front of her panties. Moisture greeted his fingertips, eliciting a moan of desire from her. Pushing the garment aside, he slipped a finger in. After a few strokes, her passion soaked through the fur of his digit. She felt tighter than usual; it had been a little while. Deciding to take it slow, he nuzzled the curve of her neck as he fingered her. Only when she started to gasp and his arm started to ache did he slink down her body.

Working like good teammates, they liberated her from her panties. Fox maneuvered between her legs and nuzzled in against her lovely entrance. Her excitement wet his whiskers as he licked his way inside. His paws dragged swoops along the curve of her rump and the flat of her stomach on their way to toy with her clit. With soft rapid circles, he stroked the hood of her bud as a counterpoint to the ever-deeper laps of his tongue inside her.

Krystal growled with desire and jostled her hips toward him, angling them up in shameless desire for his attentions. Her delicate fingers rose to play with her nipples, which he watched harden between her paw pads. Times like this, he almost felt like an empath himself. They'd gotten to know each other's bodies and minds so well, they felt so at ease with each other, that he could guess by her slightest whimper when to speed up or slow down. Whatever else life held for him, he looked forward to spending the rest of his days refining his technique.

For a moment, Fox thought he heard a strange rumbling sound. He disregarded it as the sound of an unfamiliar bed rattling. Probably a loose floor board. This building had looked hastily constructed.

With a gasp, she tightened on his tongue. Those slim but powerful paws gripped his ears and pressed him to her. A wordless cry announced her orgasm, which she rode out like a crash landing. Her hips bucked off the bed. Her legs shook around his shoulders. Her tail lashed along the sheets, scattering the last remaining rose petals. When, at last, she trembled back down to the mattress, she lay gasping for breath. Her paw curled under his moist chin, beckoning hip atop her.

Grinning, Fox climbed up her body. He lined himself up to enter her. Her hips rose to welcome him in. Slick heat greeted his cock tip as he slid inside...

And that's when General Scales, trapped in a massive hunk of sapphire, smashed through the roof.

His face frozen in a snarl of rage, he didn't move a muscle as he lifted out of the splintered floorboards and then out the new hole in the roof. As he rose into the sky, wood shingles fell away to reveal a towering plant monster in samurai armor. It moved with a bizarre slowness, raising the Scales-bludgeon over its head.

Biting his lower lip, Fox remained atop her for an instant, but sighed. "Not a hallucination?"

She snatched her belt from the floor, then yanked the staff from it. "Not a hallucination."

"Ugh." His head flopped onto her chest for an instant. "It's never a hallucination..." He sprung off the bed, tucked into a roll, and snatched his blaster from its holster on the floor. He reached out a paw toward his boxer shorts--

A dozen vines slithered into the ruined cabin.

McCloud dropped the underwear and opened fire on the invaders. He crouched in place, hoping to drive it back, even just for a moment, and get some darn clothes on.

Krystal bounced from the bed, heedless of her nudity, and snapped her staff weapon to full length. Bolts of orange plasma tore from the end of it, severing vines in spatters of chlorophyll.

A second wave of tendrils swept into the cabin. These ended in thorny, snapping fly-trap jaws the size of dinner plates. One of them dove straight for him, grazing Fox's fur and biting deep into the wooden floor.

The red fox backpedaled, firing wildly, and flung himself backward onto the bed. From that angle he had a clear shot at the vines where they entered the hole in the roof. He also managed to throw a sheet over his waist, which felt strangely vital with surreal a plant monster chomping at him.

His lover twisted a control surface on her staff, which then unleashed a fountain of liquid nitrogen. It splashed over the vines, withering them in an instant. One by one, they shuddered to a stop, frozen solid.

Through the gap in the roof, he spotted motion from the towering figure. He scrambled from the bed and tackled his girlfriend out the door.

Gemstone Scales smashed down the next instant.

The cabin was obliterated. Heavy wooden beams tumbled endlong down the hillside. Countless shingles scattered in all directions. Frozen shards of plant matter pattered down around them. A cloud of rose petals danced on the breeze.

Rising from the ground, Fox at last got a good look at his foe. It loomed at least ten meters. What he'd taken to be armor now seemed to be overlapping plates of bark growing directly from the creature. Heavy vines wrapped around Scales' prison, wielding him like a gigantic club.

The foxes snapped off dozens of shots at the plant's central stalk, but the smoldering pock-marks in the bark armor failed to slow it. Slowly, it began to raise the massive sapphire for another strike.

"Cover me!" Krystal dashed forward, hauling his belt of grenades from the piled wreckage of the cabin. Vaulting on her staff, she soared up in a low-gravity arc to pounce atop the gemstone. She scampered up the arm of the monster, tail streaming like a war banner.

Teeth gritting, Fox picked off the smaller vines chasing his girlfriend, then held down the trigger for a charge-up shot. The pistol emitted a high-pitched whine. After a breath to steady himself, he squinted past the crackle of energy built up at the muzzle, leveled his weapon, and unleashed the blazing ball of green plasma square into the plant monster's chest plate. The bark exploded outward in a plume of vaporized bio-matter. Sap glopped out of the injury in smoldering blobs.

The vixen kicked her way into a slide down the vine-arm as the angle became too great. The beep of a grenade being activated perked his ears. Blinking with energy, the white glow of the device flashed in her paw for a scant instant before she slammed it into the gap in the creature's armor. Then, hanging from the staff with her other hand, she rocketed away from the overgrown houseplant.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then a deep noise, like the boom of distant thunder, echoed through the valley. Sap sprayed from even the tiniest gap in the bark, launching various vines free and spiraling into the surrounding landscape. The armored trunk split in half, teetered for a second, then swung with incredible force to the ground. The sound rattled Fox's bones. From limbs of the ancient forest, hundreds of birds took to wing.

Gobs of goo rained down. Most of it fell in the general vicinity of Fox. General Scales, still trapped in a gemstone, rolled down the hillside and down to a gentle stop in the mulched monster and composted cabin.

Krystal hovered in for a delicate landing beside her boyfriend. "Nice shot."

"Nice plan." He tried to holster his blaster, but his naked hip didn't cooperate. Just as well--his cold paw wouldn't release its grip on the zapper anyway. "Warn me next time."

"Are you quite alright, love?" Her teal eyes traced him up and down, first appraisingly, then appreciatively.

"No!" He gesticulated at the mass of plant matter, flummoxed. "What was that?"

"Local flora. I forget the Saurian name for it. Haven't seen one that large, however." She tossed him a gentle smirk. "I thought you were a ground combat expert?"

"When I have clothes on!" He picked his way toward her, not eager to slip on the several centimeters of sap coating the ground.

A staccato of smaller thunder peals smashed up the hill behind them.

Fox and Krystal spun to face this new threat.

Tricky bursts through the undergrowth. He paused at the mass destruction and plant goo. "Wow, is this part of your mating ritual or something?" He lifted a foot, a string of tree sap stretching from it to the ground. "Mammal sex is weird."

"Tricky!" Fox covered himself with his blaster, then thought better of it and used his paw. Digging through the shattered rubble, he unearthed a bed sheet and fashioned it into an impromptu toga.

"Whoa! You found Scales!" The dinosaur squished through a bunch of plant goo to examine the huge gemstone, with his old enemy. "Good job, guys! I knew I could count on you."

"I'd say he found us." Krystal, still nude, knelt of place a paw atop the colossal sapphire.

Fox ran fingers through his head fur. "What made those plants attack us?"

"Haven't you noticed the plants only attack you?" The purple-pink triceratops spun to face him, thick tail scattering a pile of severed vines. "I think it's your alien pheromones."

The male vulpine twitched his whiskers, keenly aware of his lover's scent on them. "Really?"

"Yeah, yeah!" The dino bounced, shaking the earth again. "Remember those mushrooms that shot spores at you? They don't do that to us; that's why we keep them all over the place."

"I'd be mad, but that actually makes sense." McCloud shook his head. "Sauria has monsters like other planets have coffee shops."

~ ~ ~

Sauria's so weird, even relative to the weirdness of this rainbow-furred talking animal setting. If I lied in the Lylat System, I'd be some kind of dinosaur otaku. Then again, I already am.

Edits: CarlMinez, Eljot001, Slate, SillyNeko345, Pharrox

Art: JonasAfterDark (Used with permission.)

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~ Tempo