Star Crossed [an old and terrible Star Fox fanfic]

C24 - See You Soon, Andy

Through a blasted hole in the side of the giant ape-face ship, Fox flew his Arwing in, and landed on the creased but wide metal floor. Stepping out of his craft and into that of the self-proclaimed Emperor, he took a fair look around. The inside mechanisms, while thick, were particularly rusted, some even corroded... It was clear that he had skilled engineers, but poor materials. There seemed to be an endless menagerie of chunky computers and whirring mechanisms, the likes of which he'd seen reduced to simple microchips on his own Arwing. This was technology from 20 years ago, perhaps even 30. Some were marked as property of Cornerian labs, others already sloppily custom-branded.

It was a foreboding sense of evil that emanated from these halls of computers, their ugly truth hidden only behind the shape of the madman's face. McCloud shuddered. This wasn't any typical, borderline stereotypical evil, either. A deep red glow from the lighting of the tunnel was the only radiance, with creaks and shrills to match from the damaged machinery.

Fox suddenly heard a gasp, and a cough, from nearby. He remembered what he came here for, after being lost in this immense trance of walking through his nemesis's ship. "Andross?" he yapped.

"Hahck!— khfhrhch—" the primate spit, slouched in his chair.

Fox drew his blaster, then stepped routinely over. "Andross Oikonny, Enemy of the Lylat System and Traitor to Our Supreme General. You are under arrest for—" he started to say, then stopped, as he actually saw who he was approaching. It wasn't the twisted genius of old, the menace from the propaganda.

It was a monkey, who looked middle-aged and elderly at the same time. Andross's skin, having been wrinkled, spotted, and weakened with the toxic Venomian air, had now blistered up or fallen off with the heat blast, leaving much of his guise torn and gory. His eyes, just seconds before weary and bloodshot, had now gone cloudy, his irises paling. "You've already got me good," he stammered, with his jaw's exposed muscles seeming to strain at the very movement of his mouth to talk. "You've got me... you've got me."

Fox suddenly put his blaster down, and stepped back. "I didn't realize that what I did back there would work so well. I'm sorry," he whined. This primate seemed to be in ungodly pain, or at least looked the part.

Andross just sat back, and shook his head. "My time was bound to come on this damned planet anyhow. I died as soon as I arrived here. Only my drugs kept me alive any further." He smiled, and shook his head again. "Just due k-karma."

McCloud sighed, then looked away. "That doesn't make it right."

"Right?! H— Hah. Nothing about any of this has been right, Fox," Oikonny suddenly raised his voice. "What got me sent here wasn't right. What got O'Donnell's parents blown up, what got your mother in that car bombing, none of that was right."

"I shouldn't be listening to you," Fox turned away.

"Bah... you wouldn't have to. Go back to your General, then," Andross turned his own face away, then flinched in pain as he felt his neck's back skin crinkle away like foil. "Auurhhgh... Fox... I have to tell you something."

"What?" McCloud furrowed his brows.

"I'm so sorry. I'm really, really sorry, for anything I've done to hurt the people of Corneria," Andross elaborated.

"That doesn't make anything right, either," the fox scorned.

"I have to say it, though. I really do. I try to keep my nephew under control at times, but it's so hard when I myself can get crazier," the Emperor sighed. "Look at my hair, for Lylat's sake. I'm a mad scientist. Always what I wanted to be when I grew up," he croaked like the dying man he was. "Always joked with James about that."