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Chapter -5- Uncharted Miracle

Krystal traced her fingernail gently over groove lines between the ancient stones of an enormous wall. The mortar flaked away beneath her sharp cyan-painted claws. She made a fist and used her thumb-claw to scrape away any residual grout from beneath her index claw, then she opened her paw wide, inspected her fingernails, and retracted the claws.

She glanced back, over her shoulder, at Peppy and Fox, who were nearby, also exploring the ancient remains of ... what could only be described as a 'long-lost civilization.' She turned back to the wall she was checking. "So, team, about these Methuselah-aged Krazoa..."

Fox chuckled. "Methuselah, huh? Good word usage." He knelt in front of some sort of enormous brick doorway, part of the large wall, further down from Krystal.

Peppy cleared his throat. "Methuselah doesn't necessarily mean 'old.' He was an antediluvian, meaning he was pre-Cornerian-Flood age. That makes him a thousand years older than this giant wall ... at least that we know of."

Fox smirked at Peppy. "You know what she meant."

Peppy added, "Yes, I did. Still, no excuse for exercising ignorance in the field when studying something of great age." Peppy paused, then he decided to make a joke. "So ... the Krazoan millennials that were from the First Millennia, heh."

"Mm, funny..." Krystal pivoted on her heel, facing her team directly. "Well, what do you suppose happened to them?"

Peppy sighed. He had his back to Krystal. "Well, we don't know if they died here, or if they left this moon and headed for the Saurian surface. But I suppose that's one of many questions ... if we find bodies, that would be one good indicator. If we don't find any remains, well, then we speculate. But, remember, our mission to find Andrew Oikonny comes first."

Krystal moved further down the wall, checking for any signs of a triggering mechanism. "I understand. Fox and I are here for the mission, you are here to make sure we remain respectful for these ruins."

Peppy nodded firmly. "Exactly. I don't want to answer to the Cornerian Historical Preservation Society. They have loads of clout because the current Prime Minister is a member. Hopefully he wins again this election year, but ... that's a discussion for another day."

Krystal shrugged her shoulders. "I can't vote anyhow. Not until I've actually _lived on_Corneria for more than 5 years. I don't think the Great Fox counts."

Fox sighed in frustration. He turned back to a massive gated area, further down the walking path, where there was an arc on the lower bricks, and part of the wall appeared to be a large doorway. "How does this thing open?! God!" He knelt down on the brick walking path that led to the wall. He got down on all fours and examined markings that disappeared beneath the wall. "Here's my working theory so far: Somehow, Oikonny must've got his shuttle in through a door, here. If he could figure it out, we should be able to, as well."

Peppy shook his head. "Quit complaining and keep searching for the door mechanism, Fox."

Fox withdrew his blaster and pointed it at the wall. He opened fire several times on the large granite wall, but the stones absorbed the energy weapon's discharge.

Krystal glanced over her shoulder again. "Didn't you try that already?"

"Yeah." Fox sighed. "Peppy scanned them and determined..."

Krystal picked up, overtop of Fox, speaking in a Cornerian dialect with a slight drawl, like Peppy. She recited from memory, "...That 'the stones were designed to absorb and channel most types of energy, whether from a blaster or a concussive explosion. These bricks appear to filter the energy, possibly channel it elsewhere, and would likely withstand anything up to a high yield nuclear device.' Yes. I was listening. So, why keep shooting it?"

"It makes me feel better," he confessed with a sigh. He forced a weak smile, adding, "You did a pretty good impression of Peppy."

Krystal grinned at her fiancé. "Fox, he's standing right there."

Peppy cleared his throat. "Yup. Right here."

"Sorry for being cheeky, Peppy. Go on, it looks like you have a thought you wish to share."

Peppy chuckled. He always found Krystal's personality to be charming. "All right, so ... at a glance, the brickwork where the door meets the wall and the footpath, they look practically seamless, right?"

"Right...?" Fox murmured.

Pepper continued. "What if we can find a way to circumvent this front entrance? I mean, if Andrew's inside, there has to be a way for him to breathe - we should head to higher ground, nearby, and see if we can locate a vent or shaft used for breathable air."

Fox snapped his fingers. "Right. Because you don't have a door this big unless there's a matching facility behind it. And for seams to be that tight means that you can't get enough air in for a large building to accommodate a large group of people. That means an HVAC or air shaft. Not bad, Pep." He fidgeted with his blaster in his other paw.

Krystal looked up to a mountainous area just beyond the ruins. "That looks ... treacherous at best."

Fox holstered his blaster with a soft grunt of dissatisfaction. "Yeah, it really does. All right, Peppy ... Krystal and I could probably climb it, but at your age, no offense, well ... you know what I mean."

"Yeah..." Peppy rubbed his chin in thought. "No way I'm just going to sit here and wait for you two to get inside, find your way back through the building, and open the front door for me. We'd be here all night."

Fox rubbed his chin similar to Peppy. He turned to face the large wall. He knelt by a groove marking in the brickwork road, again. McCloud followed the groove to the wall, once more. His gaze lifted to the sky.

"What're you thinking?" asked Peppy.

Krystal grimaced. "He's thinking like a Mercenary."

"Yeah," Fox agreed off-handedly.

"What are you thinking?" Peppy repeated.

Fox stood up and knocked his knuckles against the wall. "Solid, not hollow sounding. Look, what if we use a particle blast from the main guns of the new Great Fox?"

"Fox..." Peppy shook his head with a sigh. "The old ship used a giant plasma cannon. This one has a photon cannon that could leave a crater in this moon deep enough to reach the mantle ... in theory."

"Yeah, if you hit soft ground at full power, from lower orbit, I suppose it might." Fox stood up and turned to face his team. "Look, I'm not talking about a full-power blast. Just something strong enough to open this thing. I don't want to destabilize the ruins - just punch a hole in the door. Narrow beam, full focused particle blast to cut through this thing."

Peppy sighed. "As much as I hate to destroy anything Krazoan ... I suppose a tight beam blast, just big enough to walk through, might be all right. You'll have to call Slippy to do it - Falco would just bombard the door and call it a day."

Fox nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I'm counting on Slippy's predilection for math."

Krystal grinned at Fox. "Oo, predilection. Nice word usage."

Fox reached up and rubbed the back of his neck with a dry chuckle. "Yeah, thanks."

Krystal cleared her throat. "What about using Slippy's Landmaster to do it?"

Fox shook his head. "Different type of weapon. The Landmaster's energy cannon is designed to hit a target with a massive spread concussive force. It's all about stopping power. There's an attachment to make the shots designed to puncture armor, but we don't have any of that stuff with us, right now, and we don't have the time to send anyone for it. Speaking of attachments, a Landmaster railgun attachment might work, though. In theory."

Peppy shook his head, mirroring Fox. "We don't have any railgun attachments. Those were lost on the old Great Fox, and we never kept any Landmaster attachments on the second-hand Great Fox ship you guys have been using for the last eighteen months."

Fox nodded. "It was closer to two years, I think. Anyway, whatever. It's not an option, right now, anyway, so ... back to using the new Great Fox's main guns."

Peppy sighed. "You're talking about a surgeon using a giant laser scalpel from orbit. The math involved in that..."

Fox gestured flippantly with his paw. "Slippy aced all his math classes back in the academy. Look, he's a mechanic, a machinist, and an engineer. Machinists, like surgeons, rely on a steady hand; engineers rely on mathematical perfection, right? Who better to do this than Slippy."

"Fox ... are you sure about this?"

"Peppy, trust in the man. His math will be good; ROB will double check his work. I know you still see us as kids, but we're grown-ass-men, now."

Peppy was quick to respond. "I know you're both 'grown-ass-men, now,' Fox. I trust he can hit an enemy cockpit from orbit, using a computer and a satellite cannon. But hitting a door with just enough energy to punch a hole through a several-millennia-old bunker isn't something I'd suggest. We don't know how deep it is, we don't know the type of materials used, except that it's bricks made from something other than mud."

Fox held his hands outward. He did his best to speak in a somewhat relaxed tone, so as not to raise his voice at Peppy. "Andrew could be in there, right now, breaking the walls down with a sledgehammer, trying to find some sort of ancient Krazoan weapon. Why else come here?"

"Realistically," said Krystal, before clearing her throat, "With all due respect, Andrew is likely here to find something that his uncle left behind. But, also realistically, the likelihood of it being a weapon is ... well, very good, is it not? Why else abscond to Sauria's moon?"

Fox pointed at Krystal but kept his eyes on Peppy. "What she said. I'm going to call Slippy on the radio. We should all get back about a thousand feet and take cover."

Peppy nodded with a reluctant sigh. "You're the team leader, Fox."

"And I'm a mercenary. I feel bad about causing damage to something so old, but if we don't secure the site, there might not be anything for anthropologists to study. So, I'll try and be minimal with the damages, all right?"

Peppy lifted his hands as if to gesture 'say no more' in silence.

Fox called Slippy on his communicator, opening a video feed channel on his computerized gauntlet. Slippy's floating head appeared just above the gauntlet.

"Hey'a Fox! Wow! The resolution is so much better on the holographic emitters on this new ship!"

"Slippy, lock in on my location. There's a wall I'm going to holo-mark. I want you to fire a low power beam on that spot. Do a full second controlled burst at about twenty percent power."

"Twenty percent of the main guns? That's a _lot of power, Fox_."

"Yeah. Just focus a narrow beam at about two meters wide; give it a full one-second burst. I'm uploading the digital marker now." Fox pointed his wrist at the wall, pressed a button with a faded label reading 'select/enter,' then he angled his arm again, so that Slippy's image floated above his left paw once more. "Give me a sec to get away from the area..."

The trio walked back the way they came. Fox grinned at Krystal. "Abscond, huh? Fancy word. You're learning words even I don't use often. Pretty impressive for only being in Lylat a few years."

Krystal smiled. "Cerinia had its share of five-and-six syllable words. I like large words. They sound fancy. But I try not to throw them into people's faces."

"Yeah, probably for the best. The average person would feel like you're talking down to them. All right, hon, over there. Keep Peppy safe."

Krystal replied with a wry smirk. "I'll endeavor to do my best."

Peppy and Krystal stopped at around nine hundred feet away. Meanwhile, Fox stopped only four hundred feet from the wall.

"Try it now," said Fox.

A slight wave of distortion appeared from above. The pulsation of energy hit the bricks, leaving a hole in the giant wall."

"One-one-thousand," Fox said aloud.

After a full second, the energy beam stopped.

Fox gestured to Krystal and Peppy to hold fast. He walked to the wall and investigated the hole. His eyes widened. "Whoa. It went through the outer façade, but there's some sort of barrier beneath. Okay, five seconds at twice the power."

"Seriously?" Slippy sounded impressed yet horrified.

Fox walked away and said, "Hit it."

The distorted beam caused the air to crackle from heat. A thunder-like boom caused Fox and company to hold their ears. The wave of heat caused Krystal's braided bangs to sway back and forth over her cheeks.

"One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand."

Peppy released his ears and narrowed his gaze. "Should I check it?"

Fox shook his head and spoke a bit louder than he intended. "I got it."

Krystal remained silent.

Fox sprinted over to the enormous wall and squinted. His eyes widened and brows furrowed in shock. "What?!"

Slippy's voice was tinny over the small gauntlet speaker. "Fox? What's wrong?"

"Whatever is in that hole is glowing ... maybe some sort of metal? It's not even bubbling - it's literally just a faint glow."

"Seriously?" Slippy sounded more impressed than shocked.

"Yeah! Seriously! Get us in this thing, Slip. Same spot." Fox dashed back toward Krystal and Peppy. "Okay, hit it twice as long with twenty-five percent more power than the last setting."

"You got it! Firing in three, two, one..."

Fox, Peppy, and Krystal covered their ears and averted their eyes.

A plasmatic-laced photon beam ripped through the air, bright and hot. It lasted ten full seconds.

Krystal, facing away, felt the heat on her back. She squinted at her wrists, in front of her face, and saw the fur of her pelt stand on end from static electricity.

A clap of thunder roared through the area, tapering off into a distant rumble.

A soft rain fell from the sky.

Fox looked up, grimaced, and hurried back to the door. "You set off a rain cloud with that energy blast, Slippy."

"Yeah, we were in the range of lightning discharges with the second shot, and now we're amped up more. A lightning bolt can get up to fifty thousand degrees - more than five times hotter than the surface of Solar, and it can strike with a billion volts of energy. Well, that plasma-backed photon discharge was about two-and-a-half billion volts, and I'd guesstimate about seventy thousand degrees using Papetoon imperial standard."

Peppy scoffed. "Use Cornerian Metric."

Slippy's shoulders briefly became displayed adjacent to his jawline in the holographic display from the way he shrugged. "I know it's easier for math, but I grew up with Imperial Standard. So ... whatever."

Peppy shook his head. "Embrace change."

Slippy sighed. "Embrace moving on from this topic. Don't be a boomer."

Fox grinned.

Krystal covered her muzzle.

Peppy shook his head again. "Fine, whatever. Don't be a baby boomer. You boys know what? My generation invented the goddamn Arwing. Just saying. So..." he cut his gaze to McCloud. "Did we get in?"

Fox hurried up the path to the enormous wall of the ancient ruins and approached the hole in the brickwork. "Oh. My. Goddess. Are you serious?"

Slippy chuckled. "The Krazoa sure knew how to build a wall."

"Yeah, no kidding." Fox grimaced. "Hit it with a focused narrow beam, full power for ten seconds."

"Full power?"

"As full as you can get for a narrow beam."

"Okay, move away from the wall. All of you. A lot further than before."

"Copy that, Slippy." Fox gestured with his arms for Peppy and Krystal to hurry further down the path. He followed them. A moment later, he said, "Let'er rip, Slip."

A mighty beam came down from the sky and hit the wall. It lasted eleven seconds.

"Okay, Fox! Check it now!"

Fox hurried back up the path. The hole in the wall was bigger than before ... roughly three meters.

There was a small hole through the dark metallic layer beneath the brickwork, about one meter in diameter.

Fox frowned. "Well..."

"Still no dice?!" Slippy exclaimed.

"No, it definitely worked. But the hole is pretty small. Big enough to get through, but only if we squeeze. One sec." Fox held his gauntlet in the hole and said, "Initialize an interior scan."

"Sure thing, Fox!" Slippy paused, then said, "_Okay, I'm getting something on my end ... _whoa."

"Whoa?"

"Yeah, Fox. Whoa. Looks like we've punched our way into a _massive bunker ... maybe a hanger deck of some sort. The interior wall has some sort of metal-like channels on the surface ... probably to channel the energy away from energy weapons_..."

"I need to get in there when it cools down," said Fox, mostly to himself.

"The surface channels have already caused the heat to dissipate. On my end, it looks to me like the surface temperature is already down to about the same as body heat. Double checking..." Slippy trailed off, briefly, then said, "Yeah, it's safe to pass through already. Pretty impressive for a full photonic plasma cannon blast. Maybe it really is a hanger and it's designed to contain fire or explosions without getting hot, or ... something. I don't know."

"Okay, okay, Slip. I'll call you right back."

"Keep your gauntlet scanners on, F-F-Fox, so we can map this place and try to better understand it."

Fox backed out of the video feed on his gauntlet. He checked the charge level indicator. "Okay, I'm still at full battery ... I guess I can do that. Fox out." He ended the call and thumbed a 'hold' command on the sensor display.

Krystal and Peppy cautiously moved forward in Fox's direction from down the path.

Fox turned his head and shouted back at Peppy and Krystal. "We're in! C'mon!"

Slippy said, "Stay safe, gang!" The gauntlet chirped softly to denote the end of the holo-call.

Fox spit on the hole in the side of the wall. It didn't sizzle. He licked his velvet-padded index and touched the siding. It was surprisingly cool to the touch. He took off his backpack and tossed it through the hole. It thudded on the floor somewhere inside.

McCloud put his paws on the top of the hole, and kicked his feet through, diving in feet first. He dropped to his feet, and briefly staggered, but managed to keep his balance.

Fox switched on a light on his gauntlet and pointed it at the floor.

There was a hole in the deck, made at an angle, that came from the Great Fox.

Fox called out through the hole, "Hey! Just be careful coming in!"

Krystal came through first. She slid on her back, riding her staff, so that she avoided touching the sides of the hole. She was followed by Peppy.

The aging rabbit placed his jacket over the bottom of the hole, struggled through the hole in the wall, and after squeezing through, he picked his jacket up and pulled it onto himself. "You'd think this area would be hotter, but I guess moons don't retain heat quite the same way as a big ole' planet."

"Guess not," Fox replied. "Okay, I have a bundle of flares in my backpack. He knelt down beside it, opened one of the sections, and withdrew the bounded bundle. "Time to explore." He shouldered the bag and plucked the first flare from the large group of light sticks.

The first flair ignited; he tossed it on the floor, casting a section of the enormous room in a soft yellowish glow.

Krystal glanced around in the dark, unable to sense anything in the immediate area. "Bit of a damp squib, here, isn't it?"

Fox walked for a few meters and dropped another flare. "Yeah, it's dead as a doornail all right. And big. Can't even see walls, except the light from the entrance point. How big is this place?"

Peppy lifted a single ear-stalk. "Big enough that the echo is faint in all directions, because the sound waves don't travel well enough to bounce off the hard surfaces."

Fox grimaced. He brought a single paw up to his ear and shouted, "Oikonny!"

The exclamation reverberated off of several surfaces, trampling one another, so that his voice became a muddled mess of multiple echoes, competing with each other.

Krystal grimaced. "Nice one, love." She took the bundle of flares from Fox, and, without a word, she assumed the task of making a trail on the floor of the enormous room.

Fox pointed his gauntlet forward, but the light didn't reflect off anything in the distance. "Possibly matte walls - they won't reflect the light until we're closer to them." He looked back, over his shoulder, at the small glow of sunlight from the entrance hole they'd crawled through.

Peppy cleared his throat. "The Krazoa would've needed to have modern power and lighting to light up a room this massive, no doubt about it."

Krystal withdrew her staff. It telescopically extended to its full length. She fired off a globe of hot fire, which flew off into the distance. Some ways out, it succumbed to gravity and arced downward, until it hit the ground, somewhere on the other end of the enormous dark room.

Fox let off a low whistle, impressed by the size of the room. "There has to be pillars or some sort of support columns to keep the ceiling up for over two thousand years..."

Peppy lifted a long tall ear-stalk, again, and turned slowly in a circle. "Hello..." He drew the word out long and slow as he turned. He completed a full circle and turned back to Fox. "At a normal volume, I don't hear my echoes in any direction. If there are load-bearing columns, they're not very close. But, you're right ... this room would be supporting the weight of the mountain above it - it would need to have some sort of pillars."

Fox grimaced. "Let's look at the bright side of things ... this room isn't full of enemy vehicles. It's as empty as our provisions chest."

Peppy sighed. "Fox, you're forgetting that I'm a professional."

Krystal turned to the rabbit, barely able to see his face in the ambient light of Fox's gauntlet torch. "You brought food on your transport ship?"

"Of course. Falco is probably complaining as we speak. Why do you think I waited an hour before we left? I had to unload the pallet of food I brought with me. I had ROB64 wheel it to the galley, and left Falco instructions to separate the perishables from the nonperishables, then catalogue and store everything.

Fox chuckled. "Did you bring anything for us on the transport shuttle?"

"Uh, did I not just say I'm a professional? Of course I did. Enough food for the three of us to last a week." Peppy grinned.

Fox's natural vulpine night vision caused his pupils to dilate to full large circles. He activated a green laser light on his gauntlet and pointed it straight up in the air. He squinted, able to make out the distant dot high above. It was tiny but bright.

Krystal looked up. "That's ... quite high."

Peppy squinted, followed by a shrug. "I can't even see it. I still have my distance sight, but I don't see as well as a fox or a cat. Certainly not as far with a tiny dot."

Fox touched the top of his computerized gauntlet and said, "Calculate distance."

"Working," the gauntlet replied in a monotone voice. "Nine hundred ninety-seven-and-one-half meters."

Fox blinked. He lowered his arm, causing the green laser dot to point at his shoe. "I'm less than two meters tall. And with my arm pointed upward..."

Peppy finished Fox's thought out loud. "This room is exactly one kilometer high."

"That's more than half a mile," Fox said in astonishment. "A little over thirty-two hundred feet. Why did the Krazoa need such a large room?"

Krystal un-extended her staff and put it back into a sheath on her back. "Perhaps they designed this room to house a large spacecraft? It would explain the lack of pillar supports - they would have had to design the walls and ceiling differently so that they could house a large spacecraft ... that makes the most sense to me."

Fox rubbed his chin and pointed his gauntlet laser toward the entrance wall. He touched the screen on his gauntlet and said, "Calculate distance, and add a second distance." He pivoted and pointed the gauntlet the other direction. "Calculate second distance and add it to the first. Compensate for arm length of user. Approximate final distance calculation."

"One-point-five kilometers."

Fox grimaced. "Just shy of a mile." He cleared his throat and said, "Length of room in feet, please."

"Four thousand nine hundred twenty-one and one-quarter feet."

Fox shook his head. "Okay, so we know the Krazoa used a measurement system similar to metric. That's ... something you can document in your anthropology studies of the race, Peppy."

Peppy smirked. "Noted, Fox."

"Good to know," said Krystal. "Cerinian measurement was unlike both imperial and metric. But metric was easier for me to learn because it made more sense than my race's measurement preference."

Peppy turned to Krystal. "It is easier than Cerinian measurements?"

"Yes, it is."

Fox cleared his throat. "Krystal, your race was a little more advanced than ours, though."

"Was it?" Krystal shrugged somewhat. "Your faster-than-light drives and the technology used to send the old Great Fox to the Aparoid system is quite impressive. It can be used more than once. When I came to Lylat, Sauria was the closest habitable planet, and just out of range of my shuttle's jump-drive. Once I arrived in Sauria's path, I had to travel at top speed until I reached an intersecting point with Sauria's orbital path. I used nearly all of my reserve fuel to arrive on Sauria by charting a course in front of its path. I was lucky I had enough fuel left over to take off and land on Great Fox after meeting you."

Peppy glanced at Krystal, squinting at her in the dim lighting of Fox's gauntlet, which was pointed at the floor again. "Krystal," said the aging rabbit, "How far was Cerinia from Lylat compared to the distance from Lylat to the Aparoid system?"

"The Aparoid system is ... was ... roughly ten times further away. So far away that my race didn't know about the Aparoid system. The only other habitable planet in range of Cerinia was ... is ... a planet called 'Kew.' They're advanced enough to have trade with Cerinia on a handful of occasions, but they didn't have reliable interstellar travel technology yet. If you were to chart Lylat's star, Cerinia's Sól, and Kew's star, Sunna, the three systems would create an almost perfect triangle. Kew would have been easier than Lylat, but Andross fled toward Lylat, and I demanded answers. I thought I was going to die, so I gambled with my life for my need for answers."

Peppy activated a light on his own gauntlet and pointed it forward. "Krystal, why didn't your people ever interact with Lylat in the past?"

"Because your race was known to have weapons of mass destruction. We simply ... avoided your kind. But, when Andross arrived on our doorstep, so to speak, he was piloting a ship armed only enough to defend itself from minor threats. And, his weapons appeared to have been cannibalized to make repairs to his other systems. We took pity on him. He freely offered up his computer data records, and we soon learned that he had been studying the ruins of the Krazoa."

"That was important?" asked Peppy.

"It was," said Krystal. "Their race also existed on a planet from my home system. They were extinct. When my world became doomed due to Andross' creation of a biological weapon on our home star, Sól, I was already in my shuttle at the time our star died. I charted a pursuit course to follow Andross, who departed Cerinia just days earlier. When I arrived on Sauria, I crossed paths with Andross and recognized him immediately."

Peppy blinked. "Did you know he was the one that doomed your world?"

"I ... had my suspicions. I sensed a hint of guilt from him, but he was wearing a device that blocked my telepathic ability. I barely got a word off to him, and he suddenly threw me into a trap that imprisoned me."

Fox frowned. "What, uh ... what'd you say to him?"

"I ... think I said something akin to, 'You!' before he threw me into a reverse tractor beam. It blasted me into that ... crystalline structure, which imprisoned me until you came along, Fox. It was designed to shut down my metabolic rate to a near-state of hibernation. I suppose Andross didn't want me to escape."

Fox frowned. "It also meant he didn't have to worry about feeding you, or providing restroom facilities."

Krystal shrugged her shoulders. "I believe the prison was initially intended for you, Fox. I just ... got there first. He only had the one prison. If you'd arrived sooner, it would have been me rescuing you."

Peppy grinned. He turned to Fox with a chuckle. "Things would've been very different, huh?"

Fox smirked. "My team would have rescued me. I'm sure of that."

"Rubbish," said Krystal with a grin.

"Would we?" Peppy said with a chuckle. "I was already old, Slippy hadn't flown in ages, and Falco wasn't part of the team at the time."

Fox sighed. "Yeah, true."

Krystal gave her betrothed a firm pat on the shoulder. "You're cute, Fox. I'd have rescued you." She grinned at him with a playful wink. "Now, let's go find Andrew and stop wasting time."

Peppy chuckled again, facing Fox. "You heard the lady, McCloud. Get moving."

"Jeeze."

Peppy turned to Krystal followed by a bright smile. "The only person that could tell James McCloud what to do was Vixy. It's good to see that Fox has someone in his life that he answers to. A man needs that in his life to keep him grounded. Even pilots."

Krystal gave Fox's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Especially pilots, isn't that right, love?" She slid her paw forward, over his shoulder, so that the ring on her left finger was directly in front of his face.

"Yup. Whatever princess wants, princess gets."

Krystal laughed softly. "I've been a princess my entire life, Fox. I'm ready for you to make me a queen. No, rush, though ... whenever you're ready. But don't take forever. I'm only mortal after all."

Peppy clapped his paws together, completely amused. "Vivian would really like you, Krystal. Y'know that?"

Krystal turned to Peppy and hugged him. "We'll get you home to her as soon as possible. I know you miss her, and I know it cannot be easy to see her sick. I'll make sure Fox goes to visit her, too."

Peppy whispered against the side of her head. "Thanks, kiddo. I appreciate that and I know she will, too."

Fox unholstered his sidearm and switched the light function from his gauntlet to his weapon. "All right, let's get started."

"Down to business," Peppy replied.

"Right behind you, Fox," Krystal chimed in. She unholstered a blaster and switched on its flashlight accessory. "Peppy, are you excited to chart Miracle?"

"I, uh ... yeah. Yup. Sure am." Then, in a more personal tone, he said, "Thanks Krystal."

She smiled knowingly. "All right, so, you have the charting equipment. Let's see what we're dealing with in this room, shall we?"

"We shall," Peppy replied. He reached into his jacket pocket and unrolled what looked like old fashion paper, but it was plasticky and sounded like unrolling a small poster.

The unfurled object lit up, dimly, and displayed Cornerian standard lettering, which read, 'Pairing to sensor device P1J2H3_SpaceDynamics_Model7_SmartWrapSilver.'

Peppy held his left forearm aloft. The nearly transparent sheet of paper displayed, 'Pairing successful!' Next, Peppy lowered his left arm, held the flimsy partially-rolled paper in both paws, and navigated to a map application. He created a 'new map' and displayed it from the sensors built into the bracer on his left arm.

An image of a large square room displayed on his AOLED tablet, as if it was a thin lowing map page.

Objects populated on the map, showing Fox, Krystal, and Peppy's locations, and a large square room.

Peppy pinch zoomed back a little on the plastic page. "Okay, we have the opening we made, and we have doorways at the far end on the north and west walls.

Fox nodded firmly. "All right. Let's investigate those doorways and see what we're dealing with." Fox glanced back at Krystal.

She had her staff on her back, her blaster in her right paw, and the bundle of flairs tethered to her gear belt along her back. She used her left paw to reach back and pluck one off her belt one at a time, occasionally dropping them after cracking them against her hip.

Krystal tossed a flair up ahead of them. It bounced on the ground and brightened, casting a soft orangish-pink glow, a little different than the yellow setting that Fox had been using. She brought her left paw beneath the handle of her blaster pistol and kept it pointed forward.

The group walked for about eight minutes until reaching the north wall.

They approached what looked like a wide doorway with a rolling metal door partially closed.

Peppy stepped off to the side to let Krystal and Fox work.

Krystal lowered to one knee, placed her left paw against the bottom of the door, which was only half-way closed, so that there was a meter gap open between the door and the ground. She pointed her weapon down the hallway on the other side of the doorway and squinted into the darkness.

"Anything?" Fox whispered.

Krystal waved her flashlight attachment from left to right, sweeping the hall. "Nothing. Just a very wide hallway ... large enough for moving equipment, likely from the garage to the car park."

Peppy rubbed his chin in thought. "The west doorway appears to be a bit smaller than this doorway."

"That's the one," said Fox. "Wide hallways are used for putting small craft into storage, or for carts of parts. I want to find a command center, not a mechanic bay."

Peppy feigned a wrinkled smile, glad his godson got the hint.

Krystal stood up and inspected her paw. The dust on her palm, from touching the ancient half-closed rolling door, was thick and speckled with flecks of rust. "I doubt Andrew came through this ingress. Or Andross for that matter. There is a lot of dust." She brushed off her palm on the knee of her flight suit.

Fox tilted his head. "You think we're the first here?" He pursed his lips and sighed softly through his nose.

"Don't sound so disappointed," Krystal replied flatly. "We still get to muck about in all this rubbish." She lifted a handheld scanner and scanned the immediate area for any signs of mildew, mold, or other airborne toxins. The scanner showed no signs for concern. "Least there's no tosh in the air. Should've checked before we came in. Next time, then, I hope?"

"Yeah, I guess that would've been protocol."

Peppy chuckled. "Krystal, it was the first thing I checked when I came in. If there was a problem, I would have said something."

"Oh, good. Good to see one of us followed proper protocol, then." A very slight grin tugged at Krystal's muzzle. "Me, though, I'm just chuffed I won't be dodging blaster fire in the dark."

Fox nodded. "All right, then. Let's get our bearings. We'll figure out where to find Andrew once we know where we're at. Let's move. Peppy, how far down is the west door?"

"Less than ten meters."

Fox nodded again and took point. He pointed his weapon forward, seeing the door along the western wall, up ahead. He lifted his weapon a bit. "Man, that's a tall doorway."

Peppy nodded in agreement, although his nod went unseen in the darkness. "It always astonishes me to be reminded just how tall the Krazoa stood."

Krystal feigned a weak smile. "When I was possessed by one of the Krazoa spirits, her first conscious thought, when inside my mind, was astonishment at how short we stand. Even kneeling, they would be taller than we stand. She also found my outfit to be a bit revealing."

Peppy looked back down at his map sheet with a wry grin. "I bet circus performers, walking on stilts, would know how it feels to be that tall. All right, according to my scans, there are still no biological signs in the immediate area. Not even feral creatures are showing up on the map."

Fox grinned at Krystal. "The Krazoa spirit didn't like your sexy Tarzan outfit?"

"Nope. I liked it well enough."

"Yeah, me too." Fox offered a lame grin in the dark.

Krystal used the light of her handheld scanner to gesture to her catsuit-like flight outfit. "Of course, it's not as posh as this bit." She stowed her scanner and aimed her blaster's flashlight at the floor.

Fox relaxed his posture somewhat, looking down at the floor of the large main room they just walked through. "I just had a thought, gang. The door that Krystal touched was covered in dust and a little bit of rust. So, why's the floor of the main room so ... clean?"

Peppy and Krystal looked at one another in the gloom. The shrugged in unison.

Peppy glanced at his own wrist gauntlet computer. "Like Krystal and I were saying, Fox, this bunker should be deadly from all the mold and mildew. Thousands of years' worth. It should be fatally dangerous. But I have nothing, here. Low residue ... enough to cause a sniffly nose if we stay here too long. But, you're right, Fox. Why is this larger section so clean?"

"I don't have an answer to that." Fox frowned and led his team to the doorway on the western wall. "Okay, I've got stairs. A doorway, but no door." He stepped into the doorway and pointed his flashlight accessory upward. "Wait ... there's a door. Looks like it's designed to slide shut from above, but it's probably been open for a couple millennia. I doubt it operates anymore."

Krystal pointed her blaster and light at the nearest walls, then at the floor again. "The doorway isn't quite so dirty as the other. The stairs seem to be clean as well. Well, clean considering their age."

Peppy nodded firmly in agreement. "Someone swept or employed a maid bot. This moon went a few thousand years without an atmosphere. The dust wouldn't float in here, but during the daytime, radiation from Lylat and Solar's rays would remove electrons from dust atoms, then at night, the dust would have a negative charge of electrons from solar wind. But it wouldn't float. It would only be distributed when local asteroids pulverize the lunar surface from impacts. However, inside a closed area like this, there would be a lack of dust to clean up. But there should at least be mold or mildew that came in through the ventilation shafts."

Krystal frowned. "That door back there was quite dusty. It clung to the door where I touched it." A pause, then she said, "Maybe there was a ventilation shaft near that other doorway?"

Peppy rubbed his chin in thought. "That, and maybe disintegration from the way the metal surface was breaking down. But yes, this doorway does seem quite a bit cleaner than that one."

"I did see rust as well," she replied.

Peppy looked up at the bottom of the door lodged in the ceiling above. "And I'm not tall enough to reach up and touch that door to see if it would leave dust on my paw, so..."

Krystal nodded and pointed her light in, through the doorway, at the stairs. "Two questions - how did life grow if this moon's soil was dead for so long? And ... will those stairs crumble if we try to ascend them?"

Fox frowned. "A piece of Sauria touched this moon when it came apart, and somehow it left a chunk of jungle here, which grew ... no one knows how, but this moon lives up to its name, huh? And, uh, those stairs look safe. I guess." He frowned, adding, "But no handrail. Not very safe for such an advanced species."

Peppy snickered in amusement but said nothing.

Krystal chuckled softly. "I suppose you're right about that, Fox. I don't even see markings on the wall where a rail might have existed, once." She pointed her light up the steps, took a deep breath, and said, "I'm the lightest. I'll go first and let you know if anything feels ... strange. Hopefully I don't botch it up."

"Please be careful," Fox told her.

Krystal smiled softly by the sincerity in his tone. "I will."

Peppy remained quiet.

Krystal holstered her sidearm and placed her palms on the walls on either side of the staircase and started a slow ascent.

Seven steps up, the ancient stairs crumbled beneath her. She tensed her arms, bracing herself against the wall. The stairs fell away beneath her, collapsing into some sort of storage closet that was built beneath the staircase. She grit her teeth, exhaled through them, and murmured a soft prayer. Meanwhile, she held her arms outward, locked, to keep herself from falling. She muttered under her breath. "Well, that went all to pot quick."

"Are you all right?" Fox called up to her.

"Just doing pushups against the wall, you know?"

"I mean, how are you looking?"

"As blinding as ever," she replied with a fair bit of sarcasm in her tone. "Which is right impressive, seeing how dark it is up here. Heh. Y'know, I knew that was going to happen. Called it, didn't I?"

Peppy put a paw to his mouth and hollered up to her, "Thanks for taking one for the team. If it was me, I'd have brought the entire staircase down, walls and all."

Fox shined his light into the hole of the staircase, so as not to get it in her eyes. "All right, just ... see if you can kick your legs and throw yourself at me. I'll catch you." He handed his blaster to Peppy.

Peppy kept the weapon's light pointed at the empty hole where the stairs used to be. "You've got this, Krystal."

She peered down, over the swell of her bustline, at what appeared to be janitorial equipment mounted to the wall of the closet space beneath her. She held her breath until the dust settled a bit, then she exhaled slowly, lifted her head, and breathed calm and slow. "Fifty dosh says I do something else dangerous before things really go pear-shaped, yeah?"

"Dosh?" asked Peppy.

"An unofficial name for Cerinian currency, Peppy." Krystal took a deep breath through her teeth, so as not to breathe in dust, then she exhaled through her nose. "The opposite of skint."

"Better get used to credits, Krystal, because I've got fifty that says you'll get out of this."

Krystal laughed nervously. "Good to know you believe in me, Peppy!"

Fox asked, "I need you to believe in yourself. You can do this."

"I don't ... know how much longer I can hold myself up." She took another deep breath, then added, "Glad I didn't get much further. Just a few..." she trailed off, reminded herself to use a Lylat system of measurement, and, with a soft sigh, said, "...a few feet."

Fox went up to the second step, which was cracked. He knelt down, with his knee propped against the third step, which still appeared solid. He looked down at where the fourth step was starting to crumble. His eyes lifted, and he reached out to her. "Just kick your legs back to me, okay? I'll catch your feet, and we'll go from there."

"Are you staring at my backside?"

"I, uh..." Fox swallowed. "I'm watching you so I can catch you, and not get kicked in the face."

"I'm not offended. Better my dishy fiancé than a stranger." She took a deep breath, slow, through the corner of her mouth. She did so to keep from sucking in the light cloud of dust still rising from beneath her. "All right. Don't drop me. You botch this, and we're both in hot water."

"Keep your paws on the walls," Fox said.

She kicked her legs forward, then back.

Fox caught her legs across his right shoulder and bicep. "Okay! Got you! Now, walk your arms backward. No, wait, don't walk them back... I want you to do little hops. Ready?"

"I think so." She understood what he meant. She tensed up and pushed herself back about a foot and then locked her paws against the walls again. She felt her hip against Fox's shoulder. "Almost there. One more. Ready?"

"Ready," Fox told her. "...Whenever you are."

"Right! Here we go," she replied, and pushed off the wall, backward, again. She slid her hip over Fox's shoulder, and down his back. She wrapped her arms around his chest, and eased herself to the ground, behind him, with a sigh of relief.

Fox turned to her and smiled. "See? No problem."

She embraced him. "Thanks for the save ... again. You're getting good at this. Meanwhile, I'm looking like a twit, getting into more trouble than Slippy."

Fox grinned. "I, uh ... didn't drop you when that giant crystal thing released you, back on Sauria, at the temple. This was a lot easier than that."

"True, but I weigh a bit more with my flight suit on."

Peppy snickered but didn't say anything.

Fox returned the hug, then gave her a gentle pat on her lower back, just above the hilt of her tail. "For the record, Slippy hasn't been flying as much lately, so you can't compare yourself to him. Anyway, we'll have to find another way up."

Peppy cleared his throat. "How about this elevator?"

Fox and Krystal turned to an elevator adjacent to the bottom of the stairs. The tall doors, at first glance, appeared to be flush like a wall. But, at closer glance, they could make out the seam of the double doors.

"I almost lost a pilot because we didn't see an elevator ... seriously?"

Krystal chuckled inwardly. "That was easy to miss. Don't beat yourself up over a lift, Fox."

"Yeah, yeah, I guess. I'm surprised Peppy's map didn't pick it up."

"Oh, it did," said Peppy. "But would you want to try a two-thousand-year-old elevator that hasn't been serviced since the time of the Lion-born-of-a-Tigress lived on Corneria?" Peppy returned Fox's blaster.

Fox released a breathy sigh, followed by a shake of his head. He took the pistol into his right paw.

Krystal withdrew her staff and pushed the ovular tip against the door seam. She pushed hard. The staff telescopically extended in her palms, and the tip of the oval pressed the door seam ajar a few centimeters.

She activated the 'blaster' mode, causing the spearhead to open, which forced the door seam apart a little more. She deactivated the blaster mode, pushed the spearhead between the doors, and leveraged them apart.

"Almost got it," she murmured under her breath. "Just a bit more."

Once the doors were slightly more than halfway open, the mechanism that controlled the doors activated, and they slid apart on their own with a grunt.

Krystal turned to Fox and Peppy and did a pretend curtsey, knees bent and ankles crossed. "Ta-da." She grinned, adding, "This is how the Cornerian girls do it, right?"

Fox chuckled. "Yeah. It's kind of ... falling out of fashion, though."

"Fair enough." Krystal stood up straight. She put the staff on her back, and it shrank down once more.

Peppy cleared his throat. "Hey, you two ... the control panel just lit up. If Andross or his dumb nephew did come through here, maybe it's because one of them repaired this elevator. It must be built out of a more ... durable metal than whatever was used to make the staircase."

"I guess," said Fox. "I'll try it first." He eyed the lift platform, withdrew his blaster, and used the flashlight attachment to check the elevator's interior. "So far, it looks good."

Fox stepped onto the platform, and it held.

"Well?" asked Peppy.

"Solid. It didn't even shift from my weight when I stepped onto it."

"Good," said Peppy. "My turn." He stepped onto the lift before Fox could say anything. The lift didn't shift or budge from the added weight. And then, without warning, Peppy jumped once, then a second time.

Fox's eyes widened, but the elevator didn't shift.

"Solid as can be," Peppy announced.

Fox brought a paw to his chest with an exasperated look on his face.

Peppy turned to the vixen and waved her to join. "C'mon, Krystal. Let's see if this illuminated panel still works. We should take one of the bulbs from behind this panel to see if Andross replaced it, or to see if the Krazoa made lightbulbs that last thousands of years. I'm sure Corneria would love to study the tech."

Fox sighed. "You're a little too excited about this."

"I'll retire off this ... unless I stay acting General. Haven't decided yet; too bad I can't do both."

"You really haven't decided? You should be the General, Peppy."

"Yeah, well, until I make my up mind, I'm using paid leave to be here with you, by the way. You're welcome."

Fox chuckled. "It's good to do an away mission with you again, after all these years."

"Good! Glad to hear you missed me, Fox." Peppy held his gauntlet up while watching his map start to populate sections of the second floor. "Let's get moving, else we'll have to climb up the shaft. And I'm definitely too old for that."

Krystal stepped onto the lift platform. She touched a triangular up-arrow key, and the lift doors slid shut with a thump. "I didn't see a call-button outside on the wall. I wonder if it uses a proximity sensor to open the doors."

Fox shrugged. "I guess the sensor is broken."

The elevator began to rise, slowly.

Peppy shrugged back at Fox, and said, "What if the sensors are designed to work for Krazoa, not for 'animals' or whatever they would have considered our species.

"I guess, maybe..." Fox kept his pistol pointed downward at a forty-five-degree angle. As soon as the doors opened, he pointed the light forward.

They were at the end of a hallway, which went to the right. The stairs came up on the left side of the hall, up ahead, and beyond that, the hallway was dark and rather lengthy. However, the floors were clean enough that there was minimal dust on the ground.

Fox took point again. "On me, you two."

Krystal withdrew her blaster once more. "Right behind you, Fox."

"Big red caboose bringing up the rear," Peppy joked.

Fox replied with a slight grin. "You're a lot less bossy now that you've retired from the team."

"You're not an eighteen-year-old-kid anymore, Fox."

"Fair point," Fox replied. "Teenagers are a handful."

Peppy scoffed. "Try raising three in a treehouse only a little bigger than my first apartment. Not fun."

Krystal grinned at their banter. She stepped off the lift and pointed her blaster's light down the dark foreboding hallway. "Well, there's light dust in this hallway, but no footprints in it. And Andrew's ship isn't downstairs in that large dark bay. At least not according to Peppy's map. That hanger was empty. Or ... warehouse. Whatever it was."

Peppy glanced down at his glowing map again. "Maybe Andrew came in through a back door, or an adjacent building; this could very well be a facility comprised of several buildings."

"Whatever the case may be," said Fox, "We need to tread lightly. We're on the second floor and we already know those stairs didn't hold. There might be more weak spots. This place isn't built out of solid granite like the Krazoa Palace. Let's watch our step, team."

"Right," said Krystal.

"Look at you," said Peppy with a chuckle. "Becomin' more like yer dad."

"Uh-huh," Fox murmured. He made his way down the hall, slow and cautious, with his blaster pointed forward. "I can't even see the back wall at the end of this hallway, yet. I keep expecting something to jump out at me."

"There's nothing out there," said Krystal. "Nothing alive at least." She pointed her blasted forward. "And, if the stuff of nightmares pops out? We'll sort it."

Fox nodded and continued slowly up the hall. "I doubt the Krazoa would leave booby-traps. Not their M.O. on Sauria. I haven't seen any so far here, either. I think they relied on heavy fortification ... those walls were damn impressive."

"Agreed," said Peppy, "but let's not take anything to chance." He brushed his free paw on the red outfit he was wearing beneath the silver duster jacket. His eyes lowered to the map, watching it populate up ahead on the sheet. "So far nothing out of the ordinary."

Fox nodded again. He stopped in front of an unmarked door on the right side of the hallway and pushed it open with a grunt. It slid on tracks, retreating slowly into the wall. "Storage closet? Or maybe someone's small office once upon a time. Nothing in here."

Krystal opened a door on the left and peered in. "On Sauria, there was a distinct lack of Krazoan lavatories, but ... I think this might be one."

Fox and Peppy peered in at what appeared to be tall urinals set into the walls. On the other wall were sink basins fairly high off the ground ... roughly shoulder height for the trio.

Peppy chuckled. "Well, it's good to know our races had that in common, at least."

"Yeah, neat," Fox said, pointing his light toward what seemed to be tall stalls, without doors, on the back wall. "Everybody poops."

Krystal rolled her eyes. "For a moment, I almost forgot I was on a mission with two boys. Thank you for the reminder."

Peppy chuckled. "Just wait until you're a mom, one day. Fox is right - everybody poops."

"Wonderful, children. That's wonderful." Krystal stepped back into the hallway with Fox and Peppy. "Does anyone have to use the two-thousand-year-old toilet before we continue on?"

"I'm good," said Fox.

"I went before we left the transport ship," Peppy added with a wry grin.

"Right. Moving on, then," she said with a firm nod.

Fox and Peppy grinned at one another but said nothing.

The trio continued on their way up the long dark hallway.

Peppy cleared his throat. "I've got something up ahead." He stole a glance at his map, then lifted his gaze again. "A doorway that opens up into a large trapezoid room."

Fox raised his blaster. He slowed to a cautious approach as he closed on the doorway at the end of the hall. He held his left paw out, and then gestured for Krystal to break left. Once he approached the doorway, he passed through and turned forty-five degrees right.

Krystal came in behind him and turned to the left.

They panned their flashlights around the empty dark room. There were hip-height stations and stools that seemed too low for the Krazoa.

"Fox," she said with wide eyes, "This is a control center of sorts. Look at the layout."

"Who sat in these seats? The Krazoa were too tall..."

"Good question," Krystal replied

Fox approached a large window at the far end, but it was covered in black. He tapped a claw against the surface. "It's glass, why can't we see through it?" He shined his light against the surface, reflecting dim light back at himself. "I mean, over two thousand years is a long time - it's probably just coated in eons of grime. Right?"

"That's not glass," said Peppy. "According to my scanner, it's treated quartz. And, Fox, look closer at the other side of the observation pane ... I know my eyes are going when it comes to reading, but I still have my distance vision, thank the piloting gods."

Fox angled his light and peered at something just on the other side of the glass. "Oh. Oh. I see, now. It's covered with an armored layer."

"Nice one, Fox. It's shuttered, love."

Fox rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay. Geeze, gang."

Krystal placed her paws firmly on what appeared to be a capacitive glass control panel. The panel lit up, along with multiple other stations around the large trapezoid room. "Nice!"

Ancient lettering showed up in the glass, as though it was an enormous screen. Krystal immediately recognized the letters. "It's Krazoan. I recognize it from our time on Sauria."

Fox rubbed his chin. "Yeah, I think you're right. The font style is different, but I _do_remember those symbols. I guess they had a unified language the way Cornerian Standard is used on Katina, Papetoon, and most of the other Lylat worlds."

Krystal tapped a painted claw nail against her bottom lip. "Still, these seats are too low for the Krazoa to sit. That's a bit ... odd, though, isn't it?"

Peppy walked around the control center with a thoughtful expression on his face. "Mm, I wonder what this facility was used for..."

Krystal spotted a tiny vented hole in the wall above the workstation she somehow activated. She leaned in closer to study the slated vents.

Fox turned to Peppy. "Isn't anyone going to make a comment about a computer system that has been in standby for roughly twenty-two hundred years? If not longer?"

Peppy approached one of the workstations and used his fingertip to manipulate the capacitive touch screen interface. "What's Slippy call these things? GUIs? Gooey? Something like that. Anyhow, maybe he can make sense of it."

Krystal cleared her throat and spoke to the small slated hole in the wall. "Now if we could just get it to..." she changed to her native tongue and spoke again, "...Doan qwan knocht cay es?"

The massive armored section covering the quartz window lifted away like vertical house shudders.

"Oh, my goddess ... the bloody blinds opened."

Fox stared at Krystal. "What the heck did you say to it?"

"I asked if it would open the window shades, but I murmured in Cerinian."

"Krystal, that means the computer understands your language."

Krystal leaned up to the small vented hole in the wall, above the workstation, and said, "Reh-qwan cay es chay-doh."

All the wording on all the panels around the command center changed from Krazoan to Cerinian.

Krystal's eyes widened. "I told it to change all languages to Cerinian. It worked!" She looked down at a readout on the touch screen panel beneath her paws. "The choice of vocabulary is a bit ... archaic, and the syntax is kind of weird, but ... it's close enough that I can muddle through it." She cleared her throat and told the computer, "Change to Cornerian language?"

The computer displayed wording at the station she was facing.

Peppy peered over her shoulder. "What's that the warning message that just popped up?"

"Oh," she said with a frown. "It says it did not understand the command. I guess it doesn't know Cornerian."

Peppy shrugged. "The language we use as Cornerian Standard was adopted from lots of old languages, and really only came into use within the last four hundred years, after the printing press started standardizing the lexicon. It didn't exist in any way two thousand years ago."

Krystal walked to the window and peered through operations graphics displayed in the glass. She gazed down at what looked like an enormous courtyard below. "It's a bunch of buildings surrounding what looks like ... ancient ruins. You lot want to have a look?"

"Ancient ruins?" The aging hare perked. "Older than the stuff on Sauria?"

Krystal glanced at Peppy in the reflection and nodded. "Much older, yes."

Peppy and Fox approached and gazed out through the window at the five other similar-looking buildings that made up the entire complex.

Peppy cut his gaze down to the enormous ruins in the massive courtyard, below. "Well, I'll be. It seems that these buildings were built to surround the ruins."

Fox rubbed his chin. "Why, though? I mean, why do you need five big buildings to surround some ancient building? Maybe the Krazoa built around the ruins, because the ruins were some sort of government protected area, or the ruins might have been turned into a museum. We don't know enough about their culture to assume that these buildings have anything to do with studying the ruins."

Krystal gestured to the enormous window. "The control room faces the ruins." She turned to Fox, took him by the shoulders, and guided him two paces back, then side-nodded toward the large window. The display showed a topical overview of the ruins, and some sort of status update graphic.

Fox scrunched his nose at the wording. "What's it say?"

"Something about 'No production output' referring to the ruins. It's worded weird, but I guess this was proper Cerinian two thousand years ago. Sure bringins up a lot of questions about how the Krazoa spoke it well enough to make computer systems display in that."

Peppy cut his gaze to her. "The seats are lower than the Krazoa stand. I'm guessing your ancestors worked alongside the Krazoa."

"If I'm ever possessed by one again, I'll be sure to ask it." She lifted her paw and gestured to more wording on the quartz window. "Right, then, so ... my initial guess is that the Krazoa learned that these ruins were for production of an energy source, or perhaps some sort of lunar resource. Insofar as theories go?" She shook her head with a shrug. "Perhaps it was ancient Krazoan in nature, or perhaps it belonged to an older alien race. Whichever the case may be, the Krazoan builders of this facility must've figured out how to harness something from those ruins - after learning about the ruins, the Krazoa used them to do whatever it is they were designed to do."

"Speculation," said Peppy. "But I like where your head is at, based on what facts are available thus far."

Fox moved to the window again. He peered down at the ruins, below, covered in bushes, trees, and various forms of greenery. He frowned. "What if Andross discovered whatever it does? What if he left instructions for Andrew to utilize ... whatever this place does?"

Peppy shrugged. "Nothing that would win the war, I'm sure."

Fox eyed his godfather. "How do you figure?"

Peppy replied with a wry grin. "Because if it was capable of winning wars, Andross would have used it, already. Either that, or Andrew would have used it as well, before the Aparoid invasion. My guess is that it either makes energy, or it makes something that, down the road, can be used as a weapon, or it produces some sort of finite resource."

Krystal turned to face both Peppy and Fox. She rested her rump against the control panel and crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, do we explore the ruins, or do we check the other buildings for Andrew?"

Fox and Peppy rubbed their chins, seemingly in unison, and paused to eye one another, as if considering the two options...

Krystal grinned a bit. "Fox, if you want to split up the team, I call bagsy on exploring."