ACT 02- ENGAGEMENT, I titled Act 02 engagement simply for the reason that I wrote a space battle for this chapter. Apart from the Imperial raid on Intrepid Station in Act 01 there has not been a major battle in the story until now.

Author’s Commentary
As you can see from this chapter, I still put poor Krystal inside a crystal! Since that element was a significant (?) part of the game I couldn’t bring myself to change it. I just had to completely rethink how she’d get inside the crystal since I’d removed all the supernatural elements from the game, namely the Krazoa spirits. Also, with how I ended this chapter you get to see how I handled Fox’s mission to Sauria. In the game Sauria is broken into large chunks and Fox has to go by himself, but no explanation is given for why he can’t use his Arwing, or have backup, and he’s told he can’t shoot his gun, because ‘reasons’. Well, I fixed all that nonsense. Now Fox is alone on an alien world with lots of bad guys running around that are veteran soldiers from the Lylat War. In my take of the story, planet Sauria is still in one piece, but there’s a strange energy barrier surrounding the entire planet… Essentially, I have placed Fox into a ‘Metroid’ style situation that Samus Aran would be very familiar with.

Also, in the source material, General Scales was missing one hand and had a metal prosthetic, but its never explained why he was missing his hand. I amended that detail in this chapter by showing you exactly how he came to losing an appendage.

Glossary
> Kanis – Lt. Kanis’ name is play on the word Canis, from canis lupus, since he is a type of wild dog.
> Granby Class Ship – A type of warship featured in Star Fox Zero.
> Colby Class Ship – A type of warship featured in Star Fox Zero, which was originally called the Harlock in Star Fox 64. This may have been an intentional reference to the anime Captain Harlock, as some of the ship designs in that anime are vaguely similar to the Harlock/Colby class warship.
> Butterfly Class Fighter – The official name of the classic ‘butterfly’ design space fighter fielded by Andross’ forces in most Star Fox games.

Why couldn’t you have just kept Krystal out of that gem? Why can’t you just let her fight?

The story is divided into 11 chapters. She wont be in the gem for all of them. Only some of them.

Good to know Krystal's sacrifice last chapter wasn't in vain, and Dr. Tappa was able to get out the distress call. Wonder why everyone's so quick to think he brought the Venomians?

These circumstances for how Fox got stuck on Sauria certainly make more sense than Adventures. Fox is only a scout for the main Cornerian force, and the energy shield keeps him from leaving the planet once he's landed. Essentially the same outcome as the game, but with a better setup.

The Venomians carelessly hitting their own ship to get at Fox makes them look rather incompetent: more so bumbling than intimidating. I think if they were ruthless enough to fire on their own men, they wouldn't open the shields to let their escape pods through either - especially when it risks letting Fox in as well. Besides that, it was a really good space battle. It was smart of Fox to slip through the opening in the shields when they let the escape pods in, and smart of the Granby to lower those shields completely once Fox was inside so the Colby could shoot at him instead.

I think it was too careless of Fox to annihilate the Venomians without checking if there were civilians aboard. Maybe there shoulda been a back-and-forth with the Venomian captain or something, from which Fox could glean where the research team was.

Definitely liked the detail about Scales losing his hand when he forced Krystal to be their test-subject. Serves him right!

Thank you for reading and the feedback!
I was certainly working hard to try and make the plot better than the original, and I hope the future chapters continue to impress! I appreciate you stopping by to comment.