Star Fox: The Saurian Adventure
Chp. 9

   Fox ran towards the temple where the Queen Earthwalker lay, with Krystal following closely behind.  The urgency in Tricky’s voice spurred him on; it sounded as though the Queen’s health had deteriorated in the time since he’d left for Ice Mountain.  The two of them rounded the corner at the entrance of the Temple, and Fox skidded to a halt in shock.  Krystal must have had some amazing reflexes, because she came to a stop just before she would have plowed into Fox’s back at full speed.  Fox took two steps forward and knelt by the still figure of the  Queen.  Her eyes were closed and her breathing was labored, each breath coming in slow gasps.  
   “What’s wrong?” Krystal asked from behind him.  
Fox wasn’t quite sure, but Tricky answered her; “Mom and I fled Walled City on the orders of my father.  Scales had attacked the city, and he had brought the Redeyes with him; dad didn’t want to take the chance that either of us would be caught by those beasts.  The Sharpclaws captured me while we were fleeing, but I guess mom managed to make it all the way here, when they caught up with her.”  
   Krystal laid a hand softly on the Queens’s snout.  After a moment, she said, “She was hurt when the Sharpclaws took her captive here; that and the strain of her journey here means she’s past the point of exhaustion.  Her health is failing because she’s been pushed past her limits.”  
   “Is there anything we can do for her?”  Fox asked.  
   “We need to find some white GrubTubs,” Tricky replied.  “My mom always gave them to me when I didn’t feel well.”  
   “Do you know where we could find them?”  
   “The old well,” Tricky said.  “They’re more delicate than the blue ones, they can’t stand sunlight.  The well is probably the only place you could find some here.”  
   “Let’s go, then,” Krystal interjected.  
   Tricky hesitated, looking down at the ground before looking back up at Fox.  “Um, Fox, you don’t mind if I stay here for now, do you?  I mean, I want to help my mom, but I’m not sure how much use I’d be down in the well, and I want to stay with her, to keep an eye on her.”  
   “Of course Tricky, I understand completely.”  Having lost both parents himself, Fox could understand the young prince’s desire to not leave his mother alone in such a time.  “Wait for us here, and give a shout if you need anything.”  
   “Thanks Fox.”  
   “I’ll come with you,” said the blue vixen.  Her offer both pleased and worried Fox; pleased, because she was nice to look at and she seemed friendly enough; worried because he wasn’t sure how capable she was, and because he might let himself be distracted at an inopportune moment.  
She must have read some of his worry from his eyes, because she said, “If you’re concerned about my well-being, I can take care of myself, and probably watch your back, as well.”  
   “Erm…okay then, let’s go,” Fox replied.  
   The two vulpines exited the structure and were headed towards the well when Fox spotted a large, gargoyle-like creature hovering over the well entrance.  He reached for the staff, intending to blast the thing out of the air, but was horrified to realize that it was missing. He must have dropped it when he and Krystal ran into each other!  Panic shot through him as he said, “Krystal, have you seen my staff?!”  
   “Don’t you mean, MY staff?” she replied.   He turned to see her holding the item in question in her hands, almost cradling it, like a long-lost child.  
   Fox’s eyes widened as realization hit home.  “You… you’re the one whose voice I heard when I first picked it up!”  
   She looked at him and said, “The message played for you?  I didn’t think… Well, never mind what I thought.  The important thing is I’ve found it again.”  
   “Um,” Fox hesitated a bit then said, “Not to sound selfish or whiney, but what about me?”  
    “Hmm,” she mused, looking him over with an appraising eye.  “You’re cute…” she said with an impish grin, “I think I’ll keep you too!”  
   “Um...Er...I mean…” Fox stuttered for a moment, all thought processes disrupted by her flirtatious reply.  It was a little while before he finally regained his voice.  “What I meant was what do I do for a weapon now?”  
   “Here,” she said, “use this one.  She held out another staff similar in design to hers, except silver and red instead of gold and blue.  
   Fox took it and felt the heft of it in his hand.  It was a little heavier and a bit shorter than the one Krystal had taken back, but, for some reason, it seemed a more natural fit to his hand.  He looked up at her and asked, “If you had this one, why did you take the other one back?”  
   “Because this one is mine,” she answered, “made specifically for me.  These weapons always respond better to their chosen wielders.  The one you hold now was made for someone who focused more on physical combat; although it can utilize all of the same powers that mine can, they will not be quite as strong.  Oh, and if you’re curious, I already unsealed the Fire Blaster on yours.”  
   Fox’s head practically spun at the volume of knowledge she had about the staffs.  Although at first glance they seemed like archaic and impractical weapons, the Fire Blaster alone made them fair contenders against more modern weaponry.  He had absolutely no experience with these things before now, despite having traveled extensively throughout the Lylat system.  There was a distinct chance that they, and she, came from beyond Lylat, but that question, and all the other ones it would raise, would have to wait for later.  Right now, they had to focus on getting the white GrubTubs to give to the Queen Earthwalker.  
   He examined the well and realized that if the mushrooms in question grew only in dark places, he and Krystal would need to bring another light source with them.  He turned and headed towards Shabunga’s store, stopping along the way to lift several rocks and catch the Scarabs hiding underneath.  Once he had filled the bag completely, he entered the store area, with Krystal following closely behind.  
   “Ah, welcome back, good zhir,” Shabunga practically purred upon seeing the bulging Scarab bag hanging from Fox’s belt.  He gave Krystal a quick glance, but since she didn’t even have pockets to hold Scarabs in, his attention quickly left her to focus on Fox again.  “Izh there anything I can do for you?”  
   “I’m going to need a lamp,” Fox said.  
   “Oh, and I have juzt the thing,” cackled the strange floating dinosaur.  He drifted over to a stand on the side of the wall, on which sat a glass container.  “Thizh Firefly Lantern can hold dozens of firefliezh, perfect for lighting your way through even the darkest cave, and can be yours for only twenty Zhcarabs.”  
   Fox opened his mouth to protest the exorbitant price, on what was essentially a glass jar, but Krystal beat him to it.  “That’s a rather high price,” the vixen said.  Fox turned to see her standing in front of the storekeeper with her arms crossed over her chest.  “We’ll give you fifteen, and not a Scarab more.”  She winked at Fox when Shabunga wasn’t looking, and the vulpine pilot nodded and affirmed her statement; “Fifteen Scarabs tops.”  
   Shabunga looked outraged at Krystal’s intervention, but hesitated when Fox backed up her pronouncement.  After a moment of wavering between holding out and giving in, he finally said, “Okay, I’ll zhell it to you.”  Fox took the lantern off the stand and tucked it into his pack.  Shabunga floated near him and said, “Would you like some firefliezh to put inside?  Only ten Zhcarabs each.”  
   “No thanks, I think I’ll hold off on those for now,” Fox replied.  “I’ll come back to see you if it turns out I need any.”   
   He moved away from the pedestal, and Krystal tapped him on the shoulder.  “See anything else you think we might need?” she whispered in his ear, so as not to attract the avaricious notice of the shopkeeper.  
   “No, not right now,” he replied.  He paused for a second then said, “You seem pretty comfortable working with a total stranger.”  
   “You seem decent enough so far,” Krystal replied.  “I’m very good at reading people.  So, if there’s nothing else we need, let’s head to the well now.”  
   “Okay, we should be set now,” Fox asserted.  “And if not, we know where to go.”  The two vulpines exited the store, and made their way towards the well.  On the southern side of the structure, there was a hole in the wall, big enough for the two of them to pass through if they crawled.  Fox led the way, and found himself on a ledge next to a ladder that led further down into the well.  He stepped onto the ladder as Krystal emerged from the hole, and slid down to the bottom.  He brushed his hands off and was about to step away from the ladder when he looked around and froze.  “Oh, crap,” he said softly.  
   “Where?”  Krystal’s head and shoulders appeared above him at the top of the ladder with a look of concern on her face.  
   “Huh?”  Fox was confused for a second by her question before realizing: if she wasn’t from Lylat, she might not have a reference for idiomatic expressions yet.  “No, it’s just… you remember those big red mushrooms?  They’re everywhere down here.”  
   “Oh, so that was a general expression of dismay, and did not actually mean…”  
   “No, it’s pretty clean down here, you can come down any time you like,” Fox told her.  Krystal slid down the ladder the same way Fox did; the handrails had been polished smooth by centuries of age, so there was no danger of either of them getting splinters from this maneuver.  Once she was down, the two of them moved carefully through the underground cavern, careful not to venture too close to any of the ubiquitous giant red mushrooms.  Fox remembered the debilitating effects of the spores they threw off, and had no desire to repeat the experience.  
   They came to a small underground stream, and Fox was about to move around it when Krystal grabbed his arm and said, “Wait.  There’s another Pedestal nearby.  It will unseal another power in our staffs.”  
   Fox was about to ask how she knew this, but then he saw her staff giving off a faint green aura.  The aura brightened as they passed a small island near the end of the stream, and began to diminish again when they moved away.  “Here,’ Krystal said, “it must be here.  But, how do we get to it?”  
   “I have an idea,” Fox told her.  He pulled a bomb spore out of his pack and set it on the island, then took several steps back and leveled his staff at the plant that emerged.  Krystal looked back and forth between him and the newly sprouted plant, and then hastily took refuge behind him.  Fox triggered the Fire Blaster on his staff, and the sizzling energy orb, while not quite as powerful as the one on Krystal’s staff, was nonetheless strong enough to detonate the gas stored within the bulbous plant.  The explosion revealed a hole in the ground, similar to the one where they had each gotten the Fire Blaster upgrades for their staffs.  Krystal dropped into the hole without a moment’s hesitation; Fox followed shortly thereafter.  
   In the center of the room at the far end of the grotto was a pedestal similar to the one they had used before.  Krystal placed her staff in the slot at the center, and waited for the next power to be released.  After she had retrieved her staff, Fox placed his, while she examined her staff and learned about the new ability.  
   “So, what’d we get now?” Fox asked her.  
   “A Rocket Booster,” she mused.  “You can activate it by pressing this symbol, here.”  She indicated the correct one on her staff, and Fox found the corresponding one on his own.  “This will make getting up to higher ledges much easier.”  
   “Does your staff actually talk to you?”  To him the idea sounded ridiculous at first, but it wasn’t any stranger than anything else he’d seen on this world so far.  
   “Somewhat,” Krystal replied matter-of-factly.  “It’s not actually words; it’s more like an intuitive understanding of what it can do.”  
   “I’m glad you’re here to clarify these things,” Fox said, “because I’d be hopelessly lost if I had to try to figure everything out by myself.”  
   “I’m delighted I can help,” Krystal told him, with a smile that made his heart skip a few beats.  They made their way back out of the grotto, and proceeded to the other side of the stream.  There appeared to be a pressure switch in a puddle of water at the end of the streambed, but how it kept from corroding was a mystery to both vulpines.  The important thing was that it still worked, as Krystal tested by stepping onto it experimentally and causing a gate nearby to slide up into the ceiling.  When she let her weight off, however, the gate slid back down into place again.  “Looks like one of us will have to remain here,” she said, with a little disappointment in her voice.  For some reason, she enjoyed being in Fox’s company, and she was reluctant to separate from him, even for a little while.  
   “Maybe not,” Fox said.  “Wait right here, I’ll be back in just a second.”  He backtracked to the ladder at the entrance, and found a ledge up near the ceiling that he could spring up to with the new power added on to his staff.  He placed the end of the staff on the ground, and pressed the glyph that Krystal had indicated.  He was a little worried about getting too much of a boost and sending himself rocketing straight into the ceiling, but his worries were not realized, as he was propelled to a height just above the ledge in question, with enough room to get his feet under him for a secure landing.  He made his way along the upper ledge, threading around several red mushrooms, until he came to a rock bridge that spanned an area near where Krystal was waiting.  
   About halfway across there appeared to be a spot where he could plant another bomb spore.  Fox made sure he had a clear line of retreat then he placed the spore, took several steps back, and blew up the plant.  The shockwave overstressed part of the arch and dropped a hefty stone block down to the level below.  Krystal was already in position by the time he dropped down to push the block over to the switch.  At an unspoken but mutually understood signal, they both put their shoulders to the block and pushed it over onto the switch.  With the gate now locked in the up position, they had no trouble passing through to the area beyond.  
   Fox halted in surprise at seeing a dinosaur sleeping in the center of the room beyond the gate.  “What’s a Thorntail doing all the way down here?” he wondered aloud.  Whatever the reason, Fox could see another bomb-able patch of ground underneath the snoozing dinosaur, so he tried to wake it up.  Nothing seemed to work until Krystal flicked the tip of her tail across its snout; the dinosaur gave a tremendous sneeze and looked up at the two foxes with sleep-fogged eyes.  
   “Do you have a way to see in the dark?” he asked them.  Fox responded by pulling out the lantern and showing it to the dinosaur.  “Ah, a lantern to light your way,” it said.  “Good, good, yes very good, excellent…”  He continued on in this manner as he moved away from the spot they needed to access.  Fox looked at Krystal and raised one eyebrow in silent inquiry about the Thorntail’s mental stability, but she just shrugged in response.  He shrugged in return and pulled another bomb spore out of his dwindling reserves.  He planted it in the patch and was about to blast it, but had another thought.  He turned to Krystal and asked “Would the lady care to do the honors this time?”  
   “Why thank you, kind sir,” she said with a giggle, then leveled her staff at the plant and pressed the glyph that sent a blast of energy into the pod.  It detonated with a satisfying ‘boom’, and gave them access to the lowest level of the well.  Krystal led the way this time, sliding down the ladder with an ease that spoke of plenty of experience at this sort of action.  Upon landing, she looked around and shouted up to Fox, “It’s a good thing you got that lantern, it’s pretty dark down here!  Completely dark, in some places.”  Fox slid down the ladder to join her, and pulled the firefly lantern out of his pack.  He was beginning to have second thoughts about not buying any fireflies from Shabunga, but a glimmer in another chamber caught his eye.  He followed the light to see what it was coming from.  
   The fireflies on Sauria were not miniscule insects that flashed intermittent signals to each other, like those that lived on Corneria.  Fireflies here were bioluminescent creatures the size of Fox’s fist that hovered and drifted in the air.  Fox grabbed the first one and stuffed it into the jar, but the other two were maddeningly just out of reach.  He wondered how he was going to get them, when a blue blur streaked by him.  Krystal leapt towards the wall, and then sprang off it, turning a somersault in midair and grabbing one firefly in each hand.  She executed a perfect landing, and Fox tucked the lantern under his arm to applaud for a second.  Krystal smiled and bowed at his praise and held out her catch for him; he opened the lid and she swiftly crammed both fireflies into the lantern.  
   “Do you think that’s enough?” she asked him.  
   Fox held the lantern out at arm’s length, checking to see how much illumination it provided.  Even with only three bugs in the jar, it gave off as much light as a decent flashlight.  “That should be enough for now,” he said to her.  “Although, if we find more, we should definitely try to put them in here also.”  Now that they had enough light to see by, they began to explore the darker sections of the well’s bottommost level.  
   The first white GrubTub was sitting quietly near the wall; which wouldn’t have been so bad if there weren’t two red mushrooms sitting right next to it, one on either side.  Fox hesitated, unsure about how to get the white one without succumbing to the toxic spores from the red ones.  Krystal tapped his shoulder to get his attention, and said, “I’ll stun the big ones, you grab the other one while they’re dizzy.”  Fox nodded in acknowledgement and readied himself for a sprint.  Krystal let loose two blasts from her staff, and both red mushrooms reeled, momentarily stunned.  Fox darted in and grabbed the white GrubTub, then ducked back away from the red ones before tucking his catch into his pack.  He grinned and gave Krystal a thumbs-up gesture in celebration.  She paused, uncertain of what that gesture actually meant; but decided it was an affirmation, based on his cheerful demeanor at that point.  
   The two of the scoured the bottom levels of the well, searching for as many white GrubTubs as they could find.  For some reason, the white mushrooms seemed to gravitate towards their bigger, immobile cousins.  Fox wondered if this were some strange instinct in the motile mushrooms, or if it were merely coincidence.  In the end, however, with him and Krystal working together, they were able to gather six of the necessary white GrubTubs.  Once they had secures their catch, and were sure that there weren’t any more they had overlooked, the two foxes returned to the surface.  
   Fox led the way back to the temple where the Queen was resting, Krystal following closely behind.  The two rushed through the entryway to see the Queen lying over on her side; Tricky huddled close to her, as if by his proximity he could coax health back into his mother’s body.  At the approach of the two foxes, he opened his eyes and sat up.  “Did you find them?” he asked hopefully.   
   “We found six; that was all that was in the well,” Fox told the anxious prince.  “Do you think that’ll be enough?”  
   “It has to be,” Tricky said.  
   Fox offered the white mushrooms one at a time to the Queen Earthwalker.  Because of her semi-delirious state, it took some time before she was able to chew each of them sufficiently to swallow them all, but eventually she had eaten all of the medicinal fungi, and was still.  
   “Are they working?” Fox asked anxiously.  
   Krystal laid a hand on the Queen’s forehead, just above her brow ridges.  “Yes, they’re working,” the vixen said with relief evident in her voice.  “Her health is returning already; now she just needs to rest for a while, to recover her strength.”  
   “Yes!” Fox exulted, pumping his arm up and then down in a gesture of victory.  Then he noticed the bemused look Krystal was giving him and said, somewhat more stoically, “Any idea how long she needs?”  
   “Shouldn’t be more than a few hours, Fox,” Tricky piped up.  “I can stay here while she rests, and tell you when she wakes up again.”  
   “Sounds like a good idea, Tricky,” Fox told him.  “In the meantime, I think I’ll go restock on my supplies.”  
   “Mind if I tag along?” Krystal asked innocently.   “Perhaps I can help out some.”  
   “Erm…yeah, sure, I guess you could come with me,” Fox said hesitantly.  Since they didn’t have a clear mission objective to focus on at the moment, his earlier nervousness in the company of this stunningly gorgeous and mysterious vixen had returned in full force.  
They exited the structure again, on a mission to collect Scarabs and Bomb Spores to replenish what they had used in the retrieval of the white GrubTubs.  At the Bomb Spore plant, Krystal suggested that she blow up the plant, while Fox waited downwind to catch the spores it would throw out.  Fox saw the advantage of this plan, and agreed to it; doing so allowed him to grab several bomb spores that would have otherwise landed in the stream and been swept away before he could get to them.  When they checked under rocks to find extra Scarabs, Fox used his greater physical strength for the heavy lifting, while Krystal swiftly nabbed any Scarabs that were flushed out of their hiding places.  Though only having known each other for half a day, they were falling into a comfortable teamwork routine almost naturally.  
   They had just finished filling the Scarab bag, and Fox was looking around to see if there was anything else he could use, when a peal of thunder echoed above them. Fox glanced up at the sky in surprise; while he and Krystal had been gathering their supplies, dark clouds heavy with the threat of imminent rain had rolled in above them.  Fox rushed to the Arwing, which was parked in a clearing, and grabbed a few potentially useful items before turning to head back to the Temple where the Queen rested.  Krystal had already darted in ahead of him, and was waiting a little ways back from the entryway.  Fox made it in a split second before the clouds let loose with a torrential downpour, pausing to check and make sure that he hadn’t dropped anything in his mad scramble to get in before the rain came.  Once he was sure he had everything, he set up a small portable camp stove and started heating some water for a couple of instant-soup MREs.  
   “So you are from Corneria, is that right?” Krystal asked him suddenly.  
   “Um, yeah that’s right,” Fox said uncertainly.  He absently noticed that she had a soft, almost lilting accent that was utterly unlike anything he’d heard before.  “What about you” he asked her, “where are you from?”  
   “Cerinia,” she said softly.  “Have you ever heard of it?”  
   “No, I can’t say that I have,” he told her.  “What’s it like?”  
   “It… was wonderful,” she said, almost sadly.  “It had plenty of open space, beautiful wilderness, and the cities were almost like works of art in and of themselves.”  
   “Was?” Fox asked, picking up on her use of the past tense.  “What happened?”  
   “It…it was destroyed,” she said.  “My homeworld… is now nothing more than debris floating around our sun…”  She looked down at her feet, with her knees tucked up under her chin, and struggled not to cry.  
   “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Fox said, at the same time placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.  Inwardly, he kicked himself; the fact that she had used past tense regarding the state of her homeworld should have been a clue to him, but no, he had to press the issue and bring up painful memories for her.  ‘McCloud, you dolt,’ he thought to himself, ‘your first real conversation with her and you’ve already screwed up.’  
   “It’s not your fault,” Krystal said.  “There was no way you could have known.”  
   “Huh?  What do you mean?” Fox asked, thrown off by the non sequitur.  
   “You were castigating yourself for bringing up a painful subject, but there was no way you could have known what had happened,” Krystal told him.  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”  
   “Just how did you know what I was thinking?” Fox asked uncertainly.  
   “I can hear people’s thoughts,” she told him.  “It’s a talent, what you might call telepathy, which all Cerinians had.  I can sense emotional states and what someone is thinking at the moment, and I can determine the approximate locations of sentient minds, if they’re conscious.”  
   “Must be pretty handy…”  Fox murmured at this revelation.  Then a new and horrifying thought occurred to him.  “So when we first ran into each other, and I was sitting on the ground…”  
   Krystal’s mouth quirked into a smile.  “You have… a very vivid imagination, Fox,” she told him teasingly.  
   Fox buried hi s face in his arms in utter mortification.  That low-brow, adolescent fantasy of her that he’d had, the one he’d been relieved at the time that she couldn’t have known of… she had seen the whole thing!  How she’d tolerated his presence so far after that was a complete mystery to him; she must think he was a complete jerk already.  
   His self-flagellation was interrupted by silvery peals of laughter coming from the vixen who sat next to him.  Krystal moved in front of him and took his face in both hands, one hand under his jaw while the other tenderly stroked his cheek.  “Fox, Fox,” she said to him, “if I had thought so poorly of you, do you think I would have entrusted you with that staff?  Do you think I would have followed you through the well if I thought you were a jerk?  You’re a male, and I’m used to that reaction when men see me for the first time.  Actually, I was surprised at the restraint you showed; you were a perfect gentleman even then, especially compared to some of the things I’ve seen in people’s minds.  ”  
   Fox’s embarrassment diminished somewhat at her speech, but didn’t disappear completely.  Even if she thought his reaction was normal, he’d been raised to value women as more than simply sex objects.  He couldn’t let his hormones rule his head…no matter how difficult resisting that temptation might be.  He mustered his resolve and gave her a small smile of his own.  “Thank you for understanding,” he said to her, “but I’ll try to keep my thoughts more in line from now on.”  
   “See, Fox?” Krystal whispered in his ear.  “The mere fact that you strive to improve yourself, in every area, speaks volumes about your true character.  I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”  
   “Uh… thanks,” Fox said uncertainly.  A question came to his mind.  “If your homeworld is destroyed, what are you doing now?”  
    “Searching for answers,” she said, with a more serious tone in her voice.  “Those who immolated my planet sought some specific result from their actions.  I’m trying to find out what that is, and hopefully make sure they do not profit from their atrocity.  The mere fact that they are willing to annihilate an entire world to accomplish their goal means that, whatever they had planned, it cannot be anything good.”  
   She hesitated for a moment and then said, “Although the ones directly responsible for Cerinia’s destruction died with it, I… felt a presence, as I was fleeing my doomed home.  I couldn’t actually see anything, but I certainly felt it; a powerful, evil presence, gloating over the destruction of my homeworld, like this was something it had waited for, for a long time.  I followed the trail that they had left, and it eventually led me here-and now this planet is in the process of being torn apart, and I was wondering if there was some connection between what happened to my world, and what’s happening to this one.”  She fell silent after that, unwilling to voice what she had encountered in the corridors of the Krazoa Palace.  
   Fox shook his head in astonishment.  Even after losing everything she’s ever known, she hadn’t surrendered to despair, but had sought to find the reason behind her loss; not for the purpose of retribution, but to make sure it didn’t happen again to someone else.  He wondered if he would have that kind of strength and resolve, were he in her situation.  He also wondered just what the presence she had felt was, but any further conversation was postponed by Tricky’s interruption; “Fox!  Krystal!  My mom’s awake, and she wants to talk to both of you!”  
    The two foxes got to their feet to follow Tricky to where the Queen lay.  Fox looked over at Krystal and said, “I’m sorry for what you’ve lost.  If you need anything, and I mean anything don’t hesitate to ask.”  
   Krystal smiled at his offer.  “Thank you, Fox, you have no idea how much that means to me.”  
Fox hesitated for a moment then nervously cleared his throat.  “Now that the Queen’s awake, maybe she can shed some light on what’s going on around here.  I don’t know about you, but I’m completely in the dark as far as the situation here is concerned.”  The two of them began to move towards where the Queen Earthwalker was resting, both eager to finally have at least a few questions answered.