Something small I cooked up while working on editing "Six." I may continue this-currently I have 3000 more words written in it-but for right now, consider it a oneshot.
It's one of those days where you just want to roll over and pretend the alarm didn't go off, where you're dead-tired because some stupid shit came up at midnight the night before, and you ended up tucked away four hours before you had to get up. It's been one of those days every day for the past week, and a part of me's starting to feel like it's not worth it.
Because I know that today is going to be no different. I know it as I reach over and swat the alarm, catching a few more blissful minutes of shut-eye before rolling over and throwing myself out the bed. I know it as I stagger to the shower, throw the wrong valve, and splatter myself with freezing water. And I know it as I pull on whatever clean clothes I can find and navigate my way to the mess hall.
On busy days, which is just about all of them this past week, breakfast is the closest thing to bonding time we get. The mess hall's huge, staffed by five or so mediocre chefs who turn out enough shit to feed the two hundred or so that we employ. Tables dot the room, only breaking to allow for the buffet-style serving line in one of the corners. In the center's this fancy-ass round table that looks much more comfortable than it actually is.
I get my grub and plonk my ass in one of the four chairs surrounding it. Panther's already there, and the lewd grin he gives me answers the question of what he did last night and raises the one of who he did last night. I want to yell at him that I was up saving cargo while he was cozy in his room, dozing in the aftermath of screwing some whore, but he knows it already. It's a luxury we get about once a week if we're lucky: the ability to say, fuck whatever else is going on tonight, I'm doing who or what I want tonight. Panther's got his females, I don't want to know what Leon's got, but what do I have?
Ten minutes with me will answer that question. I got nothing, because I'm the prodigy-leader of the group, the guy who mops up everyone else's crap and gets all the blame. There are posters of me all over the system, and every time Star Wolf comes up on the news, it's always my muzzle they show. A lot of people call me Star Wolf, and there's no quicker way to get your muzzle beaten in.
Panther's the team idiot, the only comic relief we get around here. I eat in silence because I know exactly what we'll say if we get to talking: I'll mention something about the work last night, and he'll bait me into asking him about whatever female he was screwing while I flew. He'll ask me how I know he had one, if I heard her yowling, and I'll end up mocking his small dick (it's not small). That's when Leon will show up and tell us all to shut up, because the last thing he wants is dicks for breakfast.
So we skip all the conversation, but Leon comes in right on time, snatching up the third chair. He wasn't off last night, but if he were, I wouldn't have said anything to him, because I don't know want to know he does with his off-time. He's the team freak, the guy who got fired at every job he got but this one. He can't help it. Maybe it's a reptilian thing, the way he just rubs everyone the wrong way without trying, without doing anything.
We've got a leader, an idiot, and a freak—and I say all this because the fourth chair's empty; it's been so for years now, ever since we gave Pigma the boot. Truth is, you can't have a team with three pilots. If Star Fox had four when Pigma turned rogue, James would still be alive. Andross knew it, Fox McCloud knows it, and we know it, but we've been down a man for ages because there's just no good pilots anymore to fill it; either none are qualified, or the ones that are go do stupid shit that either (a) gets them killed or (b) gets them my fist in their muzzle and a nice sheet of paper telling them to fuck off and work at a burger joint. It's not entirely their fault; you have to be pretty messed up in the head to make it in this life. Hell, just take a look at who's sitting at the table now.
Still, every year, when it's mid-summer on Corneria and the same deathly cold as always in space, we go hunting for someone to take the fourth chair. Right now, it's two months into Corneria's summer, and the first month of sorting out the applicants is over—which sounds all dandy, but it actually depresses the hell out of me, because that means the interviews are coming up. That means I've got to go dragging another unfortunate soul into this hellhole of a life, and like all our recruits from the past five or so years, it'll probably end up either killing them or fucking them up so much that they're ruined for life.
I can't wait.