Author's Note: I don't really remember anymore how I thought this up, but I had been wanting to write something with Slippy as one of the main characters because as far as I've seen there are relatively few, compared to the other Star Fox characters.
This is my first proper shot at anything under 'Humor' so I have no idea how this is going to play out... Any feedback would be nice!
"Slippy, you've got one on your tail."
Falco Lombardi watched in exasperation as Slippy tried futilely to shake the bogey that was pursuing him.
"Well, if you're not busy- which I can see you're not- then HELP ME!" Slippy's high voice screeched over the comm, making Falco's skull vibrate.
"Stop screaming and I'll help," Falco snapped. "…Maybe," he added, getting comfortable in his Arwing by propping his feet up onto the control panel and leaning back, wings behind his head.
"Do something!"
Falco jerked to attention as Slippy's Arwing began heading into a collision course with his own.
"What the heck are ya doin'?!" Falco yelled as he steered out of the way of the toad, sliding cleanly over the aircraft and the enemy ship.
"You're not doing ANYTHING!" Slippy shouted. "This guy won't leave me alone!"
"Fine."
Falco relocated the two ships on the radar, boosted up behind the Venomian ship and blasted it to pieces, faster than Peppy could have ever said "DO A BARREL ROLL!"
"Happy now?" Falco asked, extremely ticked off by Slippy's piloting skills… or lack of. He knew he shouldn't have been too surprised, though that made his feathers bristle in annoyance all the more.
Slippy didn't reply.
"Hey Frog-face, ya don't have to be antisocial with me."
Then he realised that the comm line had been cut.
What in Lylat…?
He looked out of the cockpit to find Slippy's Arwing slowly but surely descending towards the Venomian surface below.
"Slippy, what're ya doing?" the bird exclaimed as he tried in vain to re-activate the communications.
They didn't spark; not even erupt into the usual static.
Falco looked towards the ground below on a whim, and nearly jumped at how close it had gotten.
"What's goin' on?" he yelled to no one in particular, maybe except for himself.
He could only come to one conclusion: the Arwings were malfunctioning.
The blue-feathered bird frantically checked all the monitors and systems that were supposed to be displayed on the panel.
The shields were down.
The power was out.
The numbers on the altimeter were black.
He glanced towards the back of the ship. The thrusters were dead.
"How did this happen?" Falco muttered angrily as he tweaked with all the buttons and levers on the panel, to no avail.
Shoot.
He searched for Slippy again, to see that the frog had also lost altitude.
As his gaze swept the flanks of his Arwing, he had a hopeful brainwave.
What about the big blues?
He reached out for the G-Diffusers' lever, and gently eased it forward. The Arwing seemed to slow its fall ever so slightly. He sank into his seat for a moment in relief.
At least there's nothing wrong with the G-Diffusers.
He looked again at Slippy. The toad's Arwing appeared to be sinking faster than Falco's.
Oh, no! But he's the technical genius, he should know about the G-Diffusers.
Falco watched Slippy's Arwing impatiently, hoping that the amphibian inside had remembered the emergency 'brakes'. Even if he despised the frog's relatively atrocious piloting skills, he wasn't cold hearted… not that much, and Falco knew it.
"Come on, Slip…"
Then the other Arwing finally slowed, and Falco's ship overtook Slippy's.
Falco was the first to land on the Venomian soil. As he approached the ground he braced himself for the impact.
The Arwing shuddered violently as it contacted the surface. Falco was shaken around like a rag doll, to his chagrin.
"Crap!" he squawked.
Then the world around him ceased quaking and the bird was given an opportunity to realign the rocks inside his head.
He never got the chance, because the ship shook once again as something landed nearly on top of it.
He could nearly hear the voice replaying in his head. "Incoming!" Slippy would have said, if the comm line hadn't been dead.
Like the rest of both ships.
When Falco finally got sick of the rumbling, he looked at the thing that had tried to crush him.
"Slippy?! Learn to steer!" Falco cried furiously, then realised that the frog couldn't hear him from inside the cockpit. He grunted in frustration as he spotted a humongous crack in the glass. No good for space flight.
Dang it!
Falco emerged from his Arwing, having to shove open the cockpit because none of the Andross-forsaken controls were working, save for the G-Diffusers. The blue compartments had only suffered a ding in the metal and a scratch in the paint job here and there.
He jumped down onto the planet's surface and observed the mess of scrap metal before him. Both Arwings were smoking in places, and one of Falco's ship's wings had been mangled and almost completely detached. Any parts behind Falco's cockpit were lodged underneath the fuselage of Slippy's Arwing.
Well, this is a barrel of laughs.
"Slip, get outta there," Falco yelled.
There was no movement for a while. Just before the bird was about to yell again, a confused-looking Slippy Toad clambered out of his cockpit, falling face first into the dirt in the process as he attempted to jump down from a wing.
Slippy swore in a rather out-of-character fashion under his breath, before lifting himself off the ground.
"What did ya do with the Arwings this time?" Falco asked accusingly, crossing his arms and staring at the shorter frog with an annoyed expression.
Sure, go ahead and ignore that near-death experience, Slippy thought sourly. "I didn't make the Arwings malfunction!" he argued.
"Oh really. Then who did?"
"I have no idea! It could have been some sort of eternal interference for all I know, birdbrain."
Falco was about to retort, but stopped. Maybe Slippy actually didn't do anything.
"There might have been radio waves or a jammer of some sort," Slippy continued, a lot calmer by now. "This is Venom, you know."
They both took in their surroundings.
"Some 'uninhabitable planet', huh," Falco remarked. "Then why are we not being choked by toxic gases or melting from contact with corrosive substances?"
"Probably because there are no 'toxic gases or corrosive substances'," Slippy replied matter-of-factly.
The two took sideways glances at each other. "Andross?" they said in unison. Everyone in the System probably knew that the (now) dead monkey had been a maniacal scientist. From eyewitness accounts (namely, Fox) Andross had been mutated somehow, more than likely by his own hand. It was highly probable that he had done something to his home planet as well.
To be specific, trying to terra-form it.
However it seemed to be a failed experiment, never going as far as creating a place for plants to grow; only leeching the harmful stuff out of it, rendering it barren.
"Oi, you's there!"
The two teammates froze, turning to the direction the strange voice had come from.
"Someone must have seen us go down!" Slippy squeaked.
"Shut it, Frog-face," Falco hissed as they spotted a lone Venomian soldier coming towards them.
"Who are you's?" the Venomian yelled, a primate like most of the rest of the army. His accent was odd, almost amusing.
"What's it to you?" Falco said back, just as loudly.
"Falco, what are you doing?" Slippy whispered urgently. "How do we know this guy doesn't have reinforcements?"
Falco shot him a look that said, "Doesn't matter," and turned back to the monkey.
"Fer all I know, ye might be spies or somethin' fer that Cornerian excuse fer an army!" the soldier said menacingly, approaching the two.
"What if I said we weren't?" Falco asked slyly. It was a white lie, and Falco and Slippy knew it. Technically, mercenaries such as themselves weren't part of the army.
"Well, then I'd take ye fer interrogation, or just shoot ye if I felt like it." The monkey brandished a blaster, then cast a glance at the two ruined Arwings. "What's that mess ye've got there, eh?" He then saw a red symbol on the side of one of the wreckages. "Hey, isn't that the Star Fo-"
There was a flurry of movement, and the primate fell to the ground, out cold.
"If in doubt, knock 'em out," Falco said as he brushed off his wings.
"Sure, sure. Nice piece of advice," Slippy muttered, frowning at the unconscious soldier slumped on the ground. "So what are you going to do with him?"
Falco dragged the limp monkey over to the wreckage of their Arwings, and slid him underneath the shattered wing of his ship.
"No one will ever know." He leaned against the fuselage of his ship.
Slippy suddenly dropped to his knees. "We can't get back to the Great Fox like this," he said mournfully.
*.*.*.*.*
"I knew I should have gone with them."
Fox McCloud strode back and forth anxiously around the bridge of the Great Fox.
"If anything went wrong they would have sent a distress signal," Peppy debated.
"But what would have happened if the signal got intercepted? What if there are jammers down there and they've been downed, and we don't even know it? Barrel rolling isn't going to help them now!" Fox ranted, flailing his arms in the air. "I don't even know how I came to the decision of not going with them."
"They're top pilots… as long as Falco's babysitting Slippy's six. Anyway…" The older rabbit was thoughtful. "You could try a somersault...?"
Fox nearly smacked Peppy in the face right there and then.
*.*.*.*.*
"What are ya, mad?!"
Falco stared wide-eyed and angrily at the clueless toad as they walked towards a giant metal dome, a Venomian base.
"I didn't do anything!" Slippy moaned.
"Exactly! You think you can run in there with that thing on? It's basically like saying: 'We're Star Fox!' It's suicide!"
"What we're doing now is suicide," Slippy snapped back. "…What are you talking about?"
Falco groaned and rolled his eyes. He yanked at Slippy's jacket and asked: "What do you think this means?" He motioned towards the material in his grasp.
"It's our crest."
"Yeah! Would you like to show that off to the monkeys?"
Then it dawned on Slippy. "So what do you want me to do about it?"
The blue bird face-palmed. "You're hopeless…" he mumbled.
"But doesn't yours have it too?"
"I already got rid of my crest." Falco twirled around, and almost fell over. He showed off the back of his flight jacket. It was blank where the Star Fox symbol should have been.
"Alright," Slippy said, not hiding his dismay. "I'll get rid of it."
He pulled at the crest several times. Falco was becoming ticked, but before he could reach out to do it himself, the frog finally ripped off the red crest and chucked it away to the side.
"Tada."
"Thank you. Now we can waltz in there and they'll think twice before decapitating us," said Falco, giving Slippy a sarcastic pat on the back.
"Yeah," Slippy muttered. "It wasn't my idea to strut into Andross' leftover minions. So what ideas do you have, Owl?"
Falco struggled not to whack Slippy in irritation. "We're gonna get in there, pretend we're new cadets, then break outta there with shiny new ships. We'll fly all the way home and live happily ever after."
"So how much of that are we going to actually do?" Slippy looked at him expectantly, wanting an explanation before both of them got themselves stuck in some sort of inescapable rut.
Falco abruptly tugged Slippy behind a conveniently placed rock, away from any intrusive Venomian eyes.
The bird was suddenly very serious. Slippy was secretly relieved that Falco was no longer being a jerk.
"What I'm thinking is," Falco began. "We'll get in there and pretend we're new arrivals for the Venomian army. We'll get the inside story and blend in as best as we can before we escape… maybe even do some reconnaissance while we're there. When we get the chance, we'll 'borrow' some ships and make a break to the Great Fox and hope we don't get caught out."
"That sounds like a plan," Slippy mused, having not seen this cunning and calculating side of Falco before. "So when you say 'borrow' ships you mean hijack, am I correct?"
"Duh."
"… Let's do it!"
Falco blinked at Slippy's change of heart, then mentally shrugged. "… Just don't do anything retarded, alright?"
He pulled Slippy out from behind the rock again, and they continued towards the base.