Redline

Author's Note: Well, I guess I'm actually coming out with two oneshots to announce a return. Hah. Well, long roadtrips will do that for you. You have plenty of time to read, write, listen to music, and of course, sleep.

This is quite a departure from the typical Star Fox fanfiction- and no, this does not relate to an ending of Star Fox: Command. It's just an exploration of how Fox met Falco (at least, an alternate one). Totally alternate universe, and I know it contradicts a lot of things in Star Fox canon. And just for reference, a Viper is a Cornerian Fighter.

This is also my first story written in first person perspective, and some mild language. I hope you all don't hate it too much.

Oneshot…Redline

Perfection never seemed to matter. Neither did performance, nor did integrity, or even capability. It was all about your transcript, and how you looked to your commanding officer. It's why I left the military.

It wasn't that I hadn't made any friends during my tenure at the Academy. In fact, it was quite the contrary- I found the atmosphere liberating, and my classmates all had a spirit of companionship. We were all in it together, and we knew we'd get our wings.

That was the first year. As the studies got harder, the examinations more rigorous, some of us started doubting that shining ideal. And whenever that happens to a person, when their one hope wavers- well, it doesn't always bring out the best in you.

Take Jerry, for instance. He was a white mouse who flew straight as an arrow and wouldn't even blink if he happened to hit a mine. He was that tough. But mathematics didn't come to him. He started cheating, copying off other people's notes and tests. Eventually, the commander, a one Major Pepper, had enough. Jerry was expelled after one misdemeanor too many.

He got a fair send-off, though, that much was for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a civilian pilot somewhere, or maybe a mercenary. If it's the latter, I can definitely sympathize with him.

Not that I couldn't have made a good career in the military.. You know the saying, "friends in high places?" Well, that's what I had, and more. My father, James McCloud, died a martyr under the orders of the same Major Pepper. This was a year after Jerry's expulsion though- by then, those above had marked Pepper for something grand, and he was given a promotion straight to General.

As his first assignment, Pepper was tasked with quelling a brief conflict in one of the Cornerian provinces, ultimately due to his personal relationship with the principle foe. This was a Dr. Andross Oikonny, a conniving, cynical bastard who'd shoot his own mother if he could continue what he loved best- creating genetic freaks in the laboratory.

Well, one day, the Cornerian High Command had enough. One of Andross's 'experiments' got loose and destroyed a quarter of a city before a bunch of pilots brought it down. One died in a suicide run.

That fight was over in my senior year. We never once got the chance to fly against his pilots. Not that there were many. Most were employees who just liked the guy. No combat experience. But his biological weapons- those were something else.

In any case, though, the 'war' was over before it had begun. I guess Andross didn't really want to fight. He was a nationalist, after all- albeit, a twisted one.

General Pepper exiled the geneticist to Venom. The planet was barren, almost inhospitable- the atmosphere was laced with trace toxins. Andross's life expectancy wasn't gauged at more than an additional decade or so at best.

They were wrong. They were all wrong. Pepper began issuing regular patrols, sending them to watch Venom. On the surface, nothing looked wrong. But one day, one of the pilots returned with an anomalous reading in his sensor logs. It was energy, a large spike of it on one of the northern continents. Normally, you wouldn't even know that- the poisoned land was the same dull color as the acidic, copper-tainted seas.

That could have been anything- a sudden volcanic eruption, a particularly violent thunderwheel- but it was the energy's frequency that was disturbing. It wasn't a gamma burst, a flash of light, or a rush of heat characteristic of Venomian thunderwheels. It was a low frequency radio wave.

More than that, it was a band lower than any communications technology of the day would go. To do so would be pointless- range would decrease to mere feet. Which ruled out the possibility of communication beacons, or electrical interference- it had to be biological.

And for a source that large? Pepper didn't even want to imagine what Andross could have developed in the intervening years. I was fresh out of school, and as a junior pilot in the ranks, I wasn't even considered.

In fact, no one was. Pepper went straight for someone he knew to be dependable- my father. James McCloud and the first Star Fox team was called in for the job. The move was applauded by the public- but by no means was it a publicity stunt. I've since seen the transaction records- Pepper knew it was dangerous, and so did my father. The fees that were charged were incredibly high for a mercenary group.

Pepper paid without batting an eye.

Warp travel was still in its infancy, and there were no ships capable of attaining the speed of light available to carry my father to Venom. So he took off with his wingmates, Peppy Hare and Pigma Dengar in their sleek Arwings, fresh from the R&D lab.

I know what happened next only because of Peppy. My father took several local warp streams, permanent constructs in the fabric of space that accelerated a ship safely, and without chronological displacement to a given point.

They came into orbit around Venom when they saw it again- a brief spike in energy. As per orders, Star Fox descended into the murky atmosphere, relying on sensors alone to find their way.

They came out of the cloud cover, only to be immediately attacked by swarms of fighters and ground artillery. Even in Arwings, they didn't stand a chance. My father took down Andross's cruiser before Pigma, who'd turned his coat only minutes before, blew him and his Arwing to oblivion.

Peppy barely made it. And when he got back, I didn't cry, I didn't sob.

Instead, I applied for sick leave. The sympathetic General Pepper forced it through command, despite the general mobilization sweeping over Corneria. Not that this would amount to anything- despite public outcry, the situation with Venom would remain a stagnant stalemate for the next ten years.

In the meantime, I had resigned from the military and moved in with Peppy, who lived on a pension and the occasional odd job. I began taking these as well, and let me tell you- a famous son or not, military contracts to mercenaries who aren't the best aren't worth crap.

I'd just finished up a dull escort run when I noticed a sign in the corner of my eye- a multiterrain race. I could say that my interest was piqued, that I felt the tug of destiny- but truth be told, I was just bored, and it wasn't like I had anything more interesting to do. I mean, come on- this was Katina we're talking about. Until just before the Lylat War, the place was a backwater planet with one or two military outposts and some small cities with a combined population of maybe twenty million.

More people lived in my neighborhood, heck, literally, my backyard in Corneria.

In any case, I wandered down the road until I found my way to the main office, and I was surprised to find it to be a clean, well-to-do establishment. I signed up, called Peppy (he wasn't home- I left a message), and went over to a little pub nearby for some food and lodging.

Place was packed. There were folks from all over Lylat- heck, I could swear I saw some of Andross's lizards. Bit hard to mistake the uniform- so drab and dull that you'd die of shock if anyone wearing it walked next to a white wall.

I settled in for the night, what with the race being in two days and all. All through the night, I could hear folks powering up their engines for some practice runs out on the Katinan plains.

It was well into morning when I decided to join them. I settled into my Viper, which I had been allowed to take with me when I left the force. The engine was military grade, built to exacting specifications to take the toughest of blows. But it wasn't the fastest ship on the force, and some of the ships here, many redesigned fighters, interceptors, and smuggler ships looked a good deal faster.

In particular was one ship that looked almost like an Arwing. A fat green toad was tempering the hull with a torch as an avian of some sort watched carefully. I figured the bird was an onlooker and the toad was some hot rod pilot. I'd learn how wrong I was the next day.

In any case, the plains were empty. Despite there being almost fifteen other ships out there with me, the wastelands were so vast that if you crashed or your engine stalled, you'd be walking back over them for years before you got anywhere, if you didn't get lost.

That night, I kicked myself into gear and began to tune up my machine. I had, in all honesty, just realized that there was a prize for every entrant divided in terms of place- hit number one, and you got a full half of everyone's entry free.

The next morning, there was a nasty fog that'd rolled in from one of the nearby seas, creeping over the flat landscape like a blanket. The sun rose sometime later and burned through the fog, first tearing holes in the pall, then shredding it away.

I was startled by the sheer number of craft that showed up- a mile across, and to make the turning fair, the staggering of the lines stretched the starting line into a band half a mile long. The starting signal was the detonation of an artillery starburst over the center of the horizon.

There was a flash of light. About three craft leapt forward, and were immediately disqualified. The calmer veterans, and some of the first timers, like myself, recognized that was merely the flash of launch, not detonation. My eyes tracked the flight path of the plasma round.

All at once, it exploded into a star of flame, and my paw eased the throttle forwards. People in the crowd and those watching the race on viewscreens and holographic projectors booed profusely, I'm told, ,by the fact that within half a second, I was far in the back of everyone, and I stayed there fore almost fifteen seconds.

But I knew what I was doing. I knew how my Viper worked, how the engines would begin to lock up and lose performance and efficiency if pushed fast from even a warm start or standby. As the constrictors warmed up, began to open up, and the flame from my trinary engine ports reached back and threw me ahead. There were cheers as I rapidly advanced up the field and dodged through the first line of stragglers, then through the second. Finally, as the block began to thin out, I was up among the leaders.

The sneering, arrogant grin of a blue falcon in the vehicle next to me showed me that he was unafraid of my quick work, and I soon found out why- no matter what I did, I couldn't get ahead of him. He was too fast, his movements too precise, his reactions far too swift. I gritted my teeth and pushed on.

At this point, we hadn't even left the first straightway yet, and a good number of contestants were still right behind us- twice, I heard the commentator's voice over the communications channel, announcing that some racer or another had run directly into my exhaust and was suffering because of it.

That was their fault- not mine. My fingers hovered over my boosters. I was prepared to try something quite risky. Thus far, everyone had stuck to a near-ground height. It was time to shake things up.

There was a confirming tone from my computer, and twin ion rockets on both of my wings flared to life, glowing brightly. I could feel my speed grinding up, first slowly, then with increasing rapidity. Beside me, the falcon mirrored my move.

Then, I pulled up on my controls. I gained altitude almost unnoticeably, while the crowd was focused on my competitor's increasing lead as my speed went into gaining altitude. I seized my controls, hit the flaps, and opened up with my thrusters.

Abruptly, I went sailing up and away, quickly falling into eighth place in linear distance, but now almost two hundred feet above them all. Before the commentator even realized what I was doing, I'd already closed my flaps and prepared my engines for full atmospheric burn.

There wasn't enough clean air down there to have used it previously. Unknown to most, the Viper's engines were dual feed- in proper conditions, they could take advantage of a planetary atmosphere or oxygen pocket in space and augment its own thrust.

In a steep angle dive, it would give me maximum thrust- coupled with the booster rockets, probably more. And I still had one trick left up my sleeve.

I angled my nose downwards, drawing gasps from onlookers (or so I'm told) when my Viper went into a dramatic nosedive. Boosters roared to life once more, and oxygenated plasma rippled from my engine nodes, shunting me forward at ever increasing speeds.

It was time for my last trick. I flipped open a set of two fuel valves near my craft's nosecone, and streams of plasma came whistling out. I fired the laser mounted in the nose of my craft, simultaneously shutting the valves.

The effects were earthshaking. The plasma fuel I'd released ignited in a spectacular burst of flame. To everyone on the ground, it looked like my ship had abruptly exploded in midair- when my Viper emerged from the clearing smoke, my plasma wake had been ignited, leaving a fifteen yard trail of sparkling fire behind me.

More importantly, my speed had increased almost to the limits of my ship's endurance. I rerouted power back from the lasers into my forward shields and the G-Regulator. The gravitational field it projected held my ship together, as I rocketed out of the sky like some avenging angel.

By the time I'd returned to typical altitude, I was almost a half mile ahead of the blue falcon, sailing alone. Some burst into wild cheering- a good number of gamblers were swearing by this point.

I came into the first curve, but was unable to repeat the maneuver. I didn't dare place more stress on the already taxed airframe of my ship- my computer was already displaying locations where the structural integrity was being compromised by my speeds.

I made up for this by taking the second curve a little more sharply, shaving a good two seconds off my lap time. The rule was three laps around the terrestrial borders, then into space for a dash over the planet's equator, before diving back into the atmosphere for one last lap around the track in the reverse direction.

Most people were gradually increasing their altitude until, by their third lap, they were well into the clouds. I refused- mainly because the thinner air would restrict the performance of my engines. So while my pursuers remained a good distance above and behind me, I stayed low to the ground, hugging corners and boundaries as best I could.

Yet that blue falcon somehow managed to creep up on me, shortening my lead by about half. As I came banking into the last turn, the air screaming over my wings, he was only fifteen seconds behind me.

It was time for my heavenward ascent. I pulled back on the controls and fired my boosters. Air rammed into my engines, and I repeated my previous trick, igniting my plasma wake with my lasers to rocket me upwards, hurling me past the cloud layer within ten seconds.

My burn ended there, though. As I began to hit the upper layers of the atmosphere, the flame behind my craft flickered and died, leaving the plasma wake once more. The skies blackened around me, and then I was in space.

Unsurprisingly, the falcon was right there with me. His ship seemed to have been specifically built for space- it had made the ascent under full power in less than three quarters of the time that I had. It was nose to nose as we pulled over Katina's equator and began the race.

His ship was easily eclipsing mine in space, despite my best efforts- he knew exactly where to go, to be as close to the atmosphere without hitting stray molecules and inducing drag. I had no choice but to follow.

He was almost over the horizon by the time he began his descent. I dipped my nose, striking the upper layers of atmosphere. Bright flares of red light erupted all over my wings and fuselage, sparking off the shields. One ignited my plasma wake for an instant, but not long enough to help me significantly.

But then again, I didn't need significantly. I knew my fighter performed better than the avian's in the atmosphere. I would come out of the loops in a screaming dive, rather than stay above the track. I thought no more as I entered the loops.

The loops were the method of returning down into the atmosphere- by cycling downwards in a pattern akin to a tornado. Making the loops as tight as possible without smashing into the marking buoys was a badge of skill, and all too often, a coffin for the unwary. I was cautious as I entered the twisting turns.

The ground spun below me. I increased power to my G-Regulator, and the gravitational fields it emitted eased my vertigo and realigned my bearings, despite the whirling terrain below me. My engines glowed brightly as I continued to plummet to earth.

At last, though, I was out of the loops- I could see that my computer had flagged some other competitors, who had just entered the loops above me. I was unconcerned. Again, I switched on my atmospheric burn and blazed ahead. I set my plasma wake alight for what seemed the hundredth time in this race, and pushed my Viper into an almost sixty degree dive. My nose pointed nearly straight downwards, or so it seemed- so much air was ramming itself into my engines that the plasma wake became supersaturated with the gas, leaving a roaring inferno behind me that now extended a good twenty yards in length.

My cockpit shook around me in protest as wind screamed over my hull. The imminent collapse of my shields was being constantly broadcast before my eyes, but I pressed on. I could see the blue falcon, and then, in the blink of an eye, I was past him and below him.

His ship rocked as it took the force of my wake in full, flipping it end over end before the falcon regained control and flew into a full dive after me, knowing my plan.

But despite him tightening his wings ever closer to his hull, my Viper, strained as it was, only moments away from breaking apart, stayed well in the lead and quite ahead. My turn was generously wide to give some relief to my airframe, but the last stretch was taken in a plummeting comet of fire. Behind me the avian's craft edged ever closer as his adjustment of his airfoils became productive- he was now much more aerodynamic than my fixed wing fighter.

The end was in sight, but with my engines overloading as they were, the bird was gaining fast before leveling out. His advance stopped there. On level ground, my thrust still outweighed his increased performance. I was a good five seconds ahead still- maintaining that lead pushed my engines to the absolute limit, while he was forced to dodge the plume of flaming exhaust that marked my trail.

Even still, he was close to edging by me, air spinning up off of his wings so quickly that it was visible as a white mist trailing above and below him. I could see his face, no longer sneering or angry- just a hard determination to win. His engines blazed as he shut off the safeties for his boosters, and I was shocked as I saw a heavy segment of his hull ejected from his fuselage in an effort to throw off weight. Incredibly, he was gaining on me, edging up around my port quarter. His engines were working just as hard as mine- I could see his ship trembling, and its entire stern was blazing red, heated almost to the breaking point by the flow of constricted, overly charged plasma fuel that left a luminescent trail in his wake.

Sparks were flying from both our ships. My Viper shuddered as a panel of armor plating was shorn free, leaving the hull exposed. The metal was almost visibly bending, wracked by the harsh winds. Alarms were blaring as the coolant ventilation system was overloaded, and flame streaked from vents in my ship designed originally to ferry Freon coolant, which had been simply vaporized by the incredible heat.

The line was drawing ever closer. I could see the falcon, still creeping up on me, nosecone piercing the air into two white streams, hull plating glowing almost as red as mine with the heat of the engines and friction. I desperately gripped my throttle, pushing it just a little more, hoping my fuel injectors would widen just a fraction further-

There were roars as I crossed the finish line. I killed my engines immediately, and my inertia kept me aloft for a good ten seconds while I slacked off speed. It was astonishing to most- fighter wings were rarely designed to allow gliding anymore, and my speed was significant thrust to coax even these into a powerless flight.

It didn't last long, though, and I soon had to initialize my engines again for the landing.

The falcon was already there before me, having finished his lap well before the third place contestant, a vixen in the same model Viper as mine. When the cheering stopped as we got out of our fighters, the awards were announced- Fox McCloud, first. Falco Lombardi, second. Fara Phoenix, third.

In that day, I met the two best pilots I'd ever seen- when I reviewed footage, it was only through luck that the vixen, Fara, had nearly stalled out, stopping her from taking the lead, and Falco had been unable to copy my maneuver because of a tuning error.

But in the end, the three of us left as friends. And when I turned to the avian, and asked if he'd fly with me , I received a careless, but certainly not faithless "yes."

That wasn't long before the Lylat War. It wasn't long before Falco's technician, a one Slippy Toad joined up with us as well. From there, it all snowballed, and when we found ourselves staring at a loan release straight from the Cornerian Army on the Great Fox, and four new Arwings in her launch bay, we couldn't do anything but sign the contract presented to us.

And after that? Well, any schoolchild can tell you about that. To me, it's all just ancient history.