Fox McCloud was flying in his Arwing so boorishly that the concept of time felt riddled with the design of failure. He knew that such travel would take him to one of the new interstellar planets that would be implanted with surveillance. He heard one was full of bloodthirsty Dingoes with disarming language and spearheaded sticks. The idea of heading to such a place recalled a succinct note for the predilection of perishing alone. That said, Fox was not depressed on these recon missions, no, he was forthright in keeping the Lylat system in a jaunty semblance of order. Normally the openness of space was soporific in the inability to feel motion, but he was more awake than ever as the rouge planet eloquently titled "that new one that looks like cheap caramel candy" came into focus.
Fox, being a older "warfur", tended to think of his thoughts as thinkers without him, but he was doubtless in believing it when the boredom had spread itself thick. This planet was uninhabited and as much as it looked like a burnt cheese puff from the market stalls. It came across more like a cheese puff that gone up snout first and then was harshly sneezed out onto the grass near the pointless market stalls that sold outdated technology.
Fox proceeded his descent into the atmosphere. The turbulence was just shaky enough to cause disorienting turns of phrase. Fox would normally just tell himself the mantra of "Justice is only for the righteous". This used to be the phrase for possible military recruits who were encumbered with commercials involving loud tunes full of virulent guitar, heavy bass, and jingoism. The new catch phrase in rotation was used to capture the antebellum spirit of historical revisionism, "Let the planets align." It was indeed a weak catch phrase that played on the idea of astrology bringing people together, and as much as Fox was a "Leovir Phase 2 Reclining", he actually felt military catch phrases needed less manifest destiny and more onomatopoeia. Of course not directly, but more in the feel of saying it. He imagined a laser coming right out of his screaming maw saying something bombastic, yet misdirected as cloying.
The planet dropped its pants. Fox confused the shape of something phallic. Banana, cucumber, pipe, tail, gigantic chef hat, tailpipe, really gigantic top hat, two bows barely above the brim opposite direction, no, this was only the clouds mutating from shades of cheddar to ballooning whipped cream flaring outward, the kind on sundaes. Fox wondered if today was not Sunday, or in Cornerian terms, Vulday 1. The days of the week on Corneria, for reference are: Vulday 1, Vulday 2, DayPepper 1, Daypepper 2, JamesDay, WarDay 1, Warday 2, Vulday 3. Fox knew the term "Sunday" from a hairless monkey's wallet (shown to him to explain it was not JamesDay)...on the protoplanet that looked liked succulent lettuce? Or maybe it was the cerulean marble, or the granite planet. The vulpine mercenary, pilot ace, best friend, good son, veteran, grinned at the rhyme of granite planet, and knew the jot the term in his journal, preferably in quotes to note the frivolity of the term.
The Arwing delineated into the planet's moist and almost lifelike, homeostatic air. Multiple diagnostic meters now leaned the right way. Beeps were silenced by the goodly fortune of smooth sails. The joystick felt small in his paws again. The layout beneath him was flat. Light had no vacancy or semblance of a home base. Either the clouds were that thick or this was their Dingo version of night. The Dingo word for night was technically big blanket, which was translated as "Wodo Wvcht", and Fox was at the toddler level of the Dingo langauge (hi name fox, peace hands, friend). There was no phrase book or dictionary for...Dingan (Dingoese?!), but prisoners were prisoners and Fox's mid-twenties lurched the memory forward. He was a guard/warden in a wonky jail where one of the lifers was a Dingo, male, probably in his fifties or sixties itself. Having never met a Dingo before, Fox had attempted communication over and over until they finally worked out a few words to each other. One of them was food (Ftid), some variation of go away (Bvey Klis!), and Wodo Wvcht, which was always said when lights out were lights out like clockwork. The Dingo of course had said it when it died too, but Fox wondered if that was fear or accepting the sauntering justice of the darkening night.
Four identical cameras started flashing, two attached under each wing, one on the nose, one on the tail. Color photos, black and white, quantum zoom, infrared, ultraviolet, thousands of filters for every sense of clarity and ineffable misuse, automatic minus the trigger constantly pressed in 4/4 time with Fox's paw. Instantly sent back to the Great Fox with aplomb, then to the Cornerian Armed Forces with the kind of warming indifference that might one day grow up to be aplomb. Even the mountains way off in the distance would be captured in their molting social anxiety. The whole planet became a movable feast of images that would have made his father a red fox in jealousy. No longer did a mercenary have to risk anything, especially a mercenary who now filled out time sheets. Life was doled out in hours now, but the overtime and double time and triple time and time and a half at least made his numbers sing. The spacecraft drew out its fuel in a hightailing jettison, roaming in circular and diagonal patterns across the whole planet. Fox wondered if any Dingoes would be caught in some embarrassing situation, not knowing of the distant arbiters. He imagined his life was probably on someone's screen right? Stained with love rubbings or virulent scratches, wishing they were him lofting across nothingness into those spinning clutches of terrestrial importance. Maybe just the youthful him in teenage conflict, killing Andross and his crapulent face. Back when he used to play flight simulators and first person shooters and municipality builders after every StarFox mission, counting the numbers backward from his moment of creation to the blistering moment when he yanked the plug. Crashing into meteors, mowing down teammates and enemies alike, turning on all the disasters: finite, brunt, callow, call its name before it all turns too immortal, have fun and know how to take it away.
The clicking motion of pictures stopped and Fox knew his voluntary departure on this planet of imminent domain was imminent. Once he was back in space, the cameras would detach and await their incoming satellites. They would conjoin in their sisterhood and be the roving eye of some poor suckling furhead or worming bird next to an engineering laptop. They were the poorer bastards. They had to come up with the future, placate all those endless feeds of visual platitudes into a tangible military excursion.
Fox knew that did not rhyme, but felt happily committed to placing the phrase in his journal along with "granite planet". All this thinking made it seem like such bromides were fans of his too, it was not too far off from all the other thoughtful measures that commissioned his mind. At least when he wrote them down, they were like him.