-.-.-.-.- 7 -.-.-.-.-

Falco gnashed on seeds. He sat across from Fox in the galley of the Great Fox. This was three years ago. They were nineteen, the age where they truly became the hotshot mercenaries of the Lylat system, having already defeated Andross once in the first Lylatian War. Corneria glowed through the row of portholes along the wall of the large dining area. The engines of the ship hummed under their boots.

Fox turned a page in his comic book about a sexy poodle pilot named Fay fighting an evil scientist named Andorf. Fox identified with it.

Falco popped another mouthful of seeds into his mouth. "Did you hear the latest about Andross?" he said, almost sounding bored as he chewed.

"I'm not interested in rumors," Fox said. He didn't look up from his engrossing comic book. Fay was preparing to enter Andorf's lair in her trusty star fighter.

"They say he has a son," Falco said.

Slippy lounged on a couch on the far side of the room from the steel table where Falco ate and Fox read. He was surrounded by gadgets, frayed wires and tools. His eyes perked to attention and he stopped tinkering with a spare ROB hand. "I heard about it too. The nets are talking about it. The word came from Area 4."

"Should I send a card to Venom?" Fox asked, sharp teeth glinting under his lip for just a second in the dim light.

"They say it's some sort of creature," Falco said. "Not ape, not even a Lylatian species."

"Yeah, an alien or some experiment," Slippy said, seeming excited at the thought of the horror of a new Androssian creation. "I wonder if it has a mother."

"Is it a threat?" Fox asked.

"It's an infant," Slippy said. "At least that's what they say. Andross disappeared for two years and now he's back with a baby."

"What's its name?"

"It was something almost unpronounceable. Something like Shee-geer-ooo—"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Fox jolted awake. He was in a queen-sized bed in a beige hotel room. Gold morning light waved through the bland curtains and traced shadows on his orange furred chest. Glass buildings stood through the windows. Pittsburgh. Earth. A human girl lay next to him. Wolf. He said her name and she stirred in the cotton sheets. He said it again and she rolled sideways and peered at him and smiled, then rolled her eyes. "It's too early," she grumbled, adjusting her black tank top. "It's only the second day of the convention. We can sleep."

Fox said nothing, staring ahead at the blank television screen, reflecting a bowl image of himself and Wolf on the bed. His fur stood in different directions. Wolf's blond bobbed hair was frayed against her face.

"What are you thinking about?" Wolf asked.

"Just a dream, trying to remember it."

"Where were you?"

"Back in Lylat I think. With Falco. It's mostly gone now."

She sat up a little and looked at him, studying his face and body. How his eyelids moved when he blinked, the little gold eyelashes, the curvatures of his abdomen where the fur lightened into shades of peach and white just before the brim of his boxers, how his torso rose and fell imperceptibly with his quiet breathing through a wet black nose. Throughout the night, Wolf had slept at least a foot away from Fox, a safe space. But she would still wake up at random points and touch him on the arm, just to see if he was still real, not some prolonged hallucination that culminated the night before when she fell with him from their twentieth floor balcony, saved by his iconic hexagonal reflector.

"What?" Fox asked.

"I'm sorry, I'm still trying to adjust to you existing."

"I'm adjusting too."

The door of the room burst open. Falco and Slippy entered, disheveled and beat tired for 9 a.m.

"Are we interrupting anything?" Slippy grumbled as he casually strolled past the bed. His green face paint was smeared, exposing large swaths of his sweaty chubby white face.

"Did you guys even sleep last night?" Wolf asked, pulling her sheets up protectively. "How the hell do you even function?"

"Red Bull," Falco said, nearly bouncing in. He slapped Fox on the shoulder as Fox rubbed his eyes. "The drink of champions." Falco looked at his hand and saw orange hairs, then orange hairs on the bed that had come off of Fox's matted body fur. "I can't imagine sleeping with all that crap on is very comfortable."

"It's a lot of work to take off and put on," Fox said. "Easier just to keep it on."

Wolf leered at him, smirking.

"Plus," Fox added with a smile. "It helps keep the magic going, right?"

Falco laughed, "Yeah, you make me feel like a mundane."

Fox got dressed and Wolf and the boys took turns showering. Falco spent several minutes standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shirtless, obsessively spiking up his hair in a mohawk and spraying it with blue hair dye. Fox was starting to smell, so he too took a shower but spent twenty minutes drying himself with all the bathroom towels and the tiny little blow dryer attached to the wall. Bathrooms on Earth didn't have the drying rooms he was accustomed to on the Great Fox or in Lylat in general. He then spent several minutes cleaning up orange hair clogging the drain and littering the counter. No one asked why he took so long since they all got enveloped in a heated game of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii that Falco had brought with him to the hotel. The group decided to get breakfast at the small cafe in the lobby of the Westin hotel. Other furries were present, huskies and wolves and rabbits crammed into booths and tables, even at ten in the morning. When Fox, Wolf, Falco and Slippy arrived in full costume, the hostess tiredly grabbed menus from her podium, but hung her attention on Fox for just a few extra seconds. Other furries felt two dimensional compared to the vividness of his fur and paws and perfectly fitted costuming. She led them to their booth among the similar crowd. On the way, they ran into Fox's first group of friends: Anniekin, Niffle, and Jason, who were sitting in a booth of their own, having just ordered food.

"Fox! We were wondering what happened to you," Niffle said, still wearing his same TaleSpin shirt from yesterday. "After the rave, you just disappeared."

Anniekin sat with her arms crossed, elbows resting on the table. Her lip turned upward as she said with surprising malice, "I see you've made friends with the rest of your team."

Wolf smiled thinly and extended her gloved hand, "Hi, I'm Kelsy."

Anniekin didn't take it, instead fingering with a silver chain that connected her black jacket pocket to her black jeans. Her blond hair, similar to Wolf's, fell forward into her eyes. "I hope you guys are having fun. Just remember, it was us who entered you in the Masquerade contest and got you that check. We're your handlers."

"Annie," Jason said queasily. "Chill out on them okay?" He looked up to Fox, his red scruffy hair almost matching the hue of Fox's fur. "Maybe you guys could join us? We can make room." He adjusted his fake blue cheetah tail out of the way and started to move silverware on the table.

"No," Kelsy said turning to the hostess who had been waiting patiently to seat them. "We'll just go to our own booth."

Once seated on the far side of the restaurant, Falco said, "Fox, I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but furry drama is the worst drama."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You're a good looking dude with some surreal fursuiting going on. That girl back there clearly wants a piece of you and is jealous you're hanging with Kelsy now."

"I just met her yesterday," Fox said helplessly, trying to look over at Anniekin from across the room not too obviously. "She's a stranger. I don't even know what a handler is."

"Doesn't really matter," Falco said. "She set her sights on you."

"Those guys are crazy," Wolf said. "You don't want to hang with them anyway."

"Kelsy has her sights set too," Slippy said, his chubby green painted face twisting into a devilish smirk.

Wolf shot daggers at him. "Oh do I Alex? What about you, you like every single new guy we make friends with you horny toad!"

Slippy nearly jumped from his seat, "Kelsy!"

"Guys, guys!" Fox put his hand up. "What is it with you guys? Why do you come to these conventions? Is it to just argue about who likes who? Or who's attracted to who? Or to fight for the attention of others?"

Wolf and Slippy looked away, ashamed.

Falco had been resting his chin on his hand the entire time. "Fox, furrydom is all about attention whoring. That's why people are furries. It gets them attention. What you're seeing is just a tiny…" He looked up at Kelsy across from him. "… little blonde extension of that."

Wolf threw her napkin on the table and got up, sliding around Fox awkwardly to get out of the booth. She pulled off her shoulder pads and eye patch and tossed it at Falco. It bounced off of him since they were made of light cloth and foam. She stormed through the restaurant, zipping past Anniekin's table. Anniekin smiled at Wolf's distress.

Slippy looked at Falco. "You're an asshole, dude."

Fox got up and went after Wolf. He caught up with her in the lobby of the hotel by the gift shop, where regular hotel guests were purchasing newspapers and drinks. Some tried to glance unnoticeably at Fox and the young blonde teenager in tears.

"Wolf, that's the second time those guys have made you run off," Fox said, touching her arm.

"It is stupid," she growled. "Why do I even come here? I've liked Derek for such a long damn waste of time and I only come to Anthrocon to try and get his attention, but he's just a dick to me."

"Derek?"

"Falco!" Wolf cried. "I don't know why I like him. He likes to draw dick girls. And don't call me Wolf, call me Kelsy, okay? I just want to stop roleplaying."

"You never introduced yourself to me," Fox said.

"You didn't either."

He shrugged. "Fox McCloud."

The girl laughed. "Right, right. I'm Kelsy Smith. Just a regular human girl out of high school, unemployed, bored with Earth and the guys on it."

"Then help me get out of here," Fox said. "We'll get out together. I have to help my team. I left them in grave danger, facing a mad scientist bent on killing everything and everyone I know."

Kelsy had stopped crying. "Fox, I don't know how to help you. I don't know how you're here other than what you told me about Andross."

"You've played the games. We can piece this together."

Three furry otters dashed by in oversized costumes, big and brown with white googly eyes. One bumped a regular guest of the hotel, an older woman, who bounced off the otter, arms flailing. She fell onto her hands and knees on the marble floor of the foyer. The contents of her purse splashed across the tiles. The otters didn't care and dashed off in the direction of the convention center where the festivities of Anthrocon were starting up for the day.

"Wow. They don't care about anything, do they?" Kelsy said flatly to herself. "No one on this planet regards anything going on except the fantasies in their heads. This isn't reality. I need to feel something. I need to believe in something that needs me."

Fox went over to the woman and helped her collect her wallet, cell phone, keys and makeup items from the marble tile.

Kelsy watched Fox hand items to the woman. The woman stuffed things into her purse. She didn't regard Fox's alien appearance, quietly thanking him, shaking her head.

I have to get out of here, Kelsy thought. Fox is real. There's more than just this. There's a whole other universe out there. There's a way out. She heard the Star Fox theme song in her head, the pompous intro of horns and strings slowly building up to a boisterous orchestral harmony. Her eyes set on Fox McCloud as he walked back to her with a wide swagger, his white pilot jacket flaring out with the sleeves rolled up, that red scarf tied around his neck, the gleam in his green mischievous eyes as he smiled at her.