Lucy Hare was often considered an odd child ever since she was born. Her parents' very contrasting fur styles had seemingly been thrown out the window to make a new colour - something that she, much like her mother had done when she'd got past eighteen, covered up with some plain brown dye.
She wasn't sure if pink fur, even if it was a more neutral colour than some of the furres who turned up with bright bubble-gum colour, had been the key reason for her father not particularly wishing anything from her; or perhaps he'd just wanted a son. James had one, why couldn't he have one?
Whatever the reason had been, Peppy had forbidden Lucy from entering the Academy of Flight - it had fallen to her mother to make a false identity for her; in fact that was the very last thing she'd ever done for her daughter - she was sent out on a mission shortly after, and never came back. Lucy had attended the funeral but more out of a will to observe protocol than to really pay respect to an empty casket. She simply wanted to get to Venom and find out who and what happened to her mother.
As it stood at the moment though, she still had one more year of Academy to go through before getting her flying licence. That is, if she ever got it, thanks to the good General's unique way of passing female candidates.
There was some hope though - she could get a contract to fly with a privateer group owned by one of her old friends if she did a job for them. Rather eagerly, Lucy instantly agreed, and then asked what the mission was.
"I want these two dead. You can do it yourself, you can arrange 'accidents', but I want these two dead." The hare had been in quite some shock, but wasn't able to back out of the arrangement if she ever wanted a future where she could find out first hand what her mother's fate had been. "Pepper will fail you, Lucy. He failed me, he failed Monroe, he was going to fail these two before McCloud came to their rescue. I'm the only one who can offer you a realistic place."
"I hope you're right, Cyrene," whispered Lucy, pulling her jacket tighter around her in the cold of the high roof she was on. It was settling into near the Winter Solstice, the coldest and darkest point of the year; Lucy could feel the cold winds howling up here on the roof as she looked through a pair of binoculars at the paint shop that Miyu Lynx was expected to visit around now. Lucy had been given the tip-off having asked Cyrene if she could supply her with location information. Miyu was going to be the harder of the two to track down given that her friends and contacts were much more elusive than Fay Spaniel's.
There were still a few minutes left before Miyu's scheduled appointment with the ship decorators, but Lucy was still scanning the area for sight of the bobcat. Not seeing her, she put them to one side, and sat down, huddling up against the cold. She didn't really know anything about Fay and Miyu, except the snippets on the news that had been put out about them - two female recruits on the Star Fox team being the only coherent information piece between all the clips.
Some of these channels theorised that it was their looks that got them on the team, but Lucy knew Fox better than that. Admittedly Peppy hadn't let her see him much when they were young (his potential embarrassment at not having a male successor like James had maybe being a factor; but Fox had always made time to come and see her even if she was two years his junior. He wasn't the sort to just pick a pilot because they looked pretty. Falco on the other hand…
"That's him!" thought Lucy suddenly, noticing a blob of blue down in the city streets below. She picked up her binoculars and focussed them in on Falco himself, who appeared to be in a deep embrace with another figure. Abruptly, they both pulled away, and Lucy found her target.
"Waste of time," said Miyu, grinning as she flicked her short hair back. "You're a crap kisser, blue bird." Falco scowled, but his beak creased into a smile a little as he dug out his wallet and flipped Miyu a fifty-credit piece. The pair of them, on the way to the paint shack, had passed one of Falco's old girlfriends, who had shouted out to Miyu (most likely thinking she was his new partner) that 'Lombardi couldn't kiss to save his life'. In light of this, Falco was willing to trade fifty of his credits for proof of the contrary.
"I bet you're just saying that for the money," Falco as he slanted his eyebrows in an attempt to show off. The lynx snorted, and tried to open out a jean pocket that the Great Fox's washing cycle had obviously ironed shut. Finding it stuck somewhat, Miyu swore and leant against a wall to try and wrench open the denim, when the stone wall beside her ear splintered into pieces with no more than a whistling crack.
"Ow!" yelped Miyu, the credit piece falling from her hand as it clutched a bleeding ear as shards from the stone sliced into the skin beneath the fur. However, her more experienced team mate took the initiative, and grabbed the lynx, shoving her into a nearby alleyway. The bird then withdrew his pistol and vanished out into the street, checking the blast at the wall and then having a guess where it had come from.
"Wherever the bastard is, he's using a silencer - it's why we didn't hear anything," he yelled back rather pointlessly, scanning around in case of another shot. For some reason nobody really knew the reason for, Falco was a very difficult target even for snipers. Most attributed it to the fact that he never ever stood still, but some said that he emitted a strange aura from his feathers. Whatever the reason, ridiculous or no, Mr Lombardi had never once had a problem with standing in full sniper range.
"Call in backup, you prat!" growled Miyu from inside the alley, having ripped off the bottom of her tank top and used it to staunch the blood coming from her ear. Falco rolled his eyes - perhaps it was just the thought of personal decoration on her ship or the bleeding, but Miyu had forgotten that Fox and Fay were in the middle of what would most likely be an hour-long press conference, Peppy was in a tactical meeting which would take even longer, and Slippy was with his father in the labs.
"Like who?" he shot back, reminding her of the situation of the team in their locations. This prompted a four-letter expletive from Miyu as she staggered to the very edge of the alley, her own blaster in hand and looking around with her sharp purple eyes. No shots came out, fortunately for the pair of them, but this time, Falco had an idea.
"Here, Miyu - lets' try using you as bait," he said, and before the feline could object, he had hauled her fully out of the alleyway to stand just beside her.
"The frag do you think you're doing?" asked the indignant lynx as another splinter of stone ripped up from behind them, the shot having gone wide over their heads. Falco's eyes glittered though, and he pushed the cat back into the alleyway, joining her after a minute or so.
"Sorry about that, but…" he began, before Miyu clouted him across the face with an open palm. He recovered from it, rubbing his beak and working his jaw to see if it would still work. "Okay, I kind of deserved that," he admitted grudgingly to the rolled eyes and growl of Ms Lynx. "But on the plus side, we now know where he's shooting from, that you're his target, and he doesn't want to kill you," he said with an expression of a man in court who has just given some vital evidence and is hoping it will be accepted. Miyu suddenly looked interested.
"How can you tell?" she asked in confusion. Falco smirked, tapping his beak.
"Easy - he only shot at you once you emerged fully from the alley, which shows he's in a building at right angles to this alley. Secondly, if he's not nervous, he's inexperienced. A good sniper would have taken you out the second I yanked you out of there." This didn't do much to raise Miyu's mood, as she glared at him from under a stray bit of her makeshift bandage.
"So if it had been a good sniper, I would be dead?" she asked scathingly. Falco looked up for a moment, thinking about the possible permutations of Miyu in range of a good sniper, and came up with a rather unsavoury answer.
"Yeah, you would have been. Could you slap the other side - so it at least feels even?" he asked, wincing a little in anticipation of a woman's wrath. Miyu didn't comply.
"Well, are we going to do something about this bad sniper who doesn't really want to kill me even though I'm his target?" asked Miyu irately, readjusting her ear bandage so it kept it close to her head, and didn't flap around. Falco rubbed his cheek and set his blaster to a few fractions below 'overcharge', nodding seriously.
"Does the pair of us shutting up and kicking him off the building on fire appeal to you?" he asked, eyebrow raised. Miyu grinned a fanged smile, and then let out a triumphant and eager yowl.
"That's my language!" she said gleefully, also cranking up her blaster's power, and moving up, with Falco, towards the alley entrance. Her eyes were more used to dark conditions than Falco's so peeking just one around the edge, she could make out the glints of the dying sunlight on the remnants of glass in some of the buildings. She was looking for a different sort of reflection, which could indicate an open window that a sniper would be looking out.
"Anything?" asked Falco, squinting in the direction she had been looking. Miyu shook her head, having scanned the two most likely buildings where Falco had indicated her attacker was.
"Either they've left, or they're on a roof," she muttered, glancing up at the tops of the two buildings. The sun was behind the two mercenaries, hence the window glare being easy to pick up, but it wasn't illuminating anything sharp on the roof. A few aerials and chimneys, but nothing that looked like a sniper.
"OK - I guess the paint jobs will have to wait," muttered Falco, taking some sort of metal contraption from his belt and locking it on to the side of his blaster. Miyu guessed the impressive looking widget was simply there to detract a possibly unhappy mind from the situation of none of Miyu's paint job on her ship, and for the most part, it was doing a good job. Just to spite Falco though, she opted not to ask what in Lylat the cobbled-together bit of metal was supposed to be.
"You'll have to go across the open bit - he might be crap and or not willing to kill, but I'm not about to go and take my chances if he's got a scope good enough," Miyu muttered, looking back down the alleyway to where it split off into two. Falco nodded, and raising his blaster, stepped out into the open as the cat dashed off down the T-junction. As soon as she was out of his sight, and he'd taken a few more steps into the open area in front of the two tower blocks, his comm.-link buzzed.
"Lombardi," he said quietly into his piece, letting his caller know who had picked up.
"Have you done it?" asked the voice on the other end, somewhat impatiently. Falco looked over to the alleyway, and shook his head - not that it would do much good.
"I ran into problems," he said carefully. There was an irritated grunt on the other end.
"You're not getting your money for slacking off. I want it done soon, and with photographic evidence if possible," the voice added sternly, breaking off abruptly. Falco snarled through his beak, charging up his blaster and marching off in the way he'd come.
"Some people have no patience…"
--
"So, Mr McCloud, last question for you today. Throwing it open to the crowd?" asked the rather agitated alligator, originally Fox and Fay's guide around the newly merged Arspace Dynamics and Phoenix Enterprises and now haphazardly trying to organise the crowd of reporters who had somehow got wind that the two mercenaries had made planet landing and were visiting the factories. Fox had to admit that he was doing a really sterling job, having also had to deal with a bunch of questions hurled at a few of the better known members of the factory when they'd come round the corner to see what all the hubbub was about. Some, most notably Tauv Phoenix himself, had been able to manage them very well, but Fox and Fay's experience with reporters ranged from sketchy to absolutely nothing at all. The alligator mopped his brow with his shirt and pointed to a frantically leaping mouse at the back of the pack.
"Thank you," she said with a smile at the reptile. "Stars And Sports magazine - Mr McCloud, we've already heard earlier that you rejected a race seat here at Arspace Racing to continue with your flying - will you ever reconsider that offer?" she asked, which was responded with a few groans from the redtop reporters, who had been asking nothing but personal and rather pointless questions throughout the session, and probably wanted another.
"I almost daily have re-thinks about it," Fox admitted after thinking about it for a moment or two. "I'm not sure if it's really something for me at the moment though - I'm only nineteen, nearly twenty, at the moment and if I was to launch into such a well-respected race series without assurance that I'd have a perfect team behind me and a veteran racer alongside to help me out here, I'd probably easily get scared out of my wits. Tirren here has already testified to that," he added, gesturing to a black-furred mutt on his right, one of the new racers that Tauv had pressured Arspace to put in a cockpit of one of their race vehicles.
"C'mon Fox - you've done much scarier things than go round and round a race track!" Tirren Gösser interjected, rubbing his black frizzy hair. The canine was pretty young, though about five years Fox's senior, and earlier he'd admitted he'd said he never wanted to go back into one of the ships after the first time he tested it. Apparently Tauv had faith in him, and though many reporters had scoffed at that, the CEO of Phoenix Enterprises was a clever man and often noticed talent in those who most had overlooked.
"Not at over four hundred klicks an hour through tunnels," replied Fox with his eyebrows raised, and Tirren shrugged and grinned.
"Question for Mr Gösser?" asked the alligator, and as another reporter started to ask the dog about any of his superstitions, Fox felt his comm.-bead chime in his ear. He glanced over to a rather harassed looking Fay, who was still watching the others sitting at the table that had been brought up only after a while of the interviewees standing up and taking questions. Obviously, it wasn't a team wide message, perhaps private for him. Fox didn't want to stand up and answer it now, and so ignored the chiming until it stopped.
"Thank you, Tirren," came the distinctive accent of Mr Phoenix, and obviously as Fox was trying to focus on anything other than the ringing, he'd missed the black mutt's question. The young dog quickly vacated his seat and trotted off back towards the direction he'd come, probably now glad to escape the cascade of reporters.
"Miss Spaniel?" asked a voice from the crowd, and Fox glanced over at his team-mate. Fay had taken quite a metaphorical beating from the press and only on her first time, quite fairly, she looked exhausted. It was usual protocol (or at least politeness) to respond to at least five questions from a reporter, but the two Star Fox members had been caught for nearly an hour with only various Phoenix Enterprises staff to take the burden off them with some questions directed at them.
"Mm-hm?" she asked with a hint of sleepiness in her voice. She was sitting up, but any sparkle behind her eyes was very much gone. The alligator seemed to notice this, and like Fox - who also wanted to get away and find out who was calling him - announced that this would be Fay's last question, and scanned the crowd for a raised hand.
"Yes, sir?" he asked, motioning to a Great Dane with close-cropped headfur as he raised a microphone.
"Thank you. Miss Spaniel, you are the only member of the Star Fox team who still has both parents alive. Do you think this at all affects your standing with the other members of the team?" he asked, and Fox felt a slight pinch of irritation at why family always had to be a question topic raised at every press conference, usually only by the young reporters. Was the death of a family member that difficult to really understand or to leave alone?
"No," said Fay decisively, but only after a short pause. "Having parents has never affected my relationship with Miyu; and I see no reason why any others on the ship should be bothered." She added the last bit slightly tentatively though, and glanced at Fox. He shrugged, eager to get away now, and threw in his credit's worth.
"I have no parents, as many of you know, and I have no ill feelings towards Slippy who still has his father, or Peppy, who contacts his mother from time to time. As anyone who studied maths would know, zero multiplied by two is still zero, and that's how much ill feeling I have towards Fay," he said, deciding on being a little articulate at the end. A hubbub of voices began to raise, but the alligator got in there first.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, that was Fox McCloud and Fay Spaniel!" he said, announcing that their time was up, and gratefully the two canids rose up from their seats and began to move off into another corridor. A protest rose up from the redtop reporters, but Fox and Fay paid it no heed. As soon as they were down a few corridors, and a chair was in sight, Fay flopped into it with a long sigh.
"Oh, I never want to do that ever again. Please?" she asked, her eyes closed and head leant back against the wall. Fox smiled grimly, and nodded. It was never nice giving press conferences, but quite often it wasn't a choice he could make. If he refused, the tabloids would portray him as some sort of uncommunicative bastard, and Fox could do without that label when he took a walk through a Corneria park late at night when going to one of his favourite restaurants.
"Hang on, I have to make a call back," he said, opening up his comm.-link and looking through the 'missed calls' list. When he got to the most recent in the list, his eyes widened by some margin, Fay didn't notice, as she appeared to be resting a little in order to recuperate from the interviews. However, someone else coming down the corridor did notice his surprised expression.
"Who sent the tasteless joke?" asked Fara Phoenix, a slight grin on her face as she approached the taken-aback fellow fox. Fox looked up, shaking his head as the fennec came to stand by his side, peering over his shoulder at the list of names. Fox tried to fend off the slight blush rising in his cheeks as Fara leant close. He didn't know the fennec girl very well, but he and Fay had got on well in chatting terms when they'd met her in the Arwing development chambers.
"Wasn't a joke - a ring from an old friend, it would seem," muttered Fox, letting trails of darkness enter his words towards the end. He didn't particularly want Fara to read in, but she was a relatively tall girl, and was easily able to see over his shoulder if she stood on tiptoe. The screen was showing one name, and Fara seemed to realise the slightly shocked expression on Fox's face.
"Fragging hell…" she whistled. "What's he calling you for?" Fox shrugged, placing the bead back in his ear and turning it on, selecting the name 'W. O'Donnell' and selecting 'contact'. Fara glanced across to him with a raised eyebrow - had it been anyone on his team, Fox would have tried to explain his logic to them, but he didn't know how much he could take Fara into his confidence. There were three chimes on the other end before it was answered.
"Press conference. Pretty bad time for you to call," Fox said, unusually for him getting the words down the line first. A chuckle on the other end was familiar enough, the voice that followed it only half-necessary.
"I was in the crowd, pup. Meant I could at least prove I did call you if you try to deny it," Wolf murmured with a note of smugness in his voice. Fox growled, the noise awakening Fay a little.
"Wasshappening?" she mumbled, still trying to wake up properly. Fara helped her out of the chair and filled her in on what she knew of the situation as Fox replied.
"You don't prank-call people, I remember that much - you've obviously got something you want to talk about," he said, trying to keep it short and business-like. As far as he wanted to be concerned for the moment, all Wolf and he had to talk about were their jobs. When O'Donnell replied, his voice was comfortingly to-the-point.
"Fair enough, I'm not in the mood for too much joking either," he said gruffly. "I need to talk to you about that swan girl in our year," he added, and Fox felt his hackles rise a little. Fay nudged him in the side and mouthed 'what is it?' at him, but Fox lifted a palm to quieten her for now.
"I remember her - had some business recently too," he said levelly, not using Cyrene's name. Fay seemed to huff a little at being left out, and fell back to talk to Fara.
"More than business, it'd seem. She came to me asking if I'd do a job for her, taking you out," he said, and Fox flicked his head around, watching to see if Wolf himself was waiting there with a gun in his hand at the back of his neck. "I declined - no need to go paranoid," he added, a tinge of laughter coming to his words.
"Unlike you," muttered Fox. "You've usually been up and ready for my blood." This last comment caused Fara's large ears to twitch, and she relayed it to Fay, who in turn frowned at Fox, most likely for not letting her in on his conversation with an old 'friend'.
"I rank my enemies by priority, and I remember it wasn't you who ripped my eye out," Fox nodded gravely, despite the fact that Wolf couldn't see it on the other end. "I thought I'd get you in the mood to talk a little more - I'm not going to do any more over the phone. We need to talk in person," he added, and Fox narrowed his eyes.
"We'll see," he said, terminating the connection quickly. As soon as he looked towards the two women, he was faced very much with a faceful of rather irate Fay.
"Hey Fox - if someone you and your team had to shoot down in the war and was trying to shoot you down in response is calling you, could you at least let your team know what the deal is?" Fox raised his palms again to try and quieten the dog down, and very fortunately, she backed off to give the vulpine some breathing room.
"Allright, I wasn't going to keep you in the dark if I knew a lot," Fox insisted, and Fay's expression softened a little. "Wolf just contacted to say he had been in touch with Cyrene, and needs to speak to me in person about it." Fay folded her arms and tilted her head off to one side.
"Sounds like a set-up to me," she said sceptically. Fox nodded, but raising a finger, glancing around so that no-one else apart from the two women could hear.
"Except for the fact that Cyrene's one of the few people he hates worse than me," he explained, and at interested looks from both Fara and Fay, he gave a smile and went on. "She was the one who got his eye ripped out when we were all at college together. It was after that Wolf was discharged for being deemed unfit to fly a ship for Corneria. Wolf blames me for that reason because I didn't know if I could really stand up for him to keep him in."
"She's more of a bitch than I give her credit for," whistled Fay, running a hand through her head-fur. Fara nodded in agreement in the background, but her short hair was left untouched.
"Obviously he's going to have his chameleon friend nearby even if he says to meet alone, so are you going to play dirty as well?" she asked, her arms folded over her flight suit. Fox stroked his muzzle for a bit, thinking about how to approach this problem.
"We always met at the same place when we had sensitive stuff to discuss, so I guess it'll be the same this time," he murmured. "It's a mix between a restaurant and a bar - doesn't serve heavy drinks, but nor heavy food, a mix of light of the both. Keeps eyes on the business if you're not dealing with a kilo steak," he added in explanation, and Fay nodded.
"So, you're thinking Falco or Slippy disguises himself as a barman?" she suggested, but her captain shook his head.
"They're too well known - you and Miyu too are all over the magazines, otherwise I would have asked you to play a waitress," he admitted, causing the white dog to flush a little, her earlier indignation at being left out of the conversation fading quickly.
"I could do a waiter," Fara suggested, much to the surprise of both mercenaries. "I suppose you're paying a fair price for the ships I'm developing, and you're both nice guys. It could be a favour for you, and I rarely get the chance to leave the labs nowadays, so a night with some interesting purpose would be cool."
"You're sure?" asked Fay, blinking in surprise. The fennec shrugged and nodded.
"Yeah, I'm sure. I'm a pilot first and foremost, but I know how to handle myself when staying quiet - I learnt in order to hear to all the conversations my parents had when I was a teenager," she admitted. Fox and Fay didn't need to ask any more, or ever glance at each other - the difficulties that Tauv Phoenix and Olive Trulli both had during their marriage were another of the stories the tabloids had so loved splashing across other peoples' faces - both knew better than to make a big deal about it to Fara.
"Well, I'll contact you with more details when I get them," said Fox with a smile, and shook Fara's hand firmly, and the fennec fox replied with a grin, shaking Fay's hand afterwards.
"As long as the rest of your guys are in a tree outside with sniper rifles, I think I'll be all right to take the job no other questions asked," she called after them as the two canids were beckoned over by their alligator guide, tapping his wrist computer to identify they were leaving now. McCloud and Spaniel waved over their shoulders even as Fay pulled out her own communications gear - a little more stylish than Fox's in the sense that rather than grey plastic, they were white-laminated with pink muffling plastic.
"Hey, Miyu, are you there?" she asked after selecting a name and waiting for the dial tone to go through. There was a bit of a pause, and then her brow furrowed. "Miyu? Miyu?" Fox now looked round, concerned as panic began to etch into Fay's features. "Miyu? If you're there, pick up the damn thing…"
"Here, I'll try and get Falco," Fox offered, clicking up the number but only getting a snapped line image on his communicator. "He's occupied at the moment…"
--
"Yeah, it's done," muttered the bird into the small bead beside his beak. "Wasn't easy, there was a bit of a distraction, but it's done, clean. And I have the money…"