Arc VII: Wings in the Wasteland

Part 1: I Got Better

After the long flight from Eladard back to Corneria City, Fox felt like doing anything other than planning his team's next objective. Under normal circumstances, he would have brought Scarlet back to the base with him; but to his frustration, she chose to retire to her apartment and begin dolling herself up for her upcoming photoshoot in Zoness.

Having already relayed the information on the Arwing and Affirmed Security to Rena, Fox hoped that she would have at least gotten a small head start on the operation before he and the rest of his team returned to Corneria. With Miyu traveling back to her friend Fay's apartment to spend a few hours with her, Slippy was the only remaining team member still with Fox at the moment. Like Fox, he would have preferred to be doing something else. He hid it well, but he felt nearly as exhausted as his employer did.

After paying the driver from the airport for his services, he and Slippy stepped out of the courtesy car and walked towards the entrance to the base.

"It's still here, which means that Rena didn't do anything crazy while we were away. That's good…I guess," Fox mumbled. "You've still got Zippy's remains, right?"

Slippy looked at the massive duffel bag slung over his shoulder and replied, "Yeah. It's pretty much scrap metal, though. I don't think there's much we can do with it."

"Well, here's to hoping that USB drive with all the Arwing and Landmaster data on it managed to channel an airline black box and survive being shot with a .50 caliber Gatling gun. Yeah, right—who am I kidding? It's probably fubar."

"Yeah, probably," Slippy lamented.

Approaching the front door, Fox scanned his official Foxfire Enterprises™ ID card and waited until the door unlocked for him. He helped Slippy maneuver his triceratops of a duffel bag through the door, then stepped into the main hallway. He saw Taiga at the receptionist's desk to his left, although Edgar was noticeably absent.

Turning to Slippy, Fox said, "Go ahead and put your stuff away. I have to talk with Taiga and Rena before I need you for anything. Oh, and also, I need the bag with Zippy in it. Can you hand that over?"

"Yeah, sure thing," Slippy replied before tossing his bag to Fox and darting off into the nearest hallway.

Fox shook his head and walked towards the receptionist's kiosk. As he neared it, he looked to his left and observed the hole in the wall created by Slippy's previous fourth wall break. Apart from the sloppily applied police tape that prevented access to the garage on the other side of the wall, it looked the same as it had when he smashed through it. Rolling his eyes, Fox walked up to the receptionist's desk and slapped his hands on the counter.

Distracted by the computer screen in front of her, Taiga went bug-eyed and practically leaped out of her chair. The sudden movement caused said chair to race backwards and fall over, giving Taiga an unceremonious crash landing on the hard tile floor. In the blink of an eye, she jumped to her feet and sprinted to the computer, where she frantically began closing numerous less-than-decent internet windows.

To her horror, Fox caught a glimpse of the many windows before she could close them all.

He crossed his arms and frowned. "Really, Taiga? Watching yaoi porn on company time again?"

The tigress blushed so vibrantly that her white face took on a shade of pink. "I'm sorry! I just opened one link, and one thing led to another. You know how it goes."

Fox retained his unsympathetic expression. "Uh huh. Now, if you hadn't been randomly surfing the internet instead of filing company documents, you wouldn't have seen 'that one link' in the first place. Also, why are you into yaoi to begin with?"

"Hey, stop judging me," Taiga snapped, putting her hands on her hips and facing Fox. "Guys like you love watching girls make out with each other. Why is it a problem if I'm the same way with guys?"

"Because you did it at work," Fox replied. He held up two fingers. "That's strike two—three strikes and you're out at the old ball game, Taiga. Don't do it again."

Taiga lowered her head and sighed. "Okay. It won't happen again."

"Good. Now, where's Edgar? Did he have to go to the bathroom or something?"

"Not exactly…" Taiga trailed off while looking at the empty chair where the morbidly depressed avian normally sat. "I found this in front of his computer yesterday. Here, read it."

She picked up a small sheet of paper and handed it to Fox. In a matter of seconds, the reality of it sunk in.

This ghastly frame returned to dust

My own sustenance failing

My bones, my flesh, they turn to rust

This heart of mine is aching

I thought in time that I would see

My love for her enduring

But now my dearest lies beneath

To be with her, I journey

Fox dropped the poem and snapped, "Oh, for crying out loud. He killed himself."

"That's what it looks like," Taiga replied.

"That's just great," Fox grumbled, "Since Northpoint, we've lost our demolitions expert, our pilot, our logistics guy, my wife, and now the finance officer. Who's next?"

"Hopefully Rena," Taiga suggested, the tip of her spotted tail curling in excited anticipation.

Fox ignored his teammate's dislike for the yellow vixen and instead asked, "Speaking of her, has she been up to anything in my absence?"

Taiga shook her head. "Not that I know of."

"That's interesting, because I think she might have let somebody into the base without my permission. You haven't seen anything like that, have you?"

"Um, no? All my entry and exit files show normal activity while you were away. She never left the building. The only people coming or going were me, Edgar, and a few delivery drivers."

Fox rolled his eyes. "…Unless Rena hacked your computer in the middle of the night and deleted any notifications that would incriminate her."

"Impossible. My password is uncrackable."

"That's not a word," Fox observed.

"It is now."

"It's not, but whatever. Still, you do realize that she doesn't need your password to get in. If she managed to give herself access as a system administrator, she could do almost anything she wanted in here. Since the computers picked up some viruses from your first yaoi-watching session and forced me to get Rena to clean them up, I'd say there's a good chance she has administrative access now."

Taiga frowned. "Dammit. I'm so sorry about that."

"Hmm. It's a bigger problem for you than it is for me," Fox replied with a shrug. "Now you see what happens when you break the rules. It doesn't affect just you—it affects all of us."

"You're right; fine. C…Can you go take care of something else now? I um…actually have a lot to catch up with."

"Sure, Taiga. Remember: three strikes."

"Yeah…yeah, I got it," the leopardess nervously replied.

Having corrected his receptionist's behavior, Fox walked further down the main hallway and turned left into a dimly-lit corridor near the end of the facility. He expected to hear metal riffs emanating from Rena's room down the hall. However, nothing but an eerie silence reached his ears. Creeping up to the door, he knocked and then turned the handle.

An unexpected sight greeted him inside the door. Rena lounged on her bed; but upon closer examination, Fox realized that she was actually sitting on the lap of a black and blue jackal while he stroked the fur on her bare stomach. The yellow vixen held her eyes closed, and every few seconds, a contented 'murr' sound escaped through the smile on her lips.

As soon as the jackal spotted Fox, he froze and stopped cuddling Rena, which caused her to open her eyes.

"AAAAA! Get out! What are you doing in here, Senpai?!" she screeched.

Fox crossed his arms. "Better question: what is he doing in here? And why are you cuddling, anyway?"

Instead of explaining her guest's presence or why she seemed to be engaging in a romantic activity, Rena sat up and pleaded, "Please, don't make him leave! He's harmless! He hasn't damaged anything!"

"That didn't answer my question at all. Rena, you can't just let people in like this."

"But he's my frieeeend," she whined.

Fox rolled his eyes, then addressed Rena's visitor. "Who are you? How do you know Rena… Oh, wait—you're that guy who had the motorcycle in Titania."

"Right. My name's Lucas," the jackal replied. "I was in Zoness doing some research on the Ortega family before Rena invited me to come here."

"Go on," said Fox, ears suddenly on end.

Lucas narrowed his eyes, as if he had no intention to disclose that information. "My research was not meant for you."

At that moment, Fox felt the need to take charge of the situation. In his mind, if he lacked the ability to deal with someone who had no right to be in his base, he had no right to run his own team. "Okay then," he declared, "Unless you tell me what you found about the Ortegas, I'm going to kick you out of my base, and that would really disappoint Rena. You don't want to do that, do you?"

Lucas said nothing back to him and growled instead.

"Last chance, Lucas."

Turning around on the bed, Rena implored her friend, "Just tell him. He needs to know what you found, too."

"Fine," the canine relented. "The person who's really behind the East Fortuna uprising is a 150-year-old duchess of Imperial Macbeth who inherited the entirety of the Ortega family's fortune and is now using it to buy her way back into power. And no—I have no idea how she's still alive at that age."

Fox uncrossed his arms and took a tentative step towards the bed. He tilted his head to the side in confusion. "What's her name? Christina?"

"That's right," Lucas replied. "Look—it makes as little sense to me as it does to you, but that's what everything I saw was telling me. I'll admit that I couldn't find much on the Ortega family. It's almost like they systematically destroyed everything that could have possibly told anyone about them. The one good source I found said that the Ortega Manor in Northpoint caught fire and burned to the ground during the Cornerian annexation of Northpoint a hundred years ago. It might have been destroyed intentionally."

"That's unusual," Fox mused. "Anything else?"

"Yeah. A biographer wrote that Christina had terrible allergies and almost never left the manor because of them. She was gorgeous, though. Thing is, she probably wasn't born into the family."

"You mean, she was adopted?"

"That's what I think. You see, I copied the one picture of the family that I could find, and one of the ladies had a completely different facial structure than the rest. But here—this is what I'm still trying to figure out: the guy who wrote the biography on the Ortega family said that Christina never seemed to age. She also supposedly outlived her husband, and she never had kids. Since that would make her the oldest living Ortega, she's entitled to the entire family's fortune. It's a lot of money."

Fox put his hands on his hips. "How much? Like, C1,000,000,000?"

"Not even close. I'm not even sure it can be measured in numbers. Let's just say that she could buy a country if she wanted to. The Ortegas were some of the wealthiest vassals in the Macbeth Empire back when it existed, which means that they kept a lot of the Empire's cash for themselves. A hundred fifty years ago during the Golden Age of Macbeth, that empire was filthy rich."

"Do you have that picture with you?" asked Fox.

In response, Lucas reached into his cargo shorts' pocket and pulled out his phone. After locating the image of the Ortega family, he turned the screen to face Fox and said, "Christina is the one with the veil and the dress with the corset."

Fox touched the screen twice and zoomed in on the enigmatic vixen. The copy of the ancient image lacked color thanks to the technology of the day, but something about Miss Ortega's face struck him as peculiar. Her appearance gave him a sense of déjà vu, but he could not place it.

"She's beautiful," he commented. "And you're right—she doesn't look like the others at all. My teammate Scarlet told me that she met her in Eladard. Everything checks out, so she has to still be out there somewhere."

"Dammit," Lucas huffed, "Your teammate should have killed her when she had the chance. Miss Ortega is a cunning, crafty bitch who's trying to manipulate the world to fit her vision. She's got deep connections with East Fortuna, Macbeth's prime minister, and the new Titanian president. For the record, all three of those areas were parts of the old Macbeth Empire. I think you can tell what she's trying to do."

Fox raised an eyebrow. "What? Rebuild the empire? Why would she do that? Also, she chose to help Scarlet when she met her. Scarlet told me that Christina wants to get rid of Rafa as much as I do. How does that tie into things?"

"It ties in just fine," Lucas answered. "Rafa is an egotistical, renegade leader who probably poses just as much of a threat to her plan as it does to yours. If he can be removed from power and replaced with someone more loyal to her cause, she'll profit from helping you get rid of him. That's my first thought."

"Why would he end up in power in the first place, though?"

"Well, he is family to her, after all. If you can't trust your family, who can you trust? He might have turned on her somewhere along the way and started trying to call the shots," Lucas suggested.

Fox looked away and stroked his muzzle while pondering Lucas's statements. "In other words, I shouldn't trust her when she says she wants to help us."

"Exactly. She's got her own agenda. If yours works with it, she'll be more than happy to drag you along; but if it doesn't, watch out."

"I'll keep that in mind," replied Fox. "Who were you planning to tell all this to, anyway? The Cornerian government?"

"No—Onyx," said Lucas. "If they didn't tell you already, I used to be part of their group. I left because I thought their work was becoming too high-profile to be effective. I still keep in touch with them on my own terms, though."

"I'm interested to see what they'll do with this. Do you think they'll be able to pin down her location?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Lucas replied, giving Rena a friendly pat on the stomach.

For a moment, Fox paused for thought. Then, he looked at Rena and said, "I need to set up a team meeting over what we're going to do about the Arwing. You already started digging for information on it, right?"

Rena nodded. "Yes, I did. There wasn't much that I could find, but I did pull up a few sorties that the PMC has on their agenda. One of them might have the Arwing in it."

Crossing his arms, Fox replied, "Good. I'll get the team together and set up a meeting a bit later today. Now, Lucas, I need to 'borrow' Rena for a little while."

The jackal leaned against Rena's headboard and replied, "Yeah, sure. You know, I don't have anything going on right now. I was going to go back to Papetoon after saying hi to Rena in person, but if you'd like me to join you on your next mission, I'd be willing to do that."

Rena's eyes suddenly lit up. "Yes! Please, Senpai! Pleeeeease!"

"I won't pay you for it," Fox told Lucas, "But you can help if you want. Just don't screw anything up."

"I don't think you have much to worry about," Lucas assured him.

Fox turned to exit the room, but before he left, he turned to Rena and said, "Come on, Rena. I need to see if you can get anything out of the pile of scrap that used to be your drone. Hey, wait a minute—where's your wheelchair? And your boot?"

Rena smirked. "I got better."

"What do you mean? That's impossible."

"I told you—I got better," Rena insisted. To prove her point, she vaulted off the bed and landed on her hands before performing a triple backflip, which she ended with a flawless corkscrew. After sticking the landing with seemingly no effort, she trotted up to Fox and said, "See?"

Fox admitted that he had become accustomed to the unusual when it came to Rena, but this stretched his willing suspension of disbelief to the limit. "But…how?"

"I'll explain later," Rena replied.

- § -

Forty-five minutes later, Fox and Rena emerged from the latter's workshop, where she had managed to miraculously salvage the all-important USB drive from Zippy's ruined shell. The two walked into the base's main hallway and passed the receptionist's desk, where Taiga pounded at her keyboard in a frantic attempt at making up the time lost earlier. Fox looked at her out of the corner of his eye and smirked, which prompted a nervous blush from Taiga.

As Fox and Rena neared the conference room where the rest of the team was set to assemble in a matter of moments, Fox noticed movement through the darkened glass in the base's front door. Seconds later, the door opened to reveal Scarlet, dressed in a red and black catsuit with mesh sewn into some of the joints in a way that would improve the garment's flexibility. She looked less than excited to be where she was, although Fox never expected her to come to the base to begin with.

"Scarlet? What are you doing here?"

The vixen scowled and stamped her foot against the ground in frustration. "There was a stupid little category 5 hurricane that hit the beach in Zoness where I was supposed to have my photoshoot, and now the beach town is a pile of splinters. My manager said they had to call the shoot off until they could find a new place to do it."

"Well…that sucks," Fox replied, trying to sound less than relieved that the obligation preventing her from traveling to Titania with the rest of the team had been eliminated.

"Damn right it does!" Scarlet shouted. "I was really looking forward to that. I guess I'll try to fly out to Dustball Nation with you while my management figures out what to do next. I'm not really sure what to do about Titania, though. Like I told you before, it's dangerous for me to go there."

With a look of derisive scorn on her face, Rena put her hands on her hips and suggested, "If it's too dangerous, don't go. I, for one, would enjoy a mission where I don't have to see your latex-covered gluteals every other second."

Scarlet's hackles rose. "Was that a threat? You know, I'd be more than happy to put you back into that wheelchair again, you entitled little… Wait—how are you walking again? It's only been a week since you broke your leg!"

"I got better," Rena declared.

Noticing the escalating tension between the two vixens, Fox stepped between them and held out his arms. "Whoa, girls—knock it off. Rena, you know, you've had exactly one mission with Scarlet. There's not much for you to complain about."

"It was one mission too many," Rena replied.

Fox narrowed his eyes and glared at the yellow headache. "Sorry, but for the time being, you're going to have to put up with Scarlet. She's part of this for now."

"Hmph."

He then turned to Scarlet and suggested, "We're probably going to be using aliases for this next mission, so I don't think you going will be much of a problem. If you're concerned that someone will recognize you, you can dye your fur and wear different clothes."

Scarlet frowned, then replied, "Yeah, sure…I guess. The good kind of dye doesn't really wash out for two weeks, though. If I dye my fur, you'd better get used to seeing it for a little while."

"In the end, it's about your safety," Fox shrugged. "Now come on—we need to discuss the mission."

Fox led the the vixens into the conference room. Both Scarlet and Rena avoided eye contact, not wanting to incur Fox's wrath by sparking a fire, so to speak. Inside the room, Miyu and Slippy awaited them. As in the meeting from the previous story arc that dragged on far too long, several empty chairs remained. Recalling the previous arc, Fox darted for the chair at the head of the table and sat in it before Rena could pounce and claim it for herself, even though Fox had every right to it.

Scarlet and Rena filled out the last two seats, with the former sitting between Miyu and Slippy and the latter taking a seat next to Fox. With the team assembled, Fox steepled his fingers and addressed the group. "Thanks for being on time, guys. I really appreciate it. Time is of the essence this time around. I mean, it was important in the last mission, but this time, we're really on the clock."

"How is that?" asked Miyu, disinterestedly resting her head on her fist.

"It's because we only have four days until the Arwing leaves for East Fortuna," Fox explained. "We've got to play this one fast. Because of that, we need to figure out everything we can up front. Scarlet—what exactly did Miss Ortega tell you about the Arwing?"

Scarlet shrugged and replied, "Nothing that I haven't already told you. The fighter is with Affirmed Security in Northern Titania, and it's going to ship out for East Fortuna in four days. I'm assuming if we try to nab the fighter, one of us is going to have to fly it."

Upon hearing this, traces of worry appeared on Slippy's face. "Uh, guys, can any of you even fly a fighter jet?"

Both Scarlet and Fox nodded. "We trained to use them a while back. It's why we can fly the transport plane around if we need to," Fox replied. "Still, it's been a really long time since I touched the controls of a real fighter instead of the ones in the simulator in the base here. Both Scarlet and I can fly a fighter, but when it comes to trickier maneuvers, there's definitely a hard limit to our skills."

"That concerns me," said Rena, placing her large tablet on the table in front of her. "Because based on what I found about the sorties Affirmed is going to run, it looks like it might be an escort mission. If you wanted that fighter, you'd have to shoot down the escorts. If you didn't catch them by surprise and take them down quickly, it could turn into a dogfight against professional fighter pilots, which you'd lose. Plus, if you shoot down the escorts, the base might launch missiles at you, which, well…good luck dodging those."

Miyu nodded before taking the opportunity to add her opinion. "That's assuming they're going to actually fly the Arwing to East Fortuna. That's not how most countries get their fighters, is it?"

"No, most of the time, they're transported partially assembled in cargo planes like ours," Fox replied. "In this case, though, I think they might actually fly the fully assembled thing to East Fortuna. It's a very complicated piece of equipment."

"Can it even fly that far? It's a long way from Titania to Fortuna," Slippy noted. "What's the Arwing's range?"

Rena consulted her tablet for a moment, then answered, "2,500 miles. It can make the trip on one tank of fuel."

At the head of the table, Fox grimaced while stroking his muzzle. All indications suggested that an outright theft of the fighter would not come unchallenged. Yet, at the same time, he had a sickly feeling in his stomach that neither he nor Scarlet possessed the skills to take down the fighter's escorts—and that assumed that the Arwing shipped with at least some of its weapons intact.

"If we only had more time, I'm sure we could think up a way around this. Man, we can't let that thing get to East Fortuna."

While the rest of the team stared at him and pondered the difficulty of the task at hand, Fox wondered if he could develop his skills enough by training nonstop in the simulator for the rest of the day. "Useless," he realized. "The other pilots have been doing this as a career for years." However, thinking of the simulator gave him pause for thought. An idea formed in his mind—a horrible, ill-advised idea with failure written all over it. Yet, at the same time, it seemed like the only plan that had any real chance of success.

"I just thought of something," he announced.

The rest of the team stared at him, waiting for his explanation.

"My Uncle Peppy is a Zoness War air force fighter ace. He might be a bit old…and fat…but he's definitely more cut out for the job than I am."

The collective air inside the boardroom fell more rapidly than a lead balloon after being riddled with bullets. "Fox, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think he could handle the g-forces," Scarlet opined.

While staring at her tablet, Rena suggested, "I don't know about that. Looking at these blueprints here, the Arwing has a special device called a 'G-diffuser' built into it. It's supposed to cancel the g-forces in the cockpit, which means that the only real limit to its maneuverability is its frame, which is as heavily reinforced as anything that's been put together to date."

Scarlet nodded in surprise. "Well then, there might be something to this. There's just one problem. It's kind of a big one."

"What's that?" Fox asked.

"How exactly is your Uncle Peppy going to convince these mercenaries to let him fly the Arwing? I'm sure they already have a flight roster set up for this."

"That is a problem," Fox agreed. "Rena, what do you know about that flight roster?"

"Well, for the sortie they have planned in four days, they have three pilots listed. I can't find anything on them in the Affirmed Security files, but I might be able to do more digging about them online. I've got their names, if that helps."

"Sure. Why not?"

"Okay," said Rena, scrolling through her tablet's screen with her finger. "…The names of the three pilots are 'A. Vela,' 'F. Lombardi,' and flight leader 'O. Onassimus.' Give me a minute, and I'll see what I can find online about them."

The team sat in silence for two minutes until Rena looked up from her screen and asked Fox, "What kind of animal is your uncle Peppy?"

"He's a hare," Fox replied.

In response, Rena pursed her lips and nodded at the image on her screen. "Hey, that's a coincidence. Flight leader Otto Onassimus is some kind of rabbit, although he looks pretty skinny in this picture here."

Cringing, Fox collectively asked the team, "Uh, does anyone here know of any extreme, rapid weight loss solution?"

"Liposuction," Scarlet answered. "I uh…had that done after I graduated high school. It worked, in case you didn't notice. Being a naturally big girl sucks."

"Say what?" asked Miyu, her ears standing on end. "I thought you were all natural."

"I am," Scarlet insisted. "Well, I've never had any injections or implants, at least. Although… I've been kicking around the idea of getting a boob job lately. The girls are starting to sag a bit, unfortunately. I'll be 30 before you know it, so I've got to be prepared."

Feeling awkward and slightly aroused by the direction in which the conversation seemed to be heading, Fox shook his head and stated, "I don't think liposuction is a good solution here. Is there anything else that doesn't involve surgery?"

"Laxatives," Miyu suggested.

This time, it was Slippy's turn to decry a proposal. "Nope. Doesn't work."

A devious grin appeared on Miyu's face. "Is there something you wanna tell us?"

"Nope."

A massive rush of air escaped from Fox's mouth. He leaned forward and leaned his head on his open hand in frustration. "Are you sure there's not anything that would work?"

"I've got something," Rena suggested. "It's called 'put down the cheeseburger, you farking lard roll.' Just stop eating, and you'll get thin. It worked for me."

Fox looked back at Rena with a displeased, dismissive frown. "You're naturally thin. Your metabolism is faster than a mosquito's. Also, crash diets don't work. Extreme food rationing was part of my military training, and all that happened there was that I felt like crap until I was allowed to eat again."

Scarlet rolled her eyes. "Ugh—don't remind me of that. That part of the training sucked."

"Still not as much as Hell Week, though," Fox added. "Anyway, I guess there's no way to make Uncle Peppy thin in three days. It looks like our best bet is to find him a flight suit that compresses his fat and makes him look a bit thinner."

With a shrug, Miyu suggested, "Eh, that might be enough. Those suits make everyone look fat, anyway."

"All right then—onto the next order of business," Fox continued, "We need to figure out how we're going to get Uncle Peppy into the base and into the Arwing. I'm pretty sure they're not going to just let us walk in and jump into the top secret experimental fighter. I've got a few ideas, but if anyone else has anything they'd like to suggest, let's hear it."

Miyu raised a finger and replied, "What if we did what we did with Wolf in his base? Pose as IT people and use that as a way to get into the base?"

"Lightning doesn't strike twice, as they say," said Fox. "Even though that idiom is a pile of crap, it might be true here. I think we'd be pushing our luck trying to make that strategy work a second time. We need something different for this."

Slippy offered his suggestion next. "This PMC has to take applications, right? What if we set up an appointment for the day of the sortie and met them at the office? Once we got in, one of us—preferably me—would use you guys' meetings with the staff as a diversion to enter the main base area. After I got in, I'd let Peppy in through a side entrance or something."

"It's something," Fox replied. "I don't know if it would work, but it's something, at least. How are we going to make sure he gets to fly the Arwing and not the original pilot—Onassi…you know what? I'm just going to call him 'Oni.'"

Slippy shifted in his seat to find a more comfortable position before he explained, "Sabotage, of course. Picture this: I sneak into the base with a fake uniform while you meet with the staff for your tryout. I sneak into Oni's personal quarters and wait until he gets back. Then, I take him out, leaving the Arwing wide open for Peppy, who'll be disguised as him."

Across the table from Slippy, Rena sneered. "That's a cute idea, but if anything goes wrong, it's farked immediately. Why do we need to steal the Arwing, anyway? Couldn't we just shoot it down? I thought the idea was to keep it from getting to East Fortuna. We're going to leak the plans to all the other major countries anyway, so it's not like destroying it is going to change anything."

Fox stroked his muzzle. "That does simplify things a bit. We could just drive a SAM truck into the desert, wait for the planes to arrive, and shoot them all down at once. The only problem with that is that we don't have a SAM, and because our finance and operations guy just killed himself, we're going to have a really hard time getting one on short notice. Also, I remember Krystal telling me that the Arwing was supposed to be almost impossible to hit with traditional missiles. Our best bet is to take it, unfortunately."

"Hey," Scarlet suggested, "We could try out the Landmaster. It's supposed to have anti-air capabilities, right?"

Fox nodded and pointed to her. "That's right, it does. I have no idea how it's supposed to work, though. I get the feeling 'anti-air' was supposed to mean more in terms of shooting down helicopters and cargo planes than fighters, though."

"This doesn't sound like it's going to work, boss," said Miyu.

Frustration laced Fox's face. Baring a canine, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "Give me a minute. I'm going to talk with Uncle Peppy before I give up on this." With that, he pressed the call button.

After a matter of seconds, Peppy's twangy voice reached Fox's ears. "Hello? Who's this?"

"Hey, Uncle Peppy. It's Fox."

"Aw, hey sonny," Peppy chortled. "What'cha want this time? Need to me swing ya another deal?"

"Not exactly," Fox uneasily replied. "Look, can you keep a secret?"

"If it's something your daddy would want to know, I can't guarantee it; but if it's anything else, I'll keep it locked down tighter than your new mother-in-law's turtleneck. Whaddaya wanna tell me?"

Fox cringed. "Dammit! He actually proposed to Mystic!" Of course, since he did not want to air his grievances about that issue to his 'uncle,' he bit his tongue and instead said, "I might need your help…with a mission."

"I'm listenin'."

"My team and I are trying to steal a fighter that's being shipped to East Fortuna by direct flight. It looks like the only way to get it is to shoot down the two escort planes that are going to fly with it. I know I'm not good enough to get the job done. You're the only person I can think of who could do this."

"Hmm," Peppy mumbled. "What kind of fighter is this that you're tryin' to steal?"

"It's the first production model of the most advanced air superiority fighter ever. It's kind of a big deal."

On the other end of the line, Peppy went silent. Then, he asked, "How many escorts were supposed to go with this thing? Two?"

"That's right—two."

"I'm in," said Peppy. "When do I need to meet up with ya, and where are we going?"

Fox breathed a sigh of relief. "Meet me at the base as soon as you can. We'll leave for Titania as soon as I can set up hotel rooms for the rest of the team. You have your travel visa, right?"

"Sure thing, sonny. I'm ready to roll."

"Great. Thanks for the help, Uncle Peppy."

"Yeah, no problem, sonny. See ya soon!"

After ending the call and putting his phone back in his pocket, Fox pumped his fist and announced to the team, "Great—I got him to go along with us."

He hoped that his teammates would get onboard with his enthusiasm for the mission, but all he got from them were blank stares.

Finally, Miyu decided to shatter the disturbing silence. Sadly, her voice contained not the slightest trace of enthusiasm. "Yeah, that's great, boss. Wow, I can't believe how excited I am about this."

In spite of her tendency to support Fox in most of the things he did, Scarlet shook her head and murmured, "I don't think this is a good idea, Fox. We've been lucky so far. I get the feeling it's going to run out soon if we keep doing stuff like this. We almost didn't get out of Eladard alive, you know."

In spite of his external excitement, Fox felt similarly. Yet, he knew it would take months for Corneria or any other major world power to replicate an Arwing while East Fortuna received a fleet of them. He had to do something to stop the plane from reaching the rogue nation, even if his teammates disapproved.

Sighing, he looked at his teammates and said, "Peppy will be here soon. I'll talk things over with him and get Taiga to set us up with some hotel rooms in Titania. You can go now."

AUTHOR'S NOTE(S):

Just a heads up, there wasn't much proofreading on this chapter because I was trying to put this out when I should have been asleep. If you see any weird grammar, let me know so I can fix it.