-X- Hangar -X-
Twenty sleek new crafts rested in the hangar that was filled with nothing but boxes and people prior. All clutter was gone, allowing the crafts to reflect against the bland but polished floor. The fighters looked similar to arwings except they were a little stouter and sturdier looking.
A light tapping echoed throughout the vacant room and against the floor and crafts, It was Slippy Toad. It wouldn't be for another hour or two until the drill, but the bright green bean-like being had to be quick with his work regardless. He marveled at the paintjobs. The ships were a grayish chrome with green undersides. Instead of CDF the ships were explicitly labeled NDCCP (New Defensive Council of Corneria and her Possessions), the brand new branch of CDF. Slippy looked down as his sticky arms which were holding a box full of the tools and supplies he needed to color-code the ships ,disable their weapons, and rig the tagging system, and when the drill was over he'd have to undo everything he did.
"These… must be esswings," Slippy told himself. They were called esswings because they were basically the next generation of arwings. Ar sounds like R and ess sounds like S. S comes after R. You get it. Slippy placed the box of various red and blue gadgets and decals onto the ground and rubbed the surface of the esswing. It felt far more impressive than it looked… but it also felt wrong. Why not make an arwing 2? Slippy wondered how Fox could react. It felt like Fox would either love or hate this new model spacecraft. "Oh well," Slippy said. He opened the cockpit of the first craft. It opened with a satisfying crack and hiss. The interior seemed to be mostly a dark green metal. The chair was a warm black plastic. "No access to weapon deactivation in here," Slippy said before tumbling back out and splatting his soft body on the floor.
He got up and approached the round gray laser turrets. He opened a panel and immediately recognized a way to deactivate them. He then started strapping on the faux-laser system for the drill. This first craft would be blue team. While Slippy was underneath the craft he noticed that the ship had been made on Corneria itself rather than a colony. This was a good sign in Slippy's eyes so he smiled.
-X- Living Quarters -X-
Timuron and Cobalt had returned to their dorm for a brief amount of time. Cobalt was sitting on his bottom bunk watching Timuron do pushups. "You know Tim, I don't think these extra pushups are gonna do you any good."
"I just got bored of pacing," the azdov replied.
"So you're excited for the drill?"
"You bet!" Timuron did his last pushup and let himself lay on the floor in relief before getting up.
Cobalt chuckled. "Hey, do you remember a little earlier when Malinda asked what we would do if we were on opposite teams?"
"Yeah, you wouldn't mind if I beat you right?" Timuron asked.
"Of course not, it's just you said it in a way that inferred that you would definitely beat me without a doubt."
"I was just being competitive Cobalt," Timuron smiled.
"Oh," the cobalt-colored wolf smiled back.
"We did practice against each other before in pilot school right?" Timuron asked.
Cobalt scratched his head then remembered "I think so, only one time I think but we did. I can't actually remember who won, it was close."
"It was you," Timuron stated.
"Oh," Cobalt smiled.
This is when Malinda entered the room. In addition to her normal uniform she was wearing a big sleek dark helmet with a yellow visor. "Hey guys."
Timuron was surprised. "Woah! Malinda! You look awesome!"
"Don't you two dolts have helmets?" She muffled with a helmet voice.
Timuron nodded his awkward head side to side "Not like that one!"
"Yeah most of our helmets are dark gray with black visors," Cobalt concurred.
Malinda was unamused. "Well get your helmets. The exercise begins in twenty minutes."
"Sure thing!" Timuron gekkered.
-X- Hangar (Again) -X-
Around half of the pilots were once again standing in a boring line in the middle of the big spacious hangar in which the esswings were. McCloud was still absent so they still felt free to talk amongst themselves. They all had the standards pilot uniforms and plain gray helmets with black visors with the exception of two pilots.
In the distance, the dry orb of reddish hues that was Papetoon could be seen outside of the hangar. The planet loomed over the ship peacefully as it eavesdropped as an inanimate object onto the conversation.
Kelvin, who was not wearing a helmet, had looked like he snorted something in the bathroom as he gave this weird ass look to an esswing. "Heh, these babies sure would look freaking hot if it wasn't for all the colored shit taped onto it for the exercise."
"Didn't your father invest in these?" his nameless Shiba friend borfed. He was the other pilot not wearing a helmet.
"I think so. I don't care," Kelvin yawned.
The Shiba yawned back. "The- the xeno and his friends are late. Where are they?"
"The azdov, the fatass, and the woman? They're not late. We still got…" Kelvin stared at his cellcom. "five minutes."
"McCloud isn't here either!" the Shiba said in awe.
"I know," Kelvin said as he brushed his paw through his rad mane.
"It feels weird being the punctual ones."
Kelvin was getting irritated "Dude, drop it, I get it," he snarled.
"Geez… you think you hurt the azdov's feelings the other day?"
"No, my father has done business with azdoves. They don't get hurt feelings."
The Shiba smiled "Oh, oh my god."
"What?"
"You're scared of him aren't you?"
Kelvin slapped the Shiba in front of everywhere and getting everyone's attention. "If you fucking think that I'm intimidated by that airheaded ass googley-eyed living staple remover then you got another god damn fucking thing coming to you!"
The Shiba wasn't smiling anymore. "I'm- I'm sorry… I overstepped Mr. Kelvin! Please.. please don't take away my twenty credits…"
Kelvin looked around and realized he had a lot of unwanted attention. He backed off "You'll still get your credits."
The Shiba rubbed his muzzle and huffed. Maybe he should ask for a raise if he was gonna keep up the "friendship" gig.
This is when Timuron, Cobalt, and Malinda all walked into the room decked out in fully pilot uniforms. Cobalt had a generic helmet, Timuron had the same helmet but modified for his head-type, and Malinda had her much cooler helmet. More pilots came in after them over the next few minutes, and then came in Fox McCloud.
Fox McCloud's dark olive uniform looked very clean this time. He was wearing a bunch of glistening golden and silver medals with various meanings of which Kelvin got away with not learning in academy. Fox's fur was also much more orderly now, and brighter in color than earlier… but his eyes still looked horrible. His eyes actually almost looked yellow. "Men let's commence this already. You all have been briefed in advance. I'm just going to inform you what teams you'll be on by reading off this list I have with me. My friend Slippy drew it up using a randomizer."
The pilots had only just gotten in proper alignment by the time Fox was in the middle of that sentence. McCloud didn't seem to care that much this time though.
McCloud looked at them all again. A lot of them were looking back. "You should all know staring back at me isn't proper conduct. Please look at the ceiling and listen."
The pilots looked at the ceiling, some of them didn't ever remember this being a rule where as others thought it sounded correct.
McCloud read the list. Cobalt and Timuron turned out to both be on the same team after all, blue to be specific. Malinda on the other hand was put on red with Kelvin. Not one of them thought anything of it at the moment. As pilots approached their crafts, the room was filled with the echoes of snappy hisses as the cockpits open up and hissy snaps as they closed back up with their controllers inside of them.
When the azdov, Timuron, placed the flattened grayish bottom of his pants onto the odd hardness of the chair. Neither in pilot school on Ornech or Corneria did he ever encounter such an odd seat. It's odd tiny ripples were vaguely reminiscent of the sort of chairs people used in grade school as kids, it was just far bigger. It was weird but not weird enough to be a distraction. The controls were similar enough to what Timuron had been taught to use, similar enough for him to function in flight. He clicked and fiddled the various incomprehensible doodads before him and his craft levitated off the ground like those around him.
With a fizz, a whinny voice came onto the radio chatter which came from a speaker overhead of Timuron's furred triangular hearing plates. "Greetings rookies! My name is Slippy, I'm a close affiliate of McCloud's, and I'm just calling to you all to give some final tidbits of instruction as ordered by McCloud. No one may fire the simulated shots until the exercise officially begins after the blue-assigned craft gather around the back end of the Greater Fox and the red-assigned gather around the opposite end. When the exercise starts you will hear a chime over the radio and you will then be permitted to use the added controls to fire the blanks at the other team which is essentially a stand in for any enemy. If you are hit, we will know, and we will know if you neglect to return after being hit. If you're hit, you're out, and refusing to accept that is insubordination. The beacons will detect any hits during the simulation. Any confirmed hits on your craft as indicated by these will mean that you are out. McCloud wants you all to have a zero tolerance for being hit… which… sounds obvious. Anyway the simulation ends when only one craft is unhit, and the team that craft belongs to wins. Good luck!"
-X- Outside the Greater Fox -X-
By the time Slippy was done using the radio, everyone was already separated. Ten blues, Ten reds, red versus blue, no chime yet. The radio connection between the two teams was cut and they could now only talk to each other.
"Wait a minute… who is squadron- er, I mean team leader?" One pilot in blue team commented in an indescribable accent.
"They didn't say there was one, did they" Timuron added.
"I think it's up to us, let decide how we'll coordinate together," the accented pilot responded.
"Well fuck," Cobalt said, inserting his lower gruffy voice into the buzzing of the communication system.
Timuron tapped his fingers against the visor of his helmet in a minor a-ha moment. "What if we put the person with the best vision in charge?" Timuron proposed.
"Who would that be? We're all in the same craft and we all have similar skill," a fourth pilot said plainly.
"Let's just communicate well and react according to what we tell each other," Cobalt said.
"Good, let's have a good drill everyone." Timuron said.
The others came to agree as well, although some sounded more hesitant.
Meanwhile the reds were talking with about the same level of confidence. Kelvin Celsius was gripping onto his controls with as much force as he could without actually causing his craft to do anything. He jabbed his finger onto the plastic snappy red translucent button that would broadcast his voice to the others. "What's taking this damned chime so long!?"
"I believe we're being given time to communicate what it is we think we should be doing. I don't really get it either to be honest," Malinda communicated.
"We got the woman?" Kelvin's Shiba "friend" said.
"Now, now. Don't talk like that, you'll get her all riled up," some other member of the team blurted.
"Whatever, I don't care right now. We need to take advantage-"
This is when an annoying chime screeched over the communications and caused everyone to flinch.
"Damnit let's go!" Malinda sighed. The gray fox vixen cracked her nimble fluffy gray hands and violently beat a set of buttons and crushed the handles in her hands before she used her energy to cause her sleek desaturated emerald ship to thrust forward toward the enemy. She aggressively charged via the right side of the mothership.
Even though they were on the same team, Kelvin was utterly pissed off to be out-showed by anyone. He put in his all to catch up to maintain that he was either equal to or greater than the vixen. His fur vibrated like a fire. It didn't matter that Kelvin barley knew Malinda.
Kelvin's malamute cad didn't make it onto red but his Shiba "friend" was there and was following as well. The shiba's tappy little claws weren't nearly as effective as the other two previously mentioned pilots but it was enough to back up Kelvin as he backed up Malinda.
The other red pilots started to mawk this formation until there were six formations like this and only two outlier reds flying. The blues started firing the shots first. Weak hints of light whirred across space to lightly remind the "hit" ships to turn on their "loser" lights.
One of these lights was fired by the yellow azdov who currently was looking upon the imaginary carnage with a big happy unnerved tight grin. "I got two!" Timuron yipped as he yanked on the controls to swerve under the ship to avoid a hit.
"I got two!" Cobalt barked back over the comms in a celebratory way.
Cobalt and Timuron had only moved from that starting part marginally compared to the foolish red charge. They simply moved out from behind the back and to the side of the mothership on which the majority of the targets were.
"THEY GOT ME," another blue pilot screeched over comms as if he actually had been killed after a light on his wing began to blink violently after responding to a pink "laser" from the red team."
Among the reds Kevin was livid as he swerved around the "menacing" cyan "lasers" "We're already losing men!" He snarled as he took a nano second to tend to his mane with his left paw-hand.
"I got one!" The Shiba informed the other on red.
"SHUT! Not good enough."
"Stop being such a little bitch and get some yourself," Malinda said with sass.
That's when Kelvin emitted a gross deep guttural grunt over the comms to express how displeased this comment made him. He nearly broke the controls in front of him as he blasted past Malinda and menacingly went wild with his laser.
Blzarf! Blzarf! Blzarf!
One blue-team canine stared in slow motion horror though his sparkly milk-way esswing visor as one of Kelvin Celcius's blasts dramatically made a hit on his wing that got him out of the game.
The next target of Kelvin, the blue team pilot with the indescribable accent. The light on the top of his cock pit was triggered the moment Kelvin's first target was out. Accent guy was "dead" and had to hover back into the mothership's womb as well.
The third target hit so fast on the tail it was hard to mentally register that it even happened.
"Did you see that?" Kelvin gloated to Malinda. "Bet you thought I was just a spoiled brat who couldn't shoo-"
Malinda's black wet nose shriveled up. She wanted to tell him off about how she got three as well while he wasn't even looking but instead she said "You're abusing the radio-" before being caught off by a horrific middle finger.
Timuron came up from under the mothership in utter surprise as he fired said shot from the front face of his ship onto the underside of Malinda's craft.
"Great shoot buddy…" she mumbled to herself as she turned off her radio and returned to the hangar.
-X- Hangar (Yet Again) -X-
Underneath the traffic of incoming defeated crafts. Fox McCloud was looking at the rookies through binoculars. "Amateurs… interesting to watch but amateurs. Lylatian pilotry has gone down the toilet. What the heck are they doing at the academy."
"Geez fox," Slippy whimpered as he stood beside him.
"Slippy… never mind I don't know what to tell you," Fox said as his whiskers twitched.
"Are you feeling any better?"
"I'm calling Krystal tonight. I'm going to see if there's a telescope powerful enough for me to see her waving at me from the planet below. It should be nice," Fox smiled weakly before his black foxy whisker pad twitched again.
Slippy noticed a gray whisker but he didn't comment.
Malinda Furry's craft sighed as is touched it's landing gear onto the smooth dark floor which was reflective like marble. The landing resonated a satisfying hiss which caused her ears to flutter in a trivial matter. The craft cracked open and her boots punched the ground. She landed very close to the captain. She lifted her helmet off of her head with a yank. "That wasn't my best work," she shouted, trying to make small talk.
McCloud didn't respond.
"Hello? Captain Fox McCloud?"
Slippy poked Fox and pointed at Malinda.
Fox turned to her, "I'm busy observing."
"Apologies ,sir."
"And no, it wasn't your best work. This exercise should be taking much longer but we're already down to two to two."
"Timuron and?" Malinda asked.
"Faks and Oxide on blue, Celsius and Shibayama on red."
"Fox?" Slippy asked.
"No, Faks. F-a-k-s. I hate it too," Fox said to Slippy.
"I didn't say I hated it," the toad responded.
-X- Back Outside the Greater Fox -X-
The four craft rose higher above the mother ship into the inkiness. The rusty marble that was planet Papetoon stood in that inkiness among the dim distant stars behind it. The only thing the esswing pilots were looking at was each other. Above them were some small asteroids.
Timuron darted his ship behind and asteroid, and Cobalt followed
This triggered Kelvin who yelped "Cowards! I want you to pretend die now!"
"The blue comms aren't connected to ours, they can't hear you," Shibayama stated.
The maned wolf bashed his consul "No fun! Never mind let's go!" He thrusted his craft forward with Shibayama backing him as he entered the asteroid patch and hid behind a rock of his own. A shot from Cobalt narrowly missed Shibayama.
"I missed," the blue wolf stated.
"Affirmative, I see that you missed. Do you see any more activity?"
"No Faks."
"Affirmative, they're just camping behind that asteroid shaped like an m'pak."
"I don't understand Faks."
"Apologies, It's not a Lylatian animal. It looks like an ox"
"Oh, I see."
Timuron stayed still for about ten seconds "This is less eventful then I think this is supposed to be."
Meanwhile on the red comms Kelvin stated, "This is stupid!" That's when his ship jumped above his asteroid and shot the non-m'pak shaped asteroid the blues were behind. This did nothing for obvious reasons.
On blue comms Timuron stated "I'm going to fly out to the right and when Kelvin starts trying to get me, you pop up and shoot him."
"Sounds good, proceed."
"Here I go!" Timuron whooshed towards Kelvin's right as fast as he could which prompted Kelvin to shoot the lights at him, only barley missing.
Cobalt popped up to shoot at the devious Kelvin who was attacking his friend, but his plump dark fluffy face was slapped with shock when Shibayama's craft came from under the m'pak-shaped rock. The Shiba strained his beady little eyes as he fired to cover Kelvin but Cobalt Oxide redirected and fired at Shibayama. Shibayama gasped with much shock as his front light was triggered the instant that the left wing light on Oxide's craft was set alight as well.
"Kelvin I'm out!" Shibayama barked.
"Fuck!" Kelvin responded.
"Timuron I'm out!" Cobalt sighed.
"Uh-oh" Timuron muttered.
It was not just the xeno and the maned canid fighting now. Whoever won this match would win the whole drill for their team. For Timuron this put some light pressure on his shoulders, like some creepy Ornechian alley azdov was trying to coax him into buying something he didn't actually want. For Kelvin however, the other reds could choke to death on teeth for all he cared, he didn't like Timuron. He didn't like most people but he didn't like Timuron in particular because at least with other people he could understand them. Timuron confused Kelvin. I mean what was he supposed to be, a dragon, lion, and a horse? Timuron had to lose in Kelvin's eyes.
Kelvin started spamming the controls with all the force he could as he circled around the space alien, but alas the space devil kept managing to be just ahead of Kelvin's aim. Once Timuron was able to make a turn around another soulless rock he was then high above Kelvin enough to fire back at him. He nearly hit Kelvin's back sensor.
Kelvin started getting close to shorting out his g-diffuser as he kept going faster. They spun around each other what felt like at least eighty times. It was like hell for Kelvin, he was getting a little dizzy and g-diffuser started making a screeching noise that caused his ears to vibrate. The same phenomena soon started taxing on Timuron's craft as well. The worst part for Kelvin was that there was no one for him to bitch to since the comms wouldn't connect the teams.
Finally a flash assaulted Timuron's vision, and a calm red notification buzzer went off as his right wing blinked. His crafted shot out of the patch and into open space like and object being thrown off a merry-go-round. He was out, and he went back to the hangar mildly disappointed.
"Yes? Yes… Yes!" Kelvin celebrated. The exotic canid with the outrageous hair had won.
Fox McCloud watched with strained eyes as he put the ebony-colored binoculars down from his slimy green eyes. He watched Celcius swoosh back into the hangar last. "Of course he won."