The big stone man looks down at the fox named Fox, confused. He cocks his head.
"Oole wahano! MLEMBLIMB PRINCE TRICKY?" Fox shouts, cupping his paws around his mouth to help his voice carry. "WATTA NO FRESNO. BATTA?"
"What are you doing," the stone man asks frankly.
"Oh!" Fox says, getting excited. "You speak Lylation! CAN YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU HAVE EARS?"
"Of course I have ears, you fool!" the big stone man says, offended. "What are you talking about? Are you trying to mock me! Talking stone men have ears all the time! It would be weird if I did not have them."
"I dunno, a lot of things you might assume have ears don't have ears around here," Fox says, slightly embarrassed. "I figured it was best to ask."
"What around here does not have ears that you assumed might have ears?"
"There was a dude for a carrot for a head that-"
"Speak you of DJ Quackers?!" His laughter bellows through the canyon like something that isn't thunder, because that would be a lazy description of things, but is comparatively loud. "Where do you possibly come from where CARROTS have ears?!"
"Listen here, hardhead!" Fox yells at him, trying to intimidate a rock. "The QUEEN EarthWalker sent me here to find her punk kid! Now, I'm trying to save this whole planet from 'sploding! Are you with that, or do you wanna get 'sploded?"
"Well," the big stone man says, thinking about it. "I don't want to get 'sploded."
"Good," Fox says, smirking. "Here's what I'll need you to do."
The rest of the scene was cut for pacing purposes. But, if I had to summarize it, it had something to do with Fox telling the big stone man to pick him up and throw him at the frosty mountain on the horizon. And he does, so that's how Fox got there. If anyone was wondering, when we get to the next Fox scene. It's whatver. I don't really care.
Slippy is excited when he checks the mail drop box for the first time this year.
He is getting something to fix.
"I LIKE TO FIX THINGS," Slippy confirms to the mail, I guess. He feels it was important to do so.
Without opening the mail, he immediately hightails it or whatever the amphibian version of that is to Fox's room, barging in through the door. He's too excited that he has something to do to realize that he doesn't know what it is.
"I AM THE ONE WHO FIXES THINGS THAT ARE BROKEN," he announces to no one as he repeatedly slams a wrench into the last remaining pair of James's sunglasses.
"THINGS WILL BREAK AND I WILL UNBREAK THEM." He proceeds to pull out a hammer and smashes Vixy's urn. Her ashes spill out all over Fox's dresser. Slippy eyes the remains with his eyes, then with his nose, which is to say that he noses them. Enough of the ashes go into his nostril that they form a nice gray crust around the rim.
Maybe this was what he was meant to fix. He produces a roll of duct tape. Finally using his inside voice, he says: "I will fix you a new mom, Fox.
"And when I was nine, he made me sign a life insurance policy so he could go get smokes without dying. He said if I didn't sign it, he would die and that I should sign it right away because he really wanted smokes. Naturally, I did. And he left to get smokes. Only instead of getting smokes, he ended up joining the military and becoming a war hero on a global scale. It was a couple years later, first I saw him on the news. At first I thought, wow, that is a fox dedicated to getting smokes, and getting back to his children. Only later, before my mom died, but after my dad died, my mom, the one who hadn't died, she said he didn't go out to get smokes. He just wanted to blow things up. Which made sense, honestly, because he always liked blowing things up. He liked it more if they were alive, only there weren't so many avenues he hadn't experimented with so more, so he blew things up in space until they blew him up. Anyway, after my old man croaks in space during one of the saddest baseball games I ever had, this lawyer contacts me, yeah? He says how I'm supposed to follow in my father's footsteps and sign up for the military. Become a government privatized mercenary to do their dirty work. And you know what I told that lawyer? I told him to stuff it. Yes sirree, I said you stuff the military wherever it is you stuff things, because I am my own fox named Fox and I will live my life true to my own destiny, not his. Not James McCloud's. He didn't even make it to my baseball games. Not even the ones I was good at! But the lawyer told me about how the life insurance policy my dad had me sign when I was nine actually had a clause in it about how I give up my Cornerian rights and agree to public execution if I don't pursue a military career. And well, I've seen enough war to know that it never changes. So, here I am. I don't think I ever forgave my dad for that." Fox sighs deeply. "I dunno. Maybe it's time I should. "
Fox's comm unit beeps and he checks it. It's Slippy.
"Go for Fox," Fox says after booping on his comm unit.
"Hiya Fox!" Slippy says! "How's that translator working out for you?! I noticed you've been using it a lot!"
"Translator?" Fox asks, confused. "What translator?"
"Everything you've been saying for the past hour has been automatically translated into Saurian! I thought I'd surprise you with it!"
Fox's face fur inexplicably turns white. He had been venting about personal problems to this dinosaur for longer than he would care to remember. "You mean this dinosaur has been able to understand everything I just said?" Very personal stuff. Stuff he'd reconsider telling a therapist.
"Ayhup!" Slippy says, excitedly. "Every single word! It's the most advanced translating technology in the Lylat system! The kind they use at universal relations meetings! Anyway, you seem to be enjoying it so I'll leave you to it! Over! Haha!"
Slippy hangs up and leaves Fox alone with the dinosaur. He looks over at his would be confidant for the first time in awhile and the creature seems to be frozen with fear and confusion. Eyes wider than its bone and skin structure might let on to be possible. Fox bites his lip apprehensively and gives a mortified, knowing nod and excuses himself.
It can be said that every hero exposes their vulnerability at times, Fox is just very regretful of the fact that he expressed it explicitly and unfiltered to someone who could understand him, while he had been under the impression that they couldn't.
"Ah well," Fox mutters to himself, walking down a lonely road. The only road he's ever known. "Say law V, as the saying goes."
Suddenly, laughter catches his attention from his own sorrow. Sinister laughter. When he looks up, next to a nearby frozen pond, a small impressionable dinosaur is mingling with a familiar gang of ruffians.
"And then I says to him, I wouldn't go to your stupid baseball game even if you asked me to, ya nerd!" Wolf laughs, villainously. "I don't care how much like your father I look!"
"Bah hah hah!" Pigma bellows guffaws out of his tum tum and into the air, in front of everybody. "That's funny because it's mean!"
"Stop right there, villains!" Fox wants to say, but he doesn't, because he's scared and his team isn't here to back him up. Instead, he says "Huh-hey guys! What are you... talking about?"
They all stop their conversation and look over at Fox with deadpan expressions as Fox nervously picks at the sleeves of his favorite jacket.
"Speak of the loser and he shall arrive," Leon mutters.
"What do you want, Goodie Twoshoes?" Wolf says, crossing his arms crossly.
"I told you a million times, Wolf," Fox huffs, "that's not my name!"
Wolf crosses over to him, being cross. He takes off his sunglass with the single frame designed to look like his eyepatch so people will think he's just got sunglasses on and not missing an eye. "What are you gonna do about it, Twoshoes? Cry about it?"
"I'm not even wearing one shoe, stupid! The Cornerian government sawed my legs off and replaced them with roboticals so I could handle G's more better! Idiot!"
"Listen to Mr. Fancypants, here," Pigma says, joining Wolf.
They slowly begin encircling and Leon joins them. "Yeah! Thinks he's better than us because he aint gotta wear no SHOES on his fancy ROBOTICALS."
"You think you're better than me, Fancypants?" Wolf says aggressively, grabbing him by the collar.
"H-hey!" Fox stammers, visibly afraid. "You leave that poor dinosaur alone or else!" He points to the dinosaur still over by the pond that doesn't seem to be bothered in the slightest.
"Wah hah hah!" Wolf laughs his mean laugh. "That's rich! This here boyscout thinks we's bothering ya, Tricky! Is we bothering ya?"
Tricky! That name! "Tricky?!" Fox says. "That name!"
"Bring 'em here, Stah Wolf," Prince Tricky says, cigar hanging out of his mouth like a cigar might hang out of a dinosaur's mouth. "And that'll be Prince Tricky to you!"
Wolf tosses the fox named Fox in down in front of the prince dinosaur named Prince Tricky.
"Y-yes," Fox says, scooting away from Wolf to get comfortable. "Your majesty, I-"
"New around here, aren'cha?" Tricky says, chewing on his cigar so hard the cherry falls to the ground. He relights it with his adjacent nostril.
"Yeah," he says, wrangling his thoughts like cattle out on the pasture. "Yeah, I uh. Just flew in today and boy are my paws tired! Heh."
"Yeah?" Tricky says, unamused. "Well go ahead and reach behind my horns, I keep a welcome gift there for newcomers."
"Behind your horns?"
"Yeah, just reach on back there. Consider it a welcoming gift."
"If you say so," Fox says, reaching behind Tricky's horns and feeling around blindly. "Is it the bag?"
"Yeah, it's the bag. Go on. It's yours. Open it."
Fox opens the bag and shrieks before dropping it. It's a bag of scarabs.
Star Fox Adventures!
chapter four;
Prince Tricky and the Bag of Scarabs
"Get 'em, boys," Tricky commands while spitting out the lit cigar.
Leon, Pigma and Andrew all grab Fox because they're the goons, and because Wolf is the leader of Star Wolf, he gets to punch Fox in the stomach a couple of times. It hurts, but Fox pretends he doesn't pee his pants.
"What are you doing here at this location on this planet!" Tricky demands of him. "I didn't send for you! What are you doing!"
"Your mom sent me to find you," Fox wheezes, but he can't remember why, so, thinking quickly, he regains his composure and says something that isn't true. "She's like. Dying, dude."
"What?" Tricky blinks.
"Yeah, dude," Fox says, catching his breath back to normal breath. "She's like, really dying a lot."
The royal dinosaur narrows his eyes. "When did this happen?"
"Today, dude, while you were hanging out with these," he says, pausing to vaguely gesture. "Scoundrels?"
"Hmm, quite. I have been. Seeing to business, as it were. Do you... know these 'scoundrels', as it were?"
"Yes!" Fox cries. "They're villainous!"
Tricky raises his eyebrow, his lack of focus shifting like the eyes of a man truly unsure who DID take the cookie from the cookie jar. "Scoundrels? Is this true? Are you... villainous?"
"Sure are!" Pigma says.
"The worst!" Leon contributes.
"WE ARE ALMOST AS VILLAINOUS AS MY UNCLE ANDROSS, THE MOST VILLAINOUS ENTITY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVER-" Andrew starts.
"Shut up, Andrew!" Wolf hisses. "Nobody likes you! Go back to the ship!"
"But I-"
"I said GIT!" Wolf puts his boot down. He was holding it for some reason. He steps his paw back into it. "NOW!"
Andrew sulks and walks away. Everyone watches in uncomfortable, but oddly satisfying lack of Andrew for an inordinate amount of time.
"ahem - Yes," Wolf says. "We are quite the villainy. Famous for it, in fact."
"Oh," Tricky says. "You're all fired, then."
"What?!" Wolf exclaims, appearing to be offended. "That's so unfair!"
"Tut tut," the prince tuts, "you will no longer be in charge of this operation. Please leave."
They all kick the dirt and Fox flinches for more reasons than one.
"Attention, young fox. Over here." Tricky says, calling Fox's attention to Tricky.
"What! I mean - your majesty?"
"We were conspiring to rescue a beautiful fox in revealing attire from the evil clutches of General Scales. She's been trapped in a crystal for quite some time, you see, and will likely want to marry the first person she sees."
"You mean the girl inside my head?!" Fox gasps.
"Sure," Prince Tricky says nodding, confused. "Yeah, that one. She's really hot."
"Dude, she's like the hottest chick I ever imagined."
"Quite. I was going to see to this myself, but as you say my mother is rather ill, I feel I must be present to her side in the immediate and foreseeable future so I must leave this task up to someone heroic. Are you... heroic?"
"You bet I am!" Fox strikes one of those poses he likes striking so much. "I'm way heroic and awesome!"
"For the sake of due diligence, Mister, uh-"
Fox is confused that he just kind of trailed off in mid sentence like that for a second before realizing he hasn't introduced himself. "Oh! I'm Fox."
"You, you are a fox, but what is-"
"Fox." Fox says nodding. "Fox." He points to himself.
"Uh. Yes. You fox, me dinosaur. How quaint. Mister fox, are you prepared for this mission, knowing the dangers of rescuing a very hot woman and her wanting to marry you?"
"Yeah dude! And if I don't rescue her, the planet will explode, huh?!"
Tricky just blinks at him for a moment. "Absolutely. Sure. It's very urgent."
"I'm on it! I will marry the pretty lady and stop the world from 'sploding!"
"That's great. I knew I could count on you. And young fox, should you ever need my help, just take this horn and blow upon it, and I shall be there to help you in but an instant."
"What horn?"
"Just reach on in and get it," the dinosaur says, offering himself to the fox. "The horn is right behind my horns."
"I, uh," Fox hesitates. "I mean."
"Oh, right. I am very sorry about earlier, but please, this is a measure of global urgency."
Fox's trembling hand retrieves what he's very relieved to find is an ordinary musical soundhorn of some sorts behind the strange creature's biological horns. He goes to blow it, but Tricky stops him.
"Only blow upon it when you are in dire need," he says gravely. "I must be off to see my dying mother."
"Great! Tell her Foxy sent'cha!" he says, clicking his teeth as he fingerguns and winks at him.
Tricky narrows his eyes again. "I shall do this. H'YAH!" And with that, Prince Tricky kicks up a trail of dust that follows him into the night sky.
When his presence is gone, Fox looks fondly down at the horn before the expression is bittersweetly taken from him by a harsh mistress called Reality. And Reality? Oh yeah. She bites.
Fox sure does hope that Queen EarthWalker is sick with something because he doesn't know what he's going to say to Prince Tricky if he ever needs to blow this horn.