Chapter 11.
Fire in the Sky.
Fox watched as Slippy worked on the last thruster. Once the frog changed the thruster's direction, the asteroid would have just enough acceleration to send it away from Venom.
From the bridge, he could see the bright yellow spacesuit and the panel that Slippy already threw over his shoulder. It'd been about twenty seconds and the thing still flew in an arc, spinning lazily without landing.
The captain of the Star Fox team eyed the horizon warily. What he and Slippy, or more honestly just Slippy, did here would save millions. Still, the real fight would happen away from here. The enemy fleet needed to go through the defending fighters before it could do anything about the thrusters.
On one paw, Fox felt good about the plan. On the other, he wouldn't even be a big part of it. He didn't know how to feel about that.
The red fox knew that he couldn't help much in his condition. Still, the idea that others would fight while he sat on his tail doing nothing bothered him in a way that felt deeply, deeply wrong.
He felt an especially ugly guilt, a kind that lurked at the back of his mind, gnawing at all his reasoning, whispering a retort every time he rationalized why he needed to be here and not in an Arwing.
His team could handle it. Does that mean you're abandoning them?
Slippy needs the support. He could've done this by himself.
Fox was in no shape to fly an Arwing. So you're useless, then.
He rubbed his tired eyes. His chest still ached both in the bones around his heart and in the seams across his skin. He didn't need the painkillers anymore, but all the sensations coming together in his mind and body left him shivering with nervous energy. Fox needed to do something. Something to help. Something to chase away the lurking, ugly thoughts that gnawed at him.
He spoke into his headset again, "Slippy, I don't know what we'd do without you."
"Crash and burn, probably!" The frog said it almost right away.
Fox suppressed a wry smile before the frog added in an almost apologetic tone, "I mean, I think you wouldn't have a easy time staying in the air."
Staying in the air. Almost immediately, he remembered what happened when he had to land in the hangar. He remembered the look in the feline's eyes. The anger. The contempt.
When he talked to her, he expected her to be hostile. But he didn't expect her comments to stay with him this long. They still rang in his ears.
You don't have any right, any goddamned right, to judge me and act like you're any better than me.
Fox clenched his fist.
You don't get to pretend you're being the good guys.
He wanted to snap back, to throw everything she said right back at her. The words got under his skin, and the snarl she said them with stayed in his memory.
Fox shook his head. He remembered an old saying that insults only hurt deeply if there's some truth in them.
He felt a visceral, gut-deep nausea at that idea and pushed the thought away. It woke up a feeling he held buried deep down that he was afraid to think about.
The red fox felt a surge of relief when he got an incoming transmission. It helped push the dark thoughts away.
A blue falcon appeared on his screen. "So, how's saving their world going?"
Their world. Fox thought about those words as he spoke. "It's going. Slippy's pretty much a miracle worker."
"Don't tell him that. If his head got any bigger, I'm pretty sure it'd break his helmet like a popped light bulb," Falco looked through the side of his canopy, "anyways, I still don't like working with these people. Especially not that one."
He tilted his head towards something outside his canopy. Fox paused, and shook his head with a sigh. "We don't have many other options. But yeah, she bothers me, too."
"Here's hoping an asteroid creams her," A flashing light shone on Falco's beak as he spoke.
Fox got the same alert on his screen. One last talk between all the leaders before they would throw themselves into the fight.
The portraits lined up across the screen. Ray, Peppy, Riley, Falco, and Miyu. Fox tried to ignore her. She glanced frostily at something off-center on her HUD. It might have been one of their portraits.
"Alright. This is it. Make sure you know your part of the plan and what to do if things go wrong," Peppy spoke, sweeping his gaze across his own HUD, "Keep each other updated and watch each other's backs,"
Fox saw a brief expression flicker across Miyu's face. Riley just nodded. "Our job is to take out their leadership. Let's make sure we-"
An alarm blatted and every HUD lit up every face a bright red. Riley didn't even miss a beat. "They're starting their attack. Good hunting, people."
The portraits turned to static one by one, and Fox slumped back in his chair. The feelings that bothered him returned, stalking his thoughts. He pushed them away again as another thought overshadowed them all.
What did Andross mean when he mentioned many, many projects?
Miyu eyeballed the swarm of HUD-tagged enemies. She formed up by Riley and McCoy, and she could see two of the Star Fox fighters cruising by beside them before they took off ahead of the group with several other fighters.
She glanced at her trigger, then at McCoy. The idea of deserting briefly touched her mind. But then what? Where would she go? Venom? Venom would be dead, and her fighter just wasn't fit for long range travel. Without a carrier, she'd run out of food or water before even reaching the nearest safe haven. She could try the warp gate over Venom, but again, then what? Have her face plastered on wanted posters everywhere?
She let out a slow breath through her nose. No. She needed to stay. This way, she had a chance at hitting back at the people who put her here.
Miyu glanced again at the fighter-bombers. She wondered if McCoy thought about the same thing. He probably did, but for better or worse, he was still here.
She saw the two carriers in the distance. One was her former home, and the other was a genuine Venomian assault carrier. This fight would be hard.
The first wave of ships opened fire, and the asteroid's defenders broke formation as fighters swarmed them. The feline pilot gripped her throttle, only just noticing that her LADAR display of the Venomian carrier found something new. Something she didn't remember from before.
Almost every surface on the carrier retracted. Some new plates rose up from beneath the armor. The plates looked oddly ridged, like the raised edges of dinner plates, or trays, or windows, or displays...
The realization froze Miyu's blood. She reached for her control panel and sent out an emergency alert:
"DO NOT LOOK AT THE CARRIER. I REPEAT, DO NOT LOOK AT THE CARRIER. IT'S PUTTING OUT DISPLAY SCREENS WIT-"
She didn't even finish before a wave of torpedo alerts flooded her cockpit.
"What the crap?" Falco muttered as he saw the carrier raise several screens in place of its armored surfaces. This didn't make any sense at all. Why take down all your armor in the middle of a fight, just to throw out some TVs? What were they gonna do? Put up videos for the-
The screens flickered, and the ferret's face appeared. On all of them.
On every.
Single.
One.
Fox watched, jaw sinking down, as he saw friendly green HUD tags vanish one by one. The rest moved erratically. Three crashed directly into the carrier's shields. Two flew off in straight lines before struggling to right themselves. One of those disappeared as fighters chased it. A rippling circular distortion marked each lost fighter.
He immediately reached for the control panel to open a channel with Peppy. Peppy reached him first, instantly looking haggard on his HUD as the hare stared straight down. "Fox, we..."
The hare trailed off as he blinked hard, and one of his ears flicked. He sounded like someone coming up for air after being forced underwater. "We're...We're getting eaten alive out here."
"What do you need me to do?" Fox responded immediately.
Peppy glanced at his canopy HUD and whispered in genuine horror as he saw something. Fox knew what it was when the Great Fox's speakers blared.
"TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT. TORPEDO ALERT."
The noise rattled Fox's nerves as he saw the bridge HUD mark each torpedo with terrifying red hazard-stripe brackets. He saw one of the carriers turn directly towards him. Towards the Great Fox.
And nobody moved to intercept them.
Miyu's warning died on her lips. She watched as a half dozen fighter tags vanished before her eyes. She glanced at the Venomian carrier's red square and reflexively looked away. She expected the same terrifying static-in-your-head feeling from before, but the carrier was either too far away for her to see the screens clearly, or she didn't look at it long enough for it to harm her.
Riley rapped out new orders without hesitation. "Total, McCoy, get after those torpedoes and the breakaway carrier. Now."
Miyu didn't even bother to think before speaking. "What?! Just us?! How are we going to stop all that?!"
Riley snapped back, "No arguing. Go."
Miyu froze for long enough to see another fighter disappear on her HUD. She cursed, then banked away towards the asteroid thrusters. She fumed as she broke away from the fighting and started an intercept course with the lead torpedo.
The HUD tagged each torpedo with counters for distance and time. She glanced at her own speed and the speed of each torpedo as a new realization dawned on her.
They wouldn't reach the torpedoes in time. That information sent a cool rush down her spine. Riley's voice rapped new orders, "McCoy, I want you to launch your munitions into the path of their torpedos. Catch as many as you can in the explosions."
"...Roger." McCoy coolly answered. He didn't sound happy about it.
"Total, I want you going after that carrier." Miyu grit her teeth as she heard Riley speak.
Miyu wanted to argue. Then, she clicked her jaw shut and turned towards the carrier. She watched as McCoy's fighter-bomber launched smart bombs into the paths of the initial wave of enemy torpedoes.
As she turned towards the carrier that used to be her home she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that almost all of the torpedoes vanished in bright fireballs.
Almost.
"SLIPPY, I NEED YOU BACK IN YOUR FIGHTER. NOW." The panic in Fox's chest bubbled up to his throat as he watched the frog awkwardly pull himself back into his Arwing.
Fox could see the fireballs that caught many of the incoming torpedoes.
He also watched as two of the thrusters Slippy worked on erupted in retina-bruising flares of light. He watched as the captured mercenary carrier closed in, launching fighters. He saw one allied fighter flying to intercept, followed by a single fighter-bomber.
Slippy's fighter turned to face the new attackers as it took off. Fox heard the frog's chatter immediately over his headset. "Fox, you have to move the rest of the thrusters yourself. We don't have options anymore."
Fox nodded immediately, even as he felt his heart sink at the news. He guided the Great Fox towards another thruster, careful to avoid its bright plume. He only just realized what he needed to know now. "Uh, Slippy? How do I do this?"
Slippy answered quickly, moving his fingers over his console fast enough for them to look like they were teleporting as the HUD image lagged. "Push it in the middle. Not right on the joint. Just-just make sure you point them in these directions-"
Slippy sent a crude diagram with finger-drawn outlines that overlapped with Fox's HUD. "Make sure you line them up with the drawing. You got that? Like the drawing."
Fox squinted. "I...I got it. I think I got it."
"I mean, gee, I sure hope you do." Slippy's portrait disappeared the moment the fighters opened fire. Slippy's sarcasm didn't even sink in. Fox already nosed the Great Fox into position and slowly, gently, pushed it forwards.
The collision jolt sent brief starbursts of white into his vision. The sound put his fur on end. He hesitated for a second, then kept pushing forwards, ignoring the groan of the ship's hull.
The thruster tilted, agonizingly slowly, and with a wail of metal that Fox could feel behind his eyes. He looked through the window and watched as the thruster moved.
He glanced at the display of the fights again, and saw the strike team assaulting the Venomian carrier regrouping...
"Firing torpedoes." Falco heard Riley speak. The voice felt distant, like he heard it through a few walls. He tried to focus on everything except the god-damned display-plated carrier.
He'd spent the last several minutes dodging while trying to avoid eye contact with the carrier. He felt cross-eyed three minutes into it and already felt sick.
Assaulting the carrier turned into a disaster. The carrier never even suffered a scratch, with every one of the few hits being absorbed by the shields. The ferret continued to glare, smugly this time, as the defenders struggled to do anything about it.
Fighting the other strike craft turned into a nightmare as they consistently angled themselves to be between their carrier and the asteroid's defenders.
Falco pulled his trigger, blasting both wings off of a red-and-green fighter, watching as it fled with no guns to fire. He chased it until it flew in the direction of the carrier. He sucked an inward breath through the edges of his beak and felt his eyes water as he saw the ferret's face beyond it. He turned away, cursing.
He knew the enemy had the advantage by being between the carrier and their targets. The only times they needed to face the carrier was when retreating, and that rarely lasted long. Still, he saw the occasional wobble when they flew towards it.
Falco only just started to realize how hard it felt to breathe. He muscled through it, sending another fighter spinning into the void with a hit from his one blaster cannon.
He saw two torpedoes fly by and crash into the carrier's shields. The shields flickered and vanished as scrap from the explosion flew through and hit the hull.
As the knowledge dawned on him, he saw the fighter-bomber fly by, spinning lazily as it overshot the carrier.
Falco realised what it meant the moment the shields went down. He practically shouted as he turned to face the carrier, making sure he kept it at the very edge of his vision. "Everybody, hit it now. Now, dammit, NOW!"
The remaining fighters turned to face the carrier, and plasma bolts started hitting the ship itself. Huge screens froze in sections as plasma bolts melted holes into them. Two more fighters spun out of control as they got close, ramming, intentionally or not, into the carrier.
The ferret's face changed. Now he started to frown.
It lasted less than a second before a missile hit something important, and every screen shut off. The carrier cracked in half, its engines shorn off by Falco's missiles.
Falco watched as bodies flew from the ship's split hull. He tried to find one body in particular, then shuddered as he thought what would happen if he found and saw its face.
What do we do? What do we do?
The voice in Miyu's head roared at her. She watched as two of the three fighters blew right past her. The third pummeled her shields.
McCoy fired his last smart bomb when he destroyed the torpedoes. Now, he struggled to avoid being shot by one of the fighters from the carrier.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the fighters break apart mid-flight, and watched as one of the Star Fox fighters chased the one going after McCoy.
And the mercenary carrier flew right by.
That...didn't make sense. It didn't carry weapons. What could it do?
She saw it make an accelerating beeline for another thruster, and the terrifying thought of a suicide run dawned on her.
Miyu swore. She jammed her fingers into the console hard enough for them to hurt and switched to the channel for the Star Fox team, yelling at whoever flew the other Star Fox fighter. "Take care of whoever's chasing me, I'm going after the carrier-"
"Wait, wha-?" Miyu didn't even bother to acknowledge, but watched as the Star Fox pilot changed course to take on the fighter behind her.
She swooped in so close to the ship that she could count the rivets. She eventually found what she looked for. A directional thruster built into the side of the ship. She pulled the trigger, boring through the carrier's shields and cracking the thruster with multiple hits.
She flipped to the other sides, taking down as many directional thrusters as she could. Gritting her teeth, and trying to ignore the adrenaline-charged trembling of her fingers, she pushed her fighter into the carrier.
For a half-second, she wondered if she blacked out. Then she saw the ship's hull almost an arm's length from her face through the canopy.
Now came the important part. She pushed her fighter into the carrier, sending it off-course.
She didn't have the firepower to blow it up, but she could send it somewhere else.
Miyu watched the asteroid thruster plumes as they got terrifyingly large in her vision. Her HUD already flashed a red collision warning as a voice pleaded in her ear to move away.
And as the plume got close, she did.
Miyu pulled away, seeing the carrier enter the plume, never hitting the thruster.
She watched as it evaporated mid-flight, spinning into molten pieces. She shivered as she spoke, feeling the adrenaline still send a tremor through her fingers. "Carrier down."
Fox clutched his chest, digging fingers into fur and feeling something under it racing. He pulled the Great Fox back from the last thruster. The last one.
He saw the carrier barely miss the thruster before being pushed into the plume instead. He bit his claws as he saw the number of friendly fighters dwindle to almost nothing in the fight against the Venomian carrier. He almost would've seen Venom die.
He slumped in his chair. He pressed his palms into his eyes with a sigh that shuddered like a racking cough. His paws shook. The enemy carriers flew as clouds of scrap. Andross' asteroid plan failed...
"FOX, WATCH IT-"
A fighter flew in an arc, aiming directly towards a row of thrusters.
An image of the debris from the first breaking through and smashing the second, third, and worse flashed through Fox's mind.
The red fox felt his mouth turn dry. Without a second thought, he pushed the Great Fox forwards, aiming for the space between it and the thruster.
He saw the red-and-green fighter barreling down almost towards the bridge...
Miyu watched as a Venomian fighter broke apart in front of her when she noticed a geyser of scrap metal fly from the neck of the Star Fox carrier. She heard the frog let out a cry over the net as his face appeared on her HUD. The falcon appeared, too, whispering under his breath in the same voice you'd usually hear in a prayer. The hare's jaw just dropped, eyes wide.
"FOX! NO!"
"C'mon. C'mon. Don't go like this. Don't go like this..."
The silence lasted for what felt like a minute, and Miyu's fur stood on end as she heard the panic and concern in the team's voices. She looked towards the Great Fox and wondered. Really wondered. If he was gone this time...
A familiar face showed up on her HUD. "This is Fox McCloud. I'm rattled, but I'm still here."
The hare let out a shuddering sigh of relief. The frog clapped with what looked like tears in his eyes. The falcon cheered, slamming a fist on the console as he whooped.
Miyu paused, seeing all these faces. Something at the edge of her mind pulled at her thoughts, and she briefly wondered if she should join in.
Instead, she turned off the connection, and turned away.
Fox lay back in the hospital bed with a small grin. They did it. Venom and the asteroid were both safe.
Others joined him in the hospital, some of them stood, and some lay in beds of their own. Riley blinked sleepily at two of the pilots sitting at the foot of her bed. Ray and Rock sat by Fox, with Rock filling a plastic cup from a keg nearby. Did that break hospital rules? Fox wasn't sure anyone cared. People celebrated right now.
He frowned a little as he remembered the dead. They'd need to do a service. When he tried to sit up and mention it to Ray, the ape gently smiled and told him they could find time to grieve. Now, spirits were high, and they needed to celebrate.
Fox could see Greene at the corner of the room with Falco. She met Fox's gaze for a second, and she looked genuinely relieved to see him. Turning away, she listened to Falco as he waved his red plastic cup in an arc across an imaginary horizon.
Most of the mercenaries from Riley's group gathered around their leader. Fox remembered the coyote bomber pilot and wondered where he was. He looked the most hostile, so Fox thought he needed to keep an eye out for him.
That said, most of the crew got along pretty well. Slippy talked to the arctic fox, who enthusiastically imitated swinging a crowbar. Slippy watched, wide-eyed and smiling as he listened to what Fox guessed was the story behind it.
Peppy sat by Fox, smiling warmly as he and one of the mercenary pilots talked about where they were from. So far, everything felt like it was going pretty well.
But one face mattered to Fox McCloud. The face of the pilot who flew her fighter into another ship to keep it from smashing into another thruster by herself. That event stood out in his mind for the last few hours.
After some serious thought, he motioned for Peppy to give him something to write with, and something to write on. Picking up a hospital food tray, he used it as a desk while he wrote. Peppy glanced at it occasionally, and frowned thoughtfully as the fox eventually filled both sides of the paper.
After a while, Fox sat up, with Peppy helping to prop him up. He motioned for the arctic fox to come over, and started folding up the paper with his paws...
Miyu Lynx looked over her fighter again. She reviewed her gear a second, and a third time as she prepared to leave. The asteroid's mechanics already repaired it, and now she just wanted to leave.
She stood, the only one left in the hangar, except for one guard who watched her warily. She ignored him, and she tried her best to ignore the tapping echo of her boots as she walked across the floor, circling her fighter.
The only thing harder to ignore echoed from down the hall. The cheers, the laughs, the sounds of a party. Her ears flicked at the sound as she started to climb into her cockpit.
Her ears swiveled when she heard a familiar voice shout from down the hall. Looking up, she saw the arctic fox waving something in her paw.
Her ears instantly flattened, and she felt small wave of shame as the arctic fox she talked to for so long walked in on her as she was starting to leave.
"Miyu! Hey, I got something for you." The arctic fox called her name, and Miyu frowned a little, remembering that even now, she didn't know the fox's name.
She handed the paper up to Miyu as she stood on the wing. Miyu picked it up as she talked some more, "It's from that McCloud guy. He said he wanted me to get it to you if you were...still around."
Miyu narrowed her eyes at the fox's name, but relented as she saw the arctic fox sweep her gaze across Miyu's fighter. Maybe she only just figured out why Miyu was here, alone, packing.
The arctic fox hesitated for a moment, and then asked, quietly. "Do you want to join us?"
Miyu met the arctic fox's gaze, and felt self-conscious. She opened her mouth to speak, and found herself struggling for words. "Ah...well...y'know..."
The arctic fox filled the spaces between Miyu's words with her own. "You...don't have to be alone like this. I think some folks back there would be pretty happy to see you."
Miyu paused and met the gaze of the arctic fox. She opened her mouth to speak, and this time no words came out.
The fox spoke up again, gently pulling at Miyu's elbow. "C'mon. I really think you could use it."
She tilted her head in the direction of the party with a genuine smile. Miyu's frown deepened as she looked down and spoke quietly. "Just...give me a minute. I want to think about it."
The arctic fox's smile faded, but she nodded. "Alright. Still, I hope I'll see you there."
With that, the fox jogged away, looking over her shoulder before she moved around a corner and disappeared from sight.
Miyu stared in the direction of the party. As she heard it, she felt a yawning pit inside her. Somewhere beneath her heart. It was the space she always felt her heart pulled into, and the source of every time she felt her blood turn cold. For a while, that space disappeared when her team welcomed her back with champagne and a crowd. It came back and grew wider when she found herself alone in her bunk, turned away from everyone in the room.
Miyu shook her head, and this time turned to the note in her paws. She scowled. Kneeling by her bags, she rooted around in one of the pockets until she picked up a lighter.
Holding the paper up by a corner, and after two or three flicks with her thumb, she lit the note from the lower edge. She watched as it burned, words folding into themselves as the paper browned, shrinking and curling in the flames. She dropped it as the flames almost reached her fingers, turning away as the last sentence visible started to burn.
We couldn't have done it without you.
Epilogue
Fox walked through the neck of the Great Fox, where the torpedoes punched through the armor and left a space where the metal melted inwards. A makeshift tube linked the body of the Great Fox with the bridge. As Fox walked through it, he almost stepped on ROB. A while earlier, Slippy decided to stick ROB's head to an ankle-high set of wheels until they could find ROB a new body.
ROB chirped a reply in the form of a garbage truck's reverse tones as it backed away from Fox's boot and ran down the hall. Fox smiled a small smile and just felt glad he didn't lose ROB, too.
Arriving at the bridge, Fox took off his white jacket and set it down in the chair by Peppy. The hare glanced over his shoulder for a full second before turning away with a deep breath. "Y'know, we didn't get paid bad for that job."
Fox kicked up his boots on the seat of a nearby chair as Peppy kept going. "With what they paid us, we might be able to get the entire Great Fox completely repaired. Or we could repair all the Arwings, y'know,"
He shot Fox a sad smile with upturned paws. "But not both at once."
Fox already knew. The numbers still hit hard. All that work, just to break less than even. His gaze wandered across the bridge window towards Venom beyond. The planet looked green from here. Fox always thought of it as a sickly green, but from here, it almost looked like the kind of green you saw in a deep ocean. That new comparison gave him pause as he remembered that people lived here. He kept that in mind as he spoke. "I'm just stunned we haven't seen this on the news yet."
Peppy turned, the chair creaking as he got to his feet. "Don't worry, we will. We're gonna have a lot to explain to Pepper and the rest. So, y'know, be ready for that."
Fox nodded. As Peppy stood, he patted Fox on the shoulder and walked away. He halted when Fox spoke, "So what happened with the ruby?"
Peppy stopped at the door when he heard Fox speak. He made a one-note hum and scratched his ears. "I'm surprised I forgot about that. We went back, and it was gone. Not stolen, but we saw a fine dust where it used to be. Slippy says he thinks it disintegrated, judging from the powder."
The hare chewed a lip thoughtfully, "It kind of makes sense. If it held anything, Andross probably put a self-destruct thing in it. And I'm not gonna question Slippy when it comes to chemistry."
He looked back at Fox. The vulpine still faced the window. The hare put his paws in his pockets as he spoke, slowly. "Are you...still thinking about what it told you?"
The pause lasted long enough for Venom to spin and reveal another continent. Fox didn't turn away when he answered. "I know he like mind games, Peppy. He just...got to me."
Peppy walked back over to Fox and put a paw on his back. "Fox...I..."
He threw up a paw as he spoke. "I can get why you think that there's a chance he wasn't lying. I'm just not sure he could pull off a threat like that. Not now."
Fox looked up to face Peppy standing over his shoulder. The hare smiled wryly and stared at Venom again. "From what it sounds like, they've scoured that planet for years and didn't find a thing. They'll probably even do it again, after today. All those people coming together to bring down a rock on Venom, I'm not sure they can ignore it. But even if he has something up his sleeve now, after all that time, I bet we'll catch it."
The red fox nodded, slowly. The words felt reassuring, even if he had his doubts.
Fox thought about all the Venomians willing to bring down a rock on their own home. "I know we missed some of the Venomians as they got away. Think there's a bounty on them?"
"Fox, how could there not be?" Peppy snorted, "A bunch of die-hards come together to break their own planet apart? There's nowhere they're gonna be able to hide."
He walked towards the window. "My money's on terrorists. They hate that the new Venom government's all buddy-buddy with Corneria's, so they take it out on the people. Screw 'em."
Fox kept staring at the planet, and then stood as some of the chair's frayed edges caught on his tail. Flicking it away, he leaned closer to the window, taking in the view of the planet.
He lost his father on this planet, the source of the invasion. The memory felt recent, and if he didn't have a calendar, he would've sincerely felt the war was only months ago, instead of years. For a long time, he hated the planet. And now he thought about everyone living on it who almost died because of Andross and whatever cronies got rounded up to carry out his plan. And more than anything, he thought about what else could be, maybe, hiding on the planet to threaten them all.
Fox sighed so deeply he felt smaller when he finished. He didn't know what to think about Venom. It represented enough to make him feel lost when he looked at it.
"Well, I'm gonna turn in. Bridge's yours. Don't stay up too late." Peppy gently bumped his fist into Fox's shoulder and walked away.
"One last thing." Fox spoke as the hare turned away. Peppy stopped, turning again to face the fox.
"I keep thinking about what she said." Peppy's ears laid back when the fox said she. He frowned.
"It got under my skin." Fox spoke, turning to face the space between Peppy and himself. "We don't get to judge her. We're not any better than her. We're not the good guys. Those words...stuck with me. I can't stop thinking about them."
A look slowly spread across the hare's features. He tilted his head back as he focused intently on Fox's face. "Do you think she's right?"
"No."
The force behind the words shocked him as he said them, and he wondered if he said them maybe a little too quickly. He flattened his ears, looking down. "I think she was being unfair. Yeah. We're mercenaries. Yeah, we fought for money, like her. But..."
Fox grit his teeth. "But we try to be better. Than the rest. We don't always succeed, but...we try. And we actually helped this time."
Fox shook his head. "I don't know. It's like she found a bruise and stuck a finger right into it."
Peppy smiled, walked up to Fox, and gently patted him on the back. "Honestly, Fox, what matters to me is that you decided to be different when she insisted you were the same."
With that, Peppy smiled and turned away. "You have a good night, Fox."
Fox watched as Peppy disappeared behind a door, and stood there, slowly taking in the silence. Turning back towards Venom, he didn't look at the planet, but instead looked at his reflection in the window. He read that face for a while before he reached into his pocket and pulled out the bullets the nurse gave him.
He sat down, holding them in his palm and spent his time staring at the bullets, at the planet beyond, and at the face reflected in the window.
END
Well, that's it. The end of the first story. I'm glad y'all joined me for this.
I thought about ending it all here, and I could. There's enough questions to leave stuff up to the imagination while also having enough answers for decent closure.
That said, I also worked on a short story, and I have the next part of the Star Fox team's story already in mind. So here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna put all of the future stories associated with this setting here in this fanfiction entry. It should make following it easier. It's an idea Elarix pitched earlier, and I liked it. So shout out to him for making that suggestion.
You'll see the Star Fox crew again pretty soon. This came a little late, so I think y'all deserve an update on their adventures in the near future, and even another big story. Who knows? You might see some familiar faces, too.
Thank you again for reading. I enjoyed writing it, and I look forward to more.
Nail Strafer: Yeah, I thought about that, but the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. I didn't see any scenario where they could backstab the team and end up in a better position. I initially put the ferret in there to add some mystery to the setting, so I don't want to explain what he is too much.
Elarix: Yeah, I was aiming to have Miyu be something like that. Honestly, your comment inspired me to make Falco say something similar. I'd also like to thank you for your suggestion about where to go with this fanfiction. It helped a lot.
Overture OTSW: Thanks again! I just hope to keep y'all entertained.
NadaYNadie: As usual, I like reading your reviews. You and Elarix have some opinions on Miyu that I think are worth keeping in mind as I write more. Like I said earlier, I have more planned for this story, and I look forward to hearing y'all's thoughts on it.
Alright. I hope y'all had a good time reading my story, and I hope y'all stick around for more. As for now, I gotta jet. Don't worry. I'll be back with more.
-NothingExtra