6 Months Later...
Pom Station, as it was affectionately known amongst the students of the flight academy, hung high above the planet Corneria in a synchronous orbit. On most clear nights, you could spot the dim lights of the station at a single point in the sky, like an unmoving star.
At the dimly lit Canary Roost, just down the road from the spaceport, amongst colonies of drifters, vagabonds and the new poor, a fox sat at the bar, his idle eyes seemingly entranced by the half-empty beer before him. Or was it half-full?
Whatever it was, he wanted more of it. Utter oblivion was what he craved.
Fortunately for him, he drank free at this bar. He drank free at every bar. Perks of being a war hero.
He didn't come often, but he did come regularly. It was one of few places he could go where he would be left alone. Of course, everyone there knew who he was - but in this part of Corneria's SOI, you kept to yourself if you knew what was good for you. Fox liked that. The clientele skewed male, but it took all kinds. Drifters, hustlers - the occasional orphan, like little Damon, the 12 year old gecko busboy.
Fox took a glug from his beer, the ice cold brew sending a chill to the tip of his tail. He was allowing himself this mental day off. It wasn't going to become a problem - a lot had happened recently. He deserved it.
Why today, though? He could have avoided this scenario - sitting alone in a dive bar, again, for the fifth day in a row.
He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open, and scrolled down a list of names on the monochrome green screen. Highlighting "Mom," his finger hovered over the call button.
A second passed. Two.
He closed the phone and set it down on the bar.
"Another, please and thank you, Savanna," Fox called to the bartender.
"Comin' right up, sweetie," the sheep called back, disinterested.
As the bartender pulled a fresh beer from the icebox and slid it down the bar to Fox's waiting paw, the saloon doors swung open, and in came a spritely firespit of a woman, with a topiary of frizzy, black fur on the top of her head. She was dressed in a flight suit bearing the seal of the Cornerian Air Force, and she had streaks of oil dried to parts of her face and neck.
Ah, for fuck's sake, Fox thought to himself, The Venomian.
She'd probably already seen him - he now realized that he was sitting almost exactly in the middle of the room. Exactly where a person's eyes would go upon entering the pub. He didn't usually do that - he didn't usually like being unable to have his eyes on the exits. Call it paranoia - but it was true - Andross's assassins were still everywhere. Probably.
Bright brown eyes gleamed above her impossibly rounded, conspicuously furless, spotted cheeks. She wore the same flat-toothed smile she always did; a smile that screamed some sort of ignorant bliss. In truth, her positivity was overwhelming at times; at this time, downright sickening to Fox, who wanted nothing more than to drink in peace.
Except when he made eye contact with her, she seemed to freeze - like a deer in headlights. Like someone whose boss just caught them at the bar after calling in sick.
That is what happened, Fox joked to himself. Well, would've. If I were still her boss.
"Is that Mr. McCloud?" Huma asked rhetorically, her momentary shock replaced by her everlasting smile. Before Fox could say anything, she approached. Pushing his misery deep inside, his dour expression shifted immediately to one of feigned camaraderie.
"Greasemonkey!" he called back affectionately. "You don't have to Mr. McCloud me any more, Huma, I'm not your boss. I'm just Fox," he chided her, tapping the bar to his left. "Come on over, have a seat."
The ape sat down beside Fox and set her bag down on the bar. Her impossibly thick jungle of a mane was pulled back in a ponytail; it was clear she had just gotten off for the day.
"I wasn't aware you was a Rooster, too," Huma quipped. "You sing?"
"Oh, nobody wants to hear that," Fox joked back. He'd tried the karaoke before - it went poorly, like much else did that evening. "'Sides, I think Savanna would probably kick me out for scaring away her customers."
"Fox, you know as well as I do that ain't a single man, woman or child ever stepped inside this bar that's afraid of you," Savanna bleated.
"Can confirm," yelled Damon, the orphan gecko busboy.
"Barkeep, a pint of dark if you'd be so kind," Huma called down the bar, before turning her attention to her former boss. "So, what's the score, Foxy? We celebrating? Honoring?"
"Hoping to turn four to this many," Fox said, holding up eight fingers. "You?"
"I've got three days left before we ship out to Sauria," Huma lamented. "Figured tonight's probably the last night I've got to tie one off. Everyone's busy though. So, I figured - Roost it up."
"My thoughts exactly," Fox agreed. He took another sip of his beer. He didn't care about this conversation. He didn't want to think about work. Godsdammit, Huma, of every bar in Corneria's SOI - you had to come here?
"Sauria?" Fox queried. "Isn't that illegal?"
"Uh, yeah, yeah, I mentioned that when Slippy first brought it up," Huma recalled, before preparing her high-pitched imitation of her teammate's voice. "And he was just like, don't worry about it. That's what he said, don't worry about it."
Fox chuckled. "I guess it doesn't really matter anymore," he said, "After all the shit Andross did down there, I guess the whole goal of protecting and preserving their ecosystem just…doesn't really matter now, does it?"
"I heard the Red Eye tribe got ahold of some MMUs from Andross's gorilla units," Huma laughed. "Imagine that - standing out on the roof and some big-ass fuckin' lizard with those teeny tiny-ass arms flies past you. Gods help us if they ever figure out how to use the damn things."
"Who knew that the first legitimate challenge to Cloud Runner's thousand-year supremacy would be big, dumb lizards with jetpacks."
"I guess even the failed pilots still have potential," Huma reasoned. "A Red Eye falling on you from a thousand feet in the air - you could probably do some damage with that. Knock out a base or two."
"You should bring this up with R&D," Fox joked. "I think there's some serious potential here for some Arwing upgrades. Red Eye bombers. It's brilliant - we just drop the Red Eyes with their jetpacks over enemy territory and then let them figure the rest out from there. Worst case scenario, you lose a Red Eye - big deal."
"I'm sure they aren't all big dumb lizards, Fox," Huma laughed, but Fox was unconvinced.
"I saw one on the nature channel take a squat in a puddle and then drink out of it, Huma," Fox explained. "There's more empty space in those massive skulls than there is in the Lylat System."
It wasn't so bad having someone to hang out with, Fox realized. Today didn't have to suck entirely, and Huma was always such a sweetheart. She was green, sure, but she had a real talent for mechanical sciences.
"So, the elephant," Huma sighed. Fox looked around.
"Who, Hector?" he said, gesturing toward a man seated near the door. The elephant's ear flicked as if to swat a bothersome bug.
"No, the elephant in the room," Huma laughed. Fox blinked.
"Yeah, his name's Hector," Fox said, flat.
"Why aren't you with your mama? It's Mama's Day. I know you still got one, I seen her picture in your office. From Solstice Day, with all the sausage?"
Fox went silent. He took a gulp of his beer. He could feel the sweating coming on.
"She's off having a girls' day in the city with some of her lady friends. Plus, she - well, you know we don't get on very well anymore."
"Got it. Hey, I totally understand, I. Feel. You. Bro," Huma said, slapping Fox on the shoulder with each full stop. "My mama doesn't like me very much either. She says the military's for boys, not girls in boys' clothes. Thinks I'm selfish for putting myself in danger. Says I'm gonna get sick, or spaced, or sucked into a black hole, and I'm like, Ma, you know there aren't any black holes in the Lylat System, right? Shit like that."
"Sounds like a hoot," Fox chuckled. "Religious?"
"'The gods are always watching, Huma,'" she said, mockingly. "'You're never alone, Huma. I'm watching, Huma. The gods are watching, Huma.'"
"Creepy," Fox opined.
"Right?"
Fox noted that he was actually on his fifth or sixth beer of the night. Right?
Fuck it.
"My mom hates me now. After the war, I broke her," Fox admitted. Huma's everlasting, toothy smile dampened. He motioned with his eyes to the bartender, who grabbed two more beers from the icebox.
"When Dad moved on, she all but disowned me when I told her that I wasn't going to quit the academy. She just couldn't get over this thought she had of me dying too, and she just…hates me for it."
"Oi. Sounds like you've had a rough time of it."
"Yep. And then, the wild old man Peppy got me involved in this crazy ride," Fox explained, referring to his stint as the leader of Lylat's premiere mercenary crew. "Mama couldn't take that. At all. And then, after the war…I thought everything would change. But then my stupid ass had to go and tell Mama what I saw…"
"What you saw, you mean, like, in the war?"
"Nah, just some…early PTSD fits, I guess."
As the quivering mass of brain matter pulsed with aneurysms before Fox's eyes, he realized he had won. Why, then, were Andross's eyes, dangling limp from the fleshy nerves connecting them to the brain, looking at Fox as though they were laughing?
The ape's powerful voice blasted through Fox's brain like a telepathic lightning strike: "IF I GO DOWN, I'M TAKING YOU WITH ME!"
Moved entirely by instinct, Fox yanked the control stick of his Arwing as hard as he could, pulling into a tight U-turn - his vision began to tunnel in from the outside as the forces overwhelmed his Arwing's G-Diffusers, and he felt his body going numb from toes to legs, from fingers to arms, until only a small part of his head had any feeling at all - what Fox had come to believe was death, in slow motion, the body slowly shutting down. A bright white silence clouded his consciousness. And for a few seconds, he was at peace.
The radio crackled. At first, garbled, but soon clear as day - "Don't ever give up, my son."
"So to her, I'm a selfish military brat, who never respected her, who went out of my way to hurt her - who made up ghost stories to hurt her. A well-rounded disappointment. Etcetera."
"Still, though," Huma nodded along. "It's Mama's Day. Make her happy. While you can, you know. She's right, after all - you very well might get killed some day."
"Yeah. I know."
"Anyway, I gotta get going, Fox," the ape drawled. "Mama might not like me, but she still loves me, so I'm meeting her for seafood. Tell yours 'Happy Mama's Day' for me, yeah?" Huma teased, and then she was gone.
Fox sighed and picked his cell phone up off the bar. He flipped through his contacts until he found his Mom's number, and placed the pad of his toe to the call button, but before he could tap it, he heard a group - men, women, children, screaming in the streets. He hadn't heard screams like that since…
Oh, gods.
The door exploded open and Huma came barreling into the saloon, her hairless face drained of all color.
"Fox!" she screamed. "We've got to move, now!"
Fox stood from his stool and rushed outside alongside Huma, joining hundreds of others standing in the streets, their eyes turned to the skies. Floating endlessly in the same spot of the sky as it always was, was the planet Corneria, that brilliant blue ocean marble they all called home.
And right in front of it, a rock. A very, very big, burning rock.
—-
Please leave a review if you've gotten this far!