Disclaimer: I don't own Star Fox. I wish I did, though. Non Nintendo characters are mine. E-mail me if you wish to use them.
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It was a fairly routine job. Fox, Falco, and Slippy were headed to Corneria's Inter-Lylatian Communications Satellite to see what was wrong. Normally, Falco would have stayed back at Great Fox, but he was bored.
"It'll probably just be a systems glitch or something like that," Slippy said.
"Your point?" Falco asked.
"My point is that you'll just be in the way!"
"I'm sorry, that's your job, isn't it?
"Stop it, guys," Fox said, sighing; he didn't feel like dealing with this. "We're almost there."
Falco and Slippy fell silent, and the trio docked at the satellite. There was always a maintenance crew onboard, and Slippy was going to talk to them. Fox had to come because Slippy might need someone to go out and fix the satellite manually; Slippy needed to stay inside to make sure all the systems were working. Fox wasn't looking forward to that; he was planning on asking Falco to do that if needed.
The team was met by a young, nervous-looking leopard.
"H-hello," he stammered. "I'm Jason Hunter. I heard that y-you were coming to fix the satellite."
Falco hid a smirk, and Fox rolled his eyes ever so slightly. Slippy started talking.
"Do you know when the satellite started malfunctioning?" Slippy asked.
"Around two am, space-time," Jason said. "B-but nothing seems to be wrong."
Fox was startled, but didn't show it. That was the same time he woke up from his dream. It was probably just coincidence, though.
"Can you take me to the control room?" Slippy asked.
"Of course," Jason said.
Slippy and Jason continued talking about the satellite, and Fox and Falco fell in step behind them. Slippy apparently locked the door behind him, for Falco slammed into the door as soon as it closed.
"Shit," he growled, rubbing his beak.
Fox sighed heavily and leaned against a wall. "It's not like we would've helped any."
"My beak hurts," Falco grumbled.
"Not to mention your pride," Fox muttered.
"Well, since when did Fox McCloud act like me?" Falco asked, seeming amused.
"Since today," Fox said flatly.
Falco crossed his arms and leaned against the wall opposite Fox, looking his friend in the eye. Fox stared blankly back.
"What's up with you?" Falco asked.
"Everybody keeps asking me that," Fox sighed, looking away. "Nothing is up with me, Falco."
Falco shook his head but said nothing more. Fox had no patience today, and when dealing with Falco, patience was what he needed most. The avian was just going to have to learn what happened when he pissed Fox off. Which might mean spending the night in the cargo bay.
Slippy walked out of the control room holding two space suits. They were similar to scuba gear, only the helmets were bigger and the material of the suit was different.
"You two are going to have to go out and check the satellite over for damages," Slippy said.
"And since when could you order me around?" Fox asked.
Slippy seemed startled, and one look at Fox told him that Fox was serious.
"I wasn't ordering you," Slippy said. "But before we left you said you would do it, so..."
"Whatever," Fox muttered, getting into the suit.
Falco was already in his, and the two made their way out into space. Fox looked over the satellite half-heartedly. He hated going out into space with a space suit. Nothing seemed to be wrong with the satellite, either, so he was pretty much doing this for nothing.
"Look, Slippy, there's nothing broken," Fox growled through the radio.
"You haven't checked it all yet," Slippy said meekly.
"If I don't find something, I'll break it myself," Fox mumbled to himself, continuing his search.
"Fox is right, Squeaky," Falco said.
"Don't call me that!" Slippy snarled.
"It's true, isn't it?" Falco laughed.
"No!" Slippy said angrily.
"Stop it, both of you!" Fox said, growling low in his throat.
The fighting stopped, and Fox and Falco finished the check. Nothing was wrong. Fox decided to head down to the base to tell Pepper about it and discuss a price for this little escapade.
Falco and Slippy were silent during the short trip. Fox assumed they didn't want to get yelled at again. they had to know Fox just wasn't going to deal with them right now.
"Slippy, come with me," Fox said as he got out of his Arwing. "Falco, don't go far from the hangar."
Slippy followed Fox up to General Pepper's office. His secretary stopped him.
"Do you have an appointment?" she asked.
"No, but I'm going in anyway," Fox said.
The secretary raised her eyebrows and pressed a button, speaking into a speaker. "General Pepper, it's Fox McCloud of Star Fox. Should I let him in?"
"Yes, Ms. Elliot," General Pepper said.
Fox and Slippy walked in.
"Nothing's wrong with the satellite," Fox said as soon as he walked in. "We checked."
"It stopped working three hours ago, though," Slippy said quietly.
Pepper thought for a moment. The time seemed to trigger his memory.
"There was a research project going on at that time," he said slowly. "They're taking a break now, but they're still in the lab. Maybe you should check there?"
"Fine," Fox said. "Slippy, take Falco and go to that lab."
"Where is it?" Slippy asked Pepper while nodding to Fox.
"You know where the laboratories are, right?" Pepper asked, and Slippy nodded. "It's the third one on the right."
Slippy nodded again and walked out.
"You want to know how much you're going to get payed, I assume?" Pepper asked. "Fifteen thousand."
"Surely the reconnection of Corneria to the rest of the Lylat System deserves at least double that," Fox said.
Pepper sighed. "Twenty-three thousand."
Fox did the math. that meant a little over forty-five hundred for each of them, split five ways, which he usually did. Not too much, but it would do. "Deal."
Falco was looking around the lab. He had no idea what anything did, and it seemed they had a lot of monitors, all displaying a dark, gray field.
"What are you researching here?" Slippy was talking to a scientist.
"We're researching the possibility of other worlds," the scientist, a gorilla, said. "Other worlds as in parallel universes."
"Any luck?" Slippy asked.
"Yes, in fact," the gorilla said, turning to a monitor. "We seem to have made some contact with this world. It seems to have no population, but we aren't sure yet."
"Doesn't seem like the nicest place," Falco muttered.
"At about the same time we made contact with this world, the satellite began to malfunction," the gorilla continued, ignoring Falco.
"I see," Slippy said. "I take it you don't know much about this world yet?"
"No," the gorilla said. "We'll tell you if we learn something."