Wolf-cam
Disclaimer: Star Fox is not mine. I don't get money for this. You know the drill.
Just some stream-of-consciousness authorial bitching about life that I wanted to do, and Wolf O'Donnell is my weapon of choice in dispensing it. Not sure how well this meshes with Star Fox canon, but I'm going off the games, which are about as authoritative as one can get, so nyah.
Her name was Kit, and she was a journalist.
Wolf O'Donnell hated journalist chicks.
To be more specific, Kit was a lynx, and lynxes were in high demand by Corneria's major news networks. Somewhere along the line, Wolf had guessed, someone of fashion renown had decided that lynxes were classy, elegant, and pretty, at least in appearance—Wolf could certainly attest that they weren't always classy or elegant, but that was another story. And that was the reason everyone gave for why lynxes were so damned popular among the press. But the real reason was pretty damn obvious itself—it was evidently some kind of unspoken message to the female lynxes (of course they were female) from the networks: "we're only giving you a job here because you have a nice ass and that skirt really brings it out."
Wolf occasionally wondered whether the lynxes realized this.
But journalist chicks were troublesome. Wolf had found himself taking them hostage, capturing them, threatening them, killing them, and various other usually violent ways of interacting with them countless times across his career. While Pigma had been flying with Star Wolf, he'd been known to do particularly nefarious things, things even Wolf didn't entirely approve of, usually under the influence of copious amounts of liquor.
As for Andrew, Andrew was so pathetic that everyone would totally shut him down, partly because he tried to be polite about it, and there really is no polite way to go about sexual assault. It was sort of amusing, in that special "I had no idea a cellular organism could sink this low" sort of way.
Journalist chicks all had their own distinct mannerisms, but by and large, they were nosy, insistent, pestering, and completely disregarding of Wolf's privacy...until he captured them. Once he captured them, they degenerated to tears and despair at their fates, particularly if Pigma ever got to them. They were burdensome, loud, and obnoxious.
And all of these sentiments combined to make Wolf wonder why the hell he was waking up in Kit's bed.
Well, he reasoned with himself, at least she's a piece of ass. Wolf had never felt particularly attracted to any members of the feline species, but this little encounter had been...enlightening. The memories trickling back into his sleep-muddled brain were all the reinforcement that thought needed. All Wolf was willing to indulge in at the moment was the thought that he would have to try that trick with his tail again next time.
Whoever it was next time, anyways.
Rubbing sleep from his remaining eye, he tried to reassemble the events of the previous night. He wasn't hung over, though he suspected she might be. This was even after three rounds of a drink the bartender at a club somewhere had called "Venom," which looked like he had gone and taken some seawater from Zoness and put it in his tap. Wolf O'Donnell was just really freaking good at holding his liquor. As for her, though, he recalled her getting a little tipsy, but not completely smashed.
Wolf measured drunkenness against the ultimate extreme of that time when Andrew had discovered Leon's stash of rum. Now that was hammered.
Looking around the room, Wolf ascertained that he was actually not in Kit's bed, per se, because the room he was in looked remarkably like a hotel room. The logo of the "Four Towers Hotels" chain on a cup on the nightstand was also a giveaway. Grunting, he set about the unpleasant task of getting his bearings.
The digital clock said seven-forty-something. Wolf looked outside; it looked gloomy and overcast, like a rainstorm was imminent. He was fairly sure he was in Corneria City, specifically the swanky uptown district where all the snobby bitches and culturally deficient corporate employees were known to hang out. His clothes were strewn in an interesting disarray around the room—it must have been a hell of a shag to get him to fling one of his boots clear across the room.
Looking down to his right, he found Kit herself.
The first thing he noticed—he had failed to notice it earlier, but he had also been preoccupied with other things—was a design on the small of her back, just above her tail. The nearest he could tell, it was some kind of sacred symbol of purity among the native tribes of Katina; it looked like a couple of claws holding some kind of red jewel, which rested directly over her spine at the base of her tail.
The irony was not lost on Wolf.
Wolf knew the rest of Kit's body quite well, and so decided not to distract himself. Wolf was no stranger to the one nightstand—she was still asleep, and Wolf guessed she would be for another hour or so. He set to work looking for his clothes. Upon crawling out of the covers, though, Wolf ran into a problem.
It was really fucking cold.
Running around the room naked in what felt like subzero temperatures was not Wolf's ideal way of starting his morning, and Leon and Panther weren't supposed to meet up with him until the afternoon, so Wolf retreated back under the covers, glowering at the room and how freaking cold it was. The art of the one night stand was to leave before she woke up, preferably having several miles between him and her when she did wake up; thus, any sort of confrontation or possible unpleasant commitments could be avoided. Get your sex and go; it was pretty simple. Besides, Wolf O'Donnell was known primarily by reputation, not appearance, and he prudently refrained from revealing his real name to people like, say, the girls he was sleeping with.
Akira Shinichiro, however, had been the worst pseudonym ever. Wolf mentally reminded himself once again that he needed to kick Panther's ass for that fake ID.
Wolf looked about the room again for a means of escape—the last thing he wanted was Kit waking up and getting all touchy-feely with him. Then he would have to kill her and he was hoping he would be able to nail her again one day. That thing she did with her tail was pretty cool, after all.
Besides, the last thing Wolf needed in his life was a girl to follow him around wanting attention and affection and material gifts and all that. He had made his way on his own with the camaraderie of Leon Powalski and Panther Caroso—neither of whom were girls, although occasionally Wolf had his questions about Leon—and earlier the not-entirely-effectual assistance of Andrew Oikonny and Pigma Dengar. He was good enough at this one night stand thing to get essentially as much sex as he wanted—and it wasn't even a necessity like food so it wasn't a terribly frequent indulgence—and he had no need or desire for all the "affection" and "companionship" that people claimed came with relationships.
And, of course, all that "affection" and "companionship" crap just boiled down to sex, the ultimate goal of pretty much any guy who gets into a relationship. And Wolf was already getting plenty of that without the emotional and financial tolls attached.
Kit stirred, and Wolf felt a sinking feeling of doom, but she settled back down to sleep. With an internal sigh of relief, Wolf steeled himself and slipped back out into the cold. Collecting his clothes and risking a brief shower, he was not long in stealthily escaping.
Of course, once she woke up, Kit would probably be wondering where her hymen went, but that wasn't Wolf's problem.
The streets of the swanky uptown district of Corneria City were bustling at this time in the morning—most people were on their way to work. The morning news was playing on a cadre of enormous monitors looming over the streets; looking up, Wolf found himself dwarfed by the image of a quite attractive young female fox, wearing a dark red blouse with a plunging neckline.
Poor girl. She probably thought they had put her there for talent.
Evidently, Corneria's top brass had passed a new bill concerning the hiring of mercenary teams, like Star Fox. Wolf thought back fondly to what was commonly called the Star Raven Incident. The Cornerian military had contracted a small-time mercenary group styling itself as Star Raven—Wolf was merciless in throwing the "rip-off" label—to rescue the nubile media-darling daughter of the Prime Minister from a gang that was holding her ransom. They had somehow gotten their hands on a seriously heavy arsenal of leftover Androssian anti-personnel weapons that were wiping out the Cornerian military teams sent to rescue her, so in went Star Raven to go play hero. Unfortunately, the Cornerians had failed to perform a background check on Star Raven, and the mercenaries were already minutes away from reaching the Prime Minister's daughter when someone realized that Star Raven was a gang of nefarious serial rapists.
Wolf had to smile at that. That was the sort of stupidity you didn't come across every day. The PM's daughter was probably still sore from that gangbang.
Of course, Star Fox had dodged the stringent new regulations concerning mercenaries by virtue of their popularity, ducking into a legal gray zone called "freelance paid special forces operations team and consultant." Panther had taken a stab at it, back before the bill had been passed and Star Fox's role was still being decided, and the final translation had been "they get paid to blow up the shit that the Cornerians can't blow up." At the thought of his nemesis, Wolf snorted in disgust—Star Fox was the Patriotic Virtuous Defender of Justice, always answering the call for help when Corneria's military failed, which seemed to be all the time. Fox McCloud had no spine—he was a lapdog whose leash was held firm in the decrepit paw of General Pepper. Each member of the team was a media darling in their own right. Fox McCloud made the ladies swoon; Falco Lombardi was like some kind of role-model for all those stupid kids who thought he was cool; Slippy Toad gave hope to even the geeks, which was no small task for anyone; Peppy Hare was the universally loved Grandpa; and Krystal...well...that one spoke for itself.
Wolf wondered how long it would take for her to start showing up in the centerfolds. Panther would be a first buyer, most definitely. Maybe the sales would help pay for those things of hers, too; they certainly couldn't have been cheap.
Stalking down the street, Wolf stuck to the alleys and nooks and crannies. Though his reputation was universally known and feared—he had to wonder how the passerby would react if they knew it was Wolf O'Donnell they had just shouted "Get a job, motherfucker!" at, though he imagined it involved loss of bladder control—his appearance was not, but that was no reason not to stay in the open.
It never ceased to both amuse and annoy Wolf O'Donnell that Fox McCloud was thrown laurels and Wolf O'Donnell was a name people said when they were really, really, really angry and wanted to invoke the wrath of someone even scarier than God. Not that Wolf wanted his face on posters and pillowcases and collectible thermoses, of course—the less publicity he got, the better, whether he was doing good or evil. But they, Fox and Wolf, were both mercenaries—people who will do what other people ask in exchange for money. Wolf could think of another profession that operated in such a manner. All the Star Fox fans, though, failed to realize this crucial connection.
And then there were the stupid computer game fanboys who would hear the word "mercenary" and leap into a frenzy, running their morbidly obese little legs off, under the impression that "mercenaries" were armor-wearing badasses with enormous cadres of weaponry, top-of-the-line spacecraft, and possibly a universal five 'o'clock shadow, but retaining just enough moral sense to fight for the universal good. Some days Wolf wanted to bust into the bedroom windows of all those stupid game geeks and show them what a real mercenary was and just how atrophied a real mercenary's sense of morality was.
Of course, when Wolf realized that most of these game geeks would be wanking at Mach 2 for roughly 12 of the day's 24 hours, well, that plan sure went to hell fast.
Cutting through a back alley and slipping out into a street crowded with the culturally deficient, Wolf risked a glance around as the crowd swept him along. He was close to the bar where he was supposed to meet Leon and Panther in the afternoon. But it was still something along the lines of eight in the morning, and the earliest he could expect them was around three.
Seven hours of nothing.
Wolf sighed and set off along the sidewalk.