Note: Character disclaimer is at the beginning of the Zero Chapter.

"Gotta knock a little harder, gotta knock a little harder: break down the door." Yoko Kanno, Gotta Knock a Little Harder

Chapter 1: Break Down the Door

Luckily, I couldn't have picked a better time for my escape. Corneria was taking on pilots of all species, preparing for their new exploratory fleet. Anti-Amphiboid sentiment was pretty much a thing of the past, and I didn't mind settling down at the capital base for a while.

At least, I wouldn't have, if I'd been a little more accustomed to general society. All my life, the only people I'd ever met were either other Amphs, raccoon mechies from Papetoon, or adult officers and company CEOs who came to tour the workshop. All business, all military. Everyday people were not a part of my repertoire, especially not soldiers.

A lot of the trainees I was placed with had started as soldiers, and they had a hard time adapting to the idea of exploratory work. Ribbing was standard, and I could have handled it if it stopped there, but ultimately they were too rough for me.

Somehow, I'd convinced the recruiters that I was sixteen; I don't think my fellow trainees were observant enough to question that lie, and I got the short end of the stick in every roughhousing situation that sprang up. I probably appeared in the medical wing four times in my first week alone, and I could feel folks getting suspicious. Even if I was an uncommon species on Corneria, some medic with prior Amph experience was bound to notice that I was too young for the military.

To make matters worse, I heard through fellow mechies in the hangar that dad was looking for me, using all the partnerships and inside connections he had in the industry. It wouldn't take long for him to find me in a state-sponsored pilot training initiative.

I bucked the program and went looking for a graduate who might be willing to train me privately.

The first five pilots I contacted all sounded like good tutors, and I must have sounded like a good student. Then I'd meet them, we'd talk, and all bets were off. Nobody would take on an eleven-year-old kid.

When candidate number five figured out I was a runaway, I only just narrowly escaped getting turned in to the local authorities. To make a long story short, my getaway involved me hiding in the facilities of a public park and thanking god I could hold my breath for so long.

By this time, I was just about out of potential teachers. With Corneria as eager as it was to put an exploratory armada into deep space, virtually every last pilot graduate was off-world, setting up outposts on Katina or being trained to go to the Frontier.

There was only one name left on my list: Fox McCloud.

McCloud was last on my list for two reasons. First, he'd been off the base for nearly two years. All the other choices were fresh graduates from the past semester, and I figured I'd have better luck convincing them to casually take on a private student.

Second, everything I heard about this guy freaked me out.

He'd been top of his class in practically everything, but he'd left the base on graduation day and never come back. That was really unusual. Some guys I talked to said top brass had covertly recruited him for a place in black-ops.

He was a Cornerian-born Vulpine by all accounts, but everyone said he acted almost like a wild animal, bloodthirsty and cold. A cadet told me he'd witnessed McCloud kill one of his classmates during combat training, then calmly request his next match with the body still on the mat. I didn't believe the story at first, but then I heard it from another guy. And another. It got scarier each time.

The worst I heard, though, came from the upper echelons of the brass I had access to. I was cleaning the officers' kitchen, scrubbing the coffeemaker in particular, when someone brought up the name in the adjacent sitting room.

"McCloud? The younger one, right? Fox?"

"Of course the younger one, you idiot, the rest of the family was killed, remember?"

"Yeah, Fox. I heard today that they're scrapping the ships we used to fly together… Whatever happened to that guy?"

"Insane," said a first lieutenant, sipping his coffee calmly.

"You serious?"

"Yeah, he finally lost it. A recluse, now, still living in the old family apartment," the lieutenant set down his cup and sighed, "They say Lt. Hare goes and checks on him every so often, just to see if he's offed himself yet. Poor bastard."

"I heard that, too," said a major, "they say the training here was the only thing keeping him in check. No outlet once he graduated, and he just snapped."

"He was good, though," a squadron captain said quietly.

"Yeah," the lieutenant agreed, studying his cup, "Damn good."

Other officers nodded.

Someone discreetly changed the subject, and I hurried to finish cleaning, lest they notice I'd been listening in.

It was that incident more than any of the others that pushed the name "Fox McCloud" far to the bottom of my list. I would have scratched the name out altogether, except that one thing continued to come up whenever I asked for information on McCloud: everyone agreed that he was "damn good."

Damn good or not, it certainly didn't help matters that he wouldn't answer his phone. I called him three times, but he never picked up. There was no answering system, either, which really was odd in that day and age.

I knew that he lived on the ninth floor of an older apartment complex near the base. It had been built by the Cornerian military to house soldiers back in the last days of political hostilities between the planets of the Lylat system, when Corneria actually felt it needed a standing army. They'd sold it to a private landlord since then, but from what the rumors said, McCloud started paying rent to keep the apartment where his family had once lived, rather than relocate to new quarters.

I could have sent a letter, but I was running out of time by this point. I wanted to do everything I could to avoid being caught and dragged back to Dad's workshop in defeat, still a mechie, still just a kid. I didn't think I could survive the "reception" I'd get if I went back. I didn't have the extra money it would take to keep supporting myself on Corneria, either. At least, not if I wanted to reserve a substantial amount to offer in exchange for training.

I decided that I had to meet this McCloud right away and try one last time to apprentice myself to a real pilot.

I remember practicing what I would say as I rode the elevator up to the ninth floor, sticking to the least agitating words I could think of. The last thing I wanted was to rile this half-crazed legend. I kinda wished I'd brought someone with me, just incase he was even worse than anyone knew.

Not like I had any friends on this planet, though. Who would I have asked?

As I walked down the quiet corridor to apartment 924, I began hoping he wouldn't be home.

Most of the residents had something out in the hallway around their doors to make it look more welcoming: a plant, a hanging decoration for the season, or if they had kids, a short plastic tricycle or some other colorful toy might be sitting idle nearby.

Door 924 was blank and bare. The carpet in the hallway outside seemed relatively new, not a lot of traffic in or out, but it was filthy. I paused for a few seconds to rehearse my lines, steeled myself, and reached up a hand to knock just below the dingy yellow letters that marked the door.

I stopped just short. There were some scratches in the wood where my hand had been about to land that I hadn't noticed before. They were more like deep gouges, really. The varnish was scratched off, and the wood was splintered in several places close together, as though from multiple impacts. It was about head-height for the average Cornerian.

I looked down at the doorknob. The wood around the keyplate had been ground down until it too was splintered and ragged. The brass knob itself was so scuffed and dented that looked like it had been attacked with a chisel.

I swiftly turned and went back down the hall the way I had come. Slippy, do you really have to go this far? Surely you can go back to the program at the base and lay low… dad will have to give up looking for you soon. Just get through training like the rest of them, no need to deal with crazy people.

I pulled up the collar of my coat as I withdrew, partly to stop the chills running up and down my back, and partly to hide my face. I'd given up on my last chance, and I was ashamed.

Sure, I could go back to the program at the base, I told myself, but I knew that I couldn't hide there forever. I'd already raised enough suspicion about myself when I left the first time around, and at least five graduated pilots now knew that I was too young to be there. Between the administration and my own ineptitude, I'd already given myself away enough for dad to find me easily. He wanted his precious designer back, and I just knew that I was going to be dragged home to the workshop one way or another.

Mission failed, and that was the end of it.

With my eyes fixed on the floor as I retreated to the elevator, I didn't notice the figure in front of me until I bumped into him.

"Ah, sorry," came a voice from behind the overstuffed grocery bag, "you okay?"

I looked up to the talking brown bag in a stupor.

My new acquaintance was roughly five and a half feet tall and apparently couldn't see any better than I could, with a large bag from City Grocery held in both arms and blocking his face. I could only see his orange-brown ears sticking up over the top; standard Cornerian ears, I guessed, or maybe Feline. He was wearing a long grey coat that draped down his back and obscured everything, else I would have tried to figure out his species from the tail.

"Yeah, sorry," I answered, shuffling out of the way, "wasn't looking where I was going."

"Me neither," said the voice with an apologetic laugh, "mind grabbing the coffee for me? It fell out," he gestured with his boot to a package of grounds next to us on the floor, "I only live a few doors down."

"Uh, sure."

I scooped it up and followed him down the hall, away from the elevator, back towards room 924. I was still a little nervous, but I didn't want to be rude to anyone. This seemed like standard behavior in an apartment complex, anyway. The guy probably though I was some resident's kid.

"So where'd you come from?"

"Huh? Oh, I came looking for someone," I said, "I don't live here."

"Didn't think so," he said, "I know all the kids on this floor, at least. Who are you looking for?"

"I'm trying to get some training… in, in a particular field, and my peers recommended a guy who lives here."

I tried to come up alongside him, but he walked too fast for my short legs. I couldn't blame him, the grocery bag looked pretty heavy, and I was sure he was eager to put it down.

From the back, I could see that he wasn't much older than I was, but I still hadn't gotten a glimpse of his face. He had close-cropped white hair atop that strange orange fur. I remember thinking it was odd for someone so young to have white hair already, but then I realized that Cornerians, with all their breeds and colors, could have any kind of hair under the sun. And anyway, dogs probably thought it was weird that Amphs were all bald.

"Training, huh? You going to an academy around here?"

"No… no, I actually never went to school. I was taught at work. I'm… well, an industrial designer and mechanic, really."

"Wow, at your age?" he said, "That's great. Wish I had a real job like that," and he laughed again.

I decided that I liked that laugh. It was honest.

We suddenly stopped in front of an apartment door.

"Here we go. Sorry, I never got your name," he said, shifting the weight of the bag as he turned to me. I think he was trying to get one arm free so he could shake my hand, but it wasn't any good.

"I'm Slippy. Slippy Toad," I said, smiling for the first time in what seemed like a week. Now that I think about it, that might have been the first real smile of my life. He was a nice guy, and for the past minute he'd afforded me time to forget about all the trouble I was in.

But as I answered, he wriggled out of his left boot and brought up his footpaw to the doorknob; I saw he had the key between his first two toes. He deftly maneuvered it into the lock, turned it, and then turned the knob, all with his foot. Then, without any effort at all, it seemed, he spun around and knocked the door open with a high kick from his right boot.

"Nice to meet you, Slippy…"

And as the door opened into the apartment, I saw the numbers "924" swing away into the darkness. I looked up to find the bag gone and a Vulpine face smiling at me politely, one orange-furred hand held out to shake mine.

"…my name's Fox McCloud."

next chapter: Fox