K, so first I'm gunna rage cuz my mom got pissed and went off on me cuz apparently I wasn't pulling in karate sparring, and my brother got a bloody nose and I don't even remember even freaking touching him, other than blocking. Second, has anyone noticed That in the 'Publish', the 'Rules and guidelines' section, that it says "Spell check all story and poetry."

Wait...

"Spell check all STORY and poetry."

Shouldn't it say STORIES and poetry?

And they tell us to spell check...

—

I'm thanking God right now that my mom doesn't get home before I do. That gave me time to finish freaking out and then chill and get my thoughts together.

Fox was in my room, chillin' on my guitar. Damn, he's getting good.

I dropped my backpack off in front of my room, and flopped onto my bed.

Fox looked at me with an eyebrow raised "What's pulling your tail– er, I mean, what's up?"

"I beat the crap put of the Bitchy Junior before coming home—"

"Ah, good! Whats the problem then? He won't mess with you any more."

"AS I WAS SAYING, A teacher saw me, and so I'm going to get suspended when I go back. Hell my life'll get suspended when my mom hears about this.

"Ah. Well then, I guess you need a bit of good news then, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess I woul- Wait... Do you mean you HAVE good news?"

"Yup."

"Great! What is it!"

"I got a returned radio transmission today. The rest of my team should be here to get me by the morning of tomorrow."

"Oh. That is good I guess... But I just helped an alien, no offense, get back to space! What am I supposed to do after that? Sit and twiddle my thumbs as the silence communities debate on wether you are even out there? No! So what am I supposed to do, Huh? Tell me!" I was on the verge of yelling. I was a wreck from being about to be suspended, and I didn't want to lose my new friend, even if he didn't belong here.

"Well... I was planning on asking, but I didn't think you would want to do it, seeing as your mom is still... Alive... And all," Fox choked out that last part, "but, if you really want, we could use you on the team. Your fighting matches, if not bests, mine, and seeing the video games we've been playing all week, you MIGHT be pretty good at flying. MIGHT."

I couldn't believe my ears. I was going to go to space. As in light years away. To fight and be a mercenary. It was like a video gamers dream come true. And seeing as I'm a gamer, it was exactly that.

"R-really? You'd let me be a part of the team?" Fox had already told me all about how Star Fox was the best mercenary group in the universe (literally), and A little about Falco and Slippy, and Peppy, and the Corneria system, and all that crap, so I was freaking honored, "I would be honored."

Fox suddenly grinned at me. "Dude, you just got so serious it wasn't even funny." Then he started cracking up.

I laughed along with him for a while. And he didn't say anything.

"Wait... You actually mean it?"

"Yeah. Why would I mess around now? I mean, I got the message, they're coming for me, and I've found an amazing fighter. Why would I pass that up?"

I thought on that.

"I dunno... But I'm not sure 'amazing fighter' is the right term. I'm really not all that good by myself."

"Pshhh! Yeah, and taking out like 30 armed gangsters by yourself isn't good."

"I see your point, but it was only twenty. Nope! No! Shush! Don't say anything! Imma need ta get packed, and you distracting me isn't helping."

Fox snorted and crossed his arms, but didn't say anything.

I ran to the closet and grabbed one of those suction bags my mom always has for storing laundry. You fold and put the clothes in, then suck out all the air through a pump. For a science project last year, I had made a hand pump to make an almost vacuum chamber, so I grabbed that and some duct tape and modified the end to fit to the bags nozzle thing.

When I got my pile of clothes to fit into the bag, along with essentials like duct tape, my homemade hidden blade, a hunting knife, a flashlight, and my MP3 player, song with some other various items, I zipped it shut and pumped the air out. Then I ran to the cabinet and got the super glue, and glued some belts to make straps for a backpack. It weighed a ton, but it was small(ish) and wouldn't get in my way.

I glued on another little pouch for the pump and stuck it in.

I walked back to my room, considering something.

"Hey, Fox," I said hesitantly, "Do you think we'll be able to take my drum set? I don't want to get out of practice while we're 'away'."

"Hell, the Great Fox is big enough, but you could only take the drum set on one condition... That we take the guitar too." Fox grinned wolfishly (or foxishly, your pick) at me. I grinned back.

"Why would we leave that? I mean it's not like we're gunna come back here every time we need to practice."

Alright... I've got all essential items, plus my drum set, the guitar, and the speaker... Oh shit. Where are they going to pick us up? They can't just land a Fucking huge space station thing in the middle of town!

"Uh, Fox?" I said, the blood pounding in my head, "Where do you suppose that they'll pick us up? And what with? Cuz the Great Fox isn't just gunna land here and nobody notice it."

I would say Fox paled, but I couldn't really tell. "Oh shit. You're right. The ships shields are for lasers too, so your bullets would tear the ship to pieces... We gotta tell them to take the Arwings. There's no other way they could get here unnoticed."

I looked at him. He looked at me. We said simultaneously, "To the ship!"

We had ran the whole way there, and I wasn't tired. I suspect my space crystal helped.

But if the pattern held, that meant I would be exhausted In a minute or two.

I slowed to a jog as we neared the Tower with Fox's ship.

When we got to the ship, the exhaustion hit me full force. I wasn't breathing hard, but I felt like I just swam a Thousand Free for time.

I leaned against the ship and let my muscles go slack. I've found this is the best way for me to regain my energy.

After a moment of fox panting, I turned and hit the radio button like fox had done earlier.

"Alright. This is Kevin, and... Oh shit. They won't listen to me will they?" I said, turning to Fox.

"Probably not" He said, walking past me to get closer to the radio.

"This is Fox McCloud speaking. Members of Star Fox, do not come to the surface of this planet in the Great Fox. Do not come to this part of the planet during its day. You will be killed. Also, I have a friend who we are taking along. Don't shoot him."

I was super excited. There were real 'aliens' coming to my planet to come and pick me and Fox up like a couple of guys picking up their friend from his house. It was mind blowing to think about.

I was thinking about how cool it would be to be an interplanetary mercenary when my thoughts were interrupted by a squawking on the radio.

"Hey Fox, Falco here, i must have heard you wrong, but i thought you said you found someone you're taking along?"

"Yup, thats right." there was a pause before the next answer.

"Lets get this straight, we're coming to pick up your sorry ass off another uncharted planet and you find ANOTHER member for the team? Is it going to be like this with you every new fucking planet?"

I could hear the playfulness in his voice, but I could also tell Falco was cocky and was trying to act all cool. The usual shit you find on any planet I guess. Although, to be on the team, he had to have a reason to be all cocky. I heard another voice in the radio, a higher pitched one. It kind of grated on my ears, but I could tell whatever it was was smart.

"Hey Fox! It's great to hear you're all right! We should be there in about... Twelve centums. Give or take a few centimes. So be ready for us!"

"All right."

Fox switched off the radio, and started walking away from the ship. I followed him a while, and realized he was headed back to my apartment.

"Hey! Aren't we supposed to be getting ready to leave? I mean, they said they'd be here in like twelve minutes."

"No. Slippy said they'd be here in twelve centums. A centum is the universal unit of time in the galaxy. It's roughly two-anda-half minutes to your clock, so we've got about an hour before they get here.

Oh... Well tonight wasn't going to be as exiting as I would have liked. [This chapter isn't as exiting as I would have liked either]

We headed back to the apartment.

We rushed back into my apartment when we got there, grabbing the stuff we would need. I grabbed my pack, and the case I had thrown my cymbals and stands into. I had taken to drum heads out and stacked the drums up inside of each other. Now I was just carrying the big bass drum with the other drums inside, my pack, and the case with my cymbals, stands, and a few drum heads in it.

Fox's load was just about half as heavy as mine. He was carrying the speaker, and had the guitar slung across his back. He had other various items of his in the pockets of one of my pairs of pants that he was wearing.

I glanced enviously at him. He had half the crap and half the weight to carry, and was rubbing it in my face. He was carrying the speaker in one hand, even though I could tell he was straining to keep it up like that.

Why doesn't my super-power crystal thingy do much when I want it to?

I complained quietly the whole way back to the Tower.

When Fox and I got there, we dropped our stuff onto the slightly bloodstained floor of the building. It kind of scared me that I was the one who spilled most of the blood, but most of it wasn't mine. It reminded me of just how powerful I was now that I had the crystal.

Fox radioed to the rest of Star Fox to see where they were. This time there was no delay between transmissions. They must be getting close.

Fox had asked where they were, and the high pitched voice, Slippy, Fox had said, told him that he was using the radio waves to determine where we were through some kind of positioning shit. I understood almost half of what Slippy said, I'm sad to say, cuz I could tell that fox had gotten like, none of it.

Anyways, they were close. Like, directly-above-us-in-the-atmosphere close. I was starting to get butterflies in the pit of my stomach like I do before a long race. It was almost scary. It was exhilarating.

I was starting to think that maybe the team had been stopped by something when Fox called out to me. He was pointing to the sky. I looked, and saw two streaks in the sky that could easily have been passed up as asteroids. But they were getting closer. The ships were speeding to the ground at frightening speeds, past the speed of sound, I'd bet. But pulled up short of the ground, one doing a tight loop before touching down, the other just plain landing. The one that flipped opened with a hiss, a blue figure doing a backflip out, it's arms out parallel to the ground, it landed on one knee, one arm, or wing I should say, still out, the other was on the ground. He stood up.

This one must have been Falco.

'Wow. His mom was creative,' I thought 'I mean, naming a falcon thing Falco is super-duper creative. At least Slippys parents were... Oh.' I saw the other ship hiss open, and out hopped a frog-like creature. 'Never mind. His parents weren't very creative either. Toads are slippery, so call one Slippy. I get it. Though at least they were more creative than Falco's parents.'

All in all, I wasn't super impressed with the team. You had Fox, the great leader guy, skilled at everything except technology, then you had Falco, the usual football jock of space, and you had the nerd. I was mildly concerned about the shape of the rest of the galaxy if the best mercenary team was only what it looked like.

Falco and Slippy immediately went to Fox, Falco saying hey, and Slippy asking if he was OK and what had happened and if there was any trouble on the planet. When they finished their quick catch-up session, Falco looked at me with what I would call a sneer, but I couldn't be sure with a beak.

"So you're the new recruit, huh? Why do you think you're good enough to be on this team? This is a team for highly skilled professionals, not a charity for scrawny kids off the street."

I didn't like Falco already.

Slippy pushed past Falco and walked up to me, sticking out his hand. "Hi! I'm Slippy! Welcome to the team!"

"Thanks. Is this really all the team? I mean, you guys don't really look like much."

Slippy, being the chatty one, started babbling immediately. "Oh we'll we do have another member, but— Hey!"

Falco cut him off with a shove.

"BUT, they didn't come because they were not really needed here." Falco finished for Slippy.

"Huh. OK." I said, acting indifferent. I made a mental note to ask Slippy who the other team member was and why he didn't come.

"Alrighty then," Falco said, clapping his wings/hands together, "What are we going to do with Fox's ship?"

I looked at the ship and realized Falco had a point. We couldn't just leave this piece of technology lying around for some government agency to find, making people pre-maturely aware of aliens.

We all thought for a moment, Fox said, "Well, we could dump it back into the lake I originally crashed into. That would get rid of it for a while. The lake is pretty deep."

I nodded. "Yeah. Being the city park, not many people swim underwater here much either, so it might not be found for years after we've left."

"Good, now how do we get it there? This gravity is higher than most life-sustaining planets, so everything is heavier here." Slippy said, "We might not even be able to lift it."

I looked at Slippy, seeing that he wasn't lying, and Falco nodding only proved it was true.

"Fox and I carried it here from the lake by ourselves! It can't be that heavy!" I exclaimed.

"Well then you can do it again," Falco said smugly.

I was hating Falco almost as much as I hated Mr. Fag. But Mr Fag had a reason to be a fag. He was a teacher and knew how to deal with bitchy students. Falco's just being a fag to be a fag.

"Nah. Fox, Slippy and I will just sit here and watch as you try to get the thing out by yourself." I said sarcastically.

"Pshh! You know thats impossible! Jus cuz your bein' a bitch about what you and someone else did doesn't mean someone can do it them 'imself! In fact, let's see you try! I betcha five hundred credits that you couldn't move this thing to the lake!"

I turned to Fox. "How much is a credit? Like, how many meals can you buy for a certain amount of credits?"

"Well... Let's see... With 5 to 8 credits you could buy a decent meal at someplace like a fast-food joint." Falco was doing a poor job at hiding his laughing at me at asking this question.

"Well, that means its about the same as a dollar in USA money." I turned to Falco, "I accept"

Falco smirked. He thought he couldn't lose. I was hoping I wasn't remembering the weight wrong.

I walked behind the ship and pushed on the mostly hollow hull. I felt it rock forward slightly, but my straining was in vain. I couldn't move it. Falco started laughing at me again.

I got pissed. Someone had to show this freak a lesson. I redoubled my efforts. I felt the ship start to slide.

[A/N Shit. I just looked up an Arwing and found out its much bigger than I originally thought. Please bear with me, I didn't know, and I'm not about to change the whole story to accommodate. I'm going to try to resize it mentally as the story goes on.]

I felt satisfaction in knowing that I could move this and Falco didn't think he could. It was big, yes, but the wings had fallen mostly off and the whole inside was mostly gone or hollow.

I slid it, faster and faster through the door, my muscles burning with strain. I just thought of it like a 500 though. Kill yourself now. You can rest later. Falco was jeering at me the whole way.

I pushed for what felt like forever, but soon I made it to the top of the ridge leading down to the lake. It would be easy from here.

The nose of the ship slowly started tilting down, then sped up. Soon enough, I was almost jogging it down the hill.

I finally made it to the lake, and the ship flew right in into the lake with a ginormous splash. I ended up getting soaked, but the ship, still having some air in it, was floating to the center of the lake, slowly sinking.

I watched as the ship finally filled and sank below the surface. I turned around and grimaced. I hadn't thought of everything. The ground was torn up in a path to the lake where I had pushed the ship through the grass, tearing it up.

I walked back to the team, Falco glaring at me with crossed arms, and Slippy looking at me with open mouthed amazement. Fox was standing slightly behind Falco, smiling lightly and giving me a little thumbs up.

"Alrighty then! Let's get going!" I said with a lot more energy than I actually felt.

Another long story short, it was hell trying to pack everything into the Arwings. Falco complained the hell out of the whole situation. He was complaining to look cool, I know, but still, it got freaking annoying.

Now that I think about it, that's probably why Fox opted to ride with Slippy...

Falco is complaining about how stupid it was to be lugging a couple of 'noise makers' across the galaxy. I was trying to ignore him, checking to make sure all my cymbals and drum heads are still with us and in their places. I felt my anger rising. Fox had told me when he first started to hear my music that all they had in the rest of the Universe so far was either pure tribal drum beats, or crappy opera-like stuff from the way he described it.

Honestly, I felt sorry for the universe.

Having opera coming into existence is bad enough, but not having any other types of music? That's just sad. Though, it does make sense. If you had to cater to thousands of species worth of listeners, that could get pretty fucking hectic.

"Kevin?" Falco had been talking to me, apparently. Of course, I had zoned him out by now.

"Yup?"

"You ready to go? We've been sitting on this God awful planet for like, fifteen centimes now. I'm getting fucking hungry."

Of course. He wants to get away from my planet, and calls it 'God awful'. Just super polite and manner-full.

"'God awful'? This happens to be my planet you're talking about," I said.

"Oh yeah, whatever." Falco mumbled.

I suppressed my rage. Why was I so angry anyways? I was trying to get away too. Maybe its like a team pride thing. Your home team sucks, but it's still your home team, so you want to defend it.

I breathed a slow outward breath, trying not to hit Falco. I was sorely tempted, seeing as my crystal would supposedly give me super-epic fighting skills, but I didn't. I didn't want to be kicked off the team while still on my own planet. That would kinda suck.

"A'rite. Let's get going." I said, trying not to let the anger color my voice.

Falco ginned at me crookedly, "Now that's what I like ta hear!"

"Heh, yeah... Heh, heh." I said halfheartedly. I was getting tired and needed to get some sleep or I'd be dead by the next day, I knew that much about myself.

I climbed into the 'Arwing' as Fox had called it, and moved to cram myself in the back. The drums took up a lot of room, so I didn't have a lot to spare.

Falco hopped in, sliding everything closed and settling in his seat. He looked at me and grinned again, shaking his head. I heard the engine (or was it the thrusters?) start with a high pitched whine.

I felt the same thing as when an elevator starts going up. There is a little jerk, then it's all smooth. I watched clouds move past and took one last look behind me at my planet. I felt bad. Like, really bad. I was ready to kill myself for some reason. I almost broke down crying right there. My head was trying to work through the haze of depression as we left the atmosphere, but I wasn't getting anything.

Suddenly I got distracted by us passing the Asteroid belt. I swear I saw one of the Dwarf planets that they think are in there. My depression quickly faded and was replaced by an overpowering sense of curiosity. I wanted to see what was on the dwarf planets, even if there was nothing, but we were speeding away at super speeds. I heard a crackle in the radio and Fox's voice came on.

"Alright. Where are we and which way is the Great Fox?"

Falco pressed the radio button thing and said, "It is about 2 degrees to the left and a Lightterm away."

"Alright. Get in formation and we'll go Faarlight."

I was bubbling over with curiosity again, but this time at what they were saying. What was a Lightterm? Or a Faarlight? Hell, what did the Great Fox look like? How were we going to get there so fast? How were—

My train of thought was cut off as Falco hit something. There was a tremendous shudder within the ship, and then all of space seemed to be flashing by. I was at a loss for words. Space just seemed to be bending around us. We were speeding through the universe at untold speeds! I felt like I was in Star Wars. We just entered light speed. Or warp speed. Or however fast we were going.

I was overjoyed! I was ecstatic! I was fucking Freaking out!

My eyes were huge as I took in the surroundings. Which were all the same. It was like a white tunnel, or a large tube of lights, which were probably hundreds of stars.

White...

White...

White...

Board...

In a good few minutes, I was out.