A/N: This chapter was once part of Chapter Seven, but I split it up to keep you, dear reader, from totally going nuts. I'm a nice guy like that. ;)
Disclaimer: As I've stated previously, I do not own Smash Bros. If I did, I would sleep upon piles of money instead of in my bed. Plus, I'd be a total chick magnet. So, no; I don't own Smash Bros, Solid Snake or Star Fox. I do, however, own the song 'Grown So Furry'.
Down in the basement, Fox McCloud played a mournful blues riff on his guitar and sung in a stereotypical mournful blues voice. He was also doing that thing in blues where they have to say stuff two times for some reason but no one complains because it sounds cool. Falco and that nerdy guy who looked a lot like Pit were taking a break, smoking… something and watching Inception on a wide-screen TV.
I've grown so furry,
My baby she don't love me no more.
I've grown so furry,
My baby she don't love me no more.
When I get up in the mornin,'
I can't even find my feet.
When I get up in the mornin,'—
Just then, Fox could hear his wife calling for him at the top of the basement steps. Sighing angrily, he stopped playing and walked up to a nearby stand and placed his guitar on it.
Fox had gained a deep appreciation for music at an early age (Read: his parents forced him into it from the moment he could stand on two feet). His father, James McCloud, had not only been the leader of the original Star Fox team, but he was also the lead guitarist/vocalist for Exclamation Mark and The Exclamatrons.
After James (Who was also known as '!') died at the hands of the mad scientist/insidious music mogul Dr. Luther 'Jazz-Hands' Andross and from the farts of his former bassist Pigma Dengar, Fox had dedicated his life to saving music from mediocrity and Justin Bieber.
He trudged up the steps, muttering angrily to himself. At the top of the steps, he said to his wife "What's going on?"
"There's some old British guy at the door," explained Krystal as she led her husband to the front door. "I think he's selling something."
Fox and Krystal came to the front door, where Major Aholl stood. Behind him, stood a collapsible plastic crate filled with a bunch of stuff that looked like it had been stolen from the drug aisle at Dor-Mart.
"Hello, sir," said Aholl with all of the class of an English gentleman. "I was wondering if I could take a moment of your day to talk to you about hair care."
"Hair care?" asked Fox, tilting his head sideways. "I don't have any hair, just fur."
"I realize that you do not have hair per se, good sir," said Aholl, unfazed. "But I have some products here that can help you maintain your lush, full, sensuous body of fur."
Fox cocked a brow in confusion at the last statement the major had made and then crossed his arms, looking very bored and angry.
Aholl held up a purple bottle of some kind of conditioner. "This product is called—"
He was cut off by the sound of glass breaking inside the house. Within a second, Snake stood in the living room behind Fox and Krystal, bleeding from various cuts. Aholl could see a large hole in the glass door that led to the patio. Krystal and Fox both stood with mouths open wide as they stared at the injured man who was bleeding all over their pristine, white carpet.
"YOU BLOODY IJIT!" shouted an indignant Aholl, throwing the bottle of conditioner at Snake's head, which in turn bounced off and made a hole in some nearby windows. "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL I GAVE THE SIGNAL AND THEN GO THROUGH THE DOGGIE DOOR!"
"Uh, a little problem came up…" said Snake quietly. He turned around and showed the homeowners and the major the pit bull hanging off of his buttocks. Fox began to reach for his blaster when he was suddenly rendered unconscious by Aholl's fist to the back of his head. Before Krystal could respond, she too was knocked out by forty pounds of flying pit bull.
A minute later, the major and the man stood over the bodies of the two foxes and the unconscious dog. Aholl glared angrily at Snake, his face turning as red as Hayley Williams' hair. "WHAT IS BLOODY WRONG WITH YOU, YOU—"
"Mom? Dad?" said a young voice. Both men turned and saw a young fox with blue and white mottled fur standing at a staircase leading to the second floor of the house. He gave both men a horrified look as he saw his parents on the floor.
"What did you—"
He was cut off when a tranquilizer dart hit him in the neck. Within moments, he joined his parents and the dog in dreamland.
Snake looked over at Aholl, who was holding a blowgun, and gave him a thumbs-up.
"Now you need to go down to the basement and 'retrieve' the other two," said Aholl quietly, making quotation marks with his fingers again.
"Okay," said Snake, making the aforementioned quotation marks as well.
Snake began to slink away toward the nearby basement stairs, when Aholl came up to him and said, "Wait, Snake. If you want to get the other two, you're going to need 'this.'" After making more fake quotation marks, Aholl pulled a small red can out of his jacket and handed to Snake.
The operative studied the can. "Pomade? I haven't used this stuff since the '80s…"
Snake was suddenly overcome by a flashback of a mission he went on when he was sixteen years old. He was driving down a New Mexico highway in a red Corvette; he was wearing black sunglasses, a green muscle shirt and he had his hair styled like Mel Gibson's in Mad Max. Rick Astley boomed loud on his radio as he used an uzi in his right hand to gun down a group of drug smugglers crossing over the border. Ah, those were the days…
Aholl smacked Snake on the forehead, unfortunately snapping him back to the bleak present. "That isn't for you, you divvy. You have to use it to knock out those other two fellows down in the basement."
"You want me to knock those guys out with a can of hair dressing?" asked Snake incredulously. "How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't know," said Aholl shrugging. "If you could blow up that Raven fellow's tank with just hand grenades, I think you could come up with some idea of using the pomade to 'retrieve' those two for the president."
Snake quietly descended the basement stairs, complaining to himself about why everyone had to always bring up his role as a government lackey or the blowing-up-Vulcan-Raven's-tank thing. Why couldn't they talk about his career as a musician or his role as painter and PBS regular Bob Ross in the Bob Ross biopic Happy Little Trees instead? There was much more to his life than just killing people.
Pushing that matter to the side for the moment, Snake continued to quietly make his way down the basement stairs. As he came closer to the bottom, the air became thick and clouded and smelled of that odd odor he had caught a whiff of outside. He also thought he could hear a sound coming from the basement, which sounded a lot like somebody playing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," but as he got closer to the bottom, he could hear it was just two guys laughing.
Disappointed, Snake made his way further down. Just then, a demonic Chibi-Snake with sharp fangs and yellow eyes materialized behind him and kicked him in the butt, knocking him down the stairs. Chibi-Snake laughed evilly and then returned to whatever infernal realm he came from (It was called New Jersey).
Snake fell down the four steps he still had left to reach the bottom and landed on the ground quietly just because he's Solid Snake and could theoretically destroy Steven Seagal with his mind or make a woman pregnant by just looking at her (The Mainstream Media won't admit it, but that's really why America's population has increased so much in the last few years).
Getting up off of the cold, hard, unloving, uncaring, ungenerous and just plain antisocial basement floor, Snake took a quick survey of his surroundings; the basement was decorated in the style that postmodern artists refer to as 'Aries Headbutting Tom Cruise in the Gut in the Time of the Internet Meme'. It was filled with hundreds of cardboard boxes, where entire civilizations of cockroaches made their homes and plotted vengeance against humanity for some reason. There were also plaques mounted on the support pillars that had various meaningless quotes that sounded like they were taken from either a fortune cookie or an episode of Criminal Minds.
There was some smoke in the air, but in some weird, physics-defying way, it actually was thinner down in the basement than it was on the way down.
Over in an obscure corner, Falco and that other guy were sitting on a burgundy leather sofa, watching Inception on a wide-screen television. They both were smoking… something and were laughing raucously. The nerdy guy got up and said in a slurred voice, "Hey, Falco! Look at me, I'm that guy from Titanic falling in slow motion!"
Snake got down on his belly and crawled behind the sofa. Now would be the perfect time to strike. He felt around in his pockets, but was unable to find the can of pomade. He cursed silently. It must have fallen out when I fell down the stairs…
"Hey, Falco!" Snake could hear excitement in the nerdy Pit-like fellow's voice. "Look at this weird thing I found!"
Snake quickly took a peek at what was unfolding; the guy was holding the can of pomade and Falco got up from the couch and staggered over to his buddy.
He opened the lid of the can and both of them looked at the white stuff inside. The Pit-like guy stuck two fingers into the gunk, pulled some out, sniffed it and then put it in his mouth; he licked his lips.
"Mmmm…. Man, that stuff is thick and freaky!" Inspiration appeared on his face like a zit before prom night. "Thick… Freaky…. Thickfreakness! That's it! HEY, FOX! I'VE GOT THE NAME FOR OUR NEXT ALBUM!"
Now was the moment. Snake jumped up from behind the sofa, rocketing through the air like an early dream of mankind and knocked the two numbskulls' heads together, knocking them out cold. Standing in triumph over the two unconscious idiots, Snake bent over, put the lid back on the pomade and put it in one of his pockets.
He then picked up Falco and the other guy's bodies, slung them over his shoulders and carried them up the stairs, grinning as he told Major Aholl, "I guess that pomade did really work after all, Major."
Aholl seemed as pleased as punch. In fact, at that very moment he was drinking some punch he stole from Fox and Krystal's refrigerator. "Brilliant job, Snake!" He put his punch down, pulled out a large black garbage bag from one of his jacket's pockets and proceeded to throw Fox, Falco and that Pit-like guy into the bag. He slung the bag over his shoulder and started toward the front door.
Snake sat on a couch in the living room, looking at Krystal, her and Fox's son and the pit bull on the floor. He shook his head and sighed.
"What's wrong, Snake?" asked Aholl turning around, looking genuinely concerned.
Snake looked at Aholl and began to launch into one of those boring yet philosophical rants that characters from Metal Gear have a bad habit of getting into.
"Is this really right, Major?" asked Snake. "Is it right to break into people's homes and kidnap them just because the President of the United States wants them to perform at some sick party? Is that what the Founders of this nation envisioned? Am I just a monster to go along with Wario's games? Shouldn't I just flee for Aruba, dye my hair blonde and change my name to Bubba? Who am I kidding? I'm just a pawn in some fat guy's twisted chess game. And M. Night Shyamalan tricked me. That guy really was dead in that movie from the beginning!"
He brought his fist down on a glass coffee table and shattered it, thus causing more property damage he would likely have to pay for later and even more personal injury to himself. "Aw, nuts…"
"Come on, Snake," said Aholl, beckoning him with his free hand. "We can't stay here debating morality all day; we can do that on the plane. I also just downloaded The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension and Jumpin' Jack Flash. We could watch them on the way to the next drop-off point."
Snake grunted. "I think I'd rather die…" He felt around in his pockets for his box of suicide pills, but couldn't find it.
"Looking for these?" asked Aholl tauntingly. He held out a small pillbox that had the words 'Death-Rite-Now' written on it.
"Why, you…" Snake bolted up from the sofa and chased Aholl out of the house.