Chapter 3: First Encounter

Leon zipped away from the broken engine, laughing manically as he did.

"This is going to be very fun." he said, concentrating again.

"Eyes on the prize, you guys." Wolf said, doing another lap around the ship. When he came to the front, he saw the Hangar doors opening and a lot of fighters coming out of the Longshot. "Good to know they don`t waste time. Star Wolf, engage!"

"Come fight. My rose will be the last thing you will ever see." Panther said, jumoing right into the middle of the fighters and blasting some almost instantaneously.

Leon opened fire with a charge shot, managing to hit three at the same time. The chameleon seemed to be having fun.

Two fighters came to chase Wolf.

"Wanna play?" he asked. Then, he rammed his controls in the direction they were coming from. The Wolfen zoomed past the old, outdated fighters, who clumsily turned around almost smashing on one another.

Wolf did a U-turn, and fired a clean shot at one cockpit, incinerating it and blowing one ship up. He boosted towards the other fighter, and the sharp tungsten wings of the Wolfen cut the ship almost cleanly in half. After one second, the two halves exploded violently. Wolf looked back. The fighters had no chance against them.

Panther threw a bomb at another. He managed to catch a couple of fighters.

"Scratch that lot." he said. Wolf saw, as he shot down another fighter, that the defenses were dwindling. The Captain probably didn`t want to have too big a military outfit with him, to seem inconspicuous.

Suddenly, a blue blaster shot through the explosion and hit Panther clean on the side.

"Gah!" he screamed, shocked. "What the hell?!" he tried to use his controls, but they seemed jammed. "That was no normal blast! The motherfucker is using…"

"EMP." Leon said, turning his ship to look at Panther`s Wolfen. "Scored quite a hit."

From within the explosion, another fighter screamed in Leon`s direction. He barely had time to think before the fighter whizzed past him, sending him spinning about.

"Goddamit!" he screamed, trying to adjust his position.

"This one`s mine."Wolf said, locking onto the new opponent and boosting towards it.

He caught up with the ship. He saw it wasn`t the same model as the ones before. Actually, it was quite cutting edge and sleek

"That`s an Arwing Interceptor." He thought, following the fighter in every curve. "Haven`t seen one of those in a while."

He shot, but the pilot of the other ship was good. He predicted where every shot of his would land, and barrel rolled accordingly. Wolf kept on the chase, and he was thoroughly enjoying this.

"This is what I`m talking about." He thought, concentrated. "Been a while since I last had an opponent this good. The last one was… McCloud…"

His thought made him hesitate. The other pilot capitalized on this, and did a looping over his head. He followed him with his eye, his ocular computer leaving a heat trail on the ship`s exhaust.

"What the heck?" he thought. A blue bolt blitzed by him, and he quickly dodged another shot before it could hit.

The roles were reversed. Wolf did a U-turn, but the other pilot turned the ship around and followed him. The ship`s were parallel, both cockpits turned to each other and damn close to each other

Wolf looked up, and caught a glimpse of the other pilot for the first time. It was a female lynx. He raised an eyebrow. She wasn`t wearing any uniform, just a light brown sleeveless jacket, a white undershirt and black cargo pants.

She looked up, and he saw that her eyes were green. Her face wasn`t fixed with murderous intent. Instead, they were… euphoric? Thrilled? He couldn`t tell…

00000

Miyu knew she had heard that voice somewhere. When she had first seen the ships, she had smiled. Now, facing off against the man himself, her hands couldn`t help but shake whilst holding the control stick. Not of fear, though. She was excited beyond any words.

"Holy shit…" she thought. "I`m dogfighting Wolf O`Donnell…"

She didn`t know what to expect when she had tilted her head up. But what she really wasn`t expecting to see that purple eye piercing into her skull. He wore a black jacket, but she couldn`t see anything else. Just that purple eye looking straight into her green ones.

Suddenly, he twisted his Wolfen. His wings jammed against hers, jolting her out of her trance. She tried to move, but his wings were locking hers in place. She saw him tap into the control panel once, and suddenly her communications window opened up, showing his face.

"Sorry, kiddo. But I got to go." He said, in a calm tone.

He sharply turned his control stick, freeing her, but cutting her wing clean off. She gasped. Her ship was no longer flying at fighting speed. She tried every button, but the jerk had cut her cannons and bombs as well. He probably tore away a part of her electrical system.

"Son of a bitch!"she screamed, punching at her faulty interface.

00000

Wolf let her drifting in space. He wasn`t really interested in killing her off. He joined back with his squad. Panther was still trying to reconnect his ship.

"Try to divert power from the blasters." Leon was giving advice, but Panther`s angry face probably indicated that he wasn`t doing much to help.

"I already tried that! Ugh, this is so embarrassing!"

"Tell me about it…"

"Why you…"

"Panther, Leon, stop it." Wolf intervened. "Leon, these aren`t are old ships. There`s not nearly enough power in the blasters to do that. Panther, divert power from the engines."

Panther did so, and almost instantly, his ship blinked to life again. He breathed in relief.

"Thank you, Wolf."

He nodded, then looked at the Longshot. The ship`s massive engine were reduced to mere flaming debris.

"Let`s finish the job."

He boosted towards the Carrier, Leon and Panther at his heels. The comn channel opened up. The captain was dead on the floor, and a pilot was talking on the screen.

"W.. we.. we`ll give you anything you like! Just please… Let us live!"

Wolf grinned at that.

"We did offer you a fair chance. Now that you know who we are, we can`t leave prisoners…" he began.

"No! Please!"

Wolf pressed on his undertrigger. His bomb, along with Panther and Leon`s raced to the ship.

The explosion was impressive. The ship scattered in one huge white flash, leaving the cockpit mostly intact, but annihilating almost everything else. Wolf had been kidding the pilot: they had aimed the bombs purposefully at a safe spot, not harming the cockpit…

…nor the cargo.

"I`m picking up readings."Panther said, tapping on his still flickering radar. It seemed that the EMP had messed with his more delicate systems. "A box, near the explosion site. It is sending a distress signal."

"It`s the Eye." Leon said, and Wolf could hear the coins dropping in his voice.

"Let`s take it to the hideout. I can disable the signal on route."

Wolf was about to acquiesce, when he noticed the ship he had previously thrashed moving around in the corner of his eye computer. He quickly turned his ship, seeing that a side booster managed to turn it clockwise, facing the opposite direction. Wolf shot something at it. The small black tracker glued to the rear of the ship right as it`s main booster sent it soaring through the stars and out of sight.

"One got away." Leon said.

"I`ll give chase." Wolf said. Leon looked at him, intrigued. "You two, get back to Sargasso and store that thing. Panther, make sure to get rid of that before hitting base."

"Got it. Good hunting." Panther said. He and Leon turned their ships away and Panther caught the box in a gravity tether. Then, they both boosted in Sargasso`s direction, leaving Wolf alone.

Wolf rested against his seat. This had all been…exhilarating. On their first outing they had managed to nab a very expensive target…

… and he had managed to dogfight someone good.

"Speaking of which…" he tapped on his computer, showing the coordinates of the escaping foe. "By the looks of it, she`s going back to Corneria. I`ll probably arrive there before her, since I don`t have a wing missing .Then, I`ll track her down myself."

Satisfied with his plan, he typed in the coordinates to Corneria and accelerated into maximum speed, leaving the automated controls do the rest. He leaned back in the chair, and closed his eye in waiting…

00000

"B…b…bos…boss?.." the pilot of the Longshot asked, with the weak communication`s line he had managed to retrieve.

"Who is this? Report!" General Pepper`s face said, on the monitor. His face was older and more scarred than before, after the incident in Corneria.

"I…I..I`m Flight Lieutenant Jeffrey Aroroo! We`ve been attacked!"

"Attacked? By who? Where is Lindshaw?"

"He`s dead!" a spark erupted behind him, and he quickly turned around. The crew within the cockpit was mostly alive, albeit in shock, and they were working on leaving it operational.

"Dead? Who attacked you?"

Jeffrey paused. He had seen the ships. He had heard the voices. But he didn`t want to believe it… He bit his raccoon lips and said:

"Star Wolf… They are back… "

00000

Miyu was working hard to keep her ship flying. She had been on this for almost an hour, and her damaged scanners indicated that she was approaching the planet.

She broke out of max speed and slowed the ship to reenter the atmosphere.

"Arwing Interceptor pilot Miyu Lynx requesting to land on Corneria City`s main port. I need a repair crew; my ship has been badly damaged."

"Roger that, Miyu. We will dispatch a team of mechanics to docking bay 1345-Z. Please dock there."

"Thank you Corneria Port. Miyu out."

She turned off communications and concentrated on landing the half-of-a-ship she was piloting.

Corneria was a beautiful planet. Vast oceans covered half of the planet, and whatever wasn`t ocean was flooded with a white sheet of buildings and progress. It was still day on the city she was approaching, Corneria City. The city was the pinnacle of development in the whole system. Huge skyscrapers, adds and highways all flooded the skyline. She flew in a serpentine pattern to the port, a huge mushroom shaped building next to the coast.

One of the docking bays opened up for her. She lined up with it the best she could and entered bumpily the space port. A crew of rats was waiting, but she actually saw their mouths drop when they saw the extent of the damage done to her ship. She turned the thrusters off and jumped opened the cockpit, jumping down.

"Miss…" one of the rats began. She finished dusting off her clothing and looked at him. "How did you manage to cleanly cut your wing from you ship. And, I`ll be damned, almost half of the electrical system too…"

"Had a bad day." She said, walking past the mouse and giving him a tap in the shoulder. "Be sure to leave it good when I`m back, sweetie. You might get handsomely paid…" she said, before walking off the port.

"Now what to do?" she asked herself. She could call Fay, but knowing her, she was with Bill, walking on the park or something. Her stomach grumbled. "I think i`ll nab some chow. Then I`ll walk around a bit."

She began to walk to one corner of town. She knew just what she was going to eat.

"That dinner near home seems like a good idea. I could use a burger."

She mulled over a few things on her head. She still couldn`t believe she had fought against the whole Star Wolf team. The legendary bandits who were considered the only group apart from Star Fox that could turn the tide of a war. And she disabled two of them!

But, last she heard of them, they had helped Fox and his team destroy the Aparoids, and hadn`t been seen since. Everybody assumed they had sacrificed themselves in the subsequent explosion.

"That doesn`t seem to be the case. I`m pretty sure the damage to my Interceptor is real, and I saw him, HIM, in the cockpit of that fighter." She chuckled. "Maybe I was so bored I started hallucinating…"

That was a theory she threw right out of the window very quickly, as a gloved hand grabbed her arm and pulled her into an alleyway.

She struggled and kicked, but a forearm was pressed against her throat and she was shoved against a wall. She heard a low grumble from the shadow in front of her.

"Listen here." She heard. "Don`t try to fight off. I just want to talk."

She finally got a good look at her assailant. Her eyes widened when her eyes set on the purple iris looking at her… again.

"Wo..Wolf O`Donnell…"She said.

"It seems you know me." He said. He released his forearm and let her stand on her own. "But I don`t know you. How about I pay you lunch and we discuss a…"

He stopped for a second, thinking of an expression. Miyu kept her eyes locked on his, and on the vicious looking blaster by his waist. She noticed the rest of his attire. He wore a black coat, black pilot pants and military style boots.

"… business propostion."

She looked at him like she had just seen a ghost. His position was relaxed, but he seemed to be able to snap her in half like a twig if he wished, or blast her between the eyes in a moment`s notice. However, she didn`t feel afraid. On the contrary…

… she felt thrilled. She smiled.

"Of course, O`Donnel. Let`s talk, but you pay dinner."

He nodded, and motioned to out of the alley.

"Shall we?"

This was my first attempt at space combat. Please, tell me if you liked it, hated it, want to marry it or whatever. Reviews are Golden.

Keep Strong

Eddy