I decided to take matters into my own hands after the Great Fox II had finished resupplying in a busy port city on Corneria.

Fox would usually take a leisurely flight around much of the planet in his Arwing, flying along the old flight paths he would take with his father when he was younger. I had been hoping that Fox would invite me to fly with him on those paths, but that never seemed to cross his mind. I didn't like the lack of surprise I felt when this happened.

Falco and Slippy sought to commune around the city surrounding the spaceport where we were docked for the day. When it came time for the two of them to split, I told them I would catch up with them in a while after organising some of my things. They saw no problem with my reason, nor did they question it. The only problem I had was ROB.

He was going to be the only one on the Great Fox II as it was getting restocked to monitor our adjusting inventory and generally keeping a servo on things. He shouldn't have been too big of a concern seeing how his attention would be kept on the incoming shipments, though I was not careless as I discreetly made my way to Fox's stateroom once I was sure ROB wouldn't detect me. I couldn't read the artificial mind of a robot, so I couldn't be too careful.

I made it to Fox's room with no issue and made sure the automated door was disabled once I was in. Being that our current Great Fox was an older vessel, there weren't any security cameras to catch me snooping around in his quarters without his knowledge. I felt uncomfortable doing this; I had always respected Fox's privacy and never had I come in here uninvited, but my itch could not be satisfied until I was sure that he wasn't hiding something from us to make him behave in this subtle way.

I made my way over to his desk and booted up his computer. When confronted with password authentication, my thoughts blanked, for I initially had no idea what his user password could have been. After several unsuccessful attempts, I lucked out and managed to guess the right password: rocknroll. I had heard Fox sometimes say that whenever he was about to pull a foolish but brilliant manoeuvre when we were caught in a few past aerial dogfights together. I felt a little proud of myself for guessing that.

Fox's desktop was then unveiled to me, and the background was the group picture we all took together a few day cycles after our victory over the Aparoids—Peppy and ROB included. We were all eating at an outdoor restaurant, and I could see how exhausted we all were, some visibly injured more than others, yet triumph was gleaming on our faces. It warmed my heart to see this; we all looked so happy.

While looking at the photo, my eyes soon drifted outside the monitor to see a framed picture of his late parents, James and Vixy, on his desk. My smile slowly faded as I imagined them looking at me through the frame, disapproving of my actions for invading their beloved son's privacy like this. Even though I had my reasons, I knew my excuses were hollow at best, but they were nonetheless reasons I deemed worthy of pursuing at that moment. I hoped that somewhere out there his parents understood this as well, and I hoped they would forgive me.

Fox had a well-organized desktop, making it easy to sift through. I peeked through his finances folder, and there was nothing documented there that contradicted what he shared with us. I looked through the maintenance logs for the ship, parts catalogues for our Arwings, as well as diagrams for the Cloud Runner and Falco's proposed craft, the Sky Claw. Checklists for upgrades, oxygen supplies for the Arwing and the Great Fox II, and even logged dates when the ship's septic tank had been emptied.

There was nothing of note here that I could find, which brought me some reassurance. At least Fox didn't seem to be hiding anything confidential. That is, until, I looked at some recently viewed documents when I right-clicked on the desktop icon, and saw the word "termination" as the title of a document. I was both curious and unnerved by this discovery. I doubted that anything positive would be found in that file, and I wished I had logged off right then and there looking back on it, but I didn't.

My curiosity prevailed as I opened up the document. It was indeed a letter of termination still in the process of being written, and typed out on the recipient's line was my name. I stared at this unfinished letter for a long moment. Why was my name on an employment termination letter?

Before I risked jumping to conclusions, I traced this document back to the folder that it was saved in, rationalizing that Fox must have one of these letters drafted for everyone if he ever had to use them, but my letter was the only one inside. I looked at the date when this letter was created and saw that it was made weeks prior, and last viewed yesterday.

I could feel my throat clenching the longer I dwelt on this revelation. Was Fox intending to terminate me? He had to have been, seeing that my name was typed out clearly on the document, but nothing else was typed out, and it had remained devoid of elaborating texts for weeks since its creation.

A feeling of dread began swelling in my chest the longer I let this revelation sink in. Since no statement was given on the document, I was left to try and figure it out for myself based on virtually no evidence, and that was a harrowing thing for me at that very moment. Was I underperforming as a pilot? Surely Fox would have mentioned something like this to me by now, wouldn't he?

I was left staring at my name on the otherwise untampered termination document for a good long while, unsure of what to think or what to feel about this. Eventually, after sparing a second glance at the humble photo of Fox's parents, I closed out everything and logged out of the computer before getting up and exiting the room. I didn't know what to expect to find when I committed to this covert plan of mine, but it surely was not that.

My initial concerns had now evolved into fears over my standing on the team, my new livelihood, and my future with Fox McCloud. Perhaps there was no future with him after all. I knew for a fact now that sleeping was going to be impossible this coming Cornerian night, as well as many nights after that.