[b][u][center]The Lylat Wars: XXX
Part 6
Sponsored by GlynWolf
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]
 
 
 
 
 



Fox met Peppy at his dad’s old apartment. To say that it was ghost-like was an understatement: with all the old furniture taken away, the pictures pulled down from the walls, and the old models of starships that had hung everywhere, it was as if nothing had ever lived there. The only sign that anyone had was in the rabbit’s hands.

“That dad’s old blaster?” Fox asked, leaning against the doorframe.

Peppy looked up from the window, the scarred, short-barreled weapon resting between his hands. Fox couldn’t get over how drained the older man looked; it was like every smile that the rabbit had ever given was gone, and so were all the ones from the future. He looked almost dead where he sat.

“…Yeah. The one he liked to use down on the range.”

“…”

“He, uh…I got it for him after one of the longer campaigns,” Peppy said, thumbing the grip. “Said that he needed something when he was ground-side, after all the enemies he was making, heh. He…he kept it with him on other missions. Said this one was gonna be the last one. Last one before he passed it on to you. Said he didn’t want you to have to use it, but…”

There were no words for that. Fox just stared down at the weapon, wondering if things would have been any different if his dad had had it when Pigma betrayed everyone. It was stupid – there was no chance in hell that having a blaster after crashing on Venom would have made a lick of difference – but the what-if refused to leave his mind.

Peppy thumbed the blaster one more time before spinning it around and holding it out, gripping the barrel. He gestured at Fox.

“Well?”

“…You’re saying you want me to take it? I thought –”

“I got it for him, yeah. But he wanted to give it to you. I’m not spitting on the last wishes of my best friend, sonny.”

“If you’re sure –”

“I am.”

He hesitated just a moment longer, but Peppy’s stare – dead as it was – and the gentle nudge of that outstretched weapon finally persuaded him. Fox reached out and took it, feeling the light weight and the smooth metal beneath his fingers, and the warm leather around the rubber grip. He closed his eyes, imagining what it must have felt like for his father to have something like this.

A softer image of his father’s hands around his, wrapped around them and helping him hold the gun, filled his mind. He shook it away, not daring to dwell on that for long. He didn’t need the tears.

Holstering the weapon at his side, he forced himself to meet Peppy’s eyes. The rabbit had forced himself upright again with a grunt, turning to look out the window, and Fox joined him. It was easier to look at things than each other.

“I got a few people.”

“How many?”

“One for sure, six other applicants.”

“That’s a start,” Peppy said. “Doubt we can field more than four Arwings, total.”

“Good thing that we already got three for sure then, huh? That is…if you’re willing to fly again?”

“Sonny. If you think I’m going to sit out the war with the guy that took my friend from me…or miss the chance to put Pigma in the [i]dirt[/i]…you got another thing coming.”

That was what Fox had hoped to hear, but actually getting those words from Peppy made him smile. The team might have some talent behind it, but they were painfully short on anyone with actual combat experience. He had his time in the sims and on the street, and Falco had just as much time in the air as he did, but neither of them had ever gone into a live combat situation the way that Peppy did. Injured or not, the rabbit was going to be invaluable to the team.

“So, what else you got?” Peppy asked, holding out one hand.

Fox handed over the files that he’d put together. Six of ‘em were more or less the academy records for the few that he’d found that were interested in throwing their lot in under the McCloud name, while the top one –

“Who’s this?” Peppy asked. “Never heard of him before.”

“Falco’s an old friend of mine.”

“He ever been to the Academy?”

“Not exactly,” Fox said, rubbing the back of his neck. “He’s more…self-taught.”

“Fox –”

“I can vouch for him having the flight skills. He can keep up with me, and you know how good I am.”

“I know how good the sims say you are, Fox. I ain’t seen you fly yet, but…I’ll trust your judgment on that one. I wanna see him fly ASAP, though. Self-taught pilots got a lot of bad habits that you gotta break before you can teach ‘em anything good.”

Fox nodded, restraining the urge to snap back. There was nothing good that would come from that right now. He’d gotten enough out of Falco and Slippy – the former with a long talk after that wolf came by, the latter with some sex – that he had gotten past the worst of his shock and the pain that had come from it. Peppy, he reminded himself, had been in the hospital the whole time, and the most that he would have gotten for help would have been doctors that he didn’t know and maybe, if he was lucky, a visit from General Pepper. There’d be no comfort in that.

Even so, it took a lot for him to keep quiet. Peppy looked over Falco’s dossier with a practiced eye, narrowing it more than once, but for all that the rabbit clearly didn’t like the idea of the bird being part of the team, he couldn’t find anything to outright disqualify him. Which was all for the good.

The other applicants, on the other hand –

“Too angry.

“Too psychotic.

“Too scared.

“Too stupid.”

In short order, Peppy had eliminated all but two of them. Fox blinked as Peppy walked over to a different window, laying them out side by side on the sill. The rabbit leaned over them, and the intensity in his eyes – and the purpose there – seemed to give him some of his life back. Fox almost smiled to see it, and realized just how much the dead-eyed version of Peppy had scared the living hell out of him. Seeing someone that had been that casually confident before being so broken…it was terrifying.

“You know either of these kids, Fox?”

Glancing over Peppy’s shoulder to see who was left, Fox blinked. One of them was someone that he had never seen before in his life – some raccoon that had been part of the flight class at the academy, decent enough from what little he remembered from the paperwork, but nothing outstanding – and the other was Slippy. He’d been flattered when Slippy had said that he would sign up, but he’d never expected the frog to actually follow through. Maybe there was something there, after all.

But if he spoke up –

[i]I already vouched for Falco. I can’t just say Slippy deserves to be there,[/i] he thought. [i]Particularly with how bad he is on the sims…[/i]

He grimaced as he remembered the frog’s scores. He wasn’t a failure, but he was a hell of a lot better fixing the various machines around than he was flying them. Slippy would be a valuable mechanic, even a good scientist for someone, but a good pilot, he was most definitely not.

“No,” Fox lied.

“Hmmmph.”

Peppy turned from one application to the other, his eyes narrowed as he muttered under his breath to himself. Every so often, he’d reach up and pinch at his chin, pulling on the gray and white fur at the bottom of his muzzle.

Fox didn’t say a word. It killed him inside not to vouch for another friend, but he needed to trust the rabbit. The last thing that the team needed was a weak link; one more of those, and things could go as badly as they had for his father.

For everyone.

He leaned against the wall, looking around the apartment once more. He hadn’t been back here in ages. Ever since he’d started going to the Academy – and even before – he’d been rooming with others, living elsewhere rather than in the empty apartment. It was so strange – and so chilling – to be back here when there was nothing left.

When there never would be anything left.

[i]He’s gone,[/i] Fox thought, and waited for the pain to hit.

There were echoes of that massive weight, but nothing of the great anvil of emotional agony that he kept expecting. The agony of grief wasn’t necessarily lessening, but he was getting used to it. It couldn’t keep hitting him in the same way.

Still, he hung his head, his arms crossed over his chest and a little shiver running up and down his spine. His dad was gone. No getting around that.

“This one,” Peppy said.

Grateful for the distraction, Fox turned and looked at the applications –

[i]He picked Slippy?[/i]

Arching an eyebrow, Fox looked up at the rabbit again. Peppy shrugged.

“The other one’s the better pilot, but not by much. Might have a better kill ratio, but the kid’s coming in half-dead every time on the sims,” Peppy said. “Put that kind of pilot in a real ship, and he’s going to die in three missions. Tops. The other one’s crashing about a third of the time, but all the other times he’s coming in well-repaired and in good shape. That means that he’s making some obvious mistakes that can be corrected.”

“You’ll take someone that comes in dead a third of the time instead of someone that comes in barely alive all the time?” Fox asked, chuckling. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“It’s sims,” Peppy said, shaking his head. “Gives you kids a sense of invulnerability. They ever get the grav-checks right in those things?”

“…Come to think of it, not really.”

“They ever get around to jostling you, banging you against the side if you get hit too hard?”

“…No…”

“Mmm-hmm. That’s what I thought.” Peppy chuckled. “Someone like that’d be getting their head caved in even with a flight helmet on. Their ship might still be flying, but they’re not going to be awake enough to notice it inside the damn thing.”

“Huh…Never thought about that.”

“That’s the difference between flying the real thing and flying in a sim, Fox. It’s much more real.”

Instantly, he was reminded of the flight over the city that he and Falco had done, the escape from law enforcement, the raw pleasure of being in the air and the insane panic when he’d run out of fuel and had to improvise a landing. The g-forces, the pull of the machine, the realization that he could actually die: they’d all hit him harder than anything in the sims ever had.

“…Yeah. You’re not wrong. So…Slippy, huh?”

“Yeah. Pretty sure we can buff up his flight skills, and we need all the other stuff that he’s offering.”

“Mechanic?”

“And brain. Test scores are off the charts.”

“Wait, what?”

He took the application off Peppy, flicking through the submission to the back. His eyes widened as he saw the grades that Slippy had been getting, his mouth slowly falling further and further open.

[i]Holy…[/i]

While he’d known that Slippy was doing better in the theoretical stuff than he was – well, better in nearly everything besides the sims – he hadn’t realized that the frog had been that far up the grading scale. He was pretty sure that Slippy was setting the bar for everyone else that came afterward, and they were going to hate him for setting it as high as he had.

[i]And if he brought Beltino onboard…[/i]

Well, not literally – no way that they could afford to pay for Slippy and that brilliant frog at the same time – but just having that connection…

[i]Holy shit…[/i]

“Are you good with them, Fox?”

“Yeah…yeah, I think I am.”

“No.”

Peppy grabbed him by the shoulder, turning him around.

“I need to hear ‘yes.’”

“I just –”

“No, you said ‘you think.’ If you’re going to be the team leader, I need you to sound like you’re sure about this, Fox.”

“Fine. Yes. We’ll take Slippy,” Fox said, shaking his head. “Now –”

“Now we figure out finances.”

“…What?”

“Finances. We’re going to have to pay to fuel up the Great Fox, we’re going to have to make sure that we have enough fuel and ammo for the Arwings, for paychecks, everything. Selling off what we can will be a start, but it’s going to be rough for the first few contracts.”

“We can sort that out later. I have to –”

“Later?”

Fox blinked. For all that Peppy had been the sort of joyful uncle in his life for years, he’d always known – on some level at least – that his dad wouldn’t just have the rabbit around for morale. He’d have some good reason for being there, something hard and firm that every warrior seemed to have deep down.

This was the first time that he had ever gotten the chance to see it, and it was staring at him with more disapproval than he could ever imagine.

“There’s no ‘later’ with this, Fox. When you’re in charge of a bunch of soldiers, there’s no winging it when it comes to this sort of thing. You gotta make sure that everything’s lined up, because every battle’s gonna do its best to screw it up. If you aren’t paying attention, then nobody else is.”

“…”

“I don’t know what you were doing in the Academy, Fox, but from now on, you gotta put in the work.”

“I –”

“So, you and me, we’re gonna go find somewhere to sit down – my hips still ain’t great – and we’re going to figure out how we’re going to get the money for this stuff.”

#

It took them a week to get everything. There were favors asked, loans borrowed, and even a fair bit of work getting his father’s apartment sold off properly. All in all, it was barely enough money to get everything fitted together with the inheritance that Fox was left with.

And yet, as he stood outside the Great Fox and stared at the massive ship, he couldn’t help but feel the ghost of a smile pulling at the edge of his face. Everything that the Star Fox team had belonged to him, now, and he was the one pulling the strings. He was the one that got to decide where they went, what they did, and how they did it.

Was he a little afraid of getting it wrong? Oh, yes. Very much so. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a hint of excitement about the whole thing, too.

Fox rested his hand on his father’s blaster, taking some comfort just knowing that it was there, hanging from his hip, ready for business if anything went wrong. His boots were new, and tight, as was the rest of his uniform. It would slowly get better, he knew that, but it was going to take some time to break it all in and feel comfortable in.

The only thing that was still his was the gray vest that he wore. He ran his hand down the front of it, feeling the various bumps of rations and other little tidbits that he had brought along.

[i]Today’s the first day...of a brand new life.[/i]

“You ready, sonny?”

Fox looked over his shoulder as Peppy emerged from a taxi. The rabbit had been tying up the last of the paperwork down at the military offices, getting their first contract and a few other things that needed managing. He looked…well, he didn’t look lively, but the rabbit looked less dead than he had a week ago. Something about the whole operation seemed to have given Peppy some purpose back, and that was a major thing for both of them.

“Ready as I’m going to be,” Fox said, turning back to the Great Fox. “She’s…beautiful.”

“Your dad put everything that he had into getting her up and running. Gonna be a big change…”

“Yeah…well, change is what makes the Lylat System go round.” Fox shook his head. “And change is the only way that things are going to get better.”

“You’re telling me, Fox. You’re telling me.”

“Yeah…just…waiting for the other two to get here, and then we can get airborne.”

“They know where to go?”

“I gave them pretty specific directions.”

“Well, we’ll –”

The screeching sound of a half-dead hovercraft cut the rabbit off in mid-sentence. They whipped around on their heels, Fox going for his blaster and Peppy pulling his out faster than Fox knew was possible. A gray blur jumped off the street, then somehow bump-jumped itself off its stern and over the fence surrounding the airfield.

“What the hell is that?!” Peppy shouted.

“…I have a pretty good idea,” Fox said, lowering his blaster. “Goddammit, Falco…”

The hovercraft hit the ground on the other side of the fence with a bang and didn’t come back up. It scraped across the pavement, sliding under its own momentum all the way to the pair of them before finally coming to a stop two feet away. Fox holstered his weapon as the cockpit door opened sideways, grumbling under his breath as Falco stepped out.

“Way to make a first impression, Falco,” he said.

“Hey, I figured I’d give you and the old-timer a show before we kicked the dust off our boots,” the falcon said, leaning against the wrecked vehicle. “Besides, I’m not using this thing ever again anyway; might as well scrap it before I go.”

“Was it yours, kid?” Peppy asked, slowly lowering his own blaster.

“Heh, in every way but the paperwork.”

“You stole it?”

“Ehhhh, more picked it up and fixed it up,” the bird said, shrugging. “Why? You gonna make a thing of it before we get off-planet?”

“If we had the time –”

“Heh. Fox, this is Peppy, yeah?” Falco asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Riiiiight. Well, old-timer, we’ll see how long it takes for me to get your spot.”

“My –”

“Okay!”

Fox stepped between the bird and the rabbit, holding out his arms to keep them from charging at one another. Gritting his teeth to keep an annoyed sigh from escaping, he turned to Falco.

“First off. He’s the one that flew with my dad. Whether or not you like him, that doesn’t matter; he’s still going to be the one getting us in the air, and the one telling us how [i]real[/i] flight experience works. Don’t start with this, man.”

He turned to Peppy.

“Falco’s been a friend of mine for a long time, Peppy. And I know how good a pilot he is. Yeah, he’s not the sort of person that you’d pick since he didn’t go to the Academy, but he’s got the skills. You’ll see. I promise. Just…try and relax, okay?”

They weren’t happy, obviously, but at least they both grunted and seemed less willing to go at each other’s throats. Fox stayed between them, regardless, shaking his head as he imagined what would happen going forward.

Peppy was an old military hand. The rabbit knew how the world worked, but at the same time, he knew from experience that there was a great deal of pride in that military service, in order and getting things done the right way. Someone like Falco, someone that operated outside of the normal order of things, would get on his nerves without even trying. There’d be a lot of getting used to him on that side of things.

And on the other hand, Falco hated the system. Hell, Fox knew that his friend positively loathed it; that was why he was part of a gang and why he had been street-racing for as long as he had. There was nothing for him in the official system, so –

Fox stiffened as he remembered the wolf again. That whole little speech about the way that the CDF had let so many people down, how they were willing to do whatever they needed to get what they wanted –

[i]That’s different,[/i] he thought. [i]Falco might be an angry little bird, but he’s not exactly going around killing people.[/i]

But at the same time –

Fox shook his head, pushing the thought out of his skull. This wasn’t the time for that sort of philosophy, and they still needed Slippy.

As Peppy made his way back to the gangplank of the ship, overseeing some of the robots that were loading things in, Falco leaned against one of the cargo crates nearby. The bird looked back at the ship, then back at Fox.

“Well, much as he’s a bit of a prick, he’s got a good draw,” the bird muttered, rubbing the back of his head. “Didn’t think that he’d be able to react that fast.”

“Heh, you’d be surprised.”

“You ever seen someone pull a blaster that fast?”

“…Once.”

“When?”

“Take a guess.”

“…Oh, fucking shit…”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Shaking his head, he leaned back against the same crate. No sign of anyone else coming to the airfield yet. Maybe Slippy had gotten lost. Or maybe the frog had decided that he didn’t have the guts to come on a mission like this. No shame if he had; it just meant that they’d need to get someone else.

“Fox?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s the last guy?”

“Oh, right. I, uh, I didn’t tell you.”

“…Fox. You did [i]get[/i] one more guy, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I got another guy.”

“Okay. Who?”

“Oh, you’ll, uh, you’ll see.”

“What the hell? Fox, just – oh. Oh, fucking hell, don’t tell me that you brought Kat on for this.”

[i]That[/i] would have been an idea, but he had a feeling that he would have had an even harder time selling her on the team than he would have Falco. At least with Falco, the whole rap sheet thing was only a bit of vagrancy, some play at being in a gang, some theft here and there. He had a feeling that Kat – someone that had been part of it for even longer than Falco – would have been much worse.

And more to the point, he wouldn’t have been able to vouch for her. He’d never seen her fly.

“No, not her,” Fox said.

“Then who?”

Beep, beep.

Looking up at the source of the horn, Fox bit back a small grin at the sight of a literal air-bus floating over the airfield. It was about the size of a large tram and moved at a fairly good clip over the pavement. Shining white with a few black accents along the side, it looked as clean and clinical as one could get.

It descended and parked right beside them. Fox braced himself for Falco’s reaction as a door opened on the side, and as Slippy poked his head out, he was not disappointed.

“Him?!” Falco wheezed.

“Mmm-hmm,” Fox muttered.

“You son of a – him?!”

“I picked you, Peppy picked him,” Fox said, pushing off from the crate. “So, in terms of authority –”

“Don’t say it.”

“Me, Peppy, you, Slippy.”

“You son of a bitch…”

It was almost funny, and would have been if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d have to figure out a way to make sure that they got along. As it stood, he was biting off a bit of hysterical giggles that wanted to escape. One way or another, he’d have to make sure that the mismatched crew that he’d pulled together could get along.

[i]A traumatized veteran, a hot-shot gang pilot, and a shy gay mechanic,[/i] Fox thought as he walked over to the air-bus. [i]Not the sort of group that I saw myself leading anytime soon, but…[/i]

But his dad was dead.

And that meant that everything had changed.

He didn’t quite stumble as he thought of that, but he did have to force himself to keep moving as that little reminder snuck in under everything else. Another little moment where the heart wanted to stop, where his lungs felt too tight and the world felt like it had just been cut away for a moment. The moment of dislocation faded quickly, but it still left him breathless in a bad way for a second or two.

Slippy waved as he hopped down from the air-bus, and Fox forced a smile on his face as he offered his hand.

“Good to see you, Slippy.”

“Oh my god, I – I almost didn’t think this was real. Oh, um, sorry about being late. Beltino – you know – long goodbyes and all, and –”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“So, um – oh, Falco.”

Slippy waved. Falco rolled his eyes, but at least he nodded in some form of acknowledgement. It could have been worse. Could have been outright mockery, which would have been a [i]serious[/i] problem.

“Come on. Let’s get onboard.”

Fox waved for them to follow, and thankfully, they did without a word of complaint. They walked up the gangplank, found Peppy in the middle of designating tasks with ROB64, and Fox gestured for his attention. Once he had it, and saw Peppy coming their way, he leaned back against one of the stacks of storage crates that had already been tied down. He had a few seconds to collect his thoughts, and he used them to the best of his ability before the rabbit had joined their ranks.

“What’s up, Fox?” Falco said, arms crossed.

“Yeah, um, everything okay?” Slippy asked. “Wow. This place is big.”

“I need to focus on loading up, sonny. Let’s make this quick.”

“I plan to.”

As he looked from one teammate to another, he couldn’t help but wonder what he might have done if he had more time. If he had more money. If he had more [i]everything[/i] to put together a team of his own. There were so many things wrong with this set up, from Peppy’s age and out-of-date ideals to Slippy’s shy, almost fearful way of approaching things, to Falco’s need to be the best in every situation.

[i]If I had my pick…[/i]

But he didn’t. He had to make it work one way or another, because everything else had gone wrong. He couldn’t get it wrong. If he did…well, he just had to get it right, instead.

“I’ll keep this short. Welcome to the Star Fox team.”

“Heh, seems a little much to name it after yourself –”

“It was the name that my father put on the team, and it’s the name we’re keeping,” Fox said, narrowing his eyes at the bird until he looked away. “Like I said, welcome to the Star Fox team. You’re all here for different reasons, but we’re going to have the same goal: to swat as much crap out of the sky as possible.

“You all know by now. My dad, and most of the original team, died. I’m going to tell you what the news won’t. They died on a secret mission to Venom, and they died finding out that Andross is still around.”

There wasn’t as much of a reaction to that as he thought. Peppy already knew, of course, but he’d thought that there might have been something from Slippy or Falco. Aside from a blink or a raised eyebrow, though, there wasn’t much. In a way, he was thankful; one less thing to have to explain.

“The way I see it, if he’s brave enough to start shooting down people over his planet, that means that we have a year, maybe three, at most, before he starts making problems again. We need to use that time to get up to speed, to get ready, and get as much gear as we can to take him on when he starts rampaging across the system again. And as much as I want to take the fight to him right now…”

And he did. Oh, he did. A large part of him wanted nothing more than to take one of the Arwings in the ship and shoot right across the galaxy and see if he could kill Andross from orbit…but that wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t good enough, not yet, not if his father had already been killed.

He had to get better.

[i]They[/i] had to get better.

“I know this isn’t going to be easy. None of us have the same skills as the others. All of us come from…different perspectives, and we all want something different from this,” Fox said. “All I ask…is that you keep trying. That you work as hard as I work, and keep pushing. Because one way or another, we have to be ready. And if we aren’t…things are going to get a whole lot worse.”

“You can say that again,” Falco muttered.

“So…are we all in this together?”

“Of course,” Peppy said.

“Damn right,” Falco chuckled.

“I’m – well, I’ll try,” Slippy said.

That would have to do. For now, that would have to do.

 

 




 
[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]
 
Summary: Fox has a meeting with Peppy, and things are set up for the new team.
 
Tags: No Sex, Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad, Starfox, Starfox Team, Assembling the Team, Series, Angst, Anger, Sadness, Fox, Rabbit, Falcon, Frog,