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A friend started talking to me about Star Fox a while and got me thinking. I actually got into furry by writing Star Fox fan fiction back in the day; it's interesting to revisit your roots.

There's no sex in this at first, but there will be eventually. I don't know how long this will be--probably not too long. I have about 20,000 words written, and I suspect I'm around half done. Hopefully I have the patience to upload here in the future, as wrestling with the upload system is not fun.

---

By now he knew the routine. It'd been a decade now he'd been polishing the facade, on and off; compared to the politicians who'd spent twenty, thirty years doing the same, he was still an amateur, but everyone saw him through a rose-tinted lens that honed in on his war medals.

He knew where to drop subtle inflections. Where to add an embarrassed flick of the ears. Where to trail off and look thoughtful. Where to shake his head as if in sorrow of the system's great loss--a sorrow that necessarily had to be manufactured, lest the sobering reality strike too deep and leave him paralyzed. He couldn't risk that. No one could. The loss had been too real.

Not hundreds. Not thousands. Millions.

Dull applause sounded as his last words died and a somber "Thank you" signaled the end to his speech. An old rottweiler gave him a nod and a mouthed "Good job" as he stepped off behind the stage into a bustle of military and politicians. To his right was the Zonessian governor, talking to Corneria military's chief of R&D. Farther down, he could see the chief justice of the interplanetary judiciary council. Scattered among the gaggle of military veterans being honored at the ceremony, he saw representatives from countless branches of the planetary government and caught more than a few nods. A few here and there waved him over for congratulatory words or spills of whatever the latest rumors were on the planetary alliance's next moves.

The first thing he did when he got a moment alone was to reach up and undo that damned neck-button that was nearly choking him. His eyes scanned around. In all the crowd, there was one he was looking for, but the short hare tended to get lost in the buzz of tall bodies.

Seven months had passed since he'd fired the self-destruct program into the hive mind, and Corneria was just starting to get itself back on its feet. It'd been a long and arduous process, but Fox had been prepared for it, this time. Lots of time spent meeting with the city council. Lots of time spent in courts. Lots of time spent in public ceremonies and speeches. Not particularly fun, but at least it was somewhat gratifying. At least he was doing something. It was too easy to go insane if all he could focus on was the lack of piloting jobs.

In that time, they'd rebuilt the infrastructure of the city enough for most citizens to resume normal life. It helped that they didn't have to begin from nothing: only around half the city had been damaged in the attack, and only around ten percent had been damaged to the point of inoperability. Most of the essential areas had been spared. Corneria Central Stadium hadn't been one of them, and the completion of its repairs signaled, at least in the public eye, the next stage in recovery.

Fox attributed much of Corneria's rapid recovery to the hare who was now just a few feet in front of him. He'd convalesced seamlessly and he'd done an excellent job of blending in to his new role:

"Hey, general."

Peppy clapped a hand down on his shoulder. "You did good."

"And you're a good speechwrite."

The two shared a brief chuckle, then stepped out the way as a group of veterans headed by them, out towards the stage. "I guess things are finally getting back to normal," Fox said. "Memorial stadium and everything. It'll be in the history books soon."

"So will we all," Peppy droned. His eyes followed the next crowd heading to the stage for a bit, then shifted back to Fox. "So, what have you been up to lately, anyhow? I haven't seen you in forever."

He wanted to say nothing, but it felt like too much of a confession. Too real. He combed his head for a moment, thinking. "I don't know. Lots of speeches and events. Banquets. Outreach events with the kids." He didn't want to say anything more, so he threw the question back at Peppy: "How about you?"

Peppy didn't even have to stop to think. He talked for a while, about how much military presence had been needed in the streets to prevent thieves from raiding the buildings that had been ruined during the attack, about the influx of space-pirate attacks on interplanetary vessels that had led to the current ban on civilian interplanetary travel, and about how damn annoying it was to fight the council on his every move. Unsurprisingly, the general of the Cornerian military was high on the radar of innumerable special interest groups. It was one hell of a high-profile job, and Peppy seemed hell-bent on proving that, despite his graying fur and recent almost mortal injuries, he could still keep up on the level of his predecessor, General Pepper.

Fox listened to all this with mild disinterest. It should have been endearing, to see the subdued enthusiasm on his old mentor's face when he described a particularly clever move he'd made to outpace political stonewalling, but instead, it was just a bit sad to see the hare's enthusiasm directed towards something so far removed from Fox's interests.

Fox gave a curt nod and made a few cursory comments, but the same tricks that worked on officials and company representatives didn't work on his old mentor. The hare could tell something was wrong, and he paused in the little of one of his stories. "Something's bother you, Fox?"

"I don't know. I think I'm ready to get back to the grind. You've got a nice new job and everything, but I don't. I was actually hoping you might have something for me to work."

"Already anxious to get back in the air?" Peppy laughed. "I figured you would be." He leaned in. "There's not a lot of good work out there right now, I know, but if you're interested... well, I've got something I'd like you to investigate." He put a hand down on Fox's back, and started steering them towards a corner, away from the crowd.

"I'm listening."

"Well, don't get your hopes too high. It's nothing official yet, but I'm sure I could cover expenses and probably scrounge up some good pay for you in a few weeks' time. I'm sure you're well aware--Fichina hasn't been doing too well ever since the Aparoids hit."

He remembered the battle on the icy planet's surface. The scramble to capture Pigma, the anger as the swine infected the Climate Control Center with Aparoids, and the frustration of watching him fly away while Fox was stuck preventing the damn thing from melting down. Peppy had been there, too. Until the module was repaired, Fichina would essentially be inhabitable. Not exactly good news for the planet's considerable population.

"Yeah. I remember."

"The civilians there have held up well, but supplies are running low, and we desperately need to fix the damn module so they can start sustaining themselves again with agriculture. We've been sending ships with repair parts. Expensive parts."

Fox sighed. "Let me guess. The ships were raided."

"I'm afraid so. Even the cargo ships we've sent with food have been attacked. The population is freezing and starving and I don't know how much longer they'll last without aid." Peppy braced himself with an arm up against the wall and sighed. He looked tired; his age was showing, although the nearly-mortal injuries he'd sustained just seven months ago certainly didn't help. "We tried sending escorts, but they were destroyed. Pirate activity is thriving and our military is stretched thin. I don't know how much more we can afford."

"So, you want me to join the escort?" Fox didn't much like the sound of this--if a full military escort had been wiped by pirates, it didn't sound like he'd have much of a chance himself.

"The next ship is in a couple weeks. If you want to join the escort then, there'd certainly be pay in it for you and it's more than likely you'd see fire. But in the mean time, I've got a hunch..."

"Yeah?"

"My scouts reported sightings of Wolfens in Meteo, near where the ships disappeared. I've got a suspicion that Star Wolf is alive and active."

"...they're alive?"

The words came out automatically. The surprising thing wasn't that they were alive, or even that they were already allegedly back to crime; rather it was the feeling of relief that washed over him. It had been anyone's guess as to whether the exploding Aparoid homeworld had taken Star Wolf out with it, and it was something he'd found himself pondering more than once late at night when sleep wouldn't come.

Peppy nodded. "Yes. They took a pretty big hit during the war. I wouldn't be surprised if they were using the cargo from these ships to re-establish their foothold in Meteo. I'd like you to investigate the attacks, and in particular Star Wolf's involvement. If they're in on this, then we have a problem."

Fox took in a deep breath. Peppy's words weren't getting through to him. "I'm not a... private investigator, or a detective."

Peppy gave him the strange look he deserved. "Neither was I, when Pepper hired Star Fox to investigate Venom, ten years back. Something's wrong?"

Fox tapped his claws against the wall and chose his next words carefully. "I'm not at all interested in waltzing into Meteo alone. If word gets out I'm there, I'll be toast."

"Course you wouldn't be going at it alone. I can't spare any troops, and I can't go myself, but there's the rest of the old gang. I'm sure Falco would want to fly again. If not, there's hundreds of capable pilots who'd kill to fly with you. You could consider it a chance to vet new recruits to fill my and Slippy's spots."

Fox didn't offer a response, but Peppy was still looking at him expectantly. Star Wolf hadn't really been something any of them had talked about, save Fox and Falco a couple times after a couple too many beers. "Even if I could get the old gang, it just doesn't feel right, to think of them as the enemy. You were there--I don't know how much you remember after that crash--but we wouldn't have won against the Aparoids without them. Don't get me wrong. I've never liked them, but it's honestly a relief to hear that they're alive."

"I know, but millions of lives are at stake, Fox. We owe enough to the people to at least investigate. Think about it?"

He certainly didn't feel comfortable with taking the mission then and there, with so many unknowns, but it also wouldn't feel at all right to turn his own friend down. "Why don't you write up something for me, and send it out as an official contract with all the details? That way I'd know what I'd be in for." That'd also give him some time to try and put together the team again.

"I'll get started right away." Peppy extended his arm; Fox clasped the hare's hand in his own.

"Thanks, Pep."

---

"So what's it like living solo?"

Falco took a moment to finish downing nearly half his beer in a single gulp before responding. "It's a lot quieter without you bitching at me all the time." It came down against the table with a loud clang that pierced through whatever garbage was playing on the holovision that neither of them were watching.

"Yeah. It's definitely quieter without your music. Or your shitty soap operas." Fox had barely taken a sip from his beer. He hadn't visited Falco much, ever since he'd moved out. Each time he'd been impressed that the bird had been able to afford this place. The view out the window looked down across half Corneria city. It wasn't one of the luxury spots that had a bird's-eye view of Corneria Park, but it was about as close to it as a mere mortal could hope to afford. At least, it made Fox's second-floor place four blocks down seem like a college kid's studio in comparison.

"Hell of a view," he muttered. The contrast between the real estate and the shitty beer the bird bought wasn't lost on him. "Guess the test pilot business isn't treating you bad, huh?"

"Easier than merc work and pays ten times as much." Fox tilted his head, and Falco waved a hand. "Alright, well, it doesn't pay ten times as much. But you get a lot more pocket-money when you don't have a ship and a carrier to maintain."

"Right." Fox frowned. He idly fingered the side of the beer-bottle and found his claw cutting through the label. Falco looked thoughtful, like he still had more to say, and Fox wasn't sure he wanted to hear it.

"...it's such a shitty gig, you know. Being a merc. You don't realize it till you get out of it."

Fox remembered how, not even a month after the war had ended, he'd had countless mails from flight companies and the military R&D sector flooding his inbox. He hadn't even opened half of them. And even after seeing Falco's newfound life of luxury, he hadn't thought to go back and revisit them, not even once. "Doesn't it get boring, though? Being a test pilot?"

The couch shifted as Falco stood. He wrestled another bottle from the fridge and plopped himself down again with a grunt. "Nah. It's not so bad. Still get to fly."

"It's always the same shit, though. They offered me the same sort of job, and it's always... you know, test standard maneuvers, test timings, test gauges." He took another gulp from his own beer. He was approaching the three-quarters point on it. Ten years ago, he used to always keep pace with his feathered friend, but as the years passed by, he'd gotten slower. "I'd fall asleep and wreck the damn thing."

He expected Falco to laugh, but the bird just shrugged. "S'not completely brainless. There's obstacles courses and shit." Falco'd never been one to let his emotions bleed through into his words, but even Fox could hear the boredom and disinterest, there. And yet he didn't seem to care.

Ten years ago and Falco was the only other pilot he knew who had the same kind of borderline bloodlust he did in the sky. He lived for the dogfight; the moment one mission was over and he'd had his little customary fling planetside, Falco was gearing up for the next.

"As if pilots like us couldn't do any course the military could sling at us, even in a shit-tier ship."

"See, this is why I like living alone. Don't gotta listen to you bitching all the time."

Fox rolled his eyes. For a few minutes, they both faced the holovision. It was some drama about a group of scientists working on nanotech. The Aparoids had forever ruined nanotech for Fox; even if it was completely benign, it'd forever give him the creeps. He'd never forget the purple haze creeping through the air, taking Pigma, the Fichina Climate Control Center, Pepper. Silence rolled on. Fox finished his first beer, and Falco finished his second, giving it a firm push farther back on the glass table.

There was an eerie tension in the air that Fox wondered if Falco felt.

"Look, Fox. Being a merc is great. Really. But that shit takes over your life. All your money goes to tech or you can't keep up. All your time goes to hunting out jobs. Can't ever live in one place, can't ever see a girl more than once before you're halfway across the damn system."

Fox leaned back and propped his feet up on the table. "You didn't seem to have a problem with that, back then."

"I didn't. It's just, that shit gets old. This is so much easier." He folded his hands behind his head. "You act like I'm trying to say I'm done with it forever. It's been what, seven months since the Aparoids? How long did we just shoot the shit after Andross?"

"Three months and we were back in the sky." He shouldn't have spouted that out so readily or confidently. He'd obviously been dwelling on it, and Falco cast him a slanted eye. "You know, back then I didn't know what to do with myself. I was young. I was famous. I had people dying for interviews, dying for attention, and I didn't have a clue how to respond. There was novelty..."

Falco laughed. "I bet you got laid more times in those three months than in the rest of your life."

Fox ignored him. "But I'm not a kid anymore. I've had my time in the spotlight and I just want to get back to flying."

"I think you're just afraid of living a normal life. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy yourself back then."

Fox sighed. It was ten years ago, but he still remembered what it was like. Bar after bar, swarmed with fangirls and fanboys. Reporters knocking on his door and finding him on the street. He quickly learned not to say anything to any of them--inevitably he'd just drop some casual remark just for the sake of saying something, and it'd end up twisted and mangled out of context in the tabloids the next day. It was the questions about James that had gotten to him the most.

The fangirls weren't much better. Sure, it was nice having everyone so taken with him, but it was superficial at best. 'Get fucked by Fox McCloud' was high up on the bucket list of a surprising number of college-aged girls, and he'd taken advantage of that a few times--more often than not coaxed by Falco after a long night of drinking.

But whereas Falco would often see the same girl several times, Fox never saw a single one more than once. Not to say that he didn't have offers, but he never embraced the lifestyle as much as Falco did. He was just in it for the attention, not the sex: every experience that he could remember resulting from a bar pickup had always been drab and boring sex-for-the-sake-of-saying-I-fucked-Fox sex. He'd always figured all the over-the-top lewd stories Falco had told him had been lies and exaggerations, but no: Falco had always just been way more into it than Fox had. He had a hard time taking a girl seriously when the moment she thought his back was turned, she was texting all her friends to brag about what she'd picked up at the bar.

"Not really," he muttered at last. He sighed. "I wanted to see what the life was all about, y'know. I thought it'd grow on me, but it didn't."

Falco rolled his eyes. "Don't give me that kind of shit, Fox."

"It's not shit. It's--"

"You know what I mean. That 'I'm too mature for one night stands' shit. It's all about experience. I got enough of it to figure out what I like, and what girls like. And you know what?" He grunted. "I found what I want. I've had the same girl for three months now."

Fox tilted his head. "Really? You didn't tell anyone?"

Falco shrugged. He looked a little sheepish, turning away to stare at the holovision once more. His feathers toyed with the opening of an empty bottle. "Not anyone's business."

He took that as a clue not to pry. He turned towards the holo himself, and sighed. Damn it. For all that conversation about girls wasn't exactly his forte, at least it let him procrastinate what he imagined was going to be a dead line of questioning anyway. "I couldn't date a fan."

"Excuses."

"No, I mean it. Doesn't feel right. It's..."

"So what happened to Krystal? She's not a fan. And she's as much a bitch as you are. Chick was born to fight."

Fox shook his head, and met Falco's eyes. If he wasn't going to pry about Falco's girl, then Falco couldn't pry about her. He was silent for awhile. Peppy had always said James never had anything in his life but girls and planes. Fox didn't have girls.

"Why'd you come over, anyway? I know it wasn't to talk about girl problems."

Fox shook his head. "It's nothing."

"Bullshit. Speak up. I've got to get going soon to pick her up, so make it quick."

He sighed. "I was just... well, I thought it was obvious. Peppy offered me a mission..." He gave Falco a sidelong glance, and Falco shook his head, ever so slightly.

"Sorry, Fox. But I think I'd like a year off, at least, before I get back to it. You know, enjoy civ life for a while. 'sides, I got flights lined up all next week and I can't blow 'em all off. Not saying I'm quitting the team for good, but hell..." Falco shook his head, and his next words were drained of some of their usual brashness. "We're coming up on our thirties now, Fox. It's got to stop being our whole life sometime."

It felt like a heavy weight settled on Fox's chest. He pursed his lips, trying to disguise the sadness. It was a moment before he spoke up again. "...what if it's a particularly juicy mission?"

Falco laughed. "I don't mean to be a dick, but what the hell could be juicy after saving the whole goddam system from those bug-freaks?"

Fox grinned. "Relief ships to Katina have been getting intercepted through Meteo by pirates."

"And my ass is blue. What else is new?"

"Pepper's got a hunch that one of our old friends is behind it. You know. Wolf. Panther. Leon."

Falco took in a deep breath and sighed. He was quiet for a while, eyes focused on the rolling credits of the nanobot-show. That wasn't exactly the reaction Fox had been hoping for, but by this point, it certainly wasn't a surprise.

"You really think they're the bad guys now?"

It certainly wasn't lost on him how much the bird's words mirrored his own from his earlier talk with Peppy, and he responded in turn: "They're raiding relief ships. They don't get a free pass because of what they did in the war." His tongue echoed Pepper's sentiments of its own accord. "Honestly, I thought you'd be eager to join in. You hate Star Wolf."

Falco stood. Both of his beers went into the recycling. He leaned an arm down onto the back of the couch, staring down at Fox. "Yeah, well, I hated them because ten years ago they almost killed you. But it's been a decade. People change."

"You really think so?"

"Some people do. I have. Wolf has." He turned and headed over to the coat rack to pick up his jacket and slip it over his chest. "You haven't."

Two minutes later and Falco was ushering him out the door.

The official contract came two days later, beaming to his comm with an unceremonious chime that interrupted his morning coffee. The rest of his day disappeared into an abyss of musing and brooding. For as long as he'd ever been in the sky, he'd flown with Peppy, Falco, and Slippy. It just wouldn't feel right, heading off on a mission with anyone else, especially not fresh recruits who would be trying way too hard to impress him. Yet the thought of spending even another week earthbound when he had a perfectly viable (if sketchy) mission lined up nearly sickened him. He hadn't realized how strong that feeling was, until he'd had the chance to sit down and dwell on the prospect of turning down a chance to be in the air.

It wasn't until that night that finally, he hit the reply button. _ I'll take the mission. Here's what I'll need from you._