Star Fox Reborn Chapter Four
Sorry this took so bloody long. I've been stupidly busy and stupidly distracted. Next chapter should be up shortly, and definitely have a bit more action ...or at least...things going on.
Star Fox: Reborn
Chapter Four: New Friends (and Sometimes More)
The trip back to the Third Division Mothership was noisy--but only because Bastion O'Donnell sat in Dax's jet, tied to James, who remained silent through it all.
"Shut up or I'll drop you off right now!" Dax barked for the umpteenth time. It was an empty threat, of course--he couldn't simply throw the wolf out into the vacuum of space. He'd face horrible consequences if he did.
Bastion simply sighed and shut his mouth, grimacing.
Gray turned and looked back at the two prisoners. The jet lacked space on a normal trip, but with two extra passengers, there was truly no room to move. The Arwing had been totally remodeled since Fox's time: it now had two side-by-side seats, rather than a single one. There was an extremely cramped "storage" section behind the two seats for supplies; it was here the two prisoners were crammed. Bastion's complaints were, therefore, not entirely unfounded.
"My team will know," the wolf pointed out.
"Good for them. If they come within a hundred miles of you, they'll all be shot down," Gray countered, shaking his head.
The wolf again fell silent.
Dax looked over at his younger brother. 'The kid did well,' he thought. 'All that pressure, and watching me get knocked out. Of course, there wasn't much to do...but he still did well.'
"Something on your mind, Dax?" Milani's voice came over Dax's earpiece. She had probably tuned it so only he could hear her.
"No. Well...I'll tell you when we get back," Dax said dismissively. "Team."
"That's us," Cody Millett replied.
Dax hid an amused smile. "Shut up for a second. When we get back, I need to talk to my brother. So you lot need to make sure Bastion and James both get into a cell alive."
"Why don't you and Gray do it? A little on-the-job bonding," Marcus suggested, cracking a smile. He waited a few seconds, hoping for one of Dax's classic comebacks.
"No. I don't need this idiot overhearing us," Dax replied, glaring back at Bastion.
"Focus on flying," the wolf growled, noticing the fox's angry eyes.
Gray gripped his seat nervously. What could Dax possibly want with him?
Dax managed a sly grin. He looked over at his brother and winked to show he wasn't in trouble.
Gray simply shook his head and stared forward as the stars whizzed past.
"Look, kid, you, uh...You're..." Dax stammered, not entirely sure what he was trying to say.
"Spit it out," Gray urged.
Dax raised an eyebrow. "Calm down. Now, look...You handled things pretty well back on Sauria."
"There was nothing to handle," Gray muttered indifferently. He stepped up his pace. The two foxes were walking along the brightly-lit corridors of the Third Division's main base. Lights out was several hours ago; not a soul roamed the corridors or lounged in the mess hall or rec rooms. The two had quickly dumped their guns and other gear in the team's locker room while the others led Bastion and James to the Detainment Center.
"I wouldn't quite say that. You had a rather obnoxious prisoner to deal with. And from what Milani told me, you did pretty well interrogating him, after you rather expertly turned the tables on him," Dax complimented, putting a paw on his brother's shoulder.
Gray stopped and turned, staring daggers into his brother's eyes. "Darco packed his gun. Wolf's idiot friend forgot to take it. He slid it to me because I'm a better shot. That's all. That was nothing to do with me."
Dax shook his head. "Take some credit, kid. You did well."
"Whatever you say," Gray muttered, ducking into his bedroom and slamming the door. He heard Dax sigh and listened as his brother's footsteps faded away.
"YES!" he roared, punching the air. "The damn guy finally gives me some credit."
He beamed and threw his jacket and boots in a corner of the room. He lay on his bed, still in his combat uniform, and smiled at the ceiling. "Finally, finally."
He bolted upright as someone knocked softly on the door.
"Gray," a melodic voice permeated through the door.
"Katrina?" Gray asked groggily. He was shocked; the second he had hit the bed, his exhaustion hit him like a blast from the Arwing.
"Can I come in?" she asked simply.
"Uh...Wha...Gimme a minute," Gray replied, picking up his boots and jacket. He glanced at the guitar in the corner and bit his lip. He put his boots neatly next to his dresser and draped his jacket over the guitar to hide it. He closed all the open drawers and pulled the sheets up over his bed. He darted into the bathroom, wet his hair and pushed it back, out of his eyes.
He pried the door open and looked at the white cat, his fur dripping wet.
She giggled.
"Can I come in?" she repeated.
"What's so funny, first?" Gray countered, blocking the doorway with his arm.
Kat deftly snuck under Gray's arm and dove onto his bed, rolling in mid-air. She put her arms behind her head.
"What the hell?" Gray asked, throwing his hands up. He took a cautious glance around the hallway and made sure his door locked.
"My room is occupied," Kat informed him, closing her eyes and laying her head back.
"By who?"
"A Second Division cousin of mine. She came to visit me during her Vacation Week, but...I was on Sauria. Now she's sleeping in my bed," Kat explained. "So I'll be staying here."
"And where am I gonna stay?" Gray asked. "You're not even in the right part of the Barracks. I'm sure some other team had an open bed."
Kat snickered. "This whole gender segregation thing just makes inter-team 'mingling' a whole lot more fun."
"Mingling?" Gray asked, taking off his shirt and throwing it on his dresser. He sat on a chair and put his feet up on his dresser, rocking back and forth.
"You know exactly what I mean. Why did you take your shirt off?" she giggled.
He shrugged. "I sleep without a shirt. It's my room. I can do what I want. Now, where am I going to stay?"
Kat rolled over once so she was on the edge of his bed, leaving a large space.
"Is that a guitar?" Kat asked, jumping up and rushing over to the old acoustic instrument in the corner of the room.
"N-....Yeah," Gray admitted, sighing.
"We're not supposed to have toys, you know. You could get in trouble for this," Katrina warned him, picking up the old six-string and strumming an open chord.
"Keep it down!" Gray hissed, yanking his "toy" out of her hands and sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Play me a song!" Kat whined, pawing at him.
"Y'know, Dax says the same thing every time he sees the damn thing," Gray muttered.
"So he knows?" the feline asked, genuinely curious. Dax held firm to his rules, and to the Division's rules--he was usually very strict, especially with simple little things like this.
"Of course he does. He pushed me harder than my dad did to take lessons," Gray sighed. "They thought it would keep me out of the military."
"That didn't work too well," Kat observed, noticing the mixture of melancholy and anger that crossed the fox's face.
"Well when your parents are murdered by a bunch of Anglars and you have nowhere else to go...the Academy was..."
Katrina put a comforting hand over Gray's. He looked up at her and smiled.
"Sorry," he managed.
She sat next to him and held his hand. "You've got nothing to be sorry for," she whispered. "You've been through a lot."
"All of us have," he pointed out.
She simply giggled in response.
Before Gray could even begin to ask her what was so funny, they were kissing.
The next few moments felt like hours to the fox. He had no idea what was happening, nor did he care.
It was Katrina who broke away from him.
"Well. That was...interesting," she said, rubbing his head slowly.
Gray said nothing, staring at her with a half-open jaw.
She giggled and put the guitar back in the corner of the room, with both of their jackets over it this time.
"I, uh...I," Gray stammered.
"Don't. No words," Katrina said, lying down on the bed. "Sleep."
Gray nodded and put his arm around her, kissing the back of her head gently. Again, she giggled.
"Am I really that funny?" he asked, chuckling to himself.
"No. I am," she replied.
The two of them drifted off almost immediately, the warm darkness of sleep closing in on them.
Gray woke up mere hours later. He looked over and saw Katrina curled up with his arm draped over her.
He chuckled and slowly, almost silently, rose from the bed and snuck out of the room. Again, no one roamed the halls; he assumed it was an hour or two before the normal wake-up time. He, as well as the rest of his team, would be exempt from this--those returning from missions received two days paid vacation. Fortunately for the team--and the whole Division--the following week was their annual Holiday Week. The team would have to go back to work for a day, then have the weekend and following week off to go back to their home planets and visit their families.
Obviously, this wasn't the case for Dax and Gray--they usually just stayed aboard the Mothership along with the others who had nothing to return to on Corneria. Only a handful of such people existed, and of these, Dax and Gray were the only two whose parents had been killed by terrorists. Those sorts of attacks simply didn't happen--it seemed that the assault on the McClouds and their village was a freak accident. A fluke.
Except terrorist groups of that caliber don't have flukes.
This thought flitted across Gray's mind every year around this time, but he always dismissed it. Who could have, would have, paid the Anglars to attack and kill the McCloud family? They hadn't done anything of particular value since Marcus McCloud saved Corneria from an out-of-galaxy threat--a race of warriors known only as the Horde. They made their home on a large starship similar to Corneria's Division motherships, which they fondly called the Garrison. The Horde blazed through the Lylat system, attacking first only the outer planets, supposedly to get a feel for the "rapid-response" system that Corneria had in place. When it proved to be weak and unprepared, the Horde dove straight for Corneria. Marcus and the Star Fox team repelled the attack, nearly destroying the Garrison and sabotaging communications between it and troops around Corneria and other Lylat planets. The Horde, as a militaristic race, was shattered.
These were the masterminds of the attacks. The Anglars simply didn't have the weaponry or tactics to pull off such a raid and get away unscathed. It was not a purely isolated incident; other attacks had been reported on other planets, and they all had similar effects, and targets--the descendants of the Star Fox team that stopped the Horde in the first place. The only successful "assassination" was of the McClouds. For some reason or another, several descendants and home bases of the still-active Star Wolf team were also attacked, but no one quite knew why. The attacks still happened sporadically, and the Horde's name became increasingly linked to the Anglar assaults. The Anglars lacked the equipment and ambition to pull off any sort of major terror attack--unless they were funded. No major wars had occurred in the Lylat System since the Horde's attacks, so they were the only true enemy that the Lylats had. Still, the question of why they had waited so long to avenge their fallen leadership from generations before remained a mystery. No one had an answer.
That is, no one outside the Horde and the Star Wolf team, whose leader Gray was on his way to visit.
The Hold door stood guarded and locked, as usual. The guard, however, recognized Gray, having known him from their days at the Academy. He merely nodded and unlocked the door, letting Gray into the dark dungeon-like Hold. Unlike the rest of the bright chrome and white, brightly-lit Division Mothership, the Hold achieved its designed purpose perhaps a little too well--it consisted of dark, rusty metal and a dim, ever-flickering light dangling from the ceiling high above. Bastion O'Donnell and James were tied up back-to-back and chained to the walls of the ten-by-twenty foot room. Darco Lombardi sat in a corner of the room, twirling his pistol, eyes distant. He barely noticed Gray walk into the room.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" Gray asked, confused.
"Same as you, I suppose," Darco muttered, rubbing his eyes.
"Were you sleeping?" Gray shook his head, awestruck.
"Questioning these bastards gets tiring," Darco growled. "Just woke up about half an hour ago."
"And how long were you in here for?" Gray asked, the concern edging into his voice.
Darco stopped twirling his gun and cocked his head. "Since we got back," he said after a pause.
"Dammit, Darco," Gray muttered "Why?"
"He says he'll only talk to you," the bird replied. "But I didn't want you to get involved."
Gray narrowed his eyes at the wolf. "Darco," he called.
"Hm?"
"Leave. I'll talk to him," Gray growled coldly. The wolf looked up groggily and gave a crooked, fang-filled grin.
Darco would have argued if he hadn't seen Gray's face. Pure fire burned in the fox's eyes, the likes of which Darco had never seen. "Don't do anything stupid," the pheasant advised upon leaving.
Gray sat down and stared at the wolf--who was still beaming.
"You know exactly why I'm here," Gray said simply.
The Star Wolf leader nodded.
"Why the Horde? Why now? Now-ish, perhaps. How long ago was it that your parents died?" Bastion asked bluntly.
Gray hung his head and shuffled his feet. "Eight years ago."
"Eight years. Just under half your life without your parents. I bet it leaves a dirty taste in your mouth. Gritty, like sand, but it burns. Burns your whole being, your whole existence to the very soul. These terrorists threw your life down a hole and buried it alive, still clawing for breath--"
Gray grabbed the wolf's neck and squeezed tightly. "Shut your mouth about my life. That's not why I'm here. I'll do the talking. You keep your damn mouth shut until I say so. Understand?" the fox growled, tightening his grip on Bastion's throat.
The wolf gagged and whimpered an affirmative.
"Ok, then. Now. How do you know it was the Horde?" Gray asked pointedly.
"Because they asked the Star Wolf team to do it first. I had literally had the leadership of the team for a week when the offer came in to assassinate a certain clan of McClouds. In return, they promised to stop killing off Star Wolf members, who they blamed for letting Star Fox obliterate them in their invasion. Had Star Wolf intervened, perhaps the Lylat System looks a bit different today. But we didn't. I wasn't around back then, but I would never have done it. A system run by the Horde just seems like a bad idea. I turned the cowards down and killed their messenger," Bastion explained breathlessly. He finished with a sharp sigh, and then shook his head.
Gray sat back and scratched his head. "Why did they decide to take revenge now, though?"
"Eight years ago isn't 'now.' And I don't know. A change in leadership, maybe? A particularly vengeful beasty wants some payback on those who stopped, or failed to help, them? I don't know, Gray. But I'm not against you or the Cornerian military on this. In fact, the Cornerian leadership seems pretty content to let the attacks go. No one of political importance is being targeted, are they? No. They don't care. But I want the bastards dead as much as you do," Bastion said. Gray thought he heard a twinge of sympathy in the wolf's voice, but he dismissed it.
The two nemeses stared at each other for a long moment.
"Can I tell you something?" Bastion asked, his voice losing its normal gruffness.
The young fox opposite him raised an eyebrow. "Go ahead."
"Bastion isn't my name. It's James' last name. I was only using it as an alias."
Gray narrowed his eyes at his rival, of sorts.
"I'm not going to tell you what it is. Maybe if you're a good boy in the future, I'll tell you."
The fox shook his head and chuckled. "Go to hell," he muttered and left the room, entirely uncertain about how he was supposed to feel about the wolf. He had other things to worry about, the first in his mind being the (hopefully) sleeping cat in his room.