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THIS IS NOT A STARFOX FANFIC.

Phew, got that out of my system. Bonus awesome points to you if you figure out the nickname before you read my character's explanation. Completely breaking out of the flow of things, this is available for all readers, eighteen or not.

I've gotten tired of Siber and his krew for the moment. Don't worry, they'll be back. Until then, I'm really enjoying these new people (who are not in Siber's universe at all, surprisingly). As with that series, though, if you would like to be included yourself or have a character included, I am open to rational suggestions and would really enjoy a chance to write someone else's character.

t3h p05t, 4 j00.

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_Beasts in their major freedom

Slumber in peace tonight. The gull on his ledge

Dreams in the guts of himself the moon-plucked waves below,

And the sunfish leans on a stone, slept

By the lyric water,_

from "Beasts," by Richard Wilbur

When two human or anthro beings first come into contact with one another on this speck of space dust we have presumptuously made synonymous with the material that makes it, even such an insignificant moment as this chance meeting among heptillions that may have occurred in the past eternity, if it is between two particularly well-suited individuals, warrants a capture by the universe as a snapshot of human interaction. Well-suited, of course, does not necessarily mean that they got along swimmingly at first glance, or even that they got along swimmingly at all. When General Lee and General Grant first met, such a memory was most likely engraved in the structure of the universe and put alongside all the others: the lovers, the archnemeses, the parents and children, the business partners, and the murderer and his victim. Any pair is potentially worthy of this snapshot. Only a very few ever truly deserve it.

Guinnevon Leary and Faeram Marshall were two such lucky individuals. The first was a fox so alluring, so unquestionably graceful, so perfectly curved, that at times he appeared to be some nymph, some naiad, some sylph drawn from her thermals and updrafts and gales into the body of a young man, whose emerald eyes were always partially hidden behind a veil of thick, black eyelashes, shining as though captured from a dragon's lair and set for a pharoah on his faraway throne out of a face as smooth and playful as a fawn's. The red luster of his fur shone brilliantly in any light it could find, even when tucked away inside the black jeans and tee shirts his mother hated that he wore. A golden earring, set with amethyst, adorned his right ear, dangling from the perky feature like a sleighbell, glimmering like the rest of him. It mysteriously seemed to match his lucious hair, hanging down to his shoulder blades and tinted a deep, majestic blue like the depths of the ocean. His tail, thick and three feet long, followed him like the tail of a comet, its fiery red painting his past as surely as some god or perhaps even God had painted his future. His slight frame bounced, weaved, and floated as he walked, defying the biophysics that made most youths his post-pubescent age prone to trip over themselves and flail with lanky arms and gangly legs until someone was injured. His muscles were small and taut, leaving room for interpretation of his strength and drawing women and men to him in droves. He was the picture of high school glory, but despite constant reminders and definite awareness, he would not directly acknowledge it. Regardless of his defiant mode of appearance, a well-honed upbringing had left him honorable, well-mannered, and to the regret of dozens, chaste.

The second individual had not necessarily been cheated out of glory, as it would seem someone must have been to afford Guinnevon's luxurious physique, but nor had the dice in his genetic match-making been handled by such a high-roller. This squirrel had been born with a coarser type of fur and less note-worthy features. His ears were slightly rounded and less imposing than the sharper variety many admired. His white chest fur and chestnut overlay did not reflect the light as did Guinnevon's and to those who knew him, seemed almost to drain the light from where he stood. His shoulders were uncharacteristically broad and his other muscles well-defined for a rodent. A black tattoo from some foreign land or another adorned his left pectoral. No one really knew if he was a virgin or not, and few cared. He was taller than the average male, standing at five feet, nine inches, but he didn't stand out. His tail was nothing extraordinary and his eyes were often bloodshot, his gaze hooded like Guinnevon's, but from fatigue, as the lines ringing his eyes showed all too well. He was known to partake of alcohol, hash, and LSD liberally. A darkness radiated from his person as though under a new moon only could he truly shine.

"Wake up, Fae," the squirrel heard sometime during his third period class. "I don't know how you did it, but you passed again. Well-done." Fae rolled his eyes up from under his arms at the old panthress handing over his paper. Mrs. Buckshire was a kind woman, but had harsh edges to her that sometimes made her mood difficult to read. Her fur was silver in patches and she wore her head hair in curls over thin spectacles.

"Thanks, Mrs. Buckshire," he mumbled, looking at the sharp handwriting where it spelled out "80 / C" on his math paper. Glancing quickly around to take in the faces of those nearby, most of whom were shunting his gaze, he flipped quickly through the test, glancing at the red marks scouring it.

She walked off and flicked her tail. "Come see me after class. We need to talk."

He moaned and pulled his hood back over his head, quickly asleep again. He didn't wake up until the bell. Meanwhile, the elderly cat moved on through the room, congratulating, cajoling, and coddling until she reached Guinnevon. "Guin, I think you can do better than that."

The fox casually slid the paper from her grasp. "But Mrs. Buckshire, it's an eighty-eight. Isn't that good enough?"

She froze him with a stare he received only ever from her. She was one of the few teachers at the school not swayed by his charm. "'Good enough,' Mr. Leary, is never good enough." She paused for a moment, considering his innocent, seemingly hurt eyes. "You will also see me after class." He looked back at the paper as she let his gaze drop before quickly slipping it into his backpack. His eyes wandered over to the squirrel she had spoken to. From the back, only the gray hoody and lazily curling tail were visible. Guin's eyes narrowed in interest.

He made a point not to condemn others based on first impressions, given his unflagging beauty, but this seemed like a special case. He heard how the others talked about that one. He was dirty, crass, and ill-mannered. How he had stayed in school was a mystery. They had always been in the same level classes, but never spoken, never even met one another, each hardly aware of the other's presence. Thinking back, though, Guinnevon realized exactly how many classes they had shared. Fae had been a presence in his life from seventh grade until this, his junior year of high school, and he had not even noticed.

The papers all returned, Buckshire took her place before the white board for lecturing, teaching advanced pre-calculus, meaning an unceasing, ever-growing base of trigonometric identities. She herself did not understand how Faeram had gotten into her class for the first few weeks. As winter exams approached, though, she had taken the time to examine all of his past grades, which was easy because she was one of the few teachers who trusted her students little enough when they claimed she had made a grading mistake that she kept a photocopy of every test on file. Given his apparent motivation, he should have been in basic geometry or some other lower-level class. However, he sat there, hovering on the edge of failing as though predetermined to never fall behind or push ahead.

Guin was the less interesting case, obviously. He was a pretty-boy who didn't have a place in the world yet. He knew he was gorgeous, he knew he would have no trouble finding a mate when the time came, and if his clothes were any indication, his parents could send him to his college of choice, assuming he was accepted. So, he didn't try. He let his natural intelligence, limited though it was, guide his path through school and always had. It wasn't the first time the lady had seen someone like this, and she was certain it would not be the last.

She wondered if the two she had pointed out could help one another. Niether appeared to have any motivation to excel, although she was certain that at least Guin could, if he so chose. She wasn't so sure about Faeram, and that was part of this experiment. She had intentionally failed to contact his parents, although she knew other teachers had, because she knew it would do no good. A child like that would not change because his parents, whoever they were, asked him to. He needed a reason. Whether or not Guin would provide that reason was uncertain. She had dealt with children with drug problems before, and nothing really seemed to work particularly well with them. Pairing them with successful individuals made them more down-trodden, putting them in groups of their own kind provided an exponential decrease in productivity, and their general response to those less than they in state or situation was the typical "at least I'm not that bad" line of thinking. So maybe choosing this pairing would have some magical effect or another, even though it wasn't so much a pairing as an association. Anyway, she was no psychoanalyst and didn't know anyone who was so, hey, why not try to do something unusual?

After class, Guin packed intentionally slowly so he wouldn't be seen waiting to address her. After everyone else had left, he slowly made his way to her desk, passing Faeram with an almost caustic glance. "Faeram!" barked Mrs. Buckshire. He awoke blearily, looked around, and stood up with his backpack slung over one shoulder.

Niether student could see, but behind the mask of calm she displayed for them, her hands were sweating and her mouth had gone dry. It had taken a long time to verify or believe what she was seeing in Faeram's work and past class schedules, which she had managed to drag out of the principal only barely. She pulled out the stack of photocopies she had made, shuffled them and rapped them on the desk, then took off her spectacles and turned a practiced, weary gaze to the two of them.

"You both understand why I'm keeping you?"

Fae didn't respond, but Guin nodded quickly, brushing back his hair. "I know, I could do better. But ma'am, I'll be late to class..."

"I'll write you both late passes. I don't have a fourth period, so I can keep you as long as I like. Guin, I'll start with you." She fixed him with the same gaze from before. "I know you're doing decently well in my class, Guin. You pass easily and you seem to understand the material, and I'm proud of that and many students would be envious of that ability." He smiled politely and she returned the expression with the same reasoning behind it. "I know, though, that you don't try." His face fell pitifully, but she would have none of it. "I'm an old woman, and I can see when a student is not reaching his full potential, and you are just not doing it. B's are enough to get you by, but when you could be acing every test I hand you, it simply doesn't cut it for me. There's not much I can threaten you with, but I've always been known for my creativity, and believe me when I tell you that I can find a way to punish you for doing 'good enough.' I want you to pick up the pace, so you can have a job and a life to go with your hair." He flushed at that last cut, and she kept him still with her wry gaze before dropping it.

"Can I go, then, ma'am?" he asked humbly, his tail twitching uncertainly. She couldn't really punish him, could she? He had a clean slate with his parents, and his older sister had never been brilliant, so they didn't push him to excel, either. There was nothing she could do to him... but he didn't dare question her authority to her face.

"No. I made Fae stand there while I talked to you, so you will have to hear what I have to say to him. Now, Fae," she began, turning to him. He didn't respond at first, his eyes hidden under his hood. Even the crowfeet around her eyes hardened as she said it again. "Faeram," she commanded.

He jerked his head up quickly and took off the hoody, revealing tired, blood-shot eyes. By all rights, he looked like he should have had a smoking cigarette in one hand, but he had always avoided the "death-sticks." He looked back at her in earnest. "Sorry, ma'am. I guess I... zoned out there."

She harrumphed at him suspiciously while glancing back at her notes on him. "Well, you did just get up, so I guess I can't blame you."

"Sorry, ma'am," he apologized again. She raised a questioning eyebrow while she was checking the papers. He was polite. She had never noticed that.

"It took me a long time to figure you out, Fae," she murmured, pulling out a particular essay from an earlier English class, "but maybe I can make my explanation shorter by showing you this. Do you recognize this essay?"

He glanced at it briefly and a spark of recognition ignited alongside... something else. "Yes, ma'am." The writing was barely intelligible, but the grade on the paper was a solid "C-plus."

"Read me the first sentence."

He read it, word for word. "'In his book The Scarlet Letter, author Nathaniel Hawthorne makes an... exem... exempulry allegory between some characters using a... a plechura of symbols and their meanings.'" He finished, and the something that had sparked with the recognition had been kindled.

"You know how to pronounce those words, Fae, and you spelled them right, there," she said gently, watching him. He didn't meet her gaze. "Exemplary. Plethora. Later on, you use the word 'catechism' in its appropriate context, and yet you consistently misused and misspelled words like 'their' and 'blurry.' I know Mrs. Angelthorpe, and she is far too far gone to have caught something like this." That was his ninth grade English teacher. "She saw your apparent failure to appraise the symbols you talked about and the fact that you only wrote a single page of what could have been three pages of material and handed you that C-plus. I see that you're hiding something."

A cold flame of fear was burning slowly in his black eyes. Guin was looking curiously at the paper in the squirrel's hand. Fae scratched his head nervously. "I don't see what you mean."

"Let me try to clarify it." She folded her hands with her elbows on her desk and affixed him to his spot with her piercing eyes. "I majored in statistics in college and received a physical doctorate in algorithms. The reason I'm here now is that I once made a mistake for the CIA." Both students were rooted where they stood, jaws slightly agape as they gawked at her. She ignored the attention and cut off Guin's attempted sycophancy. "Once they're done with you, you get pension checks and are told to carry on as though nothing had ever happened. I noticed a pattern in your papers, Fae, and I don't like, or I don't know, what I see. You've been lying, Fae."

The length of her explanation had given him time to quench that fire. "Why would I lie so I could do worse?" he asked with a smirk.

"I'm not sure, Fae, and that's what I'd like to know. Your mistakes are not the common mistakes other kids make. They look stupid, but they're not. The vast majority, if not all, comparing the questions you got right, however well-disguised, to the missed ones, seem to indicate that you would have had the right answer if you had wanted to."

His confidence was back with him, and he refused to back down. "Not to offend you, ma'am, but that doesn't make sense to me. I do well enough to get by, and that's all I need, really. I mean, come on. I'm not exactly gonna be President or the CEO of anything."

"Not if you don't get some motivation behind you, you aren't," she chastized. "You could do a lot better if you would quit pretending to be less than you are. I believe in you, Mr. Marshall, even if you don't want me to." She knew there had to be some motivation already there, for him to continue to learn anything at all. If only she could inflame it somehow, she was convinced he could light up the world with what he knew.

Buckshire finally stopped looking at him and pulled out a sticky note pad to write them late passes. "Where are the two of you headed?" she asked perfunctorily, glancing at the clock for a time.

"I'm going to Mr. Muller's room," Guin answered quickly.

"Same here," Fae mumbled. They looked at one another, and that was the moment they met. The glance came and went and was gone, but to those attuned to the workings of the universe, a pulse swept through time and froze that image, those green, delicate irises looking directly into the inky depths of Fae's red-rimmed eyes, the two of them angled symmetrically across the front of the panthress's desk while she bent over it, blind to what had happened, and Fae's glint of recognition were caught forever, stored in a place few will ever find and from which none return, once enraptured by the power held there.

Walking out of her classroom and down the empty hallways, Guin felt uncomfortable for one of very few times in his life. This squirrel just seemed to... ooze nothingness. His shadow was blacker than other people's, his visage darker and more enigmatic, his entire being seeming wrapped in occult secrecy. In short, he was creepy. He kept his eyes to the ground and made no move to acknowledge Guin's presence. He smelled a little, like cheap wine and smoke, and it offended Guin's nose. His shoulders were hunched and his coat was wrapped tightly around him as though he were always cold. He was scary, and it made Guin feel awkward.

"So... is there really something you're hiding?" he tossed into the silence. "Mrs. Buckshire sounded pretty convinced."

There was no response for a few seconds. As soon as Guin opened his mouth to repeat the question, though, he got an answer. "People can be pretty convinced of a lotta things, Starfox." His voice was low and pugnacious, as if he just wanted to create tension.

Guin grinned nervously, confused. "Starfox?"

"Your name. Makes me think of Starfox."

"My name's Guinnevon. What does that have to do with anything?"

He shrugged nonchalantly, smugly. "It's your name." They had reached the door to the next classroom. Fae gave a strangely playful glance over his shoulder as he trudged in, his note somehow wrinkled and smudged after the short walk when he handed it over. "You tell me."

Guin just looked at him, unsure of the glance and unsure of his words. They felt... prophetic. But how could a nickname as useless as that be in any way prophetic? He shook his head and took his seat, no smile on his usually cheerful or bemused face. Whoever Fae was, he decided, Guin was having nothing to do with him.

Later that night, Guin was still thinking of the squirrel. Starfox. Why? It was a stupid nickname. Guin hadn't ever even gotten into that series. He liked the newer stuff: "Halo" and "Gears of War" and all that. What even gave Fae the right to give him a name different from the one he already went by, anyway? He liked Guin. It was quick, simple, and easy to remember. Starfox, as the vulpine boy had learned from a friend, was complicated.

Fae was strange. Guin could not get over that simple observation. He also found himself, in every class after Buckshire's, watching the squirrel and trying to see if that aura, dark without being sinister, was really there. It was something about him that, juxtaposed with his playful quip and his politeness, clashed and by its very nature was magnetically repulsive, like roadkill and brain surgery.

He thought back to a conversation he had had later that day with a human he knew by the name of Kindelford Gates, who very reasonably went by his middle name, Jeck. This particular human was interesting in his own right. He had grown up a middle child in a middle class family and had been largely ignored for much of his life because of it. As an early victim of the Western European reverse-racism movement, he received little attention from the government and as a white male stuck between an adopted younger daughter lynx and a prodigal older son, he received little attention from his parents besides obligatory we're-sorry-you're-not-as-special-as-our-other-children disguised as something genuine. He was average-looking, with mild acne on a lightly-tanned face, smoothly-curving features, soft, brown eyes and impossibly straight, mahogany hair. His body shape was just on the masculine side of effeminate, with supple lines from under his arms to his gently-rounded hips and muscular legs. His shoulders were somewhat weak, but they were offset by a strong chin and stronger gaze, well-tempered over the years to transform what may be at first perceived as a dismissably placid face into an unbreakable chain of command. He was somewhere between Guin's height and Fae's, meaning that the fact he was captain of the marching band and a leader in most any group he joined or was put into attested to his powerful voice and attention-drawing gaze.

"Hey, Guin," Jeck had called in his friendly baritone at lunch. The fox looked up and waved, at first about to let it go at that. However, thinking back on how much Jeck generally knew about people and, indeed, the world in general, he decided to invite the other boy to sit with him. As usual, he was in tight quarters what with the tremendous number and variety of girls who invited themselves over, but instead of playing their heartstrings today, he ignored them almost entirely, save for a few dashing smiles and a wink or two. And an ass-grab for Lolita, his current favorite.

Sarabi, Jeck's lioness girlfriend (despite the social taboo on inter-species couples), followed with her dazzling smile matching her glittering earrings. Some people said that Jeck had just gone for her for the Lion King reference, and while that was secretly part of it, she was also academically brilliant and, when she decided to get out from behind her glasses and let her platinum hair out of its cooped-up bun, was absolutely stunning. She rarely did, though, and her African accent was hard for some to get by, as was her introspective nature. How Jeck had penetrated her shell was anyone's guess. Guin parted the masses that rushed to destroy any chance she had of getting a seat and magically, one appeared for her. The crowd visibly thinned.

Jeck grinned triumphantly as he came over. "Ah, I thought I could get you to do that if I pitched it right. Sara, are you sure you don't want to sit with your friends? We're probably gonna talk about icky guy stuff."

She leaned over to him and whispered in his ear, "I may be shy, but I love watching the faces of these girls when they see that I get to hang out with him and they don't. I can deal with 'icky guy stuff' for a day." He chuckled airily, and she giggled.

"Jeck, manipulating people. Why must you always use me like this?" Guin asked with a smile over his soda. They had been friends for a few years, ever since Jeck had ceaselessly shoved Guin through a basic level required science class they had suffered through.

The boy just smiled. "So why were you and Faeram late for class together?" Sara began daintily eating her pizza, a food most people are completely unable to eat without some degree of messiness. After staring in wonder at her for a few moments, Guin answered.

"Mrs. Buckshire decided we weren't doing well enough in her class, even though we're both passing." Their voices were lost in the tremendous, sadly-ornamented cafeteria, so secrecy was a surety, if it was ever an issue.

"Skimping on effort again?" Jeck joked.

Guin rolled his eyes. "I just don't see why it's so important. It's not that I haven't thought about it, or that I don't know how capable I am or anything." His tenor, usually up-beat or seductive tone was somewhat downcast. "I just don't feel the urge to do better than I have to." Sara shot him a look that he missed. She was the current number two in their class.

"Eh. Can't say I agree with your thinking, but Mrs. Buckshire doesn't really have a right to pull just the two of you out. I mean, Fae's my friend and all, but the kid is a pothead, no matter how smart he is. And there are plenty of other students who aren't making As, so what's her problem?"

Guin paused, his eyes hard. "Wait, say that again."

"I mean, she must have just been choosing random people to lecture..."

"No, no. The part about Fae being smart. I never met him before today, really, but he's never seemed like anything special."

Jeck averted his eyes in hesitant concession, not really wanting to condemn anyone he considered a friend as "stupid." "I suppose he doesn't exactly stick out. But he's a smart one, somewhere down deep. You know, he once told me why LSD was such a great drug? He laid it out in, like, perfect chemical detail. I double-checked on the internet."

Guin rolled his eyes and took another gulp of soda before chowing down on his sandwich. "He's just weird. You know, when Mrs. Buckshire was telling him how unmotivated he was, she took out this old English essay he had and pointed out all these words. He was using all this 'SAT-word' crap two years ago, but spelled easy stuff wrong to make himself sound stupid. I'll bet he's under-cover for something."

Jeck stuck him with a grinning stare. "Guin. He's a pothead. You can fake a lot, but you can't fake what he does. That kid is a stoner." Sara was still quiet, now sipping from a soda can as though it were a tea cup. Jeck was awkwardly trying to mimic her grace with food while at the same time staying a man. Luckily, only Sara could tell that that was the reason he kept straightening his shoulders and then leaning his elbows back on the table.

"He called me 'Starfox.' What do you think he means by that?"

"Pot. Head. It doesn't mean anything. He probably saw your hair or your tail or something and it reminded him of a comet." Jeck leaned in for a bite of food, but then stopped. "Well, wait a minute."

Guin did wait. He was used to this behavior from the human, who enjoyed word games more than most. Jeck would initially totally dismiss an idea, but then had a habit of running it through his massively capable brain a few times and seeing how it could work.

"Your whole name's Guinnevon, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if you take the 'guin' off, you get 'evon.' I knew a girl once named Avon, and people called her Nova for fun."

Sara looked up. "She choreographed for the colorguard. Oh, she was a genius. Wasn't her sister's name Galaxy, or something?"

"Yeah, that one. Well, if you flip around your name and keep the pronunciation, you get 'nova,' which would have to do with space, and you're a fox. So, Starfox. Huh. That's pretty good," he mused, sitting up again.

Guin thought about it, surprised that the name actually made sense. "I guess so," he agreed. He always felt like he was in the company of giants, with these two. They were both science-minded academics who enjoyed language to its fullest extent. Jeck was a bit too playful to advance far into the top echelon of the class, but Sara was bound and determined to graduate valedictorian.

Conversation moved on to more normal things - video games, movies, homework hassles (of which Guin had none), the like. The rest of the day, Guin's eyes kept landing on Fae, over and over again. In a way, the two of them were similar: capable, but entirely unmotivated. At some point that day, Jeck had suggested that the old panthress, who had taught him a year ago, might have been doing some... what had he called it? "Socio-therapeutic matchmaking," trying to make the two excel by playing them off one another's unique situations. Guin wondered if he might be right, and then wondered if Buckshire might be right. Maybe, somehow, if the two of them got to know one another or at the very least studied together, it would spark something. As things stood, he was happy to let them keep standing. Somewhere in the back of his mind, though, the combined threats of ending up like Fae, Buckshire's brutally honest words, and Jeck's omnipresent, progressive mentality were beginning to add up. Maybe he was lagging behind unnecessarily. He kept thinking about it until he reached his bed that night. It was strange, to for once in his life, be this unsure about his future.