Pilot Chapter

“Another day, another mission, another success”

Are your very pleased words after another successfully completed mission out there in the cosmos. You’ve been on a roll lately, getting well-paying jobs from all manner of contractors, from officials and military to the lowest of the low, and you feel like a little reward is in order. You’ve got the money, and you definitely got the time to spare, so why not indulge in one of mankind’s greatest inventions?

So here you are, on this end of the world, a shitty, dirty, old bar built on a space station in the middle of nowhere, far away from the Lylat system and very out of Corneria’s jurisdiction, allowing for all kinds of weirdos and scum to just sit back and chillax without Cornerian military on their ass all day.

You called it shitty, dirty and old, but it’s not so bad, because there’s no pressure from any officials, the place is surprisingly lighthearted despite the regulars being the likes of bounty hunters and mercenaries much like you. And the booze is pleasantly excellent quality, so you got nothing to complain about, other than the fights that some time break out, forcing you to stand up and move to a corner with the rest of the patrons while the two or more fellows beat themselves like they owed each other money, which sometimes they do.

But hey, they also come with the added bonus of being great free entertainment, few things beat the sheer stupid fun of drinking with a bunch of strangers while live drunkenly commentating about two or more idiots punching each other’s lights out and betting on who will win.

Of course, it’s not funny when you lose the bet and your money.

And funny of you, wanting to stay away from Corneria’s officials, you did graduate from Corneria’s Flight Academy as an ace pilot. Why CFA? Well, other than because that’s the place where the best fighter pilots in history came from, it also has the best education in flying of all the currently charted territory in the universe. One would think that you, being a student from CFA would affiliate yourself with Corneria, similar to the likes of Star Fox, right? But nope your only affiliation with them is the logo on your certification and license.

If there is one military or government you’ll ever affiliate yourself with in a long lasting contract, it’ll be Earth’s, because, you know, it’s your home planet and you have a soft spot for that hellhole no matter how shitty is.
After graduating, you went back to Earth and modified your Arwing III into something that suited your tastes better. Made it look like a fighter ship from an old ass sci-fi movie from way back when your planet was even shittier. 

“Heh”

You laugh to yourself, you pity the dead from hundreds of years ago, who never had the chance to experience the wonders of technology and space travel, all they could hope for was getting cock teased with movies and other media entertainment to quench their thirst for space travel and exploration, while you just take what you have for granted because in today’s age this shit is as normal as walking.
Next, you became a freelancer mercenary. Got a job? You’ll do it, doesn’t matter who, the only thing it matters is how much they pay, highest bidder and all that jazz. If shit ain’t worth your time, effort, and life, you’ll pass. You’ve done jobs for Earth, Corneria, Zoness, Sauria, Papetoon, Venom and etc. You’ve had contractors ranging from Corneria’s very own government, to CEO’s of small and big corporations, to PMC’s in need of an extra pair of laser canons, to criminal groups.

Your areas of expertise are dog fights, scouting missions, and escort missions, but sometimes you’ll do simpler shit like deliveries or guard duty on ground level.

*BLAM*

The thundering sound of the bar’s doors blasting open interrupts your inner half assed recapitulation of your life. Every head, including yours, turn to the entrance, were a dark silhouette stands by the door frame. However, unlike its bombastic door opening skills, the entry is as anti-climatic as it can get as the person just walks into the bar with no further hype.
You do, however, get to see who got everyone’s attention once it walks into the bar. A wolf, a Cornerian wolf to the exact.
With a grey fur coat and a white muzzle, the wolf strides into the bar with heavy stomps, wearing a long brown coat over the shoulders, and simple button up white shirt, alongside beige trousers, a pair of black aviator sunglasses, courtesy of yours truly’s planet, because Earth makes the coolest sunglasses, and to top it all off, flip flops.

Yes, flip flops.

But what really catch your attention are two things. 1: It’s a she, that waistline can’t lie, and neither can these boobs. And 2: she looks FUCKED UP.

You eye her up and take in the state of her appearance. The sleeve of her right arm is pulled up, revealing a Hydro Cast, a sleek silver metal cylinder of a cast with blue neon lines along its length. The cast fills itself with a special liquid containing vitamins and medicine to accelerate bone regeneration and are absorbed through your skin.
Pretty damn handy piece of tech, it’s especially useful for the likes of you, whose line of work guarantee getting some broken bones and many other injuries from time to time. And because it’s so practical and light, a sling is hardly, if ever, necessary, confirmed by the lack of one to hold her arm.

Continuing the visual appraisal, the wolfess has bandages visible on every part of her body that isn’t covered in clothing, which is impressive because she is very much covered from neck to bottom in clothing, but her remaining hand has bandages on it, so does her paws in those dumb looking flip flops. From her neck and down into her shirt also have bandages wrapped, and the top off her head is wrapped in the same white cloth, almost looking like a turban if it weren’t for the pointy wolf ears coming out of little holes.
On her face, there’s an angry red cut on her upper lip on the right side of her muzzle, giving it quite the contrast against the white fur of her snout.

You don’t know why, but she looks kinda familiar.

The wolfess continues to stomp her way through the bar. And rather than weave her way through the tables and patrons, the patrons themselves pull themselves, their chairs, AND their tables out of the way to let her pass.
Looks like you got a regular badass here if all these suicidal chuckle fucks would rather give way than be in the way.
Unaffected by any of that, she keeps going until the bar’s counter is on sitting range, where she settles down on the stools. The wolfess sits there in silence for a good minute, everyone staring at her back with apprehensive looks, as if expecting shit to go down at any minute, with the exception of you, who doesn’t know anything about here, and the old, grizzled German Shepherd of a bartender, who looks as unresponsive and emotionless as ever as he wipes the shot glasses clean with a white rug.

“Give me your strongest shit”

She orders quickly, no chit chat or beating around the bush.

She’s got a gruff, battle hardened voice, very natural, doesn’t sound like those of women who want to sound tough and destroy their throats forcing their voices to be as rough as possible. You guess it goes well with the battle damaged looks she has going for her.
The old dog nods and sets down the shot glass for her, before preparing a mad concoction of multiple of his strongest drinks in a cocktail shaker that would most definitely kill any weaker man just from one sip. While he prepares his death potion, the wolfess crosses her arms over the counter and slams her face on her elbow pits, wallowing in her frustrations.

Now you’re starting to feel sorry.

Finishing with the death potion, the old dog was about to pour it for her when she swipes her free hand and snatches the whole canister from his fingers. She shoves the tip on her muzzle and tilts its, and in an impressive display of experience, downs the whole poisonous concoction in one go, no shudder, no shake, no flinch.

“Another”

In a perfectly clear cut tone, no tipsiness or slurry talk whatsoever, she slams the end of the canister down and pushes it across the wooden counter toward the as emotionless as ever bartender, who just shrugs off and proceeds to pick it up, re-adding all the drinks previously mixed together to make another round of the alcoholic suicide recipe.

Again, you see her shove her face between her arms, burying her snout the inner side of her elbows, this time with the added witnessing of a big breath expanding her torso from behind, and then shrinking back as she sighs out loud.

When the drink is ready for the second time, she allows the bartender to pour it for her, but tells him to leave the canister; that she’ll fill the glass herself. So, he leaves the wolfess to her own devices and goes do whatever he was doing before she showed up.

The wolf in turn continued to wallow in her seeming self-pity, taking shot after shot, one after the other, all in one gulp, and looking very miserable while doing so. You can’t see her eyes from beneath those sunglasses, but if you have to take a guess you’d say they look tired. You’ve been to this bar many times in the past and have seen many people acting just like her, usually mercenaries who failed spectacularly at a mission and ruined everything for them, and she looks just like them, but maybe not with the same life shattering circumstances.

And because of that you can’t help but continue to watch the wolfess drinking her sorrows away, your own drink forgotten on the table, the least of your worries. You don’t know why, but the sight just makes you sad, and it’s not like you’re some knight in shining armor who can’t handle the sight of a damsel in distress, you had seen your fair share of chicks being miserable and not a one of your fucks was given to them, but this wolf, she’s different.

So much so that you surprise yourself when you stand up from your chair, leaving your moderately expensive drink behind, and stride towards the downtrodden girl sitting in the counter. Some of the patrons turn their heads and look at you like you’re stupid or have a death wish but you ignore their asses because they’re not important enough for you to care about what might be swirling through their heads.

As you approach the possibly volatile wolf, you notice how short she is, although that’s to be expected from Cornerians. They have a botched up metric system and somehow seem to think that they’re the same size as humans with their average of around 6 feet height. But the truth is that they’re all the size of teenagers and barely come close you’re your pecs with your real 6 feet height.

Closing in, like the master Casanova you believe yourself to be, you lean on the counter right to her left with all smooth moves of a Michael Jackson wannabe. However, the moment your hand touched the smooth wooden counter, a claw shot up from beneath her downed head and straight into your jacket’s collar.

You look down at the furry, partially bandaged hand holding your collar of your open jacket, and gulp as you watch it’s clawed fingers angrily clench harder around the leather fabric, the rubbery sound of leather being pulled echoing throughout the now completely silent bar. The hand pulls your collar up near your face only for it to blur down towards the counter, taking your face along the momentum.

You see everything going brown for a fraction of a second before-

THUD*

You head is slammed on the counter so hard the entire cacophony of cringes and groans from all the patrons who felt the pain themselves. Yes, that’s how hard your head hit the table.

“Ow… that’s gonna leave a mark” – You mutter yourself between pained grunts, that’s definitely gonna leave a dump, if not, at least a cut on your forehead.

“Ya know, just because I’m sinking my face in whatever the fuck I’m drinking, doesn’t mean I’m free for picking”
She says in a very clear cut, sober tone, still holding you down against the table through your collar, yet without even have the decency of taking her head off the crook of her casted arm to look at whoever she’s talking to, which is your wood merged face at the moment.

“I had a really shitty day, and really I’m not in the mood to deal with any horny dudes looking for easy game”

Her claws grasps your jacket’s collar even tighter, pushing you and your quickly forming forehead bruise onto the hard and surprisingly smooth wood. Hissing in pain, you open one of your eyes, mainly the one not glued to the counter, and notices she’s not even looking at you, not even one of her eyes to face you behind those sunglasses, she just keeps muzzle buried on her cast’s crook.
You mean; she could at least turn her head when addressing you.

“You sound surprisingly sober for someone who’s been downing shot after shot for, like, five minutes straight”

Is the first thing to come out of your mouth, smooth moves, you devilish human you. Could’ve said anything else to the clearly angry wolf who’s about to claw and/or bite your face off, like a ‘sorry, it wasn’t my intention’ or ‘I’m not that kind of person’, but no, you had to be a smart ass about it, well, at least you stayed in character you guess.

“Tch, heha” – She laughs a little bit. The grip around your jacket’s collar goes loose and you watch her retracting her arm from your person and crossing it back with her other arm.

Oh shit, it worked? Your sass actually worked? That’s a first, looks like your charming personality and unmatched sense of humor got her in enough high spirits to not go through with whatever she might have had planned for your precious head.

“High alcohol tolerance” - She huffs in annoyance, raising her face just enough to down yet another shot of pure undiluted lava in one go like a total pro “It’s a pain in the ass, I wanna get drunk and I can’t without wasting all my god damn money”

“Really high, you mean, that shit’s not healthy” - You say, lifting your head from the counter and rubbing the sore spot with a hiss. Feeling something wet, you bring your hand down and look at the blood covering you2r fingers, ah shit “Ay, this counter is clean, right?”- You call the bartender out.

The bartender turned from the random dog filler, whose breed is not worth remembering, he was serving to at you like you’re completely retarded or have some mental disorder before going back to filling another soul with liquor, so you’ll take that as a yes.

“Huh, If I wanted healthy I wouldn’t have picked a bar in the middle of bumfuck nowhere” - She huffs, as she pours another shot for herself and gulps it down, in the short distance you see the bartender looking at her with an annoyed glare “What about you?” –  The wolfess pours another glass for herself “What brings you here to this anus of the universe spot?” her drink sloshed as she nurses it with amazingly skilled movements, not letting a single drop fall or drip down the sides of the glass.

“Me?” – You ask, sitting up and going back to the position you were forcefully pulled from, this time leaning your elbow on the counter like the casanova you thought you were “I was here to reward myself for a mission well done” – You close your eyes and smugly place a hand over your chest in self.

A crack and a splash later, you open your eyes to see the wolfess with her sharp teeth slightly barred, her hand clenching hard on what was left of a shot glass before it shattered and punched through her bandages and the skin of her palm, spilling blood and alcohol on the table.

“You’re gonna pay for th-

“Yeah whatever, I’ll pay, give me another glass” – She rudely interrupts the bartender, who huffs in disdain, but obliges anyway.

The wolf, in turn, brings her hand up to her mouth and bites down on the glass shards stuck on her palm and roughly pulls it off with a sickening, yet silent squelch, spilling some more of her crimson bodily fluids on the counter, then spits it out. That must’ve hurt, and yet she didn’t even flinch. You wonder if she’s just that much of a badass to tough it out or the booze is getting into her system enough to give her some good old alcohol induced pain tolerance.

She continues to bite the rest of the shards stuck on her palm without a care in the world, each making a sound that’d make any weaker man queasy, all the while you watch fascinated at how uncaring she is about just having cut open her hand. She doesn’t even register the bartender coming with a new glass until he put it down right in front of her, where she stopped to look for a moment, before returning to her task at hand. 

“You’re one tough bitch, ain’t ya?” – You speak out before you could even think your words through.

“The toughest one you’ll ever find” - She spits the last glass shard from her palm before clenching it slowly “So” - She rips the bandages with her teeth and licks her palms clean of the blood “You were saying?”

“Yeah, right” – You take a seat on the stool by her side and raise your hands chest high to explain yourself “So, I was here to reward myself with some good booze, when I saw you entering the bar all grumpy and miserable and though, maybe I should go cheer her up”

“Uhum” – The wolf audibly responds, sounding unimpressed, and not at all convinced in your story. “Yeah, well, if you wanna cheer me up, you can start by paying for my drinks” – She sips her drink, before finally turning towards you.
When she does however, two bushy white eyebrows shoot up past her sunglass’ frame. Said eyebrows then furrows as she leans left and right, and eying you up and down before the right thick eyebrow raises above the frame again.

“What the fuck are you?” – She asks bluntly, drink currently forgotten as she continues to take in your appearance from behind those black shades of hers. 

“I’m a human; we’re kinda new around here in the Lylat System”

“Oh yeah, humans” – She turns back to her half finished shot and nurses it a bit “Kinda forgot you existed” – And takes a sip, finishing the glass.

She forgot? Wow, you mean, yeah, humans aren’t exactly common in the Lylat system or on this corner of the universe, but they’re common enough that a Cornerian wouldn’t just fucking forget. And you thought you had no fucks available to give, this girl is on a whole new level of no fucks given.

“We’re not very common around these parts, only recently did our planet got accepted into the Ly-

“Yeah, I don’t give a shit about that” – Taking the cocktail canister in her hand, she pours herself another glass, filling it to the brim once again, and showing her impressive drinking skills, clearly built through years and years of getting shit faced, by not letting a single drop fall despite manhandling the poor cup.

“Okay…” – You respond, a little bit disappointed that she doesn’t care enough about your race, but eh, what can you do about it? “Well, one cheer you up coming up” – You fish your wallet from one of your jacket’s inner pockets and pull from it a Credits Card, not to confuse with Earth’s Credit Cards, valued in 1.000 credits and slide it by her drink. 

“Oho” – She laughs, gulping down the shot in one go and picking the money between her fingers “Now we’re talking” – The wolf smirks while inspecting the card, showing off her pearly white, super pointy fangs and serrated line of teeth “This is cheering me up alright” – She flicks the card up, and catches it as it falls down. 

“Hey, barman!” – The wolf calls out for the bartender, who turns sharply to look at hear, from the small movements of his face you can already see that he’s getting up there with her antics “Make another round for me, will ya?” – Waving the credits card to catch his attention “Actually, make three, and leave them on the counter for me” – Then she throws the card like a ninja star, and surprisingly, the German Shepherd catches it with a precise swipe of his arm.

German Shepherd, wolf… huh, you never noticed until now that despite being from planets millions of kilometers away from Earth, they share the exact same names as the feral animal species from your planet, how conveniently curious.

“So, what got you down in the dumps?” – You ask, leaning back against the counter and watching the bartender pick up all the drinks he needed to create hell booze as well as three cocktail shakers like the wolf lady asked.

“Star Fox” - She snarls, taking another shot in one gulp. Welp, there goes that cheering up.

“Star Fox?” – You ask “What about them?”

“Everything” – the wolfess pours the rest of the canister’s drink into the glass, and waits for the bartender to finish his alchemy.

“Everything as iiiiinnnn” – you stretch the last word, hoping she’ll fill in the rest with info that you don’t need, but want nevertheless.

“As in my last mission when to shit, again, thanks to their meddling” – she slams the half-filled glass shot on the counter in anger “Meaning I got no pay again, my space crafts are wrecked, again, and my team’s reputation is dropping harder than a meteor, AGAIN!” – and BLAM, she slams her forehead on the counter.

Oof, that’s a hard pill to swallow. You know who Star Fox is, probably the best mercenary squad in, like, ever. If you’re doing a mission for someone and bumping into them on the opposite side by a competitor, usually Corneria, employer, shit’s a guaranteed fail.

Unless you’re Star Wolf, the only team that can match them toe to toe, and the baddest motherfuckers around. No one messes with Star Wolf, they’re a big part in your decision to become a fighter pilot and mercenary, their leader specially, Wolf O’Donnel, was your main inspiration. She’s just the coolest, rocking that purple and grey combat get up adorned with all kind of blades; she looks like a walking weapon. 

“I’m tired of being hired by low paying, underground employers” – Rather than refill her glass shot, she snatches the first ready cocktail shaker takes a big gulp of it, gasping and slamming it down on the counter, sloshing its contents around.


”I’m an ace pilot too, dammit, even better than Fox, but his ass and his team are always there to fuck with my missions” – she growls in frustration, hand clenching around the steel canister, bending it under the pressure of her grip “So my team’s record gets shittier, and no employer worth their salt will waste their money on a squad that doesn’t get results” - She takes another big gulp directly from the canister.

“If you’re even better then Fox and his team, then how come your streak against him so negative?” – You ask, genuinely curious about this wolf’s claim, you kinda doubt that this nobody is just as good as Fox fucking McCloud.

“Most times Star Fox is hired to intercept my ass while I and my team are busy carrying out a mission for some criminal fuck, so of course they’ll ambush us before we can have a chance to counter” – this time she takes a small sip, but a very angry small sip.

“To add salt to injury, the Cornerian Army just gifted them brand spanking Arwing IIIs, the newest model on the market, while we have to make do with our outdated Wofen IIs” – for a moment, she decides to completely forget her drinks, and spins on her seat to face you, fully dedicated to her rant.

“And since Fox fucked with Macbeth Weapon’s Factory, the only supplier of Wolfen fighter ships in the fucking universe, there’s no new models ever, and no one manufactures Wolfen parts either” – She slams her casted arm on the counter in anger, denting not the cast, but the counter, getting a glare from the bartender a few feet behind “No other planet wants to manufacture Wolfen ships because they were designed for Andross’s forces, and no one wants anything to do with Andross even if indirectly, when if it could very well strengthen their military might or make them a ton of money, the fucking dumb pricks ”

“Well…” – You start, placing a hand on your chin “Why don’t you just grab an Arwing then?” – You ask.

“Nah, fuck that” – She breathes out after her lengthy rant, and grabbing the dented canister to fill the rest of the half-filled glass shot “I ain’t getting an Arwing on principle, that’s the enemy’s weapon” – She says, picking up the drink and nursing in her grip “And it’s not like I got the money to get four Arwing IIs, let alone third generation, shit’s expensive and I’m not butt buddies with Corneria’s military to get some for free like fox boy”

“If anything Corneria hates my guts” – You hear her muttering as the takes a gulp of her drink.

“So, all I have are outdated Wolfen IIs that have seen and fought more than their fair share of battles” – She sighs despondently “And looks just the part too, like rags full of rudimentary patches” – She finishes the shot in her hand.

“Why not grab some generic star fighters then?” 

“Huh” – She huffs, like she was insulted “That shit’s the worst, I’ll tell ya, they can’t handle a single dogfight before tearing themselves apart; I’d rather stick with my beat up Wolfen. Generics are better suited fight simulations in academies, not real dogfights” – and more of that deadly alcohol goes inside the glass “Even busted up my Wolfen is still more reliable than a generic Phoenix Industries, you either go Space Dynamics or go home, no inbetween” 

“Well shit” – You lift your arms in exasperation, this bitch is making it harder for herself out of pride. That’s stupid, you gotta give it to her to sticking to her guns like that, but that’s stupid, she’s gonna die one of these days because she doesn’t want to let go of her Wolfens.

Wolfens… Hmmm…

“Yeah, well shit is right” – She sniffs hard, and spits a gob of mucus on a space spittoon “And now after another failed mission, I’m here to drown my sorrows in alcohol and hopefully forget that today even existed”- she pours more 

“Wait a minute” – you interrupt her mid drink, and she pulls the glass from her mouth to glare at you “You said your team is just as good as Star Fox, right?” – You point at her.

“Yup”

“And your spacecraft of choice are Wolfens, correct?” – You now point to an imaginary fighter ship.

“What about it?” – She takes another swig of her drink.

“Who’s your team?” – The wolf pause mid swig and slowly removes her glass from her lips, before looking at you incredulously, at least that’s what you assume from the skin wrinkling on her muzzle.

“Are you serious?” – She leans her head a little and stares at you for a few good seconds before realizing you’re not pulling her leg, she tilts her head back sighs in disappointment and annoyance “Star Wolf!”  - She exclaims in annoyance, like you were supposed to already knoWHAT?!

“Star Wolf!? THE Star Wolf!? You’re Wolf O’Donnell!?” – You jump off your seat and stares at her in shock, pointing your arms directly at her. The entire bar stops what they were doing to stare at you, the retard screaming at Wolf O’Donnell, now you get why they looked at you that way before, holy fuck!

The she wolf, in turn, looks surprised at your reaction, before smirking to herself.

“The one and only” – She raises her sunglasses and rests them on top of her head, showing off her red right eye, and the scar over her closed off left eye.

“Hah, holy shit, no wonder you looked familiar!” – You hover your hands over your head in disbelief, the Wolf O’Donnell was right in front of you, the baddest bitch in the universe “I’m big fan, I’ve read of all your stories and achievements, you’re like, the coolest ace pilot ever” 

“Oh really? Nice to know” – She takes swig from her drink, despite the uninterested tone of her voice, you do get a tiny bit of pride in having a fan “But only now you noticed it was me? Big fan you are” - Wolf huffs sarcastically, a small smile at the corners of her mouth.

“I mean, no offense” – You raise your arms in surrender “But you kinda look like shit” – Your raised hands point towards all the bandages, the sling, her bloody hand, and her disheveled appearance.

“Eh, none taken” - She comments, before jabbing him on the ribs. You grunt, but just laugh it off along with her “A fan, huh?” – She looks at the empty glass in front of her, ready to be filled again “First time I hear that” – She places it down and reaches for the second canister in line.

First time?

“Nah, that can’t be” – You wave your hands down dramatically “No way no one ever told you that, you’re too cool not to be a fan” – You see the corners of her lips go up a little again for a fraction of a second before they go down.

“It’s true, Fox boy’s and his team the one who gets all the fans” – The wolfess rolls her one functioning eye in annoyance.

“They’re all tasteless fags then” – Wolf snorts on her drink at that statement, and holds back her chuckles “Your team was a big part in my decision into joining Corneria’s Flight Academy, and you were my main and biggest inspiration into becoming a mercenary”

“So you’re a mercenary too, huh?” – She spins on her seat to address you directly, taking a swig of her drink, before pointing a finger at you, glass still in hand “You better watch yourself then, get in my way and I’ll shoot you down” - She smirks.

“Not if I shoot you down first” – You lean forward and smirk back.

“Oho, didn’t you say you were a big fan?” – She huffs, eyebrow lifted, the smug smile never leaving her face.

“I am” - You place a hand over your chest “And it would be a massive boost to my ego to best my idol in a dog fight”

“Tch, you’re one cheeky brat, ya know that, kid?” – Wolf laughs and shakes her head, pouring another shot for herself.

“Brat? I’ll have you know I’m already 20 years old” – You proclaim proudly, pointing a finger towards the ceiling.

“That’s pretty young from where I’m looking” – She gives you a side glance, tilting her head up so that she can look down on you. It doesn’t really work because you’re taller than her, you’ll give her points for the effort though. 

“How old are you to even be saying something like that?” – You ask genuinely, leaning your head to the side. And she doesn’t respond; Wolf just looks away, mildly annoyed and sticking her lower lip out a little before taking another sip of her drink.

“Shut up” – she mutters to herself while you hold back your chuckles.

And just like that, you two continue to shoot the shit, talking about missions, achievements, comparing feats. You tell her how you graduated top of the class in the Cornerian Flight Academy and have been involved numerous high risk missions all around the Lylat system and beyond. Though that pales in comparison to the tales Wolf has shared with you.

Like you, she too graduated top of her class during her time in the CFA, however she had scored so damn high that she got recommendations to join not just Corneria’s military, but many conglomerate and multibillion corporations as their personal flier and fighter, but she rejected it all for the sake of having the freedom of working with whoever she wanted. And of course, she had fought in many big wars, including the Lylat Wars and the Aparoid Invasion, while your ass only managed some small, only nation-wide wars.

Hell, she even started talking mad shit, like, literal nonsense was coming out of her mouth, and she touted it with just as much conviction as her real stories. Shit like how she was twice invited to an interdimensional fighting tournament where she fought stuff like dragons, people that turned into dragons, little kids, robots, robots that looked like little kids, monsters, plumbers, and some bitch with guns on her heels.

Headed by two, giant disembodied hands.

“Yeah, I think you had enough” – You motion to take the drink off her hand but she quickly downs it before trying shaking her head off the dizziness that was finally claiming her mind.

“Yesh, my crew’s probably… getting themselvesh killed without my… my… without me” – She slurs, and staggeringly pushes herself off the stool, barely maintaining herself up.  

“Need help?” – You offer a hand but she slaps it away, or tries to, twice, before giving up with a lengthy, heavily telegraphed wave.

“Naaah, I’m… I’m good” – Only when she takes a step forward falls face first into the floor, it stand there not knowing what to do, she doesn’t want your help, and will probably get pissed if you push it.

“Ow” – Oh wow, that was a delayed response, nearly ten seconds, she really needs help. So you ask again

“Need any help?” – You squat by her side, resting your elbows on your knees. Wolf just turns her head to the side you’re on so her one eye can glare at your face.

“I don’t need any… help. I’m fffucking Wolf O’donned, the only… the only bitch on this side of the galaxy who can… who can…” – She slurs out against the floor, her voice fading away as she succumbs to pull of dreamland.

Great, now you have an asleep Wolf O’Donnell on your hands, from your spot you look left and right to see the same people who before were scared shitless of her, now looking at the downed wolf with a certain glint in their eyes, a glint that you’ve seen many times before from mercenaries and bounty hunters alike, and the glints of cowards too, who wait for a moment of weakness to strike.

Well shit, can’t let them take a crack at your new, famous friend, can you? Hell no, not on your watch. You flick your jacket’s flap just enough that you’re packing heat and aren’t afraid of fighting back, even the ever emotionless bartender is looking at them with a heated glare that would promise pain if any of them decide to stir shit up in his bar. 

And while they’re busy having a stare down with the German Shepherd, you pat her down in search of a communicator. Wolf has a team, so she must have some sort of communicator, phone, or anything she can use to talk to her crew from long distances, and sure enough, you find it, a round holo-communicator inside of the pockets of her trench coat.

Turning it on you search for the list of connections or contacts saved, her crew mates are probably here somewhere, but before you could even find any specific names, you find a contact named the Wolf’s Lair. You can only assume it’s the name of Wolf’s mothership, if she has one, much like Fox has the Great Fox.

Kinda of an in your face name, but you can’t say it isn’t accurate.

Calling for it, you have to wait for a few moments before the face a chameleon pops up in the holographic display in full 3D.

“Finally decided to bestow upon us the visage of your mug Wol- you’re not Wolf, what’s going on?” – From a sarcastic, condescending tone, to a dangerous one promising pain, Leon Powalsky answers the communicator, and shit, it had to be him. It could’ve been Panther or even that fat pig fuck Pigma, but no, you got the psycho.

“Your captain had one too many and is passed out on the floor” – You  turn the handheld device toward the sleeping wolf, and see a hand showing up in the hologram, going directly toward Leon’s forehead as he sighs in displeasure.

“But of course she has” – He shakes his head “If it wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience, would you kindly bring our dear captain back to our ship?” – He politely asks, but you can hear the undertones, he’s not asking, he’s ordering you.

“Yeah, sure, just tell me where it is” – Yeah, well, you were gonna do it anyway, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“The Wolf’s Lair is located at hangar number 7. You’ll know it when you see it” – You nod and prepare to turn off the communicator when Leon cuts you off

“Oh and one more thing” – His golden eyes grow cold, as they narrow into slits “Don’t try anything funny, lad, I’ll know” – And then he turns off the communicator from his side.

Ooookay

You know enough about Star Wolf to know that Leon is by far the most dangerous right next to Wolf. The difference being that, as already mentioned, he’s an actual psycho compared to Wolf’s more ‘façade to instigate fear’ psychoticness, making his threats carry a lot of weight. And no matter how much of a fan you are or how cool you think they are, except Pigma, you definitely don’t want to be on Leon’s shit list.

Shaking yourself from the fear crawling up your spine, you crouch down, and put the communicator back where you found, before picking up Wolf and slinging her over your shoulder. Unsurprisingly, she’s quite light, and fit, you’re not groping or anything, but her form is built and you can feel the hard muscles through the baggy clothes.

With yours and her drinks already paid, you move out of the bar and head towards hangar number 7 with a sleeping infamous mercenary over your shoulder. Many stare your way incredulously, stopping on their tracks just to watch the human carrying the infamous Wolf O’Donnell.

They probably think you captured her or some shit.

In a few minutes time, you reach hangar number 7, and much like Leon had told you, you would know the ship when you see it, because it’s fucking massive, colored purple and grey, and has Wolf’s Lair written on the side. It’s literally impossible to miss it even if you tried, you’d have to be blind to not see it, and even then the sheer presence of that thing would make sure even a blind person could feel it.

And by the ship, next to its cargo ramp is Leon himself, who on person looks a hell of a lot more intimidating, despite being nearly two feet shorter than you. Approaching him, you carefully unsling the sleeping woman from your shoulder and gently hands her over to the alien chameleon.

Who, with all the care in the world, he unceremoniously slings her over his own shoulder like a sack of potatos, giving his shoulder a good shrug to keep her stable, before wordlessly nodding at you, and waking back into his ship.

Well, guess this is it then.

-----

“Aww, fuck, my head” – Is the voice of none other than Wolf O’Donnel, upon waking up from her alcohol induced short coma with a killer headache, also known as feeling like death “What the hell happened?” – She groans to herself.

“You sank your face in that poison you call a drink again, and lost consciousness… again”- She hears the irritatingly posh and smug voice of one Leon Powalsky from her room’s doorway and sees the smug chameleon leaning there with an annoyed expression.

“And I guess one of you guys carried my drunk ass back to the ship?”- To her surprise, Leon shook his head, making her sit up on her good elbow.

“Not this time, no, this human lad had the decency of actually bringing you here” - Wolf blinks in confusion, what the hell is he talking about?

“Human? I don’t remember any human”

“Can’t remember anything, figures” – He laughs and shrugs.

“Fuck off, Leon” – She growls, before groaning and closing her eyes, damn headache.

“I gladly would, but unfortunately this crew is the only decent pay for a fellow such as myself” – She slams her head back onto the pillow and sighs harder, placing the back of her hand on her forehead, feeling her headache growing worse by the minute. 

“Oh, and I almost forgot, the lad who brought you back left this in your coat” – He takes out a crumpled note and throws it to Wolf, where she catches it midair.

“Groping girls when they’re conked out? Didn’t think you’d stoop that low” – She smirked smugly at him. He huffs and gives wolf a condescending smirk

“Huff, please” – She turns to the exit to see the chameleon walking away “I’m attracted to real girls, not troglodytes” – Finishing what he had to say, Leon walks out, the blast doors shutting close right as he leaves. Wolf glares at the spot Leon occupied

“Tch, asshole” – She mutters under her breath, before inspecting the crumpled note in her hand- “Who the hell uses paper nowadays, anyway?” – She wonders out loud, before unfurling it.

It’s a letter from his human guy Leon was talking about. Maybe she shouldn’t of have gotten so shit faced, she’d at least remember the guy. Or maybe it’s for the better, for all she knows he could be some creep, after all, who the hell leaves notes on an unconscious girl’s clothes? Either way, she straightens the unfurled piece of paper and reads it to herself. Foggy memories of the day before creeps back into her mind bit by bit. She remember entering the bar extremely fucking pissed and ready to melt her brain, then meeting some guy who was actually kinda fun to hang out with, especially when he agreed to pay for her drinks and even said was a big fan of hers.

When she reaches the end of the letter, it reads “If you ever find yourself needing an extra pair of hands, or just a drinking buddy, give me a call” with his contact number written right next to it.

“Give him a call, eh?” – She smirks, smashing the letter into a ball and lazily throwing it on the floor “Who knows? Yesterday was kinda fun, and free booze is always welcome” she stretches her arms and crosses them behind her head, before drifting off to sleep.




------

Chapter 2

“Heh heh heh, thank you”

You blink uncomfortably at the thanking merchant whose space craft parts you just bought from. He’s a real mystery; no one knows anything about him other than that he looks like a creepy potential child molester with his black long coat covering every inch of his body with the exception of his golden eyes. But you’d be lying if you didn’t say that his stuff wasn’t high quality.
The shitty, dark and dirty walls of his little shop were covered from top to bottom with nothing but top of the line, original, but definitely not legally or officially licensed, space ship parts of all kinds and brands. From Space Dynamics to Phoenix Industries, it’s all here, all in tip top condition, a far cry from the shop itself which is in some serious need of a cleaning from all the grime and rust covering these walls and floor.

He had so much shit you even asked if he had any Wolfen parts, and surprise surprise, there weren’t any as expected, although his response wasn’t what you expected “Nay, with MacBeth out of the game, there’s no more manufacturing of Wolfen parts, else I’d be selling them” is what he had said, so the Andross relation doesn’t bother this guy “I know for a fact that lass Wolf O’Donnel and her group still uses Wolfens, I could make good money as her dealer” – And of course he wouldn't miss a chance to make some money.

“Umm, yeah, sure” – You give him a little hand wave and make almost robotic 180 in front of his counter “No problem” – Before heading to the exit of this guy’s very his poorly kept shop, seriously, you think you saw some space maggots on the corner festering on what was left of a rotten, burger.

Releasing a breath you barely even noticed you were holding, you let your shoulders relax the moment you step out of the store and out of the alleyway leading to it, and into one of the many shopping districts of the space station. The station is divided into massive levels, 10 to be exact, the commercial levels at least; the eleventh and last one is the command center and power plant. The commercial levels are circular in shape, but densely packed from top to bottom, to the point there are buildings built on the very bottom of the next level’s floor.

The shopping districts of each level is where the most movement is at, stores, kiosks, people selling their shit on top of a little table, and people selling their shit over of a piece of cloth on the floor, here you could find everything for everyone, from space ship parts, to entire fucking space-crafts being on sale, to low quality grub, to clothes, and so on and so forth.

If you were looking for something, you’d find it here; just make sure know what’s quality and what’s not. A lot of these stores have these bright neon colored signs advertising their name and deals or sales, as well as having clean well kempt stores, but most of these were only trying to fool a fool, and you’re no fool. You know these stores sell low quality shit, and are just trying to get your attention with how good their store and their wares look, but you know where to look for, and the store you just came from? A creepy looking door at the end of a dirty alleyway filled with trash and feral rats as well as space feral rats and their disgusting little mutant hybrids.

No one except those who know their shit would ever go there, that’s why you’re one of the only few costumers. It’s expensive stuff, and your wallet screams in agony every time you come to make a little visit, but it’s worth the investment, the stuff comes directly from the licensed manufactures, all smuggled of course, by himself even, so he makes it a little cheaper than their actual market value.
Right now you’re on level 2, having just bought the parts you need to replace some parts of your HQ ship, as well as replace the old and busted ones of your fighter space craft, which is where you’re heading for, Hangar number 2, your head quarter’s ship current residence. So with your trusty shopping duffle bag on hand, you set course for some fixing.

“Hands up”

Aaand a voice suddenly calls from behind, with something touching the back of your head right after.

Cornerian Academy Self Defense training, engage!

Survival instincts from the hellish combat training courses in the academy kick in and in a second you’re spinning on your toes, and swiping your arm to hit the aggressor’s weapon and away, but instead your arm’s wrist is caught mid swing, before the powerful grip pulls your arm all the way until your body completes a 360 and your back is again facing the perpetrator. The arm then used to swipe the weapon away is taken by the wrist again, where it’s pulled down to your lower back, followed up by a kick to the back of the knees sending you kneeling down as a weight violently shoves you against the metallic floor of the shopping district. And as quick as lightning, the same hand that held your wrist let go for a fraction of a second to pull your free hand down to your lower back, before resuming to now holding both wrists at once, and pushing its weight down your back, keeping you down for good.

“Ow!” – You grunt when your face hits the floor. You struggle, trying to pry yourself from the grip and weight holding you down, but whoever has taken you is stronger than you are.

Shit! Fuck! You got careless, let your guard down, and now you’re gonna pay the pr- 

“Easy there, sport” – The owner of the voice squeezes your wrist hard, making you flinch and hiss in pain “No need to get feisty” – The pressure then alleviates as the hand around your wrist lets go.

Wait a minute… you know that rough yet feminine voice.

“Wolf?” – You ask, trying to turn your head to see behind but managing to not see shit.

“In the flesh”- She responds, finally completely letting go of you as the weight on your back shifts and then disappears.
With a grunt, you push yourself up and brush the dirt from your clothes before turning around to see none a smirking Wolf O’Donnel standing straight on her proud 4 feet tall height and looking a little less shitty than the day back when you two met in that bar, she even took off some of her bandages, most notably, the ones that covered the top of her head, allowing you to see the white tuft of fur that extends shortly past her shoulders.

Arm’s still on a sling and cast though, that shit’s fast, but not miracle working.

Her aviators are also gone, allowing you to fully take in the shape of her head and face, she’s very much like a feral wolf from your planet if they had more… cartoony is the word? Features, her eyes are bigger and rounder, and her muzzle, eyebrows and hair are all stark white, and very contrasting against her grey fur coat, as opposed to the gradually changing colors of a wolf’s pelt.

Anyway, you close the distance between the two of you and then lean left and right, trying to look at whatever she had on her person that was used to aim at your head. Blinking in confusion, she stares at you for a bit before turning her head and torso left and right, trying to look at whatever you were looking for, but failing to catch anything of note.

“What are you looking for?” – She asks, placing resting her non injured hand on her hip.

“Your gun” – You sigh and fall back.

“My gun?” – She raises her right eyebrow, looking at you incredulously.

“Yeah, your gun, didn’t you aim a gun to my head right now?” – You try to explain to the confused, only for you to her the wolf stifling a laugh.

“Oh, I get it“ – Wolf claims, shaking her head from side to side “Here’s my gun” – She raises her left hand and makes a finger gun, index and middle pointing up and the rest cocked back, before aiming it at your face “Bang” – And pretending to take a shot, with pretend recoil and all, before cocking her head to the side with a smirk.

“Well” – You take a quick page out of her book and rest your own fists on your hips “You definitely sound livelier than last time”

“Last time I was looking to get shit faced, but found you instead” – Wolf pokes her sharp clawed finger on your chest “You showed a girl a rather decent time, and lifted her spirits a bit” – She smiles before punching your arm, and damn she’s strong, that’s gonna leave a bruise.

“Only decent?” - You say, rubbing your arm where she hit you, yup, definitely gonna leave a bruise.

“Only decent” – Her arm hovers up your head and points at your face “Don’t let it up your head, kiddo” – And her hand then unfurls and travels to the side of your face, where she condescendingly taps your cheek thrice with smug look on her face.

You sigh in exasperation, again with the kiddo stuff? You scratch the back of your head in exasperation, you’re old enough dammit, twenty two, and you’ve been in this business for four years already. Yeah, she’s been working as a mercenary for god knows how long and your experience is just a fraction, but still, some respect please!

“Thanks, I’ll not let it inflate my ego,” – You roll your eyes in annoyance “What are you doing here anyway?” – Is your question, genuinely curious as to why she’d be all the way down here in level two when hangar seven is quite far from here.

“Taking a stroll,” – She answers quickly… a little too quickly.

“A… stroll?” – You repeat it out loud very slowly, letting the words and the very notion that Wolf would just go out on a stroll over doing literally anything else more engaging, like starting a fight and beating up some punks for their lunch money… wait no, that’s what one does at school.

Beating punks for their beer money, yeah, that sounds better. 

“Yeah, can’t a girl go for a walk?” – The one eyed wolfess stares at you with an inquisitive glint in her eye “I can’t do shit, my ship’s still trashed, I’m still trashed, and I don’t feel like drinking right now, so I’m just going on a walk,” – She explains while very expressively raising and lowering her good arm over every point she covers.

“On a section of the station that’s an over an hour half walk away from your hangar?” – You cross your arms and lean your head to the side, still

“Yup,” – Wolf nods, simple as that.

You don’t buy it, and make sure your face shows, and she knows that you know, that’s why right now you two are locked in a stare down, none backing down from trying to outstare one another, she doesn’t want to tell you what she’s doing, and you wanna know what it is. Cold sweat runs down your face, while you do your dammed hardest to not blink, it’s pretty hard when you’ve got two eyes while she only has to deal with one, with its crimson red iris boring down on you like pool of blood that belonged to you after she blasts your insides an-

“Tch, alright,” –She clicks her tongue, shoving her good hand inside her pocket.

Wait, just like that?

“I’m too old for kiddy games like this,” – Wolf mutters under her breath, before shaking her head “I’m looking for a mechanic to take a look on my Wolfens. There, happy?” – The eyepatch wolf motions her hand forward, waiting for your response.

“A bit, yes,” – Is said response, while you internally revel in your first, albeit dumb, and childish, of many victories against Wolf O’Donnel, before going back to the matter at hand “Are they really that bad?”

“Bad doesn’t even begin to describe it, kid,” – The wolfess points a finger up “One’s engine is so busted it can barely lift three feet from the floor,” – Two fingers “another has a whole wing missing after the last the last mission,“ – Three “other had its laser canon shredded, it can fly but is completely defenseless” – Four! “and mine’s control panel blew up on my face after it was shot through the canopy, I don’t even know how it didn’t kill me,” –She snorts angry hot air from her nostrils, clearly not heavy about both the state of her ships and having to share this info with you. “It did give me all this though” – Her hand waves at herself exasperatedly, showing off her sorry state.

The wolfess sighs, a bit dejectedly and very frustrated, and squats down on the floor like a slav, or a delinquent from one of your Japanese anime, before pulling a pack of cigs and a lighter form her coat’s pocket. With practiced movements she brings the whole pack to her mouth and takes one of the small bundles of cancer that just so happened to be sticking out from the rest of the bunch with her sharp teeth, and lights the tip, taking a quick drag, then taking it between her fingers and spewing all the smoke form her nostrils.

And jeez, that sounds pretty bad, no wonder she didn’t wanna tell you anything. Someone out of her circle knowing about her situation must be a humiliating thought for such a proud person like Wolf.

“I can take a look at them if you want,” - You offer offhandedly, making her freeze her drag before slowly looking up from her spot near the floor.

“You?” – She points her cigarette at you with an incredulous look “Look, Kid,” – She breathes the smoke out, and puts the cig on her lips ”You’re nice and all that shit,” – Wolf raises her hand and raises a finger  ”But I’m looking for a professional, someone who knows what they’re doing” - She comments… rather condescendingly with her cigarette muffled voice.

Ouch. 

“No offense, boyo,” - She says when noticed your literal physical flinch, “But I need a real mechanic, and I need one who can do a decent job for a cheap price” – The wolfess takes another drag from her cigarette. And from then on nothing, she just stays there, squatting on the floor, smoking her cig, probably thinking about what to do next, not even continuing the conversation.

Well… I guess this is it then, it’s clear she has nothing else to say, and you’re not gonna push a conversation out of her and risk getting your ass kicked around, you’ve felt her strength, and that was back when she wasn’t even really trying to hurt you.

“Yeah, well, umm…“ – You don’t know what to say next, because you’re essentially blowing her off, but she DID stop you when you were busy “Sorry to cut this meeting short, but I gotta go, I have some stuff to do” - You point your thumb over your shoulder, in the direction where the hanger your mother base shit is located. She blinks up to you then shrugs her own shoulders from her spot on the floor, fairly content on just raping her lungs.

“Alright, see ya later, I guess,” – She comments uninterestedly.

Turning around from the grey wolf, you collect up the bag containing all the shit you bought that fell from your hand after your failed and fairly humiliating attempt at defending yourself. Seriously, she’s got one less arm and still managed to single handedly, quite literally, take you down. You’ve either been getting soft with your hand to hand, or she’s just that good.

Funny, the bag feels kinda lighter, hmmm… must be your imagination.

“Yeah, see ya” – You call out, giving her a two finger salute. Aside from a quiet “Hmm?” coming from behind, you don’t know whether she got your salute or not.

Your walk back, however, only takes a few seconds before you hear Wolf calling you out.

“Hey!” – You stop and turn at the sound of her voice “This shit yours?” - She holds up her left hand, and in it is- !!!

You immediately zip back at her and extend an arm to try and grab it, but she pulls her hand away right at the last moment, nearly mounting over her as you try to reach for the object in her hands and she extends her arm away, somehow managing to prevent you from grabbing it despite her shorter stature and range. On the ground you see the object’s container, an unsealed cylindrical glass box with four metal strips, each parallel to another.

“Ah ah aaahh” - She smirks, reveling in your sudden desperation as you try and fail to get back your very expensive, sphere shaped purchase “I see this is important to you”- Putting her shoulder against your chest, she easily pushes you back.

You stagger backwards, finding your footing in an attempt to not get knocked down on the floor yet again, before setting yourself straight in time to see Wolf throwing it u-!!

“Don’t do that!” - You almost scream, and run after her, trying to get the sphere again, only for the more nimble Wolfess to sidestep under your swipe and push you away again, extending her left hand where the sphere safely lands in her hand.

“Do what?” -Her smirk grows more mischievous as she keeps throwing the sphere up and down like it’s a fucking a baseball.

“That! Throwing it, that’s unstable, enough damage to it will get us both killed” – Holy shit this fucking wolf will kill us all.

“Then I won’t let it fall” – The wolfess stated matter-of-factly, bouncing the sphere one more time, before catching it and looking at the thing, turning her hand to inspect the smoothly shaped, baseball sized sphere “What is this anyway?” - She looks at you questioningly, probably thinking it’s a valuable or some shit.

When you don’t immediately comply, she shakes her hand left and right, looking at you with a very fake fearful expression, and with a very much fake “Oopsie daisy” lets go – NOO!!! You freak out, letting go of your bag and moving to try and catch it before it fucking hits the ground and blows up killing everything in a twenty foot radius. But as you dive and slide to catch the ball, Wolf very quickly snatches it before it lands on your hand. 

You take a deep breath and slam your head against the metallic floor of the station and sigh in relief and frustration, relief because you’re not dead; frustration because Wolf is fucking with you. Looking up from your spot on the floor, the wolfess looks down on you with a smirk, before squatting down close, this time spinning the sphere on the tip of her claw like a basketball.

You glare at her, but comply anyway, in this situation there’s nothing you can do. You wonder if this is some sort of pay back for making her spill the beans and reveal why she was so far away from hangar number seven, but you don’t think she’d be so petty as to hold a grudge over something so small.

Then again Wolf isn’t exactly known for being a nice person.

“That!” – You start very loudly and very annoyed, placing your hands on the floor and pushing yourself up “Is a power core” – and you reply calmly, taking a deep breath. Take deep breaths, remember who you’re dealing with here, she can probably break all your limbs faster than you can blink.

At your response, however, the sphere’s spinning is forced to a stop once her fingers curl around its shape, and the wolfess’ eyebrows furrow. Her single functioning eye flicks between you and the power core as she slowly stands up straight to take a proper look at the metallic sphere in her hand.

“No, this isn’t” – She fixes her eye on you, confusion swimming inside those blood red pools.

“Yes it is” – You clarify, you know your shit, that’s a power core through and through.

“No” – She pushes the ball to your chest and you barely manage to catch it “A power core is shaped like this,” - She draws a rectangular shape on the air with her left hand “and it’s like a metal cylinder with glass windows on the side, and a cable at the top and bottom where you must connect with a ship’s energy system , not to mention they’re half my size” – She lowers her hand to around her waist, to give you an idea of its height. 

“It looks sorta that,” - She points toward the glass container laid forgotten on the floor “but replace the metal with glass and glass with metal. That,” – She now points at the sphere in your hand “isn’t a power core”

You look at her strangely, before – Pfft, a hand flies up to your mouth as you hold back a laugh, making your cheeks inflate with mirth.

“What are you laughing at?” – She glares at you, obviously not liking at the possibility that you might make a fool out of her.

“Heh -*cough*, before you hit me, let me tell you that you’re actually correct“ – The wolfess shoves a hand on her pocket and narrows her eyes, but motions you to continue with a flick of her head “The thing is, what you described is an outdated power core, Wolf” – And now she blinks rapidly at the new information given, leaning her head in confusion “How long have you have had your Wolfen II?” – You ask.

“Around a decade, why?”

“A decade? Jesus” – You mutter under your breath in disbelief, before coughing when you see her glare “Well, in a decade’s time a lot of things change, and technology usually jumps to become not just more advanced, but efficient, this,” – You hold the power core in front of her face “is one of these advancements, a spherical, smaller, power core. It holds more power and takes up less space; one downside is that they’re much more fragile”

“And how do you solve that issue?” – Wolf crosses her arm over her cast. The glare on her face slowly morphing into an expression of curiosity and wonder.

“When you install the power core, it emits a magnetic field that repels all the walls around it, making it float firmly on the center,” – You explain “no matter how hard you’re hit, the power core will remain in place” 

“Hmm” – She rubs her chin, nodding slowly to your explanation “And why would you need a new one?” – Wolf extends her hand inquisitively.

“My craft’s power core is running out of energy” –You huff in annoyance “One of the shitty parts about these is that they can’t be recharged like old models,” – A sneer makes its way up to your face “Fucking greedy corporations, they did it on purpose, I know it” – With the hand you’re not using to hold the power core, you rush up to Wolf and points at her face with you conspiracy that’s more likely to be right than wrong.

Wolf, on the other hand, begins rubbing her furry chin, rather, scratching the underside of her chin as she continues looking up to you questioningly; her lone blood red eye adorned by a raised eyebrow. You can’t help but feel there’s something cooking up inside her pretty little wolf head.

“Is there more to this ‘Power Core’ ?” – She stops self-petting her chin to do quotation marks with her non fucked hand before it goes back under her jaw.

“It IS a real power core” – Your eyes roll in barely retrained annoyance “And yes, there is. As you have probably noticed, they don’t have cables or jacks or ports, or whatever you wanna call it” – Again you hold the power core in front of Wolf’s face and spins your hand around, displaying the ball and how there are absolutely no holes or bumps, or wires, it’s completely smooth.

“Yeah, I noticed, how does it even work?” – The wolfess leans her head to the side in wonder.

“That’s because newer space ship models in general have the walls of their power cores chamber covered in conductors that absorb energy from the power core, like, umm…” – the sounds of our finger snapping permeates the area “kind of like a lightning rod,” – You exclaim, remembering what you wanted to say “with the difference being that rather than waiting for lighting, or this case, energy, to strike, it pulls the energy from the power core, fueling every part of the ship, from engine, to weapons, to communicators and the controls”

She keeps stroking her furry chin, looking at you with a different expression from the one when she blew you off from trying to help. Actually, completely different; like, there seems to be some interest in her eye.

“Hmmm, and what do you do with it when something breaks?” – The wolfess asks.

“Well, I fix it” – You smugly place a hand over your chest in pride.

"You fix it?” – While her tone remains the same as always, her ears stand straight almost immediately, both pointing directly to you.

“Yup” – You nod crossing your arms and puffing out your chest “Just need to buy the parts, spend a day or two with my fighter, and it’ll be as good as new”

“Interesting… very interesting” - She mutters, before looking up to you “Looks like you know your shit around star crafts” - The index on the hand still under her chin points at you, smiling slyly at you 

“Yes, I do” – Much like before, place a hand over your chest and smile smugly at her, getting a playful ‘tch’ from her “I like taking ships apart and building them again as much as I like flying and doing mercenary work,” - You say, finally picking up the container from the floor and safely storing the power core, where it automatically floats in place right in the middle “so I worked for many mechanics as an intern or part time employee during my time in the CFA” – Walking over to your back you place the container back inside it “Yaru de Pon himself also shows up every quarter year to check up on the CFA’s Arwings, and I would hang around him all day to learn as much as I could” – With a small grunt, you heave the heavy bag of ship parts and sling the strap over your shoulders “And he had a lot to say, and I a lot to learn”

“Cool, cool” - She nods, looking at you with a strangely focused expression, like she made a decision and is dead set on going with it.

“Umm, why are you looking at me like that? – You blink, taking 

“Because I just found my mechanic, and he’s doing it for free” – She smirks, showing off those terrifying rows of pearly white sharp teeth.



---

Chapter 3

“Barely meeting a guy and you’re already taking him home?” – You comment out loud, incapable of holding back the quip as you follow the one eyed wolfess towards her mother base ship, the Wolf’s Lair “Didn’t take you for a... what was it? Easy game?” – As you walk, you bend forward to her left and turn your head to meet her eyes to eye.

“Oh hardy har-har, mister casanova” – Wolf laughs sarcastically, with a hint of amusement accompanying, as well as a poke to your eyes.

“Argh!” – A grunt escapes your lips as you furiously rub your aching eyes. Fuck that was a cheap shot, almost made you drop your shit.

“You’re ten years too early to get some of this, anyway” – She says suggestively, running her non fucked hand through the curves of her body, curves that were hidden under all those loose clothing, making it nowhere near as hot as she probably intended, which gets a laugh out of you and her.

You were about to retort how she was probably 20 years too old, but you don’t feel like dying yet.

The two of you stop near the front of the behemoth that is the Wolf’s Lair, a grey and purple colored five stories high and 70 feet wide easily over a hundred in length, space carrier type ship. It’s not as massive as a military grade carrier that can go for nearly a mile, but god damn it’s bigger than anything you’d ever manage to buy. You guess that’s to be expected considering it has to carry 4 ships simultaneously as well as have separate sleeping quarters, and commodities like kitchen, bathroom, recreation rooms, the bridge, store room, and all that fancy that shit. Your own ship’s got nothing on it, it’s just big enough for your two star fighters, a kitchen, a bathroom, and one sleeping quarter that triples as recreation room AND the bridge.

Sticking her thumb and index on her mouth, Wolf lets out am ear bursting whistle that makes you physically cringe from how high pitch and loud it was, and had the entire population of the hangar look in your direction. You were about to ask what the hell she was doing when the ramp to the Wolf’s Lair’s hangar began to lower until it touched hangar number 7’s metal floor, and allowed you access into the ship.

Grabbing your attention with a snap of her fingers, she points her index and middle forward and strides toward her ship’s docking bay, climbing the ramp with you following right after. Last time you only got to see the ship’s bay from the outside, since Leon was there and he most likely wouldn’t let you in, but now you are her, and its…. not as spectacular as you imagined. The outside gives the inside a little too much justice.

It’s spacious, you’ll admit, enough to house four very visibly busted up Wolfens and still over extra space for at least two more star fighters, but the state is rather poor and definitely a byproduct of Wolf’s lack of well-paying jobs as of late and probably a straight up lack of will to clean that mess considering who you’re talking about. Unlike the outside, which, while not pristine, looks pretty well kept, the inside has stray ship parts lying about, oil smudges, burn marks, skid marks, laser holes, dents and whatever more type of damage you can find.

You stop by the ships to take a look at them, but it doesn’t last long.

“Hey, what are you doing there?” – Wolf calls you out.

“I’m… evaluating the damage?” – You point toward the space crafts that you were brought here, specifically to fix.

“Yeah, well, you can do that later, get your ass here” – She calls for you, pointing down right to where she’s standing, an elevator. Taking another quick look at the ships, you slowly step away from them and towards the elevator, where the wolfess is tapping her foot waiting you. As soon as you get in, she pushes a button and the doors shut down and you feel the elevator going up. 

“Umm, shouldn’t I be taking a look at the ships?” – You ask to the wolf by your side; that IS the reason you were brought here, right?

“You will” – Wolf places a hand on the back of her neck and leans her head left and right, most likely alleviating the stiffness on neck and around her shoulders “But you should at least be introduced to the crew” – She sighs in satisfaction when her neck pop.

“And why would I need to be introduced to your team?” – You raise an eyebrow in wonder.

“How about this” – she wets her lips with a quick lick of her tongue “You’re in a ship housing four of the most dangerous mercenaries on the galaxy” – Ooookay… “Each of whom can kill without remorse” – Alright “Now what would happen if they saw a stranger messi-“

“I see where you’re getting at” – You interrupt her explanation. Yeah, it wouldn’t be very fun to one minute be fixing a ship and the next having your ghost futilely trying to collect the remains of your head against the ship’s hull. 

“Good, because I wouldn’t want my current source of free booze to die and leave me paying to get drunk again” – She taps your chest with the back of her hand, looking up at you with a toothy smile.

“So that’s what I am? Just the guy who buys you drinks?” – Your knuckles rest on your waist. 

“For now? Yeah” – The wolfess huffs a smirk directed at your clear annoyance “Maybe later you can be promoted to ‘sometimes I’ll buy you ONE drink’ rank” – Her smirk turns into a grin as your annoyance visible grows. The elevator dings and she steps out, strutting like she owns the world, and you follow right after into a featureless steel grey hallway, sighing in displeasure scratching the back of your head, that wolf’s got some damn cheek, if you’ve ever seen one.

Wolf guides you through the aforementioned corridor and as you follow, you take the time to take a good look at your boring surroundings. You know you’ve said before, but it really has to be said again, the inside really doesn’t give the ship’s outward appearance any justice. Only this time instead of a dirty and busted up hangar you get a boring set of hallways with boring blast doors and built with boring steel in the color of a boring gray.

Wherever she’s leading you towards, you hope it’s better than the hallways, they could at least have like, some posters and shit, but it’s all featureless. And thankfully, your prayers are answered. A bigger blast doors opens as soon as Wolf steps in front of it and reveals a relatively spacious, and rather nice looking recreation room, that looks more like a bar than anything else. 

It’s rectangular in shape, with one blast door on three of the four sides of the room, with last side being reserved for a massive glass window that stretches through most of the wall’s length. On one corner, there’s full bar, with counter, fridge, shelf, and all that jazz, but pretty damn empty, however, with only a few bottles here and there, and from the looks of it, it is the cheap and weak stuff, no wonder Wolf went to a real bar to drown her sorrows in.

On one of the bar’s stools sat a purple, almost black colored panther, he must be… well, Panther.

On another corner there is a boomerang shaped couch facing said corner, where a huge flat display hanged from the ceiling, flanked by two massive audio systems. And smack dab in the middle of the room, sat a classic, physical pool table, made of old and worn out brown wood and green fabric on the top. A rack for cue sticks was located on the parallel wall from you’re and Wolf’s position, and by the pool table was none other than Leon Powalsky himself.

You feel like there’s someone missing, but nothing comes up to your mind.

“I hope none of you shitheads broke anything while I was out!” – Wolf calls out loud in both a sarcastic, yet strangely commanding tone.

“Look who’s talking” – Leon, without even looking at your general direction, continues playing pool by himself “Last time you got angry you punched a hole through the armored window and nearly got us all killed” – He hits the ball and misses the target by an inch, making him snap his fingers in frustration as he watches the ball ricochet around and hit some random balls, but getting none in the holes.
Anyway, fucking what?! You look at the wolf by your side, this shrimp of a canine punched through that window over there? That shit looks at least five inches thick. What the fuck is this girl on, you want some of that?

“Yeah, whatever” - She sticks a pinky inside her ear, the difference in your reactions is staggering, you wonder how normal that kind of shit is “Anyway, I got ourselves a mechanic” – And finally, she begins to introduce you to her crew after flicking the dirt off her finger nails.

“Finally” – The chameleon rests the stick onto his shoulder and turns around to face you two “About time yo- you again?” – Being a chameleon, he doesn’t have eye ridges or eyebrows, but the movement of his eyes clearly indicate what would be considered an eyebrow raise upon laying his eyes on you “Huh, never thought I’d see you again” – He comments

“Honestly, I could say the same” – No you couldn’t, you fully intended on interacting more with Wolf and her team, although in hindsight that might’ve been a mistake.

“Anyway, what is this about Wolf’s boyfriend being a mechanic?” – The chameleon points his stick to you.

Boyfriend?!

“Very funny, Leon” – Wolf rolls her eye “Our guy here” – She pats your back, hard, making you stumble forward “Is a bona-fide mechanic,  and can fix the Wolfens for us”

“Well, I’m not really a mechanic” – You correct her, making Powaksly look at you inquisitively “I’m a mercenary who knows how to fix ships” – And explain the situation.

“Really wolf?” – He turns his head and gives her a tired look.

“Tsk, give me a break, you longue tongued freak” – Yikes “I questioned him some and he seemed to know his shit”

While you will agree that you definitely know your shit when it comes to fixing and modding ships, her questions were kinda ass and basic and not really the types of questions one would use to test someone’s knowledge over something. That’s like assuming a guy is a, excellent sniper because he knows how use a bolt action with a scope attached to it. 

“Besides, he’s doing it for free” – Wow, okay, time out.

“I never agreed to do it for free” – You turn to the not-eyepatch-wearing wolfess and make that much clear.

“Yes, you did” – And of course, she insists, because why wouldn’t she?

“No I did-“

“Shut up” – She growls and that seals your lips instantly

“Anyway, I think introductions are in order” – She points at Leon Powalsky who huffs smugly in amusement at your lack of self-respect towards the wolfess. Shit, that was really pathetic, man, but can someone really blame you? Look at her, you fucking dug your grave the moment you decided to interact with this crazy bitch further than you should’ve, you either do what she tells you to, or dies. Or at the very least gets hospitalized for months.

“You already met Leon, our resident psycho and finances man, he’s in charge of our cash and making sure our clients pay up or else“ - You only see Leon lifting his head and presenting his neck, before swiping his green lizard claw across his throat at an agonizingly slow pace, hissing all the time.

“Despite being a chameleon, he’s kinda shitty at stealth” – Leon rolls his eyes but disappears for a moment before appearing again to show his chameleoness, however just like he said, it’s kinda shitty, because his outline was as clear as day “But he’s a killer interrogator, don’t meet him while strapped to a chair if you value your life” – the lizard nods in confirmation, before returning to his pool game.

“Narcissus over there by the bar is Panther Caruso” - She points at the deep purple, almost black colored Panther that you noticed earlier hanging by the bar, who stopped looking at his… mirror?? To address his boss.

“With all due respect, my dear leader” – He leans back and shifts his head to face you two ”I wish for you to go fuck yourself” – He comments, before returning to his reflection where he… is he blowing kisses to himself? Jesus.

“He’s our sharp shooter, can take precise shots from feet to miles away with anything ranging from plasma handguns, to landmaster tanks” – Hmm, very impressive, as expected from a Star Wolf member “Give him the space, time, and quietude, and he could hit a fly from miles away with a plasma cannon” – Really? That’s reassuring, now you know that if you ever wrong Star Wolf, no matter the distance you’ll be in danger.

“He’s also a wannabe lady’s man who can’t get pussy even if his life depended on it” – Wolf smirks and leans her head to the side, dodging a flying portable mirror.

“And last, but very, very much least, is Pigma, who fortunately is not here today to bitch in our ears for the rest of the day” – She opens up a big smile at the very notion that Pigma isn’t around.

Wait, that’s it?

“That’s it?” – You ask, scratching the back of your head.

“That’s it what?” – Wolf blinks, apparently not connecting the dots between her statement and your question.

“Aren’t you gonna say what he is, or what’s his place on the team?” – You motion your hands toward the two other members doing fuck all.

“I would if he had anything remotely worth talking about” – She closes her eye and raises her non fucked arm “Pigma’s just a really damn good pilot, nothing else. He doesn’t have a specific role, he’s just a good pilot” - Huh, weird. You’d think that a legacy member like Pigma would have a bigger role in Star Wolf and not be just a pilot, maybe he’s not all that hot shit.

“And guys” – Wolf waves her left hand towards your person “This is…” - She pauses, a frozen smirk on her face that she holds for a good ten, strangely long seconds, fingers wiggling before robotically turning to you “Name” – She orders.

“Oh, so now you ask for my name?” – You cross your arms in exasperation.

“I didn’t need to know your name before, you were just a guy I bumped in the bar” - Ouch, a little too blunt there “But now that you’re gonna be working on my wolfens for the unforeseeable future, your name, c’mon” - She demands, not even asking nicely, she’s even motioning her fingers as if you’re supposed to hand her something.

You sigh strongly, you’re really starting to regret ever striking up a conversation with Wolf back in the bar. With nothing else to do, you blow a few strand of displaced hair from your face.

“The name’s James” – You say with conviction, if you’re gonna get bullied by them, at the very least don’t let them get to you, or see them get to you. You don’t really know why, but both Wolf and Leon jumped back at little at the revelation of your name

“James Hunter” – You finish, looking strangely at the two oldest Star Wolf members, who are staring at you, Panther though, he doesn’t give a shit, he just continues to appreciate his own visage from a replacement mirror that he got without anyone noticing. 

Wolf and Leon share a look, before they nod at each other.

“Here, put this on” – She pulls her aviators from a pocket inside her coat and hands them to you. You stare that sunglasses hanging from her finger tips in curiosity, looking from it to her face repeatedly, before she gets fed up with your lack of reaction and shoves it on your chest 

“Do it, c’mon” – the wolfess outright commands you to.

So, with a shrug and a nod, you put the glasses on, what could possibly go wrong, it’s just a pair of sunglasses.

“Yeah, no” – Wolf says flatly.

“Not at all” – And Leon responds because… reasons?

“Just a coincidence” – She nods, receiving one from Leon as well.

Okay, what the hell is going on? They’re clearly onto something that you’re clueless about. You were about to ask when the wolfess reaches up to your face and takes the glasses off herself, pocketing them inside her coat, before pointing her thumb over her shoulder.

“C’mon, kid, introductions are over, let’s get to business” – Without even waiting for you, she does a 180 and struts back to the door we came from.

Wha-, but… what the fuck? Sighing audibly, you swerve in place and follow after Wolf out of the recreation room and back into the hallways, where she leads you all the way back into the elevator, and thus, back to the hangar, where the wolfens that you are supposed to fix were located.

“Alright, listen up” – She clears her throat as you both walk into the hangar “These are the beauties you’ll be working on” – Wolf steps up to the space crafts, placing her hand on the hull of one that from the outside looks sorta banged up, but you can see the canopy’s melted glass. You guess that’s Wolf’s ship.

And… well, you also guess when they’re on pristine conditions they’re quite the sight to behold, but beauties wouldn’t be a word you’d use to describe, maybe damaged goods.

“Cool” – You nod to yourself, looking 

“Not cool, amazing” –She immediately corrects you.

“Yeah, sure amazing” – You ignore her rude correction and step up yourself toward the ship. It has a black, white and red color pattern, but a lot of the painting has been scratched and is even peeling off. The hull has tons of dents and scorch markings, like aforementioned the canopy was melted, and you can only guess the cockpit looks like a fucking mess and- Oh yeah, it is, pulling yourself up you see the whole shebang is just trashed to hell and back. The control panel is completely busted open, with melted holes and random wires jutting out of it.

Letting go of the edge of the cockpit, you land with a grunt and turn towards Wolf, who’s waiting for your input. 

“Do you have any tools I can work with?” – When asked, the wolf points over her shoulder to a workbench with a couple of tools. Getting there, you see that your luck continues to elude you. The tools she has here as basic as it can get, come screw drivers, wrenches, nuts and bolts, pliers, and a few other tools meant more for checkups and touch ups than straight up fixing, like replacing a loose or damaged screw, that’s easy enough. 

It’s clear as day that these guys do minimal work on their ships and they just hire a mechanic to do the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, the mechanic this time around is your ass, and you’re not even being paid for it.

Well, might as well take what you can get for now. Picking up a screw driver and wrench, you make your way back to Wolf’s Wolfen and climb into the cock pit. At first you try unscrewing the parts of the panel that weren’t burned into molten metal, but apparently it did melt, but from the inside, the screws absolutely do not turn either left or right, so you do the best next thing instead.
You shove the flat blade screwdriver on the edge of the panel, where it connects with the control’s main body, and push it down. It takes quite a bit of force, but you manage to break the screw holding the panel with a loud crack.

“What the hell are you doing up there?” – You hear the gruff female voice of one Wolf O’Donnel sounding not at all pleased.

“Evaluating the damage” – You say out loud, going back to what you were doing and planting the screwdriver on the other side.

“You’re not breaking shit, are you?” – She screams back

“You can’t break what’s already broken” – And grunt back, pushing the screwdriver down and breaking another screw. Not breaking shit… can you believe her? Did she see the state of this thing? It’s impossible to open up that panel without tearing it out. Anyway, two down, two to go.

You repeat the process with the remaining corners of the panel and finally, it is removed. And the inside isn’t pretty.  You sneer in disgust as if you had just witnessed a dead body that got its midsection blown by a shotgun, because for you might as well be. Everything inside is just destroyed, blown, or melted. Electrical boards, wires, sockets, fuses, all components that make would make a control panel, nothing was left undamaged, whoever Star Fox member did this, you gotta commend them, it was a pretty damn excellent shot, the fucker fully incapacitated Wolf without just blowing up her ship and killing her in the process.

Maybe that was the intention, they’re kind of the good guys after all, even if Wolf and her team are kind of real assholes, Star Fox would probably let them go instead of taking their lives.

You dive your head deeper into the wreckage, trying to find anything salvageable, but nopity-nope, it’s all gone to shit. The ship will need a full replacement of all these parts. Hell, if anything, the entire god damn cockpit will need to be replaced, the explosion from the controls also damaged the rest of the cockpit, the only part that can be saved is the seat, which Wolf protected with her face.
Pulling yourself out of the hole, and then out of the ship, you land down on the hangar with a grunt and crack your knuckles, here comes the hard part. Taking the wrench, you move yourself to a panel between the beak and cockpit where you assume is where engine is located. Wouldn’t want one right on the front or the back, that’s where most shots are aimed at.

With the wrench in hand you stick the end around one of the four nuts and with a heavy grunt, you pull it.

And it barely moves an inch.

Holy shit, this one’s shut tight, but you felt it move, so don’t feel frightened, especially when there’s a girl right behind you, wouldn’t want make her think even less of you. With another grunt you take the wrench with both hands and painfully slowly pull the iron bar and the nut along with it. It takes a good five minutes, but you finally manage to unscrew it, with the bolt on the other side sticking out.

The rest of the nuts took just as long to unscrew, but when it did, boy did it feel good. There’s this strange good feel feeling when you take shit apart, or put it back together, you don’t how to explain, but it just feels right. Anyway, nuts unscrewed, you take the plate with both of your hands and pull it off with a quick metal grinding sound, revealing the insides of the ship, and boy oh boy; it did not look good.

While nothing here is unsalvageable, at least you think so, a lot of parts just seem almost ready to fall apart, and the worst part, you have next to no idea what you’re looking at here. You have a general idea since most star fighters use the same template, the Arwing, but these Wolfens are, almost completely fucking alien, even more alien than Wolf and her rag tag group of little animal people.

Parts and pieces where you’d expect them to be aren’t there and instead are pieces of machinery that you have no fucking clue what they’re meant and how they work. They could have the exact same purpose as the ones on an Arwing, but most likely could be completely different and work in an entirely new way. These ships were made for Andross’ armies and I doubt he’d want anyone trying to replicate his design so easily if Wof’s claims about these ships’ reliabilities are true.

Well, that makes things a tiny little hell of a lot harder for you. All you can do right now is access the level of damage, but even then, without knowing exactly how this shit works, you’re stumped, your knowledge will only let you know if a part is completely fucked, or brand new looking, anything in-between is a mystery and a part to you that looks just fine might in fact be wrecked to end.
Sighing in frustration and displeasure, you take your head out of the ship’s insides and pick up the tools you left on the hangar’s floor. Guess it’s time to take a look at the other ships, so that’s where you head for once you turn away from Wolf’s star fighter. She looked about ready to ask you something but you held up your hand and went on to take a look at the rest of the Wolfens.

You have the nagging feeling that your results will all be the same, you’ll managed to get a shallow understanding of their total damage levels, but most likely not enough to make a full judgement on how banged up these vehicles are. 

You head next to the ship that had its laser canon blown off, surprisingly enough, it’s in a very well kept state compared to the rest of the ships, the hull has as little dents and scratches as possible, the painting is nowhere near as worn or peeling off. The cockpit is a bit worn, but otherwise it’s a positive view so far. This one at least flies, and you’re certain of it, but it doesn’t hurt to check further.

You open up the control panel and see that everything is, assumedly, in place, with nothing missing or damaged, everything seems fine. Closing the control panel down, you climb out of the cockpit and open up the panel on the side to reveal this baby’s insides, and well, it’s way more tidy and non fucked than Wolf’s, that’s for sure, but there still seems to be some damage, just not as massively extensive.

Well, one ship isn’t complete trash fire, it gives you hope for the next ones.

And boy, do you wish it didn’t, the next two are a bad, bad shape, not as bad as Wolf’s, but nowhere near as good as the second space craft you checked. As already mentioned by Wolf, one of its wings got completely blown off, leaving only a stump and ripped off wiring and chassis, the insides are pretty bad too, with everything being overworked to death, these parts are past their usability and it shows even if you don’t know shit about Wolfens.

It’s just pure intuition,

The last one also the same, only even worse on the inside, cockpit seems fine, but the engine is totally fucked, no beating around the bush, its dead Jim. You can maybe try to repair it, but not knowing how it works will make the whole process of analyzing and reverse engineering that shit just to discover how to fix it, and then fix something that is mega busted, painfully long, not impossible, but fuck, it just makes your head hurt about how much work you’ll need to get done on that engine to make it work in case there are absolutely no replacement for it.

And well, that’s about it for evaluation you guess. You can save these ships, it’ll take time, but it is possible with a ton of perseverance and an even bigger ton of patience. Not with the tools at your disposal though, you’re gonna have to make a trip back to your ship to pick up the equipment needed to deal with this shit.

Screwing the last nut in place, you close down the panel to the engine of and dust off your hands from all the dirt and soot that it collected, not that it helped clean it a lot, but it makes it feel a little less dirty. You should grab a pair of gloves too.
Walking back to the foot tapping, inpatient wolfess, she looks up to you with a line ready on her lips.

“How bad?” – She asks, already pre-emptively wincing at any news you have.

And the diagnosis is quite to the point.

“They’re totally fucking fucked Wolf, big time” – You just tell her straight up with a tired sigh, already mentally readying yourself for the gauntlet that will be touching up these star fighters, and sure enough, she hisses when you tell her how it is “I’ll have to head back to my ship and grab my tools so I can get to work on these” – You motion to the ships “Especially yours and the one with the busted engine”

“Leon’s” – She mutters under her breath “Shit” – And curses under the same breath.

“Oh, also” – You snap your fingers; snatching her attention “Do you have any spare parts for them?”

“I have a few stored, yeah” – She crosses her arms and nods away towards a blast door on the other side of the hangar

“Good, because while I…” - You sigh, rolling your eyes “agreed, to fix your ships for free, any part that isn’t readily available will have to come out of your pocket”

Her eye narrow in your direction and demeanor immediately shifts to from displeased with the situation to very displeased with you

“Now you wait a se-

“AH!” – You raise your arm and open palm right at her face. Getting the Wolf to jump back, interrupting whatever she were gonna say, that however doesn’t keep her eye from narrowing even further  “Oh no, you don’t look at me like that, I’m already doing you a massive favor fixing your ships free of charge “ – In a surprising bout of bold courage you get to her face and poke the tip of her snout, but fuck it, the amount of time you’re gonna be wasting on these ships will be insane, and if you back out you know she’ll get you no matter how far you go, so might as well test your luck.

“So you should at least shell out some cash for the parts you need to, you know, fly again hmmm??!” - You make sure to focus on the last part, knowing that she’s probably anxious to go back to mercenarying around and fill her pockets “Especially when I’ll have to adapt and modify these parts to fit your ship’s systems, since nobody makes Wolfen parts anymore, you can do at least that. Much” - You poke her nose twice again for good measure and to get your point across.

Soon, however you feel a trembling sensation at the tip of your finger, and see the wolf’s lips pulling back, revealing her sharp, pearly white teeth, grown pronounced creases on her nose, giving your little animal companion a rather vicious and feral look, while a low growl raises from the back of her throat. 

“Get that hand off my face” - She hisses through her teeth and you realize what you’re doing. You quickly pull your hand from her and hold your finger with the other, looking closely at the finger that just touched her wet, yet surprisingly soft nose, wondering how you managed to do that without her biting it off and spitting the bloody stump on your face.

“Fine!” – She barks out, snorting through her nostrils in frustration, probably because she’ll have to lose money one way or another “I’ll pay for the god damn parts” – The she pokes you repeatedly on the chest  “But you better do a damn good job, got that?”

“I will” – You say with conviction, surprising her a little bit, who expected you to balk under her intimidating presence. You very much believe in your chops as a mechanic, you can get these ships up and flying even if it takes weeks. Their state is pretty much of complete disarray if your evaluation is correct; these ships can’t be just taped together like they appear to have been for god knows how long. They need real repair asap, else one of these days these ships will just blow up at random because of poor patching work.

“Good” – She responds firmly after recovering for her mild shock, taking her finger off your chest and stepping back “Now go do your thing” – The wolf huffs and waves her arm off towards the hangar, and that’s where you head.

During your trek towards your homebase ship, you can’t help but raise our hand and rub your fingers together, reminiscing of how soft it felt to touch Wolf’s nose. It was just like when you boop a dog in the snout, it’s a nice feeling, the colder, wetter, and softer, he nicer it feels. You wonder if you’ll ever be able to pull that again without that jaw taking off with your finger, along the rest of your hand.

Probably not.

You’re surprised you’re not dead yet actually.

----------------------------------------------------------

Wolf stands her ground, watching with a glaring eye as the human she forced into fixing her ships disappears after walking down the hangar ramp, off to grab the tools needed for a more through check-up, and repair. And if what he said about they’re state is correct, than boy did fox boy and his troupe of space clowns done fucked up her Wolfens good.

After he fully disappears and the ramp goes up, doe her demeanor shift ever so slightly, her narrowed eye grows less angry, and before she knows what she’s doing, her uninjured hand reaches up to her nose, touching the exact same spot where, remembering how he fearlessly stood up to her. Quite rare to see that in a man nowadays, only Leon and Panther have any balls to sass you back, and that’s only because they’ve been on the team for years now.

“Tch” – The wolfess clicks her tongues “That brat’s got some cheek” – Yet still smirks, sliding her thumb across her nose.

-------

Chapter 4

“So… your name is James?”

Wolf asks from her spot on her wolfen’s wing as you try to unfuck the fucked control panel, you raise your above the cockpits edge and watch her laid down on her back, one leg lazily dangling on top her knee, one arm behind her head, and the other resting on her stomach. 

“Yeah”- You respond quickly “What about it?” – You head back to the panel and continue your work, or at least do your best.

“Heh, nothing” – you hear her laugh out an excuse.

“Nah, there’s no nothing here,” – You claim, adjusting a firm grip on your electric torque wrench, no way you’re raping your arms to remove these nuts and bolts “Or else you wouldn’t be asking” – Your response comes out louder than normal so it can overpower the sounds of your tool. Wolf doesn’t immediately respond, so you take the opportunity to work in silence and focus on the banged up controls.

It’s been like this for the last three days since you started the repair work actually, with you making very, very slow progress on the Wolfens, while Wolf herself shows up every now and then to make small talk. You don’t know why she would chose to hang out with you when she has her crew to shoot the shit and trash talk all day long, as well as shit to do in that recreation room. Even in a war of insults being flung around, you can feel there is a sense of camaraderie between them.

Your only guess is that Leon and Panther are busy with their own things, and so Wolf has no one to interact with other than you. You mean, there’s Pigma, but from the way she talks about that dude, not even you would want to hang out with the pig. She makes his ass sound like a fucking creepy sexual deviant, and being a girl and all, even if the very limit of tomboy without going full trangender shit, it makes total sense she’d not like his company.

Still makes you wonder why is Pigma even part of Star Wolf if Wolf and her teammates don’t seem to like him that much.

Or hell, maybe she does interact and spend time with Leon and Panther, you just can’t see it because you’re stuck here working twelve hours a day on these ships, and you’re not even past the first one, and you don’t think you’ll be past said first one until at least a week and a half with how slow progress has been. This is like, fucking quantum physics shit turned up to eleven.

You know Andross was a scientist, but god fucking dammit did he really had to make these damn ships so shitty to work with? By the time you’re finally done you hope these machines can fly faster than the speed of light and shoot laser beams capable of tearing planets apart, because fuck these designs, and fuck Andross, and fuck the company that built these things. 

You have managed to remove the control panel and scrub the cockpit’s inside of any loose parts in order to replace it with an unused control and panel from a spare cockpit, yes an entire spare cockpit. It was literally the main body of a wolfen without wings, turbines, beak, tails, nothing, just the main, middle body, or torso if you wanna get simple.

Carrying that shit wasn’t easy, and trying to piece it together is quite the arduous task as well, you tried looking at the other ships for reference since none of them have their controls as wrecked as Wolf’s, but even after looking over and analyzing them thoroughly, it only allowed you surface level understanding.

And it’s with said surface level understanding that you’re trying to put this thing together.

At least you’re making more progress than the day you started the repair for real, which was literally none, you were so stumped you couldn’t do jack fuck for the entire day, it was on the second you decided to try and reference the other ships, and while it helped a lot, like aforementioned, it wasn’t enough.

You even tried asking Wolf, Leon or Panther if they knew what the fuck what did what inside their ships, but even they didn’t know much, they know how to pilot them, and how to remove the power cores and refill them, which surprisingly remained the same universal power core model as bad when these ships were manufactured, instead of some frankenstein’d monstrosity of a power core with its own, impossible to reproduce, energy source, meant only for the Wolfen, guess you lucked out on that one.

At least ONE thing is fairly simple about it.

Wiping the sweat forming on your forehead and around your brow, you sigh in relief, another piece properly bolted in place, you assume so, now there’s a fuckload more to go. But so far so good, as time consuming as it has been, you do believe you have been doing a good job, that’s your experience messing around with machines telling you that.

A tired sigh escapes out of your lips, and you back up to sit down on the cockpit’s seat, resting your arm on the cabin’s edge for a quick breather. One hand goes for the other and by the fingers, and removes the glove covering your sweaty digits, before you stick it under your arm and pull it out, letting your hand slide off without dirtying it with rust and soot.

Running your now gloveless hand through your brown locks, you slick some of the out of place fringes back, and finally relax on the surprisingly soft, and obviously already butt market seat of the wolfess who’s putting you to work for free. At any other given moment you’d be at the very least a little embarrassed that your ass was sitting down on the same place that Wolf’s, if by the width and depth of the marks, rather sizeable behind.

But you’re so tired that you really don’t care about possible implications.

“So…” – You hear the wolfess call you out, and you turn your head ever so slightly to see her head leaning back to address you “How does my ass dent feels?” 

God damn this fucking wolf, if you weren’t embarrassed before, now you are.

You didn’t even notice your hand flying straight to your face and pinching the bridge of our nose. One look at the wolf and you can see her looking at you with that grin that you forced yourself to grow used with due to how incessant her barrage of these things were, and form that grin you can only assume your face is either a little or very red from her sudden comment.

Well, might as well play along, you guess, if you learned anything from spending time with the she-wolf is that playing along with her bullshit results in her overall being less overbearing.

“Feels great actually” – You try to sound non-caring, like this is a normal conversation to have and not at all weird “It’s very smooth , round, deep, and wide too” – To add credence to your claims, you wiggle your ass a little, and in turn, your body, so she can see that yes, you are feeling her ass dent with your own ass.

And that’s not as arousing as you otherwise would think, just, weird.

“Is that your idea of a compliment?” – And funnily enough she doesn’t at all feel creeped out, she just laughs it off.

“You did ask for it, didn’t you?” – She shrugs her shoulders as best as she can from her lying form “And, well, you’re kind of cute too, so yeah, I guess it is” – You comment offhandedly, waving your hand toward her nonchalantly. Her lone eye widens a little, before her grin recedes and she huffs haughtily.

“I’m not cute” – She mutters, looking anywhere but you with a small pout.

Your own eyebrow raise at the sudden shift in tone and demeanor, but you’re too tired to really care and ask what’s going on, so you just sit there and relax as much as you can. You really want to close your eyes and take a nap, but with Wolf within the vicinity, the chances of you being broken out of your sleep with a punch to the face are quite high, and you don’t that happening anytime so.

A few minutes of relaxing, and kind of awkward thanks to the now silent Wolf not making a peep, go by, and you make the most of it by doing absolutely nothing and just resting before restarting the process of repairing this fucking ship. Your relaxation, however, was not meant to last when the sudden appearance of something, or rather, someone, whose mere presence is hard to bear.

And it all started with a snort.

When the sound was heard, Wolf’s ears swiveled toward its source, and you turned your head to see a rotund pig man, even shorter than Wolf herself, standing by the wolfen looking up to you with a strangely indecipherable face. He just looks up to you with those creepy, half-lidded iris and pupil-less shining eyes, surrounded by pitch black darkness.

Pigma Dengar.

You do your best to hold back a shudder from this weird feeling crawling up your skin. This is your first time looking at Pigma in person, and he looks anything BUT intimidating with his round figure, stubby legs, and disinterested looking eyes, not even the three claw scars at the top of his head manage to make him more vicious looking.

But there’s this aura around this guy that just screams danger, and kick starts your fight or flight instincts. This guy, he’s bad news, and you can feel it in your bones.

Fortunately, he doesn’t stick around for long, after what you can only assume is a quick evaluation of whoever you are, he gives a dismissive snort, as if completely disregarding your entire existence, and turns around towards Wolf, who sat up straight with her legs crossed and arms resting on her shoulders while she looks down on the pig man.

Another dismissive, this time a little grumpy sounding, snort comes out of his massive plug of a nose and he turns around, stomping his way towards the elevators and probably his own sleeping quarters.

When he enters the elevator and it closes behind him, you automatically let out a breath you didn’t even realize you were holding, melt back onto the seat. One look at the wolf, and you watch as the apex predator stares at the spot Pigma stood on before closing her lone eye and lying back on the ship’s wing.

“Jesus” – You finally break the ice “What crawled up his asshole?” – You ask, leaning against the cockpit’s ledge, waiting for Wolf’s response.

“A little bug called I-got-no-money-and-I’m-pissed” – Wolf tries adjusting herself to a more comfortable position again, but has no such luck “I guess he did have a place on this team, I just forgot” – with a frustrated huff from being roused out of her rest, she stands up and jumps down from the ship’s wing, choosing instead to set herself on the floor by the ship’s side, squatting down and drawing a pack of cigs.

“And what would that be?” – You cross your arms over the ledge and look down on the eyepatch wolf already lighting a cigarette.

“He’s our resident greedy cunt” – She takes a deep breath while the fire’s still on, lighting the cancer stick “Only cares about how much money he’s got” –And grabs it between her fingers, blowing smoke through her nostrils like one of those old ass diesel cars.

“And since you’re broke as shit” – You comment, and witness her dragging the entire cig in one go, and pulling it out of her mouth between her sharp claws.

“Exactly” – She confirms, letting all the smoke leave her mouth before, without even looking, flicking the cigarette butt right in your eye. 

“Ahrg!” –You grunt, rubbing your eye and blinking rapidly to relieve the ache and rub off the ashes. Looking up at the raised canopy, your reflection shows your eye’s now red and irritated eye, followed by a quick grimace before your head turns back down to the already smoking again Wolf with an annoyed frown.

“Don’t sass me kid” – She looks up with a grin.

“Dully noted” – You rub your eye some more “Why do you even keep him around? You two don’t seem to get along, like, at all”

“Beause I kind of need his fat ass” – Taking the cig out, she sighs a cloud of smoke, and rests her hand on her knee.

“Seriously?” – You raise an eyebrow in wonder, Pigma doesn’t seem like the type of guy who’s needed for anything other than be there to fill a spot.

“Yup, what I said about him before was no joke, he’s a damn good pilot” – She then points her cigarette straight toward one of the Wolfens, specifically, the one that only has its laser canon busted and nothing else “That’s Pigma’s, while I wouldn’t say he’s as good as me, he’s on a whole another level compared to Leon and Panther”

You let out a long whistle, who’d thought the fat ass was actually that good.

“That, and I had a left over spot on my team” – resting your head over your crossed arms, you lean further to listen to her story “A lot of people tried to join when news that we had one member less started circulating, but none of them were good enough to fill up for him after I kicked his ass out” – she puts the stick of nicotine back between her lips “So imagine my surprise when, after the Aparoid invasion was over, he showed up on our doorstep, begging, desperate to return to Star Wolf” – She takes another drag, but lets the smoke through her nostrils, keeping the cigarette in place.

“I shouldn’t let him come back, after all, I kicked him out because he isn’t trustworth, but…” - She sighs, blowing more smoke out of her the sides of her mouth “In all honesty, I was desperate too, I needed that fourth member, and Pigma’s one of the best out there”

“So far he hasn’t done anything that I’d consider treason. He kept himself in line, did his work, especially when he got paid for it. But lately he’s just being a grumpy fat bitch because he can’t fill his little inflatable kid’s pool with cash to swim in it”

“Because your ships are busted and you can’t work without them” – You comment and get nod in response “Well, good thing I’m here doing this for free then” – she looks up to you with a raised eyebrow “Otherwise you’d have to endure his bitching for way longer”

“Oh, definitely” – She agrees with an exasperated sigh “I don’t think I’d stand another day with him snorting on my ears for a mechanic” – Wolf then looks up to you with curiosity in her eyes “Anyway, speaking of star fighters, what is yours anyway?”

You lean back a little in surprise, eyes widening a bit from the out of a sudden question. 

“Why do you want to know that so suddenly?” – You ask, a bit taken back.

“I don’t know, we’re talking about ships, and you’re a mercenary like me, just curious to know what kind of craft you fly in” – She shrugs.

“Well… okay, I guess” – Your hands that once hang over the ledge in a crossed manner pull back to grab said ledge as you vault yourself over the cockpit’s edge and land down next to Wolf with a grunt, the sound of your boots hitting the floor echoing around the Wolf’s Lair’s hangar. She eyes you up for a moment, wondering what the hell you’re doing, when you shove a hand inside your jacked and take out your own Holo-Communicator. 

“Wanna see my ship?” – You ask, but don’t wait for any answers as you turn the device on and scroll through its multiple features. Back in the day, way before you were even born, those things were called cellphones “Here you go” – You select the gallery feature of your Holo-Com and scroll through the holographic images until you get to your destiny.

A fully colored, 3D holographic representation of your star fighter.

Wolf let’s out a low whistle as she looks at the beauty that is your ship, taking the Holo-Com from your hands and inspecting it from up close, pushing the buttons to turn the ship around in all directions, and zooming in to get a more detailed appraisal.

“That’s a nice looking craft” – She looks closely at it, taking in as many details as she can “Never seen anything like it before” – Wolf throws the device back and you barely catch it before it hits the ground “Is it a model from your planet?”

“Nah” – You continue flicking through the images, showing her in more details the insides of the ship “My planet tries, but they have yet to make a breakthrough in the market of military grade space crafts, at least on the level of Space Dynamics” – You come back to the very first image that showed the ship in full from the outside “This, my dear Wolf, is an Arwing III”

Wolf slowly turns her head to your general direction and with her one eyebrow raised she asks… no, she straight up states.

“You’re bullshitting me” – She sneers, the expression of a non-believer clear on her face.

“Not at all, here” – You scroll through the images again, with the wolf leaning close so see for herself that you’re not pulling her leg, and zoom in on the internal parts, and how some of them the Space Dynamics seal etched on them, and Space Dynamics parts only work on their own space ships “It’s an Airwing III on the inside”

“Then how does it look nothing like it?” – She throws a hand up in disbelief.

“Because I modded it, of course” – You puff your chest in pride, that ship is one of your greatest achievements. You made it pretty much indistinguishable from an Arwing from the outside, and even some of the inside too.

“You, an entire ship?” – She sneers condescendingly “When you’re having so much trouble with mine?”

“Well, for one” – You let the smug slowly creep through your face “My Arwing wasn’t a total trash fire when I modded it” – You point a finger right at her face, and grin further when you hear her growling like a dog, showing off her sharp fangs when her lips “Two, your ships look like they were stapled together and wrapped with duct tape” – Said finger draws closer to the wolf until it pokes her in the snout “And three, you can thank Andross for making them as hard to mess around with as possible, and work specifically with Wolfen parts and nothing else” – And now it’s a good time to pull your finger back, when she tries to bite it off.

“Fine, I get it, my Wolfens look like shit” – The wolfess crosses her good arm over the casted one and slumps further onto her squat, her ass nearly touching the floor “Tell me something I don’t know” – She huffs haughtily, even turning her face up. She stays silent with a frown on her face and her lower lips sticking out, like a kid who just got grounded. Before she uncrosses her arms and rests them on her knees “So, why did you mod the Arwing III?” – She leans her head and looks up to you “Aren’t they, like, the top of the line star fighters?”

“Honestly? Because I think they look kinda lame” – that gets a snort out of the Wolf, and makes a small smile grown from her previously pouting face “Their default design are very mediocre, functional” – You raise your hands parallel to your head “But mediocre -  And drop them to further your point.

”Can’t disagree with that” – Her thumb crosses her nose, smile expanding as she does so “But what you did doesn’t look like a simple modding job, shit looks like a completely different ship” – She takes the Holo-Com out of your hands again and sets it on the ground before the two of you, pressing a button to enlarge the 3D hologram.

“I can see some resemblance here” – She takes out the cigarette from her mouth, using it to point out the four wings forming an X pattern “And here” – Then the elongated body “But other than that, nothing else” – She turns her head to you, eyes full of genuine curiosity “How the fuck did you turn an Arwing into that?” – She waves her hand through the hologram, making it flicker wildly before stabilizing, with a smoke trail following right after.
“A fuck ton of work, I’ll tell ya” – You say exasperatedly, but with a smile on your face anyway, it’s not every day someone gets genuinely interested in your ship “I basically had to build an entire new body and rig” – Your explanation starts, with your hand hovering over the image’s form “One that can accommodate not only Space Dynamic originals, but third parties or even custom built parts as well, while maintaining the sleek and nimbleness of the Arwing”

“At first I had a lot of trouble coming up with the rig and body, so much so that I never ended up coming up with one” – You shrug, Wolf looks at you strangely, but you just laugh it off “Hah, yeah, that design right there is actually really old, like, over two centuries old” – And you laugh again when he one eye widens in surprise.

“Over two centuries?” – Her mouth hands open “Humans had space travel for over two centuries already?” 

“Nope” – You shake your head, stifling a laugh from the resulting reaction,

“…” – She holds up a finger, cigarette now firmly held at the base of her middle and ringer fingers, and opens her mouth to say something, but no sound comes out for a while “Then how?” – She asks in disbelief.

“Would you believe me if I said the design came from a very old movie?” – You lean your cheek against hers and she immediately pushes you off with a dumb smile.

“No, you didn’t” – she shakes her head, a smile growing on her face again, as she puts the cigarette back in her mouth.

“I did” – You reach for the holo-com and press a few buttons, searching for the movie you’re talking about. You motion her to get closer, and show the star fighter is, in fact, a design from a movie over two centuries old.

“Pfft hahahahaha, that’s so lame” – And she starts laughing, slapping her knees “A movie, really?” – She asks with a side glance.
 
“Hey, it looks cool, and got me to improve the Arwing III further than the stock model” – You can only hold your hands back up by the sides of your head.  

“Oh yeah?” – She leans her head sideways, still giving you that side glace “Do tell?” – And she doesn’t sound at all convinced, the movie thing must’ve burned some points you’ve gained.

“I will” – and you do “Even though the design came from a movie, I still had to build the body and rig myself, as I said, to accommodate all the parts while keeping the sleekness and all that shit, so it has all the maneuverability expected of an Arwing III” – You point towards the X shaped wings “And it packs a whopping four laser canons, one at the tail end of each wing” – Then you zoom in further to show her the canons  “Unfortunately, the downside is that I couldn’t amplify the power output, so the four lases put out the same amount of power and energy as the stock Arwing’s dual canon set up, but more split up with each of the four cannons having half of one Arwing III’s cannon” – You shrug your shoulders and sigh. The reason why you couldn’t amplify the power output was because there’s nothing more powerful on the market, and trying to overclock the canons to pull more energy from the Power Core can overheat the shit out of your canons.

And since they’re at the tip of the wings, if they explode during combat, you become a sitting duck, that is, if your ship doesn’t blow up entirely with you in it.

“All these canons having half the power of the Arwings doesn’t sound very effective” – Wolf leans closer to the hologram, scratching her furry chin in thought “What’s the point of having four canons, if they’re way weaker?” – She turns to you with a question that you very much have an answer for.

“Easy” – You hold a finger up with a know it all smile that she immediately rolled her eye over “I couldn’t amplify the power output, but I could, and did, amplify the firing rate” – You watch her crimson orb stop in its track to focus on you again “Because the power output is lower, the cannons heat up at a much slower rate, allowing them to shoot more without overheating too fast, since there’s less power and energy running through the canons’ systems”

“How fast are we talking about?” – She through narrowed eyelids.

“Three times faster than the stock Arwing” – You say, holding up three fingers next to her face “I guess gatling gun would fit better than a canon now that I think about it” – You rub your chin in wonder.

“That would mean you can shoot nearly twice as much power in less time” – Wolf concludes, nodding approvingly 

“And that’s not all” – you snap your fingers excitedly, honestly you’re surprised she haven’t ditched you yet, you didn’t take her for the type to talk about ships like this considering her supposed lack of knowledge about their mechanical aspect “My star fighter have a customized lock-on targeting system that allows me to shoot from up to four targets at the same time” – You grin, growing more and more excited as you explain “Of course it loses effectiveness when I target four enemies at the same time as opposed  to focusing all lasers on onto one“ – You shrug  “But in a pinch, that means I can deal with four enemies at once in a large scale battle”

“Not bad, not bad at all” – She compliments you… sorta, with a low whistle.

“Yup, and that’s all on all range mode” – You save the best for last, getting Wolf’s remaining functioning eye to widen in surprise “Ah, you forgot that the Arwing comes with two flight modes, didn’t you? Well, this is Standard Mode” – Reaching for the Holo-Com once more, you press a button to switch the image and show her the Standard Mode you just spoke off.

The hologram flickers off, and is replaced by another image of the same ship, this time with the wings closed off, looking more like a generic star craft with only two wings on the sides.

“On Stardard Mode the wings close down together, exchanging the high maneuverability and fire rate for extra speed and firepower” – Your raise one arm, and then lowers it only to bring up the other to give a visual representation of the switch.

“Firepower?” – She turns to you in slight confusion “Didn’t you say each canon was half as powerful as a stock Arwing?” 

“I did” – You nod, and her face grows even more confused “But when the wings come down together, the canons dock with one another, going down from four, to two canons, combining their fire power to around the same level as the Arwing’s” – To emulate the combining aspect of the wings, you claps your hands together “The downside is that because there’s now more power running through the combined canons, they can’t handle the fire rate, which-”

“Means the fire rate is lowered to prevent overheating” – The interrupting words come out of the wolf’s lips as a straight up statement, not even a guess. 

“Exactly” – You confirm, surprised with the how much she’s actually processing and understanding “But it’s not that much of a deal, really” – a shrug comes after she gives you another incredulous side look “Standard mode is made for long term flights and travels, get from point A to point B” – With your hands raised, you draw an imaginary line from your left index with your right “As well as clearing up space debris on the way and minor combat robots. It isn’t suitable for dogfights, as you may already know” 

“Standard mode is, well, as standard as it get” – You laugh it out, getting an amused smirk out of her too “Only way faster” – You add at the end.

“Quite the star ship you got there” – she comments, a shocking amount of genuine truthfulness to her words. Considering her attitude, you’d at least expect her to sound somewhat more sarcastic “Not on the same level as my Wolfen of course” – She shrugs and smirks. Unsurprisingly this one sound just as genuine, you notice, rolling your eyes at her jab “But it’s a pretty damn good, I wouldn’t mind having one of these, even if they’re still technically Arwings” – at the end of her tirade you can feel a little bit of disgusts geared towards the Arwings part, but not as much as she usually shows.

Taking the holo-com from the ground, she holds it up and shrinks the image, taking a final look at your pride and joy of a mechanical beat before flicking the device like a coin. It goes up in an arc, swiftly spinning around, making the 3D image swivel around like a schizophrenic child before it falls, face up, right in your already awaiting hand.

“Does it have a name?” – She motions her head towards the 3D image of your star craft.

“The RX-Wing” - You say.

“Arexwing?” – Her head leans sideways, not sure how to take the name.

“No, no, no” – You hold your hands up “R, X, Wing” – You write the name in the air with your fingers, first the R, then the X, and you follow with wing “The name of the movie’s ship is X-Wing, so-”

“You turned your ship’s name into a word play” – She smiles smugly. And you can’t even retort her condescending statement, because she’s absolutely correct.

“Yes” – You hold your head a little low while her booming laugh of amusement echoes throughout the hangar.

“Hahahaha, haaah, well…” – She sighs, taking the cigarette forgotten in her mouth and taking one long drag, finishing it in less than a seconds “You know what?” – the wolfess stands up from her spot, throwing the cigarette butt out and stretching her non-broken limbs until you hear multiple pops and a satisfying groan out of her lips “It’s been fun having you around” – She admits as you stand up right after her.

“With the ships wrecked and the boys all antsy because if it, shit has been kinda boring” – bringing a hand up to the back of her neck, she leans her head left and right, popping more stiff joints.

“I’m happy to please” – You smile, content that Wolf actually do find your company enjoyable.

“Happy to please, huh?” – Her lone eye’s eyebrow and eyelids drop and she smiles suggestively “Then how ab-“

“Don’t” – Now it is time for you to interrupt her, and you very much want to prevent that joke before your face can go potentially red, bringing in a whole new wave of unlrelenting teasing from her.

“Haha, alright” – She stifles a laugh and holds her hand up, she got busted “Guess this is it for now, you better get back to these ships then, because I want them ready asap” – The wolfess motions her head to the star craft you were repairing.

“Will do, don’t worry” – You reassure the wolf with a pat on the shoulder, before turning to the ship “By the time I’m finished they’ll all feel brand new” – You claim with finality. 

“I doubt it” – She cheekily replies, giving you a side glace, that you only respond with an eye roll “But don’t let me keep you from trying” – As you finish rolling your eyes, you smile and nod anyway, watching from the corner of your eye the wolf rearing her arm back for something, probably a pat on the back ”Now go do your job” – With another nod, you step forward, but something stops you mid step. 

“Ow!” – You jump up, a sudden spike of pain in your ass cheek accompanied by a loud slap that echoed through the entire hangar, and probably the whole fucking ship, stops you dead on your trek. Landing on your feet and rubbing the innocent victim that was your right ass check you curse out loud “What the fu-“ – You turn back to see the wolf already feet away from you, walking towards the elevator.

“Let’s hang out again later, boyo!” – She laughs out without turning, giving you a two fingered salute, before she enters the elevator and disappears behind the sliding doors. You stare blankly at the shut doors of the elevator, rubbing your still stinging ass cheek, fucking heavy handed bitch, did she really need to slap your behind that hard? And you swear you also felt her fingers cop a quick feel of your ass the moment of impact.

“Crazy wolf” – You mutter. Cheeks, not the ones down there, slightly tinged red as you climb back into the cockpit.


-------

Chapter 5

You stop picking apart what you believe is the control panel’s main circuit board and with a quick rub of your fore arm, wipe off the sweat forming on your forehead, both to stop some from getting in your eyes, that shit stings, from falling onto the circuitry, possibly fucking everything, and to move those pesky, now sticky, hair strands from your forehead.

You should get an elastic hair band to tie it, or maybe get a haircut altogether.

Jesus Christ, why is it so hot today? And why is there no air conditioning on this fucking hangar? You’d think that with how fancy the ship is, the hangar would have some air cooling system or some sh – A  loud whistle interrupts your train of thought and jostles you from your perch inside the Wolfen’s cockpit, making you hit your head on the ceiling.

“Ow” – You hiss quietly to yourself, rubbing the back of your head before backing up and propping your arms over the ledge, and pulling your head above it, witnessing quite the peculiar, yet welcome for your tired ass, image. 

Wolf is down there holding twelve pack of beer.

“C’mon down here, kid” – She motions her head “The weather managers of this station decided today should be hot as fuck day, so I grabbed some cold beer to cool down” – She holds her hand higher and jiggles the twelve pack on her grip, making the cans clack an tinkle against one another.

“You know at this rate if you keep interrupting me I’m not finishing these ships ever, right?” – You comment halfheartedly, both annoyed at the interrupted, yet still thankful for the sudden offer for a rest with a cold beverage to boot.

“Yeah, but right now I don’t really care” – You can only chuckle at the wolf’s utter lack of discipline, and grab the cockpit’s ledge, vaulting yourself over and landing on the ground next to the Wolfess. You can see that the heat’s affecting her way more than it is affecting you.

Her mouth’s slightly parted, and you can see the tiny white breaths coming from both her nostrils and mouth. Also, there’s the fat that she straight up gave up the long coat for today, going instead with just the casual social shirt, pants and, of course, can forget the flip-flop

You ty but the snort comes out anyway.

“What are you laughing at?” – She asks jokingly, already having caught you looking at her dumb flip flops.

“Nothing” – You still obviously lie through your teeth.

Her only rebuttal is a short ‘heh’ and a smile, before setting herself like she always does, squatting right next to her Wolfen and puts the pack down, ripping the cardboard surrounding the cans with one hand, while you sit by her left, cross legged. She’s so short that even with her legs still supporting her, as low as her ass is, she’s comes up just a bit shorter than you.

“Do you always have to squat like this?” – You ask suddenly, making her pause the slaughter of the cardboard box and look at you with a leaned head “Why not sit down like a normal person?” – Her single eye raises an unamused eyebrow and you feel you said something dumb.

“I like to crouch like this” – She pats her legs “It’s good exercise to keep these babies in shape, and in a hurry I can go straight into a sprint” – Huh, never thought about it. Thinking about it takes less priority when her hand moves over to your face and flicks your forehead “No sassing, remember?”

“Aye-Aye ma’am” – You roll your eyes and rub the spot she flicked you.

“Good” – She smiles and finishes opening the pack, before grabbing a beer and throwing it up. Without a hitch, your arm extends to catch the falling can, while she takes her own. 

Crack and hiss, two of the most satisfying sounds put together, it signifies the important event that is Open Season on this right here beer in your hand, and you’re gonna make the most of it. Bringing the cold can to your lips, you take a massive gulp, relishing on the beverage’s sheer cold refreshing your tired ass self after working so many fucking hours straight.

“Ahhh” – You breath out in satisfaction, feeling the cold drink cooling down your throat and spreading the cold all over your sweaty body “It’s shit” – You comment, waving the can at her, before taking another sip.

“I know” – She laughs, cracking her own can open literally single handedly and taking a big swig “But it’s what I have right now” – With a clench of her fist, the can crushes under the pressure of her grip is thrown away, before another one is taken.

Jesus, already? 

“Better than nothing I guess” – You shrug, can’t really complain, she’s offering it for free, maybe it’s a reward for your incessant work on her ship. If it is then that’s a nice little action from the wolf that otherwise would probably just keep pestering your ass while you worked.

One thing sticks out about this though.

“Wouldn’t it be better to be drinking this with your friends?” – The hand holding the can points a finger toward the alcohol downing wolfess, bringing it up to your lips for another swig.

“I am” – She responds, breathing cold air through her mouth in satisfaction.

Wow! That’s… that’s actually really nice to hear, you can’t help but let a content smile cross your features, while your non occupied hand unconsciously scratches your cheek bashfully.

“Besides, my crew’s busy doing whatever, so I came to you instead” - Aaand the feeling is now gone, your finger stops the scratching, and your eyes soar toward the wolf unamusedly.

“Glad to know I’m the ‘in case of emergency’ choice” – Your eyes roll in annoyance.  

“Don’t be like that, I’d choose you over them in a heartbeat” – She bumps your arm with a smile, a surprisingly genuine one.

“Really?” – You finish drinking your beer and crush it much like she had done, and halfheartedly chuck it away.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s fun to hang out with them, but only you know how to hold an engaging conversation” – She admits, finishing her second can and going for a third one already “Sometimes I just want to sit back, relax, and shoot the shit, I can do that with you” – She bends her wrist back to point at you, before moving to take a swig of her beer “But the boys are always pent up and want some action, like beating someone up, looking for missions or fucking” – Fucking?

“You have sex with your whole crew?” – Your sudden surprised question makes Wolf’s eye widen as she spits against the can she was drinking from, soaking her face and clothes in some of that cheap alcohol.

“Me?!” – She asks between coughs, before thumping her chest with a fist “Fuck no” – Her eye furrows, sounding genuinely offended and insulted by your insinuation “They chase whore tail, or some delusional fangirl, of course” – Hmm, guess that shouldn’t be surprising, someone like Wolf would probably hold herself above her own crewmates when it comes to this kind of shit “Huff, like I would ever let them touch this-” – Wolf hand goes over her shoulder and points her thumb down towards her ass “-and this” – then she pulls it back and hovers it under her breasts “I’m just too good for them“ – she holds her head high in pride.

You test your luck in the lottery. 

“If you keep rolling your eyes like that they’ll fall off” – Wolf points out with a short laugh, taking another swig from her can.

“Yeah, well” – You realize you were about to roll your eyes again, and stop as soon as you catch your companion smirking at you “Maybe if you stopped drowning me in your overwhelming ego I’d stop not buying your antics” – You say, taking a sip from your beer.

“Then you better get some diving gear, because I’m not stopping” – She smugly remarks, downing her third beer, and going for a fourth. 

“Kinda hard to imagine that the great Star Wolf members can’t score with normal people” - You comment, getting back into topic, getting an elbow to your ribs.

“I can get normal people to fuck” – She mutters quietly to herself, as if you struck a chord or something. She takes another massive swig that leaves her can halfway empty before continuing at normal tone “My crew’s a bunch of misfits, and can only get some if they pay” – Another swig, another beer down, another beer up, there’s number five.

“Except for Pigma, he’s got a girlfriend” – HE’S GOT A WHAT!?

“Pigma? Really?” – Your head leans sideways in disbelief? Of all fucking Star Wolf members the creepiest is the one to get a girlfriend? Not even you ever had a girlfriend, what the fuck.

“Really” – The wolfess puts up that smug grin “His girl’s real handy, I’ll tell ya” – Putting the beer down and making a weird up and down motion with her-

“PFFT” – Now it’s your turn to spit your beer and soak your face and clothes in cheap alcohol once you get what she meant “Hahahahahaha” – You laugh out loud, trying your best to stop yet failing miserably

“Did you really think Pigma had a real girlfriend for a moment?” – She smugly comments, picking her beer up and taking a quick sip “You’re more naïve than I thought” – She shakes her head.

You breath in relief when your laughing fit finally end,  almost coughing from how hard Wolf got you, should’ve now better. 

“You… hah, you really don’t like him, do you?” – Adjusting yourself to unflatten your flat ass from sitting still on the hard floor for so long, you ask.

“Not at all” – Not even a shred of hesitation there “I said before and I’ll say it again, only for you and no one else to hear” – The last part is muttered, coupled with a hand flying towards your face and poking your cheek in a mocking threatening manner “I was desperate, and Pigma was the only good enough pilot to roll with us” – A hard shrug nearly spills her beverage “Everyone else who tried to apply wasn’t up to snuff”

“Why though?” – Another question comes from you; there’s gotta be a reason, right? She can’t just hate him for shits and giggles. One doesn’t get this amount of shit just for existing, even Wolf wouldn’t be like that, you assume.

“I don’t trust his ass, he tried to fuck us over during the Aparoid wars, and came back crawling on his knees like a bitch” – Her lips pull into a sneer, the creases of her muzzle folding back menacingly “Were I not so desperate for another team member, I would’ve gladly kicked him in the face and told him to scram” – The can’s tip is nearly shoved inside her mouth when she takes another swig  “And to be perfectly fucking honest, I regret ever letting him come back, I’d rather continue with our three man team over having to share breathable air with Pigma”

“Well, then why don’t you kick him out?” – Your hand free of beer rises questioningly, with the palm facing the ceiling after a flick of your wrist.

“Because he brings in the money, the most out of all of us” – Wolf admits with another sneer, one of offense rather than disgust, likely an insult to her pride and ego that Pigma performs financially better “He know his connections on top of being a good pilot, were it not for his fatass we would be in the red right now” – Well, apparently to the point of carrying the team as well, damn.

The two of you stay in silence after that, drinking your shit brand beers; your eyes hover back to watch the slightly distraught wolfess lean her head up towards the ceiling like she’s about to howl, only for a sigh… well, more like a throaty groan of frustration, to come out of instead. Nursing her can, left, and right, her ear flickers in your direction, before her head leans sideways.

She still can’t see you, but from her body language you can tell she’s about to address you.

 “So, how long now?” – She breaks the ice, motioning her head back, where the Wolfen lays behind her, clearly wishing to change subjects, and you’re more than willing to abide if it means not sitting in awkward silence.

“Maybe a another week, I dunno” – Scratch the back of your head in thought “It’s pretty hard to predict this shit when your ship’s like an eldritch abomination of mechanical marvel” – From your head, it moves to the Wolfen and taps it twice, giving you two metallic ‘thunks’ with each hit.

“Which means” – She nurses her beer, waiting for you to explain. You only sigh and take another sip of your shitty brand beer.

“Which means your ship is shit to repair because there’s literally no equal to cross reference in the whole fucking universe” – A sigh escapes your lips as you lean back and rest against the star fighter “Damn, and hail Andross, I guess” – Arms playing up in exasperation ”The way he created these ships is nothing short of genius. They’re as advanced as an Arwing III from what I saw, despite being so old, but they’re stupidly difficult to work because of how unique to itself the ship is” – The back of your head bangs against the cool hull of the ship.

Again, she turns at you, waiting for an explanation.

“Absolutely everything, with the exception of the power core, is built specifically for the Wolfen, and nothing else” – And you swipe your arm to the side, sliding an imaginary tab ”Which means there is no record of Wolfen, or parts, anywhere, no reviews, no analysis, no studies, nothing. It’s like…” – Your lips purse and your hands rise up to your eyes’ height parallel from one another, trying to think of an analogy “I stumbled into an ancient civilization that just so happen to have far more advanced tech, years ahead of us, and I’ll need years to start understanding it” – And swipe them down when you finish your shit analogy, hoping that she got it.

“Only instead of a civilization, advanced tech, and years, it’s me, my ship, and weeks” – And fortunately she does. 

“Pretty much, yeah” – You breath out in relief. Good, no need to wrack your brain trying to think of simpler terms.

“Suck’s to be you then” – She smirks, bringing the beer to her lips and taking a long, loud, mocking sip. Well, at least she’s not angrily annoyed anymore; guess that’s better than nothing.

But oh boy, she might get more pissed after what you have to tell her now.

“Remember what I said about you having buy parts so I can try to adapt them to the Wolfen’s mainframe? Well, turns out that’s actually impossible “ – You swore you saw Wolf stealthily pumping her fists and exclaiming a muttered yes, and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes for the umpteenth time “It’s either Wolfen parts, or no game” – and there’s that small victory smile turning upside down and her head turned to you with scowl that demanded answers “If you don’t have any part that needs replacing, that ship will be out of commission for good” – And you just lay it as it is, better to just tell her it straight than beat around the bush.

She keeps staring at your face, straight in the eyes looking for any speck of lie or deception either in your face, or your eyes, with an unfamiliar serious expression crossing her wild features. But she finds none, because you’re not lie, you’d never lie about this either. Her lips fix themselves into a straight line and her head turns to face straight down. 

“Fuck” – She spats out, hastily finishing her beer and smashing the can against her head, before shooting it across the floor, ears splaying back against her head.

“Yeah, fuck is alright” – You agree, watching the can click and clack as it bounced across the floor before sliding with an ever lowering screech till it stopped.

“Can’t you do anything? The other mechanics I got could fix them” – She looks back at you, genuinely distressed about the state of her ships, her good arm extending wide from her, geared towards her own, and the other out of commission Wolfens on their respective landing spots.

When you don’t immediately response, the wolfess just clicks her tongue in frustration, moving her hand inside the beer back and digging for another can, roughly pulling the beverage and anxiously cracking it open, obviously mad at the most recent progress update.

“Had your ships ever being so busted they needed replacement parts before?” – You ask, instead of responding to her question, you eye her downing the entire can, not even minding the alcohol leaking through the corners of her mouth and further drenching her fur and staining her clothes.

“No…” – Is the quiet mutter that comes out of her muffled lips behind the arm rubbing the alcohol from her wet lips and chin, before taking another beer.

“Well, if they have never been, they sure are now” – No mincing words here, she’d probably prefer it this way anyway  “Maybe we can build a wing for Panther’s Wolfen, but any pieces that are part of the internal structure of the ship can’t be replaced by anything other than a Wolfen part, and if you don’t have them”

“They can’t be fixed because no one manufactures them” – She comes to the conclusion on her own, her fist clenching around the can. You flinch back and close your right eye when the can bursts open, splashing beer everywhere, and drenching you both in cheap alcohol. Like the time you met her in the bar, she cut her hand in ripped aluminum can.

“The only real good news I can give you is that there’s at least enough spare parts inside the storage room to fix two of them” – A repurposed peace sign is what you give the wolfess when her head and ears snaps to your general direction “I think” – And your hand moves to the back of your head to scratch it, if you had some blueprints maybe that could help you out, but what are the odds of her having those?

“God dammit” – She growls, not at you thankfully, but at something, probably Star Fox “Now I’m in a bad mood” – She grumbles, sneering at the crushed can that was now stuck to her skin, leaking blood and alcohol on the floor, then flicking her wrist, dislodging the aluminum from her hand. Any desire to drink more is most likely go- wait no, she’s picking another one, aaand she downs it in one go.

“Ask me something” – Wolf requests, out of nowhere.

“What?” 

“Ask me something, anything” – Scratch that, she demands it “To get my mind off this shit, at least for now” – She grabs her next victim and cracks it open.

“Oookay…” – You agree to the unexpected request, watching the wolf take the can by the side in her jaws, and pours it over her hand, washing away the blood and cleaning the would off any possible infection. If anything else, this wolf is fucking tough, that’s for sure, and clearly knows how to handle herself “Uhhh… pshhh” – You breath out through your teeth “I remember your drunk ass telling be about some fighting tournament, what was that all about?” – Her ear snaps to your position, indicating she was all ears.

“The Smash Bros?” – Her voice is muffled by the can, but you can still understand what she said.

“The what now?” – You swore you heard a ‘huff’ before she took the can and took a sip from it instead of finishing the whole thing.

“Smash Bros, it’s a fighting tournament, yeah” – She licks her lips.

“Who the hell calls their fighting tournament Smash Bros?” – Seriously, Smash Bros? Did a child pick that name?

“Beats me, I got in invited in the third installment, shit was crazy” – The wolfess shrugs herself, bringing the beer back to her lips

“So, what was it like?” – You ask further, indulging in her intent of distraction from the previous topic.

“It’s cool, you know” – She thinks a little before giving a better answer “Get to beat people up without repercussions, Fox and Falco Lombardi were there too, and I got to kick the shit out of them” – She laughs to herself with a pleased smile crossing her muzzle.

“Too bad I got invited after the party started” – She huffs in slight annoyance.

“Party?” - Before the end of the tournament at that? “Like, a party to commemorate the third entry in the tournament?”

“Hell, no” – She shuts your assumption down “After all these freaks got invited, some weird cosmic god thing tried to fuck everything up during an exhibition match” – Cosmic what now? “Only for everyone to be saved by some naked blue hedgehog guy, I think his name was Sonic”

What-

“Speedy little shit, he’s the one who took me out when the tournament started for real” – She goes on a rant and you begin to get seriously lost “I couldn’t hit him once, son of a bitch evaded everything with his sound speed powers shit”

In-

“After I got eliminated, some gigantic fat king penguin came up and offered to join his band of bad guys, which comprised of himself only because no one wanted to join him and his fat, retarded ass. I told him to fuck off and he ran off crying, ha!”

The-

“But none of that will ever come as close to being paired up with a literal potted plant for a tag team fight” – With how much she waved her hand around, her beer is mostly there on the floor from all the spilling “Can you fucking believe it? Me, the great Wolf O’Donnel, being paired up with a fucking plant, I felt so god damn insul-

Fuck? And she goes on, and on, and on! For the next twenty minutes you stay there, still as a statue, looking completely bewildered as Wolf describes what can only be a fucking acid trip, in terrifyingly depth too, like she actually lived through all that shit. You don’t know how she lucid dreamed that hard, but you want to know how, that sounds incredible.

She talks about fighting an angel and his emo doppelganger on top of a speeding race jet; being reprimanded by a giant, floating, disembodied glove after pulling a prank on Fox, and Falco; participating in a baseball competition where the end goal is to hit a sentient punching bag with a bat so hard you send it flying through the stratosphere; beating up super powered animals including some artificially created cat embryo-fetus abomination; getting flirted on by human special operations soldier with, on her own words, the most perfect ass on a man ever, in a full body skin-tight suit, and kicking his nuts for him to stop flirting because she wasn’t interested, even if his ass was great.

She talked a lot about his ass a lot.

And, no shitting, being cooked alive by a retarded pink bubblegum alien thing that fucking EATS people by sucking them, assimilate their powers and skill, and vomits them back out right after. After hearing all that nonsense you just had to tell her.

“Stop” – You raise your hands, making Wolf stop her fucking retarded story, she was so into her rant that you physically touching her shoulder got her to yelp and jump. Putting your hands together, you close all your fingers except the pointers and thumbs “You” – You point your combined finger gun towards the awaiting Wolf “Mean to tell me” – Your hands part ways and you stick a thumb to your chest “That you actually, legit, got invited to an interdimensional fighting tournament…”

“Uhuh” – She responds like it’s the most normal thing ever.

“And that you met a big fat penguin, fought a naked hedgehog man thing, and tag teamed with a potted plant?”

“Yup” – She blinks, not really getting where you’re going at because she’s got to be drunk, that’s the only explanation.

“And you’re not bullshiting me, at all” – You wave your hands across one another negatively.

“Nope” – Quick and to the point, like the rest of her answers, which only leaves you with one thing left.

You towards the wolf and raise your left hand, to which she looks at it with her only working eye quirking an eyebrow. Said hand’s fingers curl until you have a finger gun manufactured right then and there, quite a beauty of a finger gun at that, can fire imaginary bullets at the speed of light too bad it can’t kill anything with it, but does have a rather useful skill, point at shit, and you use the aforementioned skill to point to your right, and when Wolf turns her head, she sees your right hand already giving her the middle finger.

“Pfft- hahahaha!” – And she cackles wildly at your overdramatic reaction, letting go of her beer and slapping her knee.

Cool that she finds it funny, but you’re not laughing, this shit’s stupid and you don’t believe it.

“Haha, oh man, you’re funny” – Her previously busy hand rises up to eye level and wipes a tear threatening to roll down.

“I’m glad that you’re having fun, but you really want me to believe that shit?” – You send her way a half lidded, unamused look, which gets her to turn to you.

“I mean, it IS true, so yeah, I do” – Her shoulders shrug off your continuous non-believing reaction, not even bothering to hide her grin.

She’s got to be fucking with you.

“You just inhaled like, a billion cans of beer” – To emphasize your point, your arm shoots toward the beer pack, where it has two can remaining “You’re drunk” – That wasn’t even a question, just straight statement.

“Kid, I’m as sober now as when I arrived” – Yet she continues drinking her beer like she’s getting her fix.

“Bullshit” – And your reply is given.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk” – she waggles her finger negatively, still pretending her story’s real “No bullshit at all, my dear human” – The grin enlarges, nearly all the way back to her cheeks, like a fox, ironically enough “Remember that time back in the bar?” – She asks, nursing her beer and finally emptying its contents, before shoving her hand into the pack and getting another.

Now there’s only one left.

“What about it?”

“You call yourself my friend and don’t even remember my quirks?” – A weird slap follows soon after, the sound of the beer can awkwardly smooshed against her breast when she tried to put it over her heart “That hurts me deeply” – the sarcasm is palpable, and it leaves you befuddled to what she was going for.

Remember one of her quirks? She has so many of them that it is honeslty hard to keep track, but narrowing it down to the day you met her gives you. You think some more, and watch her drink down the beer, trying to remember what it is she wants you to remember. By the time your answer finally comes up, she’s already finished with that beer and have already reached for the last one.

“High tolerance for alcohol?” – You ask un-assuredly.

“That’s my boy” – She puts the can on the ground and reaches up to your cheek, pinching it condescendingly.

“Okay, fine!” – You give, and move her hand away before rubbing the sore spot “Let’s assume you’re correct” – the Wolfess huffs amusedly at your response, picking the beer back “Do you still think I’d believe all that shit just because you told me that story while not drunk?” – You finish your own beer that’s due to being finished, shit’s not even cold anymore, so it leaves an unsatisfying taste in your mouth.

“Well” – She starts her reply with a grunt, pushing herself off the floor and patting her clothes down “If you really don’t believe me, you can ask Leon, or Panther, any of them will back me up on this” – she cracks the last beer open and takes a gulp.

“Even Pigma?” – You ask, standing up soon after her, time to get back to work, it seems.

“Especially Pigma” – She laughs it off “He’s been jealous ever since the first time I got invited, and will always gladly tell you how I lost all two times they called me” – Her head moves left and right, and you hear the familiar sound of joints popping “I think I’ve had enough” –The wolfess stretches her arms above her head and groans when more joints pop “It’s still hot, I’m tired, and I drank so much beer that I have to take a piss”

“Gross” – You comment, really didn’t need to hear that “You sound like a fucking man at times, did you know that?” – The empty can in your hands flies over the Wofen as you chuck it over your shoulder.

“Try growing up as the only daughter in a family with five sons” – She replies, doing some slow, high knee taps to shake off the stiffness from squatting for so long “They’ll rub off on you real good” – She doesn’t even sound offended at the mention of how extra tomboy she is, any other woman would’ve kicked your ass if you said that shit.

“Anyway, gotta go” – She shoves the unfinished beer in your hands “Here, you can have it” –Barely catching the can before it spills all over your clothes, you watch the Wolf make her marry way towards the elevator.

Crazy wolf she is, you bring the beer up to your lips and take a swig of the way less cold, but still colder than your previous one, beer. “Hmm?” – Eyebrows furrowing in curiosity upon touching the cold aluminum, the beer is pulled from your lips, followed by a swipe of your tongue across both upper and lower, so this is what Wolf tastes like, not bad. You finish the beer and smash the can, before throwing it away. The aluminum can bounces around on the trash littered floor, this place already looks like a giant garbage can, more will not make a single difference.

But as you climb back inside the ship’s cockpit to continue your repair work, something crosses your mind

Aw fuck, you forgot to ask about the blueprints.


-------

Chapter 6

“What do you mean blueprints?” – Asks a bewildered Wolf from her perch on the Wolfen’s wing, lying down with her legs dangling about in a bored manner.

“Blueprints, schematics” – You point out, stopping your repair job for a second to address the Wolf face to face “You know, that thing that manufactures make when they create a new piece of technology, kind of like a guide line of how to build it?” – You try to explain in the simplest, clearest way you can for her to understand.

“I know what they are, dumbass” – She rolls her lone, crimson eye so hard it almost threatens to pop out of her socket.

As expected, repairing the Wolfen II has been an arduous and time consuming task, with it being a shockingly advanced piece of tech rivaling, if not even surpassing in some regards, Space Dynamics’s latest generation of Arwings. A testament of Andross’ mighty intellect; sounds kinda shitty complimenting the fucker who started a whole solar system wide war that killed millions of Lylatians, but credit where credit is due, dude was a genius.

And you, you’re no genius, else you would’ve managed to successfully reverse engineers these babies and proceed to quickly put them together and fix them right up. And since you’re not, your reverse engineering of this ship’s parts has been a massive time eater, just one part took you a whole day to discover how it was built, where it fit, and how to make work.

So now you’re resorting to pure dumb luck and asking if Wolf has the blueprints to help you out.

“Then why did you ask that?” –Your hands go in in exasperation.

“Because I want to know how blueprints are gonna help you out” – You make sure to give her the best, most genuine ‘are you fucking serious’ expression you can make, and it works, sorta, because she just shrugs. Sighing dismay over her, and by extension her whole team, utter lack of mechanical knowledge on the ships THEY pilot, you begin your explanation.

“They’ll tell me what does what in these fucking ships” – You’re starting to get irritated with her sheer ignorance, no one should be this unknowledgeable about ship when you fucking pilot them!

“How?” – You close your mouth shut and take a deep breath. Deep breaths, she’s got to be fucking with you at this point, you can feel a grin on her face, even if you can’t see it.

“Without them, it’ll take forever to fix your fighters” – You explain, sitting back on the cockpit’s seat and looking towards the lying wolf, and sure enough there’s a grin on her face, she’s fucking with you. “Because I’ll need to take your ship apart, part by part, piece by piece” – Your hands move as if picking things up and moving them from one place to another “Discover what does what, and then fix it” – Take a breath, cause you’re not finished yet “And with the blueprints, one or two nights of study will tell me what everything is, does, and where they fit, allowing me to repair the Wolfens way faster” -  You finish your explanation “Because god knows how long that’ll take with technology that I’m wholly unfamiliar with, without these blueprints” – You sigh in exasperation, falling back on the cockpits seat with a hand over your face.

To be perfectly honest with yourself, you set yourself up for disappointment the moment you asked Wolf, of all people, for blueprints and schematics of a ship, even if it’s her own. How would she ever have laid her hands on one of these? They were probably blown up alongside the McBeth’s Weapon’s Factory during the Lylat wars, of course she’s not gonna have th-

“Alright, I’ll give them to you”

“What!?” – The surprise revelation have you sit straight so fast you lose control of your momentum and nearly hit your head against the control panel, reacting just quick enough to stop your crash with your hands “You actually have them?” – You push yourself from the panel and back onto the seat, looking at Wolf with what you can only describe is incredulously.

“Pfft, of course I do” – The wolfess scoffs at your tone, sounding slightly offended that you would say something like that, as justifiable as it is.

“What do you mean of course you do?” – You ask again, even more incredulous, does she really want you to believe that her owning the blueprints for these ships is normal?

“And what do YOU mean by that?” – With a grunt, she sits up, and careful not to use her still broken arm, stands up, only to stomp your way with an annoyed frown, before squatting down before your person, looking down on you from her elevated perch on the window.

“Exactly what I meant” – You lean your head up to meet her elevated eye.

“Which is?” – She rests her elbows on her knees and leans down, giving you a side glance.

“Do you honestly see yourself as the type of person to keep that kind of shit?” – Your arms cross over your chest, conveying your total lack of confidence in her ability to actually give a damn about pieces of paper, or data, or whatever was used to storage the information.

Her muzzle opens wide to respond, but it soon pauses and  closes down very slowly as her only functioning hand raises toward her chin, scratching the white fur that covers the underside of her mouth, lower jaw jutting out just a little as she reflects over your question,

“Yeah no” – Comes her quick conclusion accompanied by a shrug after little time spent thinking over the matter, before her hand flies over to your face and she flicks your forehead the moment she spotted your slowly forming smirk.

“Ow!”

“What did I tell you again?” – She keeps the tip of her index, and by extension claw, glued to your forehead, pushing it back some.

“No sassing the wolf” – You sigh, and is then startled by something patting your head.

“Good boy” – She pats the top of your head, and keeps patting. Then the patting turns into rubbing, and she rubs your hair left and right. You think nothing of it first, thinking it might be some Lylatian curiosity over Humans only having significant amounts of fur, or hair, on the top of their heads. But she doesn’t stop; Wolf keeps petting your head, feeling around your scalp and through your hair with those sharp clawed fingers.

Honestly? It feels nice, kinda like those grabby, claw thingies used massage your head, only more dangerous.

“Feeling good there?” – You ask, and much to your surprise she doesn’t stop when you call her out.

“Yup” – She keeps petting your head, either oblivious or purposefully ignorant of the annoyance painfully displayed in your face “Your hair’s so smooth” – Well, a compliment is a compliment, so you’ll take it with a small smile at the corner of your lips. Your own hand moves to touch the top of hers, but with a light speed swipe, she swats your hand away and goes back to petting your head.

“Yeah, well, I take care of myself” – You cross your arms and sigh, sinking further into the seat waiting for the grooming to end while Wolf relishes in the feel of your well cared locks.

“Hmmm, do we have a narcissist here?” – She smugly asks, finally taking her and off your head, only to poke your cheek instead.

“More like employers appreciate their mercenaries looking presentable” – You prop an elbow on the cockpit’s ledge and rest your other cheek on your closed fist knuckle while she keels poking you “Gives an air of professionalism and shit, you know” – Your eyes close and you wave your hand around, and before you can shut your mouth you doom yourself “You should tryIIIIIGH!” – Wolf pinches your cheek and pulls it with an unamused look. You tap out, but she doesn’t let go for a good ten seconds, leaving you with a red mark on your cheek.

“Anyway” – You hiss, rubbing the spot she wolfhandled “Do you really have blueprints for the wolfen, or are you just pulling my leg?” – Your question is answered with Wolf dropping form her squat into sitting right on the cockpit’s edge, and resting her crossed arms on top of your head.

“Yeah I do” – Oh thank god, you won’t have to spent the rest of your years on these things “After the whole Andross shit ended and McBeth going under, we went to what was left of the Weapon Factory to see if there were any spare ships or parts” – She lays her chin over her crossed arms “Those spare parts you saw there?” – With a quick movement of her head that you feel, and turn towards, you see entrance to the storage room “That’s what’s left of what we salvaged”

“Okay, but what does that have to do with you having the blueprints?” – You try adjusting yourself to a more comfortable position, but Wolf quickly snaps your back to where you were; HER more comfortable position. Your angry growl only gets a muffled chuckle out of her.

“What it has to do is that while we were there, Pigma, the always greedy fuck that he is, proposed that we looked for blueprints and schematics for Wolfens or individual parts to sell and make a shit ton of money” – That… makes a surprising amount of sense, since they can’t fix or make ships for shit, they could sell this highly advanced piece of tech’s schematics for a fuckzillion, and then gain a manufacture and mechanic to repair their crafts.

“Did it go through?” – The answer should be obvious since Wolf’s not exactly bursting at the seams with money.

“Nope” – You feel her head moving negatively, confirming her verbal response “No one wanted to have anything related with any Andross shit, not even the ships, their loss” – She sigh “We even found schematics for some unfinished third generation Wolfen III prototype, and they still didn’t bite” – Wolfen IIIs? Jesus fuck, if a second gen is already enough to flex your mental muscles to their limits, you can’t even imagine what a third gen would do “So we have a couple of schematics collecting dust back in the storage room” – She shrugs off towards said room again.

“So… can I use them? – You ask one more time, hopeful that she’ll say- 

“I guess so, if it’ll get my Wolfen’s back in track faster, go ahead” – The weight on your head suddenly alleviates and from your peripheral vision the wolfess stands up “Be right back with it” – she gives you a grin and jumps off the wing, striding towards to the elevator.

Sasuga.

-----------------------

Man, those blueprints sure came in handy, just gotta tighten this one last bolt aaaand…

“Hey!” – You hear Wolf’s voice from the outside. Poking your head above the cockpit, you watch her, for the first time since you two met, fully healed up, and looking up to you with her knuckles resting on her rather wide hips. You honestly have to stop yourself from undressing her with your eyes for a moment there, because while she’s fully decked out in her famous black battle/flight hybrid suit minus the purple vest, the way it clings to her body leaves next no room for imagination.

Like, damn, that shit would be a full body cat suit if her pants weren’t slightly baggy.

“What?” – You ask back, trying not to stare, reminding yourself that the sharp ass gloves covering her already sharp claws are part of her suit and she could rip your throat clean in a single swipe with those things.

“How about a status report?” – The knuckles leave their resting place on her hips and rise to cross themselves under her chest.

Status report? Alright.

“How’s this for a status report?” – Throwing her the smuggest smirk you can possibly stretch across your sweaty, oil dirty, face, you flick the switch and turn on the ship. It rumbles with immense power, surprising you at first, but not enough for your grin to dissipate, and a mighty loud hum enter your ears, telling that the machine is, in fact, repaired and ready for work, just to make sure, you take a hold of the levers responsible for the amount of power directed towards the turbines and pull it up just enough for star craft to hover over the floor a few feet.

You prop your elbow onto the cockpit’s edge, and let it hang down on the side of the ship, as you look down on the now dumbstruck wolfess. Her lone eye is wide open, and her mouth parted, hanging there, eye moving from you and her hovering ship. The air pressure it makes when so near the floor rebounds over to her, but she doesn’t seem to care at all as the air current blows her tied hair back.

Alright, you think that’s enough smug for you, taking a hold of the aforementioned lever, you push it down, and the ship slowly descends onto the floor, where then flick the power switch, turning off the machine. Pulling yourself up, you climb over the cockpit and land down right in front of the still mouth hanging Wolf, who’s now looking up to you.

“So” – You dust your gloved hands off the soot and dirt, unable to get the grin off your face “What do you think?” – You ask the wolfess, who slowly makes her way towards you.

Aaaand she ignores you. With slow steps, she walks forward past you and towards her ship. She places a hand on the hull, and then she presses the side of her head against its cold metal carapace. Closing her eye, she takes a deep breath, and releases it slowly. Meanwhile you lean sideways with a raised eyebrow and a weirded out face, wondering what the fuck she’s doing. It’s almost like she’s trying to hear the ship say something.

Suddenly, she springs to action and with great acrobatic skill, jumps toward the cockpit, grabbing the ledge and climbing inside the cabin. Soon the replaced canopy closes down, sealing her inside the ship, and you hear the engines humming to a start. Another sound makes itself known and you turn towards the source to see the cargo doors opening up. Knowing full well what comes next, you step away from the rising star craft and bring your arm to your face as it blasts off, protecting you from the air pressure.

You watch as the Wolf shows off her unmatched piloting skills by flipping the airship in the tight space of the station’s hangar outside and, you guess, fly off into the depths of space.

“I guess she liked it” – You smile to yourself at another work well done, and a possibly satisfied friend. It’s only been, one, two… you count on your fingers, stopping a few times to make sure you’re not forgetting day. Around eighteen days, twelve hours a day, just on that ship alone, Christ.

And to believe that if you didn’t get your hand on those blueprints that time could extend to maybe a month. Thankfully Wolf did have the blueprints in hand, letting you cut down that time to half, and hopefully will let that time be halved on the remaining ships, at least the ones that can get repaired with the rest of the spare parts.

It takes a while for Wolf to come back, like, a damn while. In the time she took to test drive her craft you managed to clean up the mess off fucked up parts and pieces that formed around the ship like a rat’s nest, do another evaluation of the rest of the ships, and choose which one you’ll work on next, you picked Leon’s, by the way.

You decided to go with his, seeing he’s been a Star Wolf the longest, second only to Wolf herself, and because his fighter is completely shot and probably the one in most need of a repair out of all of them. Hell, you’re probably not even needed to repair the other two, they’re superficial at best. Panther’s need a new wing, and Pigma’s need a new laser canon.

He can still do jobs with it, just ones that doesn’t involve any killing.

He could be a delivery boy! That’ll bring money, you don’t judge people who do that, you still do delivery services every now and then when you’re not really into gunning down your enemies and just want to have an easy time. Not every mission has to revolve around raining down fire on all pilots on the opposite side of your objective.

When she does come back, you’re waist deep into Leon’s wolfen’s insides. From behind the flaring engines of the repaired air craft can be heard growing louder as it comes closer, signifying Wolf’s return, followed by the sound of releasing air pressure that accompanies every landing and the unlocking of canopy latches of every star craft ever.

Following the landing, comes the sound of her boots loudly clacking hard against the floor, echoing throughout the hangar before they begin stomping towards your person in a hurried manner. As the hard boot soles on metal grow closer, you begin pulling yourself from the ship’s innards to greet your ‘employe-

“Ugh!” – Wolf’s grunt is followed by a sharp strike onto your backside, more painful than last time thanks to her razor sharp gloves.

“Ow! – Which makes you jump and hit your head on the engine “Argh…” – Your hands fly straight to the top of your head in an attempt to rub off the pain.

“You son of a bitch!” – From behind you; came the agitated voice of Wolf.

What the fuck, she’s mad at you? But you fixed her shit! Pulling back, with your hand still rubbing your sore head, you turn around to NOT see Wolf mad, much to your confusion, but with a big happy shit eating grin on her face.

“You fucking did it” – She punches your forearm, surprisingly not as hard as she smacked your ass “Holy shit, hahaha…” - She laughs out and about in happiness, and continues to repeatedly mock punch your arm while your bewildered ass tries to defend yourself.

Well, this is a surprise, or not… maybe? Honestly, how would you know she’d thank you for repairing her ship by beating you up, yeah, sure, she grew up in a family full of boys and if she’s anything to go by they were quite the rowdy bunch, but… punches, fucking really? Don’t blame this guy for not processing this whole thing so instantaneously.

“I did promise I’d fix it” – The punching finally slows down and your brain begins to catch up
 “So, how is it?” – You ask her, the hand on top of your head moving to rest itself on your  down and rests its knuckle on your hip, the other who attempted to block her play fighting follow right after.

“Like its brand fucking new” – The massive smile never leaves her face “I don’t know how you did it, but it feels as good when I first got it” – Oh, are those compliments you’re hearing? 

“Well” – You take a hold of your pants by the waist and pulls it up some, very much enjoying the ego stroking you’re receiving ”I did promise I’d make it as good as new” – Taking a step forward, the Wolfess moves out of the way as you make a bee line for her star craft. 

“And boy, am I glad you kept that promise” – The wolfess states, following after you and backhanding your already punished arm once more “Because it hasn’t flown that smoothly in years” – Nearing the ship, and you a stop to properly appreciate your handcraft, while the Wolfess keeps going, and much like before, places her hand on the ship’s hull and gently caresses its damaged carapace “I could kiss you right now, you know?” – She comments offhandedly, turning her head back and giving a side smirk.

“Who am I to stop you?” – You retort, fingers moving over to your chest.

“Don’t try your luck” – The wolfess pushes her herself off from her star fighter and begins to strut her way back to you.

“Ehh, it was worth a shot” – You close your eyes and shrug your shoulders. 

“Yeah, I guess it was” – You only hear her response and the incoming sound of her footsteps stopping right in front of you, for a moment you wonder why, that was until a pair of claws grabbed the flaps of your jacket and pulled your face down.

Eyes snapping open in surprise, you’re just fast enough to catch the wolfess stealing a kiss from you, while her own lone eye is closed. The kiss, however, ends as quickly as it began, leaving you completely unable to enjoy this once in a life time chance, as well as dazed as the wolfess pushes your staggering ass back.

Eyes unblinking and mouth hanging open, there’s no more appropriate reaction to what just happened, you can’t even verbally respond, you just… stare at the grinning wolfess, and she doesn’t let the opportunity escape.

“So good it left you speechless, huh?” – Her grin grows more suggestive “Make sure to remember that feeling” – A claw rises to touch your collarbone and drag itself all the way to your chin, where it stays for a while before she swipes it off, nearly cutting your skin in the process “Because that’s the only one you’re ever getting, kid” – She smirks again, licking her lips clean of your shared fluids and gulping it down “Not bad” –She nods positively, before doing a 180 and climbing back inside her fighter to take flight again.

After she leaves, you fall on your ass as your brain begins to process what the hell just happened, only to fail miserably as the only thing that crosses your mind was the short yet sweet feeling of Wolf’s lips against yours. Leaning down on your back, you fingers trace your own lips as you’re constantly reminded of the sensation, as quick and swift it was, with your face growing hotter the more you think about it.

A huff of frustration escapes your nostrils like a stream, fingers moving from tracing your lips to holding your temples.

“Damn wolf”