I

Why am I still here...? Do I still want to be here...?

A faint glow began to fill the darkness.

The embedded ceiling lights began to illuminate with a deep orange hue; with the lightbulbs being flood lights and the walls of the room being completely constructed out of metal, the room became bright as day within seconds into a slow scheduled brightening.

It did not affect Wolf O'Donnell at first, who was sleeping soundly on his side, letting off quiet breaths with interludes of soft nasal snores as little droplets of drool saturated the area on the pillow his mouth was.

Once the lights reached sixty percent intensity, the room became bright as an operating theater. Wolf began to turn to the other side for a short while before sleeping on his stomach, hands under the pillow with his head resting on the right hand. He retained the sleeping position for a couple more minutes before his eyelids became inadequate.

He peered his eyes open and closed it immediately at the reflex of bright lighting. He reached out his hand to the nightstand. He felt his eyepatch, moved to the alarm clock and grabbed his phone plugged in behind it. He pulled the covers over and looked at the phone. Nothing. Just a black screen with the time, indicating 6:57 am Central Corneria Time.

Wolf grumbled as he unlocked the phone and opened the internet, only to be denied access in the form of an "unknown error."

He went to the messages menu and attempted to text in the Star Wolf group chat, consisting only of Leon and Panther. He sent a neutral "Hello" and only to be spat in the face with the following:

{6:58 am Your message could not be sent due to an unspecified error. If this continues to occur, please contact our customer support. –Lylat Mobile}

He let out a disappointed breath and went for a call to Panther, but still, it had the same message but now in an annoying robotic voice which made him hang up immediately after the first word was spoken.

He sat on the bed, the spikes of his hair leaning towards the left, his eyes only a quarter open and left arm numb with the feeling of needles stabbing at it.

He swung his left arm in a loop to stretch it and did the same to the other; once sensation resumed he walked barefoot on the freezing cold metal ground to the lightning panel only to dim the lights to a less harsh level. He retreated to the bed to gather up some more warmth in the cold confine, which was 59 degrees Fahrenheit as he glanced at the thermostat next to his bed.

As he sat, he looked around the room for the billionth time. It was a small square bedroom, 8 feet by 8 feet as he remembered, with the most elementary necessities, including a door that leads to a bare-bones bathroom.

He let out a gigantic yawn as he was greeted with blank and dull chrome metallic walls and floors once again. It didn't bother him until recently, being a man in a floating cage wandering aimlessly in space.

Two years before, the place was his personal heaven after a long day at his office or conducting his duties around the station. At the end of the normal day, he would jump onto the bed, slide into the covers and fall asleep within fifteen minutes. Afterwards, his time from getting into bed to fall asleep has gotten longer and occasionally nonexistent as his synapses worked overtime, causing him to lose interest in sleep.

After the Aparoid war, the base was sieged again by the CDF, capturing all three offenders, with Andrew being on the run. Panther and Leon were taken back to Corneria and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Wolf, on the other hand was sentenced to nine years of exile in the space station, supervised by several guards and security cameras.

Star Wolf did help Star Fox when the Aparoid turmoil gained severity along the way; as a result, they were credited with shorter sentence. Panther and Leon were released three months ago and have been doing well since then. They were still jailed for other reasons like tax evasion.

Wolf hasn't received any word on his prison sentence, and simply asking the guards would elicit no response, just a cold deceased look on their faces. Sometimes he would start a staring contest, and they would never blink.

He got out of bed and slipped into his sandals, wearing a white tank top that revealed a fair bit of his muscle definition and grey oversized sleep pants with the strings about six inches suspended from the front. After making his way to the bathroom at a sulking pace, he grabbed his comb and hair gel to fix his mohawk before brushing his teeth.

With a breath of fresh mint and strawberries, he returned to the room and donned his typical spiky mercenary outfit hanging behind the door to the hall, since it's the only suitable thing he could wear in a setting like this. It was a symbol of authority and power to him, and it hugged him closely during the golden days. This time, that tightness only got weaker each passing week.

Before he could reach for the knob, he lunged over to the nightstand and grabbed his black eyepatch hanging over the edge and strapped it over the blurry eye, along with grabbing his phone and slotting it in his pocket.

At first, the halls were completely dark except for the dim guide lights every hundred feet. Once Wolf appeared into the open expanse, the entire place was flooded with synthetic lighting, revealing the hollow tube.

It was a step up from having groups of two or three sitting in corners, smoking a cigarette and rambling about all things Andross in which Wolf and they couldn't care less anymore. The result of that was Wolf constantly being involuntarily obliged to clean the halls but gave up several days later.

Across the hall was a large window showcasing the vast emptiness that Wolf was stationed in. It's painted with stars and some slow-moving rocks; in the distance, a bigger bright blue planet on the left and a smaller tan colored one on the right.

Just by looking at the blue one made him wince. It was a long time ago where he had a one-on-one with Fox and lost badly. He was overflowing with confidence with his new feature of his Wolfen where it morphs to a quadruped. It became another hull loss and another near-death experience.

He walked left at a snail's pace relative to the window. The next door on that same wall had a portrait of him in his mercenary outfit, smirking with his arms crossed. Under it was a nameplate. "WOLF O'DONNELL" with a subtitle "CEO - STAR WOLF. (The Overlord)"

It took him a while to look at the finer details, but then looked and walked away in defeat, with only his ego to blame.

The door on the other side led to the kitchen. A breath of fresh air with the metal shining in near perfect reflection with the lights above. It consisted of a long metallic counter wrapped along half of the walls in a "C" shape, and on the other side stood a large round table, capable of seating up to a party of twelve. Whenever Wolf spent time eating there, it was usually with Panther and Leon, drinking liquor and playing poker in the meantime.

In one of the cabinets were coffee grounds and filters.

Filter in, some water, coffee grounds in, and with a flick of a switch, nothing. A light was supposed to come on inside the switch. he frantically wiggled the wires, unplugged it and plugged it back in, and no avail. He surrendered,

He looked inside the refrigerator and the only thing in there was a liter sized jug of orange juice made from powder. It was a quarter full, and he averted eye contact with it.

In the golden days, it would be completely stacked with a spectrum of boxes and packaging of various sizes and shapes. In the freezer it would be a chockful of delicacies that would easily put some pounds on him. However, many days when he would take inventory, an unprecedented amount of food would go missing compared to previous logs.

He closed the refrigerator door, sighed slowly and turned his head to the two cardboard boxes to the right. He looked inside the top box, and it was the usual can of baked beans and a pre-cooked omelet.

Wolf shoved the box to the side, gritting his teeth and dug a claw into the adhesive, running it down the seam. He took a small bag of vanilla cookies on top, dumped the contents in his mouth like a garbage truck and called it breakfast. The other items he sifted through were ended up in the same fate as the two he shoved aside.

The door next to it leads to the recreation room, where he expected for it to be filled with a nice tune coming from the ceiling. One half of the room was filled with various weight training equipment and the other side is the more soft and colorful stuff. Now it was just a place for him to weigh himself on a regular basis.

The scale was an analog scale where the main dial from 0 to 20. There was a paper taped to the side, tabulating conversions between certain values in stones and pounds to kilograms.

He repulsed as the needle only went a bit over 11, which was the lowest he has been at lately.

Walking over to the other side, he fiddled around with the tabletop football and billiards table before sitting down at the couch facing the television in the corner. There's a microphone and a plastic toy guitar connected to it, both looking like they were just bought from the game store.

Wolf could only sit there and see himself having a good time with Leon and Panther, playing the day away to fill the melancholy silence. He looked back at the tables and saw them playing snooker there too, laughing and gossiping.

"Hey, Wolf! You want to join in?" Leon's voice echoed from behind.

"It's a fun game, Wolf. Come on, release some steam. Stop worrying about Fox," Panther invited before he bent down and aimed for the next shot. The cue bounced off the pink ball with a loud click, launching it into a corner hole at a tight angle.

"Ah! No fair!" Leon uttered in denial. "So you're what, 20 points ahead of me?"

Panther smugly chuckled at Leon's denial as he readied another shot, aiming for another red one.

"Alright, I'll play!" He uttered, standing up tail wagging fiercely.

The two already faded from his view, and his tail dropped dead.

He gave it some thought as his heart beat against the sternum harder and faster.

At a quick pace, he walked out the same door that he entered earlier. He sighed and walked to the door that's next left of his office.

Wolf tried opening it; it clicked, but the knob did not give. The door had a picture frame of Leon smiling generically and the name tag "LEON POWALSKI" under it. The same went for the door on the other side, but with Panther's portrait of him smiling smugly, passionately smelling a rose.

He stood in front of his own office, staring at the door. His breath became controlled.

You can do this, Wolf. You can do this…

Hand grasping the knob, he gently turned it and the door gave way to a dark and surprisingly warm office, which is about the same size of his bedroom. He closed the door behind him, bathing in black with the slight cosmic glow shining through the curtains. The ambience quieted down considerably compared to the hallway, with only one air vent on the ceiling producing soft white noise.

Wolf reached for the glowing light switch to his left and slid the knob it up all the way, causing the room to be gradually lit up with an orange hue and then white with a yellow tint.

Compared to the bedroom, his office was adorned with decorations, shelves and bookcases stuffed with books and paper. They walls were still metal, but the floor was a beige carpet.

On one wall, it contained stochastic assortment of picture frames in respect to position, shape and size; they all had the motif of Wolf's smile in it.

The first one he eyed was the three sitting together, confidently taking a shot of a clear liquid. He couldn't remember what it was, but it had a nice smell to it.

The next one was smiling Wolf sitting in front of a lavish cake with the burning candles spelling out "35."

Four years. It has been that long.

His eyes focused on the faded reflection of the face of a frail man on the glass of that photo, and then back to the picture. They don't belong…

A large panoramic photo was hung just below the ceiling, and it consisted of the original five standing in the corridor he was in. Pigma and Andrew on the outer, Leon and Panther in the inner, and Wolf in the center, standing in front of his office, in their neutral emotions and poses.

He urgently took the frame down, unscrewed the back and took out the picture, which was on a sheet of poster paper. He folded it in a way so that it excluded Andrew and Pigma when he hung it back.

Wolf walked over to the metal crate that was behind him. It had a sleek shine to it on the edges and a three by four array of buttons paneled on the top.

"PROPERTY OF STAR WOLF" was printed on the side diagonally, with what looked like black spray paint; under that it had "ANDROSS" written, but it was barely legible. On the bottom it had all five original member's names on it. Pigma's wasn't there in any trace, and Wolf obtained the chrome spray paint from a cabinet behind him and sprayed over Andrew's name, coating it over more than enough times.

On the back of the door hung a vertical rectangular frame, containing the Star Wolf contract written when the group was formed. He kept a mental image of it before browsing the other memorabilia that were scattered around the room, most of them being pictures.

One of the pictures on the writing desk was him standing on the snowcapped Hawk Mountain, with a summit elevation of ten thousand feet. He was 16 at the time, arms raised and beaming with the untainted blue sky behind him.

He looked at the next one; his pupils doubled in size.

Two wolves, both similar in body and facial structure, stood next close to each other, arms extending to each other's shoulder. Both had a smile on them, more so on the taller one with the violet eyes.

The shorter one is his son Jonathan, or as Wolf loves to call him "Wolfy." He was about a head shorter than Wolf at the time.

The only noticeable difference were his eyes that are bright yellow in color. Wolf has his white puff of chest hair and a light grey abdomen on his fur, whilst his son has completely white fur on his abdomen that gradients to a light grey on the limbs and side.

The picture next to that was Wolf and him sitting on a bench, with Wolf playing his guitar and the two looking at each other.

"Wow, you sound so good! Do it again!" his son clapped as the campfire crackled and burned brighter.

It has been close to five years that Wolf has left his son without any closure, and he would realize that one day…

"You're going back to work AGAIN?"

…he will meet him again, not knowing what or how he would be.

"Yup! Hopefully I'll come back soon to see your delicate face again. Promise!" Wolf climbed onto the Wolfen parked on the side. His son gave an affirmative smile and a wink as a reply.

As his Wolfen's main engines roared to life, his son gave him a big handwave, in which Wolf waved back jauntily.

Anything outcome was possible to manifest into Wolf's thoughts as he stood, eyes completely frozen.

"…You… You never told me about this, did you?" A deeper, yet familiar voice echoed in his head.

He focused on the picture as he remembered the texture of his fur and how it felt when he constantly ruffled his hair, and the melodic whine of his voice.

"…Get your filthy hands off me!"

All Wolf had was the urge to reach his arms into the picture and pulling him into his arms, smiling, laughing, and being a bit younger, but there's always the inevitable feeling of being stabbed right in the heart, knife twisting and turning.

"…You're not my father, Wolf."

Wolf quickly looked at the picture again. The short wolf disappeared.

He immediately put it face down and looked away for five second, sealing his eyes and gritting his teeth. He then slowly lifted back up, with the picture being normal.

He turned his head to the metal box. Slowly walking over, trembling and kneeling, he pressed the buttons on the keypad.

0-8-3-0

The box gave a loud hum and a satisfying click, causing the top of the case pop slightly open.

Lifting the cover, right on top was a leather guitar case and buried below it was a present wrapped in decorative red and green paper, with a white cross tie around it. A card was attached where the bow was.

The present had a fair bit of weight to it as he removed it from the box. He flipped open the card to reveal a note written in elegant cursive.

"Dear Wolfy, Happy 17th birthday from the team! Your dad misses you a lot and dreams about you practically every day! Hehe. We wish you all the best! Here is a present from us!"

Below were signatures from the three, with Wolf's being the largest; next to Panther's signature lived a dedicated doodle of a rose in red ink.

He put it back into the case immediately and closed it. He landed his forehead right on the edge of the box, trying to shove away what he had experienced within the past thirty minutes.

Thereafter, Wolf went for the contract that was hanging behind the door. He took it out from the frame and gave it a good glance, skimming through the clauses that he wrote in print. The lines slanted down as the text advanced to the right.

On the bottom were five signatures, but he had something different in mind rather than scratching the two obvious ones out.

He held the yellowed paper with two hands on the top.

As he was about to make the decision, a sound of a guitar being strummed emanated from the immediate vicinity. It's a familiar tone that he hasn't heard in a long time.

He pulled out his phone and was greeted with this plastered on the black lock screen:

{1 New E-mail}

There was resonant knocking in the distance.

"O'Donnell!" A guard shouted outside, voice echoing from one end of the hall to the next, and then it transitioned to steady footsteps in crescendo.

A shot of cold traversed from Wolf's head to his feet.

{8:39 am: From: pepper Subject: IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING…}

Thank you.

Author's Notes

I have edited this section, about 3 months after I posted this story.

- This is my first fic involving the Star Fox universe, and I haven't written a fanfiction in a long while. I did have another account where I wrote some junk during 8th grade, did not want to revisit that again.

- Please bear with me that my knowledge of the Star Fox lore is lackluster, so please don't freak out if you see something that doesn't mesh well with the lore. The characters are mainly the foundation.

- English isn't my first language. I moved to the US when I was like 7. Had some trouble learning English during elementary school but gradually became much better. Thankfully, that was my critical period of learning English, so it was retained pretty well.

Story Stuff

- The purpose of this chapter is to paint the picture and immediately give you the conflict Wolf has to deal with. I know some of you like to have it revealed slowly, but by the time I am typing this new author's note, which is about 3 months later, I can't really change much.

- This story will have OCs. I am aware some folks don't like that. I will keep OCs to a minimum the best I can. The most OC-heavy parts of the story are just interactions with the main characters.

- The WIP title of the story was Chains, inspired by the song The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, which tells the conflict between the band members that their love is bound by this chain and it must not be broken.

- A Stone is 14 pounds.

- If I realize in the future that the timeline needs changing, I will make note of that because it may change to keep age consistency.