The legendary ship, the Great Fox, was currently docked at the Cornerian Orbital Space Port, and its crew was preparing for their next scheduled R&R. They’d only just returned from two months of field training with two full squads of Cornerian Defense Force cadets. Five years ago, Captain Fox McCloud had signed an agreement with the Cornerian military to run a special training program which would have the Star Fox Team take on one to two squads of CDF cadets for up to two months at a time. This would line the Star Fox Team’s pockets with extra credit while giving the cadets some real field experience running sorties and training routines alongside industry veterans.

The Great Fox had only enough room in their hangar bay for a single squad of CDF fighters, so the two squads had been given rotating shifts to mimic the conditions of real combat. While one squad flew their sorties the other squad rested on deck and did whatever ship duties were assigned to them. Everyone on board was made to work to earn their keep with every member of the Star Fox taking on roles like a professor in a university.

Fox McCloud gave guidance and instruction on tactics and simulations. Falco Lombardi was the senior flight trainer that graded cadets on their performance in and around their fighters. Slippy Toad, as ship engineer, gave assignments pertaining to ship maintenance and assigned grades accordingly. Krystal McCloud rounded the team out as the ship’s only doctor. When she wasn’t giving instruction on emergency response and field medicine, she rendered assistance wherever the others needed it.

Inside the Deck 04 hangar bay, a crew of CDF airmen were unloading the fighters from the Great Fox to be sent for repair and refit. The two squads of cadets had already left the ship and were now en route back to the Academy where they would complete the rest of their training, and hopefully earn their wings.

Very soon, the ship would be back to square one with only the Star Fox Team in attendance: Fox McCloud, his wife Krystal, Falco Lombardi, Slippy Toad, and lastly the new face of Miyu Lynx.

With Peppy Hare’s passing there was an opening for another permanent member of the Team, and the young lynx had been granted the opportunity of a lifetime to join the famous crew of the Great Fox. She’d once served on this same ship as a cadet, having spent an entire month as a trainee under their tutelage.

The Lylat War broke out when she was still a little girl, having only been five years old at the time. She hardly had any real memories of those days. The childhood memory remembered most clearly was the huge incident on the planet Sauria, which happened several years after the Lylat War had ended. The backwater jungle planet had turned into a war zone, and that had captivated the Lylat System so much that even to this day people would talk about what they were doing when they heard the news of it, just like they did when asked about what they were doing when the War had started.

For Miyu, she remembered it was a Saturday and she was at the park playing with some of her friends from school. Her best friend’s mother had taken them to the park and then suddenly she was in a full panic and urging them to leave to get in her car. She took them all straight home and soon as she was through the front door of her house her parents were both hugging her. Minutes later she saw the news, and everyone was terrified that there was going to be another war.

She remembered the news footage of floating wreckage in space, and then the big speech that General Pepper gave after it was all over with.

She was only thirteen at the time, but seeing all the recruitment ads convinced her that she should enlist. Miyu felt an upswelling of patriotic spirit but was too young to fly in the CDF. Instead, she spent a lot of her free time reading up on the Lylat War, trying to understand who their enemy was. She read through so many books and articles about the war that she was one of the few people her age that had an encyclopedic knowledge of the war. Her classmates thought she was weird, and her parents were afraid she’d actually join the military.

A few years later, when the Cornerian Civil War broke out, Miyu was confused. She so desperately wanted to enlist and fight, but when the Empire stopped being the enemy and instead everyone was fighting each other, she didn’t know who she was supposed to side with! When it became common knowledge that the Star Fox Team had sided with General Pepper’s faction, Miyu felt confident that was who she should support, but she’d still been too young to enlist.

She was stuck at home, watching the news as Cornerian fleets fought one another all across the System. If the news wasn’t feeding them reports about suspected Imperial traps and traitors, they were feeding them propaganda from both sides of the War. Everyone was afraid, and no one knew who the real enemy was. But Miyu felt safe in assuming that whoever Fox McCloud was fighting was the bad guys. He’d already fought them twice and was right both times, she didn’t think he’d make a mistake this big.

And in the end, he did end up being right, and the only reason Miyu and her family were still alive was because he’d personally recorded a broadcast that told everyone to start fleeing major cities. He was pleading with everyone to listen to him and to trust him, because they were all in danger, that it was life or death. He was telling everyone that Admiral Shears, the leader of the opposing faction, was going to start attacking major cities to end the war through sheer brutality.

18.7 million people did not listen, and six hours later they all died. Only a third were military personnel, the rest were civilians that thought they were safe. Miyu’s family had listened to Fox McCloud’s broadcast, and packed everything that could fit in their vehicles and fled to the countryside as far from the cities as they could.

Admiral Shears attacked Corneria City first, Miyu’s birthplace. The only surviving footage of the attack was from a CCTV camera that happened to be aimed in the right direction. A single bright green light appeared in the sky above the City, and then it rapidly expanded to form a ring of light. It was no different than the gate rings starships used to warp across the Lylat System.

Except this gate could be remoted formed at great distances from its source, and at any location you desired. Technology that Emperor Andross had started developing in anticipation of holding the galaxy hostage, now completed by the hands of Admiral Shear’s most fanatical scientists.

A single metallic sphere emerged from the gate and fell towards the City, and then it detonated, turning half the city into a smoldering crater.

Admiral Shears hit six more cities before he died, allegedly by the hands of Fox McCloud himself. At least, that’s the version of events everyone had been told, and Miyu chose to believe it.

Some of Miyu’s friends and their families didn’t listen to the warning, and their names were now etched into a memorial at the sight of ground zero alongside millions of others. What used to be the greatest city on Corneria had been knocked into the stone age through nuclear Armageddon with no hope for recovery for decades to come.

When Miyu finally turned eighteen, she enlisted, and she fought like hell to score the highest marks and begged and pleaded to be put on the list to get sent over to the Great Fox for special training. She eventually got what she wanted, through sheer force of will, and she’d made a great impression. After she graduated from the Academy, earning her own wings to fly, she only had to wait.

Today, she was a member of the Team, having taken Peppy Hare’s spot now that he’d been gone for more than a year. It felt weird and unnatural finally getting what she wanted out of life, since she’d spent so much of it being told ‘no’, and especially since it came at the price of losing a hero like Peppy Hare.

Miyu sat a box down on the table in her quarters. The contents of the box were a mix of personal items and physical mail she’d received while the Great Fox had been out with the cadets. She’d been a member of the Star Fox Team for six months now, and at the age of 25 she finally felt like she might just have made it!

She spun around her quarters, the room that was exclusively hers to use and decorate as she saw fit. When she’d first moved in, it had been a storage closet for several years. Originally, Krystal McCloud had used this room when she first joined the Star Fox Team after the Saurian Incident, but once her relationship with the Captain got off the ground she moved out and into his quarters on Deck 01. After the boxes and clutter had been moved out and Miyu could move it, the room still didn’t feel lived in. It was very sterile and lifeless and even after six months of her using it she still felt like a visitor. It even had that lingering smell that hotels often did.

Stale with side of clean.

She had another box down in the hangar bay to grab, so she left her quarters and saw that Slippy’s door was open, his room being across the hall from her own.

Miyu poked her head in, finding the frog sitting at his desk. His quarters were a cluttered mess of tools and electronic equipment. It looked like the spitting image of a workshop and IT department at the same time.

“Slippy, I’m about to grab another box of mine from the hangar, do you need me to get anything for you while I’m down?” She asked him.

“Nope, but thank you for asking, Miyu.” He told her, turning briefly to greet her.

“Yes, sir!” She replied with a smile before stepping away from his door to walk down the hall.

She had to pass by two other doors before reaching the elevators.

Falco’s door was shut, but the noise of music playing loudly was coming from the other side. He was never one to ask for help or agree to accept it, so she didn’t bother disturbing him. The door across from his, and right next to her own, had been Peppy’s. She’d never been in there before, but his name was still on the door label. In the six months since she’d joined no one seemed motivated to do anything with his old room.

Sometimes the Captain would come down and go inside. He’d stay in there a while before he came back out, and sometimes Krystal would join him. Miyu felt everyone was still mourning his loss. It was an uncomfortable subject to bring up, but the Great Fox’s android assistant, ROB, had told her that Peppy’s health had been in a steady decline since the Saurian Incident. He’d lived a difficult life filled with a lot of violence and exposure to danger. It took its toll and he passed away at the age of 60.

The lynx kept walking, passing through the bulkhead door and into the large open space that acted as an intersection between the two elevators on the starboard and port sides, and the crew quarters on the bow and stern sides. She stepped into the port elevator and pressed the button to drop her down one deck. The doors shut with a hiss then she felt her breakfast stir in her stomach as the elevator quickly dropped one deck before stopping on a dime.

The doors hissed open again and she emerged into the hangar bay. This was the largest section of the ship, taking up the entirety of Deck 04, and at least a quarter of every other deck above it.

Miyu left the elevators behind; walking past the gantries for their four Arwings, one of which was now hers. With Peppy gone, Slippy had started spending more time on the Great Fox as engineer and working on both maintaining the Great Fox and its complement of vehicles, but also acting as support during missions. Now that Miyu was on the Team, they could leave Slippy in his support role while Miyu took over as pilot.

At the stern of the ship was the equipment elevator, which was currently lowered to Deck 04 and fully laden with more than a dozen plastic cargo crates of supplies.

Her Captain, Fox McCloud, and his wife Krystal, his second in command, were milling about the boxes looking through them. The Captain had a digital pad in his hand, and it looked like he was taking stock. His wife looked up and over at her, smiling, then called out to the Captain that the box she was looking through had four months’ worth of toiletries.

“Sir, is there anything I can take with me back to Deck 03?” Miyu asked him as she stepped onto the elevator pad.

He looked up at her, his face a lot older than hers, but he was still only in his late thirties.

“Can you carry all that?” He gestured with his pad to the entire port side of the elevator. It was at least eight crates of supplies.

“No, sir, not without the forklift.” She replied, her tone and manner very formal out of habit from the Academy. “Do you want me to grab it? I think it’s still on Deck 02.”

The forklift was the only thing they had on the ship that could carry this much cargo up and down the decks of the Great Fox. That’s one of the reasons why the intersections between the elevators were so large, and the elevators themselves were so spacious. They needed the room to move a small forklift with crates of supplies and down all four decks of the ship.

“Miyu, he’s joking.” Krystal laughed.

“I mean, she can still get the forklift if she’s volunteering.” He laughed in reply, shaking his head down at the digital pad as he tapped it with his finger.

“Yes, sir! I will!” She eagerly replied.

She pivoted on her foot and began to jog back to the elevators, leaving behind the box she’d come down for now had a new job to do. She could grab it when she got back with the forklift. Miyu entered the elevator and pressed the button for Deck 02 and zipped upwards. The doors hissed open, and she found the forklift parked in the middle of the mess hall where they’d unloaded their food supplies. Two of the plastic polished crates were still sitting on the pallet, so she quickly lifted them and moved them over to the nearby counters, and then mounted the forklift and began to drive it back to the elevator.

Miyu was glad she spent so much time playing sports and staying in excellent shape. Her joining the military only added to her physical fitness. Being so in shape was making her new life in the service, and on board the Great Fox, so much easier. During times like these when they were transporting supplies all over the ship, a good set of muscles was helpful to have. She was glad that she was impressing everyone with how useful she was as a member of the Team.

She didn’t want to come off as a burden after having tried so hard to train with them and then to join their legendary Team. She’d sent an awful lot of letters to superior officers and did as much arm twisting as she legally could without getting herself kicked out of the Academy. It wasn’t without effort that she made it this far.

And she felt very blessed to be here! She was going to work as hard as she could and she was determined to make sure everyone else knew it, too.

The lynx drove the forklift into the elevator she’d used to ascend, and then pressed the wireless controls on the forklift to tell the elevator she wanted to return to Deck 04. When the door hissed open again, she drove out and between the line of Arwings to where the Captain and his wife were still working.

She parked and hopped off the forklift and immediately asked what they wanted to move and where.

The Captain started pointing to individual crates and telling her that they were all to go to Deck 03. As he started reciting each one, she started grabbing and lifting with Krystal explaining to her where each crate needed to go as she took them. Half the crates were easily carried, being only filled with bathroom supplies, but the other four were much heavier. The Captain helped her lift the last two as they were filled with supplies for the Deck 03 Armory.

When everything was loaded onto the forklift she asked if there was anything else she needed to do before driving the crates to the elevator, and Krystal reminded her that she needed to grab her box. She’d almost forgotten! Miyu grabbed the small box and put it on the stack with the others and then drove off with the forklift to make her way back up to Deck 03. She arrived, then stopped the forklift to quickly take her one box back to her room before hopping back on the forklift and carrying on towards the other end of the deck.

She parked the forklift in the hallway between the cadet quarters and the bathrooms. This side of Deck 03 is where she’d lived for nearly a month a few years ago when she first stepped foot on the Great Fox. She’d been in the starboard side bunks, which was ‘Shift A’. Two shifts of cadets rotated on and off duty to simulate real life on a warship. Next to that room was the armory. She quickly opened the door to the armory with the secret passcode everyone on the crew was taught to memorize.

The door swished open, and she huffed and puffed quickly while rubbing her hands together. She grabbed the first of the two very heavy boxes and quickly hoisted it up and waddle-walked it into the armory before sitting it carefully down on the floor. Then she did the same with the other one. She popped one of them open, saw that it was fresh magazines and clips, some sidearms, a few bullet boxes. She checked the other box and saw it was more bullet boxes and several different kinds of explosives. She whistled at the assortment before closing both crates and leaving the armory, locking the door shut behind her, as per protocol.

With six crates left on the pallet she began to move them one by one to their destinations. Three went to the men’s bathroom, and one went to the women’s, since the former saw a lot more action than the latter. The last two crates on the pallet were for the storage closet on the opposite side of the hall across from the armory. That door didn’t need a passcode, so she just opened the door with the push of a button, then carried the two crates inside. When she checked what was in them, she saw it was an assortment of household items, cleaning supplies, tissues, disposable items, etc.

With everything in its proper place, she mounted the forklift again and carefully backed it up into the intersection. As she looked over her shoulder to see where she was going, she saw Falco emerge from his room down the opposite hall.

“What’d you bring up?” He asked as he took one step into the intersection, watching her reverse the now empty forklift towards one of the elevators.

“Four crates of bathroom supplies, two crates for the storage closet, and two crates in the armory, Sir.” She told him, stopping the forklift to address him properly.

“Cool, I’ll go check out what toys he bought.” He replied and started walking around the forklift toward the other hall.

“It’s mostly small arms and explosives, Sir.” She told him.

“Even better!” He replied and carried on past her.

When his back was to her, she resumed backing up the forklift into the elevator and used the remote to move her back down to Deck 04. When she started driving back towards the equipment elevator Captain McCloud and his wife were waiting for her.

“Thank you, Miyu. Let’s get the rest of this loaded onto the pallet and brought up to Deck 02.” He told her, directing himself right at her.

“Yes, Sir!” She quickly agreed, hopping off the forklift and rushing to the first crate of many.

After she started carrying the first crate, the Captain and Krystal both stepped in to help until a total of eleven crates were stacked carefully on the pallet.

“Fox, I can help her with the rest if you need to head back to the Bridge.” Krystal told him.

“Sure, I’ll be there till mess I think.” He replied, waving his digital pad in the air as he walked over to the narrow control panel near the edge of the equipment elevator.

Krystal hurried over to the forklift and put her foot on the small vehicle’s sidestep, lifting herself up with a hand on the roll cage. She told Miyu to start driving and the lynx started the forklift. Once they were clear, the Captain started lifting the equipment elevator up to Deck 01, which was its default position while in port. The hangar bay on Deck 01 had a bulkhead door that gave you access to the rest of the Deck.

“Thank you for being so helpful today, Miyu.” Krystal told her, and Miyu smiled.

“Yes, ma’am! Just trying my best.” Miyu told her.

“And everyone on board appreciates it. You work yourself harder than most of the boys do.” The other woman replied.

Miyu didn’t know what to say, as she didn’t want to say anything bad about her new crewmates. She thought Slippy worked really hard, but Falco only seemed to work when he sat in an Arwing. Maybe he was upstairs sorting the armory out, but she wouldn’t know until someone told her, or she checked it herself.

“Did Slippy or Falco take charge of what you brought up to Deck 03?” Krystal asked her.

“Slippy was in his room working on something, ma’am, but while I was leaving to head back down Falco said he was going to the Armory.” She replied.

“He’s probably doing more playing than working. We’ll have to get it sorted tomorrow.” Krystal replied.

“Yes, ma’am.” Miyu answered.

Miyu reached the elevator, then carefully drove it inside. Krystal hopped off and thumbed the button on the wall to tell the elevator to go up to Deck 02. When they reached their destination, the other woman exited first and then helped guide Miyu backwards into the intersection, then told her to just park it there.

With Krystal’s help, she began to help unload the forklift to carry crates into the mess hall. Most of the crates contained food items, but there were also some medical supplies. Miyu was told to go ahead and start unloading the crates of food items to be sorted into the pantries, and as the lynx did that Krystal took the medical supplies into the Med Bay. The two women did the labor of putting everything where it belonged, Krystal finishing first in Medical before coming into the kitchen to start helping sort the Mess.

By the time they were done, the Captain was radioing Krystal from the Bridge and asking for an update on their supplies. While Krystal gave him his update, Miyu started carrying the now emptied crates back to the forklift so that they could be returned to Deck 04. They didn’t need to hang onto the crates so they would get returned to the Corneria Supply Exchange, which is where they bought all their supplies from. They recycled all their crates for free.

“Miyu, when you’re done bringing the empty crates to Deck 04, leave the forklift there and meet me on Deck 03.” Krystal then told her.

“Yes, ma’am!” She replied, and then began to ride the forklift into the elevator to head back down.

She drove to the end of the hangar bay, and unloaded all the crates off the pallet and into a neat stack next to the where the equipment elevator would be resting once it was lowered back down again.

Leaving the forklift where it was parked, she jogged back to the elevators to head back up one level to Deck 03 and started searching for Krystal. She wasn’t around, still talking to the Captain on Deck 02 probably. She sighed, fidgeted briefly, then decided to walk over to the Armory to see if Falco was still there.

When she saw the door to the Armory was shut, she punched in the code and let the door swish open. The two crates she’d brought in earlier were in a state of disarray. Falco had clearly rummaged through its contents thoroughly but hadn’t put anything away.

She sighed again, and squatted down next to one crate on the floor and began to pick up as many magazines as she could carry in her arms to sort them into the storage racks where they belonged.

“Sorry I’m late. Fox was trying to explain that we would need to order even more supplies. He’s planning on having another twenty crates delivered tomorrow if you can believe it.” Krystal told her from the open doorway, stepping in to examine the state of the two crates.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s a lot of supplies.” She replied.

“We’re getting a last-minute change for the next cadet rotation. The CDF wants us to try to fit in a third shift, a full fifteen pilots. We’ll need more supplies to keep them covered for two weeks of training.” The other woman explained.

Miyu’s eyes widened at the news of there being three teams of cadets now.

“No one will have their own bunks if we do that.” She told the other woman.

“Was your bunk in the CDF really your own?” The vixen then asked her.

That stopped her, and as she thought about it, she ended up shaking her head in the negative. No one really had claim to any one bunk. That was just where you slept when someone else wasn’t sleeping on it. The only thing that was well and truly yours on a CDF warship was your personal locker.

“But it’s only for two weeks!” The vixen replied with a smile, then squatted down next to her and began to sort through the crates.

Together, they emptied both crates and put everything where it belonged, and then left the emptied crates outside the Armory door to deal with later.

Krystal gave the order to follow her to the storage room across the hall, and then they proceeded to sort through those supplies as well. With it being so much, it took a lot longer to organize everything. Krystal was very particular about everything being done right, making the point that soon they were going to have to maintain a crew of twenty people and this storage room was going to see a lot of traffic as supplies got used up.

Miyu agreed and was as meticulous as she could be with every bottle of shampoo, box of tissues, and container of pens. It was menial work, but she’d had done worse. Miyu still did worse. Everyone took their turn to scrub the toilets, though at least on the Great Fox the women took care of their side while the men handled their own. When she was still flying with the CDF, she had to wash everything no matter which sex used it.

“I’m sure its not as bad as your days in the CDF. They’d have brought in a lot more supplies than we do with ships as large as theirs.” Krystal mentioned to her once she finished organizing the rack of goods in front of her.

“Yes, ma’am! The Great Fox is easy by comparison. Having five people instead of a few hundred is a lot easier to keep sorted.” Miyu agreed, remembering the hectic days of her brief career in the CDF.

After she’d earned her wings, she didn’t immediately get to join the Star Fox Team. She’d busted hump in the Cornerian Defense Force serving like everyone else did, sharing bunks and bathrooms with hundreds of other pilots and ship personnel.

“Way more than that. Your old ship was a cruiser, I believe.” The vixen replied.

“Yes, ma’am. I served on the C.A.S. Concord. I don’t know the actual number for the crew, but it was many hundred.” She told the other woman.

The vixen stood up, having finishing stocking the bottom shelf with supplies. It looked like they’d managed to settle just about everything into place by the looks of the now emptied crates.

“Let’s get these crates back out into the hall, and then I think our R&R might actually begin. Until tomorrow, at least.” She told Miyu, who was now standing alongside her.

“Yes, ma’am!” She replied and grabbed one of the crates and together they moved everything back out into the hall.

Once that was done Miyu volunteered to take care of bringing the empty crates down to Deck 04, but Krystal told her not to, instead directing her to take advantage of what free time she has left before the new shipment of supplies arrives the following day. The vixen reminded her that she had her own boxes of personal items to sort through, which the lynx had nearly forgotten about in the hustle of trying to sort through everything else.

Miyu told her she’d do that, but as she left the other woman behind, she vowed to wake up early and start gathering crates the next morning so that they’d already be down on Deck 04 so they wouldn’t be in the way tomorrow when they have to move fresh crates up to the higher Decks.

Soon as she was back in her own quarters, she opened her two boxes and started going through her mail. Her parents had sent her a handwritten letter, which was their tradition since Miyu had enlisted. The boxes were items she requested from home now that she had a room of her own instead of a cramped personal locker. They even included a few things she hadn’t thought of.

It was nice unpacking little pieces of home and putting them into place around her quarters. Now she had real photographs, old keepsakes with sentimental value. She put her autographed baseball, safely sealed inside its clear plastic box, on her work desk. Now her room felt lived in, more than just a stale hotel room that was just a temporary residence for a passerby. The only thing that was missing were the posters from her old bedroom wall, but her parents hadn’t sent those to her, and she hadn’t dared to ask. She didn’t think it’d make a good impression in front of her new colleagues if they walked into her room only to see shirtless posters and cutouts of her favorite singer pinned on the wall.

She went over her belongings once more, really just hunting for something to do, until she finally gave up and sat down at the small table she had in the middle of the room. Life was easier in the military when you always had something to do. The cat had grown comfortable with a life set to a schedule.

Right now, she was fidgeting and antsy. The last six months had been busy every day with training. She hadn’t been given a formal assignment when they had cadets on board, so she just helped out whenever she was needed. When there weren’t cadets around, she manufactured jobs for herself to do. No one needed to tell her to do anything since she was already on the prowl for assignments. It didn’t matter what it was, it could have just been taking garbage to the compactor.

That had been her life in the CDF, and she was fast to realize that life on the Great Fox was a lot slower. Almost too slow! She wanted more to do!

Miyu stood back up again and made for the door, exiting her room, and leaving it behind her.

She started moving the empty crates from both Decks into the elevator and took them down to Deck 04 so they’d already be there in the morning. Krystal had told her to wait, but Miyu was just too impatient of a girl to sit idle when there was something she could be doing.

When it came time to eat, it was in the very early afternoon. Normally they ate at 12 on the dot, but with the ship docked for R&R the Captain decided to roll the schedule back by two hours to let everyone sleep in and have some extra time in the evenings. Not that there was a curfew for anyone on board, but it seemed like he was going through the formality of declaring it.

Miyu arrived early, having run out of things to do on the ship, and began to assist ROB in making lunch. The android hadn’t been built to cook food, but he was good at being given a schedule and a recipe. She honestly didn’t appreciate his cooking very much, since it lacked that… Organic touch that a real chef would have. Even military cooks learned to make field rations taste good to boost troop morale.

ROB simply didn’t know how to deviate from a recipe, he was strictly by the numbers and performed his task to the letter, dotting every I and crossing every T. With Miyu in the kitchen, she tried to override him when she could, adjusting spices and seasonings and this and that until the stew he was cooking was something that resembled a real meal instead of something a factory machine would have spit out into a can with an expiration date on the bottom.

“You don’t have to help ROB cook, Miyu.” Falco was the second person to enter the mess hall.

“Yes, Sir, I know. I didn’t have anything else to do so I gave myself work.” She replied.

“You don’t have to keep calling me sir! I know I’m old, Miyu, Jeez. You’re like a cadet that wont leave.” He complaint, plopping himself down into a stool at one of their dining tables.

“I’m sorry!” She called back from the counter as she used the instant oven to zap balls of dough into puffy round dinner rolls.

She was trying to learn what everyone on the ship wanted from her. Her military habits got her into trouble with Falco most often, the bird hating being called sir. She wasn’t doing it on purpose!

Slippy didn’t seem to mind, he was always very warm towards her, especially since she was quick to help him with anything mechanical. He was older than her and she was physically fit. If there was something labor intensive that she knew she could do, then she’d do it for him wherever she was able.

The Captain liked it, but his wife seemed more like Falco. She didn’t enjoy being reminded of her age, too, Miyu had to guess. The lynx wasn’t sure how old anyone was actually, she just knew she was now the youngest person on the Team.

But she had a pretty good idea that Krystal was the second youngest. She looked like it, at least. Apparently, she’d still been a teenager when the Saurian Incident happened. So, a couple of years older than Miyu at least, and she was 25.

“Talking about age, are we?” A feminine voice sang as the vixen walked into the mess hall to join them.

“We certainly weren’t talking about yours!” Falco replied.

Miyu turned to look and found Krystal looking back at her with a smile. She smiled back, then returned to help ROB. She liked his wife, but there weren’t that many women in the Cornerian Defense Force. Miyu had always been a tomboy, and once she was in the Academy she learned to coast along with the boys. She could bump elbows and jockey with them as good as any man could.

Krystal was very feminine, not an ounce of tomboy about her, and honestly it was almost intimidating.

It was like looking into a mirror that told you everything you weren’t. When Miyu had a job to do, she could focus on her duty and not let her mind wander to silly shit, but when she was just pulling rolls out of the oven, she was left thinking about how outclassed she was.

Not only was she the least experience member of the Team but as the second woman to join the Star Fox Team she couldn’t even begin to hold a candle to the first.

“Let me help you.” The other woman had snuck up behind her, but fortunately Miyu didn’t jump from the surprise.

The fox began to assert her own feminine dominance in the kitchen and began to give ROB direct instruction on what he should be doing. The stew wasn’t done yet, as it was still brewing on the stovetop, but they were also going to have a few side dishes.

It was weird watching and listening to Krystal interact with ROB. Everyone on the ship spoke to ROB like he was a person, like he’d been born as a Robert, and everyone just called him ROB for short. Krystal talked to him like he was a machine. Miyu had to think about it, and realized she was doing the same. She didn’t know how to feel about that. Was she supposed to do one or the other? The CDF didn’t have android assistants on their ships…

“Miyu, go ahead and fix everyone’s drinks. Non-alcoholic please.” She told her, and Miyu quickly complied.

Voices from outside the mess hall revealed that the last two members were soon to appear. The Captain and Slippy each entered, talking about what was on the list of supplies to be delivered tomorrow.

“You should have ordered a few spare sparts for the Landmaster, just as padding.” Slippy was saying.

“Slip, I can’t justify ordering a combustion manifold when the cadets are only using their fighters. I can only pad so much.” The Captain replied.

“Yeah, yeah, but at least think about it next time before shooing off an order when they are giving you a blank check!” The frog replied, exasperated.

“Gentleman, please tell Miyu what you would like to drink.” Krystal spoke up from the opposite side of the kitchen.

Miyu was in the process of getting glasses out and filling them with ice from the dispenser.

The men all gave her a combination of orders. She made one glass of water for Slippy, an unsweetened tea for the Captain, and Falco wanted carbonated cherry from the dispenser. She made herself a glass of unsweet tea to copy the Captain’s taste, and then turned to ask Krystal what she would-

“You can make me a water, Miyu, but get some lemon juice for it from the dispenser.” The other woman beat her to the punch, and the lynx quickly started fixing her drink too.

For the second time someone snuck up behind her, the Captain himself was now at her side and grabbing two of the beverages to carry them back to the table. Slippy met him halfway and took the two glasses and walked them back to the table where Falco waited, then the Captain walked back and took two more.

Again, she was left feeling like she had nothing to do now that Krystal had arrived and began to take over the kitchen, and now the Captain was serving everyone their drinks. Her own unsweet tea sat on the counter in front of her, so she picked it up, feeling uncertain.

“Go ahead and sit, Miyu. You’ve helped so much today, go relax!” Krystal encouraged her, and reluctantly she complied.

She carried her glass to the table. Slippy was sitting next to Fox, and Falco across from him. She didn’t want to sit next to the Captain since that was where Krystal belonged, so she took a spot next to Falco.

“Krystal told me you and her got everything sorted out in the Armory?” the Captain asked her directly.

“Yes, Sir!” She snapped a reply, the fox lifting his eyebrows at her intensity like he often did.

The subtle smile he wore whenever she fell into military habit always made her feel even more embarrassed.

“Good!” He replied back with equal intensity, meanwhile Falco was muttering about how they needed to beat the cadet out of her. Slippy only chuckled.

She really felt so young at this table of veterans.

“Don’t be mean to her!” Krystal called from the kitchen, impressing Miyu with the keenness of her ears.

It never failed that Krystal McCloud would hear what someone said, no matter how quiet. It was like she learned to read lips through hull plating.

When lunch was finally served, they enjoyed a main course of hearty stew, which was accompanied by dinner rolls, string beans, and whole kernel corn. Between Miyu’s and Krystal’s meddling in the kitchen the meal turned out rather nice, but she would never get over how ROB would cut meat into perfect little cubes like they’d rolled off an assembly line.

The conversation over lunch mostly focused on what was going to come next after their R&R ended. With an extra squad of cadets on the ship it would be so much more hectic than normal. Miyu mostly just listened patiently while the rest had the real talk, but a few times Krystal volunteered Miyu to speak when it seemed appropriate. She was mostly just trying to get her to join in, to participate more, or at least Miyu thought so. The lynx just felt so outclassed more often than not.

After they all ate, no plans were made for a group dinner. Lunch in the mess hall was the only meal that everyone attended, like a tradition. Breakfast and dinner were optional and most of their meal rations were easy to make with their appliances. Hardly any real cooking involved. Just pop it in a machine and pull it out hot. Or cold, depending on what you wanted.

To Miyu it seemed like their R&R was every man for himself. Everyone on the ship had their own plans, though she was pretty sure Slippy was going to spend his working on the ship and the Arwings. That was his passion, and being docked at the Cornerian Orbital Space Port didn’t lend anyone much to do. It was a military port.

She’d overheard Falco saying he was going to walk the port when he had time, since they did have bars for off duty soldiers. That seemed to be his jam. Women, drinking, and drinking with women. That didn’t offend her any, since she’d shared quarters with plenty of CDF men, she knew what they were like. She only got offended if one of them didn’t know how to listen when she told them to grab someone else’s ass.

The Captain and his wife left to Deck 01, and with everyone else vanishing into their own directions Miyu decided to manufacture some more work for herself.

She crossed to the other side of the ship while ROB remained in the mess hall to handle dish duty. That was nice that she didn’t have to do it herself like she was on a Cornerian cruiser. Across from the mess hall and med bay was the crew lounge and gym. For a ship with such a small crew it had a huge area of recreation!

This was honestly her favorite part of the ship, it had everything! The crew lounge was a bar, theater, casino, and whatever else you wanted it to be. A great place to party, and it was where the cadets were taken to celebrate after they’d completed their training with the Team. 

Next to the lounge was the gym, and it had four flight simulators tucked into a corner, and a wide array of exercise equipment spread out everywhere else. If she didn’t have any real work to do, then she could at least burn off some of her energy with weights. She tossed her vest onto a nearby bench and started unzipping her uniform until she could pull her arms from the sleeves and let the top half fold down over her belt.

Despite being unzipped she still appeared decent to the eye, at least with her sports bra, since it was a thick durable item that gave her ample protection from gravity. She used to be embarrassed being around so many men with breasts as large as her own, but she had that beaten out of her quick in the Academy. Anything anyone had a hang up over had it beaten out of them until you were working like a well oil part in a machine of war. In no time at all she stopped worrying about people looking at her tits and instead began to hate how they would get in her way when she was learning how to perform routine maintenance in her fighter craft, or how they would disqualify her from performing a proper push up.

She tied her sleeves into a knot in front of her to keep them from flopping, then picked a bench to start doing reps. Without a spotter she decided to use less weight on the bar, and then took a position on her back and began doing reps. She figured she could kill time running herself through a few reps of several different exercises until she was too worn out to continue, then she could crash into bed and listen to music until she fell asleep.

Miyu was about to count to forty with the bar over her chest when the entry door slid open with a hiss. She looked over and saw the Captain enter. She counted to forty with her next lift and set the bar down on the rack above and behind her head before sitting herself up.

Habit hit her, and she popped a salute before the Captain waved his hand dismissively.

“We’re off duty!” He reminded her, and she quickly put her hand down.

“I’m sorry.” She replied, almost calling her sir, but thinking better of it.

“Not a big deal, you’re still learning to take your boots off is all.” He told her warmly. “Krystal suggested I burn off some steam, guess you had the same idea?”

Thinking about it, he was right. That’s exactly what she had in mind, though she knew the Captain was going through a lot more stress than she was. All she was worried about was not having enough work to do, the Captain was worried about having too much work to do for being only one man. She didn’t envy the job her commanding officers often had. Her mental library of military facts had taught her how much stress command positions put on an officer when so much depended on your ability to make good decisions. She knew the Captain had had to make difficult decisions.

“Do you need a spotter?” He asked her, gesturing to the fact she was without anyone to watch her bench.

“Oh, no, sir, I wasn’t putting much weight on it.” She replied, realizing too little, too late that she’d called him sir again.

“How much you normally do? I’ll spot you so you can do a few.” He told her, ignoring her slip up.

She told him how much, and before she could do it herself, he was already grabbing a pair of plates and moving behind the bench to slide them into place on the bar.

When he told her to lay back and get to it, she obeyed her Captain. They were off duty, but in his presence, she had no other option. Instinct was telling her to do whatever this man told her to do, and her tomboyish spirit was flailing in the wind next to the hero of the Lylat system. She didn’t like being alone with him.

It was bad enough that she felt so out of place on the ship, or that she was outclassed by the only other woman on the ship. Fox McCloud wasn’t just some normal officer she’d cross paths with, or even serve under on a Cornerian Defense Force cruiser. He was THE officer! And he was married, so that girlish part of her that swooned after men like the ones on her favorite wall posters made her conscience ache.

He made her feel like a teenager again, her emotions a messed-up mix of shame, arousal, guilt, angst. Melodrama of the heart and she was so much of a tomboy that she hated feeling like this.

Her back hit the bench and she reached up to grab the bar and the older man lightly held his own hands under it at the same time. She lifted the bar, ignored the subtle but unmistakable bulge in his uniform, and began to do her first rep with a proper set of weights.

After having already counted to forty with lighter weights, she exhaled with her next push, telling him that she wasn’t planning on doing very many of these. He countered her by telling her to show him how many she could do.

She of course obeyed and having reset her count back to 0, she didn’t stop until she counted to fifty. Having carried so many crates earlier in the day and now having warmed up with the lighter bar, she was at her limit. She sat the bar back down and needed to rest her arms.

“Ok, my turn.” He told her, gesturing for her to hop up.

She hopped up as instructed while the captain pulled off his jacket and began to tug his shirt over his head. The lynx had to tilt her gaze away out of respect for him and his wife. She’d seen him without a shirt plenty of times but with the two of them alone in the gym it felt wrong to look.

The sound of metal clacking drew her attention, and her eyes, back to the fox.

He’d started changing the weights on the bar until they were swapped out with a heavier set. She didn’t know how many reps he intended to do, but she was feeling quite excited at the prospect of watching him bench so much weight, even though she shouldn’t be feeling it at all!

The Captain laid himself down on the bench and she assumed her position behind the bar. He wiggled himself up the bench and reached up to lift the bar from the rack. When he started his first rep, she reached out with her hands and lightly held her fingers beneath the bar as it quickly rose and fell with every rep.

She listened to his breathing as he pumped the bar, enjoying the view of the older man’s fit and toned body. The excuse of being his spotter was good enough to let her casually eye him without it looking like she was a sleazy gawker. It also helped that he had his eyes shut with concentration as he did his reps, his lips silently mouthing out the number of each repetition.

He looked really good, much better than Falco by leagues. She wasn’t particularly fond of avians, and Falco’s personality wasn’t really one she’d ever find attractive. He had too many personal flaws, even if she admired his talent and experience with an Arwing.

After a while of watching him, he matched her in reps and then broke her score until he finally decided to quit and dropped the bar onto the rack with little assistance from her.

“That’s a lot better.” He said aloud, almost to no one in particular.

He sat up stretched his arms out, Miyu watching the muscles under his fur flex as he went through the motions. She bit herself on the side of her tongue, reminding herself that he was married, and her Captain.

“I feel like I hardly got anything done today, and it’s stressing me out even though the computer says everything is all green.” He complained, swinging his leg over the bench to rise to his feet.

“You’ve been busy!” She said in his defense. “You’re running a tight ship, Sir.”

“I’m going to pinch your lips shut.” He looked at her with his hand now lifted, his thumb and index finger making a pinching gesture at her face.

He wore a smile, but she knew she’d just called him sir again.

“I just think you’re working very hard, is all. You could probably let others help, maybe Krystal?” She suggested.

“Half of what she does on this ship is what I used to do. If I gave her anything else, I might as well crown her Captain. I’m going jogging.” He replied, now walking over to the far side of the room where a set of treadmills sat in a row by the wall.

As she watched him walk away, she looked around the room at all the exercise equipment. Miyu flexed her arms and figured that maybe working her legs with a run would be an honest next step. Eyeing up her Captain’s backside wasn’t bad either, setting her guilt to the side for a moment as she quickly hurried to catch up to him.

“You don’t have to do exactly as I do.” He told her, stepping onto one of the machines before activating the control panel at the front.

The treadmill began to roll and with it the Captain began to walk and keep pace until the machine had reached the speed, he’d set it to, which was a nice jogging pace.

“Before I joined the Star Fox Team, I always had other people to train with. I got accustomed to socializing, but on the Great Fox I’m the only one that makes good use of the gym.” She admitted.

She stepped onto her own treadmill, one right next to the Captain’s own. She activated it and set her pace to match his and began to walk until she was at a jogger’s pace.

“Everyone makes their way down here at least once every day or two, except for Slippy. You’re just too wound up tight on that military schedule. If you relaxed a little and let yourself be more flexible, you could come down here whenever someone else is. Or just ask us.” He told her.

As she jogged in place on the rolling rubber, she listened and let the Captain’s word sink in. She knew she was being stubborn with her habits. She’d eaten, breathed, and slept the military service for so long that now that she was in a business casual environment, she was the odd one out, a real obvious outsider that stuck out too much.

“It’s hard to break tradition.” She replied, her arms pumping forwards and back with her jog, same as the Captain’s.

So hard, in fact, that without her even thinking about it she’d synced her own footsteps with his, like she was marching with her former servicemen and women. Tap, tap, tap, their feet were hitting the rubber in a steady rhythm.

“Yeah. I’ve been there. You’ll get used to it here. You’ve done good so far.” He told her.

She nodded in reply, breathing quietly through her mouth as she kept up with him. Miyu didn’t know how long he planned on running, but at a jogging pace she knew she could keep this up for a good long while. Even though the Academy was all about space and sky, they still put every cadet through basic training like the Army did.

“Krystal is under the impression that I intimidate you. Is that true?” He continued, turning his head to give her a side eye.

“No, sir! You don’t intimidate me. I’m just adjusting still.” She replied quickly, now embarrassed.

He did intimidate her, but she didn’t want him to think it was any fault of his. It was all just her being a big stupid fish out of water.

“Well, I hope you can adjust quick. Turn your speed up to eight.” He told her as his own hand reached out to his own panel to turn the setting up.

She obediently complied, reaching out and pressing the button that would increase the speed of the treadmill to its eighth setting. The rubber beneath her feet quickly sped up and now she and the Captain were both at a full run. Miyu had to pump her arms harder and adjust her pace as her footfalls fell into rhythm alongside the Captain’s.

“How long can you keep this pace up?” He asked her, panting as he ran next to her.

She quickly did the mental math, came up with a rough estimate, and then told him.

“Oh, that’s pretty good! You might even be able to compete with my wife with that kind of endurance.” He told her.

Miyu was panting, too, and nodded silently to save herself some breath.

As she ran, arms swinging at her sides, her sports bra was doing its damnedest to hold her girls in place. She’d long since dismissed the awkwardness of having large breasts in the military, but running right next to the Captain was awakening sensations of self-consciousness she hadn’t felt in well over a year or more. She’d thought that had been beaten out of her. Guess not!

The Captain looked over at her, then smiled.

He reached out to the panel again and pressed the button, and his treadmill sped up again to its highest setting. The fox was now running at a sprint, and without being told to, she hit her own button and felt the rubber speed up beneath her feet. She fell into a hard sprint right behind him, her arms pumping, her feet slapping the rubber hard as she tried to ‘catch up’ to him and match his rhythm.

The Captain looked back over at her, then started laughing. She was confused. A few moments later he slapped the dial.

“Ok! Ok, I’m done.” He finished his laughter and started pushing the button to drop the speed down.

She followed after him until they both came to a stop.

“Are you trying to be childish on purpose?” A woman’s voice came from behind them both.

It spooked Miyu with how sudden it had appeared behind them, but the Captain was unphased and simply turned to look at his wife who was standing a few feet away watching them both.

“Me? Never, I am a beacon of unrivaled maturity.” He replied, turning himself around completely so he could lean his back up against the treadmill’s control panel.

“You know he does this to me all the time when he could just ask like a normal person.” Krystal told Miyu, but the lynx was at a loss for what she meant.

“Ma’am?” She asked.

The vixen lifted both hands up to her chest and grabbed the bottom of her jumpsuit just beneath her breasts, then shook her bust twice.

“Yours are bigger than mine so I’m not surprised he had you running at the max setting.” She told him.

Miyu flushed pink under her fur, now realizing why the Captain had looked over at her and laughed. She hadn’t felt like this since she’d started basic training!

“I was testing to see if she could keep up with me! I’m not some pervert that shit tests the rookies like Falco.” He told his wife.

“You’re a great many things, Fox. Miyu, normally I’d be the one here putting up with him, so thank you for keeping him company.” She replied.

“She’s been a real sport, apart from her calling be sir after hours.” The Captain then told her.

Miyu felt herself awkwardly wither in the face of the two foxes. She was still reeling from embarrassment when Krystal looked at her, then at the Captain.

“Fox, you’ve got three work orders to finalize before midnight, don’t you?” The vixen said, looking back to her husband.

He sighed.

“Yeah.” He replied.

Krystal balled her fist and stuck out her thumb, then pointed it in the direction of the door. The Captain stepped off the treadmill and stepped close to his wife to plant a kiss on her cheek before passing her by to make for the door.

“Thanks for the comradery, Miyu! You’re doing great!” He said as he left, and Miyu stifled the urge to lift her hand in salute.

“You’re welcome!” She replied.

“Knowing him he probably had you spot him before he took the treadmill?” Krystal asked once her husband had gone.

“Yes, ma’am, he did.” She replied, to which the vixen nodded.

“You’re probably getting tuckered out, so maybe you can help spot me for a little while before you call it a day?” Krystal asked her with a smile.

“Oh, of course! I can.” She replied back.

Krystal led them back towards the benches, and as the vixen took her position Miyu was left playing the role of spotter once again. She watched the vixen discard her jacket, leaving the woman exposed almost as if she was naked. Krystal spent most of her time wearing a bodysuit, a form fitting outfit that looked shrink wrapped to her curvy body.

It was very sexy, very feminine, and reminded Miyu of everything she wasn’t. The lynx was hardly feminine enough to make something like that look good, or at least she didn’t think so. The only thing she had going for her was her boobs.

“You’re being too hard on yourself, you know?” Krystal suddenly asked, interrupting herself during one of her reps.

“Ma’am?” Miyu looked down to the other woman’s face, her fingers still lightly hovering under the weighted bar.

“I keep getting the impression that you’re beating yourself up. You shouldn’t.” The vixen told her, then continued with her reps.

Krystal wasn’t trying to lift very much weight, as she was probably the least physically formidable person on board the Great Fox. Her effort at the bench was more akin to good cardio than anything that would build much mass.

“I’m not trying to, ma’am.” Miyu replied, now reflecting on her own thoughts.

Of course, the woman below her couldn’t know what she was thinking, but in a way she was right. Miyu was beating herself up too much. The lynx was just grateful no one knew what was rattling around inside her head, because if they had then that’d both be embarrassing but also confidence shaking.

Miyu really worked hard, too hard for someone who liked to cling to self-doubt like it was some kind of collectable.

“Stop calling me ma’am, we’re off duty! We’re you doing that to Fox the entire time?” The vixen asked, finishing up her reps and letting her arms drop to her sides so she could let her hands rest over her tummy.

“I, I’m sorry. I just keep forgetting. I did keep calling him Sir.” Miyu admitted.

“Well, if you want him to tease you about your boobs that’s a very good way to do it. We’re already an informal bunch as it is, so we don’t expect you to act like your still in the barracks after we all clock out for the day.” Krystal told her, now sitting herself up.

“I know. I’ll try harder to relax from now on.” She told the other woman, hating that she was provoking this kind of response constantly, unable to battle her own habits.

“Don’t worry too much about it. You’re still adjusting, and we’re all going to be here to help you. Just be prepared for a lot teasing until you finally figure it out.” She told her with a bright smile, then Miyu watched as she picked up her jacket and slug it over her shoulders.

“Normally, I’d try to do more but I think today has been enough. I’m sure it’s the same for you. How about we head to the showers and call it a day?” She asked.

Miyu looked at her, then nodded.

“Sure, that sounds good.” She replied, surprised at such an offer since Krystal had never used the crew showers before.

Well, at least not in the time that Miyu had been a member of the Team. She and the Captain had their own bathroom in their quarters on Deck 01, and presumably that’s where the two of them did all their bathing. Must be nice having so much privacy when everyone else relied on the community facilities on Deck 03. This was especially true when they had cadets on board, as then it was a full house.

Not that it bothered Miyu since it was just another day in the military.

“We don’t normally get to spend much time alone with each other, so this would be a good chance to have some girl time. You probably never had much of that in the CDF, is that right?” Krystal asked her while the vixen led the way out of the room and towards the elevators.

“I don’t think so. There weren’t that many of us, and everything is co-ed. Nothing was sex segregated.” She replied.

“Is it against regulations for the girls to have some privacy?” Krystal asked.

Miyu frowned, more from her own thinking than anything directed at the vixen.

She couldn’t remember anyone trying to figure that out. The lynx couldn’t think of any reason why she would have. She came to enjoy everyone’s company regardless of their sex, and having a moment of just her and the small number of other women just didn’t appeal to her. Too much a tomboy, really. She tended to prefer male company if only because they tended to mirror her own interests. So long as she was tough enough to endure their elbowing and leg-pulling she was ‘one of the boys’ and was always accepted.

But girls, even one like Miyu, were built different from men. She could only hope she never came off as fragile or spoiled to the men she trained and served with.

“No, I don’t think so. Would be hard to manage with tight shifts, though.” Miyu finally gave an answer.

The vixen made a thoughtful noise, and continued to lead the way to Deck 03, the two women taking the elevator to drop one level and then they were on their way down the hall to the showers. Miyu didn’t spot either of the men on their way to the bathrooms, nor did she hear any activity on the men’s side.

“I think we might be alone.” Krystal remarked, already beginning to strip herself bare even though she’d yet to step foot into the women’s bath.

By the time they were past the toilet stalls the fox was naked, hanging her jacket and jumpsuit on one of the wall hooks while Miyu played catch up to join her, not that she was in any kind of hurry.

“It’s been a while since I had to use these. I hope the water still gets hot like they used to.” Krystal said aloud.

The noise of water turning on to begin pelting the faux tile floor began while Miyu was still hanging the last of her clothing up on the wall. Now naked herself, she turned to enter the showers. Her shyness at seeing the other woman naked was short lived. She’d seen so many men and women naked now due to her life of military service that such culture shocks were brief.

It didn’t help her jealously though. She was feeling it, watching the vixen from behind. Krystal was not standing under the running water, but rather a few steps away to wait for it to warm up. Her back was turned, but Miyu had the chance to admire the other woman’s feminine physique. She was a beautiful woman that activated Miyu’s own feelings of inadequacy. As much of a tomboy as she was, she still carried little embers of womanhood in her heart, things like children and family.

At least she had breasts most men would adore, though they’d have to tolerate a woman as tall as she was, and one that might have been more physically fit than he was.

Krystal took that moment to turn her head, looking the lynx in the eyes before glancing down at the cat’s body. Her earlier shyness returned when it became clear that the other woman was assessing her, and not even trying to hide it.

The vixen then smiled, then looked back up to the lynx’s face.

“You give off too much negativity for someone that looks the way you do.” She suddenly said.

“Ma- Krystal?” She replied, nearly walking into a blunder of calling her ma’am again.

“Don’t make me think I’m losing my touch. My intuition is telling me you’re not accustomed to being around pretty women. You’re attractive, too, you know.” She said with a smile, then turned back to the running water to stick out her hand to test it.

Miyu didn’t know what to say, and she was actually blushing because of it. Flustered even! She didn’t think she was attractive! She had a woman’s tits but the rest of her was a far cry from being conventional. Krystal on the other hand was more than conventional, she was the ideal!

The vixen stepped under the water, satisfied with its temperature, and began to soak herself through.

“Thank you, but I don’t know if I agree.” Miyu decided to reply, rejecting the compliment.

“And here I was hoping that you’d be like Falco.” The vixen replied with a chuckle.

“Like Falco?” Miyu asked incredulously, moving to another shower head and turning it on.

With Krystal’s shower already summoning hot water, the one Miyu had selected wasted no time in heating up as she tested its temperature with her hand.

“If you compliment Falco, he’ll lap it up and brag. I’d hope you’d do the same, but of course you’re like the other two. Can’t take a gift given without acting like its undeserved.” She replied.

“I’m just no good at it.” Miyu replied, ducking her head under the water and letting it soak through her fur.

“The military has a bad habit of pounding everyone flat. It’s ok to have a little bit of ego, you know. You’re a role model of feminine fitness and a talented pilot and soldier.” The vixen showered her with praise like the water now running over the lynx’s head.

She didn’t know how to feel. Yes, she agreed! Miyu worked hard to be as fit as she was. She worked hard for everything she had, and she’d earned it all! It just wasn’t in her nature to accept compliments, she guessed. For as long as she remembered she’d always get squeamish when people started talking her up. It might have had something to do with her parents, since they tended to brag about her, which in turn just embarrassed her.

Being teased for knowing so much about the Lylat War also didn’t help.

“That actually reminds me. When you were here training as a cadet Fox said he remembered you mentioning that you were well versed in military history.” The vixen suddenly said with perfect timing.

“Um, yes. Actually, I am. Well, it’s recent history but I’ve studied it on my own since I was little. I don’t remember mentioning it to him when I was here training though.” Miyu replied, turning her head away from the overhead faucet to look at the other woman.

The vixen had turned around at some point, her back now to the wall so she could wash her hair. Miyu got an eyeful of the blue vixen being soaked form head to toe in water, her fur slick with the flow, dripping sheets off her breasts and hips. She really was leagues above Miyu in every regard.

“That’s what he told me a while ago. I doubt he even remembers when you actually said it apart from the fact it came up. He’s got a selective memory. But he mentioned it to me, and it got me to doing my own thinking.” Krystal continued.

“About?” Miyu asked.

“I was thinking that you would be a good resource about military history. Since you said recent history then I assume you mean at least as far back as the Lylat War?” She asked in return.

“Yes, Ma-“ She began.

“Don’t say it.” The vixen had her eyes closed as she started rinsing her hair, but she wore a smile.

“Yes, I started reading about the Lylat War and then everything that came after. I’m not a college student about it, but I know more than most people I would think.” She told her.

The vixen replied with a hum, then pivoted around to face the wall again.

“Is there a reason you wanted to know?” Miyu dug a little.

The vixen smiled but didn’t look back in her direction and instead remained focused on her own hygiene. Miyu needed to do the same, and so she ducked her head back under the running water while reaching a hand into to the small cubby hole build into the wall. She grabbed a bottle of shampoo and began to do as Krystal had done, which was give herself a proper wash.

“I’m thinking of putting you to work with the cadets, but you’ll need to get with Fox first so the two of you can hash out what it is you actually know about military history. If you know all the things he wants you to know, then he can use you as an assistant on tactics and the like. Slippy isn’t any good at that, and Falco’s only marketable skill is piloting an Arwing as a solo fighter or as a wingman. He’s never had the knack for squadron command.” Krystal began to explain herself.

Miyu was immediately digging her fingers through her scalp, working the shampoo through her fur as she started working the gears in her head. Did she know enough about military history to be able to help the Captain like that? She might. The lynx could rattle off every major battle in the Lylat War and the Civil War to a point where she could write a paragraph or two for each, using what she remembered from her repeated readings of textbooks. She’d watched enough documentaries and web clips of the fighting to pull information from those, too.

Military history was, as other people had pointed out to her in the past, her autistic fixation.

She didn’t want to brag, but she was pretty confident that the Captain could give her an assignment to ‘teach’ and if she didn’t already know the content then she could find it by researching it online and apply it just as well. Miyu always did well in school, but history was where her passion shined, and with her military training and experience as a pilot she now knew how to digest military history in more practical ways.

“I can handle that, especially if he’s clear about what he’s expecting from me.” She replied after some thought.

“Good! He’s been putting a lot of thought into it himself lately, so I think he’ll do a good job of getting across what he wants.” Krystal replied.

“Do you know when he will have time to talk about it?” Miyu asked as the noise of water shut off behind her.

She turned her head and caught the view of the other woman shaking her arms and legs to sling water free of her blue fur before reaching up to use her hands to squeeze excess water from her hair. The vixen was very beautiful. Miyu turned back to look at the wall and ducked her head under the water to rinse out her own hair.

“No, he doesn’t, but I’ll make sure he talks to you tomorrow. If it gets put off for too long, he’ll start to stress out and he’s got enough of that to deal with as it is.” The vixen replied.

Miyu pulled her head out from under the stream and shook her head free of loose water before looking back towards Krystal, finding that the other woman was watching her as she let herself drip dry.

“I’ll be ready! I’ll do my best.” She replied.

Krystal smiled warmly at her.

“We know you will, now I’m going to finish drying off and head upstairs to my husband. You worked very hard today, Miyu. You’ve earned some beauty sleep.” The vixen told her with cheer, then departed the showers.

“Goodnight!” She shouted after her, watching the vixen make her exit past the toilet stalls before grabbing her clothing and a towel, quickly wrapping it around her middle before she could exit the women’s end of the bath.

As Krystal left Miyu remained. She didn’t need to scrub herself down, but she did reach out a hand to turn the heat up. The lynx let the hot water soak her to the bone, the warmth cutting through her fur and into her work weary muscles. Once the room was filled with steam, she turned the knob to shut off the flow, then began to shake herself dry.

She wondered if she was going to find herself showering with Krystal more often, if the vixen was sincerely interested in having some girl time. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would be less lonely to have company from time to time in the showers like she used to with the co-ed showers of the CDF.

Then Miyu had a sudden thought, and started giggling, a rare noise that sounded too boyish for her own liking.

There wasn’t anything stopping her from walking into the men’s side, but she didn’t think Falco and Slippy would appreciate the invasion. For each their own reason. It was something worth a laugh.

She grabbed a towel and did as Krystal had done, wrapping it around her middle so she could preserve some of her modesty, then yanked her clothes off the wall hook before walking across the ship to the other end of the deck where her room waited. Once she was back inside her quarters, she finished drying herself off before ditching her towel in the laundry hamper next to the door.

Her mind wandered away from the vixen and back towards her husband. The Captain was cooking up a new job for her, and she’d make sure she worked her ass off to do the best that she could! If they were willing to trust her with something as important as playing a role in training new cadets, then Miyu was going to prove to them that she was worthy of it.

Suddenly, An intrusive thought of the Captain in the gym slipped into her mind, and she smiled shyly to herself. Despite her embarrassment she wouldn’t mind spending more time with him, too. He looked good working out. She was full of intrusive thoughts today as she was reminded of the two of them running on the treadmills, the Captain watching her tits shake. Miyu just couldn’t stop grinning now that she was alone to her own thoughts without fear of what anyone else would think.

But she got a hold of herself, and refocused on the work she would soon be expected to do. She grabbed her digital tablet and laid down on the bed. She began using the Great Fox’s database and net connection to look up material she could use as a teaching aid, and to help refresh her own memory on anything she might be hazy on.

In the back of her mind, she kept being reminded that tomorrow was a busy day and she needed to get some beauty sleep, but she kept shaking it off in the pursuit of skimming through just one more digital textbook. As much as she tried to focus on her tablet, the thought of going to sleep was persistent, almost frustrating with how it distracted her from the information on her tablet.

Then suddenly she felt lightheaded, and her head hit the pillow with the thought of getting beauty sleep parked front and center, and just like that she was out like a light. Then the lights in her quarters turned themselves off.

The legendary ship, the Great Fox, was currently docked at the Cornerian Orbital Space Port, and its crew was preparing for their next scheduled R&R. They’d only just returned from two months of field training with two full squads of Cornerian Defense Force cadets. Five years ago, Captain Fox McCloud had signed an agreement with the Cornerian military to run a special training program which would have the Star Fox Team take on one to two squads of CDF cadets for up to two months at a time. This would line the Star Fox Team’s pockets with extra credit while giving the cadets some real field experience running sorties and training routines alongside industry veterans.

The Great Fox had only enough room in their hangar bay for a single squad of CDF fighters, so the two squads had been given rotating shifts to mimic the conditions of real combat. While one squad flew their sorties the other squad rested on deck and did whatever ship duties were assigned to them. Everyone on board was made to work to earn their keep with every member of the Star Fox taking on roles like a professor in a university.

Fox McCloud gave guidance and instruction on tactics and simulations. Falco Lombardi was the senior flight trainer that graded cadets on their performance in and around their fighters. Slippy Toad, as ship engineer, gave assignments pertaining to ship maintenance and assigned grades accordingly. Krystal McCloud rounded the team out as the ship’s only doctor. When she wasn’t giving instruction on emergency response and field medicine, she rendered assistance wherever the others needed it.

Inside the Deck 04 hangar bay, a crew of CDF airmen were unloading the fighters from the Great Fox to be sent for repair and refit. The two squads of cadets had already left the ship and were now en route back to the Academy where they would complete the rest of their training, and hopefully earn their wings.

Very soon, the ship would be back to square one with only the Star Fox Team in attendance: Fox McCloud, his wife Krystal, Falco Lombardi, Slippy Toad, and lastly the new face of Miyu Lynx.

With Peppy Hare’s passing there was an opening for another permanent member of the Team, and the young lynx had been granted the opportunity of a lifetime to join the famous crew of the Great Fox. She’d once served on this same ship as a cadet, having spent an entire month as a trainee under their tutelage.

The Lylat War broke out when she was still a little girl, having only been five years old at the time. She hardly had any real memories of those days. The childhood memory remembered most clearly was the huge incident on the planet Sauria, which happened several years after the Lylat War had ended. The backwater jungle planet had turned into a war zone, and that had captivated the Lylat System so much that even to this day people would talk about what they were doing when they heard the news of it, just like they did when asked about what they were doing when the War had started.

For Miyu, she remembered it was a Saturday and she was at the park playing with some of her friends from school. Her best friend’s mother had taken them to the park and then suddenly she was in a full panic and urging them to leave to get in her car. She took them all straight home and soon as she was through the front door of her house her parents were both hugging her. Minutes later she saw the news, and everyone was terrified that there was going to be another war.

She remembered the news footage of floating wreckage in space, and then the big speech that General Pepper gave after it was all over with.

She was only thirteen at the time, but seeing all the recruitment ads convinced her that she should enlist. Miyu felt an upswelling of patriotic spirit but was too young to fly in the CDF. Instead, she spent a lot of her free time reading up on the Lylat War, trying to understand who their enemy was. She read through so many books and articles about the war that she was one of the few people her age that had an encyclopedic knowledge of the war. Her classmates thought she was weird, and her parents were afraid she’d actually join the military.

A few years later, when the Cornerian Civil War broke out, Miyu was confused. She so desperately wanted to enlist and fight, but when the Empire stopped being the enemy and instead everyone was fighting each other, she didn’t know who she was supposed to side with! When it became common knowledge that the Star Fox Team had sided with General Pepper’s faction, Miyu felt confident that was who she should support, but she’d still been too young to enlist.

She was stuck at home, watching the news as Cornerian fleets fought one another all across the System. If the news wasn’t feeding them reports about suspected Imperial traps and traitors, they were feeding them propaganda from both sides of the War. Everyone was afraid, and no one knew who the real enemy was. But Miyu felt safe in assuming that whoever Fox McCloud was fighting was the bad guys. He’d already fought them twice and was right both times, she didn’t think he’d make a mistake this big.

And in the end, he did end up being right, and the only reason Miyu and her family were still alive was because he’d personally recorded a broadcast that told everyone to start fleeing major cities. He was pleading with everyone to listen to him and to trust him, because they were all in danger, that it was life or death. He was telling everyone that Admiral Shears, the leader of the opposing faction, was going to start attacking major cities to end the war through sheer brutality.

18.7 million people did not listen, and six hours later they all died. Only a third were military personnel, the rest were civilians that thought they were safe. Miyu’s family had listened to Fox McCloud’s broadcast, and packed everything that could fit in their vehicles and fled to the countryside as far from the cities as they could.

Admiral Shears attacked Corneria City first, Miyu’s birthplace. The only surviving footage of the attack was from a CCTV camera that happened to be aimed in the right direction. A single bright green light appeared in the sky above the City, and then it rapidly expanded to form a ring of light. It was no different than the gate rings starships used to warp across the Lylat System.

Except this gate could be remoted formed at great distances from its source, and at any location you desired. Technology that Emperor Andross had started developing in anticipation of holding the galaxy hostage, now completed by the hands of Admiral Shear’s most fanatical scientists.

A single metallic sphere emerged from the gate and fell towards the City, and then it detonated, turning half the city into a smoldering crater.

Admiral Shears hit six more cities before he died, allegedly by the hands of Fox McCloud himself. At least, that’s the version of events everyone had been told, and Miyu chose to believe it.

Some of Miyu’s friends and their families didn’t listen to the warning, and their names were now etched into a memorial at the sight of ground zero alongside millions of others. What used to be the greatest city on Corneria had been knocked into the stone age through nuclear Armageddon with no hope for recovery for decades to come.

When Miyu finally turned eighteen, she enlisted, and she fought like hell to score the highest marks and begged and pleaded to be put on the list to get sent over to the Great Fox for special training. She eventually got what she wanted, through sheer force of will, and she’d made a great impression. After she graduated from the Academy, earning her own wings to fly, she only had to wait.

Today, she was a member of the Team, having taken Peppy Hare’s spot now that he’d been gone for more than a year. It felt weird and unnatural finally getting what she wanted out of life, since she’d spent so much of it being told ‘no’, and especially since it came at the price of losing a hero like Peppy Hare.

Miyu sat a box down on the table in her quarters. The contents of the box were a mix of personal items and physical mail she’d received while the Great Fox had been out with the cadets. She’d been a member of the Star Fox Team for six months now, and at the age of 25 she finally felt like she might just have made it!

She spun around her quarters, the room that was exclusively hers to use and decorate as she saw fit. When she’d first moved in, it had been a storage closet for several years. Originally, Krystal McCloud had used this room when she first joined the Star Fox Team after the Saurian Incident, but once her relationship with the Captain got off the ground she moved out and into his quarters on Deck 01. After the boxes and clutter had been moved out and Miyu could move it, the room still didn’t feel lived in. It was very sterile and lifeless and even after six months of her using it she still felt like a visitor. It even had that lingering smell that hotels often did.

Stale with side of clean.

She had another box down in the hangar bay to grab, so she left her quarters and saw that Slippy’s door was open, his room being across the hall from her own.

Miyu poked her head in, finding the frog sitting at his desk. His quarters were a cluttered mess of tools and electronic equipment. It looked like the spitting image of a workshop and IT department at the same time.

“Slippy, I’m about to grab another box of mine from the hangar, do you need me to get anything for you while I’m down?” She asked him.

“Nope, but thank you for asking, Miyu.” He told her, turning briefly to greet her.

“Yes, sir!” She replied with a smile before stepping away from his door to walk down the hall.

She had to pass by two other doors before reaching the elevators.

Falco’s door was shut, but the noise of music playing loudly was coming from the other side. He was never one to ask for help or agree to accept it, so she didn’t bother disturbing him. The door across from his, and right next to her own, had been Peppy’s. She’d never been in there before, but his name was still on the door label. In the six months since she’d joined no one seemed motivated to do anything with his old room.

Sometimes the Captain would come down and go inside. He’d stay in there a while before he came back out, and sometimes Krystal would join him. Miyu felt everyone was still mourning his loss. It was an uncomfortable subject to bring up, but the Great Fox’s android assistant, ROB, had told her that Peppy’s health had been in a steady decline since the Saurian Incident. He’d lived a difficult life filled with a lot of violence and exposure to danger. It took its toll and he passed away at the age of 60.

The lynx kept walking, passing through the bulkhead door and into the large open space that acted as an intersection between the two elevators on the starboard and port sides, and the crew quarters on the bow and stern sides. She stepped into the port elevator and pressed the button to drop her down one deck. The doors shut with a hiss then she felt her breakfast stir in her stomach as the elevator quickly dropped one deck before stopping on a dime.

The doors hissed open again and she emerged into the hangar bay. This was the largest section of the ship, taking up the entirety of Deck 04, and at least a quarter of every other deck above it.

Miyu left the elevators behind; walking past the gantries for their four Arwings, one of which was now hers. With Peppy gone, Slippy had started spending more time on the Great Fox as engineer and working on both maintaining the Great Fox and its complement of vehicles, but also acting as support during missions. Now that Miyu was on the Team, they could leave Slippy in his support role while Miyu took over as pilot.

At the stern of the ship was the equipment elevator, which was currently lowered to Deck 04 and fully laden with more than a dozen plastic cargo crates of supplies.

Her Captain, Fox McCloud, and his wife Krystal, his second in command, were milling about the boxes looking through them. The Captain had a digital pad in his hand, and it looked like he was taking stock. His wife looked up and over at her, smiling, then called out to the Captain that the box she was looking through had four months’ worth of toiletries.

“Sir, is there anything I can take with me back to Deck 03?” Miyu asked him as she stepped onto the elevator pad.

He looked up at her, his face a lot older than hers, but he was still only in his late thirties.

“Can you carry all that?” He gestured with his pad to the entire port side of the elevator. It was at least eight crates of supplies.

“No, sir, not without the forklift.” She replied, her tone and manner very formal out of habit from the Academy. “Do you want me to grab it? I think it’s still on Deck 02.”

The forklift was the only thing they had on the ship that could carry this much cargo up and down the decks of the Great Fox. That’s one of the reasons why the intersections between the elevators were so large, and the elevators themselves were so spacious. They needed the room to move a small forklift with crates of supplies and down all four decks of the ship.

“Miyu, he’s joking.” Krystal laughed.

“I mean, she can still get the forklift if she’s volunteering.” He laughed in reply, shaking his head down at the digital pad as he tapped it with his finger.

“Yes, sir! I will!” She eagerly replied.

She pivoted on her foot and began to jog back to the elevators, leaving behind the box she’d come down for now had a new job to do. She could grab it when she got back with the forklift. Miyu entered the elevator and pressed the button for Deck 02 and zipped upwards. The doors hissed open, and she found the forklift parked in the middle of the mess hall where they’d unloaded their food supplies. Two of the plastic polished crates were still sitting on the pallet, so she quickly lifted them and moved them over to the nearby counters, and then mounted the forklift and began to drive it back to the elevator.

Miyu was glad she spent so much time playing sports and staying in excellent shape. Her joining the military only added to her physical fitness. Being so in shape was making her new life in the service, and on board the Great Fox, so much easier. During times like these when they were transporting supplies all over the ship, a good set of muscles was helpful to have. She was glad that she was impressing everyone with how useful she was as a member of the Team.

She didn’t want to come off as a burden after having tried so hard to train with them and then to join their legendary Team. She’d sent an awful lot of letters to superior officers and did as much arm twisting as she legally could without getting herself kicked out of the Academy. It wasn’t without effort that she made it this far.

And she felt very blessed to be here! She was going to work as hard as she could and she was determined to make sure everyone else knew it, too.

The lynx drove the forklift into the elevator she’d used to ascend, and then pressed the wireless controls on the forklift to tell the elevator she wanted to return to Deck 04. When the door hissed open again, she drove out and between the line of Arwings to where the Captain and his wife were still working.

She parked and hopped off the forklift and immediately asked what they wanted to move and where.

The Captain started pointing to individual crates and telling her that they were all to go to Deck 03. As he started reciting each one, she started grabbing and lifting with Krystal explaining to her where each crate needed to go as she took them. Half the crates were easily carried, being only filled with bathroom supplies, but the other four were much heavier. The Captain helped her lift the last two as they were filled with supplies for the Deck 03 Armory.

When everything was loaded onto the forklift she asked if there was anything else she needed to do before driving the crates to the elevator, and Krystal reminded her that she needed to grab her box. She’d almost forgotten! Miyu grabbed the small box and put it on the stack with the others and then drove off with the forklift to make her way back up to Deck 03. She arrived, then stopped the forklift to quickly take her one box back to her room before hopping back on the forklift and carrying on towards the other end of the deck.

She parked the forklift in the hallway between the cadet quarters and the bathrooms. This side of Deck 03 is where she’d lived for nearly a month a few years ago when she first stepped foot on the Great Fox. She’d been in the starboard side bunks, which was ‘Shift A’. Two shifts of cadets rotated on and off duty to simulate real life on a warship. Next to that room was the armory. She quickly opened the door to the armory with the secret passcode everyone on the crew was taught to memorize.

The door swished open, and she huffed and puffed quickly while rubbing her hands together. She grabbed the first of the two very heavy boxes and quickly hoisted it up and waddle-walked it into the armory before sitting it carefully down on the floor. Then she did the same with the other one. She popped one of them open, saw that it was fresh magazines and clips, some sidearms, a few bullet boxes. She checked the other box and saw it was more bullet boxes and several different kinds of explosives. She whistled at the assortment before closing both crates and leaving the armory, locking the door shut behind her, as per protocol.

With six crates left on the pallet she began to move them one by one to their destinations. Three went to the men’s bathroom, and one went to the women’s, since the former saw a lot more action than the latter. The last two crates on the pallet were for the storage closet on the opposite side of the hall across from the armory. That door didn’t need a passcode, so she just opened the door with the push of a button, then carried the two crates inside. When she checked what was in them, she saw it was an assortment of household items, cleaning supplies, tissues, disposable items, etc.

With everything in its proper place, she mounted the forklift again and carefully backed it up into the intersection. As she looked over her shoulder to see where she was going, she saw Falco emerge from his room down the opposite hall.

“What’d you bring up?” He asked as he took one step into the intersection, watching her reverse the now empty forklift towards one of the elevators.

“Four crates of bathroom supplies, two crates for the storage closet, and two crates in the armory, Sir.” She told him, stopping the forklift to address him properly.

“Cool, I’ll go check out what toys he bought.” He replied and started walking around the forklift toward the other hall.

“It’s mostly small arms and explosives, Sir.” She told him.

“Even better!” He replied and carried on past her.

When his back was to her, she resumed backing up the forklift into the elevator and used the remote to move her back down to Deck 04. When she started driving back towards the equipment elevator Captain McCloud and his wife were waiting for her.

“Thank you, Miyu. Let’s get the rest of this loaded onto the pallet and brought up to Deck 02.” He told her, directing himself right at her.

“Yes, Sir!” She quickly agreed, hopping off the forklift and rushing to the first crate of many.

After she started carrying the first crate, the Captain and Krystal both stepped in to help until a total of eleven crates were stacked carefully on the pallet.

“Fox, I can help her with the rest if you need to head back to the Bridge.” Krystal told him.

“Sure, I’ll be there till mess I think.” He replied, waving his digital pad in the air as he walked over to the narrow control panel near the edge of the equipment elevator.

Krystal hurried over to the forklift and put her foot on the small vehicle’s sidestep, lifting herself up with a hand on the roll cage. She told Miyu to start driving and the lynx started the forklift. Once they were clear, the Captain started lifting the equipment elevator up to Deck 01, which was its default position while in port. The hangar bay on Deck 01 had a bulkhead door that gave you access to the rest of the Deck.

“Thank you for being so helpful today, Miyu.” Krystal told her, and Miyu smiled.

“Yes, ma’am! Just trying my best.” Miyu told her.

“And everyone on board appreciates it. You work yourself harder than most of the boys do.” The other woman replied.

Miyu didn’t know what to say, as she didn’t want to say anything bad about her new crewmates. She thought Slippy worked really hard, but Falco only seemed to work when he sat in an Arwing. Maybe he was upstairs sorting the armory out, but she wouldn’t know until someone told her, or she checked it herself.

“Did Slippy or Falco take charge of what you brought up to Deck 03?” Krystal asked her.

“Slippy was in his room working on something, ma’am, but while I was leaving to head back down Falco said he was going to the Armory.” She replied.

“He’s probably doing more playing than working. We’ll have to get it sorted tomorrow.” Krystal replied.

“Yes, ma’am.” Miyu answered.

Miyu reached the elevator, then carefully drove it inside. Krystal hopped off and thumbed the button on the wall to tell the elevator to go up to Deck 02. When they reached their destination, the other woman exited first and then helped guide Miyu backwards into the intersection, then told her to just park it there.

With Krystal’s help, she began to help unload the forklift to carry crates into the mess hall. Most of the crates contained food items, but there were also some medical supplies. Miyu was told to go ahead and start unloading the crates of food items to be sorted into the pantries, and as the lynx did that Krystal took the medical supplies into the Med Bay. The two women did the labor of putting everything where it belonged, Krystal finishing first in Medical before coming into the kitchen to start helping sort the Mess.

By the time they were done, the Captain was radioing Krystal from the Bridge and asking for an update on their supplies. While Krystal gave him his update, Miyu started carrying the now emptied crates back to the forklift so that they could be returned to Deck 04. They didn’t need to hang onto the crates so they would get returned to the Corneria Supply Exchange, which is where they bought all their supplies from. They recycled all their crates for free.

“Miyu, when you’re done bringing the empty crates to Deck 04, leave the forklift there and meet me on Deck 03.” Krystal then told her.

“Yes, ma’am!” She replied, and then began to ride the forklift into the elevator to head back down.

She drove to the end of the hangar bay, and unloaded all the crates off the pallet and into a neat stack next to the where the equipment elevator would be resting once it was lowered back down again.

Leaving the forklift where it was parked, she jogged back to the elevators to head back up one level to Deck 03 and started searching for Krystal. She wasn’t around, still talking to the Captain on Deck 02 probably. She sighed, fidgeted briefly, then decided to walk over to the Armory to see if Falco was still there.

When she saw the door to the Armory was shut, she punched in the code and let the door swish open. The two crates she’d brought in earlier were in a state of disarray. Falco had clearly rummaged through its contents thoroughly but hadn’t put anything away.

She sighed again, and squatted down next to one crate on the floor and began to pick up as many magazines as she could carry in her arms to sort them into the storage racks where they belonged.

“Sorry I’m late. Fox was trying to explain that we would need to order even more supplies. He’s planning on having another twenty crates delivered tomorrow if you can believe it.” Krystal told her from the open doorway, stepping in to examine the state of the two crates.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s a lot of supplies.” She replied.

“We’re getting a last-minute change for the next cadet rotation. The CDF wants us to try to fit in a third shift, a full fifteen pilots. We’ll need more supplies to keep them covered for two weeks of training.” The other woman explained.

Miyu’s eyes widened at the news of there being three teams of cadets now.

“No one will have their own bunks if we do that.” She told the other woman.

“Was your bunk in the CDF really your own?” The vixen then asked her.

That stopped her, and as she thought about it, she ended up shaking her head in the negative. No one really had claim to any one bunk. That was just where you slept when someone else wasn’t sleeping on it. The only thing that was well and truly yours on a CDF warship was your personal locker.

“But it’s only for two weeks!” The vixen replied with a smile, then squatted down next to her and began to sort through the crates.

Together, they emptied both crates and put everything where it belonged, and then left the emptied crates outside the Armory door to deal with later.

Krystal gave the order to follow her to the storage room across the hall, and then they proceeded to sort through those supplies as well. With it being so much, it took a lot longer to organize everything. Krystal was very particular about everything being done right, making the point that soon they were going to have to maintain a crew of twenty people and this storage room was going to see a lot of traffic as supplies got used up.

Miyu agreed and was as meticulous as she could be with every bottle of shampoo, box of tissues, and container of pens. It was menial work, but she’d had done worse. Miyu still did worse. Everyone took their turn to scrub the toilets, though at least on the Great Fox the women took care of their side while the men handled their own. When she was still flying with the CDF, she had to wash everything no matter which sex used it.

“I’m sure its not as bad as your days in the CDF. They’d have brought in a lot more supplies than we do with ships as large as theirs.” Krystal mentioned to her once she finished organizing the rack of goods in front of her.

“Yes, ma’am! The Great Fox is easy by comparison. Having five people instead of a few hundred is a lot easier to keep sorted.” Miyu agreed, remembering the hectic days of her brief career in the CDF.

After she’d earned her wings, she didn’t immediately get to join the Star Fox Team. She’d busted hump in the Cornerian Defense Force serving like everyone else did, sharing bunks and bathrooms with hundreds of other pilots and ship personnel.

“Way more than that. Your old ship was a cruiser, I believe.” The vixen replied.

“Yes, ma’am. I served on the C.A.S. Concord. I don’t know the actual number for the crew, but it was many hundred.” She told the other woman.

The vixen stood up, having finishing stocking the bottom shelf with supplies. It looked like they’d managed to settle just about everything into place by the looks of the now emptied crates.

“Let’s get these crates back out into the hall, and then I think our R&R might actually begin. Until tomorrow, at least.” She told Miyu, who was now standing alongside her.

“Yes, ma’am!” She replied and grabbed one of the crates and together they moved everything back out into the hall.

Once that was done Miyu volunteered to take care of bringing the empty crates down to Deck 04, but Krystal told her not to, instead directing her to take advantage of what free time she has left before the new shipment of supplies arrives the following day. The vixen reminded her that she had her own boxes of personal items to sort through, which the lynx had nearly forgotten about in the hustle of trying to sort through everything else.

Miyu told her she’d do that, but as she left the other woman behind, she vowed to wake up early and start gathering crates the next morning so that they’d already be down on Deck 04 so they wouldn’t be in the way tomorrow when they have to move fresh crates up to the higher Decks.

Soon as she was back in her own quarters, she opened her two boxes and started going through her mail. Her parents had sent her a handwritten letter, which was their tradition since Miyu had enlisted. The boxes were items she requested from home now that she had a room of her own instead of a cramped personal locker. They even included a few things she hadn’t thought of.

It was nice unpacking little pieces of home and putting them into place around her quarters. Now she had real photographs, old keepsakes with sentimental value. She put her autographed baseball, safely sealed inside its clear plastic box, on her work desk. Now her room felt lived in, more than just a stale hotel room that was just a temporary residence for a passerby. The only thing that was missing were the posters from her old bedroom wall, but her parents hadn’t sent those to her, and she hadn’t dared to ask. She didn’t think it’d make a good impression in front of her new colleagues if they walked into her room only to see shirtless posters and cutouts of her favorite singer pinned on the wall.

She went over her belongings once more, really just hunting for something to do, until she finally gave up and sat down at the small table she had in the middle of the room. Life was easier in the military when you always had something to do. The cat had grown comfortable with a life set to a schedule.

Right now, she was fidgeting and antsy. The last six months had been busy every day with training. She hadn’t been given a formal assignment when they had cadets on board, so she just helped out whenever she was needed. When there weren’t cadets around, she manufactured jobs for herself to do. No one needed to tell her to do anything since she was already on the prowl for assignments. It didn’t matter what it was, it could have just been taking garbage to the compactor.

That had been her life in the CDF, and she was fast to realize that life on the Great Fox was a lot slower. Almost too slow! She wanted more to do!

Miyu stood back up again and made for the door, exiting her room, and leaving it behind her.

She started moving the empty crates from both Decks into the elevator and took them down to Deck 04 so they’d already be there in the morning. Krystal had told her to wait, but Miyu was just too impatient of a girl to sit idle when there was something she could be doing.

When it came time to eat, it was in the very early afternoon. Normally they ate at 12 on the dot, but with the ship docked for R&R the Captain decided to roll the schedule back by two hours to let everyone sleep in and have some extra time in the evenings. Not that there was a curfew for anyone on board, but it seemed like he was going through the formality of declaring it.

Miyu arrived early, having run out of things to do on the ship, and began to assist ROB in making lunch. The android hadn’t been built to cook food, but he was good at being given a schedule and a recipe. She honestly didn’t appreciate his cooking very much, since it lacked that… Organic touch that a real chef would have. Even military cooks learned to make field rations taste good to boost troop morale.

ROB simply didn’t know how to deviate from a recipe, he was strictly by the numbers and performed his task to the letter, dotting every I and crossing every T. With Miyu in the kitchen, she tried to override him when she could, adjusting spices and seasonings and this and that until the stew he was cooking was something that resembled a real meal instead of something a factory machine would have spit out into a can with an expiration date on the bottom.

“You don’t have to help ROB cook, Miyu.” Falco was the second person to enter the mess hall.

“Yes, Sir, I know. I didn’t have anything else to do so I gave myself work.” She replied.

“You don’t have to keep calling me sir! I know I’m old, Miyu, Jeez. You’re like a cadet that wont leave.” He complaint, plopping himself down into a stool at one of their dining tables.

“I’m sorry!” She called back from the counter as she used the instant oven to zap balls of dough into puffy round dinner rolls.

She was trying to learn what everyone on the ship wanted from her. Her military habits got her into trouble with Falco most often, the bird hating being called sir. She wasn’t doing it on purpose!

Slippy didn’t seem to mind, he was always very warm towards her, especially since she was quick to help him with anything mechanical. He was older than her and she was physically fit. If there was something labor intensive that she knew she could do, then she’d do it for him wherever she was able.

The Captain liked it, but his wife seemed more like Falco. She didn’t enjoy being reminded of her age, too, Miyu had to guess. The lynx wasn’t sure how old anyone was actually, she just knew she was now the youngest person on the Team.

But she had a pretty good idea that Krystal was the second youngest. She looked like it, at least. Apparently, she’d still been a teenager when the Saurian Incident happened. So, a couple of years older than Miyu at least, and she was 25.

“Talking about age, are we?” A feminine voice sang as the vixen walked into the mess hall to join them.

“We certainly weren’t talking about yours!” Falco replied.

Miyu turned to look and found Krystal looking back at her with a smile. She smiled back, then returned to help ROB. She liked his wife, but there weren’t that many women in the Cornerian Defense Force. Miyu had always been a tomboy, and once she was in the Academy she learned to coast along with the boys. She could bump elbows and jockey with them as good as any man could.

Krystal was very feminine, not an ounce of tomboy about her, and honestly it was almost intimidating.

It was like looking into a mirror that told you everything you weren’t. When Miyu had a job to do, she could focus on her duty and not let her mind wander to silly shit, but when she was just pulling rolls out of the oven, she was left thinking about how outclassed she was.

Not only was she the least experience member of the Team but as the second woman to join the Star Fox Team she couldn’t even begin to hold a candle to the first.

“Let me help you.” The other woman had snuck up behind her, but fortunately Miyu didn’t jump from the surprise.

The fox began to assert her own feminine dominance in the kitchen and began to give ROB direct instruction on what he should be doing. The stew wasn’t done yet, as it was still brewing on the stovetop, but they were also going to have a few side dishes.

It was weird watching and listening to Krystal interact with ROB. Everyone on the ship spoke to ROB like he was a person, like he’d been born as a Robert, and everyone just called him ROB for short. Krystal talked to him like he was a machine. Miyu had to think about it, and realized she was doing the same. She didn’t know how to feel about that. Was she supposed to do one or the other? The CDF didn’t have android assistants on their ships…

“Miyu, go ahead and fix everyone’s drinks. Non-alcoholic please.” She told her, and Miyu quickly complied.

Voices from outside the mess hall revealed that the last two members were soon to appear. The Captain and Slippy each entered, talking about what was on the list of supplies to be delivered tomorrow.

“You should have ordered a few spare sparts for the Landmaster, just as padding.” Slippy was saying.

“Slip, I can’t justify ordering a combustion manifold when the cadets are only using their fighters. I can only pad so much.” The Captain replied.

“Yeah, yeah, but at least think about it next time before shooing off an order when they are giving you a blank check!” The frog replied, exasperated.

“Gentleman, please tell Miyu what you would like to drink.” Krystal spoke up from the opposite side of the kitchen.

Miyu was in the process of getting glasses out and filling them with ice from the dispenser.

The men all gave her a combination of orders. She made one glass of water for Slippy, an unsweetened tea for the Captain, and Falco wanted carbonated cherry from the dispenser. She made herself a glass of unsweet tea to copy the Captain’s taste, and then turned to ask Krystal what she would-

“You can make me a water, Miyu, but get some lemon juice for it from the dispenser.” The other woman beat her to the punch, and the lynx quickly started fixing her drink too.

For the second time someone snuck up behind her, the Captain himself was now at her side and grabbing two of the beverages to carry them back to the table. Slippy met him halfway and took the two glasses and walked them back to the table where Falco waited, then the Captain walked back and took two more.

Again, she was left feeling like she had nothing to do now that Krystal had arrived and began to take over the kitchen, and now the Captain was serving everyone their drinks. Her own unsweet tea sat on the counter in front of her, so she picked it up, feeling uncertain.

“Go ahead and sit, Miyu. You’ve helped so much today, go relax!” Krystal encouraged her, and reluctantly she complied.

She carried her glass to the table. Slippy was sitting next to Fox, and Falco across from him. She didn’t want to sit next to the Captain since that was where Krystal belonged, so she took a spot next to Falco.

“Krystal told me you and her got everything sorted out in the Armory?” the Captain asked her directly.

“Yes, Sir!” She snapped a reply, the fox lifting his eyebrows at her intensity like he often did.

The subtle smile he wore whenever she fell into military habit always made her feel even more embarrassed.

“Good!” He replied back with equal intensity, meanwhile Falco was muttering about how they needed to beat the cadet out of her. Slippy only chuckled.

She really felt so young at this table of veterans.

“Don’t be mean to her!” Krystal called from the kitchen, impressing Miyu with the keenness of her ears.

It never failed that Krystal McCloud would hear what someone said, no matter how quiet. It was like she learned to read lips through hull plating.

When lunch was finally served, they enjoyed a main course of hearty stew, which was accompanied by dinner rolls, string beans, and whole kernel corn. Between Miyu’s and Krystal’s meddling in the kitchen the meal turned out rather nice, but she would never get over how ROB would cut meat into perfect little cubes like they’d rolled off an assembly line.

The conversation over lunch mostly focused on what was going to come next after their R&R ended. With an extra squad of cadets on the ship it would be so much more hectic than normal. Miyu mostly just listened patiently while the rest had the real talk, but a few times Krystal volunteered Miyu to speak when it seemed appropriate. She was mostly just trying to get her to join in, to participate more, or at least Miyu thought so. The lynx just felt so outclassed more often than not.

After they all ate, no plans were made for a group dinner. Lunch in the mess hall was the only meal that everyone attended, like a tradition. Breakfast and dinner were optional and most of their meal rations were easy to make with their appliances. Hardly any real cooking involved. Just pop it in a machine and pull it out hot. Or cold, depending on what you wanted.

To Miyu it seemed like their R&R was every man for himself. Everyone on the ship had their own plans, though she was pretty sure Slippy was going to spend his working on the ship and the Arwings. That was his passion, and being docked at the Cornerian Orbital Space Port didn’t lend anyone much to do. It was a military port.

She’d overheard Falco saying he was going to walk the port when he had time, since they did have bars for off duty soldiers. That seemed to be his jam. Women, drinking, and drinking with women. That didn’t offend her any, since she’d shared quarters with plenty of CDF men, she knew what they were like. She only got offended if one of them didn’t know how to listen when she told them to grab someone else’s ass.

The Captain and his wife left to Deck 01, and with everyone else vanishing into their own directions Miyu decided to manufacture some more work for herself.

She crossed to the other side of the ship while ROB remained in the mess hall to handle dish duty. That was nice that she didn’t have to do it herself like she was on a Cornerian cruiser. Across from the mess hall and med bay was the crew lounge and gym. For a ship with such a small crew it had a huge area of recreation!

This was honestly her favorite part of the ship, it had everything! The crew lounge was a bar, theater, casino, and whatever else you wanted it to be. A great place to party, and it was where the cadets were taken to celebrate after they’d completed their training with the Team. 

Next to the lounge was the gym, and it had four flight simulators tucked into a corner, and a wide array of exercise equipment spread out everywhere else. If she didn’t have any real work to do, then she could at least burn off some of her energy with weights. She tossed her vest onto a nearby bench and started unzipping her uniform until she could pull her arms from the sleeves and let the top half fold down over her belt.

Despite being unzipped she still appeared decent to the eye, at least with her sports bra, since it was a thick durable item that gave her ample protection from gravity. She used to be embarrassed being around so many men with breasts as large as her own, but she had that beaten out of her quick in the Academy. Anything anyone had a hang up over had it beaten out of them until you were working like a well oil part in a machine of war. In no time at all she stopped worrying about people looking at her tits and instead began to hate how they would get in her way when she was learning how to perform routine maintenance in her fighter craft, or how they would disqualify her from performing a proper push up.

She tied her sleeves into a knot in front of her to keep them from flopping, then picked a bench to start doing reps. Without a spotter she decided to use less weight on the bar, and then took a position on her back and began doing reps. She figured she could kill time running herself through a few reps of several different exercises until she was too worn out to continue, then she could crash into bed and listen to music until she fell asleep.

Miyu was about to count to forty with the bar over her chest when the entry door slid open with a hiss. She looked over and saw the Captain enter. She counted to forty with her next lift and set the bar down on the rack above and behind her head before sitting herself up.

Habit hit her, and she popped a salute before the Captain waved his hand dismissively.

“We’re off duty!” He reminded her, and she quickly put her hand down.

“I’m sorry.” She replied, almost calling her sir, but thinking better of it.

“Not a big deal, you’re still learning to take your boots off is all.” He told her warmly. “Krystal suggested I burn off some steam, guess you had the same idea?”

Thinking about it, he was right. That’s exactly what she had in mind, though she knew the Captain was going through a lot more stress than she was. All she was worried about was not having enough work to do, the Captain was worried about having too much work to do for being only one man. She didn’t envy the job her commanding officers often had. Her mental library of military facts had taught her how much stress command positions put on an officer when so much depended on your ability to make good decisions. She knew the Captain had had to make difficult decisions.

“Do you need a spotter?” He asked her, gesturing to the fact she was without anyone to watch her bench.

“Oh, no, sir, I wasn’t putting much weight on it.” She replied, realizing too little, too late that she’d called him sir again.

“How much you normally do? I’ll spot you so you can do a few.” He told her, ignoring her slip up.

She told him how much, and before she could do it herself, he was already grabbing a pair of plates and moving behind the bench to slide them into place on the bar.

When he told her to lay back and get to it, she obeyed her Captain. They were off duty, but in his presence, she had no other option. Instinct was telling her to do whatever this man told her to do, and her tomboyish spirit was flailing in the wind next to the hero of the Lylat system. She didn’t like being alone with him.

It was bad enough that she felt so out of place on the ship, or that she was outclassed by the only other woman on the ship. Fox McCloud wasn’t just some normal officer she’d cross paths with, or even serve under on a Cornerian Defense Force cruiser. He was THE officer! And he was married, so that girlish part of her that swooned after men like the ones on her favorite wall posters made her conscience ache.

He made her feel like a teenager again, her emotions a messed-up mix of shame, arousal, guilt, angst. Melodrama of the heart and she was so much of a tomboy that she hated feeling like this.

Her back hit the bench and she reached up to grab the bar and the older man lightly held his own hands under it at the same time. She lifted the bar, ignored the subtle but unmistakable bulge in his uniform, and began to do her first rep with a proper set of weights.

After having already counted to forty with lighter weights, she exhaled with her next push, telling him that she wasn’t planning on doing very many of these. He countered her by telling her to show him how many she could do.

She of course obeyed and having reset her count back to 0, she didn’t stop until she counted to fifty. Having carried so many crates earlier in the day and now having warmed up with the lighter bar, she was at her limit. She sat the bar back down and needed to rest her arms.

“Ok, my turn.” He told her, gesturing for her to hop up.

She hopped up as instructed while the captain pulled off his jacket and began to tug his shirt over his head. The lynx had to tilt her gaze away out of respect for him and his wife. She’d seen him without a shirt plenty of times but with the two of them alone in the gym it felt wrong to look.

The sound of metal clacking drew her attention, and her eyes, back to the fox.

He’d started changing the weights on the bar until they were swapped out with a heavier set. She didn’t know how many reps he intended to do, but she was feeling quite excited at the prospect of watching him bench so much weight, even though she shouldn’t be feeling it at all!

The Captain laid himself down on the bench and she assumed her position behind the bar. He wiggled himself up the bench and reached up to lift the bar from the rack. When he started his first rep, she reached out with her hands and lightly held her fingers beneath the bar as it quickly rose and fell with every rep.

She listened to his breathing as he pumped the bar, enjoying the view of the older man’s fit and toned body. The excuse of being his spotter was good enough to let her casually eye him without it looking like she was a sleazy gawker. It also helped that he had his eyes shut with concentration as he did his reps, his lips silently mouthing out the number of each repetition.

He looked really good, much better than Falco by leagues. She wasn’t particularly fond of avians, and Falco’s personality wasn’t really one she’d ever find attractive. He had too many personal flaws, even if she admired his talent and experience with an Arwing.

After a while of watching him, he matched her in reps and then broke her score until he finally decided to quit and dropped the bar onto the rack with little assistance from her.

“That’s a lot better.” He said aloud, almost to no one in particular.

He sat up stretched his arms out, Miyu watching the muscles under his fur flex as he went through the motions. She bit herself on the side of her tongue, reminding herself that he was married, and her Captain.

“I feel like I hardly got anything done today, and it’s stressing me out even though the computer says everything is all green.” He complained, swinging his leg over the bench to rise to his feet.

“You’ve been busy!” She said in his defense. “You’re running a tight ship, Sir.”

“I’m going to pinch your lips shut.” He looked at her with his hand now lifted, his thumb and index finger making a pinching gesture at her face.

He wore a smile, but she knew she’d just called him sir again.

“I just think you’re working very hard, is all. You could probably let others help, maybe Krystal?” She suggested.

“Half of what she does on this ship is what I used to do. If I gave her anything else, I might as well crown her Captain. I’m going jogging.” He replied, now walking over to the far side of the room where a set of treadmills sat in a row by the wall.

As she watched him walk away, she looked around the room at all the exercise equipment. Miyu flexed her arms and figured that maybe working her legs with a run would be an honest next step. Eyeing up her Captain’s backside wasn’t bad either, setting her guilt to the side for a moment as she quickly hurried to catch up to him.

“You don’t have to do exactly as I do.” He told her, stepping onto one of the machines before activating the control panel at the front.

The treadmill began to roll and with it the Captain began to walk and keep pace until the machine had reached the speed, he’d set it to, which was a nice jogging pace.

“Before I joined the Star Fox Team, I always had other people to train with. I got accustomed to socializing, but on the Great Fox I’m the only one that makes good use of the gym.” She admitted.

She stepped onto her own treadmill, one right next to the Captain’s own. She activated it and set her pace to match his and began to walk until she was at a jogger’s pace.

“Everyone makes their way down here at least once every day or two, except for Slippy. You’re just too wound up tight on that military schedule. If you relaxed a little and let yourself be more flexible, you could come down here whenever someone else is. Or just ask us.” He told her.

As she jogged in place on the rolling rubber, she listened and let the Captain’s word sink in. She knew she was being stubborn with her habits. She’d eaten, breathed, and slept the military service for so long that now that she was in a business casual environment, she was the odd one out, a real obvious outsider that stuck out too much.

“It’s hard to break tradition.” She replied, her arms pumping forwards and back with her jog, same as the Captain’s.

So hard, in fact, that without her even thinking about it she’d synced her own footsteps with his, like she was marching with her former servicemen and women. Tap, tap, tap, their feet were hitting the rubber in a steady rhythm.

“Yeah. I’ve been there. You’ll get used to it here. You’ve done good so far.” He told her.

She nodded in reply, breathing quietly through her mouth as she kept up with him. Miyu didn’t know how long he planned on running, but at a jogging pace she knew she could keep this up for a good long while. Even though the Academy was all about space and sky, they still put every cadet through basic training like the Army did.

“Krystal is under the impression that I intimidate you. Is that true?” He continued, turning his head to give her a side eye.

“No, sir! You don’t intimidate me. I’m just adjusting still.” She replied quickly, now embarrassed.

He did intimidate her, but she didn’t want him to think it was any fault of his. It was all just her being a big stupid fish out of water.

“Well, I hope you can adjust quick. Turn your speed up to eight.” He told her as his own hand reached out to his own panel to turn the setting up.

She obediently complied, reaching out and pressing the button that would increase the speed of the treadmill to its eighth setting. The rubber beneath her feet quickly sped up and now she and the Captain were both at a full run. Miyu had to pump her arms harder and adjust her pace as her footfalls fell into rhythm alongside the Captain’s.

“How long can you keep this pace up?” He asked her, panting as he ran next to her.

She quickly did the mental math, came up with a rough estimate, and then told him.

“Oh, that’s pretty good! You might even be able to compete with my wife with that kind of endurance.” He told her.

Miyu was panting, too, and nodded silently to save herself some breath.

As she ran, arms swinging at her sides, her sports bra was doing its damnedest to hold her girls in place. She’d long since dismissed the awkwardness of having large breasts in the military, but running right next to the Captain was awakening sensations of self-consciousness she hadn’t felt in well over a year or more. She’d thought that had been beaten out of her. Guess not!

The Captain looked over at her, then smiled.

He reached out to the panel again and pressed the button, and his treadmill sped up again to its highest setting. The fox was now running at a sprint, and without being told to, she hit her own button and felt the rubber speed up beneath her feet. She fell into a hard sprint right behind him, her arms pumping, her feet slapping the rubber hard as she tried to ‘catch up’ to him and match his rhythm.

The Captain looked back over at her, then started laughing. She was confused. A few moments later he slapped the dial.

“Ok! Ok, I’m done.” He finished his laughter and started pushing the button to drop the speed down.

She followed after him until they both came to a stop.

“Are you trying to be childish on purpose?” A woman’s voice came from behind them both.

It spooked Miyu with how sudden it had appeared behind them, but the Captain was unphased and simply turned to look at his wife who was standing a few feet away watching them both.

“Me? Never, I am a beacon of unrivaled maturity.” He replied, turning himself around completely so he could lean his back up against the treadmill’s control panel.

“You know he does this to me all the time when he could just ask like a normal person.” Krystal told Miyu, but the lynx was at a loss for what she meant.

“Ma’am?” She asked.

The vixen lifted both hands up to her chest and grabbed the bottom of her jumpsuit just beneath her breasts, then shook her bust twice.

“Yours are bigger than mine so I’m not surprised he had you running at the max setting.” She told him.

Miyu flushed pink under her fur, now realizing why the Captain had looked over at her and laughed. She hadn’t felt like this since she’d started basic training!

“I was testing to see if she could keep up with me! I’m not some pervert that shit tests the rookies like Falco.” He told his wife.

“You’re a great many things, Fox. Miyu, normally I’d be the one here putting up with him, so thank you for keeping him company.” She replied.

“She’s been a real sport, apart from her calling be sir after hours.” The Captain then told her.

Miyu felt herself awkwardly wither in the face of the two foxes. She was still reeling from embarrassment when Krystal looked at her, then at the Captain.

“Fox, you’ve got three work orders to finalize before midnight, don’t you?” The vixen said, looking back to her husband.

He sighed.

“Yeah.” He replied.

Krystal balled her fist and stuck out her thumb, then pointed it in the direction of the door. The Captain stepped off the treadmill and stepped close to his wife to plant a kiss on her cheek before passing her by to make for the door.

“Thanks for the comradery, Miyu! You’re doing great!” He said as he left, and Miyu stifled the urge to lift her hand in salute.

“You’re welcome!” She replied.

“Knowing him he probably had you spot him before he took the treadmill?” Krystal asked once her husband had gone.

“Yes, ma’am, he did.” She replied, to which the vixen nodded.

“You’re probably getting tuckered out, so maybe you can help spot me for a little while before you call it a day?” Krystal asked her with a smile.

“Oh, of course! I can.” She replied back.

Krystal led them back towards the benches, and as the vixen took her position Miyu was left playing the role of spotter once again. She watched the vixen discard her jacket, leaving the woman exposed almost as if she was naked. Krystal spent most of her time wearing a bodysuit, a form fitting outfit that looked shrink wrapped to her curvy body.

It was very sexy, very feminine, and reminded Miyu of everything she wasn’t. The lynx was hardly feminine enough to make something like that look good, or at least she didn’t think so. The only thing she had going for her was her boobs.

“You’re being too hard on yourself, you know?” Krystal suddenly asked, interrupting herself during one of her reps.

“Ma’am?” Miyu looked down to the other woman’s face, her fingers still lightly hovering under the weighted bar.

“I keep getting the impression that you’re beating yourself up. You shouldn’t.” The vixen told her, then continued with her reps.

Krystal wasn’t trying to lift very much weight, as she was probably the least physically formidable person on board the Great Fox. Her effort at the bench was more akin to good cardio than anything that would build much mass.

“I’m not trying to, ma’am.” Miyu replied, now reflecting on her own thoughts.

Of course, the woman below her couldn’t know what she was thinking, but in a way she was right. Miyu was beating herself up too much. The lynx was just grateful no one knew what was rattling around inside her head, because if they had then that’d both be embarrassing but also confidence shaking.

Miyu really worked hard, too hard for someone who liked to cling to self-doubt like it was some kind of collectable.

“Stop calling me ma’am, we’re off duty! We’re you doing that to Fox the entire time?” The vixen asked, finishing up her reps and letting her arms drop to her sides so she could let her hands rest over her tummy.

“I, I’m sorry. I just keep forgetting. I did keep calling him Sir.” Miyu admitted.

“Well, if you want him to tease you about your boobs that’s a very good way to do it. We’re already an informal bunch as it is, so we don’t expect you to act like your still in the barracks after we all clock out for the day.” Krystal told her, now sitting herself up.

“I know. I’ll try harder to relax from now on.” She told the other woman, hating that she was provoking this kind of response constantly, unable to battle her own habits.

“Don’t worry too much about it. You’re still adjusting, and we’re all going to be here to help you. Just be prepared for a lot teasing until you finally figure it out.” She told her with a bright smile, then Miyu watched as she picked up her jacket and slug it over her shoulders.

“Normally, I’d try to do more but I think today has been enough. I’m sure it’s the same for you. How about we head to the showers and call it a day?” She asked.

Miyu looked at her, then nodded.

“Sure, that sounds good.” She replied, surprised at such an offer since Krystal had never used the crew showers before.

Well, at least not in the time that Miyu had been a member of the Team. She and the Captain had their own bathroom in their quarters on Deck 01, and presumably that’s where the two of them did all their bathing. Must be nice having so much privacy when everyone else relied on the community facilities on Deck 03. This was especially true when they had cadets on board, as then it was a full house.

Not that it bothered Miyu since it was just another day in the military.

“We don’t normally get to spend much time alone with each other, so this would be a good chance to have some girl time. You probably never had much of that in the CDF, is that right?” Krystal asked her while the vixen led the way out of the room and towards the elevators.

“I don’t think so. There weren’t that many of us, and everything is co-ed. Nothing was sex segregated.” She replied.

“Is it against regulations for the girls to have some privacy?” Krystal asked.

Miyu frowned, more from her own thinking than anything directed at the vixen.

She couldn’t remember anyone trying to figure that out. The lynx couldn’t think of any reason why she would have. She came to enjoy everyone’s company regardless of their sex, and having a moment of just her and the small number of other women just didn’t appeal to her. Too much a tomboy, really. She tended to prefer male company if only because they tended to mirror her own interests. So long as she was tough enough to endure their elbowing and leg-pulling she was ‘one of the boys’ and was always accepted.

But girls, even one like Miyu, were built different from men. She could only hope she never came off as fragile or spoiled to the men she trained and served with.

“No, I don’t think so. Would be hard to manage with tight shifts, though.” Miyu finally gave an answer.

The vixen made a thoughtful noise, and continued to lead the way to Deck 03, the two women taking the elevator to drop one level and then they were on their way down the hall to the showers. Miyu didn’t spot either of the men on their way to the bathrooms, nor did she hear any activity on the men’s side.

“I think we might be alone.” Krystal remarked, already beginning to strip herself bare even though she’d yet to step foot into the women’s bath.

By the time they were past the toilet stalls the fox was naked, hanging her jacket and jumpsuit on one of the wall hooks while Miyu played catch up to join her, not that she was in any kind of hurry.

“It’s been a while since I had to use these. I hope the water still gets hot like they used to.” Krystal said aloud.

The noise of water turning on to begin pelting the faux tile floor began while Miyu was still hanging the last of her clothing up on the wall. Now naked herself, she turned to enter the showers. Her shyness at seeing the other woman naked was short lived. She’d seen so many men and women naked now due to her life of military service that such culture shocks were brief.

It didn’t help her jealously though. She was feeling it, watching the vixen from behind. Krystal was not standing under the running water, but rather a few steps away to wait for it to warm up. Her back was turned, but Miyu had the chance to admire the other woman’s feminine physique. She was a beautiful woman that activated Miyu’s own feelings of inadequacy. As much of a tomboy as she was, she still carried little embers of womanhood in her heart, things like children and family.

At least she had breasts most men would adore, though they’d have to tolerate a woman as tall as she was, and one that might have been more physically fit than he was.

Krystal took that moment to turn her head, looking the lynx in the eyes before glancing down at the cat’s body. Her earlier shyness returned when it became clear that the other woman was assessing her, and not even trying to hide it.

The vixen then smiled, then looked back up to the lynx’s face.

“You give off too much negativity for someone that looks the way you do.” She suddenly said.

“Ma- Krystal?” She replied, nearly walking into a blunder of calling her ma’am again.

“Don’t make me think I’m losing my touch. My intuition is telling me you’re not accustomed to being around pretty women. You’re attractive, too, you know.” She said with a smile, then turned back to the running water to stick out her hand to test it.

Miyu didn’t know what to say, and she was actually blushing because of it. Flustered even! She didn’t think she was attractive! She had a woman’s tits but the rest of her was a far cry from being conventional. Krystal on the other hand was more than conventional, she was the ideal!

The vixen stepped under the water, satisfied with its temperature, and began to soak herself through.

“Thank you, but I don’t know if I agree.” Miyu decided to reply, rejecting the compliment.

“And here I was hoping that you’d be like Falco.” The vixen replied with a chuckle.

“Like Falco?” Miyu asked incredulously, moving to another shower head and turning it on.

With Krystal’s shower already summoning hot water, the one Miyu had selected wasted no time in heating up as she tested its temperature with her hand.

“If you compliment Falco, he’ll lap it up and brag. I’d hope you’d do the same, but of course you’re like the other two. Can’t take a gift given without acting like its undeserved.” She replied.

“I’m just no good at it.” Miyu replied, ducking her head under the water and letting it soak through her fur.

“The military has a bad habit of pounding everyone flat. It’s ok to have a little bit of ego, you know. You’re a role model of feminine fitness and a talented pilot and soldier.” The vixen showered her with praise like the water now running over the lynx’s head.

She didn’t know how to feel. Yes, she agreed! Miyu worked hard to be as fit as she was. She worked hard for everything she had, and she’d earned it all! It just wasn’t in her nature to accept compliments, she guessed. For as long as she remembered she’d always get squeamish when people started talking her up. It might have had something to do with her parents, since they tended to brag about her, which in turn just embarrassed her.

Being teased for knowing so much about the Lylat War also didn’t help.

“That actually reminds me. When you were here training as a cadet Fox said he remembered you mentioning that you were well versed in military history.” The vixen suddenly said with perfect timing.

“Um, yes. Actually, I am. Well, it’s recent history but I’ve studied it on my own since I was little. I don’t remember mentioning it to him when I was here training though.” Miyu replied, turning her head away from the overhead faucet to look at the other woman.

The vixen had turned around at some point, her back now to the wall so she could wash her hair. Miyu got an eyeful of the blue vixen being soaked form head to toe in water, her fur slick with the flow, dripping sheets off her breasts and hips. She really was leagues above Miyu in every regard.

“That’s what he told me a while ago. I doubt he even remembers when you actually said it apart from the fact it came up. He’s got a selective memory. But he mentioned it to me, and it got me to doing my own thinking.” Krystal continued.

“About?” Miyu asked.

“I was thinking that you would be a good resource about military history. Since you said recent history then I assume you mean at least as far back as the Lylat War?” She asked in return.

“Yes, Ma-“ She began.

“Don’t say it.” The vixen had her eyes closed as she started rinsing her hair, but she wore a smile.

“Yes, I started reading about the Lylat War and then everything that came after. I’m not a college student about it, but I know more than most people I would think.” She told her.

The vixen replied with a hum, then pivoted around to face the wall again.

“Is there a reason you wanted to know?” Miyu dug a little.

The vixen smiled but didn’t look back in her direction and instead remained focused on her own hygiene. Miyu needed to do the same, and so she ducked her head back under the running water while reaching a hand into to the small cubby hole build into the wall. She grabbed a bottle of shampoo and began to do as Krystal had done, which was give herself a proper wash.

“I’m thinking of putting you to work with the cadets, but you’ll need to get with Fox first so the two of you can hash out what it is you actually know about military history. If you know all the things he wants you to know, then he can use you as an assistant on tactics and the like. Slippy isn’t any good at that, and Falco’s only marketable skill is piloting an Arwing as a solo fighter or as a wingman. He’s never had the knack for squadron command.” Krystal began to explain herself.

Miyu was immediately digging her fingers through her scalp, working the shampoo through her fur as she started working the gears in her head. Did she know enough about military history to be able to help the Captain like that? She might. The lynx could rattle off every major battle in the Lylat War and the Civil War to a point where she could write a paragraph or two for each, using what she remembered from her repeated readings of textbooks. She’d watched enough documentaries and web clips of the fighting to pull information from those, too.

Military history was, as other people had pointed out to her in the past, her autistic fixation.

She didn’t want to brag, but she was pretty confident that the Captain could give her an assignment to ‘teach’ and if she didn’t already know the content then she could find it by researching it online and apply it just as well. Miyu always did well in school, but history was where her passion shined, and with her military training and experience as a pilot she now knew how to digest military history in more practical ways.

“I can handle that, especially if he’s clear about what he’s expecting from me.” She replied after some thought.

“Good! He’s been putting a lot of thought into it himself lately, so I think he’ll do a good job of getting across what he wants.” Krystal replied.

“Do you know when he will have time to talk about it?” Miyu asked as the noise of water shut off behind her.

She turned her head and caught the view of the other woman shaking her arms and legs to sling water free of her blue fur before reaching up to use her hands to squeeze excess water from her hair. The vixen was very beautiful. Miyu turned back to look at the wall and ducked her head under the water to rinse out her own hair.

“No, he doesn’t, but I’ll make sure he talks to you tomorrow. If it gets put off for too long, he’ll start to stress out and he’s got enough of that to deal with as it is.” The vixen replied.

Miyu pulled her head out from under the stream and shook her head free of loose water before looking back towards Krystal, finding that the other woman was watching her as she let herself drip dry.

“I’ll be ready! I’ll do my best.” She replied.

Krystal smiled warmly at her.

“We know you will, now I’m going to finish drying off and head upstairs to my husband. You worked very hard today, Miyu. You’ve earned some beauty sleep.” The vixen told her with cheer, then departed the showers.

“Goodnight!” She shouted after her, watching the vixen make her exit past the toilet stalls before grabbing her clothing and a towel, quickly wrapping it around her middle before she could exit the women’s end of the bath.

As Krystal left Miyu remained. She didn’t need to scrub herself down, but she did reach out a hand to turn the heat up. The lynx let the hot water soak her to the bone, the warmth cutting through her fur and into her work weary muscles. Once the room was filled with steam, she turned the knob to shut off the flow, then began to shake herself dry.

She wondered if she was going to find herself showering with Krystal more often, if the vixen was sincerely interested in having some girl time. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would be less lonely to have company from time to time in the showers like she used to with the co-ed showers of the CDF.

Then Miyu had a sudden thought, and started giggling, a rare noise that sounded too boyish for her own liking.

There wasn’t anything stopping her from walking into the men’s side, but she didn’t think Falco and Slippy would appreciate the invasion. For each their own reason. It was something worth a laugh.

She grabbed a towel and did as Krystal had done, wrapping it around her middle so she could preserve some of her modesty, then yanked her clothes off the wall hook before walking across the ship to the other end of the deck where her room waited. Once she was back inside her quarters, she finished drying herself off before ditching her towel in the laundry hamper next to the door.

Her mind wandered away from the vixen and back towards her husband. The Captain was cooking up a new job for her, and she’d make sure she worked her ass off to do the best that she could! If they were willing to trust her with something as important as playing a role in training new cadets, then Miyu was going to prove to them that she was worthy of it.

Suddenly, An intrusive thought of the Captain in the gym slipped into her mind, and she smiled shyly to herself. Despite her embarrassment she wouldn’t mind spending more time with him, too. He looked good working out. She was full of intrusive thoughts today as she was reminded of the two of them running on the treadmills, the Captain watching her tits shake. Miyu just couldn’t stop grinning now that she was alone to her own thoughts without fear of what anyone else would think.

But she got a hold of herself, and refocused on the work she would soon be expected to do. She grabbed her digital tablet and laid down on the bed. She began using the Great Fox’s database and net connection to look up material she could use as a teaching aid, and to help refresh her own memory on anything she might be hazy on.

In the back of her mind, she kept being reminded that tomorrow was a busy day and she needed to get some beauty sleep, but she kept shaking it off in the pursuit of skimming through just one more digital textbook. As much as she tried to focus on her tablet, the thought of going to sleep was persistent, almost frustrating with how it distracted her from the information on her tablet.

Then suddenly she felt lightheaded, and her head hit the pillow with the thought of getting beauty sleep parked front and center, and just like that she was out like a light. Then the lights in her quarters turned themselves off.