The headset cracked on top of the bright flashing buttons in the main panel of the Sky Claw in short yet loud bouts of white noise combined with various unintelligible voices that came from a distant module. The device was purposefully left unattended by its owner, who had decided it was just about time for his third doughnut break in the last two hours.

And the avian knew it wouldn't be the last one in the remainder of the operation.

For the past few months, he had been tasked with several air-based duties in an unexplored Planetary System in his brand new and improved spaceship, and while the design had made the craft look significantly slimmer and much more aerodynamic, the bird had been suffering the opposite effect: after Fox had restricted his aid to aerial support exclusively, the blue bird had found himslef in not only a far more sedentary routine but also quite often extremely bored. While the canine was facing all the baddies and doing barerel rolls here and there while being chased by all sorts of enemies, he could only stare from a distance and occasionally dispose some rounds of laser-beam shots if the team got in trouble. Other than that, his life had been reduced to sitting in the receiving end of an endless stream of random voices yeelling and screaming order at one another over the interfering frequencies of the intergalactic intercom. Paying attention was just as bad as trying to ignore them. Only occasionally the group would intercept some important message or receive a distress signal, but other than that, the throbbing pain that the white noice gave Falco had to be trated with something stronger and far more soothing than painkillers. Those we beginning to lose their effect.

And so he found that food worked just fine.

Lombardi had never been all to keen on the idea of cheating his strict diet and his carefully designed exercise regime, however, the burden of two months of inactivity and seval boxes of useless pills into his new job had made him desperate to find a solution. And a nice white cardboard box left unattended in his ship provided just what he was looking for. He couldn't remeber the last time he had enjoyed something so much and for a moment —just a fraction of a second— he could forget his reality and experience the rush and rhe bliss he once had felt fighting and cahsing other pilots all over the galaxy.

And then... Well, it escaleted pretty quickly afte that.

At first he refused to give into the pleasure. The bird handled the situation as if he was walking on eggshells. He avoided the supply room as much as he could and would often skip meals in order to compnsate for the extra calories he shamefully added to his diet.

But even the toughest pilots can't resist the constant temptation. For some reason, those white cardboard boxes seemd to be everywhere he looked. He always found one waiting for him in the chair in the cockpit of his ship, and another conveniently stashed under the control panel beside the intercom machine, not to mention the seemingly permanent pile of them idly placd in the hallway. He had asked Fox and Slippy about them and they had just shrugged at the bird's comment, holding one of the boxes open for him to pick yet another of the fried sugary pastries.

Of course the gain was gradual, so nobody really noticed until it was both far too obvious and far too late to do something about it. By then, Falco (A.K.A Stuffed Turkey) Lombardi was already spilling out of his ripped-to-shreds jumpsuit, and unable to lay off the constant influx of treats. Of course, this only restricted his participation on the team's activity even further, leaving him stranded in the communications room, with his double-wide rear spilling out of his chair. The only times he came out of his new workplace was to sleep and if course to retrieve more food to feed his now insatiable appetite.

At least the brighlty coloured doughy treats made the job a lot more tolerable. And after all this time, Falco was finally coming to terms with his current position. If somebody had to do this task, he might as well complete it along with all the additional benefits!

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This started as a pencil-and-paper sketch I made a while ago, which I happened to like a lot, and after going through my notebooks, I decided to give it some digital clean-up. It quickly became something bigger in more ways than one. Forgive me for the story: it is flat and simple... I am not feeling inspired enough to write properly.

I really liked the outcome and I hope you all do too. Sorry that this is the second consecutive fan-art pic I upload. I promise I will work on some original ideas and characters as well.

All feedback is greatly appreciated, as always.

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StarFox and all its characters © Nintendo

Artwork is mine.