#nova fox

If you don't that's still ok 😊

If you don't feel like drawing them or your too busy with other stuff, thats ok, I get it 😊

Sure! Sorry I took so long, I just had no motivation, but I finally found the motivation to do it and I think it turned out pretty good!

Keep in mind I did edit their names a tiny bit, I also added some details that I thought were nice! And the things in neon next to them is their scent!

Introducing (Nova Fox)

It was an Orange victory that day, bringing their ranking to third overall, behind Black Team and Gold Team. Blue Team unfortunately dropped to sixth.

It had been a long and hard battle, however. Two hours of fierce gameplay. In this precarious arena, only three Orange mates had been left standing by the end.

Nova Fox wrenched his arena suit off. He grabbed a towel, the academy’s oak tree emblazoned on it in black ink, and headed to the shower room.

Gelatin bombs would be his downfall, he was sure of that. This was the third game where he had been removed due to one. But they weren’t even one of the worst obstacles. This was only the fourth month. The worst was yet to come. He didn’t even want to think about those.

The senior year at the Southern Nygylfi Training Academy was the worst. Everything, your whole future depended on this final year. Nobody gave two Balthazar Farts for the previous years. Nobody. Especially the Intergalactic Space Academy. This year, Nova Fox would be subjected to a variety of maddening examinations. Not to mention his team had to keep their place in the top five of the standings for the rest of the year. Unless you were a prodigy, and Nova Fox was confident about his lack of status there, only mates of the top five teams had even a chance to qualify for ISA.

It was only the fourth month out of ten. Six more months, and the arena game would gradually get harder and harder. They learned it in their freshman year— secure the glowing orbs and place them inside the holes in the platforms to earn points. Shooting others got you a few points too, but not as many.

Nova Fox printed his essay and then shut down his tablet. With luck, he’d be able to get seven hours of sleep tonight.

So much work just to get into the ISA. It was prestigious— they had an acceptance rate of 5%.

“You all right, Nova Fox?” Meteor Hare patted him on the back.

“Just tired.”

“Aren’t we all? It was a good game today, though…”

Nova Fox nodded as he shut off the lights. Good game… Fun game.

His parents had always planned for him to attend ISA. Every parent who named their child with a space object followed by the species hoped for a future Lieutenant in the ISA. Other kids got normal names… like Robert. Or Billy.

“Good shot there.”

The rain was coming down thicker now. Usually they had goggles, but of course Planet Mouse had taken his pair and lost them. Wiping his arm across his eyes, the shiny uniform sleeve did little to help his vision. But in the corner of his eye, he made out a glowing red sphere.

“Orb. West. Right next to the palm tree,” he muttered into his headset. “I’ll get it.”

He slowly teetered his way from platform to platform until he reached a small island.  

But Cloud Coon awaited him. He had already grabbed the orb, which glowed menacingly in his two-armed grasp.

A heavy one, then. Nova Fox blasted the unarmed sucker right in the head. Taken by surprise, Cloud Coon let the orb go sprawling from his arms, rolling slowly down the sandy slope.

“Blue orb retrieved,” said his headset.

Nova Fox shot the raccoon, who was lying stunned on the ground, right in the chest, and then sprinted to the red orb. He scooped it up.

“Red orb retrieved,” he said, still pointing his blaster at the unfortunate raccoon. “Protection required.”

“Got you covered,” a bucktoothed hare said with a grin. “Let’s go… ah…”

A giant, gelatinous turtle splatted down, exploding as it hit the island, sending goop and teeny particles of sand everywhere.   

Nova Fox screeched as it sent him flying into the sizzling liquid.

“Don’t worry! I’ve got the orb!” the hare panted, grabbing the red sphere with one mighty hand and hopping away from the glutinous remains.   

“Damn you, Balthazar,” grunted Nova Fox as he let himself be carried away by the current.

Giant numbers began to project upon the arena ceiling in flashing colors.

A 4x4 square foot of tile beneath Lt. Commander Jenkins’ boots began to shake. Suddenly, they skyrocketed towards the top of the arena. Jenkins leaned over the circular keyboard that had sprung up around him (partially so he wouldn’t topple off) and looked down at the scene below him. A tablet docked on his right was displaying a zoomed in view of the center of the empty arena.

Massive pipes along the walls of the arena churned gallons of sizzling liquid into the arena. More tiles began to spring up, although not nearly as high as Jenkins’ towering pedestal, floating among the surface of the waves. From chutes higher up on the walls, little boxes fell to the waters with a splash while shiny metallic orbs descended slowly from the ceiling.

Jenkins’ licked his buckteeth coolly and rubbed his gloved paws together. Wiggling his rabbit fingers and cracking his knuckles, he turned to enter some numbers into the keypad on his left. The number ten was flashing upon the ceiling…

He hummed a little space shanty to himself.

Meanwhile, Nova Fox was anxiously rubbing his foot with one hand, listening to the mysterious churning from above. From the depths of the pit, he and his fellow mates couldn’t see what was going on above.

Five seconds…

“Oh, I shall be evil!” Jenkins tittered tapping a few more keys. From the wall chutes, fat, gelatin turtles dropped.

Two seconds…

The sloping wall of the pit molded into stairs. Orange Team scurried orderly up the steps, Nova Fox slightly limping in the middle.

One second…

“ARE YOU READY?” Lt. Commander Jenkins roared into his microphone, gesticulating wildly to the skies as artificial rain began to fall. He then opened up the umbrella and took a seat, watching the game going on below on the little tablet.

“Up, up, over, come on now!” Orange Team Second-in-command, Asteroid Skunk, roared, giving his smaller mates a hand over the wall separating the top of the pit from the arena.

Captain Dust Badger shouted commands.

“This is a tricky arena. Defense will have a hard time, but Blue Team’s offense isn’t too great, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. It’ll be easy to lose mates in this arena. I can’t stress enough how important it is to be more careful than fast here— you fall in because you go too fast, that’ll be an automatic removal. Go slowly, you’ll hopefully only get shot a few times— but let’s avoid that. Defense, the goal isn’t backed against a wall this time, so I want a perimeter around it—”

Meanwhile, Blue Team Captain, Gravity Toad, brandished his laser blaster threateningly from his end of the arena and bellowed, “CHARGE!”

A few of the first blue-capes to emerge lost their balance and toppled into the sizzling liquid. “REMOVAL! REMOVAL! REMOVAL! REMOVAL! THAT IS FOUR REMOVALS FOR THE BLUE TEAM!” bellowed Jenkins into the microphone.

Gravity Toad halted his charge with a blast into the air. “Defense, to the platform. Offense, get to your positions— it’s almost the five minute mark! Gatherers— get started! Go gather! Shooters… SHOOT!”

Blue Team surged forward, jumping from tile to tile with near-perfect balance. The six defense mates followed the tile path to the left, where a giant, circular platform alit with ten glowing holes on the sides floated gently in the liquid.

Nova Fox drew his laser blaster, both hands on the coarse grip. He glanced over at Sun Stag, leader of Orange Team’s shooters, who gave him a curt nod.

There wasn’t much room to take a running start. Nova Fox barely cleared the first platform; his tail hissed as it brushed against the bubbling concoction below.

Blue Team was still out of shooting range.

“Should I wait for them to come here?” Nova Fox muttered to himself as he shifted his weight on the bobbing platform.

Taking large steps, Nova Fox leapt his way towards the midfield line.

“Watch out: vision obstructions from above,” said a voice from his earpiece.

Nova Fox chanced a quick glance up and received a plump raindrop in the eye.

“Damn you, Balthazar,” he grunted for the second time that day.

The platforms were beginning to float with the current. He began his travels again when suddenly his laser blaster began to vibrate.

PEW! PEW! PEW!

Blue bolts just barely missed his head. “WATCH OUT, NOVA FOX!” someone shouted in his ear, but amidst the cries and shouts of mates on both teams, he could barely hear the warning.

Lieutenant Commander Jenkins was busy shouting himself hoarse at the cauliflower that had once again appeared on the arena floor.

It was the seventeenth time this had happened in a month. Either somebody, and Nova Fox has a nagging feeling whom, kept dropping that cauliflower on purpose to annoy Jenkins, or the vegetable patch had been sprayed with Bio-High! again.

Nova Fox glanced at the frozen clock. He knew it was frozen. But he looked anyways. In the arena, it was always 2:59.

“THAT WAY,” Lieutenant Commander Jenkins had told them, “IT ALWAYS SEEMS LIKE YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE DISMISSED. AND YOU GET YOUR HOPES UP. BUT THEN YOU REMEMBER THE CLOCK IS FROZEN. AND YOUR OPTIMISM IS SQUASHED LIKE THIS TITCHY LITTLE CAULIFLOWER RIGHT HERE.” Jenkins then had proceeded to crush the sad little vegetable underneath his boot.

Nova Fox glanced at Jenkins to make sure the Lieutenant Commander was still distracted and then quickly took a sip of water from his favorite water bottle. A wheezing Cloud Raccoon suddenly hopped down next to him.

“Lemme have a sip of that water, would’ya?” the raccoon coughed, reaching for Nova Fox’s favorite water bottle.

He handed it over and nervously glanced once more at Jenkins who was grabbing the mushy squashed remains of the cauliflower and sniffing them. Jenkins’ ears did a full 360, wriggling as they turned like some sort of creepy eyestalks.

“NOVA FOX. CLOUD COON. WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING DRINKING WATER? YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE PREPARING FOR THE SCRIMMAGE.”

Yelping, Nova Fox scrambled from the sideline and grabbed his laser blaster.

Cloud Coon wrenched it violently back, spewing the contents of Nova Fox’s favorite water bottle everywhere. “Hey man, that’s mine.”

PEW!

Once again, Nova Fox yelped as a bright orange beam blasted through his foot.

“Oh man. Sorry about that,” Cloud Coon said, his eyebrows wriggling with bemusement. “That is your laser blaster.”

The raccoon looked under the bench and found his own blaster and began to walk to the other side of the arena.

Nova Fox kicked off his boots, examined the nasty burn smoldering from his paw, and moaned. “Damn you, Balthazar,” he swore to the heavens. “Damn you!”

“ENOUGH WITH THE DAMNING; THE SKIRMISH STARTS ON THE DOT: YOU’VE GOT TWO MINUTES—”

At least the laser blaster was locked on low mode for the skirmish. Even with these practice blasters, when set on high, second-degree burns could arise. Gritting his teeth, Nova Fox slid the boot back on and half-skipped to the other side of the arena where his fellow orange-caped teammates knelt in a small pit underneath the main ground level of the arena.

Lieutenant Commander Jenkins, known as Dark Matter Rabbit before becoming a Lieutenant and earning a real name, hopped over to the levers on the eastern side of the arena.