[b][color=00a651]Fuka Nakano[/color][/b] Mitiga was in the same city, scarcely five or six miles away from the shattered wreck of Tripoli International Airport. It took seconds for Peacenik to swing around and get in range, once again in the midst of searching radar and scrambling jets. She cycled through her weapons with the bored diligence of a store clerk running inventory, waiting for Wunderkind as well as Scott and his personal hound Kat to pick their targets. A Blinder, the control tower, some fuel storage, and then the runaway, all of which went up in overlapping starburst explosions, bathing the night sky in brilliant orange. She watched impassively, selecting her targets from what remained. [color=00a651]"Rifle out.[/color] she called, the last of her anti-radiation missiles streaking towards a SAM site to erase it from the face of the earth. [color=00a651]" And pigs away."[/color] Her final JDAM and SLAM-ER shot out for the Tupolevs, tearing one to pieces and blasting the wing off another. That was all of her air-to-ground expended; Fuka was now free to bail out. As she started the trip home she felt not satisfaction but unease, the sensation causing her jaw to clench under her oxygen mask. She was definitely tired, and who could blame her? Two strike missions in the same day, both of which involved multiple dogfights, and preceded by a gunfight on foot and [i]another[/i] sortie, shifting in and out of her flight suit more often than she had changed her socks. The stop and start got under her skin, made her feel like she was being jerked around. But that was an old annoyance, something she had gotten used to long ago. [quote=@Letter Bee] "All our powers combined!" [/quote] [color=00a651][i]Good God, shut the fuck up.[/i][/color] Fuka felt out of place. She wasn't even a week removed from entering mercenary life and was already second-guessing it. She didn't trust multiple members of the squadron for reasons of personality and stability; they were crazy, but not her kind of crazy. Too many loudmouths and blood drinkers, too many Section 8 candidates with chips on their shoulders and poor impulse control. Again she remembered her mother's warnings, the older woman trying to curb her already burgeoning sociopathic tendencies in childhood but failing. Now Fuka was flying high in the pale pre-dawn, trying not to think about the length of her contract. It was her fault, of course, her fault and no one else's. She had been so desperate to separate herself from her family that she jumped from field to field without concern with whether or not she'd fit, like a college kid sampling majors. She should have stayed in the Army, where things made sense. She had enjoyed being a Ranger and was damn good at it, good enough that she might have been able to join Delta. She belonged on the ground with quiet professionals, not in the sky with showboats. Similarly, Cobalt needed a second-in-command who fit their vibes, not a silent and sullen samurai who hung around like a stain on the wall until it was time to kill something. [quote=@Letter Bee]"What firms are developing those and where can we find them? Is anyone else interested in trying to get them?"[/quote] [color=00a651]"That's not for us to know at the moment. We're better off focusing on the practical nature of what we just faced; the who and why will be determined by the intel people. We all got very lucky-had they come in on our broadside, firing their lasers, some of us would be dead or captured. They don't need to wait for lock-on or to lead their shots, and we can't outrun light."[/color] [color=6ecff6][b]Ximena Huang[/b][/color] Ximena snickered meanly as the last of the Titans was condemned to Tartarus, just like their namesakes. La Catrina waggled her wings before cutting in front of Calico, lazily rolling onto her back while Jefe scanned the giant menu that was Mitiga International Airport. [color=6ecff6]"Hmmm, let's see here...ah, you'll do."[/color] There was a communications building off to the side, festooned with antennas and coaxial cabling. It looked ad hoc to Ximena's well-trained eye, a series of field modifications thrown into an empty structure in preparation for some intensive operation. There were probably people in there, hunkering down while trying to relay requests for support. A Soviet-made bomb smashed right through the roof before exploding, blowing out most of the walls and collapsing what remained in on itself. [color=6ecff6]"And something for you as well."[/color] There was a shop hangar with the nose of what looked to be an [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-76]Il-76[/url] jutting from it, the venerable beast of a utility craft undergoing maintenance of some sort. Ximena cheerfully made the mechanic's jobs impossible with her last KAB-500, the guided bomb splintering the cockpit and cracking apart the fuselage. [color=6ecff6]"Blasting Russian planes with Russian weapons, funny life we live, ain't it, Calico?"[/color] Funny indeed. Ximena was out of explosives but still had rounds rattling in her chaingun, and she was ill-tempered enough to use them. With the radar down and most if not all of the missile platforms destroyed, she was free to make a looping pass over the base, watching hawk-like for signs of life. [color=6ecff6][i]There.[/i][/color] A pair of trucks had split off for the exit gate, practically bumper to bumper in their haste to escape. It wasn't much, but no predator turned down a meal. [color=6ecff6]"Moving to strafe!"[/color] The Beautiful Corpse screamed down from on high, proverbial talons outstretched and cannon winding up. In the split second it took her to line up a shot Ximena took in the battered state of the vehicles, saw the beds full of soldiers and aircrew. She saw terrified faces, uniforms stained with sweat, rifles slung over shoulders or clenched in hands- Good enough, they were a legitimate target. [color=6ecff6]"Guns guns GUNS!"[/color] Jefe shrieked, cackling madly as she let loose with everything she had. In an instant, the trucks were nothing more than twisted piles of scrap, metal fused with flesh, while set alight and thrown all over the service road they had tried to escape by. Ximena showed mercy by making sure no one would be left to bleed out, using up the last of her high-explosive incendiaries on the thirty or so squirters. Any counterattack the Libyans put together would just have to go on without them. Satisfied in the same way a bear would be after feasting on an elk carcass, Ximena threw her plane up and over into formation with the rest of the gang. [color=6ecff6]"I saw you tossing rockets during your dogfights."[/color] She hailed Mykhalio, blithely cutting into the conversation. [color=6ecff6]"Don't do that, it's wasteful. If you're not going to spend them on something actually hittable, you might as well take more actual missiles instead, get good at using your main gun like I am."[/color] The 'helpful' advice covered her racing mind, Ximena making a note to discuss the evening's events with her boss later. In fact- She killed her helmet mic and fished for her tablet under her seat, awkwardly propping it between her knees and typing an email with one hand. The message would be waiting for Scott whenever he next checked his inbox. [quote]RE:LASERS???? Should probably talk to you and Wiseman again. Seems like my past has come back to bite us all in the ass instead of just me this time ( •_•) PS: that was fun we should be wingmen sometime (✌ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞ [/quote] [@Rhona W] [@Letter Bee] [@Finetales]