[b]March 13th, 2014
Over Lampedusa, the Mediterranean[/b]

There wasn't time to ogle the destruction wrought (as much as Fuka would have liked to); the Mirages were climbing fast and their friends on the ground were searching for targets. 

The fox call naturally drew the eye, Fuka turning just in time to watch the missile detonate, shredding the flight lead's bird and sending it tumbling to the island below. The sky-pirate had gotten out when the getting was good, lucky him, and once they shook off the sensation of their brain rattling around skull from a rocket-propelled dismount they'd be shitting themselves with the memory of just how close they came to getting killed.

That left one, and they were a smart fucker. Fuka grumbled to herself as the Mirage tucked low to the ground, the terrain scattering her lock as it steadily slid inside her circle. It was just a physics problem: lighter plane plus good thrust equaled faster turning. It was what she would have done had their positions been reversed. 

Fuka snarled wordlessly as she threw the Black Bunny into a rising loop. G-forces pressed down on her like the palm of God trying to smother her out, a synthetic finger hovering over the control panel. The HUD flashed a hateful red, RWR bleeting in panic. The plane itself knew it was being hunted and screamed in warning, and Fuka, the shepherd she was, saved it. 

A two-fingered punch of the touchpad sent chaff and flares scattering across the sky, the magnesium-laced cloud of aluminum strips thrown to the wind by the passage of a missile. The Mirage had missed, and now Peacenik was coming down on top of him. 

They were on a path to intercept one another, hurtling closer and closer to oblivion. Getting a lock at that range was almost instantaneous, firing instinctive. There was no fox call, no time for one even, just the whoosh of a Sidewinder being launched and a fiery wreck of a plane falling out of the sky. 

Another victory for her.

"Sorry about the blind fire," she chirped, leveling out to begin banking back around towards the hill. "Was a little dicey there. Gonna kill that radar and then mop up with the rest of the ordinance." 

It was an entirely exposed stationary target; hitting it was a near-automatic process. Flash it with the targeting laser, wait for the tone, give Chevy a hearty "Magnum out!" and peel away as the crater that once been a radar installation smoked like a chimney. The SAMs were near-worthless now, and Lampedusa was nothing more than a bunch of sandcastles for her to kick.  

She went down the line, locking onto targets as they appeared in her sights before destroying them. 

"Rifle out." 

The second SLAM-ER smashed into the remaining ferry, carving a gash through the centerline. She wondered idly whether it had been purchased or if some poor businessman was going to turn on the news and see his missing boat sinking into the Mediterranean. 

"Going in for that corvette." 

Fuka was taking her time now, lazily lopping back over the harbor with a waggle of her wings. The people on the ground could see her and down nothing about it, and she put on a show for them. The Bunny rolled languidly, belly facing the sun momentarily as its pilot homed on the warship. She selected her shots carefully, aiming for just above the waterline. As she turned right side up Fuka let the JDAMs fall away, two thousand pounds of boom gliding towards the enemy.

"Pigs away."

They hit home, the ship suddenly engulfed in a cloud of smoke and dust. However badly the escort mission had gone, no matter how tits up the rest of Cobalt had ended up, Fuka had done her job. 

"I'm spent, ready to head home?" 


[@Kensai]