Karlsland Border, November 11th 1945
Lufftwaffe Hauptmann Gertrude Barkhorn gripped her twin MG-42s tightly as she followed the darting hexagon covered fighter, trying to find an opening to strike from. Behind her, the three other witches of her flight, the Fuso healer Yoshkia Miyafuji, Gallian Ace Perrine Closterman and the Suomus witch Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen fought their own private battles in the sky around her.
A swarm of these small Neuroi drones had jumped them, and was now running, perhaps realizing they had bitten off more then they could handle from the four witches. Following one of the black craft around a bend of trees, Gertrude felt her lips purse into a smile as she raised her guns "Got you" she chuckled firing both slightly ahead of the drone, leading it with the training drilled into her skull.
Hot streams of 7.92 Mauser danced to the side and in front of the Neuroi, one or two lucky bullets striking home and knocking the beast off balance with a horrid scream. Adjusting her aim, she tore it in half, with one last roar the Neurou fell to the ground in pieces before turning to a shower of hot white shards. The hairs on the back of her neck twitched and she heard Eila shout "Barkhorn, behind you"! She spun around, shield up as an incoming blast stuck her magic defense.
The Suom blasted the Neuroi responsible in quick order with her own MG-42, silently the Karlslander thanked the girl's magic gift of foresight, allowing her to see into the short term future. This was not the first time it had saved her and many others in the heat of battle. Pressing a finger to her ear, and the magic powered radio inside it, she thanked her wingmate for the help.
"No problem Cap'n". the Grey haired girl replied causing Gertrude to sigh, turning her attention elsewhere, she found the battle won. Both Closterman and Miyafuji flying to rejoin her and Eila. Gertrude warmed a bit as they grew near "Not bad, today you all handled yourselves well. I'll make sure to add that to my report". Closterman smiled, Miyafuji's face warmed as she thanked Gertrude, and Eila blew her tongue calling such official praise "worthless".
Gertrude ignored her as they flew back, not giving her a talking to for such conduct towards an superior seemed her reward enough in Barkhorn's mind.
...
Alone...
All others destroyed.
The lone drone would not go the way of it's fellow combat forms, it had replayed their mistakes in it's own brain. Seen the errors they had made, and was now ready to strike back. Flying high above the humans, it calculated it's plan one last time, dive at a speed akin to that sound traveled to close the distance before leveling and attacking so quickly, at least one enemy would be dealt with.
And so it began it's speeding assent, the closet thing inside it that could be called glee warming over the idea of killing one of it's races greatest foes. Perhaps that is what clouded it's calculations that day, that or not realizing that one of it's targets would know in advance of it's attack, when a human in blue yelled and the four turned their weapons skyward, it did something it had not intended to do, or calculated the effects of.
Fired the internal laser housed inside it's core, the process of which, converting matter within it's area into energy, mixed with the speed it was now at, caused a chain reaction that had but one result...
...
Barkhorn watched the Neuroi, breaking the speed of sand with a bomb, glow as it readied to fire, and then...cease to exist. One moment there before them, the next gone. Her eye swore it caught it, faded for a moment, see through before it disappeared, but she could never be too sure. Once again, she thanked Juutilainen for her warning, before moving heading back towards base again, no one quite sure what they had just witnessed.
"it just...vanished..." Miyafuji said to herself, Gertrude had no argument with that, although she didn't think it some kind of combat move by the Neuroi, more some type of...accident of sorts.
"Nothing can just disappear like that, can it"? Perrine questioned out loud. Only Eila, ever the observant one, had a different thing to say "Maybe it didn't disappear, maybe it...went somewhere else"? The blonde witch rolled her eyes at the mention of this "Then where could it have gone to?" Eila only lifted her shoulders into a shrug "Maybe it's like where our legs go inside our Strikers when we fly, somewhere else."
Everyone's mind on the return trip to base was on what they had seen, or what they hadn't seen after a moment.
...
For a moment, nothing, for a single second, the Neuroi didn't exist. Then, it did again, and found itself once more in the sky, a lighter sky, now above water,part of it's body gone, ripped off by the event that had just transpired. The buzz inside itself told the Neuroi it's location had changed, somewhere far west of it's last location. And it felt...empty, it could not sense any of it's kin nearby, no other Neuroi within almost 500 kilometers, and that was scanning on it's highest levels. It seemed as though this was a separate planet from the one it was on before. All it could sense, was nearby landmasses, islands. Driving on programmed instinct, the drone made it's way towards the nearest one.
...
Elsewhere miles away on a strip of beach, a smaller piece of it, found itself weak. Too weak to reform, or to even try and scan the area around it to find it's location. All it could do is wait...
USS Battan Caribbean sea, March 28th, 202-
Deep within the depths of the US Navy warship, inside the Combat Information Center, the brain of any warship, a sailor watched...something appear on his monitor, once moment the space between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic was clear of aircraft, and the next, something was just...there, as if i'd appeared out of thin air. He hesitated for just a moment, before calling out "Sir, you gonna want to see this"!
Fun Fact: I own WAY to many trashy Tom Clancy spoof, Military "Techno-Thriller" novels, i buy the things for 3 for 1$ at local book stores on a monthly basis, and after so many of them, i thought "Hey, what if i took that idea of military fiction and semi-political drama and added a Strike Witches aspect to it? I may be a monkey, but i can do that much"! and thus, this story was born! ...If your reading this anyway, its my own little guilty pleasure project for now, i hope to have a few chapters out as your reading this, publishing them in pairs for double the fun (or cringe) value. The plot is simple, a Neuroi is somehow transported to Earth, and now this will start a chain of events that lead to a conflict on the steps of the United States.