DISCLAIMER - I do not own Advance Wars or anything copyrightedly relating to within, which is copyrighted and owned by Nintendo, although I do happen to like this piece of work I've written and if I ever discover some random lamer forging it in their name I will be substantially cheesed off, and nasty letters from me will commence bombardment on said lamer. So don't even bother stealing it. However, you MAY place this on your website without my consent should it have an Advance Wars fanfiction section. If that happened and I discovered such a thing has occurred, I'd actually be quite flattered. Thank you, and enjoy.

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Storming Skies
By Rusty Dillingham
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---Mission One – The Liberation of Kivari---

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New Year's Day, 0200 Hours
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Thunder rolled across the darkness of Kivari.

The city had been occupied by Black Hole forces almost two months earlier, being one of the first communities to fall to the rogue nation's latest terror campaign. Food shortages, power outages, lack of water; just when a person thought things couldn't get worse because of these invaders, they did. And every night, the occupying forces would order a blackout across the city to insure the peace; to make sure no rebellion popped up in the middle of the night and rioted up a storm as bleak as the weather. It was a dark, gloomy hell, and the invading forces made damned certain of it.

Of course, there'd been rioters – Rioters who had been easily dispatched by Black Hole infantry. It was a miserable scene everywhere one went in the town. By this time, a person couldn't walk down the street to the store without being harassed by the gruesome-looking, gray-skinned infantry units of Black Hole origin, and with the bizarre, walking tanks plodding around all over the place, it was safer to stay indoors anyway.

Black Hole knew their business well. Kivari was a key Orange Star city, much like Krasst – Only Krasst was back in Orange Star's possession. And even then, conditions hadn't been as bad for that city as they were for Kivari. Black Hole was frankly grabbing up every inch of resource the settlement had, and it would only last so long. Businesses were being shut down, homes being taken over for Black Hole's own perverted, personal use -- Things weren't looking good at all for Kivari's residents.

Yet the Black Hole forces had overlooked one simple thing. They had numerous infantry, Neo-Tanks, APCs, and had even taken command of the city's transit system, molding every bus into a nightmare of wheeled weaponry. But at the same time, the occupation force's air defenses were miniscule. There were certainly patches of anti-aircraft units placed here and there throughout the city, but thought obviously hadn't been put into oh-so necessary strategy.

The Black Hole occupation commanders in the makeshift headquarters, formerly the city's central post office, were for the most part unaware of this devastating mistake they'd made.

"Are the Mid-Tanks set up in Sector 11-B yet?" one of the ugly creatures asked, its voice sounding as though someone were trying to strangle it while it gargled.

"Of course they are!" the other spat. "Do you think I'd be dumb enough to delay carrying out an order from Commander Adder himself? He'd have my head on a platter within minutes."

The first alien officer narrowed its vulgar, bulging red eyes. "What about the rockets in 06-A?"

"What do you think? I'd be an idiot not to have them set up already. It's two in the morning, for Pete's sake."

"Yes," the other muttered, perhaps better suited to the idea called strategizing "but didn't the Commander talk about something else before he left for the front lines? Something about the air?"

"Well, who cares about the air? We can't breathe these repulsive humans' atmosphere. He probably said the air made his skin itch or something – You know how he is." The second officer glanced out a nearby window, perhaps thinking it had heard something. "Or maybe he said the air gives him indigest—"

An utterly earth-shattering explosion tore through the postal office as though some great asteroid had slammed right into it, sending debris – and the two officers – flying in every possible direction. A wave of fire flew through the many rooms as the fireball lit up the night all around the area for miles around. Throughout all the sudden chaos, the hideously loud roar of engines up in the sky was clearly audible.

"YOU USELESS IDIOT!!" The first officer poked its sweaty head out from under a broken desk, ready to raise every inch of hell it could. "He was talking about the AIR! THE AIR!"

The second officer cleared its throat uncomfortably from somewhere under a mess of wood and paper. "Whoopsy."

With a scream of its afterburners, the Orange Star jet shot up and away from whatever was left of the Kivari post office. It kicked onto its side as it roared past a flock of taller buildings, immediately gaining attention from a group of anti-aircraft units stationed on top of some of them. Without hesitation, a barrage of bright yellow bullet streaks erupted from the top of the buildings as Black Hole desperately tried to down the enemy aircraft, but the fighter was moving at over mach one at this point. It easily evaded whatever gunfire was sent its way.

"Wee-oo!" Glenn Gordon couldn't help but grin as he piloted his nimble, orange-hued aircraft back towards a speeding party of similarly-painted fighters, all coupled together one-by-one in a mostly rogue echelon formation. Further stressing the afterburners sped up his arrival to the group, but they probably wouldn't stay together for long, considering the situation they were now in.

"Doggone, Glenn," a voice over the fighter pilot's communications radio uttered, "a guy can't help but think you're actually having fun when you do somethin' like that."

His grin turning into a smirk at Tuxedo Ral's sarcastic commentary, Glenn easily brought his aircraft up next to his wingmate's with all the experience any Orange Star ace would have. "No one ever said I wasn't allowed to get a kick out of flying a plane. That and kickin' some Black Hole ass."

"Pffft," Tux groaned from the fighter beside Glenn's. "I'm the only one allowed to party around here, in case you've gone and done forgotten."

Glenn found this true, but only because Tux was allowed to get away with it for some completely nonsensical reason.

It had only been around a month since the battle over the Fate's Point base – The most decisive battle of the war yet. Glenn and the 207th Orange Star Air Force squad, the Thunderbolt Squadron, had taken the fighting right to Black Hole, along with the enemy ace pilot who had plagued the Orange Star pilots for so long: Kailaff Boldigh. It had been in that battle alone that the Orange Star air force had eradicated any threat from Boldigh and what had come to be known as "the Black Cannon," the fearsome doomsday weapon, but while Kailaff Boldigh's remains scorched the skies over Fate's Point, there still lay a gruesome danger in Orange Star's – and the Thunderbolts' – future.

It had soon become very clear to Glenn that even with a loss as devastating as that of the Fate's Point battle, Black Hole's invasion forces wouldn't slow down in the least. He was equally irritated to learn that during the battle, Black Hole had occupied at least two cities on the other side of the Macro continent. There was nothing more infuriating – at least nothing he could remember or think of – than performing to the best of your abilities and taking a big swipe at the enemy only to have it handed back to you, ass-first.

Luckily, at the same time, Orange Star's forces hadn't slowed down either. Glenn had become the first "ace" pilot of the war, taking down five enemy Black Hole fighter aircraft, otherwise known now to the air force as "bandits." Strangely enough, he hadn't felt as proud or happy about the inconspicuous title as he thought he would, but when one of Glenn's squadron members, Felipe "Fel" Banon, passed him in takedowns, the Thunderbolts' flight leader thought it best to get his game on a little more every time they went into combat to lay down the law.

Fel Banon certainly wasn't Glenn's kindest wingmate. It seemed the two of them were constantly at it sometimes back on the Reagan air force base. It had the tendency to get a bit ridiculous at times. The two of them had gotten locked up for a while in the stockade for starting a food fight in the middle of the cafeteria, but after a blue million apologies from Glenn, Commander Beauregard gave in and struck it from his military record. Fel Banon wasn't so lucky, and seemed to resent Glenn even more for it.

But Fel was only a friendly rival, in the big thick of things. If Glenn had a true enemy for an ally, it was Zodolphas Gallow.

Zodo was of Blue Moon origin, but had defected to the Black Hole cause with Kailaff Boldigh soon into the invasion. Being a member of Boldigh's squadron, it had probably been quite hard for him to simply say "no" to the now-dead pilot, but sometimes, he sure didn't act like it. Zodo had been arrested by Orange Star forces after the battle over Fate's Point, quickly being taken into custody soon thereafter for interrogation. Strangely enough, he was released sometime later, and, as though considering such an action to be another of the billion ambiguous tests he'd already given poor Glenn, Commander George Beauregard had interrogated and eventually recruited the pilot into the Orange Star air force, placing him smack in the middle of Thunderbolt Squadron.

Apparently, Zodo Gallow was a good enough pilot to constitute him working to reform, as Beauregard had put it. The allied nations had reform programs that allowed this to occur, and at the prospect of helping society out, the Orange Star military had plunked him right into Thunderbolt Squadron. If anything, despite his general tolerance of it, Gallow seemed entirely unable to work at actually seeming like a pleasant fellow to be around. Evidently, he wasn't as fond of his new allies as he'd been of his old squadron.

Of course, Glenn had been dead-set against the idea from the very start, complaining of how a fellow like Gallow was a risk to he and his fellow wingmates, but Beuaregard, stubborn as he was, didn't put up with Gordon's whining for too long before threatening to throw him back into the stockade if another peep was made about it. So now Glenn had two rivals on his hands, one who could very well turn renegade at any waking moment. Thankfully, fratricide was one thing Glenn didn't have to go and actually talk about with Zodo. Beauregard had made the consequences of such actions very clear already.

"So," Gallow spat over the radio, his voice drowning in impatience, "what do we do now, fearless leader?"

Glenn frowned at the jet he thought was Gallow's, silently wishing there were some way he could pull the guy's ejection handle for him. "You hold onto your butts for orders, that's what. Let me scout around a minute and see what's next on the agenda."

At least Glenn's other comrades were easier to put up with. Crazy old Tuxedo Ral still spent the nights howling like a banshee and drinking every molecule of alcohol available on the Reagan base, Bubba Boggs was the same as he'd always been, Tristan Royal was still a green kid despite a few kills, and Rainey Banker was still Glenn's best "other" friend besides Tux. Glenn honestly still didn't know quite where he stood with Rainey, but it was clear the two of them were becoming more than just friends throughout this whole thing.

And finally, Achmed was still there too, just as baffling and unintelligible to Glenn as the guy had always been.

"Bubba, take Rainey, Fel, and Tristan and head over to the north section of the city. If the intel was correct, that's where most of their rocket units are set up at the moment." Glenn dipped his fighter onto its left wing and struck out from the group over towards a darker section of Kivari. The night sky was sure to light up any moment now with anti-air gunfire as they ventured into the deeper, more commercial areas of the community. "The rest of you, come with me. We'll handle the majority of anti-air in the west."

Four aircraft took off from the party, leaving Tux, Achmed, and Zodo to follow on after Glenn at just under mach one. Glenn gazed out the fighter's canopy, scanning the horizon for any visual sign of enemy bogeys, but thankfully, there was nothing. Yet, anyway. Those damned flies for fighters always liked to pop up at the least enjoyable occasion, usually right when a mission was near completion. "Make sure you guys keep an eye on your radars while we're in the thick of things. You know how the bandits are."

Glenn made sure his oxygen mask and orange helmet both were fitting tightly on his face as a determined glare accompanied his restlessness as he and three of his wingmates headed deep into the midst of what was sure to be air-to-ground combat, or what would at least hopefully be. He glanced over to his right, watching Tux bring his own fighter up alongside Gordon's – Just as a wingmate should. Before they knew it, they were in what intelligence predicted to be the main combat zone.

"Happy New Year, folks," Glenn muttered unenthusiastically.

A mixture of similarly bland responses mumbled back to him over the radio.

Suddenly, without warning, a volley of gunfire sprayed up at the four orange, mechanical vultures from not only the ground, but the top of numerous buildings as well. It lit up the night like some huge parade of fireworks, only these particular fireworks happened to be particularly lethal, and in addition also happened to be aiming directly for the Thunderbolts overhead.

It's about time, Glenn thought as he shoved his fighter into a violent corkscrew through a barrage of ground-based gunfire, sending his head pushing to the side with a tremendous, invisible force. There was without a doubt much more of it than he'd predicted there would be, but this was no problem. The enemy forces didn't make up that intimidating a force. Not only that, but together, the four fighters had enough armaments equipped to take out any threat to them and more, so long as they didn't have the aiming skills of imperial stormtroopers.

"Tux, stay with me! Gallow, Achmed, you two take the gunfire coming from those buildings." Forcing himself to trust his two wingmates to do as he told them, Glenn shoved the control stick hard away from the bright yellow tracer rounds' origin points with Tuxedo Ral backing him up. "Come on around with me, bud, and stay as low as you can. They won't be able to get very good shots at us when we're goin' the speed of sound at 'em."

Tux grinned under his oxygen mask from the cockpit of his fighter. "Roger that, boss."

The two Orange Star fighters wheeled around and, as though making some daring and possibly suicidal move, headed directly back towards where the anti-air units sat immobile. Glenn personally had no idea whether or not Black Hole's anti-air machines were manned, as most of their technology wasn't, but he didn't let that deter him from nuking – or at least taking out of commission – these miserable rats taking potshots at him.

"Switching to freefall bombs." Glenn flipped a tiny switch on the fighter's control stick, effectively activating the aircraft's unguided bombs rather than the lock-on missiles. They would probably have a better impact on the anti-air units than any other armament would. "Watch my tail, Tux."

"You got it." Tux fell back slightly, making sure to do so, keeping an eye out for any other enemy force they may have not yet noticed.

Within moments, Glenn was pulling hard to starboard, sending his fighter away from whatever danger the ground hefted, Tuxedo Ral shooting away after him. A lone projectile soared directly towards the ground, sending the anti-air units scrambling to get away. Glenn didn't need to look back to know the bomb had made impact, thanks to the bright, red-orange explosions glancing off his canopy. Only seconds later, massive booms tore through the cockpit, despite how fast he was traveling.

"I'd say that mopped 'em up good," Tux bragged loudly, as though he were the one who'd claimed the kills.

"Right," Glenn grinned, pushing the fighter back towards where Gallow and Achmed scrambled to eradicate the ground threats to them. They were doing a good job of things, but they hadn't gotten rid of the anti-air units yet, and that made Glenn a teensy bit impatient with the situation. He decided he'd better give them a helping hand. Four were better than two, after all, and besides, they needed to clean things up before the land-based invasion of Kivari was to begin.

Together, the four Thunderbolts effortlessly took care of the remaining enemy anti-air units without too much response. Strangely enough, not only Tux was saddened by this, but Zodo Gallow was as well.

"Shootfire," one or the other complained – Glenn wasn't really paying enough attention to bother figuring out who was speaking, but he suspected it was Ral because Gallow didn't exactly yokel on with a fake southern accent like the other. "They didn't put up much of a fight. I'm disappointed with these folks for once."

"No, they didn't," Glenn said, not entirely fixed on whatever anyone else was blathering about over the radio at the moment. "Bubba, do you copy?"

Scratching ensued over the communications link. Bubba Boggs' voice arose, gunfire in the background, accompanied by the high-pitched scream of missile volleys. "I copy, Glenn!"

"Have you taken care of those rockets yet?" Glenn shifted his view off to port, where he assumed Bubba and the others were engaged in an up-close and personal battle with enemy ground forces. The occasional explosive flashes lit up the dark night's inky horizon, telling the Thunderbolt flight leader his assumption was correct.

"Not yet," Boggs responded, a tense drip to his otherwise easy tone, "but we'll have these guys wiped out in a few moments, I'd wager. We've taken out half of 'em already, so if our land boys are ready to go, give 'em the okay on our side of things."

"I copy, Bub'." Glenn switched the communications link to the Orange Star ground forces just outside Kivari, focusing his attention on the new task at hand. "Kivari invasion force, this is 207-Leader Lieutenant Gordon. We're pretty much taken care of things up here, so whenever you guys are ready to rock and or roll, go on ahead."

More scratching annoyed his eardrums. "Roger that, 207-Lead. Expect to see some fireworks in about three minutes."

Glenn smiled to himself, happily content with their accomplishing the mission's main tasks. Now, all they had to do was split before they got any unwanted company barging through the door – Like they always did. Feathering the fighter's throttle and sending it into a sweeping turn, Gordon turned his attention down to the city's dark buildings and streets, silently wishing his fighter's canopy somehow had nightvision capabilities. The technology just wasn't there yet, however close they may have been. Oh well – Glenn, if a bit arrogantly, felt he had the eyes of a hawk, and they'd been there for him even during situations like this. Who needed nightvision?

"Man," he heard Tux comment, "we could sure use some nightvision right about now."

Glenn sighed.

"Wait!" It was Gallow on the radio this time, sounding vastly concerned with some new and blindingly obvious event unfolding. "I've got radar confirmation on unknown units, Gordon. They're moving like tangos."

Glenn's expression turned black and he groaned exasperatedly. Just when he thought they'd get away without having to go in and kick some bogey butt, too. "Maintain visual scanning. We don't want to get mixed up in another Fate's Point here."

The others chuckled uncomfortably. Sure, they hadn't been in as many dogfights as usual since the Fate's Point battle, nor one as breathtakingly large, but at the same time, they still needed to keep on their toes. The Black Hole aircraft had good artificial intelligence, yet Glenn and the rest of the Thunderbolts had noticed sometimes blatant and other times miniscule errors in their flying here and there, and this was what often gave them the edge over the enemy in dogfighting: The Thunderbolts learned from their mistakes. The bad guys didn't.

"I still don't have visual confirmation," Gallow commented, gazing out his Orange Star fighter towards the horizon, where the radar assumed the enemy aircraft was.

"Me either, Glenn." Tux kept one eye on his own radar and the other out the canopy as best he could. "I'll bet they just up and ran off when they saw us ready to rock some faces out."

They'll be here soon, Glenn didn't have to say out loud. He already suspected there was more than one enemy aircraft. That's how it always was these days, considering Black Hole was stepping up their invasion forces without a fraction of a skip. Still, Glenn never let that get to him – He and the rest of the Orange Star air force wouldn't have gotten this far without having some obvious skill.

Ratcheting the throttle up to full, Glenn took off for the enemy bogey's position, the three other Orange Star fighters following suit quickly thereafter. Soon enough, the Thunderbolt flight leader could see more than a few opposing jets not all too far away – and headed right for these four Orange Star fighter jets. "There they are! Enemy bandits, bearing two-seven-five. Engage at will!"

"Woohoo!" Grinning widely, Tux let loose a cowboy whoop under his oxygen mask as he pushed his aircraft full bore at the Black Hole fighter jets speeding towards them, going head-to-head immediately, his comrades by his side. It was a general tradition among the group to listen for that very yell nowadays, and Glenn had to admit that it got his blood pumping quite well, despite knowing deep down he shouldn't try and acknowledge or encourage Tuxedo's utter recklessness.

The bandits blew past the Orange Star fighters, sending a violent wave of air rippling through the aircrafts. Glenn was the first to kick his fighter onto its side and bring it around to try and get behind one of the enemy planes, but he already knew the bogeys would be shooting this way and that. Oh well – He'd been in this position before and knew well what to do by then.

Slowing the fighter down as he opted to make his mark on the closest enemy, Glenn kept the jet on its side, predicting the bandit's erratic movements to bring it into his sights within moments. He'd grown somewhat used to dogfighting the Black Hole fighters, and by now he was more than a little bit aware of some of their flying patterns, making things worlds easier for him during combat.

The bandit juked to the right just as Glenn caught its tail. The Orange Star fighter pilot flicked the tiny switch on his yoke that moved the armed weapon mechanism back to missiles and continued his pursuit of the enemy jet, but the bizarre-looking Black Hole fighter was doing a pretty good job of trying to evade Glenn. Still, the Thunderbolt flight leader knew what he was doing.

Coming around a bend of taller, pitch-black Kivari buildings, Glenn focused on an imaginary point that the bandit would hopefully fly into within a half second. As soon as the enemy craft was lured into the spot, Glenn's fighter spat fire. The bright reddish-orange streaks blew at a scarily faster speed than he was traveling at, careening towards the side-winding bandit as walls and windows flew past the both of them.

As the chase left the buildings and came back around towards where the others fought, Glenn examined the damage he'd done and found it to be aggravatingly minimal. Yet now the bandit was spewing a bit of smoke from its rear, so at least the Thunderbolt knew he'd dished some punishment at all. Part of the Black Hole fighter's wing was now ripped as well, successfully impairing its wing and slogging the bandit down a notch.

With the enemy damaged, the rest would be easy – At least, Glenn hoped it would be. Black Hole's fighters seemed to be desperately tenacious at times, and while he knew he shouldn't let this annoy him, Glenn found it irritating to do so much damage yet still have to push himself to the extreme to win every fight. Oh well, he always thought, he would probably do the same.

Spinning into an inversion, the enemy bandit slipped down closer to the Kivari homes and streets. Glenn would have really liked to be able to shoot this piece of scrap down to where it wouldn't careen right into someone's bathroom, but the dogfight was occurring almost directly over the middle of the city and their land forces were just outside, ready to move. He would have no choice but to try and down this guy here and now. Hopefully Kivari's news stations had by now picked up on the ferocious noises coming from the skies, prompting people to get into shelters, and were keeping track of every move the fighters made – When they could be seen, of course. With how dark it was, someone on the ground would probably only be able to see one of the combatants when they got blown to kingdom come or landed smack on someone's roof.

Glenn charged downwards after the bandit, making sure to not again fire until the enemy craft rose up, not wanting to do any more damage to city property than was necessary. As soon as the Black Hole fighter began to level out, the Orange Star pursuer behind it again took its chances, letting loose a barrage of gunfire. Unfortunately, Glenn didn't make any contact with his shots this time because the bandit rolled like a ball out of the way and to his left.

The hell with this, Glenn thought, pressing a button on the control stick. On the screen in front of him, the missile lock-on sequence began as the mechanism attempted to grab ahold of the enemy fighter. A terribly irritating beeping sound accompanied the sequence, but Glenn ignored it as best he could, having grown as used to it now as he had fighting the Black Hole forces.

As the bandit looped up and leveled out in Glenn's view, the beeping became a constant tone. Without hesitation, the Thunderbolt leader's finger clipped the ominous red button on the front of the yoke, and the aircraft lit up with a fiery hue as the missile's rear erupted and sped out into the night at its target, as though it had been longing to be released like a bull ever since it had been slapped onto the fighter's wing.

"Hit, hit, hit!" Glenn wished out loud, wincing.

The missile screamed at the elusive bandit, leaving a trail of white smoke to accompany whatever fumes were escaping the enemy fighter's hull. Only a few bare seconds had to pass before the night sky over Kivari was lit up by Glenn's seventeenth accumulated air-to-air kill. Whatever was left of the Black Hole fighter went shooting in every possible, fiery direction, pieces of the destroyed craft either falling to earth in a blaze or simply disintegrating on the spot.

"Bandit down!" Glenn yelled happily, grinning under the oxygen mask while forcing himself to not go and pump a fist while taking his hand off the control stick.

"Glenn," he suddenly heard Bubba say, "the rockets are deadbeat – We're comin' to give you guys a hand! Estimated time of arrival is one and a half minutes."

"This thing'll be over by then, Bub', but thanks just the same." Glenn pitched his fighter into a sailing climb, steering the craft back over to where the rest of the dogfighters waged war. "So, anybody seen a bogey around here?"

Glenn got his equally-sarcastic answer. A pair of bandits blew past him on both sides, immediately followed by Zodo Gallow and Achmed Yahasititapen, both in mach pursuit of one enemy craft each. Easing the stick to the right, Glenn decided to give at least one of them a helping hand, though he knew well not to claim someone else's kill. That was just rude and an insult to a fellow pilot, so Glenn and the other Thunderbolts refrained from doing such a thing, so long as their buddies weren't in any big danger themselves.

"Glenn, bandit on your tail!"

Taking heed of Tuxedo's warning, Glenn kicked the fighter as hard as he could to port, slowing it down greatly as he strained to check his six o'clock. Sure enough, a rogue Black Hole fighter was coming around on him in a wide turn, and if Glenn didn't move like a rocket as soon as he could, that crazy son of a—

Too late. An even more annoying sound than the normal beeping tone sprang up in Glenn's cockpit. It really knew how to get a guy's attention, and it literally grabbed Glenn by the throat and shook him until his teeth rattled. "He's trying to get a lock on me!"

The easiest way to evade the skilled but somewhat flawed intelligence of the Black Hole fighters was to simply point a fighter spaceward and mash it, kicking in the afterburners. Not even artificial bandits could take the amount of air pressure one felt when nearly exiting Wars World's atmosphere, but Glenn wasn't about to kill himself attempting a moon mission. At forty thousand feet, with the bandit still behind him trying to reach out and smack him out of the sky with a missile, Glenn hauled back on the stick hard and suddenly sent his fighter plummeting back towards the dirt in a death dive.

As he did this, his speed shooting to well over a thousand miles an hour thanks to Wars World's gravitational force pulling him downwards like it used a giant, invisible hand, Glenn again checked behind him to see what his pursuer was up to. He couldn't help but smirk as he watched the bandit try and loop around to pull downwards only to sputter pathetically a moment and then begin dropping like a heap of rocks thanks to the air pressure shoving it downwards while trying up its components. Those things just didn't know when to use their afterburners correctly.

"Another bandit's done for," Glenn mentioned over the radio, pulling out of the dive. The Black Hole craft continued its doomed fall to the ground through his jet wash a moment afterwards.

"Congrats, Glenn." Tux pulled up alongside Glenn's aircraft, the two wingmen shooting back towards the others. "What's that? Eighteen?"

"I don't know," uttered a fairly baffled Thunderbolt leader. "I didn't really nail him, I just sort of outsmarted him."

"Well, if it means my catching up to you, then let's make it seventeen, eh?"

Glenn could almost feel the smirk on Tux's face as the wild man said that over the radio. Tuxedo was only three points behind Glenn in air-to-air kills, having become the third "ace" of the war behind Fel Banon in second since Thunderbolt Squadron was in combat almost twice or thrice a week, and while Glenn knew he probably shouldn't approve of such competitiveness in the team, he also felt that it kept everyone on edge; on top of their game. Such was necessary at times like this.

Scanning the horizon again, Glenn took notice of the three flock of Orange Star fighters. Bubba and the others had arrived to back up the other half of the squadron, and by now the rest of the bandits were bugging out and heading back to the hellhole they'd been spawned from. Glenn grinned widely and appreciatively of his fellow pilots. "Chalk another one up for the good guys."

Zodo and Achmed pulled up next to the two paired wingmen as the squadron began to take formation. Glenn hesitated a moment, examining the ground, watching the land invasion of the city begin. They would probably meet little resistance thanks to the 207th's work. Smiling, the Thunderbolt flight leader's eyes centered on some of the other fighters near his. "Everyone alright? No one got picked at by gunfire on the ground while you were handlin' those rockets?"

"Nah," Tristan Royal commented, unhooking his oxygen mask from his helmet considering how hot it could make a pilot's face, not being the only one to do so at the moment, "we were okay. Had to do some of that crazy pilot stuff, but you know how that is."

"I've got a pretty good idea how it goes, yes." Glenn ratcheted the throttle forward, increasing his speed a little, wanting to get out of the combat zone as quickly as possible for no particular reason. "Let's go home, folks. I'm not sure about you, but I need a drink."

"You need a drink?" Tuxedo Ral laughed.

"Yes," Glenn muttered while trying to refrain from smirking, not wanting Tux's ego to get any bigger than it already was, "you're not the only one who likes to drink a while, though none of us want to get plastered to the point where we can't remember our names like someone else I know around here."

"Very funny," Tux responded, trying to not sound amused but not being overly successful at it as humorous chuckling from random Thunderbolts ensued over the radio. "That only happened once. May we drop it?"

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Author Notes:

I hath returned. Yeah, you're going: "Hey, what about Geist-Flieger"? Oh, you mean the story that I consider a failed and boring attempt at writing through the eyes of a bad guy. I hate to say it, but Glenn Gordon and the Thunderbolts are much more entertaining to write about. I guess I just happen to like them and have grown accustomed to writing about them. Anyway, this story probably won't be updated as often as the Fighters: Part II was, since I do have school to worry about… Ah well. Since I like Glenn and the bunch, I promise this story WILL be finished eventually and not be put on hold like Geist-Flieger was. I do hope you stick around, and reviews are always accepted and very appreciated as well. That's why keeps a guy writing, dontcha know.