Disclaimer: Don't own any part of it. Unfortunately. #Sigh#.
Author's note: Random ficlet that appeared in my brain after watching a WW1 documentary. Hopefully a bit more entertaining than a WW1 documentary…
Do tell me what you think. Please?
Oh, and the 'blisteringly hot' line has a kinda double meaning. You'll know when you get there (all Mike fans have probably got it already, heh).

This wasn't a Video Game

Mike carefully dodged the two enemy fighter planes careening straight towards him. He checked his scanners, but saw no other aircraft in front of him, so he made a hard right. Leaning desperately into his joystick, he turned his own plane, frantically shouting orders down to the bombardier.
"Get ready to fire!"
He prayed his calculations were right. If they were, they had good time to turn and prepare a good firing aim; if they weren't, he was giving the enemy an open opportunity to shoot his plane down. Mike Teavee had never been wrong about anything ever. Apart from one time. That one mistake had never left his memory. It had always lingered over him whenever he had had to make a vital decision. And there seemed to have been a lot of them upon leaving the chocolate factory. His first day back at school, he could have either let the situation overwhelm him, or he could have got on with his life. His first professional basketball match, he could have used the remaining three seconds to shoot the winning basket from halfway across the court, or given up the game completely. His first time in an air battle, he could have deserted the chase of an enemy heading for a civilian city, or risked his last drop of fuel to shoot it down before it did any damage. Decisions peppered his life now that he had a proper one.
"Ready?" he yelled down his radio.
"Ready, sir!" the reply came.
Mike lowered his eye to the gun sight and focused on the little white cross in the centre. He checked the scanner again. He checked the wind speed again. He checked the fuel levels again. He checked and re-checked everything he'd been trained to check then lowered his eye back down to the gun sight. He swallowed and waited. No matter how many missions he went on, Mike couldn't get used to the tension. It was the hardest part of his job. The rest was relatively easy: He'd acquired his geographical knowledge from his father, and his steering and aiming skills from video games. But this wasn't a video game. No video game allows the enemy to shoot back. No video game has explosions that deafeningly loud. No video game makes the player risk their life to save thousands.
A single bead of sweat dripped off the end of Mike's nose and it was only then he realised how blisteringly hot he was. His concentration lapsed for just a fraction of a second, but regained it just in time to see the enemy aircraft approaching…at a completely different altitude!

"Oh my God…" Mike whispered to himself.
"What is it, sir?" the captain from the gunning station said over the radio. Mike barely registered it.
"Holy shit."
"Sir?"
Mike thought fast; for some reason whenever he was faced with a situation like this, he would ask himself: "What would Wonka do?"
He could never admit it to anyone, but Mike had actually had a deep respect for Wonka, living for so long as a recluse and yet still being a success. Mike had spent the first sixteen and a half years of his life as a recluse, but he hadn't really achieved anything, and he had still relied heavily on his parents and others around him. It was almost illogical – and hideously ironic – that people now depended on him.
"Prepare to climb!" he barked down the radio. There was a flustered reply, but Mike paid it no heed. He grabbed the joystick and sharply pulled it towards himself. He climbed for a good hundred feet before he eased the plane back into a horizontal position. He panicked slightly; now all his calculations were completely thrown. He was too muddled to write down the new ones, but his head refused to remember them by itself. He blindly pushed buttons and pulled levers at his brain's command. He glanced at the scanner, away, and quickly back again. To his horror, the enemy aircraft was climbing.
"Uh, sir?" the captain's voice came over the radio again, "The enemy plane is climbing."
A small part of Mike's old, sarcastic self rose up inside him, but died away again, too overcome by fear to make an appearance.
"It'll be alright," he said firmly, still preparing his own plane to fire.
The enemy plane was getting scarily close, scarily fast. What was scarier was that it wasn't even firing at them. From what Mike could see of the model, it appeared they had every capability of doing so.
"Sir?" the captain's voice came yet again – Mike was starting to get sick of that voice, "There aren't any…kamikaze aircraft out today, are there?"
Mike gulped; frankly, it was a possibility, "No way. The Colonel said there weren't."
He took a shaky breath and looked in the gun sight again. He shook his head slowly. There was no way out of this. No time to turn, no room to fire, nowhere to go. The captain seemed to realise this.
"Goodbye, Mike," he said simply down the radio.
Mike didn't even blink, "Goodbye."
At least he'd done his job. They'd destroyed the rest of the enemy craft, and this last one was about to get destroyed by itself. The small, Spanish village was safe.

Most members of that small Spanish village looked up at the huge, yellow explosion that erupted right over their houses. There was a solemn silence as pieces of charred metal splashed into the ocean and sank to the bottom, out of sight.

A/n: I've got to say, I had absolutely no idea which direction this fic was going in until I just wrote it…but I certainly didn't think it would make me cry. Doesn't help that I've got sad music on.