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 Four – Reflections---

Thunk.

"Damn!"

Tuxedo Ral thrust another projectile at the thick, dart-filled board hanging on the wall in the pilot's lounge. At the moment, he hadn't made one direct hit on the ugly face of a random Black Hole soldier's picture in the middle of the board, but he refused to give up just yet, despite he'd been trying to hit the blamed thing for weeks on end every time he came into the lounge. Tux was a good pilot, yes, but Glenn wouldn't want him on his team in a dart-throwing competition.

"Give up, Tux!" Bubba groaned from the lounge's couch as Glenn sat with him, watching a small television on the bar's top that was airing some ridiculous fighter pilot movie full of military mistakes. He wasn't paying much attention to it, and only picked up on it whenever any sort of aircraft was shown, though most of them just got blown up. Silly action movies. Tristan Royal, sitting in a chair beside the couch, seemed more interested in the film than the Thunderbolt leader did, so he left it on anyway.

"Go fall in love with a tree limb," the competitive Ral returned, hurling yet another dart at the board and again falling up just short of the bull's-eye. "Gall-dayumn!"

Bubba just laughed, partially at Tux's fake, light southern accent. "My dead uncle Bobbo could hit that target half-wasted and upside down through a fence."

"Yeah, really," Tristan snickered, joining in on the rare 'smite the might of Tux' moment. "And Bubba's told me about his uncle. The guy's locked in a mental clinic and he could do better than you any day!"

"I reckon I'll turn both your ugly mugs into a dartboard in half a second if you don't can it," Tux grumbled as he tried again to hit the board, silently wondering how long it would take to go out and string up a hanging rope for the both of them.

"Too bad you're about as blind as a bat," Bubba Boggs remarked tenaciously. "You're probably break the window aimin' for us."

"Or the TV." Tristan crossed his legs, grinning at Tux and fully enjoying the moment.

Tuxedo Ral was the only one who didn't know Tristan always wanted to dish out some return vocal punishment to the guy. Practically everyone on base knew about how the young fellow always wanted to blurt the most sarcastic, funny thing right in Tux's face, but it had never worked in the few times he'd tried it. Either Tristan hadn't gotten up enough courage or mental wickedness to jaw much other than a gaggle of seemingly lost and rather unfunny phrases, or Tuxedo had outright jumped back and slammed the poor kid with what had to be the universe's greatest comeback. Glenn honestly felt bad for Tristan at those times and wished he could shove a big book of insults in the kid's brain to put Tux into his place – and zip up that big yap of his.

"Or the radio!" Bubba laughed. "Or the broad side of a barn! Wait, no, you'd never hit that. Just like how you'd never hit me in that exercise even with a thousand chances. You've lost your touch, Tux."

Glenn tried to ignore the conversation, but he couldn't. It was impossible to ring it out in his mind because he was sitting right next to bigmouth Bubba. What annoyed him more though was his opinion – no, the fact that Tuxedo Ral was a better pilot than both Bubba Boggs or Tristan Royal and they were dogging him about it. Sure, Bubba had gotten Tux earlier in the exercise, but it wasn't like the squadron's clowny second-in-command hadn't bested Boggs in the sims before. Besides, Tux had more kills than both of the two pilots combined, and he had displayed not only skill in the sky but trustworthiness and comradery. That was why he was Glenn's best friend and Bubba and the others weren't.

"Yeah," Tristan kept on, not noticing the annoyed look appearing on Glenn's face, "and you'd never hit me, either. Not in a million whole years."

"Heck, you got outta there in two seconds, Royal." Bubba crossed his arms. "'Course, it's not like he would have gotten you anyway even if you'd stayed in."

Tuxedo bit his tongue to keep from hammering Bubba right in his fly trap, and his hand gripped one of the darts so hard he threatened to squeeze it right in half.

Glenn's expression finally turned just sour enough for the others to catch wind of it, and his brow furrowed, not necessarily looking at any of them as he spoke. "Take it easy, boys. There's been enough turmoil around here lately already."

"Aw, Glenn, we're just havin' some fun." Bubba grinned, then made an immature face at Tux since their leader wasn't bothering to eyeball them. Tux returned the favor by thrusting a closed fist towards Bubba, positioning a dart where his middle finger would be.

"So, Mr. Flight Leader," Tristan said, turning to their squadron captain, "what'd you think of that exercise this morning anyway?"

Glenn hadn't talked much of the little practice round Commander Beauregard had forced them into sometime earlier that day. There was no doubt afterwards that he'd been especially vexed by the whole thing, what with a sudden but temporary attitude twist. Still, despite his obvious irritation with the exercise, he hadn't readily come out and mentioned exactly how he felt about it – Perhaps because no one had bothered to ask until now.

The flight leader hesitated before responding, and propped one leg up onto the table by the couch. "I didn't like it."

"That much was obvious," Tux chuckled, thrusting another dart at the board. It was a good thing he wasn't playing anyone for money. "GOD CRAP SON OF A DAMN!"

"Why didn't you like it?" Tristan had been silently and utterly perplexed by Glenn's whole problem with the exercise, and he wanted to know exactly what their superior found so horrible about it. It wasn't like they had really been in combat, so what was the deal here?

Again, Glenn just hesitated, his pupils jolty – A visual clue that his thoughts were hard to comprehend.

"I guess I kind of forgot what it was like to go into combat against real people," he finally answered. "It was a hell of a lot harder than fighting those Black Hole artificial intelligence fighters."

Glenn wouldn't mention anything else, nor the fact that Zodo Gallow's little human spirit commentary had been troubling him ever since the exercise. He found the thought of having to dogfight another actual person again very disturbing, and while he knew he was trained for that sort of thing, he'd grown comfortable dogfighting Black Hole's aircraft. He didn't want to go back to the old ways. Besides – He did enough fighting with Fel Banon and Gallow anyway.

"I had a blast," Tux snickered. "It's a lot more fun doggin' each other than it is those lousy Black Hole losers. They're hardly even a challenge anymore, I'd say."

Bubba's eyes closed halfway as he leered at the ever-arrogant Tuxedo Ral. "Yeah, you sure look like you had fun when I took you out of the practice. I know I did. You're just losin' your touch if anything."

"Get your lazy gluteus maximus off that couch and say that over here, camel face." The Thunderbolt Squadron's second-in-command scowled menacingly, lining up Bubba's big head with one of his few remaining darts.

"You've lost that lovin' feelin', Tux!" Bubba half-sang, half-cracked.

"Would you knock it the hell off?! Damn, you're drivin' me nuts!"

The entire room quieted easily with Glenn's extremely annoyed words. Tristan was the first to speak after the momentary silence. "Jeez, Glenn, chill out. What's the problem? Tux and Bubba are at it all the time and you never seemed to care."

"Yeah, well," the Thunderbolt flight leader grumbled, "would it hurt us to not get all uppity and argue every so often? It isn't that much to ask. I mean, sheez, we're in a war here."

"Not argue!? Not make fun of Bubba!?" Tux grabbed his throat with his free hand and made obscene choking noises.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt," Tristan responded, successfully ignoring Tux's increasingly tasteless animations. "But we know we're a team – It's not like we've never thought of ourselves as anything other than that. Heck, you guys are some of the best friends I've ever known in my whole life. And don't forget about that 'exchange' you're always talkin' about, Glenn."

Tristan had a point, especially with the 'exchange' bit. The exchange, as far as Glenn was concerned, was the premise of all the squadron members entrusting their lives to one another while up in the air. If another squadronmate was in trouble, one always helped them, so long as it wouldn't get themselves killed. Sure, it was a normal activity in any squadron or military team, but Glenn made damn well sure that his comrades were fully aware of it and it wasn't just something that "went without saying."

"That's true." Glenn hefted his leg off the table and sat up, resting his hands together on his lap. "I just have doubts these days with an arrogant hotshot like Fel Banon or a weasel like Zodo Gallow around, both of which are members of the exchange."

"It's a wonder why they ain't friends," Tux commented, leaning against the wall as he spun one of the darts around casually, "the two of them might as well get married, they're such rats."

Glenn sighed. "I need to think of a way to get their heads out of the clouds and get them to realize that they're part of this team now, and how we shouldn't be at each other's throats all the time. I don't really want to talk to either of them at all, at any time, but I think I'll have to eventually."

"Well," Tux yammered, snickering a bit, "you can damn well try with Fel Banon, but that Gallow, he's as stubborn as old Bubba there in a sandwich shop. He just won't go until he has exactly, and I mean exactly what he wants, so to speak. Right, Bub'? Don't tell me you forgot about that time—"

"I don't want to hear about it!" Bubba growled, covering his ears before Tux could go off on a tangent about him.

Before any of them could utter another word, or before Tux could make another sarcastic, out-of-place comment, Rainey Banker stepped into the room.

Tux used her appearance to make up for the potentially lost moment. He turned right to the fellow pilot and raised his eyebrows towards her with a big, doofy grin on his face, instantly thinking up the best – yet worst – flirtation phrase he could come up with at that moment.

"He-e-e-e-ey, Banker! Are you a pilot? Because you make me want to... I mean, uh, are you in the air force? Because you are out of this world! Wait, that's for astronauts..." He stood there a moment, trying to shake off the sudden lack of brain waves going on in his apparently empty noggin. Rainey didn't exactly look impressed with him.

"Just ignore Fabio there and sit on down over here." Glenn smiled pleasantly and waved her over to the couch, making room.

Rainey leaned against the lounge's pool table and crossed her arms, turning to watch the doorway and giving none of them an eye. "No thanks."

Glenn paused silently, put slightly backward by her bizarre demeanor. "Somethin' wrong?"

"No," she answered, though the flight leader detected tremors in her voice, "nothing is wrong."

The squadron's only female pilot just leaned there a moment more. When she finally realized that not only Glenn but the room's three other inhabitants were looking at her with equally baffled expressions on their mugs, Rainey sighed exasperatedly. "It has to do with Mr. Gallow, okay?"

Glenn leapt from his seat without missing a beat. "What in hell did that dingbat do now?"

"Nevermind!" she thrust her arms up in the air. "Geez! Just forget it."

"Tell me!" Glenn approached her, already growing frustrated by this whole sudden thing.

"No!" she countered, quickly coming to anger herself. Rainey was a hell of a lot tougher than she may have looked to some of the enlisted men, but she still had emotions much like the rest of them.

The flight leader stared at her, bewildered. "Whaddya mean, 'no'!?"

"It's not even any of your business!" She glared thunderbolts at him.

Clearing his throat a bit to make himself more noticeable, Tux started in himself. "Hold on, Rainey. Glenn's not ticked off with you, he's just trying to tell you in his own sweet way that he's worried. We all know how that old dog Zodo can be, and our fearless leader here just wants to make sure the guy didn't pull anything on you he's not supposed to. You can't blame Glenn for tryin' to figure out what's going on."

The vexed female pilot sighed again, deciding Tux's explanation was satisfactory. "I just ended up having to talk with him a bit, that's all."

"What'd he say?" Glenn instantly wanted to know.

"Look, it," she stammered awkwardly and irritatedly, "it was nothing worth babbling about now, alright? I just said something to him I probably shouldn't have."

Glenn looked almost stunned. Was she irritated with herself? Gallow was supposed to be the one at fault here! What in blue blazes was going on? He instantly set out to find what, another confused look spreading across his face and encompassing it almost completely. "What're you talking about?"

Rainey Banker paused, then hefted herself off the pool table and shuffled towards the lounge's window casually, her eyes locking on a random fighter jet from another squadron taxi onto the runway off in the distance. "I passed by him on the way here. He told me I looked nice today, and I thought he was starting something."

"Starting something?" Glenn blinked, raising an eyebrow, becoming aware of the situation Rainey had gotten herself into.

"I just thought he was, you know, being wolfy. Or something." Rainey allowed herself to grin for a moment. "So, to put it nicely, I told him to stick it."

Tux cracked up upon hearing that. So that was it. Glenn closed his eyes agitatedly and leaned against the pool table himself. This was really the last damned thing he needed – More turmoil inside his own squadron, and the fact that Rainey was the cause of some of it this time didn't help things any. Fools like Fel Banon and Zodo Gallow were the usual suspects in this sort of case, and Glenn found it obnoxious that he had the pleasure of actually counting on his other, less-asstastic wingmates to stir up some trouble.

"So what'd he do then?" Bubba asked, unable to quell his own grin at the thought of someone like Rainey Banker telling a guy like Gallow to shove something straight up his tailpipe.

Rainey rested her arms on the window sill, perhaps tired from the day's events. She was obviously more than a little unhappy with them, at that. "Well, he didn't really do anything. If anything, he looked confused, or disappointed. I thought he'd get really mad, but he didn't. He just walked away."

Glenn turned his head towards her, crossing his arms and legs together. The best cure for this situation was to probably just try and let it go, though he couldn't very well count on Gallow doing such a thing. Still, it was something that a fellow just had to put behind them. He knew full well Rainey had no desire to go up to the guy and apologize for what she'd said anyway, so that was out. "Whatever the case, just try and forget it even happened. Hopefully, he will too."

She didn't respond.

Staring at her for only a moment longer, Glenn just shook his head and took hold of a nearby cue stick, starting a game by himself and not bothering to invite the rest of them. He wanted some peace and quiet time to think.

The rest of the room was from then on quiet.

--- --- ---

Water dripped from the hangar's tin roof, beads of the liquid plastering some of the black-hued fighter jets stationed inside. It was still raining outside, and it wouldn't look as though the bad weather would let up anytime soon. Black Hole's military meteorologists had predicted at least two more days of this nonsense, but despite this, work still had to be done, including work for a certain team of aerial combat operatives.

"Are we going up today, sir?" a young though deep voice asked, a slight echo traveling throughout the large hangar.

The man turned around to acknowledge his comrade as he ran a hand through his wheat-colored hair, perhaps to dry and dry it out some. The planes weren't the only victims of the dripping roof. "I believe so. Be ready in case we get the call."

Judgment Seven's expression showed befuddlement. "Really? Would they really have us fly in such conditions?"

"Certainly. They want us to be ready for anything, much like the other nations' air forces." Judgment One tugged at his black bomber jacket. The hangar was cold – Obviously an air duct was bringing in the outside's cold atmosphere. The Black Judgment Squadron's – Actually only Judgment Squadron, as Black Hole liked to put the word 'black' before everything for some odd reason – aircraft colors seemed to only brighten the intensity of the glacial temperature.

Turning towards the black-painted Blue Moon fighter jet his leader was standing by, Judgment Seven folded his arms together, chilly mists exiting his mouth as he spoke. "And when are we supposed to head out to take care of that squadron the Commander seems to loathe so much?"

"Commander Hawke doesn't seem concerned over the squadron one way or another," Judgment One returned, pulling at one of the fighter's missiles to make sure it was tightly locked onto the wing. "It's Commander Lash who despises the squadron. She's still vastly annoyed over the loss of both Boldigh and her little Black Cannon, or so word from the capital says. Commander Hawke only sees the squadron as a nuisance, or the top priority on a structure of such."

"Still, when are we heading out?" Judgment Seven stepped over to the manned Black Hole squadron's flight leader, his eyes scanning the fighter. "He said—"

"I don't give a damn what Commander Hawke said," Judgment One uttered, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. "It doesn't matter when we go."

The other pilot stood there, still looking rather perplexed. "But if we left at nighttime—"

"—It would be no different than if we left during daytime. We're more than a match for this squadron no matter what odds are." The Judgment Squadron leader rose an arm up and let it rest on the wing, leaning against it. "Whatever Commander Hawk told you, forget all of it. We're going to do things my way."

Judgment Seven eyed his leader quizzically. "Your way."

"That's correct. You've heard of Sgadd, correct?"

"Sgadd? S-H-O-D?"

"No, S-G-A-D-D." Judgment One's eyes fluttered away from his wingmate and gazed out one of the hangar's few windows, focusing on the cold, dark mists outside created from the poor weather the country was having. "That's our target for our first mission."

Blinking repeatedly in surprise, Judgment Seven did a double-take at the flight leader. "Wait – Sgadd? But that's Eight's hometown—"

"So?" The lead Judge turned his head towards the other pilot, as though challenging him – Or at least asking him if he had any sort of problematic hitch with what they were going to do. "That's irrelevant."

"Still," Judgment Seven uttered uncomfortably, "do you think it's wise to go and attack a simple-enough community that one of our wingmates was born in?"

"Don't put words in my mouth." Judgment One glared at his subordinate, though he really didn't think anything ill of it. "I don't necessarily think it's wise. It's just a good idea, since some of the members of the enemy squadron may be from Sgadd. Since it's close to their base, or where we suspect they are, provided they haven't moved their operations yet since that failed ground attack on it, the town probably has sentimental value as well. They'll be angry over the possible loss, and it wouldn't be a hindrance on us if they were fighting blind with vexation."

Judgment Seven stood there, taken back slightly. "I never would have thought of that."

"That's why I'm in command of this unit and you aren't." The Judgment Squadron flight leader's thin mouth hinted at an ephemeral smile, but it never appeared. The words weren't spawned from arrogance – They were simply the truth, and both of them knew it.

"Anyway," Judgment One continued, "I suppose we'll head out tomorrow. I'll set up a list of specific targets in Sgadd we might want to hit and issue them during briefing in the morning. Do me a favor and go tell maintenance to make ready with the fuel and inspections."

"Yes-sir." The younger Black Hole pilot saluted. "Anything else?"

Judgment One scratched the side of his head, expressionless. "Don't bother telling any of the Commanding Officers about any of this. If you happen by them and they ask of our current plans, tell them. If not, don't. I don't think they'd agree with my strategy."

Again, Judgment Seven nodded, a weary look surfacing on his face. His leader sure pulled some risky moves when it came to dealing with the Commanders. "Yes-sir."

The Judgment Squadron leader waved a hand lightly, informing his comrade he could leave, but just before Judgment Seven was out of the hangar, the older pilot felt another drop of rain on his head and snapped himself back to attention. "Oh! Seven."

The pilot turned around. "Sir?"

"When you're done with that... Suit up."

Judgment Seven sighed.

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Author Notes:

I apologize for the length it took to get this chapter up. School's started up again, and I'm in the second semester of my bid for a certificate in computer networking & repair. Let me tell you, it's gotten a teensy bit more difficult. They like to pile on homework, that much I've realized. Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you review. They're always appreciated.

And by the way: Keep an eye out for a possible guest appearance by Thunderbolt Squadron in Dr. Bross' fic, "the Death Array." It's coming along great, and it's as good a read as any in the Advance Wars section. Highly recommended.