On The Job Training

An Ace Combat 5 story

A/N: To clear up the plausible misconception that Beowulf pointed out, I'm going to explain what Blaze meant when he talked about the 'two designs of MiGs'. He was referring to both the incident that was just about to boil over in front of him, as well as the 'Sand Island Incident' that he was in the control tower for, the one shown in the game's opening cutscene. There's a bit in that in which you can see the enemy fighters, and I'm pretty sure they were MiG-29 Fulcrums. If not, they were now. The composition of the flight that came against them in the previous chapter was just 4 MiG-21bis Fishbeds. Blaze is connecting the dots in his mind, even at that point in the war.

Whoever came up with the idea that the 108th Tactical tangled with a UFO above the Osean coast during Operation Lagoon is guilty of stupidity in the extreme. I can't even begin to fathom where they dredged up that ridiculous idea from. The closest thing that our world has ever seen to alien invasion is the planetfall of the Ulysses asteroid…or asteroids, thanks to the plan to blow that huge chunk of rock into an interstellar shotgun blast aimed at us…

Never mind that it did save the planet, someone should have used a higher yield nuke. Or, perhaps multiples. But that's past history. The flying objects which we officially 'did not shoot down' were identified…visually in fact. While we shot them down.

I can still remember the oh-so-slight bitterness that my first two combat kills did not count for anything. Chopper, though he wasn't lucky enough to get a kill in his first engagement, was somewhat pissed that officially, he was still a CV. Kei? Well, she was slightly annoyed by the fact that she had now proved herself in combat by taking down an enemy fighter, and was still getting precisely zero respect from the Captain. Add all this to some razzing by other persons on base that we had fired missiles at 'nothing', and the three of us that would fly past the next mission were in sort of bad moods.

Heck, even Genette, still steamed about the fact that he had lost his camera and video camera to the classified images they contained due to their presence on the flight that gutted Wardog, was included in our little knot of unhappiness. Only Bartlett and Pops were taking it all in stride. Pops because he really had nothing to be all that unhappy about, and Bartlett because he was just that kind of a man. Totally self-assured.

We all had our ways of coping. A beauty of a sunset found us all on the tarmac, near the hangar where Pops's transport plane rested, along with Bartlett's spare F-5E . I remember that Pops was tinkering with something to do with the mechanisms that folded the plane's wings. Genette and Bartlett were sitting and talking about the reprimand that the Captain had just gotten from Perrault, as well as what had REALLY happened in the air when we went after that SR-71. Chopper was playing catch with his dog Kirk, a friendly black lab. The Frisbee was about the closest thing in the air to a UFO that Wardog ever encountered.

Kei? Kei and I were sparring. Now, each member of the Osean Self-Defense Force, no matter what the branch, goes through a hand-to-hand combat curriculum. This meant that none of our fighting men and women would be helpless if left without weapons on the battlefield. We pilots took it seriously, because as any pilot who's ever had to ditch over a combat zone can tell you, your survival gear and weapons are definitely not certain to come with you, or land anywhere near you, assuming they get out of the plane. There's a lot of uncertainty when it comes to ejecting.

But even though Kei was trained in hand-to-hand combat, and was reasonably good at it too, she was having trouble. You see, back when I was still in college, thinking that I'd just be a civilian, I had been brought into the world of martial arts by my roommate during freshman year. My favorite was always taijiquan, and I had made, and still make it a point to keep current. I'm no grandmaster, true, but I can do some reasonably impressive stuff.

Military fighting systems are quite effective, but they have their flaws. The primary one is that they're strict playbooks, meant to be completely muscle-memory trained. If your opponent knows the system, they can control you quite effectively. The other, and this is more debatable, is that they are uncompromisingly 'hard', in martial arts parlance. A 'soft' stylist…such as a user of taijiquan, can use that to their advantage. I had both advantages.

Hence why Kei would throw a perfectly good sidekick…and go sprawling as I threw her. A punch invited joint locks, and maneuvers that put her at my mercy. Her attempt at the classic left-right was neutralized by a rising slap-block, followed by a palm-strike to rob the right of it's power, then a gentle tap with the heel of my hand under her chin to show that I could have sent her off her feet in that instance.

As we separated from our latest clash, breathing heavily, she put her hands on her knees, shook her head and laughed. "You know, you're as frustrating as the Captain."

I gave her a somewhat dirty look. "Thanks. I suppose I should aspire to that, though. Step 34b on the path to becoming a great fighter pilot…become insufferable."

That got a giggle out of her. "I don't know about that. You seem to be doing fine. It's just no matter how much I try, I can't seem to change the situation with either of you."

My eyebrow rose. "Excuse me?"

"Can't get him to respect me…can't land a, YAH!" She lunged and punched at me, an attack I redirected without taking advantage of the force to throw her or otherwise. I merely stepped behind her. "Well, land a single satisfactory attack on you."

I grinned. "Practice makes perfect." She turned to face me. "Do you really think I'm doing alright in the air?"

She started in with a chain of punches, each of which I dodged or blocked. "Come on, Blaze. You've been in live-fire air combat once, and you've already downed two planes. That's not luck."

"Edge…" I grabbed her wrist and pivoted outside, putting my free hand against her shoulder blade and hooking my foot in as a pivot point for my throw. "In case you didn't notice, one of those kills was the direct result of my squadmates' maneuvers." She went sprawling to the ground. "In fact, the second one nearly got me."

"Yeah, well, you're new at this, Jack. We all are. And that final kill was you. I don't think even the Captain could have made that missile shot."

I offered my hand to her. "Thanks." She clasped my hand, then I found myself being pulled down. "What the?"

"Ha! I got you!" she crowed.

"You're a treacherous little one, aren't you?" I asked in a mock offended tone from on the ground next to her. "I show a little chivalry and…boom."

"Well, of course!" She giggled again, a sound which would become very much lacking as the war went on. "I knew I'd have to be sneaky to win."

I propped myself up on my elbows. "Sun Tzu would be proud."

"Ah, a reader of the classics. I'm impressed. Military family?" She sat up.

I did likewise. "Nah. My parents are chefs. They own a restaurant in Oured. What about you?"

"My dad's an airline pilot. My mom died in the Erusian war."

I grimaced. "Sorry…so you were born on Usea?"

She nodded. "I'm from North Point. Dad used to fly for Istas Air. Mobius 1 saved him and his plane during the war, actually."

My eyebrow raised again. I knew the battle she was talking about. "Really now?"

Another nod. "He flies for Air Ixiom now. I just wanted to pay Osea back, though…"

I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "I get it."

She smiled. "What about you? Why'd you join up?"

I chuckled. "There's only so much you can do with a major in Osean these days, and I didn't feel like teaching. Getting your work published is pretty brutal. So…I guess I just figured, why not?" I am not immune to the irony of this. I gave up my original dream of writing fiction, and ended up with a life perfectly suited for this memoir you hold in your hands. The Fates can work in mysterious ways.

"You're kidding. You're a writer?" she looked at me funny. "You don't really look it…"

"Well, I was, anyway. Not a very successful one, but…" I looked away. My failure to make it as an author had always been somewhat of a sore spot for me.

Looking away turned out to be a very good decision. It gave me just enough visual warning to throw my arms up. You see, Alvin, in his love for comedy at the expense of his buddy, had decided to throw the Frisbee directly over my head. It got there, but only in the mouth of a jumping Kirk. A jumping Kirk which landed on me. "AH! Dammit, Chopper!"

Lick. "Woof woof!" Lick.

"Gah! Kiiirrrrk!"

It would be some of the last reprieve that we got for the next few days.