Alright guys, I am leaving for Basic next Monday so I probably won't get another chapter out before that, but hey... it's only 8 weeks, you guys are clearly super patient... so thank you I really love you guys. Well it's long overdue and I hope you guys like it, be sure to check out my other stories and LEAVE REVIEWS! I would love to be able to read all your reviews when I get back!

Chapter 33: Final Option

"Blaze, how much fuel do you have left?" Kei spoke over the radio eyeing my plane from her cockpit.

"Just enough to get back, but we're cutting this really close."

Grimm spoke up over the radio, "Captain, something isn't right with this, we need to tell someone about the 8492nd, the Lieutenant Colonel won't listen to us at all."

Sand Island appeared over the horizon and we set up for our approach to land, "No, there's no use talking to that blockhead base commander," Kei said angrily.

"Grimm, go get Pops and Gennette, Kei and I-"

"Excuse me, Alec, you have to see a medic, both you and Abby. I know you've been losing blood way too long."

"We both bandaged ourselves up, we'll be fine." I replied as my plane touched down on the runway.

"Absolutely not, we will check with the flight surgeon then we will go talk to Hamilton," Kei insisted.

"Kei we don't know what is going on with the 8492nd, we have to talk to Hamilton first. Kelly, you accompany Abby to the doc, James, you're with Grimm. I don't want any of us on our own. I have a bad feeling about this."

We taxied to our hangar and shut our engines off, no one was there to greet us, which was odd. It almost felt like, those dreams. there was a fog layer covering the whole base. All of us climbed down and I helped Abby down. My shoulder hurt as well but the bleeding had stopped. Kei, Grimm, Kelly, James, Abby and myself stood there for a moment. "Let's get moving, alright?" was all I said. We had a lot to do and not much time to do it.

We all split up and I followed Kei, the pain in my shoulder now a dull throb rather than a full stinging. "What do you think is going on behind the scenes?" I asked as we made our way to the Captain's office.

"I don't know, but someone wants all of us out of this war and I don't know why yet. First that mystery pilot, then the 8492nd? We have some enemies out there with serious connections." She replied angrily.

"Can't argue that," I opened the door to Hamilton's office to be greeted by the familiar man with a Major's insignia, "Hello, Captain Aaron, Captain Nagase," he spoke calmly.

"Hello Major," I said quickly noticing the promotion, "Congratulations on the promotion will have to wait, we have information vital to the war effort."

"Oh? You do? I doubt you have any information that I am not already aware of," Hamilton approached us walking around his desk slowly and Kei immediately tensed ever so slightly. He knows something... I thought.

"What do you know about the 8492nd, Major?" I asked my demeanor had changed, for some reason I felt like we were caught in some sort of trap I didn't know why though.

"Only, what you have said in your reports, supposedly they're a secret squadron that happens to be blamed for all of your mistakes," Hamilton's hand slid along his desk behind him, though I couldn't see what he was doing. "Perhaps they are real though... perhaps they are to blame," suddenly Hamilton's hand swung around and he was pointing his M9 straight at my face, however before I could even react Kei had thrown a punch at him, causing him to stumble to the side. I grabbed the gun trying to rip it from his hands only for him to kick my wounded shoulder. I let out a gasp of pain and released his arm falling to the ground rolling over to see Kei managed to get one more good hit in on his face and he slumped against the wall unconscious.

Kei rushed to help me up, "Are you alright?" she asked panicked.

I nodded, "Yeah, holy shit Kei..." I was almost stunned for a moment at the display she had just given but reality snapped me out of it quickly, "Let's go!" I grabbed the pistol and ran out of the office along the hall. As we ran I heard Grimm, Pops, Gennette, and James talking to Perrault, "Kei," I whispered, "We have to help them, Perrault is probably in on it too."

Kei nodded and we rushed outside to the main power splitter for the building, "Which is it?" I asked only for Kei to answer with another strong punch shorting the whole buildings power out. Suddenly the sounds of gunshots rang throughout the base.

Shit.

Just then the door swung open and I raised the pistol about to fire when I saw Grimm and the others exit, "Come on!" I hissed lowering the pistol. "I know where we can hide for now, we need to get off this base."

I led the way as we all ran towards some of the storage hangars, running along behind them and moving into the gap between two of them that provided a solid view of all approaches, we would know if someone was coming after us. We lined up along the walls to keep our profiles small. I was out of breath, and Kei was worried about me but I shook my head, "Fuck!" I hissed angrily.

Everyone looked at me except Pops, Grimm stood up straight, "We need to leave right Captain?" he asked.

I nodded looking at him, he had some serious determination in his face, "Then I'm going to try to check the hangars."

Before he left I told him, "Grimm, don't get caught, stay in the shadows and make sure no one can see you."

He nodded and sprinted off a few seconds of silence passed, "Gennette, what happened while we were gone?"

He shook his head, "Right here? Hamilton's gotten the entire base deceived, Base Commander too."

Kei jumped in, "I punched that guys lights out. That bastard was wearing a majors insignia on his shoulder."

Gennette replied, "I don't know who it is, but someone is trying to widen the rift between the two countries and keep this war going. If Osea continues to win the war will be over."

This time I jumped in, "What do we have to do with it? We're just one unit?"

Gennette looked at me, "You are the pillar of morale for the entire Osean army."

We stood there for a second, dumbfounded before Pops spoke up, "And now you know something you were better off not knowing, the President's disappearance."

As Pops spoke I felt something wet tap my hand, I jumped and clenched the pistol only to see it was Kirk nudging my hand, I quickly scratched his head surprised that it managed to calm me just a tad. Gennette turned to Pops, "Listen Pops, who are you?"

Before we could get an answer we heard footsteps approaching and I got the pistol ready. Grimm rounded the corner panting, "It's no use, they seized our planes in the hangar. And I couldn't find Abby or Kelly, the doctor wasn't there either."

I thought for a second while Pops spoke up, "I bet hangar C isn't so well guarded."

"Yeah, but those are just?"

"Training jets, we'll make a run for it in them, good thing I maintain all my planes well."

We all agreed and began to sneak our way across the base. As we approached the hangar I kept look out, we opened the door and went in quickly closing the door behind us only to hear the terrifying sound of a gun cocking. I turned and saw three people emerging from the shadows, two of them holding guns. Then, as they entered a beam of light I saw Avery, and Kelly pointing guns at us, they sighed and lowered their weapons. "What are you people doing here?"

Avery crossed her arms, "Waiting for you idiots. I managed to get them across the base pretending I was going to turn them in. You're lucky it was me that they went to and not someone else. They may have been shot on site. Fucking idiots, I've been in this military for fifteen years and they think you're traitors? Ridiculous."

"Well, what next?" I asked.

Avery chuckled, "One of you better knock me out real good so they don's ask questions."

I immediately looked at Kei and she just rolled her eyes and took a swing and the doctor fell to the floor. Then the hangar became a hive of movement, as we all quickly prepped the small training jets, "Pops, you better have a good idea..." I said rolling my eyes as he helped Gennette and Kirk into his plane, after strapping a harness and what looked like a chute bag onto Kirk.

"Trust me kid, stick with me and you'll be just fine."

"In final reckoning, the Beast is slain."

The hangar doors opened and James sprinted back to Grimm's Hawk and climbed in as we all began taxiing then the gunshots began to ring out across the base, "Alright, Ward-, Razgriz you're cleared to launch." We all immediately accelerated down the runway taking off as quickly as we could.

"Alright, we're going to head north, towards the Solo Islands, Blaze, you can keep the lead for now."

After several hours Hamilton's voice came over the radio, "Attention all air force Aircraft, enemy spy elements have made off with four training jets, find them and shoot them down."

"Hamilton! The bastard!" Grimm exclaimed.

Pops spoke up, "Guess I'll try my hand at combat maneuvering then, follow me everyone," he rolled his plane over in front of me and I stayed just behind and under his jet wash.

Then, the voice came over the radio, "This is the 8492nd squadron. We have a visual on the enemy, engaging."

My hand clenched around the stick I was itching to turn and shoot that bastard down. I didn't even realize how tight I was gripping the stick until I heard Kei's quiet voice pull me out of my trance, "Alec, none of us are in any shape to fight them... even if we were armed. You need to stay calm and focus on flying, I can't lose you now."

Then that other all too familiar voice, the one that had gotten us out of so many tight spots, "This is Thunderhead, 8492nd, are those guys really traitors? I can't believe it."

"You can believe what you want, but that doesn't change it's truth. 8492nd, you have permission to engage."

I couldn't blame Thunderhead, I wanted to but I couldn't, he really didn't seem like he was on board with this whole plan but he wasn't going to try to fight his own country. None of us wanted that, I'm sure we would have taken the same option given his position. "Alright, stick with me everyone, we can make it out of here."

Pops rolled his plane inverted and dove for the nearby island. I rolled over and followed him. We all leveled out a few hundred feet above the ground and the 8492nd voices filled the radio, "That flying style... that's not... the Raven is it?"

"You mean Huckebien the Raven? The traitor from the last war?"

"Yeah... the most famous traitor our country has ever produced."

Then Pops spoke, "Is that you Ashley? I kept hearing all about this 8492 and wondered what the heck it was. Ever sense you started this nonsense about the 'Grabacr' fighter squadron I got sick of flying in the same sky with you. You're losing your mind, and it's only getting worse."

We were now weaving through windmills and something was happening with my radar, it wasn't my priority though. "That's a volcanic island, a heavy magnetic field surrounds the whole place, we're going to lose our radar so stick close, stay in visual range."

We flew just over the top of a large hill and a wide flat valley opened up filled with massive amounts of old plane skeletons, "It's..." Kei began to say astonished.

"A boneyard..." It was tragic, seeing so many beautiful machines reduced to scrap. I closed my eyes for a brief second before opening them and seeing Pops bank left and pull into a hard turn. I followed grunting slightly as my shoulder began to throb again.

We flew along the coast some and I took the opportunity to check my shoulder, it was moist, my wound had reopened. "That's not good," I said quietly.

"What is it Blaze?" Pops asked.

"It's nothing, don't worry about me."

"Relax, you can do this." He said trying to comfort us.

Kei responded as a light haze began to appear. I shook my head and followed Pops as well as I could we weaved through the mountains, pulling one high-g turn after another. The haze wasn't getting worse, but it definitely wasn't going away. "Kei..." I said softly, "Stay close to us."

"Roger that." she replied.

"Alright we're diving into that cave now, you ready?" Pops asked.

"Huh, y-yeah, I'm ready." I don't know how loud or clear my words were, but Pops responded, his response was muddled and I was instantly surrounded by darkness with a faint light I was flying towards. I left the cave and took my hand off the throttle and put pressure on my shoulder. I adjusted my harness to keep pressure on the wound and I adjusted my position. "Goddammit, fucking hurts." The pain helped me gain some alertness back. We made more turns all the while still in massive pain, I couldn't last much longer, I was exhausted, I had lost way too much blood and I was going to die if I didn't get help soon I was going to die, there weren't any doubts in my mind.

Looking ahead, I saw another cave, this one seemed much more complex than the last one and I was only in worse condition. I flew through the mouth of the cave and there were large tracks for container cranes crossing it. I stayed just above them tapping the rudder to make the corrections necessary to stay in the center, "Kei..." My vision was fading again, I had to hold on.

"Alec, what is it, are you ok?" there was light ahead, I could make it.

"I... I love you..." my voice trailed off and I began to collapse.

"Alec! Ale-" Everything went black.