Hey yo, here's the second part to the thing I'm writing.......yeah, you know the one. Well, enough chatter, enjoy!
Steel Angels part two: Embracing Death
You can always tell the fighter pilots....they have that swagger like a personal spotlight is on them all the time.
Major Misato Katsuragi, Eighth Air Force
Shinji pulled his plane out the dive and rolled it onto it's back. The sky around him was red with explosions and tracers, the Mustang pulled into a steep climb, it's guns blazing away at a Me. 109. It rolled and dove towards the ground, making a sharp vertical loop and coming around behind Shinji and letting loose a barrage of 20-mm cannon fire at the blue trimmed fighter.
"They're too maneuverable!" He yelled to his team trying desperately to shake the wing of fighter craft that was blowing the hell out of their bombers. "Drop your fuel tanks!"
Shinji looked out his port side and saw his two squad members release the under-wing fuel tanks to allow their ships more maneuverability. He let his go and spun his P-51 into a half reverse and got behind the 109 that was just a second ago shooting his tail into pieces. It put on it's full throttle and sped away from Shinji's plane.
"Damn you!" Shinji yelled and poured fire into it's receding aft. The engine caught fire and blew, throwing the fuselage into an out of control spin that smashed into another ship going for a run on one of the B-17s. Shinji made sure the bomber was safe and risked a glance above him. Three fighters were converging on Kensuke's ship.
"Kensuke! Bogeys eleven o' clock!" He yelled and tried to ascend and put himself between them and his friend. He was so concentrated on giving the other P-51 help he almost missed the jerry diving from above, scorching the sky around him with bullets. Shinji swore and pushed his plane into a dive, weaving in and out of flak and the 109's cannon fire. As Shinji neared 2,000 feet he leveled out, the German plane staying with him the whole way. With no other option he jinked and juked around the never ending enemy fire and dove again. Below him was a smoldering pile of bricks- the remains of a building. Shinji throttled to full and yanked the stick all the way back, bringing the plane not but 500 feet above the ground. Shinji rolled his ship upside down and screamed down a ruined street towards the wreckage of the building. One fly-by was all Shinji needed to realized that what he was over was a school, and those six gleaming cylindrical objects stuck amidst the debris and bodies were- "Our drop tanks........" The Me.109 attacked from the clouds above him, guns blaring.
"Shiiiiiiiinji!!" Toji's ship made a head on pass at the opposing enemy and sheared the wings clean off it, the ammunition exploding and taking the rest of the plane with it. "Shinji! You okay, man?"
"Yo Shinji! Snap outta it!"
"Shinji! Wake up!"
"Lieutenant Ikari! Up and at 'em!"
Shinji peeled his eyelids apart and stared dumbly up at the two uniformed figures standing over him.
"Well, if the big ace isn't up." Kensuke mocked and took a bite out of a piece of toast.
Toji grabbed Shinji's shirt and hauled him to his feet. "Man, rough night?" He looked over to Kensuke. "Bet his lady friend kept him up...."
Shinji shook his head and steadied himself against the wall. "Come on guys.....I just didn't sleep well."
Toji and Kensuke exchanged unconvinced looks and pulled the poor lieutenant into the barrack's washroom.
"Better get your shower, remember the mission?"
Shinji looked balefully over to Aida. How could he forget, he had stayed up most nights working out the details with the CO. " I know."
"Gonna blow up some choo-choos." Toji smiled. "A milk run."
Shinji sighed as he looked at himself in the mirror. "Don't forget the ground emplacement guns."
"I think you'd better worry about your girlfriend." Kensuke chuckled.
Frowning at his two subordinates' immaturity, Shinji grabbed a towel and headed to the shower stalls.
"Captain Asuka Langley Soryou, due to your recent lack of success, you have been re-assigned to combat patrol Jasta 167." Asuka read the words over again. Not that she wasn't upset by her removal from the Fw-190 squadron- she had punched the deliverer of the official notice- but for once she could shoot at the Yanks and not have to worry about flying the plane. She hated it. "This sucks......" She whined. "Combat patrol my ass."
"Soryou! Officer on deck!" Lieutenant Shigeru yelled, snapping Asuka out of her idle thinking. She stood and saluted crisply.
"At ease soldier." A friendly laid back voice laughed. Asuka looked to the left at the 'officer'.
"Kaji!" She nearly knocked him off his feet with a fierce hug. "I mean- Oberstleutnant Ryoji Kaji, nice to see you're well."
Kaji chuckled. "Come on, Asuka. You can lighten up. No more 'oberstleutnant' for me, nope. I'm out of the service for the time being." He patted his bandaged side.
"Oh! Are you okay?" She asked, overly concerned.
Aoba sighed and muttered something about women being over dramatic. He had to go anyway, the control tower needed him to guide in a formation of Ju-88s.
"So, re-assigned, huh?" Kaji asked nonchalantly. Asuka 'hmphed' and nodded.
"Just because I was out-flown by some damn American...." She stared crossly at the floor.
Kaji laughed. He had to admit that even with all of her maturity, Asuka was still a little girl used to getting her way. "Well, what are your new orders? I bet the brass are just itching to put you on something utterly miserable."
"Yeah.....I'm on recon patrol of some god-forsaken plot of land no one cares about.......in an 210!!" She whined. "Not like they could at least let me in a Fw-200. And I'm the subordinate!" Asuka stomped to her bed and rummaged through her footlocker. "Who are they to make me take orders from a damn Flieger?"
"Come on Asuka. I'm sure you'll love being a subordinate." Kaji laughed as Asuka growled and made a comment about military heavy-weights and a guillotine.
Rei Ayanami wasn't happy. She wasn't necessarily unhappy, but she wasn't keen on her new assignment. For the majority of today and yesterday she had been traveling on foot or by train across Germany. Now she was on a train headed north from London, and she was bored. Mentally she went over the mission instructions given to her.
"Do you understand the mission objectives?"
Rei nodded. "Hai."
"Good, report to the number twelve hangar for insertion."
Rei nodded again. She stared at her commanding officer- Gendo Ikari. He was probably the most powerful man in the Japanese military, save for Admiral Yamamoto. To most people Gendo seemed cold, almost uncaring of his subordinates, and yet Rei knew he was doing what was best for his country. Rei also knew he would do what was best for himself. Rei peered at her face in the small room's mirror. Her usually lavender hair was now dark brown, and her piercing red eyes were fitted with blue contact lens'. This was to make her appear more average, more American. Before leaving for the hangar Rei looked disdainfully at the American flight suit and jacket she was garbed in, not only was it covered in mud and dirt, but it was two times to big for her.
As she walked out into the early morning sun she listened to Dr. Ritsuko Akagi reviewed the mission. First she had to get into an Allied base- The Eighth Air Force Base- She reminded herself. Once there she would have to successfully impersonate a pilot who was downed earlier on in the war and returned from captivity. Commander Ikari assumed that the Americans would be to happy to see their comrade alive they wouldn't notice she was built slightly different than they last remembered, or the fact she could make it across the continent back to England from Russia, where she was stationed now. Commander Ikari's technicians had managed to alter a few American records and flight rosters to include Rei, so everything should go smoothly.
"The plane will drop you off 800 kilometers east from the target. Remember that you will still have to cross the channel." Rei looked to her left, acknowledging the woman in the white lab coat. "Make it to the target at your own discretion."
"I understand."
She stepped into the cargo plane and stared vacantly out the window.
"I am here." Rei said as the train slowed to a stop.
"17:04 p.m. Nothing spotted, continuing as planned." Asuka wrote in the log and turned to the pilot of the Me. 210. "How long do we have to stay out here? I'm bored." She leaned over the pilot's shoulder to look out the forward windscreen.
"We have three more hours of combat patrol, now get back to the gunner's seat." The pilot said and shoved Asuka back into her seat, evoking a string of colorful German.
Asuka stared out the window for about three minutes before becoming bored again. She thought back to what Kaji had told her a few hours before.
" I HATE this!!" Asuka yelled and stormed across her room in search of something she could break.
"Well, there's only one thing you can do, you know." Kaji said, sitting on the corner of Asuka's bed. "Get promoted."
"Oh, yeah. That'll be REAL easy." Asuka said sarcastically. "And how am I supposed to do that?"
"You could always sleep with the top brass." Kaji shrugged. Asuka growled and chucked her standard white military pillow at him.
"Real mature Kaji."
Kaji smiled. "Well..." He said. "There's a rumor that Dornier is developing a new fighter. A push pull turboprop deal. I can't make any promises, but I'll try to get you as a test pilot. Maybe that will restore Fuyustuki's confidence in you."
"New fighter, huh? Sounds fun!"
"Hey! Nugget!" The pilot yelled from the cockpit. "Incoming bogeys, eleven o'clock!"
Asuka nodded and smiled. "Right." She grabbed hold of the machine gun yokes and waited for the enemies to become visible. She didn't have to wait very long. Three shiny fighters raced over her plane, spewing 22-mm death.
"Schiess!" Asuka swore and opened fire, missing the last plane by mere feet.
Shinji took in his situation. Somewhere over Germany......low on fuel....and now an enemy bomber. "Suzahara! Kensuke!" He yelled over the comm. "We can't waste time! We have less that thirty percent fuel remaining!"
"C'mon! Let me take a crack at it!" Toji yelled. Without waiting for Shinji's answer he went into a head-long dive at the green plane, strafing bullet holes along the main fuselage. Shinji sighed. After their mission with the trains they had become separated from the group, hopelessly lost. Needless to say Toji needed an outlet for some pent-up frustration.
"Aida, you and me will cover him, and watch out for that rear gun."
The two other P-51s dove into a lazy loop, following Toji's ship from a distance, adding enough of their own fire to prevent the gunner to get a good bead on his plane. However, Asuka didn't much worry about the two other planes, her attention was on Toji's receding aircraft.
"Come on...." She whispered as her targeting receptacle fell over Toji's aft. She was tightening her finger on the trigger when her plane veered violently, causing her shots to go wide.
"Dammit! Keep the plane straight!" She yelled at the pilot, who was doing his best to drop out of Shinji's line of fire.
"Toji! That's enough, let's get out of here!" Shinji yelled.
His P-51 made another pass at the German. "No way! They're almost toast!"
"Toji, this is a direct order! Pull back!" Shinji's ship followed Toji's as he went in low at the left wing of the jerry.
"If I can get one last shot in...."
Asuka's eyes narrowed. "That's right little man, come and get some."
"Toji!" Shinji yelled again, putting a dozen rounds into the green German plane's aft. "Come on!"
Three things happened at once, Toji reluctantly pulled out of his dive, Asuka's cross-hairs centered on his plane's belly, and Asuka fired.
To Shinji it happened in slow motion. Toji's shiny yellow-trimmed Mustang shook, then spewed smoke as a sustained line of fire cascaded into his ship's underside. It rolled towards the ground and disappeared into the cloud layer below them.
"Toji!!" Shinji poured fire into the bomber's tail as he raced past it, diving after Toji.
Kensuke looked on as Toji's plane was hit, and as Shinji followed it. Cursing, he gave a few more departing shots and throttled up to catch his team leader. "Shinji!"
"I don't see him, Kensuke!" He yelled back, voice frantic. "I lost him in the clouds!"
Aida cleared the last wisps of cloud as Shinji's still diving plane came into view.
"Pull up, man!" He screamed. "Shinji!"
Shinji Ikari wasn't about to leave his friend. He pushed his ship to it's limits, with the wind blowing around him threatening to rip the wings right off his fighter. "Toji...were are you?" He scanned the sky below him for the stricken plane, but to no avail.
"Shinji!" Kensuke's voice yelled over the comm. "Let it go! You'll die too if you don't pull up!"
The blue P-51 made no attempt at pulling out of the dive. "He could still be alive! I'm not leaving him!"
The ground continued rushing up to greet him. 5,000 feet and dropping. 4,500 feet. "Shinji you idiot! Pull up!" Kensuke pleaded.
4,000 feet. 3,500. 3,000.
"I've got to get him! I can't leave him, do you understand?!" Shinji screamed.
2,000 feet.
Kensuke leveled out, no way he was going to die today. "Damn you! Pull out!"
1,000 feet.
Shinji saw the ground, seemingly only inches away from him. It filled his entire view, an endless stretch of green field.
500 feet.
The cockpit canopy cracked. "Dammit!" Shinji cursed. Then he saw it, a tiny speck of orange and glinting metal- Toji's flaming ship.
"Shinji! You're going to crash you moron!"
Without response Shinji leveled his fighter out and began ascending, his eyes wide and face ashen.
"Shinji? You okay man?"
Shinji's cockpit echoed his anguished scream of loss.
Rei Ayanami sat in a confinement cell in an American air force base, just as planned. Right now the technicians were crawling through the British car she had commandeered, inspecting it for anything suspicious. Rei had merely nodded and followed the security guard when she was told she'd be in military custody for a while.
"Rei Ayanami." She turned her head to look at the woman in a red flight jacket and military beret. She flipped through a couple pages on a clipboard.
"Shot down a year ago on a routine mission over the USSR, couldn't confirmed as being a POW, and now back from the dead. Although military records say you piloted a P-47, no one seems to recall your name."
Rei nodded. "I am aware I do not leave much of an impression."
"You want a pass straight home, or you going to stay here?" Misato asked.
Rei hesitated, it would look wrong for her to accept staying in the service to quickly. "I have no home, I shall stay here."
Misato Katsuragi gave the Japanese girl a hard stare. There was something wrong with her....something not right.
"Major!" A corporal ran into the small interrogation room and threw a quick salute. "Vermillion Team is back..." He hesitated. "They lost one."
Misato tried not to look devastated. //Who...Shinji? God, let it not be Shinji.// "Right. Get the appropriate people on standby." She frowned at Rei, like it was somehow her fualt, then hurried off to the hangars.
Shinji sat alone on a bench in the dark hangar, looking up at his P-51. "Well? What now? Do I continue like nothing happened, or do I grieve forever?" The P-51 loomed eerily over him. "Answer me, damn you!" His voice echoed off the concrete walls.
"Shinji?"
Shinji turned around quickly, Major Katsuragi was standing in the doorway. " I heard about Suzahara..."
"Yeah." Shinji said to the floor.
Misato closed the distance between her and the young man. "I know it's tough, losing a friend is always hard. But you can't let it get you down, you have to live to give those Jerries pain."
"What's the point? Every time I get into that thing I feel like everything depends on me and my team. Why do we have to fight this damn war!?"
"Because if you don't the enemy will win, and the world will be hell, do you want that? Would Suzahara want that?"
"I don't care." He mumbled. "I don't care anymore!"
Continued.......
*Author's notes. No!!!!! Toji's dead! Or is he? Find out next time...heh, heh.