Author: Cyclone
Feedback: Please be gentle.
Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.
Rating: Mechanized violence and harsh language.
Spoilers: Up to Chosen for BtVS. Anything goes for the other.
Disclaimer: Some of the characters depicted herein belong to Joss. The jury's still out on others. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop.
Author's Note: Much thanks to David Wangen, Yorath, and Anime Ronin for their input not only in this part, but in previous parts as well.
Dawn tried to shake her head clear as the world continued to spin.
Literally.
With her starboard main thruster shot and her port main thruster at full, her battloid was stuck in a cartwheeling spin. Swallowing back the bile that threatened to rise in her throat, she levered herself away from the left-hand side of the cockpit -- where the centrifugal force was pushing her -- and wrenched an overhead panel open, slamming the heel of her hand on the button within. It was a manual cutoff switch that killed the reaction mass feed to the main thrusters.
The port engine died, and she continued to spin.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the control stick and fired her verniers to kill the spin and rotated her battloid around back to face the SDF-1. She saw Lantern's distinctive green Valkyrie in guardian mode, flitting around a pair of battlepods, neither side able to get a clean shot. She noted some Valkyrie debris among the wreckage and saw another veritech -- this one white with red trim -- facing off against an officer's pod.
Her lips curled into a snarl as she glared at the officer's pod. So, you're the one who tagged me, huh?
A quick glance at her sensor screen told her that the surviving new arrival was Skull 23. She soured as she remembered just who Skull 23 was: A hotshot amateur flying champion who'd mistakenly flown a VT trainer into combat back before the fold. He could fly -- no question; he was one of the hottest hands in her training class -- but he had about as much killer instinct as the average vamp fodder back home.
Sergeant Rick Hunter, callsign Joyrider.
She considered her options. She was at stand-off range, which ruled out guns, and without her main thrusters, she wasn't going anywhere fast. In battloid mode, missiles were difficult to use at best, and she dared not risk reconfiguring with the damage she'd taken.
Swallowing the distaste, Dawn clicked on her comm, "Joyrider, Snow White. Guns up. I'm gonna make your dance partner bounce."
There was a pause, "R-roger that, Snow White."
Resisting the urge to growl at him, Dawn brought up her targeting computer and bracketed the officer's pod. As soon as she heard the pure tone of a solid lock, the officer's pod vectored.
Straight into Hunter's targeting reticle, as the ensuing burst of shells indicated.
That left two fully-functional Valkyries against two battlepods.
It was over in a matter of moments.
"All right, all right. I'm coming!" Xander yelled at the insistent pounding on his door.
"C'mon!" Dawn snapped, throwing a helmet at him.
"Huh?" Xander replied eloquently as as he caught the flight helmet.
"I need a wingman to fly sim with me."
"Hang on. Shouldn't you be resting? You just got back from flying CAP." He frowned, "What happened?"
She growled, "We ran into some pods. I dove right into the thick of it and got buddy spiked. Don't you dare let Buffy know."
"What?" he stared. "You think I'm crazy? She'd kill me. Who buddy spiked you anyway?"
"That high-flying idiot, Hunter."
Xander swallowed a laugh that quickly turned to smoldering anger. The "great Admiral Rick Hunter" nearly shot down his little -- okay, maybe not so little anymore -- Dawnie.
"Hold it," she scowled.
"What?"
"Revenge later, sims now."
"Xander, check your six!"
"I know, Dawnie, I know," Xander said coolly as he shifted into battloid and instantly reversed direction. The GU-11 gun pod in his battloid's hand arced "down" as he passed the battlepod, bisecting the Zentraedi mecha.
He spun the battloid to face a pair of battlepods and shifted into guardian mode. He heard the missile lock tone and fired a split-second later. Three Stilettos shot out from his right wing, and he shifted to jet and followed them in, his flight path slightly under the missiles' flight paths.
He fired his gun pod, spraying an unaimed burst below the battlepods, then pulled hard on the yoke, bouncing up over the missile flight path... and cracking one of the two battlepods with another GU-11 burst as it tried to avoid both the missiles and shied away from his previous burst.
The other of the pair ate two of his Stilettos.
Xander rolled and dove, heading straight for another pair of battlepods -- the last two in the immediate area -- which were harassing Dawn's Valkyrie. Nosing his fighter to the closer one, he shifted into battloid and grabbed its chicken-walker legs. He then swung up his own legs and fired his main thrusters on full, melting delicate sensory equipment.
Still clinging to the battlepod, he inverted them both and used it as a shield just as the other battlepod fired. Xander lowered his head laser and returned fire.
"Simulation ended. Mission accomplished."
With a hiss, the cockpit of the Valkyrie simulator cracked open, and he clambered out.
"Um, Dawn?" he asked quietly. "Why is everyone staring at me?"
Before she could answer, a tall lanky man with a deep tan and blond hair walked up, "That was some pretty impressive flying in there. I'm Roy Fokker."
Shit! Xander thought. What the hell's the CAG want with me? Swallowing hard, he said, "Corporal Xander Harris, sir."
"What squad are you with?"
"Uh, Goliath Squadron, sir."
Roy frowned, "I thought that was a Tomahawk squad."
"It is, sir."
The CAG studied him for a long, nerve-wracking moment, then looked over at Dawn and said, "Well, Corporal, Lieutenant, care for a drink?"
"Sir?" Xander blinked in bewilderment but went along with it. He and Dawn flanked the CAG as they left the simulator room.
"Call me Roy. It's not every day I find a ground pounder that can make ace in one run, even in a sim," Roy said amicably. "You deflated an awful lot of egos just now." He glanced over at Dawn, "Speaking of which, congratulations, Lieutenant. Final review says that third battlepod was yours. You're now officially an ace."
Dawn let out an ear-piercing squeal of delight.
"Awk," Xander awked at the crushing Slayer-like hug she gave him.
Composing herself, she turned and saluted, "Thank you, sir."
Roy blinked at the sudden shift in gears, then gave her a lady-killer smile, "Hey, you earned it. Bonus points for what you did to help Rick take out that command pod."
She shrugged. "I had to do something, sir."
Xander halted at the door when he realized where they were leading him. It was an privately-owned bar just off the RDF compound. Looking up at the sign, he blurted out, "I can't go in there!"
"You can today," Roy grinned.
"C'mon, Xander," Dawn tugged on his arm.
With a resigned sigh and Taps playing in his mind, Xander marched into The Cat.
He could feel every set of eyes on him -- a few hostile, mostly curious -- as he followed Dawn and the CAG into The Cat. Despite the name, there wasn't a single feline decoration in the room. Rather, F-14 Tomcats, A/V-8 Harriers, F-203 Dragon IIs, and VF-1 Valkyries dominated the interior. The "Cat" in the name was short for "catapult."
It was a fighter jockey's haven, and a destroid driver like Xander stuck out like a sore thumb, even without his tags.
With a great deal of trepidation, he followed Roy and Dawn to a corner booth, and after a long moment in which Xander didn't touch his drink, Roy broke the silence, "So, Xander, is it? Where'd you learn to fly like that?"
"You ever watch 'The Last Starfighter'?"
"Cute, Corporal," Roy said. "How about the real answer?"
Dawn snorted, "Knowing Xander, that is the real answer."
"Be nice, Dawn Patrol, or I start telling embarassing stories from your childhood," was Xander's response.
"You. Woudn't. Dare." The words were spoken with a glacial tone that no sane man would ignore.
Xander, being who he was, did so cheerfully: "Of course I would. Especially since your mom was so kind as to share the really good ones with me."
Dawn paled, "She didn't..."
Xander grinned, "Oh, yes." He leaned back, "But as it happens, it is the truth. When I wasn't patrolling for, ah, our local neighborhood watch, I was playing video games. Plus, there was that pilot I met during my road trip."
Roy looked between the two and shook his head in amusement. These two were going to be almost as entertaining as Rick and Lisa.
"How'd you like to fly?"
Xander blinked.
"What?"
Author's Postscript:
New poll: What callsign should the other pilots stick Xander with?
Fury (as in Nick Fury), Snoopy, White Knight, or Wotan (an alternate name for Odin)?
