AUTHOR'S NOTES: Been awhile! I took two weeks for vacation-which was a lot of fun-but now it's time to get back to work, which means also returning to this story.

This one is all Blake and Sun.

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76)

North Atlantic Ocean

3 June 2001

Rear Admiral Edward Smith had no business being a rear admiral of the United States Navy. For one thing, his parents had named him for the captain of the RMS Titanic, as they were both aficionados of that disaster. For another, he was from Pratt, Kansas, a place that was one of the furthest points in the United States from any ocean. Despite the fear that his name might bring to superstitious sailors or his farmland background, Smith had joined the Navy in the 1980s, and his career was one long history of quiet professionalism. Even if sailors did joke about his name with gallows humor when they thought he was out of earshot. It didn't help matters that he bore a resemblance to the doomed captain of the Titanic; the Navy allowed sea beards, and his now came in a snowy white.

Smith sat in his sea chair on the bridge of the Reagan. He didn't command the carrier—a rather muscular woman, Captain Marlesa Ederne, did that—but he did command the battlegroup. Therefore, it was him that a yeoman walked up to, carrying a message. "Admiral, sir?"

Smith got up from the chair and gave a start when his back popped loudly. He was getting a bit old for sea duty. "What is it?"
"Message from the Lassen, sir. She's picked up a sonar contact, bearing 010 degrees, distance thirty miles. CIC reports nothing of ours in that direction, sir."

"Depth?"

"50 feet."

He looked at the message. That sounded like a submarine at periscope depth, but the only nations with submarines in this area were the British and the French, and neither of them would be stalking an American carrier battlegroup without his knowledge. That sort of thing led to unfortunate incidents, even among allies. That left one possibility.

Smith walked over to the display that showed his battlegroup's positions. The Lassen was to the east, the outer picket position, about thirty miles from the Reagan. He bent over the display, which put together both the surface search and air search radar patterns from the ship's radars. He tapped at two blips on the far eastern fringe. "Who's this?" he asked the enlisted man who monitored display.

"Eastern BARCAP, sir. Blake and Sun."

"Have them check out the contact. Tell the Lassen to keep monitoring it."

Blake hated to admit it, but she was sort of enjoying herself.

The sun was beginning to dip into the western horizon, turning the sky and scattered clouds a beautiful orange and pink. Twenty thousand feet below, the sea was ruffled as a wind blew across it. As long as the weather held, getting back aboard the Reagan at night would be tough, but not terrifying. She hoped, anyway. She glanced over to her right. Barely in visual range, she saw Sun Wukong's borrowed F-18. Naturally, the FCK-1A Ching Kuo he'd flown at Beacon was not built for carriers, but the F-18 was so similar that she doubted Sun had any trouble flying it. Moreover, Sun had one of the new F-18E Super Hornets, with more weapons capability and longer loiter time. The Navy was billing the "Super Bug" as the Tomcat's replacement, but Blake—like all Tomcat pilots—found the idea laughable.

"Blake, Renegade Control."

She keyed her radio. "Blake, go."

"Blake, you and Sun are directed to check out a subsurface contact, bearing 310 degrees, range five miles. It should be close enough to the surface for you to see it."

"Roger that. Did you hear that, Sun?"

"Roger." Sun had been uncharacteristically quiet, but BARCAP wasn't really a duty where one was chatty. "Blake has the lead."

"Renegade, Blake, moving to intercept." Blake tightened her seat straps—she had loosened them a bit to relax better for the long flight—dropped onto her right wing, and entered a shallow dive. As she descended, she reached forward and looked at the TCS display. The Television Camera System was a TV camera slung under Gambol Shroud's nose, allowing her to see objects at much longer range than even her Faunus eyesight. She scanned the waves below, but didn't see anything.

She went through a cloud and leveled out at five hundred feet, dipping a wing to look. There was nothing but the ocean—and then there wasn't.

A shadow stirred under the sea, and then surfaced for a moment. It was a long tubelike object, almost like a submarine, but too narrow. It went below the waves again, then the head surfaced. It came to a point, with a small bulge on top like a head, one filled with electronic eyes that Blake knew had seen her. Her breath caught in her throat for a moment. She'd heard of them, but never thought she'd seen one.

Blake keyed her mike again, but Sun had beat her to the punch. "Renegade Control, Sun! Identify contact as a Sea Feilong, course 085, speed about 150—speed increasing!" As if the seaborne GRIMM had heard him—and perhaps it had; no one knew if GRIMM reacted to radio calls—it surfaced completely in a spray of foam, and headed northwest for the battlegroup at high speed.

"Oh shit," Smith whispered to himself. He'd fought Sea Feilong before. They usually preyed on single ships—one of the few seafaring GRIMM, a pack of them had sunk most of a Chinese task force when they'd first been spotted a decade ago. They were less a threat to something like the Reagan, but they were definitely a threat to smaller destroyers like the Lassen. Most of the time they preyed on merchant ships; he'd never heard of one stalking a carrier battlegroup. Then again, they'd never heard of something like the Wyvern that had destroyed Beacon, either.

It wasn't Smith's job to run the carrier, it was Captain Ederne's, and she was already moving. "Sound general quarters! All hands to battle stations!" The general quarters gong began ringing throughout the ship, and Smith heard the sound of hatches clanging shut as the Reagan prepared for battle.

Smith looked up at the enlisted man. "Get me the Yorktown."

At this point, there was really nothing Blake could do. The F-14 Tomcat was built for air to air, Gambol Shroud in particular; she carried no bombs or missiles that could really hurt a Sea Feilong. What she needed was a Harpoon antiship missile or a laser-guided bomb like a Paveway, but she was groomed for aerial combat, with two AMRAAM, two Phoenix, and two Sidewinders. The only thing she could do—should do—was to shadow the Feilong and keep up contact reports. But through the TCS, she could see the Lassen in the distance, and knew that was where the Feilong was headed, at over a hundred miles an hour. There were over 300 men and woman aboard the destroyer.

And Blake was tired of watching people die and be able to do nothing about it.

She dived, switched to guns, and opened fire. The M61 Vulcan 20mm gatling cannon vibrated the nose of Gambol Shroud and gave a brief roaring noise. She saw shells kick up water around the GRIMM, then sparks as she hit it. She doubted she'd done it any real damage—the Feilong were heavily armored—but she certainly got its attention. She broke off her dive and climbed, then rolled over and strafed it again. The GRIMM seemed to almost twitch, almost hesitate.

"Blake, this is Lassen! Break off, we're engaging!"

Blake climbed away from the Feilong, abruptly realizing how close they'd gotten to the destroyer. The Lassen had manuevered towards the GRIMM and opened fire with its 5-inch gun on the forward deck, splashing shells around the Feilong. The destroyer crew was doing its job: keeping a threat as far away from the carrier as it could, even if they had to sacrifice themselves.

But the Feilong was too quick. The shells were radar-guided, but the GRIMM snaked around the splashes. Blake, hanging upside down, saw ports behind the "head" open up, exposing the snouts of missiles. She remembered an old briefing about the Feilong's armament: twelve heavy antiship missiles, a battery of antiaircraft missiles, four torpedo tubes. One of the latter would cripple the Lassen; one of the former would sink it. "Lassen!" she screamed. "Take evasive action! It's getting ready to launch on you!"

And then an explosion blossomed on the Feilong's port side. The GRIMM rolled away from the detonation. At first, Blake thought that the Lassen had connected, but saw the thin smoke trail behind the explosion. "Sun?" He'd fired an AMRAAM at the GRIMM, ballistically, but it had hit.

The Hornet came in on the deck, and the Feilong finally turned, towards the new threat. The antiship missile doors closed, but new ones opened, the SAM battery. Blake rolled and dived, switching on Gambol Shroud's defense system. Panels slid back, extending four cables from above and below the Tomcat's fuselage, unfolding radar reflectors on the ends, even as cameras projected holographic images of four more F-14s where one had been before. Hopefully the Feilong would see her sudden squadron as more of a threat.

Blake's mouth fell open behind the mask as Sun's F-18 suddenly became four Hornets. She blinked, and realized that there was now more than one aircraft with holographic decoys.

The Feilong was not distracted by Blake, and fired two SAMs at Sun. Both tracked harmlessly on the decoys, which vanished as the missiles exploded in the Hornet's wake, and then his nose disappeared in smoke as he strafed the GRIMM. Sun climbed away, but Blake, who had broken off her dive, saw the battery turn to follow him. "Sun! Break right!" The Hornet twisted to the right, but Blake could see the Feilong was still tracking on him.

Track this, asshole. Taking a page from Sun's book, Blake switched to her Phoenix and fired one straight at the GRIMM. The Phoenix's radar was not designed for ground targets, and in any case needed a few miles to switch on, but she fired it like an unguided rocket. The Phoenix impacted just behind the SAM battery, and the Feilong seemed to rear up out of the water. She'd done it some damage: the battery dropped back down into the GRIMM, a hatch closed over it, and it suddenly went hard to port, away from whatever had hurt it. Blake climbed again.

"Thanks, Blake!" Sun yelled. "You're my hero! I'm gonna kiss you when we get back on deck!"

"Ugh," Blake said aloud. "Just shut up and fight, you horny bastard!"

The Feilong wasn't done yet. It came back around in a wide circle, descending to just beneath the waves, then surfaced again. One of the hatches slid back, and an antiship missile launched. "Vampire, vampire!" Blake yelled out. "Lassen, missile inbound!"

The destroyer heeled over in a hard turn to starboard, then to port as the destroyer captain tried to throw off the missile's seeker head. Something like fireworks popped behind the ship—chaff, Blake recognized. The missile skimmed across the waves, and she tried to lock on with the F-14's radar: the Phoenix could hit antiship missiles, but the range was too close. Then suddenly the missile turned away, chased a chaff cloud, and exploded with a shockwave visible enough to shake the Lassen. "Renegade, Blake!" she snapped. "You'd better get something out here, because we can't do shit to this thing!"

"Blake, this is Jehovah." Admiral Smith, Blake thought, recognizing the voice. She thought it interesting that both Smith and Ironwood used the same callsign, which had to be a form of blasphemy. "See if you can draw it away from the Lassen. Bring it south if possible."

"Roger that." Blake wasn't sure exactly how to execute that order, then had an idea. "Sun, deploy your countermeasures and follow me!"

The Feilong knew it had missed, and went around in another wide circle, this time trying to manuever for a torpedo run. It was about to dive beneath the surface, when its onboard sensors abruptly detected no less than seven aircraft hurtling towards it from the south. Its sensors also picked up two radars locking onto it, as well as numerous heat signatures. It turned away from the Lassen to fight this new threat.

Blake and Sun had their holograms reactivated, dropping flares and chaff in their wake. Blake's F-14 was faster, and she kept it just above the waves. Despite herself, she was grinning as adrenaline shot through her system. One hiccup here and the Feilong wouldn't have to worry about destroying her; Blake would nicely spread herself and Gambol Shroud across a few miles of ocean. She rose just slightly, long enough to loft an AMRAAM at the Feilong—it wouldn't guide, but it would be one more thing to get its attention.

Then her radar warning receiver screamed for her attention. The Feilong had locked onto her. It should have been nearly impossible—the F-14 was surrounded by decoys, dropping chaff by the bundle, and her radar signature would've been lost in the sea return from the ocean—but then Blake realized that the GRIMM must have some sort of optical tracking system. She pulled up, then broke hard right, knowing that the brief climb had slowed her down too much, though it was either that or cartwheel across the ocean; she slammed the throttles to the stops, engaging the afterburners, but still the RWR shrilled all the same.

Then it cut off. Blake twisted back around to the left, looking down, and saw that the Feilong was burning. The SAM battery was a smoking ruin, and beyond it, she saw Sun's F-18, trailing gunsmoke. He'd accelerated past her, somehow avoiding a collision, and strafed the Feilong. The battery was small, it had been a near impossible shot, but Sun had done it. "Thanks, Sun," she breathed.

"This is the part where you say it," he returned. Blake rolled her eyes.

The Feilong knew it had been wounded, and it started moving away from the battlegroup, its programming telling it to live and fight another day. Blake switched off Gambol Shroud's holograms and reeled back in the decoys. "Blake, Sun, Renegade Control," the Reagan radioed. "Are you clear of the Feilong?"

"Roger," Blake replied. "We're clear. It's retreating—course now 090, speed about 80." As she watched, the GRIMM began to submerge slowly.

"Stand by for BDA."

BDA? Blake asked herself. Bomb Damage Assessment? They launch someone with bombs? Weird that they wouldn't tell us—

Then a cylinder with stubby wings shot past her, so fast she barely had time to register it. The missile pitched up, then dived straight down, hitting the Feilong in the spine just as its nose went beneath the waves. The GRIMM disappeared in an explosion that rocked her F-14. "Holy shit!" Blake exclaimed. They'd used a Tomahawk cruise missile on it. She shifted around in her seat and saw a thin smoke trail leading back in the general direction of the carrier, and remembered that the Reagan's battlegroup included the guided missile cruiser Yorktown.

"Blake to Renegade. BDA is 100 percent. Target very much destroyed." She watched what was left of the Feilong disappear beneath the waves.

"Blake, Sun, this is Renegade. RTB. We'll launch the alert five to spot you." Blake acknowledged, then just before she took her finger away from the radio button, she began to laugh, for the first time since Beacon.

The Feilong had spared her from a night landing.

Blake leaned against the fantail railing again, feeling pretty good. It both surprised her and shamed her. She had no right to feel good. Not with all the bodies littering Beacon. Not with Yang missing an arm.

But she still felt good anyway. She wasn't sure it was with the knowledge that she'd helped destroy a GRIMM and save hundreds of lives, or with the warm handshake and compliment she'd gotten from Admiral Smith, or the shot of "operational whiskey" the admiral had quietly shared with her and Sun in his stateroom. Admirals could get away with that sort of thing, and Smith clearly knew his pilots deserved at least something besides an attaboy. Blake wasn't a drinker—the long ago party at Beacon was an aberration for her—but the whiskey still left a warm feeling in her gut.

"Hey there." Sun Wukong, who looked pretty happy himself, ambled over and leaned against the railing with her. "We did good today."

"I suppose I owe you an apology. You probably saved my life out there with that gun run on the Feilong."

Sun waved it off. "You saved my ass when you dived on it in the first place. No worries." He put out a hand. "Friends? Or at least a ceasefire?"

Blake took the hand and gave it a shake. "I was never mad at you, Sun."

He nodded, and they watched the phosphorescent wake of the carrier for a moment. Night had fallen at last. Behind them, the huge hatch that normally opened onto the fantail was shut; it was a darkened ship. There might be more than one Feilong out there. "You just took off after Beacon," Sun suddenly said into the dark silence.

"I had to. You wouldn't understand." Blake wasn't sure she understood herself.

Sun shook his head. "No, I get it. I knew exactly what you were doing."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"You're going on a one-woman rampage against the White Fang."

She blinked. That was not the response she'd anticipated. "Er…"

Sun turned to her, his eyes sparkling in the moonlight. "You always felt like the Fang was your fight. They show up, trash Beacon, hurt Yang…it makes perfect sense."

"That's not really what—"

Sun cut her off. "You know there's no way in hell I'm letting you do this alone. It's honorable, to be sure, but you're going to need someone to watch your back—and that booty of yours." Blake covered her eyes, wondering if she should turn him in for sexual harassment, as Sun thumbed towards himself. "And that's where I come in! We Faunus have to stick together, after all."

"Sun, oh my God." Blake rubbed the bridge of her nose. "You're wrong. You're completely wrong."

"What? How so?"

"I'm not going anywhere near the White Fang."

Sun was silent for a moment, clearly taken aback. He knew Blake was no coward, but not going after the people who had nearly killed her and crippled Yang made no sense. "Seriously?"

Blake watched the foam for a few moments. "Not yet," she conceded. There was going to be a reckoning with Adam. But it would not be for awhile. "I need to sort some things out."

"Well, okay." He leaned against the railing again, and was quiet again for a little while. "Then I take it you're not meeting up with Ruby Flight at some point."

"No. Ruby's…Ruby's got some sort of special mission she's on. Need to know, and I didn't need to know." She knew better than to mention Rissa Arashikaze's visit at Patuxent River. "Weiss is somewhere in Germany, God knows where. And Yang…" She really did not want to talk about Yang. "What about Sun Flight? Neptune, Sage, Scarlet? I'm surprised you don't have Neptune squirreled away somewhere below."

"Heh. Neptune would have to be forced into sea duty. He's goldbricking ashore." Sun sighed. "Sage is back in Italy. He's doing okay—in fact, they gave him a hero's welcome, a parade and everything, being the only Italian at Beacon and all. Scarlet's in Israel. He should make a full recovery from that leg wound." He shrugged. "As soon as the dust settled in Beacon, I got orders to the Reagan from the CUAF, and they assigned me to that Super Bug with the Gambol Shroud enhancements. Project Ruyi Bang. They're seeing if it can be adopted on the Hornet, which means it can be adopted to the Ching Kuo—assuming China doesn't buy them some Super Bugs, which they will. Not a lot of carrier-capable fighters out there, after all." He snorted. "I probably just broke some regs in telling you all that, but what the hell. You deserve to know." Sun turned around and leaned against the railing, uncaringly turning his back on the ocean, though his tail curled up and around the railing for extra safety. "So if you're not going after the White Fang, where are you going?"

"Home." Blake smiled, sadly. "To Menagerie."

"Well, I knew you were going there, anyway." He grinned at her. "Good thing I convinced the admiral to amend my orders. I'm coming with you."

Blake's eyes rounded. "You did what?" Sun had stayed behind after they'd tossed back a shot of whiskey in the admiral's cabin. She'd thought it was just for Sun to get another drink out of Smith.

Sun's grin widened. "Hey, the GRIMM are getting worse. Feilong have never attacked a carrier battlegroup before—the admiral said so—and never attacked a big group of warships alone. And just because you're not going after the Fang doesn't mean they won't come after you."

Blake hated to concede to that logic, but Sun was right. The White Fang saw her as a traitor. Adam knew she would run. And it wouldn't take a tactical genius to figure out that she would run home. The White Fang could operate semi-openly in Menagerie; she wouldn't have to worry about Adam jumping her the moment she flew within range, but a quiet kidnapping on the streets would not be beyond the realm of possibility. Or a quiet murder. Adam might want her alive in the hopes she would return to him, but Sienna Khan wanted her very dead. "I guess there's no stopping you."

"Nope." He laughed. "This is going to be great. I've never been to Menagerie before. It's a regular journey to the east." Blake groaned; she knew enough of the meaning behind Sun Wukong's name to get the joke. It was a pun worthy of Yang.

She sighed. There really was no stopping Sun. And to her surprise, she found herself actually warming to the idea. It would be good to have someone she could trust there, although there was no telling what her parents would say when she brought a boy home. Kali would gush about grandchildren; Ghira might just demolish him on sight. On impulse, Blake stood on tiptoe and gave Sun a peck on the cheek. "My hero," she said, then turned and went back up the companionway to the flight deck.

Sun stood at the fantail, his hand on his cheek. Then he laughed. "Well, hot damn."