AUTHOR'S NOTES: This one's the big one, folks. Well, until Pyrrha fights Cinder in the next chapter, anyway.

In canon RWBY, of course, Weiss wasn't around when Ruby fought Neo and Roman, but there was no way she wouldn't be with Ruby in this story (Weiss wouldn't leave her wingmate), so she's in this fight. The two dogfights actually take place simutaneously; this was the only way I could get it to work without it being too confusing.

And yes, small arms will kill a high-performance fighter, if it gets down in the weeds. We lost a lot of multi-million dollar airplanes over Vietnam to tens of dollars worth of rifle ammunition.

Over Joint Base Beacon

Wisconsin, United States of Canada

14 May 2001

1540 Hours Local

"Weiss, Ruby! I'm on Roman! Where are you?" Ruby Rose was trying to keep her nose on Roman Torchwick's stolen F-5, which was nowhere near as easy as it sounded. She checked her tail and saw the red F-22 closing in. "I've got a Raptor on my ass!"

"Ruby, Weiss…I'm on the Raptor." Weiss' voice was calm, as if she was discussing going to the store. "DUST, lock onto target, select IRIS-T." The onboard computer beeped, and in the helmet sight projected on her visor, she saw the gunsight settle on the F-22. It was having trouble keeping locked- the Raptor's engines were shielded from infrared—but if necessary, the IRIS could home on the heat from the fighter's canopy. Weiss squeezed the trigger, and a missile reached out from her Typhoon. It guided on the F-22; if her sheer will could guide the missile, Weiss would have the kill.

Abruptly, the F-22 made a shallow dive, then shot upwards, dropping flares into its wake, as it used its thrust vectoring to suddenly change its direction. The IRIS homed in and blew up a flare, but Weiss barely reacted, firing a second one—only to have the Raptor accelerate, roll, and dodge that missile as well. It shot past Myrtenaster. Weiss had succeeded in getting it off Ruby's tail, at least, but now she would have to pursue, otherwise the Raptor pilot would simply reverse and end up behind both of them. "Ruby, Weiss—I'm going after the Raptor."

Ruby clicked the mike twice. It meant splitting the element, but there was no choice now. Roman had already dodged one of her Sidewinder shots, so she closed the distance, switching to guns.

Unfortunately for her, Roman had anticipated it. He waited a precious second, then suddenly threw the F-5 hard to the left. Ruby swore as she overshot, then turned hard to the right, gasping as the G-suit squeezed her hard, fighting against nine times the force of gravity as she punished Crescent Rose into a hard turn. Roman couldn't sustain this kind of turn, so if he was trying to stay with her—and she couldn't look around, with her head weighing approximately over eighty pounds—he would be forced back in front.

Weiss climbed hard, then rolled out upside down, over the top, keeping her eyes on Neo. The F-22 was gone. Oh shit, Weiss thought. If she couldn't see the Raptor, it meant that somehow it was behind her. She pushed the throttle forward and dived.

Neo had seen the Typhoon go into its climb, and realized Weiss had made a mistake: she'd taken her eyes off the Raptor for a few seconds. It was enough for Neo to turn the F-22 within its own length—an act that nearly threw her against the cockpit consoles with its violence, and had her actually screaming against the G-force—go to afterburners, and climb after the Typhoon. "Ha," Neo snorted, as she ended up behind and underneath her opponent, where Weiss could not see her. She opened fire with the gun, tracking shells into the rear of the Typhoon. Smoke and flame burst from the back of the fighter before the gunfire stopped. Neo glanced at the round counter: the gun was empty. She watched the Typhoon going down, smoking and burning, and smiled: it was finished. She went into a dive, rolled out at the bottom, then saw Roman's F-5, with the red-trimmed F-16 closing in behind.

Roman had expected that Ruby would break with him, which would allow him to get into a rolling scissors with her, exactly the sort of low-speed knife fight the F-5 excelled at. To his surprise, when he came out of his break and turned into where he thought the F-16 would be, it was not there. "Oops," he said aloud, and checked the rearview mirrors set into the F-5's canopy. "Little Red, Little Red," he sighed, "you're just determined to be the hero of Vale, aren't you?"

Ruby came out of the hard turn and saw the F-5 right in front of her. "Let's try that again," she growled, and set up another Sidewinder shot. Then she caught movement the corner of her left eye, a brief flash. Before she could barely register what that meant, her right hand, on the stick, was already moving. She turned Crescent Rose into the flash, and an AMRAAM shot past; her sudden move threw off the missile's radar head, and she'd escaped its proxmity detonation sensor by mere feet. The Raptor went past seconds later.

Neo cursed; she'd fired the AMRAAM too fast and too close. No matter, she thought, throwing the F-22 into a loop and then rolling back to horizontal as she came out of it: as long as the F-16 kept on its course, she'd be in better parameters. Sure enough, her opponent was in a shallow right turn, making her an easy target—but then Neo's finger came off the trigger as Roman flew in front of her, pursuing the F-16. It ruined her shot, but she was more than happy to let her lover finish off the annoying little bitch in the Viper.

Ruby glanced behind her. Not only had the F-22 gotten in behind her, Roman had turned her own trick against her, also pulling a hard turn and ending up directly behind Crescent Rose. The only good thing was that only one of them could take a shot at a time, but now she was totally defensive—and Weiss was nowhere to be seen. Ruby hoped she wasn't dead.

"Little Red, don't make me chase you." Roman's voice sounded in her earphones, taunting.

"Roman, you dumbass!" Ruby yelled back. "There's a shitload of GRIMM headed towards us! They'll kill you too!" She broke right as his nose winked with cannon fire, sending twenty millimeter shells her way. "You don't stand to get anything out of this!"

"You're asking the wrong questions, Red!" Roman replied, staying with her in the break. Ruby could not cheat the turn too hard, or Neo's F-22 would be on her next. "It's not what I have to gain, it's what I have to lose! I'm a gambling man, but even I know there's some bets you just don't take."

Ruby dived for the ground; her F-16 didn't perform any better than the F-5 at low level, but the heat of the ground would throw off Roman's Sidewinders. Maybe. "Like it or not, the people I'm allied with are going to change this world. You can't stop them any more than I can." Ruby noted a tinge of regret in Roman's voice, but that didn't stop him from closing the range, reaching out with the cannon. She weaved as little fireballs skipped past her canopy. "So if you can't beat 'em…well, you know the rest." Roman made a minute change with the stick, putting the gunsight pipper ahead of the F-16, letting Ruby fly right into his guns. It was still a deflection shot, but it would be enough. He cleared his tail as a matter of habit with a quick glance behind.

His tail was clear. Neo's was not. "Neo! Break right!" Roman shouted.

Neo had been intent on watching Roman exterminate Ruby Rose—too intent. She'd forgotten the sky around her. It was a rookie mistake: lose sight, lose the fight, but even veterans could get target-fixated. And Neo suddenly realized she'd done exactly that.

Weiss roared back into the fight. One engine was out, wrecked by Neo's cannon shells, but the Typhoon was twin-engined, and could fly on one. Her performance was degraded, but once Weiss had pulled herself out of the dive, looking around frantically and expecting the Raptor to be there to finish her off, she'd realized she was alone. A long turn, compensating for the dead engine, and she saw the dogfight now in front of her. Roman and Ruby were too close together for a missile shot, but the F-22 was in range, and Weiss realized the pilot was not paying attention to the sky around her. "DUST," she snarled. "Target F-22, AMRAAM." The DUST system locked on, slaving two AMRAAM to the trigger, and Weiss pulled it twice. Two dropped from the fuselage missile wells and shot towards the F-22.

Neo's eyes widened as she saw the missiles coming towards her. She was already breaking right before Roman even finished his sentence, trying to throw off the missiles, dropping chaff behind her. It worked—partially. One missile flew past, fooled by the chaff and the F-22's stealth design. The other almost did, but detonated behind the F-22, getting just enough of a radar return to realize its target was nearby. Fragments shredded the twin tails, and the Raptor fluttered and nearly fell out of the sky.

"Neo!" Roman yelled in terror. But there was nothing he could do: if he broke off to help her, he'd be sandwiched in between the F-16 and the Typhoon. He couldn't even watch to see what happened, not with the trees less than a hundred feet below, as Ruby got even lower, trying to scrape him off her tail by luring him into the trees. Hating himself, Roman left Neo on her own, behind him.

Neo's instrument panel had lit up with several warning lights. One engine was damaged and a fire light was on; she hit the fire extinguisher and tried to turn into the Typhoon, but the controls were mushy; Neo realized in horror that the rudders were damaged.

There was nothing wrong with Weiss' rudders. She rolled in behind the F-22, and selected guns. The Raptor was trying to dodge, trying to use its thrust vectoring, but all that succeeded in doing was slowing it down even more. Weiss compensated, centered the gunsight on the Raptor's broad back, and opened fire. Shells chopped into the red spine, and flames erupted from the holes as fuel caught fire.

"Fuck!" Neo shouted. She leaned back in the seat, kept her legs as steady as possible, reached between her legs, and pulled the yellow handle. The canopy blew off and she was shot free of the Raptor, even as it began to descend. It exploded before it hit the trees.

Neo was knocked out by the force of the ejection, but she came to after only seconds. She twisted around as the seat separated from her and her parachute opened. The Typhoon was already past, leaving a skein of black smoke behind it. Neo let loose with a flood of obscenity, more angry at herself than the person who shot her down. As she tucked up her legs to avoid breaking them against the trees, she hoped that Roman would be all right, and avenge her. "Cinder's going to be so pissed," she sighed as the forest rushed up towards her.

Ruby made a slight turn to the left, once more barely dodging Roman's cannon fire, and found herself over the interstate. She turned back to the right: if Roman's shells missed her, they would go into the road below, packed with cars and trucks. It also put her back into Roman's gunsight.

"Oh, well done," he snarled. "You want to be a hero, huh? Well, then play the part, Little Red, and fucking die like one!" He saw one of his cannon shells hit the top of her tail.

Task Force Gagnon

Near JRB Beacon Front Gate

1545 Local

The good news was that Gagnon's appeal to patriotism had worked: they'd covered the six miles on the frontage road to the exit for Beacon in less than ten minutes, even accounting for weaving around stopped traffic. The bad news was, once Ballew had made the turn onto the base access road, he'd run into another solid mass of traffic of people trying to get back onto the base, or off of it. Ahead, the gate was still closed, with the security police yelling at people to turn around and leave.

"Oh, to hell with this!" Gagnon shouted. "Ballew, pull over to the side!" The corporal did as asked, pulling the truck onto the shoulder. He opened the partition to the truck bed. "Grab your kit and abandon the truck! We'll go in on foot!"

Oobleck was out first, dropping nimbly to the road and running up to Gagnon. "Follow me, Major! They'll let me on—" He turned towards the sound of jet engines. "That's odd. They're very low."

Gagnon's men were piling out of the truck, and he realized they were perfect targets. "That's because they're going to strafe our ass!" He unslung his assault rifle. Small arms could be just as lethal as missiles at low level, which was why fighter pilots not flying A-10s avoided getting low as much as possible—all it took was a single bullet through the canopy to kill the pilot, and even high speed was not necessarily a savior. "Everyone down!" he shouted, and knelt, trying to make himself as small a target as possible. There was no point in running; he might as well stand his ground.

Oobleck was still standing, heedless of his safety and more curious than afraid. He made out the red panels on the F-16. "That's Lieutenant Rose," he said to himself. As she came towards them, he could see the F-5 behind her, the nose flashing as it fired.

Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck was nothing if not a quick study. "Major!" he yelled. "Let the F-16 go and open fire on the F-5!"

"Open fire!" Gagnon shouted. His men raised their assault rifles; Ballew braced the troop's M240 on the top of the cab and pulled the trigger. Oobleck's mouth opened in horror as he saw the Delta Force men firing on Ruby.

Roman saw that they were nearly back over Beacon, which meant he could expect Ruby to get more help presently. With the runways clear of White Fang and the airspace temporarily free of fighters, Beacon could surge everything they had left. Then again, they'd have their hands full with the GRIMM, which would be their priority. Adam Taurus was probably fighting his private war with his ex-girlfriend, the lovestruck fool, and that would draw a fighter or two over his way. Roman knew his best chance was to disengage, and in the confusion, fly off and see if he could find where Neo went down. Hopefully she'd been able to eject over the White Fang. If not, he'd land nearby and find her; the F-5 could land on a stretch of road if necessary, and he'd noticed some straight stretches east of the base earlier.

But he was going to kill Little Red first, and Roman saw his opportunity to do so. Ruby was flying towards an outcropping of rocks that sat on the west perimeter of the base. If she turned to either side, he'd stitch cannon shells from her canopy to her tail; if she climbed, he'd pop her with a Sidewinder—the hot F-16 against a cold sky. And she couldn't get any lower without hitting the trees. "Sorry, Little Red!" he shouted. "It's over! As for me, I'll do what I do best! Lie, cheat, steal and survive!" Ruby began to climb to avoid the rocks and went over the front gate of the base, and he switched to Sidewinders.

Then the F-5 shuddered with several hits, the sound like rocks hitting a tin roof. Fire warning lights lit up all over the instrument panel, and he heard the engines seize and begin to wind down. Something had hit him, and abruptly, Roman knew what it was. Small arms, he thought. Son of a bitch.

He pulled back on the stick to get some altitude before he bailed out, but the controls froze, the cables cut by the hail of bullets from below. The F-5 was headed directly for the outcropping. Roman relaxed. There was nothing he could do.

"Well, shit," was Roman Torchwick's last words.

Oobleck turned as the smoking F-5 smashed into the side of the outcropping and exploded. He watched the F-16 climb into the clouds. "Well done, Major!" he said to Gagnon. "I thought you were firing on the F-16, but instead you led the F-5 perfectly."

Gagnon lowered the assault rifle. "We're Delta, Professor. We can shoot. Now if you don't mind…"

"Certainly! Follow me, gentlemen—and you too, Peter."

Port grinned and gave Oobleck two fingers, straight up in the air.

Over Joint Base Beacon

1540 Hours Local

Blake turned in her straps as the Moonslice flew past her F-14. Don't, Blake warned herself. Don't fight the way he fights. The Moonslice is designed to fight close in, using its forward swept wings and low stall speed. You get into a close-range fight with him, and Adam will kill you. You've seen him do it a hundred times. She hauled back on the stick and climbed, straining against the Gs to keep Adam in sight. He was coming back around. Come on, you lunatic. Come up here and fight me in the vertical.

But he didn't. He began circling. "This could've been our day, Blake," he radioed. "Can't you see that? Are you that blind now?"

She was being baited again, Blake knew. And just like last time, she couldn't help but answer him. "I never wanted this, Adam! I wanted equality! I wanted peace!" She rolled and dived, keeping her speed up. If Adam wouldn't fight on her terms, she'd make slashing attacks at him, using the kinetic energy built up in dives to climb away. Sooner or later, she'd shoot him down, or he'd run out of gas. The F-14 could stay over Beacon all day; the Moonslice, she knew, had short legs when it came to range.

"Dammit," Yang murmured. She'd lost Weiss and Ruby in the clouds, then noticed that Blake was no longer with her. Yang turned Ember Celica around, saw the dogfight between the weird forward-swept winged fighter and the F-14, and switched on her radar. She held her fire. The AMRAAM was a superb missile, but it also had a tendency to home in on anything in front of it: if she fired into the melee between Adam and Blake, it was odds-on which one she'd shoot down. Yang reached forward and turned off her radar. Maybe I can sneak up on him.

"What you want is impossible, Blake," Adam answered.

She fired a Sidewinder at him. The Moonslice skidded and dropped flares, and the missile was decoyed off. As she roared past, he took a shot at her with his cannon, but Gambol Shroud was too fast. She lost a little energy in dodging them, but shot back into the sky. "Must we keep doing this?" he sighed. "I understand, Blake, I really do. All I want is you, Blake."

"Oh, fuck you." She rolled out again, checked her range, then saw him fire an AMRAAM at her. Blake dived again, dropping chaff; Adam had fired just within the missile's minimum range, and it failed to guide. She didn't bother firing this time, knowing she wouldn't hit, and climbed away. She knew the aircraft she was fighting: the Moonslice also couldn't carry a lot of weaponry. He probably had one or two missiles left, and that was it. If he ran out, she could pop him at long range.

Then Blake looked out of her canopy, directly into his: he was climbing as well. She could see the white helmet with its red highlights, the tailored black flight suit. "You know, Blake," he said conversationally, "we should stop meeting like this."

Yang looked up as she came back around, having flown behind and below both aircraft. Now they were slowing down. Climbing into that was liable to end in a midair collision, and she would rather not lose Ember Celica by smashing it into Blake's ex. "Come on, you two," she said. "Give me an opening."

Blake snapped open the speedbrake between the Tomcat's tails. Her aircraft slowed, forcing Adam out front, but then she saw his speedbrakes open, even his flaps drop. "Dammit!" she shouted, knowing she was now playing his game again—her stall speed was much higher. She shut the speedbrake, let Gambol Shroud fall over on its right wing, and dived, slamming the throttle forward—the Moonslice might have her in low-speed fighting, but the F-14 could easily outdistance the Moonslice. Then Blake snapped back the throttle and turned hard to the left, popping flares.

If he'd anticipated her trying to slow down in the vertical, she'd anticipated his next move. Adam had turned, rolled, and set up for a Sidewinder shot into Gambol Shroud's glowing afterburners. By the sudden turn and the flares, he'd missed. Now he'll try to get me into a scissors, slow me down, and gun me, Blake grinned savagely under the mask. She turned back to the right, glanced upwards, saw the fighter closing in, and climbed away, just as Yang had when they'd had their mock dogfight. "Got you," she said under the mask.

Yang saw her opportunity as Blake suddenly climbed. "Smooth move, Blakey!" Yang shouted. Adam was left turning in place, and he was level and slow for a second, which was all she needed. Yang racked the F-15 into a hard turn and selected guns. She'd promised Blake she'd gun Adam down, and Yang intended to make good on her promise.

Blake rolled Gambol Shroud, shedding more speed, forcing Adam out front again, and switched back to Sidewinders even as Adam realized his mistake and turned. It threw off her shot, but his desperate break to the left meant she could still drop in behind him. A quick movement of the thumb went to guns.

"Blake, break off!" Yang yelled. "I've got the son of a bitch! I'm going to blast him in the face!"

"Yang?" Blake said. She'd been so determined to get Adam that she'd forgotten her wingmate. Now she saw the F-15 charging in, closing the range—Yang was also going for a gun pass, head-on. "Yang, no!" She leveled out: if she went after Adam, she was liable to collide with Yang.

Adam checked the mirrors in the bow of the canopy, saw that Blake was out of position, then rolled and dived as Yang opened fire. She kept her speed up, knowing that her shot was ruined now too, but so was his as he dived out of the fight.

Except Adam hadn't dived out of the fight. He rolled again, coming out of the dive before it barely began, then hauled back on the stick, skidding the Moonslice and pulling its nose upwards. A conventional aircraft would've stalled as the airspeed bled off, but the forward swept wings kept the Moonslice in the air and allowed it to remain controllable. As the F-15 flashed by less than two hundred feet away, Adam pulled the trigger. Cannon shells hit the nose, the cockpit, both intakes, the conformal fuel tanks, and the engines as Ember Celica went past.

"Fuck, I'm hit," Yang radioed. She moved the stick to break away from the fight, see how bad her aircraft was wounded, but for some reason, the stick didn't move. Her right hand wasn't even on it. Yang looked down, curious.

Her right hand was lying on her right foot, atop the rudder pedal. That made no sense. Then she looked over and saw that her right arm was gone below the elbow. There was wind whistling past her helmet, and detachedly she noted that a shell had come through the nose, through the side console, and exited out the canopy. It had also blown off her arm. As she watched, blood pumped from the stump, coating the remains of the console and spraying over the legs of her flight suit. Yang blinked. There was no pain.

Slowly, she gazed at the instrument panel. Ember Celica was dying, and in her helmet, she could hear Blake screaming that the F-15 was on fire. Fire, Yang thought blurrily, I should probably get out. She moved her left arm from the throttle, over to the ejection handle in the center of the seat, wondered idly if she should grab her hand before she left, and pulled the handle. "G'bye, Ember," she whispered. "Sorry."

Then, as the seat fired, Yang mercifully lost consciousness.

"YANG!" Blake screamed. She fired an AMRAAM at Adam, more or less ballistically, to keep him away. The F-15 was a mass of flames from the canopy back, and it would explode at any second. The canopy came off and she saw Yang eject. Ember Celica saved its pilot one last time: it simply fell into the woods below without blowing up in midair.

Blake divided her attention between Adam's Moonslice, dodging the hasty missile shot, and Yang's seat. A parachute blossomed over her friend, and Blake, praying Adam didn't have time for a missile shot of his own, slowed down. There was something wrong with the little figure underneath the olive drab parachute, something missing.

"Oh God," Blake gasped, and nearly vomited.

Then the missile warning receiver went off. Blake instinctively climbed, dropping countermeasures, but the receiver kept screaming at her. Blake knew there was only seconds before she would be joining Yang in a parachute, assuming Adam let her live. She punched a button, releasing Gambol Shroud's decoys. It streamed behind her, the holograms projecting a F-14, but the AMRAAM ignored that. It didn't ignore the radar reflector underneath the hologram, however, homed in on it, and exploded. The Tomcat shuddered with the explosion, but a quick sweep of her instruments showed no damage had been done.

"I'm afraid that's it for me, Blake," Adam radioed. "But it does look like your friend's not doing so good…ow, that's an arm gone. Poor thing. She'll bleed out unless someone gets to her on the ground soon. And there's that nice stretch of road there…nice and straight. Nothing that a Marine couldn't handle, eh, Blake? You're carrier qualified, I'm sure."

"I'll kill you, you fucking bastard!" she shouted.

"You can certainly do that. I'm low on fuel, so I'm out of here." She saw the Moonslice turn and head northwest. "You can kill me, Blake, or you can save Yang. Which is it?" Blake saw the figure of Yang crumple next to the road, the parachute falling over her like a shroud.

Blake broke off pursuit and started heading for the road.

"I figured you'd do that," Adam sighed. "Know this, Blake: for what you did to the White Fang, and me, I'm going to kill everything you love. Starting with her. Until you come back, Blake. And you will come back, Blake. After you've finished running, you'll come back."

Then he was gone, as Blake dropped her flaps and lowered the landing gear. It was a straight enough road, and seemed in good repair—a nice two-lane highway with a passing lane, with only one car speeding away. She chopped back her speed and opened the speedbrake, and Gambol Shroud touched down with a puff of smoke. She stood on the brakes, and the Tomcat rolled to a halt, only a few paces from Yang's body. Even as she raised the canopy and unstrapped, Adam's words rang in her ears.